Anne Lewis had come, and that was a jubilee for her and her Village
cousins. She and Patsy and Alice and Ruth wanted to go to every place
at once and to tell in one breath everything that had happened since
they had parted in the spring.
There was Happy Acres to be visited, and its budding and blossoming
beauty to be welcomed. There was the mill, Larkland mill that was loved
almost as dearly as the miller, Mr. Giles Spotswood. There were all the
cousins at Larkland, Broad Acres, and The Roost. And there was the dear
outside host, Tavises and Morrisons and Walthalls, and the old servants
and their families, for whom Anne had gifts and greetings. The girls
made a round of visits, with their tongues going like bell clappers.
“And haven’t you found out yet where Dick is going--not yet?” Anne
asked Patsy, privately. “Oh, I’m so glad! It’ll be so much fun to
follow him up!”
“If we can. We’ll certainly do it, if we can,” said Patsy, with less
assurance. “Anne, even Dick has never kept a secret like this.”
“I don’t see why you haven’t found out, in all these weeks,” said Anne;
“though I’m glad you haven’t, so we can do it together.”
“Dick isn’t so easy to catch up with,” answered Patsy. “And then there
are our gardens. The boys won’t stop working for fear we’ll get ahead
of them, and we won’t stop for fear they’ll get ahead of us. No one has
time--and time it would take!--to follow Dick.”
“You must win out in the gardening; we must certainly beat those boys,”
said Anne. “I’m so glad I’m here to help.”
They were on their way now to inspect Camp Feed Friend and Camp Fight
Foe, that were thriving wonderfully after being replanted and reworked
ten days before. Black Mayo said Jack’s famous beanstalk must surely
have grown in the deep, fertile soil of Broad Acres garden; no other
place could produce such magic results.
Patsy and Anne found most of the war gardeners already at Broad Acres,
at work. Black Mayo had lent them Rosinante, and David was plowing
while the others were weeding and hoeing the rows of vegetables. Anne
and Patsy set to work, side by side.
“Don’t you think our garden is the better?” Patsy asked for the dozenth
time.
And for the dozenth time, Anne--partial judge!--answered emphatically:
“I certainly do. Your potatoes are taller than theirs. And your peas
are better; I’ve counted the pods on the biggest vines in both gardens.
It’s just splendid what you’ve done--all but Dick.”
“Oh!--Dick.” Whatever Patsy herself might say about Dick, she could
never bear to have others find fault with her twin brother. “He
helps Cousin Agnes in her garden. He would work here sometimes--real
often--but the boys call him ‘slacker’ because he won’t join them. He’s
working hard over his secret, whatever it is. He comes home so dirty!
And--well, Anne, I know it’s something big, from the way he acts.”
“We’ll find out what it is,” Anne said confidently.
“I hope so,” sighed Patsy.
“But now,” said Anne, “this garden is the most important thing. Oh!
it’s awful to think of all those people with nothing to eat except what
we send them across these thousands of miles of ocean.”
“We’ve been saving our flour and sugar for a long, long time; looks
like they might have enough to eat now,” Sweet William said, frowning.
“Oh! I did want them all to have enough, and leave me sugar for a
birthday cake. It’s such a so-long time since I’ve seen a real cake!”
He sighed. “I don’t reckon we’ll ever have another one; not till I get
old as Miss Fanny Morrison and don’t have any birthdays.”
“Father says conditions are terrible along the Hindenburg Line,” said
Alice. “Cousin Mayo, what is the Hindenburg Line?” she asked her cousin
who, having finished some errands in The Village, was waiting to take
Rosinante home.
He explained. “The first of this year, the Germans realized that they
could not repel Allied attacks in the position they then held. So in
March they drew back and entrenched themselves in northern France in a
position as strong as the nature of the country and their science could
make it; that is their ‘impregnable Hindenburg Line.’ The Allies began,
with the battle of the Aisne in April, the attacks they will continue
till that great Hindenburg Line is smashed.
“Well! The Huns laid waste the country that they left; robbed and
burned homes and villages in that rich farming country, and kidnapped
men and women and children and set them to work in Germany. And
they left behind wrecks of people in wrecks of homes, many of them
little fellows like Sweet William here, half starved and crippled and
shell-shocked.”
Anne put a comforting arm around Sweet William. “Don’t cry, dear,” she
said.
He stiffened his lips bravely. “I--I’m not crying,” he announced. “I--I
think I caught a cold. I’ve got a frog in my throat. I wish I could
find a lot of potato bugs! I want to work _hard_ to help all those poor
people.”
He set to work very diligently, but presently David called out: “You
Bill! You’re wearing out those potato plants, looking for the bugs you
caught yesterday. And every row I plow, you’re in my way.”
“I isn’t not moved since I got out your way the other time you told me
to,” complained Sweet William, stumbling over a furrow.
“Well, get out of the patch and stay out till I finish this plowing, if
you please,” said David, who was warm and tired and getting cross.
The little fellow turned away with injured dignity and went into
the back yard. He sat on the porch steps for a while, then he began
rummaging around. Presently he came back into the garden, with his arms
full of little sticks, and busied himself in a corner where the war
gardeners had a bed of radishes for work-day refreshment.
“What are you doing now?” Anne stopped to ask.
“Playing this is my garden. I’m building a fence ’round it,” explained
Sweet William.
“Phew! What a horrid smell! It smells like--why, I smell kerosene oil,”
said Anne, sniffing and frowning.
“I reckon it’s these little sticks,” he said. “They’re all smelly.”
“Where did you get them?” asked Anne.
“From under the back-porch steps.”
“That’s queer!” said Anne. “I wonder----”
“Come on, Anne, and let’s start our next rows at the same time, so we
can race--and talk,” called Patsy.
Anne went her way and forgot the little sticks that smelled of oil.
Sweet William put them aside presently and had a party--filling some
oyster shells with make-believe dainties and setting them out on a flat
stone.
Mrs. Mallett, who came to consult Mrs. Wilson about some Red Cross
work, paused to watch the youngster who was the Village pet.
“You are having a fine party, ain’t you?” she said.
“It’s a birthday party,” he said. “But I’m just having ash-cake. I
reckon Mr. Hoover wouldn’t want me to have fruit cake and pie. Mother
says he wants us to save everything we can, so as to feed our armies
and our Allies.”
“Bless your heart!” she said. “I wish the grown folks ’round here
would act that way. You know,” she said, turning to Mrs. Wilson, “those
Andrewses and Joneses and Walthalls aren’t making a mite of change in
the way they eat, for all the government tells them ‘food will win the
war’ and ‘if we waste at home, our boys over there will go hungry.’”
“I know. Food has become sacred; it means life,” said Mrs. Wilson. “It
is dreadful that some of our own people are so slow to realize the
situation and their duty. Miranda Osborne and I carried the government
pamphlets to the Andrewses and Joneses and Walthalls and talked to
them, but they listened as if their minds were shut and locked. They
think, as Gordan Jones said, those who raise wheat and corn and hogs
have a right to use all the flour and meal and meat they please.”
“A right! Who with a heart and conscience wants the right to use
victuals extravagant when other folks are starving? Well, I must go and
take this wool to the women that said they would knit.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Sweet William, scrambling to his feet. “I’d
rather go visiting with you than to stay here and play party by myself.”
Mrs. Mallett gladly accepted his company, and, with Scalawag at his
heels, he trotted along with her, to collect knitted garments and
dispense wool.
Suddenly Scalawag, usually a well-mannered dog that did not interfere
with people on the public road, ran at a negro boy, barking furiously.
The boy jerked up a stone, and Scalawag came back to Sweet William’s
heels, whimpering and growling. As soon as they were at a safe
distance, he again barked angrily.
“I never saw him do that way before,” said Sweet William; “never, but
that night in the garden.”
“Who was he barking at then?” asked Mrs. Mallett.
“I don’t know,” said Scalawag’s master; and then he told about his trip
to Broad Acres the night before the gardens were destroyed and about
the dog’s queer behavior.
“H’m!” Mrs. Mallett said thoughtfully. “Who was that boy we passed?”
“Kit, Lincum Gabe’s boy,” said Sweet William. “Scalawag’s met him a
hundred times, I reckon, and never noticed him before.”
“H’m!” Mrs. Mallett repeated. “Sweet William, you tell Mr. Black Mayo
how this dog acted to-day, and about that night. Some dogs have got a
lot of sense, and some are pure fools; they’re just like folks. Well,
here’s a place we’ve got to stop,” she said, frowning at the pea-green
gabled and turreted house that was the outward and visible sign of
Gordan Jones’s prosperity.
The door was wide open, and in response to Mrs. Mallett’s knock there
was a hearty “Come in!” She and Sweet William walked through the hall
and turned into the dining room where Mr. and Mrs. Jones were sitting
at the dinner table.
“O--oh!” Sweet William stared at the table. It was strangely unlike
what he was used to at home these days. Why, it was loaded with food,
vegetables swimming in sauces and gravies, two or three kinds of meat,
hot biscuits, cakes, and pies. “O-o-oh!” he said again.
“Howdy, folks!” called Mr. Jones, a stout man in shirt sleeves. “Come
in, come in, you-all, and set down to dinner.”
“Howdy, Mrs. Mallett,” said Mrs. Jones, getting up to greet the guests.
“And howdy, little man. It’s Mr. Red Mayo’s little boy, ain’t it?”
“Yes; it’s William, Sweet William Osborne,” said Mrs. Mallett, stiffly.
“I just come to bring you the wool you said----”
“Here, here!” interrupted Mr. Jones’s big voice. “Eat first and then
do your talking. We’ve got plenty victuals for you.” He laughed and
surveyed the table with pride. “Come and eat with us, Mrs. Mallett.
Come on, little boy, and set right here by me.”
“Oh, the little French and Belgians!” exclaimed Sweet William, whose
eyes had never moved from the table.
“No, thank you, Mr. Jones,” said Mrs. Mallett, drawing her lips into a
tight line. “Now, Mrs. Jones, this wool----”
“Aw, come along and set and eat,” urged Mr. Jones, hospitably. “I want
you to sample this old home-cured ham; and that’s prime good bacon with
the greens.”
The little woman’s face flushed and her eyes snapped. “Mr. Jones,” she
said, “them victuals would choke me.”
“Wh-what?” He gazed at her with blank astonishment.
“I can’t set down to a gorge like that,” she said. “I’d be thinking
’bout them hungry mouths over there.”
“Starving Belgians and French,” interjected Sweet William.
Mrs. Mallett hurried on: “Yes, them and our other Allies; they’ve got
no time to raise wheat and such; their farmers are fighting their war
and ours, and the women are working in munition factories and taking
the men’s places at home. And there are our boys--my boy--going over
there, depending on us at home to send them food. If we are lazy and
selfish and don’t raise it, or if we are greedy and selfish and use it
wasteful and extravagant, what’s to become of them?”
“Why, why”--Mr. Jones was bewildered--“I raised all that’s on this
table, ’cept a little sugar and such, that if I didn’t buy somebody
else would. I always was a good provider; we’re used to a good table,
and nobody’s got a right to ask me to live stinting,” he said, with
rising anger.
“They’ve got a right to ask me to give my son, my own flesh and blood,”
said Mrs. Mallett, with a fire of righteous wrath that paled Mr.
Jones’s flicker of temper. “And yet you think they haven’t got a right
to ask you to give up your hot biscuits and meat three times a day!
S’pose you _are_ used to being a good provider? Ain’t I used to going
to bed easy in mind about my boy Fayett--and any day I may hear he’s
dead.”
“They oughtn’t to have sent him, your boy,” mumbled Mr. Jones. “They’ve
got no business to send our men over there to fight, and maybe----”
“They’ve got all the right to send him to fight for his country. But
Fayett didn’t wait for any draft. He went of his free will--I’m glad
and proud of it--to fight for liberty. And if he dies, I want it to be
the Germans that kill him. I don’t want you, that have known him since
he was a curly-headed baby boy, to be the ones to help kill him.”
“Why, Mrs. Mallett!” Mrs. Jones said in a hurt, amazed voice. “We
wouldn’t harm a hair of his head; not for the world, we wouldn’t.”
“I’d do anything I could to bring him back safe home,” said Mr. Jones.
“That’s what you say,” the little woman cried passionately. “But words
don’t count. And you are doing your part to starve him. They can’t get
food over there, unless we send it to them. It’s being rationed out to
folks in France and Italy. The English ships that used to go to South
America to get wheat are busy taking over our soldiers and munitions
and food, food, food. And there’s just so-o much and all the world to
feed--the world and my soldier boy. If we use it wasteful, there won’t
be any to send. Yes, sir! I say your good dinner would choke me. I’d
feel I was helping to kill my own son. You may not mean it, but it’s
true that every time you set down to a meal like this you are helping
kill my son, beat our armies, make the Germans win.”
“I don’t want your cake, your pie,” sobbed Sweet William. “I’m hungry,
but I--I want to be hungry.”
Mrs. Jones pushed back her plate and sobbed with him. “I can’t swallow
a morsel,” she declared. “I can just see Fayett, like when he was a
little boy playing with my Tommy”--her own son who was dead--“when
they’d come in and say, ‘We’re hungry; give us a snack!’ I ain’t never
said ‘no’ to them.” She buried her tear-wet face in her apron.
Mr. Jones winked hard and cleared his throat loudly. “Come, come,
mother,” he said. “Don’t you cry. We hadn’t thought ’bout things like
she put ’em. I reckon you are right, Mrs. Mallett. Yes, you are! A man
that won’t work at home for them that’s fighting over there for him
ain’t much of a man. The world to feed--and Fayett! I’ll double the
crop of wheat I was going to put in, and I’ll--say, Mrs. Mallett, if
you won’t take a feed with me, won’t you and the little boy set and
have a bite?”
“That I will, thank you,” said Mrs. Mallett, smiling through tears. “I
didn’t mean to fault you too rough, Mr. Jones. But when I think ’bout
them things, it’s like I had a pot in me that was boiling over.”
“That’s all right,” answered Mr. Jones. “You put it strong to me; and
we’ll put it strong to other folks. We must see Jake Andrews and Pete
Walthall, and make ’em know what they’ve got to do. We won’t have men
here in our neighborhood that are so low-down and greedy and selfish
they won’t do their part. We’ll see to them! What’ll you have, Mrs.
Mallett? some corn bread and greens and a bit of bacon? Folks have
got to eat, you know, so they can work. Um, um! What’ll I do ’bout my
hounds?”
“Come now, Willie, you’ll have a cake and a piece of pie, being as
they’re here and got to be et,” said Mrs. Jones, bustling about to get
plates and chairs.
Sweet William gravely and wistfully considered the matter. “We don’t
have cakes at home,” he said. “But these cakes are already made--with
icing tops and raisins! I reckon it won’t hurt for me to eat one--maybe
two, to save them. The little Belgians couldn’t get this sugar anyway.”
He sighed, not altogether sad, and fell to with a will.