"ONE FLEW INTO THE CUCKOO'S NEST."
The letter for Jaynes's Post-office reached the end of its journey
first. It wasn't much of a post-office; only an old case of pigeon-holes
set up in one corner of a cross-roads store. A man riding over from the
nearest town twice a week brought the mail-bag on horseback. So few
letters found their way into this, particular bag that Squire Jaynes,
who kept the store and post-office, felt a personal interest in every
envelope that passed through his hands.
"Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis," he spelled aloud, examining the address
through his square-bowed spectacles with a critical squint. "Now, who
under the canopy might _she_ be?"
There was no one in the store to answer the question but an overgrown
boy who had stopped to get his father's weekly paper. He sat on the
counter dangling his big bare feet against a nail-keg, and catching
flies in his sunburned hands, while he waited for the mail to be
opened.
The squire peered inquiringly at him over the square-bowed spectacles.
"Jake," he asked, "ever hear tell of a Miss Elizabeth Lloyd Lewis up
this way?"
"Wy, sure!" drawled the boy. "That's Betty. The Appletons' Betty. Don't
you know? She's that little orphan they're a-bringin' up. I worked there
a while this spring, a-plowin'."
"Hump!" grunted the squire, slipping the letter into the pigeon-hole
marked "A." "If that's who it is, I know all about her. Precious little
bringing up she'll get at the Appletons', I can tell you that. They keep
her because they're her nearest of living kin, which isn't very near,
after all; fourth or fifth cousins to her father, or something like
that. Any-how, they're all she's got, and her father made some
arrangement with them before he died. Left a little money to pay her
board, they say, but I've heard she works just the same as if she was
living on charity."
"That's the truth," said Jake; "she does. Talk about bringin' up. She
doesn't get any of it. Mrs. Appleton has her hands so full of cookin'
for farm hands and all, that she can't half tend to her own children,
let alone anybody else's. It's Betty that 'pears to be bringin' up the
little Appletons."
"I'm glad there's somebody takes enough interest in the child to write
to her," continued the gossipy old squire, who often talked to himself
when he could find no other audience. "I wonder who it is. Lloydsboro
Valley it's postmarked. Wish she'd happen down here. I'd ask her who
it's from."
Jake got up, dragged his bare feet across the floor, and leaned lazily
on the counter as he reached for his paper.
"Little Betty will be mighty proud to get a real shore 'nuff letter all
for herself. I never got one in my life. I'll take it up to her, squire,
if you say so. I'm goin' by the Appletons' on my way home."
"Reckon you might as well," answered the old man, giving a final close
scrutiny before handing it to the boy. "It might lie here all week in
case none of them happened to come to the store, and it looks as if it
might be important."
Jake slipped the letter into the band of his broad-brimmed straw hat and
slouched lazily out of the store. An old blaze-faced sorrel horse
whinnied as he stepped up to untie it. Jake mounted and rode off slowly,
his bare feet dangling far below the stirrups. It was two miles to the
Appleton farm, down a hot, dusty road, and he took his time in going.
Well for little Betty that she did not know what wonderful surprise was
on its way to her, or she would have been in a fever of impatience for
the letter to arrive.
It had been a tiresome day for the child. Up before five, in her bare
little room in the west gable, busy with morning chores until breakfast
was ready, she had earned a rest long before the Little Colonel's day
had begun. Afterward she had helped with the breakfast dishes and had
taken her turn at the butter-making in the spring-house, thumping the
heavy dasher up and down in the cedar churn until her arms ached. But it
was cool and pleasant down in the spring-house with the water trickling
out in a ceaseless drip-drip on the cold stones. She dabbled her fingers
in the spring for a long time when the churning was done, wishing she
had nothing to do but sit there and listen to the secrets it was trying
to tell. Surely it must have learned a great many on its underground way
among the roots of things, and all else that lies hidden in the earth.
But she could not loiter long. There was the dinner-table to set for the
hungry farm-hands, and after the dinner was over more dishes to wash.
Then there were some towels to iron. It was two o'clock before her work
was all done, and she had time to go up to her little room in the west
gable.
The sun poured in through the shutterless windows so fiercely that she
did not stay long,--only long enough to put on a clean apron and brush
her curly hair, as she stood in front of the little looking-glass. It
was such a tiny mirror that she could see only a part of her face at a
time. When her big brown eyes, wistful and questioning as a fawn's, were
reflected in it, there was no room for the sensitive little mouth. Or if
she stood on tiptoe so that she could see her plump round chin, dimpled
cheeks, and white teeth, the eyes were left out, and she could see no
more of her inquisitive little nose than lay below the big freckle in
the middle of it.
Hastily tying back her curls with a bow of brown ribbon, she slipped on
her apron, and ran down-stairs, buttoning it as she went. She was free
now to do as she pleased until supper-time. Once out of the house, she
walked slowly along through the shady orchard, swinging her sunbonnet by
the strings. After the orchard came the long leafy lane, with its double
rows of cherry-trees, and then the gate at the end, leading into the
public highway.
As she slipped her hand around the post to unfasten the chain that held
the gate, little bare feet came pattering behind her, and a shrill voice
called: "Wait, Betty, wait a minute!" It was Davy Appleton. Betty's
little lamb, they called him, and Betty's shadow, and Betty's
sticking-plaster, because everywhere she went there was Davy just at her
heels.
All the Appleton children were boys,--three younger and two older than
Davy, whose last birthday cake should have had eight candles if there
had been any celebration of the event. But there never had been a
birthday cake with candles on it on the Appleton table. It would have
been considered a foolish waste of time and money, and birthdays came
and went sometimes, without the children knowing that they had passed.
Davy was a queer little fellow. He tagged along after Betty, switching
at the grass with a whip he carried, never saying a word after that
first eager call for her to wait. The two never tired of each other. He
was content to follow and ask no questions, for he had learned long ago
to look twice before he spoke once. As he caught up with her at the
gate, he did not even ask where she was going, knowing that he would
find out in due time if he only followed far enough.
He did not have to follow far to-day. Betty led the way across the road
to a plain little wooden church, set back in a grove of cedar-trees.
Behind the church was a graveyard, where they often strolled on summer
afternoons, through the tangle of grass and weeds and myrtle vines, to
read the names on the tombstones and smell the pinks and lilies that
struggled up year after year above the neglected mounds. But that was
not their errand to-day. A little red bookcase inside the church was the
attraction. Betty had only lately discovered it, although it had stood
for years on a back bench in a cobwebby corner.
It held all that was left of a scattered Sunday-school library, that had
been in use two generations before. Queer little books they were,
time-yellowed and musty smelling, but to story-loving little Betty,
hungry for something new, they seemed a veritable gold-mine. She had
found that no key barred her way into this little red treasure-house of
a bookcase, and a board propped against the wall under the window
outside gave her an easy entrance into the church. Here she came day
after day, when her work was done, to pore over the musty old volumes of
tales forgotten long ago.
In Betty's little room under the roof at home was a pile of handsomely
bound books, lying on a chest beside her mother's Bible. They were
twelve in all, and had come in several different Christmas boxes, and
each one had Betty's name on the fly-leaf, with the date of the
Christmas on which it happened to be sent. Underneath was always
written: "From your loving godmother, Elizabeth Lloyd Sherman."
Excepting a few school-books and some out-of-date census reports, they
were the only books in the Appleton house. Betty guarded them like a
little dragon. They were the only things she owned that the children
were not allowed to touch. Even Davy, when he was permitted to look at
the wonderful pictures in her "Arabian Nights," or "Pilgrim's Progress,"
or "Mother Goose," had to sit with his hands behind his back while she
carefully turned the leaves. Besides these three, there was "Alice in
Wonderland," and "Æsop's Fables," there was "Robinson Crusoe," and
"Little Women," and two volumes of fairy tales in green and gold with a
gorgeous peacock on the cover. Eugene Field's poems had come in the last
box, with Riley's "Songs of Childhood" and Kipling's jungle tales.
Twelve beautiful books, all of Mrs. Sherman's giving, and they were like
twelve great windows to Betty, opening into a new strange world, far
away from the experiences of her every-day life.
She had read them over and over so many times that she always knew what
was coming next, even before she turned the page; and she had read them
to the other children so many times that they, too, knew them almost by
heart.
The little dog-eared books in the meeting-house proved poor reading
sometimes after such entertainment. So many of them were about
unnaturally good children who never did wrong, and unnaturally bad
children who never did right. At the end there was always the word
MORAL, in big capital letters, as if the readers were supposed to be too
blind to find it for themselves, and it had to be put directly across
the path for them to stumble over.
Betty laughed at them sometimes, but she touched the little books with
reverent fingers, when she remembered how old they were, and how long
ago their first childish readers laid them aside. The hands that had
held them first had years before grown tired and wrinkled and old, and
had been lying for a generation under the myrtle and lilies of the
churchyard outside.
Many an afternoon she had spent, perched in the high window, with her
feet drawn up under her on the sill, reading aloud to Davy, who lay
outside on the grass, staring up at the sky. Davy's short fat legs could
not climb from the board to the window-sill, and since this little
Mahomet could not come to the mountain, Betty had to carry the mountain
to him.
The reading was slow work sometimes. Davy's mind, like his legs, could
not climb as far as Betty's, and she usually had to stop at the bottom
of every page to explain something. Often he fell asleep in the middle
of the most interesting part, and then Betty read on to herself, with
nothing to break the stillness around her but the buzzing of the wasps,
as they darted angrily in and out of the open window above her head.
To-day Betty had read nearly an hour, and Davy's eyelids were beginning
to flutter drowsily, when they heard the slow thud of a horse's hoofs in
the thick dust of the road. Betty stopped reading to listen, and Davy
sat up to look.
"It's Jake," he announced, recognising the boy who had helped his father
with the ploughing.
"Hope he won't see us," said Betty, in a low tone, drawing in her head.
"We are not hurting anything, but maybe some of the church people
wouldn't like it, if they knew I climbed in at the window. They might
think it wasn't respectful."
"He's looking this way," said Davy, who had stood up for a better view,
but squatted down again at Betty's command.
[Illustration: "OH, RUN AND GET IT, QUICK, DAVY,' SHE CRIED."]
It was too late. Jake had recognised Davy's shock of yellow hair, and
called out, good-naturedly, "Hello, stickin'-plaster, where's Betty?
Somewhere around here, I'll bet anything, or you wouldn't be here.
I've got a letter for her."
At that, Betty leaned so far out of the window that she nearly lost her
balance and toppled over. "Oh, run and get it, quick, Davy," she cried.
The little bare feet twinkled through the grass to meet the old sorrel
horse, and two brown hands were held up to receive the letter; but Jake
preferred to deliver the important document himself.
"Here you are," he said, riding alongside the window and dropping the
letter into her eager hands.
"Oh, _thank_ you, Jake," she cried. "It makes me feel as if Christmas
was coming. I never got a letter in my life except in my Christmas
boxes. My godmother always writes to me then, and this must be from her,
too. Yes, it is, I know her handwriting."
If Jake expected her to tear it open instantly and share the news with
him before she had examined every inch of the big square envelope, he
was disappointed. The old blaze-faced sorrel had carried him out of
sight before she had finished cutting it open with a pin. Then she
spread the letter out on her knees, drawing a long breath of pleasure as
the faintest odour of violets floated up from the paper with its dainty
monogram at the top.
Davy waited in silence, watching a flush spread over Betty's face as
she read. Her breath came short and her heart beat fast.
"Oh, Davy," she exclaimed, in a low, wondering tone. "What do you think?
It is an invitation to a house party at Locust; Lloyd Sherman's house
party. Oh, it's like a lovely, lovely fairy tale with me for the
princess. I've never travelled on the cars since I was old enough to
remember it, and they've sent passes for me to go. I've never had any
girls to play with in all my life, and now there will be two besides
Lloyd; and, oh, Davy, best of all, I'll see my beautiful, beautiful
godmother! I shall be there a whole month, and she knew my mamma and was
her dearest friend. I haven't seen her since I was a baby, when she came
to my christening, and of course I can't remember anything about that."
Davy listened to her raptures without saying anything for awhile. Then
he set aside his usual custom and asked a question. "Why are you
crying?" he demanded. "There's a tear running down the side of your
nose."
"Is there?" asked Betty, brushing it away with the back of her hand. "I
didn't know it. Maybe it's because I am so glad. It seems as if I was
going back to my own family; to somebody who really belongs to you more
than just fourth cousins, you know. A godmother must be the next best
thing to a real mother, you see, Davy, because it's a mother that God
gives you to take the place of your own, when she is gone. Oh, let's
hurry home and tell Cousin Hetty."
Slipping from the window-sill to the floor, she carried the book she had
been reading back to its corner in the little red bookcase, and shut it
up with the musty volumes inside. Then she walked slowly down the narrow
aisle of the little meeting-house, between its double rows of narrow
straight-backed pews. As she reached the bench-like altar, extending in
front of the pulpit, she slipped to her knees a moment. Her sunbonnet
had fallen back from her tousled curls, and the late afternoon sun
streamed across her shining little face.
"Thank you, God," came in a happy whisper from the depths of a glad
little heart. "It's the nicest surprise you ever sent me, and I'm _so_
much obliged."
Then Betty stood up and put on her sunbonnet. The next moment she had
scrambled over the sill, pulled the window down after her, and walked
down the slanting board to the ground. Catching Davy by the hand, and
swinging it back and forth as they ran, she went skipping across the
road regardless of the dust. Down the lane they went, between the rows
of cherry-trees; across the orchard and up the path. Somehow the world
had never before seemed half so beautiful to Betty as it did now. The
May skies had never been quite so blue, or the afternoon sunshine so
heavenly golden. She sang as she went, swinging Davy's warm little hand
in hers. It was only one of Mother Goose's old melodies, but she sang it
as a bird sings, for sheer gladness:
"Gay go up and gay go down,
To ring the bells of London town."