Business Enterprise
Galena Gittins had her hair screwed up tightly in curling-pins. Reggie
Furness was late in coming to do “chores” that morning, and so he had
crept in by way of the milk-room door with as little ostentation as
possible. He had found by experience that it was not wise to attract
attention to himself when he was behind time. Directly he noticed the
curling-pins his courage revived. The fair Galena was never hard to live
with when there was a festivity to the fore.
She was dashing round at such a rate that she even failed to notice his
silent entrance. He picked up the milk-buckets and scurried away to the
barn, well pleased at his escape, but actively curious as to the sort of
frolic to which Galena was bound that day.
“There’s no one dead, so it can’t be a funeral,” he muttered, as he tied
the white cow’s leg to a post to prevent her kicking while he milked.
“It isn’t a wedding either, or else I should have been bound to hear
about it. Her aunt has gone to Fredericton, so she ain’t going there.”
He was so absorbed in his meditations that he did not notice that the
rope had come unfastened, until the cow by an adroit movement knocked
him sprawling. He was used to her pranks by this time, and he contrived
to keep the bucket from being kicked over, so his own upset did not
count; and as he always pretended to himself that the white cow was a
playful creature, instead of, as was actually the case, a bad-tempered
animal, his feelings were not ruffled by his being rolled over and
having his head thumped against a post.
When he carried the milk-buckets in to the little chamber that was
scooped out from the side of the hill, he heard signs of unusual bustle
in the kitchen, and poking his head cautiously round the post of the
door, he was amazed to see a big baking in progress.
“Is that you, Reggie Furness?” called the voice of Miss Galena, who was
darting here and there, apparently trying to do three things at once.
“Step lively, will you, and help me here. I want eggs whisked, and
currants washed, sugar rolled, and a dozen things done all nearly at
once. You can’t have a sitting-down breakfast this morning. But none of
us have had that. You will have to be content to feed as you run about.”
“I don’t care how I have my breakfast as long as I do have one,” said
Reggie, who had got hold of the whisker, and was turning it at a great
rate, while the eggs churned into yellow foam under his active
exertions.
Galena laughed at the broadness of the hint, but she had not had six
brothers without knowing that boys were the hungriest creatures under
the sun; so she brought him a great wedge of pumpkin pie, just to keep
him from starving, and promised him some hot cookies as soon as they
were out of the oven. The pie was fragrant with spice and black with
currants. Reggie was in clover for once in his life. Breakfast, which
was part of his wage, consisted in a usual way of buckwheat or oatmeal
porridge drowned out with skim milk. There was no porridge pot visible
this morning, so plainly there was something very unusual on hand.
“Please, are you going to be married to-day?” he asked, his eyes fairly
bulging with curiosity. The ham boiler was on the stove, and it was
beginning to bubble, while delicious odours filled the kitchen and made
their way out through the open door. His question was only a wild
hazard. He had never heard that Miss Galena had any views with regard to
matrimony, but he guessed that in any case it would please her to be
asked, and so he would be the more likely to find out what he wanted to
know so badly. He was through with the whisking by now, and Miss Galena
had set him rolling sugar. He would not have taken any, of course, being
irreproachably honest so far as he understood what honesty meant; but he
saw no harm in continually licking his fingers as he drew the sugar in a
lump for the rolling-pin. It was good! He would have enjoyed rolling
sugar all day long.
Galena burst into a great laugh of derision, but she was not ill-pleased
at the suggestion.
“Dear me, no; I am not going to be married yet, though you never can
tell what may happen.” She lifted her head and tried to look sprightly,
but she was so worn with hard work and much dyspepsia that the attempt
was rather a failure.
Reggie looked disappointed. If the festivity were not a wedding or a
funeral, he did not see what it could be. No church functions were in
progress this month, for the parson was away on holiday, and it would
not have been considered in good taste to have a church frolic in his
absence.
Galena’s eyes sparkled. She was aching for someone to talk things over
with. The men were always in a hurry when they came in from the field,
and there was not another woman within half a mile of the place. She
hesitated, and was lost.
“We are going to have a great frolic to-night; it was only decided late
last night, that is why I am so driven with cooking this morning. We are
going to have a big surprise party at old Wrack Peveril’s; you know
where he lives—over the Ridge at Ripple. They say he is a most
fearfully disagreeable old man. He lives quite alone, and has done so
for more years than you have been alive. I have heard he made a vow that
no woman should enter his house, on account of his only daughter having
run away from him to get married. Don’t you expect it will make him sit
up when all the lot of us go walking in?”
“Suppose he won’t let you inside the door?” Reggie stared at her with
bulging eyes. He was thinking of what had happened at his own poor home
two winters before, when he and Mose had gone to bed, and had been
hounded out of it by a surprise party that threatened to pull the
shingles off the roof if they were not admitted. Mose had been furious
at the invasion, for the cupboard was empty, and the stark poverty of
the home had been all laid bare to the laughing, careless crowd who had
taken the place by storm.
“Suppose he can’t keep us out!” she mocked. “I just love surprise
parties when there is a spice of mischief in them. When we go to
parson’s and take more food than we could eat in a month, and leave it
all behind for him and Mrs. White, it is most as tame as going to church
on Sunday, or having a missionary meeting and giving money to convert
the heathen; but when we go to surprise someone who does not want to see
us, why, that is where the fun begins.”
Reggie nodded in token of understanding, but he was spared the necessity
of reply by the entrance of Nathan Gittins, the eldest brother of
Galena, who ran the farm and the saw-mill, all the four brothers in
between having left New Brunswick for the Far West when they came to
man’s estate.
All the way to school that morning Reggie fumed over the injustice to
old Wrack Peveril in forcing a surprise party, mostly of women, upon him
when he had said that no woman should enter his house.
Reggie had not had much to do with women since his mother died. He had
been only a shaver of five years old then, and he had been “dragged up”
ever since by his step-brother, Mose Paget, who owned a long strip of
rather unfertile land running parallel with the creek, but separated
from the water by Sam Buckle’s quarter-section of water frontage. All
through morning school Reggie debated the matter with so much absorption
that he had no attention to give to mischief, and in consequence earned
the good-conduct mark, to his great amazement.
Directly school was out he set off to climb the Ridge, not going by the
ordinary trail that led past Ripple, but taking a bee-line through the
woods and up over the gap where the forest fire had been two years
before. He had serious business on hand, while his conscience troubled
him a little, because he was going to betray the confidence of Galena.
He had made up his mind to warn Wrack of what was impending, so that the
old man should have a chance of doing as he liked about being at home
when the visitors came.
The day was very hot although it was October. The maples on the Ridge
were aflame with their autumn splendours, and the scarlet of the oaks at
Cumberland Crossing was a sight to see. But Reggie had scant attention
for the beauties of nature, for he was in a hurry. Make the best speed
he could, it would still be almost impossible for him to get back to the
schoolhouse before afternoon school began, and if he had no satisfactory
excuse for being late he would have the cane. To be late at morning
school was a forgivable offence, because of the long distances the
scholars had to come and the heaviness of the morning “chores” at most
of the homes; but there was no excuse for being late in the afternoon,
because no one went home then, and it did not take long to eat the
noon-piece each scholar brought in his or her school bag.
From the top of the Ridge to Ripple was easy going, downhill all the
way. Reggie crashed through the undergrowth at a great rate. He had no
watch, and could only guess at the time. Every minute gained would make
one stroke of the cane the less, for the rule was one stroke for every
minute late, so it was necessary to use dispatch.
When he emerged at the clearing in front of the house he saw the old man
doing something to a gun, in front of the chiphouse door. Quickening his
pace, Reggie was making straight towards him, but before he could
clamber through the hole in the garden fence a quavering shout reached
him.
“Now, then, stay where you are, boy! If you come a step nearer I will
set the dog at you.” Wrack’s aspect was so threatening that Reggie
decided it to be the best part of valour to stay where he was,
especially as a powerful dog which had been lying on the ground rose at
this moment and growled in a menacing fashion.
“I’ve come to tell you something that you will be glad to know,” called
Reggie.
“Tell it, then, and be off. I don’t want a lot of loafers on these
premises,” growled the old man. And enraged though he was, Reggie’s face
twitched in a grin of amusement. One small and perspiring boy who had
run all the way from the schoolhouse could hardly be described as a lot
of loafers.
“Gittins’s folks and a lot of women are going to have a surprise party
here to-night. They are going to bring supper, and dance to an accordion
afterwards,” called out Reggie in clear tones which carried amazingly in
the hot, still air. If he had been able to whisper the information it
would not have seemed so bad, but to be obliged to shout out what in
honour he ought to have kept silent about made him so angry that he
hated the old man he had come so far to serve.
Wrack gave a scornful, cackling laugh, and the dog growled in sympathy.
“If the surprise party come here it is likely they may find themselves a
bit surprised,” the old man called back, then went on cleaning his gun
as if no one were there.
“Ain’t you going to give me nothing for coming all this way to tell
you?” demanded Reggie in a shrill tone of indignation. It was past
believing that this disagreeable old man should actually refuse to
reward him for all his trouble.
“I’ll give you the stick if you don’t clear out of this sharp,” the old
man retorted with a snarl, and he looked as if he meant it.
Reggie was insistent, and inclined to clamour for what he deemed his
rights, so he burst into noisy abuse after the manner of his kind.
“Think I’m going to put up with that sort of treatment, do you? A
regular old skin-flint you are, and no mistake. I hope the surprise
party will come, scores of ’em, and I hope they will dance and dance
till your carpets are in rags, and they have worn holes in your floors.”
“Here, dog, after him!” exclaimed the old man, swinging his hand with an
air of exasperation in Reggie’s direction. But Reggie was not going to
stay on the chance of a mauling. The dog was a big animal, and he was
only rather a small boy; so he fled away with the speed of a hunted fox,
and the dog, having pursued him to the end of the cleared ground, gave
up the chase, returning towards the house at a languid trot, as if the
exertion was too much on such a hot day.
There was no slackening of Reggie’s speed until he was well on his way;
then, as the ascent of the Ridge grew steeper, he dropped into a walk.
There was black hate in his heart for the old man who had treated him so
badly, and he was meditating all manner of wildly impossible schemes for
getting the better of him as he toiled over the Ridge, then broke into a
trot again where the ground sloped to the schoolhouse.
He would be late, he was sure of it, and he would have the cane. He had
broken a confidence reposed in him, and he had gained nothing by it. No
wonder he was furious. As he turned to enter the school door he shook
his fist in impotent rage at the wooded ridge he had just crossed.