POKE-TOWN
Some ancient dwellings have the dignity of "homestead" resting upon
them like a benediction; others are aureoled by the name of "manor."
The original Day in Poketown had built a shingled, gable-ended cottage
upon the side-hill which had now, for numberless years, been called
"the old Day house"--nothing more.
"Jason! You Jase! I'd give a cent if you'd mend this pump,"
complained Mrs. Almira Day. "Go git me a pail of water from Mis'
Dickerson's and ask how's her rheumatism this mawnin'. Come on, now!
I can't wash the breakfas' dishes till I hev some water."
The grizzled, lanky man who had been sitting comfortably on a bench in
the sun, sucking on a corncob pipe and gazing off across the lake,
never even turned his head as he asked:
"Where's Marty?"
"The goodness only knows! Ye know he ain't never here when ye want
him."
"Why didn't ye tell him about the water at breakfas' time?"
"Would _that_ have done any good?" demanded Mrs. Day, with some scorn.
"Ye know Marty's got too big to take orders from his marm. He don't do
nothin' but hang about Josiah Pringle's harness shop all day."
"I told him to hoe them 'taters," said Mr. Day, thoughtfully.
"Well, he don't seem ter take orders from his dad, neither. Don't know
what that boy's comin' to," and a whine crept into Mrs. Day's voice.
"He can't git along with 'Rill Scattergood, so he won't go to school.
His fingers is gettin' all stained yaller from suthin'--d'you 'xpect
it's them cigarettes, Jase?"
Her husband was rising slowly to his feet. "Gimme the pail," he
grunted, without replying to her last question. "I'll git the water
for ye this onc't. But that's Marty's job an' he's got to l'arn it,
too!"
"Here, Jase! take two pails," urged Mrs. Day. "An' I wish you _would_
git Pringle to cut ye a new pump-leather."
But Mr. Day ignored the second pail. "I don't feel right peart
to-day," he said, shambling off down the path. "And there's a deal of
heft to a pail of water--uphill, too. An' by-me-by I got ter go down
to the dock, I s'pose, when the boat comes in, to meet Broxton's gal.
I 'xpect _she'll_ be a great nuisance, 'Mira."
"I'll stand her bein' some nuisance if you give me the twenty dollars a
month your brother wrote that he'd send for her board and keep,"
snapped Mrs. Day. "You understand, Jase. That money's comin' to _me_,
or I don't scrub and slave for no relation of yourn. Remember that!"
Jason shuffled on as though he had not heard her. That was the most
exasperating trait of this lazy man--so his wife thought; he was too
lazy to quarrel.
He went out at the gate, which hung by one hinge to the gatepost, into
the untidy back lane upon which one end of his rocky little farm
abutted. Had he glanced back at the premises he would have seen a
weed-grown, untidy yard surrounding the old house, with decrepit
stables and other outbuildings in the rear, a garden which was almost a
jungle now, although in the earlier spring it had given much promise of
a summer harvest of vegetables. Poorly tilled fields behind the front
premises terraced up the timber-capped hill.
Jason Day always "calkerlated ter farm it" each year, and he started in
good season, too. The soil was rich and most of his small fields were
warm and early; but somehow his plans always fell through before the
season was far advanced. So neither the farm nor the immediate
premises of the old Day house were attractive.
The house itself looked like a withered and narly apple left hanging
upon the tree from the year before. In its forlorn nakedness it
actually cried out for a coat of paint. Each individual shingle was
curled and cracked. Only the superior workmanship of a former time
kept the Day roof tight and defended the family from storms.
Some hours later the _Constance Colfax_ came into view around a distant
point in the lake shore. Mr. Day had camped upon the identical bench
again and was still sucking at the stem of his corncob pipe.
"Wal," he groaned, "I 'xpect I've got to go down to meet that gal of
Broxton's. And the sun's mighty hot this mawnin'."
"You wouldn't feel it so, if ye hadn't been too 'tarnal lazy to change
yer seat," sniffed his wife. "Now, you mind, Jase! That board money
comes to me, or you can take Broxton's gal to the _ho_-tel."
Mr. Day shambled out of the front gate without making reply.
"Drat the man!" muttered his wife. "If I could jes' git a rise out o'
him onc't----"
It was not far to the dock. Indeed, Poketown was so compactly built on
the steep hillside that there was scarcely a house within its borders
from which a boy could not have tossed a pebble into the waters of the
cove. Jason strolled along in the shade, passing the time of day with
such neighbors as were equally disengaged, and spreading the news of
his niece's expected arrival.
As he passed along the lane which later debouched upon the main
thoroughfare of Poketown, it was evident to the most casual glance that
the old Day house was not the only dwelling far along in a state of
decay. Poketown was full of such.
On the street leading directly to the dock there were several
well-cared-for estates--some of them wedged in between blocks of
two-story frame buildings, the first floors of which were occupied by
stores of various kinds. The post office had a building to itself.
The Lake View Inn was not unattractive, its side piazza overlooking the
cove and the lake spread beyond.
But the rutty, dusty road showed that it had been rutty and muddy in
the earlier spring. The flagstones of the sidewalks were broken, and
the walks themselves ill kept. The gutters were overgrown with grass
and weeds. Before the shops the undefended tree trunks were gnawed
into grotesque patterns by the farmers' hungry beasts. Hardware was at
a premium in Poketown, for a dozen gates along the line were hung with
leather hinges, and bits of rope had taken the places of the original
latches.
From the water, however, even on closer view, the hillside village made
a pretty picture. Near the wharf it was not so romantic, as Janice Day
realized, when the coughing, wheezy steamboat came close in.
There were decrepit boats drawn up on the narrow beach; there were
several decaying shacks bordering on the dock itself; and along the
string-piece of the wharf roosted a row of "humans" that were the
opposite of ornamental. The quick eye of Janice Day caught sight of
this row of nondescripts.
"Goodness me, Mrs. Scattergood!" she exclaimed, turning to the old lady
who had been in receipt of her confidences. "Is the almshouse near
Poketown?"
"There's a poorfarm, child; but there ain't nobody on it but a few old
folks an' some orphans. We ain't poor here--not pauper poor. But,
goodness me! you mean them men a-settin' there? Why, they ain't
poor--no, no, child. I don't suppose there's a man there that don't
own his own house. There's Mel Parraday, who owns the _ho_-tel; and
Lem Pinney that owns stock in this very steamboat comp'ny; and
Walkworthy Dexter--Walky's done expressin' and stage-drivin' since
before my 'Rill come here to Poketown to teach."
"But--but they look so ragged and unshaven," gasped Janice.
"Pshaw! they ain't proud, I reckon," cackled the old lady, gathering up
her knitting and dropping it into the beaded bag, which she shut with a
snap.
"But isn't there anybody proud _of_ them?" queried Janice. "Haven't
they mothers--or wives--or sisters?"
The old lady stared at her. Then she made a sudden clicking in her
throat that might have been a chuckle. "I declare for't, child!" she
ejaculated. "I dunno as many of us in these parts _air_ proud of our
men folks."
Just then the steamboat's bow bumped the wharf. The jar scarcely
seemed to awaken the languid line of Poketownites ranged along the
other side. The only busy person in sight was the employee of the
steamboat company who caught the loop of the hawser thrown him, and
dropped it over a pile. The rest of the men just raised their heads
and stared, chewing reflectively on either tobacco or straws, until the
plank was dropped and the deckhands began trundling the freight and
baggage ashore.
There were two or three commercial drummers beside Mrs. Scattergood and
Janice, who disembarked on this dock. Mrs. Scattergood bade the girl
from the West a brisk good-bye and went directly up the dock, evidently
expecting nobody to meet her at this time of day. A lanky man, with
grizzled brows and untrimmed beard, got up slowly from the stringpiece
of the wharf and slouched forward to meet Janice Day.
"I reckon you be Broxton's gal, eh?" he queried, his eyes twinkling not
unkindly. "Ye sort er favor him--an' he favored his mother in more
ways than one. You're Janice Day?"
"Oh, yes indeed! And you're my Uncle Jason?" cried the girl,
impulsively seizing Mr. Day's hand. There was nothing about this man
that at all reminded Janice of her father; yet the thought of their
really being so closely related to each other was comforting. "I'm so
glad to see you," she continued. "I hope you'll like me, Uncle
Jason--and I hope Aunt Almira will like me. And there is a cousin,
too, isn't there--a boy? Dear me! I've been looking forward to
meeting you all ever since I left Greensboro, and been wondering what
sort of people you would be."
"Wal," drawled Uncle Jason, rather staggered by the way Janice "ran
on," "we reckon on makin' ye comferble. Looks like we'd have ye with
us some spell, too. Broxton writ me that he didn't know how long he'd
be gone--down there in Mexico."
"No. Poor Daddy couldn't tell. The business must be 'tended to, I
s'pose----"
"Right crazy of him to go there," grunted Uncle Jason. "May git shot
any minute. Ain't _no_ money wuth that, I don't believe."
This rather tactless speech made the girl suddenly look grave; but it
did not quench her vivacity. She was staring about the dock,
interested in everything she saw, when Uncle Jason drawled:
"I s'pose ye got a trunk, Janice?"
"Oh, yes. Here is the check," and she began to skirmish in her purse.
"Wal! there ain't no hurry. Marty'll come down by-me-by with the
wheelbarrer and git it for ye."
"But my goodness!" exclaimed the girl from Greensboro. "I haven't
anything fit to put on in this bag; everything got rumpled so aboard
the train. I'll want to change just as soon as I get to the house,
Uncle."
"Wal!" Uncle Jason was staggered. He had given up thinking quickly
years before. This was an emergency that floored him.
"Why! isn't that the expressman there? And can't he take my trunk
right up to the house?" continued the girl.
"Ya-as; that's Walky Dexter," admitted Mr. Day.
A stout, red-faced man was backing a raw-boned nag in front of a farm
wagon, down upon the wharf and toward a little heap of baggage that had
been run ashore from the lower deck of the _Constance Colfax_. Janice,
still lugging her suitcase, shot up the dock toward the expressman,
leaving Jason, slack-jawed and well-nigh breathless.
"Jefers-pelters! What a flyaway critter she is!" the man muttered. "I
don't see whatever we're a-goin' to do with _her_."
Meanwhile Janice got Mr. Dexter's attention immediately. "There's my
trunk right there, Mr. Dexter," she cried. "And here's the check. You
see it--the brown trunk with the brass corners?"
"I see it, Miss. All right. I'll git it up to Jason's some time this
arternoon."
"Oh, Mr. Dexter!" she cried, shaking her head at him, but smiling, too.
"That will not do at all! I want to unpack it at once. I need some of
the things in it, for I've been traveling two days. Can't you take it
on your first load?"
"Wa-al--I might," confessed Dexter, looking her over with a quizzical
smile. "But us'ally the Days ain't in no hurry."
"Then this is one Day who is in a hurry," she said, briefly. "What is
your charge for delivering the trunk, sir?"
"Oh--'bout a quarter, Miss. And gimme that suitcase, too. 'Twon't
cost ye no more, and I'll git 'em there before Jason and you reach the
house. Poketown is a purty slow old place, Miss," the man added, with
a wink and a chuckle, "but I kin see the _days_ are going to move
faster, now you have arove in town. Don't you fear; your trunk'll be
there--'nless Josephus, here, busts a leg!"
Quite stunned, Uncle Jason had not moved from his tracks. "Now we're
all right, sir," said the girl, cheerily, taking his arm and by her
very touch seeming to galvanize a little life into his scarecrow
figure. "Shall we go home?"
"Eh? Wal! Ef ye say so, Janice," replied Mr. Day, weakly.
They started up the main street of Poketown, Janice accommodating her
step to that of her uncle. Mr. Day was not one given to idle chatter;
but the girl did not notice his silence in her interest in all she saw.
It was a beautiful, shady way, with the hill not too steep for comfort.
And some of the dwellings set in the midst of their terraced old lawns,
were so beautiful! It was the beauty of age, however; there did not
seem to be a single _new_ thing in Poketown.
Even the scant display of goods in the shop windows had lain there
until they were dust-covered, sun-burned, and flyspecked. The signs
over the store doors were tarnished.
They came to the lane that led up the hill away from High Street, and
on which Uncle Jason said he lived. An almost illegible sign at the
corner announced it to be "Hillside Avenue." There were not two fences
abutting upon the lane that were set in line, while the sidewalks were
narrow or broad, according to the taste of the several owners of
property along the way.
The beautiful old trees were everywhere, however; only some of them
needed trimming badly, and many overhung the roofs, their dripping
branches having rotted the shingles and given life to great patches of
green moss. There was a sogginess to the grass-grown yards that seemed
unhealthful. There were several, picturesque, old wells, with massive
sweeps and oaken buckets--quaint breeders of typhoid germs--which
showed that the physicians of Poketown had not properly educated their
patients to modern sanitary ideas.
Altogether the village in which her father had been born and bred was a
dead-and-alive, do-nothing place, and its beauty, for Janice Day, faded
before she was halfway up the hill to her uncle's house.