Dick was up early Monday morning, meekly and diligently hoeing the
potato patch. But his father had seen this humility and industry follow
too many offenses to overlook Saturday’s disobedience; so the culprit
received a severe lecture ending with the command to spend his Saturday
afternoons for a month working in the garden.
A month! A whole month before he could go back to the Old Sterling
Mine! All that he could do, in the meantime, to help carry out his plan
of working the mine and making a fortune, was to get tools and collect
candles.
He rummaged among the old irons in the blacksmith’s shed on several
afternoons, under pretense of finding horseshoes.
“What’s this old tool; and that one?” he asked with assumed
carelessness, pulling out one after another, until he identified and
set aside some that the miners had used.
Then he chose an occasion when Mr. Mallett was busy shoeing a fractious
mule and said in an offhand way: “Mr. Mallett, I want to dig a hole,
where I reckon there’s rock. May I take some of the old tools out of
your shed?”
“Help yourself.”
“And I needn’t bring them back right away?”
Mr. Mallett did not look up from his task. “Keep ’em long as you
please. They’re there to sell for old iron. Whoa, you brute!”
“Thank you!” Dick went away then, but at dusk that evening he slipped
back to the shop and got the pick and spade and sledge hammer he had
set aside, and sped down the unlighted street and deposited them under
the churchyard hedge.
Many an hour, during the days that followed, while he sat with a
textbook in his hand, he was in fancy unearthing vast treasures and
displaying them to the envy and admiration of his comrades. Slowly, oh!
very slowly, the days went by that kept him chained to his tasks at
home.
One pleasant afternoon in mid-April, the children drifted out of
school, in the usual merry chattering groups. The Village schoolhouse
was across The Street from The Roost. It was a quaint, ivy-mantled
brick cottage, the old “office,” in the corner of the yard at Broad
Acres. Broad Acres, once a lordly estate, was now “broad acres” in name
only. Farm after farm, field after field, had passed from the family
ownership until the mansion, with the rambling yard and garden, was
all that was left.
The house was a stately red-brick building with wide halls and
spacious, high-ceilinged rooms. Mrs. Wilson, who lived there with her
daughter Ruth, spent her days teaching A B C’s to babies and preparing
Dick and the older boys for the university. People who were able paid
her in money or wood or meal or shoes, and she accepted their pupils
and fees, but oh! how she struggled to get the children whose parents
were too poor to pay for schooling or to realize its value.
“I wish and I wish you weren’t going away, Anne, you precious darling
Anne!” Patsy wailed for the twentieth time, giving Anne Lewis a frantic
embrace.
“It’s a horrid shame!” exclaimed Ruth Wilson.
“But I’m coming back in the summer,” Anne said, to comfort them and
herself. “Oh! and, Patsy, won’t we have a lovely time, going around
with Dick!” she said, with a mischievous glance at Patsy’s twin.
“Bet you will--not!” declared Dick.
“And think what a good time we’ll all have at Happy Acres.”
“Let’s go to Happy Acres now,” suggested David Spotswood. “We boys will
catch some fish--maybe, and you girls can get flowers, and we’ll come
home by the mill.”
“Oh, yes! let’s do that,” exclaimed Anne. “You can go, can’t you,
Patsy? Ruth? Alice?”
“I don’t see how I can, to stay all afternoon,” Patsy said regretfully.
“Our Red Cross box is to go off next week and I’m not half done my
sweater.”
“I’ve got to f-finish my scarf,” stammered Ruth.
“I want to knit another pair of socks, if I have time,” said Alice.
The Village was working and denying itself to help stricken France and
Belgium. If the contributions were not large in dollars and cents, they
were great in the efforts and self-sacrifice of the little country
neighborhood. But the offerings came from the hands of good Samaritans,
not of patriots. America had accepted the war; it had not yet come home
to The Village. Later on, it was to--but we shall see what we see.
“Oh, you girls!” grumbled Stephen Tavis. “You are doing that Red Cross
stuff all the time.”
“And you boys are playing while we work,” said Patsy, tossing her head.
“We are saving flour and sugar for the Belgians. Do you want us to knit
and sew?” laughed Dick.
“Some of the boys in Washington are knitting,” Anne said gravely; “and
lots of men, real men, like firemen and soldiers. And they--we--are all
making gardens, so there will be more food to send to hungry France and
Belgium.”
“Father read from the paper last night something the President said,”
said Patsy. “‘Every one who makes or works a garden helps to solve the
problem of feeding the nations.’”
“Yes, the President says the fate of the nation and the world rests
largely on the farmer,” said David, importantly. “He wants them to
plant food crops; and that’s what I am doing.”
“Oh, your old corn acre! You’re so biggity about it,” jeered Dick.
“I wouldn’t mind a little farm work or gardening; but I certainly draw
the line at knitting,” said Steve.
“Oh! oh! oh!” Anne jumped up and down, uttering little squeals
of excitement. “Steve! David! Dick! Why don’t you have a school
war garden?”
“A school garden?” questioned Steve.
“Yes; like we have in Washington, that all the pupils work in,” said
Anne.
“Thank you! I get enough gardening at home,” said Dick, sourly. “I
don’t want to spend all my life hung to one end of a stick with a hoe
at the other end.”
“Oh! but this is fun, and good war work too. It takes just a few
hours a week from each of us. The more there are to help, the less
there is for each one to do.” Then Anne went on indignantly: “It seems
to me you’d want to help, you boys, when you think about all those
poor people over there, old folks and children and women with babies,
homeless and without food. Hundreds and thousands of them stand in line
for hours every day to get a little soup and a piece of bread; and if
we in America don’t provide that bread and soup, they’ll starve.”
“I’ll make a garden for them,” said a high, sweet voice, quavering on
the verge of tears. “If I had a hoe and a place to work, I’d begin
right away. I ain’t quite as big as Dick, but father says I’ve got
mighty good muscle. Just you feel it, Anne,” said Sweet William.
“Where’s a hoe? And where’s the garden going to be?”
“Yes; where could we have a garden?” said Steve. “I don’t mind working
a little, enough to keep up with Sweet William, if we had a good place.”
There was a pause.
“There isn’t any place. You see we can’t have it,” Dick said
triumphantly.
“There is; you can,” Anne declared vehemently. “You may have my Happy
Acres that Cousin Rodney gave me. I’ll--yes, I’ll be willing and glad
to dig up the flowers for potatoes and things.” Her voice broke and she
winked back her tears.
“O-oh!”
“Why, Anne!”
“Of course you wouldn’t!”
“What’s this about digging up flowers?” Mrs. Wilson, coming out of the
schoolroom, with her hands full of papers, heard Anne’s last words and
the horrified exclamations they excited. “Surely you aren’t talking
about dear Happy Acres?”
“Anne wants us to have a garden, a sort of war garden,” explained Patsy.
“We have them in Washington, you know, Cousin Agnes,” Anne said. “We
raise lots of vegetables, and it isn’t hard work, with so many to help;
and anyway, it’s worth working hard for, to help feed the world when
it’s hungry and starving.”
“And Steve asked where the garden could be,” Patsy continued her
explanation. “Anne says it can be Happy Acres, even if they have to dig
up the flowers.”
“That would be dreadful!” exclaimed Alice Blair.
“It’s dreadfuller for people to be starving,” said Anne.
“Shucks! We couldn’t work a garden at Happy Acres,” said Dick. “By the
time we walked there after school, it would be time to walk back to do
our home work.”
“We could run,” suggested Sweet William.
Mrs. Wilson laughed with the others; then she said: “Possibly you are
right, Dick; and certainly Anne is. Let me think a minute. If you boys
are willing to give part of your time to work for the hungry, I will
give part of my garden and my help. What do you say?”
“Yes, ma’am, thank you!” screeched Sweet William.
“I’m Sweet William’s partner,” said Steve.
“I’ll help,” said Tom Walthall, “if you don’t ask me to do too much.”
“So will I,” said Tom Mallett.
“I’ll help when pa can spare me,” promised Joe Spencer.
“I will, if Baldie will,” said John Eppes, who never wished to do
anything without his brother Archibald.
“Oh! I’ll be in it with the others,” said Archie.
“Of course you will, David?” Anne appealed to the silent boy whose
voice she had expected to hear first.
“There’s my corn acre----” David began hesitatingly.
“Of course!” laughed Dick.
“That’s just it,” Anne said eagerly. “You’ve done such splendid work,
raising such fine corn and winning prizes. You know so much more than
the rest of us about working crops that--why, we need you dreadfully.”
David tried not to look pleased. “I’ll do what I can,” he agreed. “But
I just tell you, I’m not going to neglect my corn acre for anything;
that I’m not.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Wilson. “And you, Dick--you’ll help, of
course?”
“No; no, Cousin Agnes,” Dick answered positively. “I’m getting enough
garden work to last my lifetime. And besides, I’ve got something else
to do, if I ever get a chance at it.”
“What part of the garden are you going to give us, Cousin Agnes?” asked
David.
“Let’s go and look over the ground,” said Mrs. Wilson. “I’ve just had
it plowed and harrowed, ready for planting.”
She led the way to the big, old-fashioned garden. In front were beds
of hardy flowers, and arbors and summerhouses covered with roses and
jasmine and honeysuckle. Back of the flowers were vegetable beds and
rows of raspberries and gooseberries and fig bushes. And in a far
corner, hedged by boxwood and carpeted with blue-starred periwinkle,
rose the lichened marble slabs of the family burying-ground.
David, the star member of the county Corn Club, looked admiringly at
the fertile vegetable beds. “Gee!” he exclaimed. “I’d beat the record
if my corn acre was like this; it’s rich as cream.”
“It has been a garden more than a hundred years,” said Mrs. Wilson.
“Broad Acres was the first clearing in the wilderness where The Village
is now. Here, boys, I am going to give you this sunny southeast square.
Now, let’s see who are our gardeners. You’ll join, won’t you, Albert?”
she said kindly to Albert Smith, who stood uncomfortably apart from any
of the friendly groups.
“No. I can’t,” he said abruptly. Then he turned his head with a queer
little gesture as if he were listening to hear how his speech sounded.
He added confusedly: “My uncle needs me to come home. I came to ask the
arithmetic page lesson.”
Mrs. Wilson indicated the page and then, as he slipped away, she turned
to the other boys. All except Dick Osborne enrolled as members of The
Village War-Garden Club. Meanwhile, the girls were whispering together,
and Patsy became their spokeswoman.
“Cousin Agnes,” she said, “we want to war-garden, too.”
“Y-yes, mother,” said Ruth. “We’ve been having flower gardens; why
c-can’t we raise real things, beans and potatoes?”
“You can; of course you can,” said her mother.
There was a howl from the boys.
“We don’t want girls bothering around,” said Archie. “Let them stay in
the house and sew.”
“They’ve got their Red Cross stuff,” said Steve. “That’s enough for
them.”
“We girls have Red Cross work in Washington, and we do war gardening,
too. And who suggested this garden, I’d like to know?” Anne asked.
“That’s all right; suggest,” said Joe. “Girls are good at talking; but
we don’t want them around in our way when we are working.”
There was a clamor of indignation from the girls.
“Boys! Girls!” Mrs. Wilson said in her schoolroom voice. In the silence
that it brought, she went on: “Of course the girls may have a garden,
if they wish. I’ll give them the strip of land by the rose garden.”
But the girls scornfully rejected this offer.
“We don’t want a little ribbon like that,” said Patsy. “We want a real
garden or none at all. We don’t care if you give us a bigger place
than the boys have--I’m sure we can manage it--but we don’t want an
inch less. There are more of us than there are of them; two more,
counting Anne, who’s coming back in June.”
“Give us the square by the one the b-b-boys have,” said Ruth.
“Oh, you greedy!” said David. “That would be taking nearly all of
Cousin Agnes’s garden, these two big squares.”
“Make the boys divide their square with us, Cousin Agnes,” suggested
Patsy.
“No! no! no!” the boys objected loudly.
“Who’s greedy now?” Patsy inquired scornfully.
“G-g-give us that s-southwest square, mother,” urged Ruth. “You and I
don’t need such a big garden. Let’s l-l-let the Belgians have it.”
“Well,” Mrs. Wilson agreed. She and Ruth did need the garden; it was
their main support; but in this time of world need, they must give not
only all they were able, but more and still more. She and Ruth would
get on, somehow. “You girls may have the square next to the boys,” she
said.
There were groans and cheers.
“We’ll see which do the best work. To-morrow morning let’s meet here
and start the planting. Bring hoes and rakes. I,” she added, “will
supply seeds.”
That meant another sacrifice. She and Ruth would stint themselves to
give for seed the peas and beans and potatoes they had stored for food.
On the way home, Dick and some of the others stopped at the post
office. It occupied a corner of Mr. Blair’s general merchandise shop
and it was, Black Mayo said, the Village club where young and old
gathered in the afternoons for mail and gossip.
When Dick went in, there were a dozen villagers and countrymen lounging
in the room, Mr. Blair was sorting the mail, and Black Mayo was perched
on the counter, reading the news in Mr. Blair’s paper the only daily
that came to The Village.
“The British are holding Vimy Ridge,” he said.
“What about Congress and army plans?” asked Red Mayo.
“Congress is still discussing, discussing. Why doesn’t it go ahead and
put a draft bill in shape? The President’s right; that’s the way to
raise an army.”
“Hey, Black Mayo! Here’s a letter for Polly,” said Mr. Blair. “And here
are two letters for Mr. Carl Schmidt.” He looked around.
The man who lived at the old Tolliver place came forward. “I guess they
are for me,” he said, “from somebody that did not know my name; it’s
Smith, good American Charley Smith.”
“Carl Schmidt; that’s a queer-sounding name. What is it?” asked Mr.
Jones, a stout, red-faced countryman.
“It is a German name,” Black Mayo said crisply.
“My father did from Germany come,” the man who called himself Smith
said hastily, darting an angry glance at Black Mayo and then looking
around without meeting any one’s eyes. “He was sensible, and he did
come to America. I was here born. I am an American citizen.”
“I’d hate to be one of them low-down Germans,” said Pete Walthall,
taking a chew of tobacco.
“_Ach!_ so would I,” Smith proclaimed loudly. “They are bad people.
Awful bad people.” He met defiantly Black Mayo’s quizzical eyes. “I got
no use for them German peoples.”
“Nobody has,” said Mr. Tavis.
“Oh, yes!” Black Mayo declared. “I have. One of my best friends is a
German, a fine fellow named Kuno Kleist that I spent months with, in
Mexico, helping him collect bugs and butterflies.”
“Why, Mr. Mayo!” said Pete. “You mean to say you don’t hate Germany?”
“I hate the Germany of Prussianism, power-mad Junkerism, the ‘blood and
iron’ of Frederick the Great and Bismarck and Kaiser William,” said
Black Mayo; “but I love the Germany of Goethe and Schiller and Luther
and Beethoven.”
“Germany is one!” Mr. Smith’s voice rang out. “It is one, I say.”
“So are we all, all one.” Black Mayo looked around with a sudden
winning smile. “Remember that first Christmas when German and British
soldiers came out of the trenches to exchange food and to talk
together. ‘You are of the same religion as we, and to-day is the Day of
Peace,’ a German said to a Scottish officer. And those men had to be
transferred to other parts of the line; they were enemies no longer,
but friends; they could not fight one another.
“Facts come out now and then that show the difference in spirit between
people and war lords. A German paper recently announced that the people
of a certain town had been jailed for improper conduct to prisoners
and their names were printed, to make their shame known to coming
generations.
“An American consul investigated the case. He found that a trainload of
Canadian prisoners had been sidetracked in the little town, and the
citizens had found out they were thirsty and starving; so they brought
food and drink. This was the crime for which they were imprisoned and
held up to shame!
“Oh! the war lords are trying to carry out their policy of
frightfulness. But they have studied history to little purpose if
they think Edith Cavell and the _Lusitania_ victims and the murdered
Belgians and the tortured prisoners are dead.”
“What do you mean, Cousin Mayo,” asked Dick.
“Are the Greeks of Thermopylæ dead? Or Roland and King Arthur, who
perhaps never lived?” Leaving Dick to make his own explanation, Mr.
Osborne turned to Mr. Blair. “Will, give me two pounds of nails,
please. I must be going.”
“Going!” said Mr. Blair, in surprise. It was an unwritten law that when
a man came to the post office he was to loaf there until night drove
him home.
“I’m busy making a new pigeon cote.”
“So you’ve gone back to the amusement of your boyhood, eh?” said Mr.
Blair, as he weighed the nails.
There had always been pigeons at Larkland, Black Mayo Osborne’s home.
When the house was built, the master, the first Osborne in Virginia,
erected a dovecote and stocked it with birds from the family home in
England. There they had been ever since. Sometimes they were carefully
bred; sometimes they were neglected; but always they were there,
flying, cooing, nesting in the quiet old country place.
As a boy, Black Mayo took great interest in raising and training them.
And this spring he had sent to a famous breeder for new stock and had
begun again to train carrier pigeons.
He answered Mr. Blair with a smile and a nod, and started out. “Hey,
Dickon!” he said. “It’s a long time since you came to see the pigeons.
Have you lost interest in them?”
“No; no, sir,” answered Dick, looking embarrassed. “I--I--that I
haven’t.”
“Richard is--h’m!--keeping bounds this month,” Red Mayo said austerely.
“He diso----”
“I understand.” Black Mayo spared Dick a public explanation. “Well,
come when you can. I’ll bring you one of my young birds to-morrow, to
turn loose for a trial flight.”
“Oh, thank you, Cousin Mayo!”
Mr. Smith sidled to the door and looked after Mr. Osborne, with a
malignant scowl.
“He, the one you call ‘Black Mayo,’ is--isn’t he queer?” he said to
Jake Andrews and Mac Hight, who were sitting on the porch.
“What do you mean?” asked Jake Andrews.
“He takes up for the Germans; says they are such good, kind people and
he loves them. It sounds to me strange to hear a man call himself now a
friend of the German peoples.”
“Shucks! Black Mayo ain’t said that; is he, Mr. Tavis?” Jake appealed
to the old man who now came shuffling out on the porch.
“Yes, he did,” said Mr. Tavis. “He explained at it somehow; but he
certainly said he loved them Germans that are tearing the world to
pieces over yonder.”
“And here, too,” said Jake. “Ain’t they been blowing up railroad
bridges, and factories, and public buildings? Why, they’ve got soldiers
guarding the warehouses at South City; near us as that!”
“That’s what South City gets for being on the railroad where all sorts
of folks go traipsing up and down,” said Mr. Tavis. “I stand to what
I’ve always said, I’m glad the railroad don’t come a-nigh The Village.”
“It’s good that Mr. Osborne so talks here where you permit him what he
pleases to say,” said Mr. Smith. “In New York State a man for that talk
would be arrested and punished.”
“Shucks!” said Mr. Tavis. “Black Mayo didn’t mean no harm. He always
had a funny way of talking.”
“You heard him say he loves the Germans; not so?” insisted Mr. Smith.
“Well, yes; he certainly said that,” admitted Mr. Tavis again.
“H-m-m! That’s mighty curious talk,” said Jake.