took the lilac sprig into the house. Perhaps she fancied that no one
would see the flowers but she. Maybe the oppressive stillness of the
empty house burdened her. Certainly something was heavy upon her, for
there was no smile in the sigh that came deeply from her heart, as she
locked the door. It must have seemed lonely for Miss Morgan, coming
from the crowded parlor, and the questions that her friends asked
about her plans may have followed her. Perhaps it was the answer to
these questions that kept her awake. She sat by her window and went
over and over again the question, what should she do. The wedding that
had so recently livened the cottage kept coming to the little old
woman's mind, and with it came the bride. When the other children had
gone away, Miss Morgan let them go with her blessing, and was glad of
their good fortunes. But this last child to go had been Miss Morgan's
pet. As the lonely spinster sat there she recalled how the child had
been moulded by her; how she had fancied the child's heart was hers,
cherishing in it the ideals, the sentiment, the tendernesses that the
older heart had held sacred for a lifetime. Miss Morgan recalled how
she and the girl had mingled their tears over the first long dress
that their hands made, knowing, each of them, that it meant the coming
of the parting. As she looked into the awful vistas of the stars, the
woman knew that she was one of God's creatures, all alone--without one
soul that she might even signal to.
[Illustration: _The first long dress_.]
The word "alone" came to her so strangely that she repeated it in a
whisper. Its sound touched some string within her bosom, and she put
her head upon the open window sill and wept, sobbing the word "alone"
until sleep soothed her.
The morning sunlight helped Miss Morgan to put aside the problems of
the night; she hummed an old war tune as she went about her work, but
it did not lift the silence from the house. The rooms that a few days
before had been vocal with life, were so dead that the clock ticking
in the parlor might be heard in the kitchen. The canary's cheerful
song echoed shrilly through the silent place. Miss Morgan said to him,
"Dickey, Dickey, for gracious sake, keep still--you'll drive me wild."
But her voice only increased the bird's vehemence, and the throbbing
in her ears brought on a headache. When she put a paper over the cage,
the clock annoyed her. She was irritated by a passing boy whistling
"The Girl I Left Behind Me" with all his might, but sadly off the key.
She went to the window and saw Bud Perkins.
[Illustration: "_Dickey, Dickey, for gracious sake, keep still_."]
She did not know that the child had just arisen from a cheering
breakfast at the Penningtons'--even if she knew how much a hearty
breakfast cheers up any boy. But the spectacle of the orphan facing
the world so bravely moved Miss Morgan. She felt a sudden wave of
pity, and with it came the conviction of guilt--that she had been
selfish while the boy was suffering. She had heard at the Penningtons'
that the county would probably take charge of him; but she recalled
what she had heard in its full meaning to the child only when she saw
him turn the corner, going toward the centre of the town. There was
a feeling of keen joy in her heart as she realized that she was not
useless in the world, and she went about her morning's work with the
lightest heart in all Willow Creek beating in her breast.
Bud Perkins had seen but two Memorial Days in Kansas--and upon each of
these days he and his father had gone fishing. The boy knew it was a
soldiers' holiday, and from Piggy Pennington Bud had found out what
were the purposes of the day. He knew that his father had been a
soldier--a soldier on the wrong side. But he did not know that graves
of Confederate soldiers were not included in the day's sacrament.
"Mornin', Captain," said Bud to a slight, gray-haired old man,
stooping over a basket of flowers in a vacant store-room in the main
street of the town.
When the man replied kindly the boy took heart to say: "You must be
kind o' runnin' things here, I guess."
"I'm in charge of the flowers, Bud, just for to-day," replied Captain
Meyers, who did not wish to seem as vain-glorious as he was.
"Goin' to put flowers on all the soldiers' graves--are you?" queried
Bud. The elder replied that the Post aimed to do so.
"Did you know my dad was a soldier?" was the boy's next question.
[Illustration: "_Did you know my dad was a soldier_?"]
The captain's heart was pricked when he saw what was in Bud's mind.
The captain knew what the next query would be. He was a gentle man and
kind. So, looking about to see if any comrades of a sterner sect than
he were in hearing before replying, he said: "You mustn't feel bad
now, Buddie, but it's only them on the Union side--whose graves we
decorate to-day. I wouldn't mind, if I was you." Captain Meyers was
not a diplomat, and he said the words poorly.
In an instant the boy's eyes filled with tears. They dried in anger
before they reached his flushed cheek. He clinched his hands, turned,
and walked hotly out of the room. In the door he paused, whirled
around, and cried,--
"Yank! Yank! Rick-stick-stank!
High ball, low ball, dirty-faced Yank!"
[Illustration: _During the next two hours the boy wandered on the
prairie_.]
Then he ran wildly down the street to escape the infuriated mob which
he believed would pursue him. The knowledge that he was cut off from
the day's festivities made him wince with pain as he ran. Not until
he came out upon the road across the prairie did he stop--breathless,
worn out, crying. During the next two hours the boy wandered on the
prairie and in the woods gathering wild flowers. By the time the
exercises in the Willow Creek opera house were finished and the
procession was formed, Bud Perkins had a heaping armful of field
blossoms. He was coming over the hill to the cemetery when he heard
the band strike up the "Dead March" down in the village. His impulse
was to run away. He checked himself and walked across the place, past
the shafts and monuments, toward his father's grave under the hill
furthest from the town. In the middle of the cemetery the boy stopped.
His eyes were caught by a marble lamb over a child's grave. The
inscription he read was "Mary Pennington, aged two years, three
months, and ten days." The date line upon the stone, told of a year
that had passed before the Perkins boy was born. He gazed at it a
moment, and put there a handful of his choicest flowers. Looking up
he saw some early visitor to the silent place stepping from behind
a monument. Bud had scattered his flowers before he saw that he
was being watched; so he pretended to hunt for stones to throw. He
gathered several, and peppered them at shafts and at birds.
[Illustration: "_Mary Pennington, aged two years, three months, and
ten days_"]
Bud Perkins walked to the freshly-made mound where his father lay, and
scattered his posies over it. The village "cornet band" was coming
nearer and nearer to the hill. The boy curbed a temptation to leave.
He walked lazily about the grave until the Memorial Day procession
had entered the big iron gate a hundred yards away. Calhoun Perkins's
grave could not be seen from the plot where the townspeople had
gathered. The boy sat down with his back to the crowd. He did not know
how near the people were to him. He felt that they were staring down,
perhaps laughing, at him. So he tried to assume a careless air. He
picked up clods and tossed them at adjacent objects. Tiring of this,
he chewed the grass stems, and sucked the nectar from the corolla of
wild honeysuckles. But this did not keep the lump out of his throat,
and it did not subdue the turmoil of sorrow in his heart at the
thought that his father was scorned in the town. Once his small frame
shook with a strangled sob, but immediately afterward he threw an
unusually big clod at a post near by. He had been hearing voices and
footsteps on the brow of the hill for several minutes. Occasionally he
picked out a familiar voice, and once he heard Mealy Jones call his
name. He did not answer, but a woman standing a little further up the
hill asked Mealy, "Who is it, Harold?" "Bud," said the youngster.
"Bud who?" asked the woman's voice.
The Perkins boy heard the dialogue. He was sitting down, throwing
clods into the air, and catching them as they fell, and this appeared
to be an engrossing task.
"Bud Perkins. He's settin' down by his pa's grave," replied the boy on
the hill. The child by the fresh mound pictured himself as the other
boy saw him, and his eyes brimmed over with tears. He seemed so
desolate.
"Why don't you go to him?" insisted the woman, coming nearer.
"Oh, Miss Morgan," said the boy whom she addressed, lowering his
voice, but not lowering it sufficiently, "Miss Morgan, _you_ don't
know _him_"
Just then Bud was startled by a footstep at his side. He looked up and
saw Piggy Pennington, who had a big bunch of roses in his hands,
and who, seeing the stained face of his friend, said in embarrassed
confusion: "Ma sent 'em." Piggy put the roses by the new pine
head-board, and lay down--lying across his companion's feet.
"Get off me," said Bud, when he had treated himself to a long,
trembling sniff, after a painful silence. "I ain't no sidewalk."
When Piggy went to get his flying hat, he said under his breath
to Bud, "Wipe your face, quick; some one's comin'." Then he stood
awkwardly at Bud's back and shielded him. Piggy spoke first to the
little woman, now only a few paces away.
[Illustration: _Piggy went to get his flying hat_.]
"H'lo, Miss Morgan; lookin' for old Tom? He's buried off to the right
yonder."
"No, my dear. I want to speak to Henry Perkins," replied the woman,
beaming the kindest of smiles into the guardsman's face. He stepped
from the line between Miss Morgan and the Perkins boy, not sure that
the intruder would find a welcome. Bud was glaring steadfastly at the
earth, between his hands and knees. Piggy said, "Bu-ud?"
"Whut," was the response.
"Miss Morgan wants to talk with you," replied Piggy.
"What's she want?" inquired the Perkins boy, with his head still
between his knees.
Miss Morgan had been coming nearer and nearer to him as the dialogue
had progressed. She was standing in front of Bud when he added, "I
ain't done nothin'."
Miss Morgan bent down and touched his head with her hands. Piggy was
shaking his head warningly at her with much earnestness. He feared
that such a feminine proceeding would anger his comrade. When Miss
Morgan sat upon the ground beside Bud and took one of his hands,
stroking it without the boy's resisting, Piggy Pennington was dumb
with wonder. He could not hear the gentle breaking of the agonizing
lump in the child's throat. Even little Miss Morgan could not see the
tears that had burst over the brims of the orphan's eyes. His face was
averted. She stroked his hand, and snuggled closer to him. Then she
heard a faint whimper, and her heart could stand the strain no longer;
she leaned upon the child's shoulder, and mourned with him. The
Pennington boy did not comprehend it all; but as he looked politely
away from his friends, he felt the moisture in his eyes. He wiped it
away quickly, glancing to see if his weakness had been detected.
The woman recovered in a few moments, and arose with the boy's hand
gripping hers warmly. He had felt her tears through his thin clothing,
and was conquered.
[Illustration: _She stroked his hand and snuggled closer to him_.]
"Come on, Henry; we're going now," said Miss Morgan, and drew the lad
up with her hand.
"Whur to?" asked Bud, who knew the answer instinctively.
"Home," replied the little woman, who knew that the boy knew, and who
was sure that he had consented. "Our home--yours and mine."
The boy arose, still holding her hand, and looked toward the grave
with the flowers strewn over it. He gripped her hand tightly--so
tightly that it pained her--and sobbed, as he faced away from her: "O
pop!"
Then they walked on in silence, till they came up with Piggy, who had
gone a few steps ahead. It was Bud who spoke first. He said: "You
don't live far from Piggy's, do you, Miss Morgan?"
And Piggy Pennington pointed his finger at Bud's dripping eyes and
grinned, while Miss Morgan smiled happily at the clouds.
[Illustration: _Miss Morgan smiled happily at the clouds_.]
"WHILE THE EVIL DAYS COME NOT"
THE RHYME OF MIGNONETTE
When dandelions fleck the green,
And plum-blooms scent the evening breeze,
And robin's songs throb through the trees;
And when the year is raw thirteen,
And Spring's a gawky hoyden yet,
The season mirrors in its mien
And in its tom-boy etiquette,
Maid Mignonette, my Mignonette.
When bare-feet lisp along the path,
And boys and jays go whistling by,
And girls and thrushes coyly cry
Their fine joys through the aftermath--
Then laid ghosts know their amulet
Which fickle siren mem'ry hath;
So laughing comes that sad coquette,
Comes Mignonette,--my Mignonette.
The wild rose is a conjurer,
It charms the heavy years away,
Unshoes my feet and bids them stray
O'er playgrounds where our temples were.
To some pale star I owe a debt
For harboring the soul of her
With whom I learned love's alphabet--
With Mignonette, my Mignonette.
"While the Evil Days come not"
We duck through the court, reminded a
bit by our feelings of our first love, who hadn't
the cleanest of faces, or the nicest of manners;
but she takes her station in our memory because
we were boys then, and the golden halo
of youth is upon her.--_George Meredith_.
What little things turn great events! Tragedies swing on such
inconsequential hinges. It is so exasperating to look back over the
path of a calamity and see how easily it might have been averted! If
one man in the little town of Lawrence a generation ago had eaten two
pieces of pie-plant pie instead of three for supper, the night of a
certain party caucus, he would have attended that caucus and another
set of delegates would have gone to the County convention, another
would have been sent to the State Convention, another Governor of
Kansas would have been nominated and elected, and he would have chosen
another United States Senator, who would have voted for, instead of
against, the impeachment of a President of the United States, and the
history of the civilized world would have been an entirely different
affair from the one now in use. Similarly, if Winfield Hancock
Pennington, of the town of Boyville, had slipped his shoes off in the
second block from his home, instead of slipping them off in the first
block, on his way to school, a great shadow that settled over his life
might have been lifted. For if he had not been sitting exactly where
he sat on the curbing of the street, on that bright, beautiful Monday
morning in September, removing his shoes and stockings, he would have
found no garter snake to kill; and not having killed the snake, he
could not have brought it to school on a stick; and not having brought
it to school on a stick, he could not have chased the little girls
around the yard with it before the teacher came. And if he had not
been doing that, he would not have conceived the chivalrous notion
that he might gain the esteem of his Heart's Desire by frightening
her with a snake. And if Winfield Hancock Pennington had not made his
Heart's Desire angry--without giving her a chance to cool off--she
would not have invited Harold Jones to sit and sing with her during
the opening hour. But probably all that happened had to happen in the
course of things; so speculation is idle. But when it did happen, it
seemed to be a hopeless case. Young Mr. Pennington had lived through
the day, a week before, when the teacher changed his seat so that he
could not see his Heart's Desire smile; but he knew that she was sorry
with him, and that helped a little. But when he saw Harold Jones
singing from the same book with his Heart's Desire, he tried in vain
to catch the fragment of a smile from her. Instead of a smile, he
found her threatening to make a face if he persisted. Piggy seemed to
be buried in an avalanche of woe. Then it was that he saw what a small
thing had started the avalanche of calamity thundering down upon him,
and he smarted with remorse. In his anguish he tried to sing alto,
and made a peculiar rasping sound that tore a reproof for him off the
teacher's nerves.
[Illustration: _Chased the little girls around the yard with it_.]
[Illustration: _She would not have invited Harold Jones to sit and
sing with her during the opening hour_.]
From the hour of the Jones boy's triumph, he and Winfield Hancock
Pennington--familiarly known as "Piggy"--became boon companions. A
grown-up outsider might have wondered at such a friendship, for Harold
Jones was a pale, thin youth, with a squeaky voice. His skimmed-milk
eyes popped out over a waste of freckles which blurred his features
and literally weighted down a weak, loosely-wired jaw and kept an
astonished mouth opened for hours at a time. Piggy, on the other hand,
was a sturdy, chunky, blue-eyed boy, who had fought his way up to
glory in the school, and who had run and jumped, and tumbled and
dived, and bantered himself into the right to be King of Boyville.
Chummery between the two boys seemed impossible, yet it was one of the
things which every school expects in a certain crisis. When the affair
is reversed, the two little girls go about breathing undying
hatred for one another. But a boy begins to consume his rival with
politeness, to seek him out from all other beings on earth, to study
his tastes and cater to his humors. And so, while the comradeship
between Piggy Pennington and Mealy Jones was built on ashes, its
growth was beautiful to see.
[Illustration: _Harold Jones_]
[Illustration: _To study his tastes_.]
[Illustration: ... _the comradeship ... was beautiful to see_]
In all their hours of close communion neither boy mentioned to the
other the name of the little girl in the red shawl and the paint-brush
pig-tails whose fitful fancy had brought on all his trouble. In some
mysterious way each managed to shower her with picture cards, to
compass her about with oranges, to embower her desk with flowers;
but it was all done in stealth, and she who was the object of
this devotion rewarded it openly and--alas for the vanity of her
sex--impartially. All the school watched the battle of the hearts
eagerly. The big boys, who usually know as little about the social
transactions beneath them as the teacher knows, felt an inkling of the
situation. The red-headed Pratt girl became deeply interested in
the affair, though she was never invited to a party in the school's
aristocracy. She did not even get an invitation to Bud Perkins's
surprise party, where every one who had any social standing was
expected. Yet she saw all that went on in the school, and once she all
but smiled sympathetically at Piggy, when she met him slipping away
from his Heart's Desire's desk, in which he had left a flock of Cupids
nestling on a perfumed blotter, and a candy sheep. Mealy Jones would
have snubbed the Pratt girl if she had caught him thus, but Piggy gave
her a wink that made her his partner. After that hour the Pratt girl
became his scout. The next day she blundered. That Friday was burned
into Piggy Pennington's memory with a glowing brand.
[Illustration: _The red-headed Pratt girl_.]
The trouble occurred in this way: On the Friday following Piggy's
black Monday, the King of Boyville, decided to resort to an heroic
measure. In his meditative moments Piggy had made up speeches
addressed to his Heart's Desire wherein he had proposed reconciliation
at any sacrifice save that of honor. Twice during those four days he
had stood by his Heart's Desire during recess, while they had looked
out at the play-ground. But the words next to his heart had sputtered
and bubbled into nothing on his lips. He could only snap chalk at
the young gentlemen in the yard below him, in a preoccupied way,
and listen to his Heart's Desire rattle on about the whims of her
fractions and the caprices of her spelling-lesson. Friday noon,
Winfield Hancock Pennington took a header into the Rubicon. In the
deserted school-room, just after the other youngsters had gone to
dinner or to play, Piggy, with much wiggling of his toes, with much
hard breathing, and with many facial contortions, wrote a note. He
gave it to the Pratt girl to deliver. When the first bell was ringing
that noon, Piggy was piling up the primary urchins in wiggling,
squealing piles at "crack the whip." During the fifteen minutes
that followed, he was charging up and down the yard, howling like a
Comanche, at "pull-away." But run as he would, yell as he would, and
wrestle as he would, Piggy could not escape the picture that rose in
his mind of a boy wearing his features and using his body, writing the
note that he had written. When dismembered words and phrases from that
note came to his mind on the play-ground, the quaver of terror that
rose in Piggy's whoop was not dissembled. Sometimes fear froze his
vitals, then a flush of self-abasement burned him with its flames. And
all the time he knew that the Pratt girl had that note. He almost
hoped that an earthquake would swallow her with it before she could
deliver it. When Piggy came straggling in, hot, sweaty, and puffing,
just as the teacher was tapping the tardy-bell, a wave of peace swept
over him. His Heart's Desire was not at her desk. He knew that he
had still a few moments' reprieve.
[Illustration: _He could only snap chalk in a preoccupied way and
listen to his Heart's Desire_.]
[Illustration: _Piggy was piling up the primary urchins in wiggling,
squealing piles_.]
They were singing when his Heart's Desire came in. Piggy's head was
tilted back to give his voice full volume as he shouted, "All his
jewels, precious jewels, His loved and His own." His eyes were
half closed in an ecstasy, and he did not turn his face toward the
paint-brush pig-tails, nor give any sign that he knew of their owner's
presence. Yet when she passed his desk, his voice did not quaver, nor
his eyes blink, nor his countenance redden, as his foot darted out for
her to trip over. She tripped purposely, thereby accepting affection's
tribute, and he was glad.
To elaborate the tale of how the Pratt girl blundered with Piggy
Pennington's note would be depressing. For it holds in its barbed
meshes a record of one agonizing second in which Piggy saw the folded
paper begin to slip and slide down the incline of his Heart's Desire's
desk, whereon the Pratt girl had dropped it; saw the two girls grab
for it; heard it crash from the seat to the floor with what seemed to
him a deafening roar. Nor is this all that the harrowing tale might
disclose. It might dilate upon the horror that wrenched Piggy's spine
as he watched the teacher's finger crook a signal for the note to be
brought forward. It would be manifestly cruel and clearly unnecessary
to describe the forces which impelled the psychic wave of suggestion
that inundated the school--even to the youth of the "B" class, with
his head under the desk, looking for a pencil--and gave every demon
there gleeful knowledge that the teacher had nabbed a note and would
probably read it aloud. It is enough to submit the plain, but painful,
statement that, when the teacher tapped her pencil for attention, a
red ear, a throbbing red ear, flared out from either side of Piggy
Pennington's Fourth Reader, while not far away a pair of pig-tails
bristled up with rage and humiliation from a desk where a little
girl's head lay buried in her arms. Then the teacher unfolded the
crackling paper and read this note:--
FRIEND MARY.--Did you mean anything
by letting Him sing with you. I
dont care if you did but I never don
anything to deserve it, but if you dident
I am very sorry, will tell you bout it at
the partey. Well that is all I can think
of today, from
Yourse Ever,
WIN PENNINGTON.
P.S. If you still meen what you sed
about roses red and vilets blue all right
and so do I. W H P.
[Illustration: _He watched the teacher's finger crook a signal for the
note to be brought forward_.]
Piggy waded home through blood that night. The boys could not resist
calling out "Friend Mary" or "Hello, Roses Red," though each boy knew
that his taunt would bring on a fight. Piggy fought boys who were
three classes above him. He whipped groups of boys of assorted sizes
from the lower grades; but the fighting took him away from his
trouble, and in most cases he honored his combatants. He was little
the worse for wear when he chased the last swarm of primary urchins
into his father's cow lot, fastened them in, and went at them one by
one with a shingle. A child living next door to the Penningtons had
brought the news of Piggy's disgrace to the neighborhood, and by
supper-time Mrs. Pennington knew the worst. While the son and heir
of the house was bringing in his wood and doing his chores about the
barn, he felt something in the air about the kitchen which warned him
that new tortures awaited him.
[Illustration: ... _fought boys who were three classes above him ...
whipped groups of boys of assorted sizes_.]