I.

It was their first summer at Middlemount and the Landers did not know the

roads. When they came to a place where they had a choice of two, she said

that now he must get out of the carry-all and ask at the house standing a

little back in the edge of the pine woods, which road they ought to take

for South Middlemount. She alleged many cases in which they had met

trouble through his perverse reluctance to find out where they were

before he pushed rashly forward in their drives. Whilst she urged the

facts she reached forward from the back seat where she sat, and held her

hand upon the reins to prevent his starting the horse, which was

impartially cropping first the sweet fern on one side and then the

blueberry bushes on the other side of the narrow wheel-track. She

declared at last that if he would not get out and ask she would do it

herself, and at this the dry little man jerked the reins in spite of her,

and the horse suddenly pulled the carry-all to the right, and seemed

about to overset it.

"Oh, what are you doing, Albe't?" Mrs. Lander lamented, falling helpless

against the back of her seat. "Haven't I always told you to speak to the

hoss fust?"

"He wouldn't have minded my speakin'," said her husband. "I'm goin' to

take you up to the dooa so that you can ask for youaself without gettin'

out."

This was so well, in view of Mrs. Lander's age and bulk, and the hardship

she must have undergone, if she had tried to carry out her threat, that

she was obliged to take it in some sort as a favor; and while the vehicle

rose and sank over the surface left rough, after building, in front of

the house, like a vessel on a chopping sea, she was silent for several

seconds.

The house was still in a raw state of unfinish, though it seemed to have

been lived in for a year at least. The earth had been banked up at the

foundations for warmth in winter, and the sheathing of the walls had been

splotched with irregular spaces of weather boarding; there was a good

roof over all, but the window-casings had been merely set in their places

and the trim left for a future impulse of the builder. A block of wood

suggested the intention of steps at the front door, which stood

hospitably open, but remained unresponsive for some time after the

Landers made their appeal to the house at large by anxious noises in

their throats, and by talking loud with each other, and then talking low.

They wondered whether there were anybody in the house; and decided that

there must be, for there was smoke coming out of the stove pipe piercing

the roof of the wing at the rear.

Mr. Lander brought himself under censure by venturing, without his wife's

authority, to lean forward and tap on the door-frame with the butt of his

whip. At the sound, a shrill voice called instantly from the region of

the stove pipe, "Clem! Clementina? Go to the front dooa! The'e's somebody

knockin'." The sound of feet, soft and quick, made itself heard within,

and in a few moments a slim maid, too large for a little girl, too

childlike for a young girl, stood in the open doorway, looking down on

the elderly people in the buggy, with a face as glad as a flower's. She

had blue eyes, and a smiling mouth, a straight nose, and a pretty chin

whose firm jut accented a certain wistfulness of her lips. She had hair

of a dull, dark yellow, which sent out from its thick mass light prongs,

or tendrils, curving inward again till they delicately touched it. Her

tanned face was not very different in color from her hair, and neither

were her bare feet, which showed well above her ankles in the calico

skirt she wore. At sight of the elders in the buggy she involuntarily

stooped a little to lengthen her skirt in effect, and at the same time

she pulled it together sidewise, to close a tear in it, but she lost in

her anxiety no ray of the joy which the mere presence of the strangers

seemed to give her, and she kept smiling sunnily upon them while she

waited for them to speak.

"Oh!" Mrs. Lander began with involuntary apology in her tone, "we just

wished to know which of these roads went to South Middlemount. We've come

from the hotel, and we wa'n't quite ce'tain."

The girl laughed as she said, "Both roads go to South Middlemount'm; they

join together again just a little piece farther on."

The girl and the woman in their parlance replaced the letter 'r' by vowel

sounds almost too obscure to be represented, except where it came last in

a word before a word beginning with a vowel; there it was annexed to the

vowel by a strong liaison, according to the custom universal in rural New

England.

"Oh, do they?" said Mrs. Lander.

"Yes'm," answered the girl. "It's a kind of tu'nout in the wintatime; or

I guess that's what made it in the beginning; sometimes folks take one

hand side and sometimes the other, and that keeps them separate; but

they're really the same road, 'm."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Lander, and she pushed her husband to make him say

something, too, but he remained silently intent upon the child's

prettiness, which her blue eyes seemed to illumine with a light of their

own. She had got hold of the door, now, and was using it as if it was a

piece of drapery, to hide not only the tear in her gown, but somehow both

her bare feet. She leaned out beyond the edge of it; and then, at moments

she vanished altogether behind it.

Since Mr. Lander would not speak, and made no sign of starting up his

horse, Mrs. Lander added, "I presume you must be used to havin' people

ask about the road, if it's so puzzlin'."

"O, yes'm," returned the girl, gladly. "Almost every day, in the

summatime."

"You have got a pretty place for a home, he'e," said Mrs. Lander.

"Well, it will be when it's finished up." Without leaning forward

inconveniently Mrs. Lander could see that the partitions of the house

within were lathed, but not plastered, and the girl looked round as if to

realize its condition and added, "It isn't quite finished inside."

"We wouldn't, have troubled you," said Mrs. Lander, "if we had seen

anybody to inquire of."

"Yes'm," said the girl. "It a'n't any trouble."

"There are not many otha houses about, very nea', but I don't suppose you

get lonesome; young folks are plenty of company for themselves, and if

you've got any brothas and sistas--"

"Oh," said the girl, with a tender laugh, "I've got eva so many of them!"

There was a stir in the bushes about the carriage, and Mrs. Lander was

aware for an instant of children's faces looking through the leaves at

her and then flashing out of sight, with gay cries at being seen. A boy,

older than the rest, came round in front of the horse and passed out of

sight at the corner of the house.

Lander now leaned back and looked over his shoulder at his wife as if he

might hopefully suppose she had come to the end of her questions, but she

gave no sign of encouraging him to start on their way again.

"That your brotha, too?" she asked the girl.

"Yes'm. He's the oldest of the boys; he's next to me."

"I don't know," said Mrs. Lander thoughtfully, "as I noticed how many

boys there were, or how many girls."

"I've got two sistas, and three brothas, 'm," said the girl, always

smiling sweetly. She now emerged from the shelter of the door, and Mrs.

Lander perceived that the slight movements of such parts of her person as

had been evident beyond its edge were the effects of some endeavor at

greater presentableness. She had contrived to get about her an overskirt

which covered the rent in her frock, and she had got a pair of shoes on

her feet. Stockings were still wanting, but by a mutual concession of her

shoe-tops and the border of her skirt, they were almost eliminated from

the problem. This happened altogether when the girl sat down on the

threshold, and got herself into such foreshortening that the eye of Mrs.

Lander in looking down upon her could not detect their absence. Her

little head then showed in the dark of the doorway like a painted head

against its background.

"You haven't been livin' here a great while, by the looks," said Mrs.

Lander. "It don't seem to be clea'ed off very much."

"We've got quite a ga'den-patch back of the house," replied the girl,

"and we should have had moa, but fatha wasn't very well, this spring;

he's eva so much better than when we fust came he'e."

"It has the name of being a very healthy locality," said Mrs. Lander,

somewhat discontentedly, "though I can't see as it's done me so very much

good, yit. Both your payrints livin'?"

"Yes'm. Oh, yes, indeed!"

"And your mother, is she real rugged? She need to be, with such a flock

of little ones!"

"Yes, motha's always well. Fatha was just run down, the doctas said, and

ought to keep more in the open air. That's what he's done since he came

he'e. He helped a great deal on the house and he planned it all out

himself."

"Is he a ca'penta?" asked Mrs. Lander.

"No'm; but he's--I don't know how to express it--he likes to do every

kind of thing."

"But he's got some business, ha'n't he?" A shadow of severity crept over

Mrs. Lander's tone, in provisional reprehension of possible

shiftlessness.

"Yes'm. He was a machinist at the Mills; that's what the doctas thought

didn't agree with him. He bought a piece of land he'e, so as to be in the

pine woods, and then we built this house."

"When did you say you came?"

"Two yea's ago, this summa."

"Well! What did you do befoa you built this house?"

"We camped the first summa."

"You camped? In a tent?"

"Well, it was pahtly a tent, and pahtly bank."

"I should have thought you would have died."

The girl laughed. "Oh, no, we all kept fast-rate. We slept in the

tents--we had two--and we cooked in the shanty." She smiled at the notion in

adding, "At fast the neighbas thought we we'e Gipsies; and the summa

folks thought we were Indians, and wanted to get baskets of us."

Mrs. Lander did not know what to think, and she asked, "But didn't it

almost perish you, stayin' through the winter in an unfinished house?"

"Well, it was pretty cold. But it was so dry, the air was, and the woods

kept the wind off nicely."

The same shrill voice in the region of the stovepipe which had sent the

girl to the Landers now called her from them. "Clem! Come here a minute!"

The girl said to Mrs. Lander, politely, "You'll have to excuse me, now'm.

I've got to go to motha."

"So do!" said Mrs. Lander, and she was so taken by the girl's art and

grace in getting to her feet and fading into the background of the

hallway without visibly casting any detail of her raiment, that she was

not aware of her husband's starting up the horse in time to stop him.

They were fairly under way again, when she lamented, "What you doin',

Albe't? Whe'e you goin'?"

"I'm goin' to South Middlemount. Didn't you want to?"

"Well, of all the men! Drivin' right off without waitin' to say thankye

to the child, or take leave, or anything!"

"Seemed to me as if SHE took leave."

"But she was comin' back! And I wanted to ask--"

"I guess you asked enough for one while. Ask the rest to-morra."

Mrs. Lander was a woman who could often be thrown aside from an immediate

purpose, by the suggestion of some remoter end, which had already,

perhaps, intimated itself to her. She said, "That's true," but by the

time her husband had driven down one of the roads beyond the woods into

open country, she was a quiver of intolerable curiosity. "Well, all I've

got to say is that I sha'n't rest till I know all about 'em."

"Find out when we get back to the hotel, I guess," said her husband.

"No, I can't wait till I get back to the hotel. I want to know now. I

want you should stop at the very fust house we come to. Dea'! The'e don't

seem to be any houses, any moa." She peered out around the side of the

carry-all and scrutinized the landscape. "Hold on! No, yes it is, too!

Whoa! Whoa! The'e's a man in that hay-field, now!"

She laid hold of the reins and pulled the horse to a stand. Mr. Lander

looked round over his shoulder at her. "Hadn't you betta wait till you

get within half a mile of the man?"

"Well, I want you should stop when you do git to him. Will you? I want to

speak to him, and ask him all about those folks."

"I didn't suppose you'd let me have much of a chance," said her husband.

When he came within easy hail of the man in the hay-field, he pulled up

beside the meadow-wall, where the horse began to nibble the blackberry

vines that overran it.

Mrs. Lander beckoned and called to the man, who had stopped pitching hay

and now stood leaning on the handle of his fork. At the signs and sounds

she made, he came actively forward to the road, bringing his fork with

him. When he arrived within easy conversational distance, he planted the

tines in the ground and braced himself at an opposite incline from the

long smooth handle, and waited for Mrs. Lander to begin.

"Will you please tell us who those folks ah', livin' back there in the

edge of the woods, in that new unfinished house?"

The man released his fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy

that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth,

where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked,

before he answered, "You mean the Claxons?"

"I don't know what thei' name is." Mrs. Lander repeated exactly what she

had said.