§ 1.
In the lives of each one of us, as we look back and review them in
retrospect, there are certain desert wastes from which memory winces
like some tired traveller faced with a dreary stretch of road. Even
from the security of later happiness we cannot contemplate them without
a shudder. Time robs our sorrows of their sharp vividness, but the
horror of those blank, gray days never wholly passes. It remains for
ever at the back of our consciousness to remind us that, though we may
have struggled through it to the heights, there is an abyss. We may
dwell, like the Pilgrim, on the Delectable Mountains, but we never
forget the Slough of Despond. Years afterwards, Jill could not bring
herself to think of that brief but age-long period which lay between
the evening when she read Derek’s letter and the morning when, with the
wet sea-wind in her face and the cry of the wheeling sea-gulls in her
ears, she stood on the deck of the liner that was taking her to the
land where she could begin a new life. It brooded behind her like a
great, dank cloud, shutting out the sunshine.
The conditions of modern life are singularly inimical to swift and
dramatic action when we wish to escape from surroundings that have
become intolerable. In the old days, your hero would leap on his
charger and ride out into the sunset. Now, he is compelled to remain
for a week or so to settle his affairs,—especially if he is an Uncle
Chris—and has got those affairs into such a tangle that hardened
lawyers knit their brows at the sight of them. It took one of the most
competent firms in the metropolis four days to produce some sort of
order in the confusion resulting from Major Selby’s financial
operations; and during those days Jill existed in a state of being
which could be defined as living only in that she breathed and ate and
comported herself outwardly like a girl and not a ghost.
Boards announcing that the house was for sale appeared against the
railings through which Jane the parlormaid conducted her daily
conversations with the tradesmen. Strangers roamed the rooms eyeing and
appraising the furniture. Uncle Chris, on whom disaster had had a
quickening and vivifying effect, was everywhere at once, an impressive
figure of energy. One may be wronging Uncle Chris, but to the eye of
the casual observer he seemed in these days of trial to be having the
time of his life.
Jill varied the monotony of sitting in her room—which was the only
place in the house where one might be sure of not encountering a
furniture-broker’s man with a note-book and pencil—by taking long
walks. She avoided as far as possible the small area which had once
made up the whole of London for her, but even so she was not always
successful in escaping from old acquaintances. Once, cutting through
Lennox Gardens on her way to that vast, desolate King’s Road which
stretches its length out into regions unknown to those whose London is
the West End, she happened upon Freddie Rooke, who had been paying a
call in his best hat and a pair of white spats which would have cut his
friend Henry to the quick. It was not an enjoyable meeting. Freddie,
keenly alive to the awkwardness of the situation, was scarlet and
incoherent; and Jill, who desired nothing less than to talk with one so
intimately connected in her mind with all that she had lost, was
scarcely more collected. They parted without regret. The only
satisfaction that came to Jill from the encounter was the knowledge
that Derek was still out of town. He had wired for his things, said
Freddie and had retreated further north. Freddie, it seemed, had been
informed of the broken engagement by Lady Underhill in an interview
which appeared to have left a lasting impression on his mind. Of Jill’s
monetary difficulties he had heard nothing.
After this meeting, Jill felt a slight diminution of the oppression
which weighed upon her. She could not have borne to have come
unexpectedly upon Derek, and, now that there was no danger of that, she
found life a little easier. The days passed somehow, and finally there
came the morning when, accompanied by Uncle Chris—voluble and
explanatory about the details of what he called “getting everything
settled”—she rode in a taxi to take the train for Southampton. Her last
impression of London was of rows upon rows of mean houses, of cats
wandering in back-yards among groves of home-washed underclothing, and
a smoky grayness which gave way, as the train raced on, to the clearer
gray of the suburbs and the good green and brown of the open country.
Then the bustle and confusion of the liner; the calm monotony of the
journey, when one came on deck each morning to find the vessel so
manifestly in the same spot where it had been the morning before that
it was impossible to realize how many hundred miles of ocean had really
been placed behind one; and finally the Ambrose Channel lightship and
the great bulk of New York rising into the sky like a city of
fairyland, heartening yet sinister, at once a welcome and a menace.
“There you are, my dear!” said Uncle Chris indulgently, as though it
were a toy he had made for her with his own hands. “New York!”
They were standing on the boat-deck, leaning over the rail. Jill caught
her breath. For the first time since disaster had come upon her she was
conscious of a rising of her spirits. It is impossible to behold the
huge buildings which fringe the harbor of New York without a sense of
expectancy and excitement. There had remained in Jill’s mind from
childhood memories a vague picture of what she now saw, but it had been
feeble and inadequate. The sight of this towering city seemed somehow
to blot out everything that had gone before. The feeling of starting
afresh was strong upon her.
Uncle Chris, the old traveller, was not emotionally affected. He smoked
placidly and talked in a wholly earthy strain of grape-fruit and
buckwheat cakes.
It was now, also for the first time, that Uncle Chris touched upon
future prospects in a practical manner. On the voyage he had been
eloquent but sketchy. With the land of promise within biscuit-throw and
the tugs bustling about the great liner’s skirts like little dogs about
their mistress, he descended to details.
“I shall get a room somewhere,” said Uncle Chris, “and start looking
about me. I wonder if the old Holland House is still there. I fancy I
heard they’d pulled it down. Capital place. I had a steak there in the
year … But I expect they’ve pulled it down. But I shall find somewhere
to go. I’ll write and tell you my address directly I’ve got one.”
Jill removed her gaze from the sky-line with a start.
“Write to me?”
“Didn’t I tell you about that?” said Uncle Chris cheerily,—avoiding her
eye, however, for he had realized all along that it might be a little
bit awkward breaking the news. “I’ve arranged that you shall go and
stay for the time being down at Brookport—on Long Island, you know—over
in that direction—with your Uncle Elmer. Daresay you’ve forgotten you
have an Uncle Elmer, eh?” he went on quickly, as Jill was about to
speak. “Your father’s brother. Used to be in business, but retired some
years ago and goes in for amateur farming. Corn and—and corn,” said
Uncle Chris. “All that sort of thing. You’ll like him. Capital chap!
Never met him myself, but always heard,” said Uncle Chris, who had
never to his recollection heard any comments upon Mr Elmer Mariner
whatever, “that he was a splendid fellow. Directly we decided to sail,
I cabled to him, and got an answer saying that he would be delighted to
put you up. You’ll be quite happy there.”
Jill listened to this programme with dismay. New York was calling to
her, and Brookport held out no attractions at all. She looked down over
the side at the tugs puffing their way through the broken blocks of ice
that reminded her of a cocoanut candy familiar to her childhood.
“But I want to be with you,” she protested.
“Impossible, my dear, for the present. I shall be very busy, very busy
indeed for some weeks, until I have found my feet. Really, you would be
in the way. He—er—travels the fastest who travels alone! I must be in a
position to go anywhere and do anything at a moment’s notice. But
always remember, my dear,” said Uncle Chris, patting her shoulder
affectionately, “that I shall be working for you. I have treated you
very badly, but I intend to make up for it. I shall not forget that
whatever money I may make will really belong to you.” He looked at her
benignly, like a monarch of finance who has ear-marked a million or two
for the benefit of a deserving charity. “You shall have it all, Jill.”
He had so much the air of having conferred a substantial benefit upon
her that Jill felt obliged to thank him. Uncle Chris had always been
able to make people grateful for the phantom gold which he showered
upon them. He was as lavish a man with the money he was going to get
next week as ever borrowed a five-pound note to see him through till
Saturday.
“What are you going to do, Uncle Chris?” asked Jill curiously. Apart
from a nebulous idea that he intended to saunter through the city
picking dollar-bills off the sidewalk, she had no inkling of his plans.
Uncle Chris toyed with his short mustache. He was not quite equal to a
direct answer on the spur of the moment. He had a faith in his star.
Something would turn up. Something always had turned up in the old
days, and doubtless, with the march of civilization, opportunities had
multiplied. Somewhere behind those tall buildings the Goddess of Luck
awaited him, her hands full of gifts, but precisely what those gifts
would be he was not in a position to say.
“I shall—ah—how shall I put it—?”
“Look round?” suggested Jill.
“Precisely,” said Uncle Chris gratefully. “Look round. I daresay you
have noticed that I have gone out of my way during the voyage to make
myself agreeable to our fellow-travellers? I had an object.
Acquaintances begun on shipboard will often ripen into useful
friendships ashore. When I was a young man I never neglected the
opportunities which an ocean voyage affords. The offer of a book here,
a steamer-rug there, a word of encouragement to a chatty bore in the
smoke-room—these are small things, but they may lead to much. One meets
influential people on a liner. You wouldn’t think it to look at him,
but that man with the eye-glasses and the thin nose I was talking to
just now is one of the richest men in Milwaukee!”
“But it’s not much good having rich friends in Milwaukee when you are
in New York!”
“Exactly. There you have put your finger on the very point I have been
trying to make. It will probably be necessary for me to travel. And for
that I must be alone. I must be a mobile force. I should dearly like to
keep you with me, but you can see for yourself that for the moment you
would be an encumbrance. Later on, no doubt, when my affairs are more
settled …”
“Oh, I understand. I’m resigned. But, oh dear! it’s going to be very
dull down at Brookport.”
“Nonsense, nonsense! It’s a delightful spot.”
“Have you been there?”
“No! But of course everybody knows Brookport! Healthy, invigorating …
Sure to be! The very name … You’ll be as happy as the days are long!”
“And how long the days will be!”
“Come, come! You mustn’t look on the dark side!”
“Is there another?” Jill laughed. “You are an old hum-bug, Uncle Chris.
You know perfectly well what you’re condemning me to! I expect
Brookport will be like a sort of Southend in winter. Oh, well, I’ll be
brave. But do hurry and make a fortune, because I want to come to New
York.”
“My dear,” said Uncle Chris solemnly, “if there is a dollar lying loose
in this city, rest assured that I shall have it! And, if it’s not
loose, I will detach it with the greatest possible speed. You have only
known me in my decadence, an idle and unprofitable London clubman. I
can assure you that, lurking beneath the surface, there is a business
acumen given to few men …”
“Oh, if you are going to talk poetry,” said Jill, “I’ll leave you.
Anyhow, I ought to be getting below and putting my things together.
Subject for a historical picture,—The Belle of Brookport collecting a
few simple necessaries before entering upon the conquest of America.”
§ 2.
If Jill’s vision of Brookport as a wintery Southend was not entirely
fulfilled, neither was Uncle Chris’ picture of it as an earthly
paradise. At the right time of the year, like most of the summer
resorts on the south shore of Long Island, it is not without its
attractions; but January is not the month which most people would
choose for living in it. It presented itself to Jill on first
acquaintance in the aspect of a wind-swept railroad station, dumped
down far away from human habitation in the middle of a stretch of flat
and ragged country that reminded her a little of parts of Surrey. The
station was just a shed on a foundation of planks which lay flush with
the rails. From this shed, as the train clanked in, there emerged a
tall, shambling man in a weather-beaten overcoat. He had a
clean-shaven, wrinkled face, and he looked doubtfully at Jill with
small eyes. Something in his expression reminded Jill of her father, as
a bad caricature of a public man will recall the original, she
introduced herself.
“If you’re Uncle Elmer,” she said, “I’m Jill.”
The man held out a long hand. He did not smile. He was as bleak as the
east wind that swept the platform.
“Glad to meet you again,” he said in a melancholy voice. It was news to
Jill that they had met before. She wondered where. Her uncle supplied
the information. “Last time I saw you, you were a kiddy in short
frocks, running around and shouting to beat the band.” He looked up and
down the platform. “_I_ never heard a child make so much noise!”
“I’m quite quiet now,” said Jill encouragingly. The recollection of her
infant revelry seemed to her to be distressing her relative.
It appeared, however, that it was not only this that was on his mind.
“If you want to drive home,” he said, “we’ll have to phone to the
Durham House for a hack.” He brooded awhile, Jill remaining silent at
his side, loath to break in upon whatever secret sorrow he was
wrestling with. “That would be a dollar,” he went on. “They’re robbers
in these parts! A dollar! And it’s not over a mile and a half. Are you
fond of walking?”
Jill was a bright girl, and could take a hint.
“I love walking,” she said. She might have added that she preferred to
do it on a day when the wind was not blowing quite so keenly from the
East, but her uncle’s obvious excitement at the prospect of cheating
the rapacity of the sharks at the Durham House restrained her. Her
independent soul had not quite adjusted itself to the prospect of
living on the bounty of her fellows, relatives though they were, and
she was desirous of imposing as light a burden upon them as possible.
“But how about my trunk?”
“The expressman will bring that up. Fifty cents!” said Uncle Elmer in a
crushed way. The high cost of entertaining seemed to be afflicting this
man deeply.
“Oh, yes,” said Jill. She could not see how this particular expenditure
was to be avoided. Anxious as she was to make herself pleasant, she
declined to consider carrying the trunk to their destination. “Shall we
start, then?”
Mr Mariner led the way out into the ice-covered road. The wind welcomed
them like a boisterous dog. For some minutes they proceeded in silence.
“Your aunt will be glad to see you,” said Mr Mariner at last in the
voice with which one announces the death of a dear friend.
“It’s awfully kind of you to have me to stay with you,” said Jill. It
is a human tendency to think, when crises occur, in terms of melodrama,
and unconsciously she had begun to regard herself somewhat in the light
of a heroine driven out into the world from the old home, with no roof
to shelter her head. The promptitude with which these good people, who,
though relatives, were after all complete strangers, had offered her a
resting-place touched her. “I hope I shan’t be in the way.”
“Major Selby was speaking to me on the telephone just now,” said Mr
Mariner, “and he said that you might be thinking of settling down in
Brookport. I’ve some nice little places round here which you might like
to look at. Rent or buy. It’s cheaper to buy. Brookport’s a growing
place. It’s getting known as a summer resort. There’s a bungalow down
on the shore I’d like to show you tomorrow. Stands in a nice large plot
of ground, and if you bought it for twelve thousand you’d be getting a
bargain.”
Jill was too astonished to speak. Plainly Uncle Chris had made no
mention of the change in her fortunes, and this man looked on her as a
girl of wealth. She could only think how typical this was of Uncle
Chris. There was a sort of boyish impishness about him. She could see
him at the telephone, suave and important. He would have hung up the
receiver with a complacent smirk, thoroughly satisfied that he had done
her an excellent turn.
“I put all my money into real estate when I came to live here,” went on
Mr Mariner. “I believe in the place. It’s growing all the time.”
They had come to the outskirts of a straggling village. The lights in
the windows gave a welcome suggestion of warmth, for darkness had
fallen swiftly during their walk and the chill of the wind had become
more biting. There was a smell of salt in the air now, and once or
twice Jill had caught the low booming of waves on some distant beach.
This was the Atlantic pounding the sandy shore of Fire Island.
Brookport itself lay inside, on the lagoon called the Great South Bay.
“This is Brookport,” said Mr Mariner. “That’s Haydock’s grocery store
there by the post-office. He charges sixty cents a pound for bacon, and
I can get the same bacon by walking into Patchogue for fifty-seven!” He
brooded awhile on the greed of man, as exemplified by the pirates of
Brookport. “The very same bacon!” he said.
“How far is Patchogue?” asked Jill, feeling that some comment was
required of her.
“Four miles,” said Mr Mariner.
They passed through the village, bearing to the right, and found
themselves in a road bordered by large gardens in which stood big, dark
houses. The spectacle of these stimulated Mr Mariner to something
approaching eloquence. He quoted the price paid for each, the price
asked, the price offered, the price that had been paid five years ago.
The recital carried them on for another mile, in the course of which
the houses became smaller and more scattered, and finally, when the
country had become bare and desolate again, they turned down a narrow
lane and came to a tall, gaunt house standing by itself in a field.
“This is Sandringham,” said Mr Mariner.
“What!” said Jill. “What did you say?”
“Sandringham. Where we live. I got the name from your father. I
remember him telling me there was a place called that in England.”
“There is.” Jill’s voice bubbled. “The King lives there.”
“Is that so?” said Mr Mariner. “Well, I bet he doesn’t have the trouble
with help that we have here. I have to pay our girl fifty dollars a
month, and another twenty for the man who looks after the furnace and
chops wood. They’re all robbers. And if you kick they quit on you!”
§ 3.
Jill endured Sandringham for ten days; and, looking back on that period
of her life later, she wondered how she did it. The sense of desolation
which had gripped her on the station platform increased rather than
diminished as she grew accustomed to her surroundings. The east wind
died away, and the sun shone fitfully with a suggestion of warmth, but
her uncle’s bleakness appeared to be a static quality, independent of
weather conditions. Her aunt, a faded woman with a perpetual cold in
the head, did nothing to promote cheerfulness. The rest of the
household consisted of a gloomy child, “Tibby,” aged eight; a spaniel,
probably a few years older, and an intermittent cat, who, when he did
put in an appearance, was the life and soul of the party, but whose
visits to his home were all too infrequent for Jill. Thomas was a
genial animal, whose color-scheme, like a Whistler picture, was an
arrangement in black and white. He had green eyes and a purr like a
racing automobile. But his social engagements in the neighborhood kept
him away much of the time. He was the popular and energetic secretary
of the local cats’ debating society. One could hear him at night
sometimes reading the minutes in a loud, clear voice; after which the
debate was considered formally open.
Each day was the same as the last, almost to the final detail.
Sometimes Tibby would be naughty at breakfast, sometimes at lunch;
while Rover, the spaniel, a great devotee of the garbage-can, would
occasionally be sick at mid-day instead of after the evening meal. But,
with these exceptions, there was a uniformity about the course of life
in the Mariner household which began to prey on Jill’s nerves as early
as the third day.
The picture which Mr Mariner had formed in his mind of Jill as a
wealthy young lady with a taste for house property continued as vivid
as ever. It was his practice each morning to conduct her about the
neighborhood, introducing her to the various houses in which he had
sunk most of the money which he had made in business. Mr Mariner’s life
centered around Brookport real estate, and the embarrassed Jill was
compelled to inspect sitting-rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and master’s
bedrooms till the sound of a key turning in a lock gave her a feeling
of nervous exhaustion. Most of her uncle’s houses were converted
farmhouses and, as one unfortunate purchaser had remarked, not so
darned converted at that. The days she spent at Brookport remained in
Jill’s memory as a smell of dampness and chill and closeness.
“You want to buy,” said Mr Mariner every time he shut a front-door
behind them. “Not rent. Buy. Then, if you don’t want to live here, you
can always rent in the summer.”
It seemed incredible to Jill that the summer would ever come. Winter
held Brookport in its grip. For the first time in her life she was
tasting real loneliness. She wandered over the snow-patched fields down
to the frozen bay, and found the intense stillness, punctuated only by
the occasional distant gunshot of some optimist trying for duck,
oppressive rather than restful. She looked on the weird beauty of the
ice-bound marshes which glittered red and green and blue in the sun
with unseeing eyes; for her isolation was giving her time to think, and
thought was a torment.
On the eighth day came a letter from Uncle Chris,—a cheerful, even
rollicking letter. Things were going well with Uncle Chris, it seemed.
As was his habit, he did not enter into details, but he wrote in a
spacious way of large things to be, of affairs that were coming out
right, of prosperity in sight. As tangible evidence of success, he
enclosed a present of twenty dollars, for Jill to spend in the
Brookport shops.
The letter arrived by the morning mail, and two hours later Mr Mariner
took Jill by one of his usual overland routes to see a house nearer the
village than most of those which she had viewed. Mr Mariner had
exhausted the supply of cottages belonging to himself, and this one was
the property of an acquaintance. There would be an agent’s fee for him
in the deal, if it went through, and Mr Mariner was not a man who
despised money in small quantities.
There was a touch of hopefulness in his gloom this morning, like the
first intimation of sunshine after a wet day. He had been thinking the
thing over, and had come to the conclusion that Jill’s unresponsiveness
when confronted with the houses she had already seen was due to the
fact that she had loftier ideas than he had supposed. Something a
little more magnificent than the twelve thousand dollar places he had
shown her was what she desired. This house stood on a hill looking down
on the bay, in several acres of ground. It had its private
landing-stage and bath-house, its dairy, its
sleeping-porches,—everything, in fact, that a sensible girl could want.
Mr Mariner could not bring himself to suppose that he would fail again
today.
“They’re asking a hundred and five thousand,” he said, “but I know
they’d take a hundred thousand. And, if it was a question of cash down,
they would go even lower. It’s a fine house. You could entertain there.
Mrs Bruggenheim rented it last summer, and wanted to buy, but she
wouldn’t go above ninety thousand. If you want it, you’d better make up
your mind quick. A place like this is apt to be snapped up in a hurry.”
Jill could endure it no longer.
“But, you see,” she said gently, “all I have in the world is twenty
dollars!”
There was a painful pause. Mr Mariner shot a swift glance at her in the
hope of discovering that she had spoken humorously, but was compelled
to decide that she had not. His face under normal conditions always
achieved the maximum gloom possible for any face, so he gave no outward
sign of the shock which had shattered his mental poise; but he
expressed his emotion by walking nearly a mile without saying a word.
He was stunned. He had supported himself up till now by the thought
that, frightful as the expense of entertaining Jill as a guest might
be, the outlay was a good sporting speculation if she intended buying
house-property in the neighbourhood. The realization that he was down
to the extent of a week’s breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, with
nothing to show for it, appalled him. There had been a black morning
some years before when Mr. Mariner had given a waiter a ten-dollar bill
in mistake for a one. As he had felt then, on discovering his error
when it was too late to retrieve it, so did he feel now.
“Twenty dollars!” he exclaimed, at the end of the mile.
“Twenty dollars,” said Jill,
“But your father was a rich man.” Mr. Mariner’s voice was high and
plaintive. “He made a fortune over here before he went to England.”
“It’s all gone. I got nipped,” said Jill, who was finding a certain
amount of humor in the situation, “in Amalgamated Dyes.”
“Amalgamated Dyes?”
“They’re something,” explained Jill, “that people get nipped in.”
Mr Mariner digested this.
“You speculated?” he gasped.
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t have been allowed to do it,” said Mr Mariner warmly.
“Major Selby—your uncle ought to have known better than to allow you.”
“Yes, oughtn’t he,” said Jill demurely.
There was another silence, lasting for about a quarter of a mile.
“Well, it’s a bad business,” said Mr Mariner.
“Yes,” said Jill. “I’ve felt that myself.”
The result of this conversation was to effect a change in the
atmosphere of Sandringham. The alteration in the demeanor of people of
parsimonious habit, when they discover that the guest they are
entertaining is a pauper and not, as they had supposed, an heiress, is
subtle but well-marked. In most cases, more well-marked than subtle.
Nothing was actually said, but there are thoughts that are almost as
audible as words. A certain suspense seemed to creep into the air, as
happens when a situation has been reached which is too poignant to
last. Greek Tragedy affects the reader with the same sense of
over-hanging doom. Things, we feel, cannot go on as they are.
That night, after dinner, Mrs Mariner asked Jill to read to her.
“Print tries my eyes so, dear,” said Mrs Mariner. It was a small thing,
but it had the significance of that little cloud that arose out of the
sea like a man’s hand. Jill appreciated the portent. She was, she
perceived, to make herself useful.
“Of course I will,” she said cordially. “What would you me to read?”
She hated reading aloud. It always made her throat sore, and her eye
skipped to the end of each page and took the interest out of it long
before the proper time. But she proceeded bravely, for her conscience
was troubling her. Her sympathy was divided equally between these
unfortunate people who had been saddled with an undesired visitor and
herself who had been placed in a position at which every independent
nerve in her rebelled. Even as a child she had loathed being under
obligations to strangers or those whom she did not love.
“Thank you, dear,” said Mrs Mariner, when Jill’s voice had roughened to
a weary croak. “You read so well.” She wrestled ineffectually with her
handkerchief against the cold in the head from which she always
suffered. “It would be nice if you would do it every night, don’t you
think? You have no idea how tired print makes my eyes.”
On the following morning after breakfast, at the hour when she had
hitherto gone house-hunting with Mr Mariner, the child Tibby, of whom
up till now she had seen little except at meals, presented himself to
her, coated and shod for the open and regarding her with a dull and
phlegmatic gaze.
“Ma says will you please take me for a nice walk!”
Jill’s heart sank. She loved children, but Tibby was not an
ingratiating child. He was a Mr Mariner in little. He had the family
gloom. It puzzled Jill sometimes why this branch of the family should
look on life with so jaundiced an eye. She remembered her father as a
cheerful man, alive to the small humors of life.
“All right, Tibby. Where shall we go?”
“Ma says we must keep on the roads and I mustn’t slide.”
Jill was thoughtful during the walk. Tibby, who was no
conversationalist, gave her every opportunity for meditation. She
perceived that in the space of a few hours she had sunk in the social
scale. If there was any difference between her position and that of a
paid nurse and companion, it lay in the fact that she was not paid. She
looked about her at the grim countryside, gave a thought to the chill
gloom of the house to which she was about to return, and her heart
sank.
Nearing home, Tibby vouchsafed his first independent observation.
“The hired man’s quit!”
“Has he?”
“Yep. Quit this morning.”
It had begun to snow. They turned and made their way back to the house.
The information she had received did not cause Jill any great
apprehension. It was hardly likely that her new duties would include
the stoking of the furnace. That and cooking appeared to be the only
acts about the house which were outside her present sphere of
usefulness.
“He killed a rat once in the wood-shed with an axe,” said Tibby
chattily. “Yessir! Chopped it right in half, and it bled!”
“Look at the pretty snow falling on the trees,” said Jill faintly.
At breakfast next morning, Mrs Mariner having sneezed, made a
suggestion.
“Tibby, darling, wouldn’t it be nice if you and cousin Jill played a
game of pretending you were pioneers in the Far West?”
“What’s a pioneer?” enquired Tibby, pausing in the middle of an act of
violence on a plate of oatmeal.
“The pioneers were the early settlers in this country, dear. You have
read about them in your history book. They endured a great many
hardships, for life was very rough for them, with no railroads or
anything. I think it would be a nice game to play this morning.”
Tibby looked at Jill. There was doubt in his eye. Jill returned his
gaze sympathetically. One thought was in both their minds.
“There is a string to this!” said Tibby’s eye.
“Exactly what I think!” said Jill’s.
Mrs Mariner sneezed again.
“You would have lots of fun,” she said.
“What’ud we do?” asked Tibby cautiously. He had been this way before.
Only last Summer, on his mother’s suggestion that he should pretend he
was a ship-wrecked sailor on a desert island, he had perspired through
a whole afternoon cutting the grass in front of the house to make a
ship-wrecked sailor’s simple bed.
“I know,” said Jill. “We’ll pretend we’re pioneers stormbound in their
log cabin in the woods, and the wolves are howling outside, and they
daren’t go out, so they make a lovely big fire and sit in front of it
and read.”
“And eat candy,” suggested Tibby, warming to the idea.
“And eat candy,” agreed Jill.
Mrs Mariner frowned.
“I was going to suggest,” she said frostily, “that you shovelled the
snow away from the front steps!”
“Splendid!” said Jill. “Oh, but I forgot. I want to go to the village
first.”
“There will be plenty of time to do it when you get back.”
“All right. I’ll do it when I get back.”
It was a quarter of an hour’s walk to the village. Jill stopped at the
post-office.
“Could you tell me,” she asked, “when the next train is to New York?”
“There’s one at ten-ten,” said the woman, behind the window. “You’ll
have to hurry.”
“I’ll hurry!” said Jill.