road, where there was scarcely a house, and where the woods had been
cut off more or less, so there was nothing to be seen but the uneven
ground, which was not fit for even a pasture yet. But it was not
without a beauty of its own; for the little hills and hollows were
covered thick with brakes and ferns and bushes, and in the swamps the
cat-tails and all the rushes were growing in stiff and stately ranks,
so green and tall; while the birds flew up, or skimmed across them as
we went by. It was like a town of birds, there were so many. It is
strange how one is always coming upon families and neighbourhoods of
wild creatures in the unsettled country places; it is so much like
one's going on longer journeys about the world, and finding town after
town with its own interests, each so sufficient for itself.
We struck the edge of the farming-land again, after a while, and I saw
three great pines that had been born to good luck in this world, since
they had sprouted in good soil, and had been left to grow as fast as
they pleased. They lifted their heads proudly against the blue sky,
these rich trees, and I admired them as much as they could have
expected. They must have been a landmark for many miles to the
westward, for they grew on high land, and they could pity, from a
distance, any number of their poor relations who were just able to keep
body and soul together, and had grown up thin and hungry in crowded
woods. But, though their lower branches might snap and crackle at a
touch, their tops were brave and green, and they kept up appearances,
at any rate; these poorer pines.
Georgie pointed out his aunt's house to me, after a while. It was not
half so forlorn-looking as the others, for there were so many flowers
in bloom about it of the gayest kind, and a little yellow-and-white dog
came down the road to bark at us; but his manner was such that it
seemed like an unusually cordial welcome rather than an indignant
repulse. I noticed four jolly old apple-trees near by, which looked as
if they might be the last of a once flourishing orchard. They were
standing in a row, in exactly the same position, with their heads
thrown gayly back, as if they were dancing in an old-fashioned reel;
and, after the forward and back, one might expect them to turn partners
gallantly. I laughed aloud when I caught sight of them: there was
something very funny in their looks, so jovial and whole-hearted, with
a sober, cheerful pleasure, as if they gave their whole minds to it.
It was like some old gentlemen and ladies who catch the spirit of the
thing, and dance with the rest at a Christmas party.
Miss Hannah West first looked out of the window, and then came to meet
us, looking as if she were glad to see us. Georgie had nothing
whatever to say; but, after I had followed his aunt into the house, he
began to work like a beaver at once, as if it were any thing but a
friendly visit that could be given up to such trifles as conversation,
or as if he were any thing but a boy. He brought the fish and lobsters
into the outer kitchen, though I was afraid our loitering at the
auction must have cost them their first freshness; and then he carried
the axe to the wood-pile, and began to chop up the small white-pine
sticks and brush which form the summer fire-wood at the
farm-houses,--crow-sticks and underbrush, a good deal of it,--but it
makes a hot little blaze while it lasts.
I had not seen Miss Cynthia West, the younger sister, before, and I
found the two women very unlike. Miss Hannah was evidently the capable
business-member of the household, and she had a loud voice, and went
about as if she were in a hurry. Poor Cynthia! I saw at first that
she was one of the faded-looking country-women who have a hard time,
and who, if they had grown up in the midst of a more luxurious way of
living, would have been frail and delicate and refined, and entirely
lady-like. But, as it was, she was somewhat in the shadow of her
sister, and felt as if she were not of very much use or consequence in
the world, I have no doubt. She showed me some pretty picture-frames
she had made out of pine-cones and hemlock-cones and alder-burs; but
her chief glory and pride was a silly little model of a house, in
perforated card-board, which she had cut and worked after a pattern
that came in a magazine. It must have cost her a great deal of work;
but it partly satisfied her great longing for pretty things, and for
the daintiness and art that she had an instinct toward, and never had
known. It stood on the best-room table, with a few books, which I
suppose she had read over and over again; and in the room, beside, were
green paper curtains with a landscape on the outside, and some chairs
ranged stiffly against the walls, some shells, and an ostrich's egg,
with a ship drawn on it, on the mantel-shelf, and ever so many rugs on
the floor, of most ambitious designs, which they had made in winter. I
know the making of them had been a great pleasure to Miss Cynthia, and
I was sure it was she who had taken care of the garden, and was always
at much pains to get seeds and slips in the spring.
She told me how much they had wished that Georgie had come to live with
them after his mother died. It would have been very handy for them to
have him in winter too; but it was no use trying to get him away from
his father; and neither of them were contented if they were out of
sight of the sea. "He's a dreadful odd boy, and so old for his years.
Hannah, she says he's older now than I be," and she blushed a little as
she looked up at me; while for a moment the tears came into my eyes, as
I thought of this poor, plain woman, who had such a capacity for
enjoyment, and whose life had been so dull, and far apart from the
pleasures and satisfactions which had made so much of my own life. It
seemed to me as if I had had a great deal more than I deserved, while
this poor soul was almost beggared. I seemed to know all about her
life in a flash, and pitied her from the bottom of my heart. Yet I
suppose she would not have changed places with me for any thing, or
with anybody else, for that matter.
Miss Cynthia had a good deal to say about her mother, who had been a
schoolmate of Mrs. Wallis's--I had just been telling them what I could
about the auction. She told me that she had died the spring before,
and said how much they missed her; and Hannah broke in upon her regrets
in her brusque, downright way: "I should have liked to kep' her if
she'd lived to be a hundred, but I don't wish her back. She'd had
considerable many strokes, and she couldn't help herself much if any.
She'd got to be rising eighty, and her mind was a good deal broke," she
added conclusively, after a short silence; while Cynthia looked
sorrowfully out of the window, and we heard the sound of Georgie's axe
at the other side of the house, and the wild sweet whistle of a bird
that flew overhead. I suppose one of the sisters was just as sorry as
the other in reality.
"Now I want you and Georgie to stop and have some tea. I'll get it
good and early," said Hannah, starting suddenly from her chair, and
beginning to bustle about again, after she had asked me about some
people at home whom she knew; "Cynthy! Perhaps she'd like to walk
round out doors a spell. It's breezing up, and it'll be cooler than it
is in the house.--No: you needn't think I shall be put out by your
stopping; but you'll have to take us just as we be. Georgie always
calculates to stop when he comes up. I guess he's made off for the
woods. I see him go across the lot a few minutes ago."
So Cynthia put on a discouraged-looking gingham sun-bonnet, which
drooped over her face, and gave her a more appealing look than ever,
and we went over to the pine-woods, which were beautiful that day. She
showed me a little waterfall made by a brook that came over a high
ledge of rock covered with moss, and here and there tufts of fresh
green ferns. It grew late in the afternoon, and it was pleasant there
in the shade, with the noise of the brook and the wind in the pines,
that sounded like the sea. The wood-thrushes began to sing,--and who
could have better music?
Miss Cynthia told me that it always made her think of once when she was
a little girl to hear the thrushes. She had run away, and fallen into
the marsh; and her mother had sent her to bed quick as she got home,
though it was only four o'clock. And she was so ashamed, because there
was company there,--some of her father's folks from over to Eliot; and
then she heard the thrushes begin to call after a while, and she
thought they were talking about her, and they knew she had been whipped
and sent to bed. "I'd been gone all day since morning. I had a great
way of straying off in the woods," said she. "I suppose mother was put
to it when she see me coming in, all bog-mud, right before the company."
We came by my friends, the apple-trees, on our return, and I saw a row
of old-fashioned square bee-hives near them, which I had not noticed
before. Miss Cynthia told me that the bee money was always hers; but
she lost a good many swarms on account of the woods being so near, and
they had a trick of swarming Sundays, after she'd gone to meeting; and,
besides, the miller-bugs spoilt 'em; and some years they didn't make
enough honey to live on, so she didn't get any at all. I saw some bits
of black cloth fluttering over the little doors where the bees went in
and out, and the sight touched me strangely. I did not know that the
old custom still lingered of putting the hives in mourning, and telling
the bees when there had been a death in the family, so they would not
fly away. I said, half to myself, a line or two from Whittier's poem,
which I always thought one of the loveliest in the world, and this
seemed almost the realization of it. Miss Cynthia asked me wistfully,
"Is that in a book?" I told her yes, and that she should have it next
time I came up, or had a chance of sending it. "I've seen a good many
pieces of poetry that Mr. Whittier wrote," said she. "I've got some
that I cut out of the paper a good while ago. I think everything of
'em."
"I put the black on the hives myself," said she. "It was for mother,
you know. She did it when father died. But when my brother was lost,
we didn't, because we never knew just when it was; the schooner was
missing, and it was a good while before they give her up."
"I wish we had some neighbours in sight," said she once. "I'd like to
see a light when I look out after dark. Now, at my aunt's, over to
Eliot, the house stands high, and when it's coming dark you can see all
the folks lighting up. It seems real sociable."
We lingered a little while under the apple-trees, and watched the wise
little bees go and come; and Miss Cynthia told me how much Georgie was
like his grandfather, who was so steady and quiet, and always right
after his business. "He never was ugly to us, as I know of," said she;
"but I was always sort of 'fraid of father. Hannah, she used to talk
to him free's she would to me; and he thought, 's long's Hannah did any
thing, it was all right. I always held by my mother the most; and when
father was took sick,--that was in the winter,--I sent right off for
Hannah to come home. I used to be scared to death, when he'd want any
thing done, for fear I shouldn't do it right. Mother, she'd had a
fall, and couldn't get about very well. Hannah had good advantages.
She went off keeping school when she wasn't but seventeen, and she
saved up some money, and boarded over to the Port after a while, and
learned the tailoress trade. She was always called very smart,--you
see she's got ways different from me; and she was over to the Port
several winters. She never said a word about it, but there was a young
man over there that wanted to keep company with her. He was going out
first mate of a new ship that was building. But, when she got word
from me about father, she come right home, and that was the end of it.
It seemed to be a pity. I used to think perhaps he'd come and see her
some time, between voyages, and that he'd get to be cap'n, and they'd
go off and take me with 'em. I always wanted to see something of the
world. I never have been but dreadful little ways from home. I used
to wish I could keep school; and once my uncle was agent for his
district, and he said I could have a chance; but the folks laughed to
think o' me keeping school, and I never said any thing more about it.
But you see it might 'a' led to something. I always wished I could go
to Boston. I suppose you've been there? There! I couldn't live out
o' sight o' the woods, I don't believe."
"I can understand that," said I, and half with a wish to show her I had
some troubles, though I had so many pleasures that she had not, I told
her that the woods I loved best had all been cut down the winter
before. I had played under the great pines when I was a child, and I
had spent many a long afternoon under them since. There never will be
such trees for me any more in the world. I knew where the flowers grew
under them, and where the ferns were greenest, and it was as much home
to me as my own house. They grew on the side of a hill, and the sun
always shone through the tops of the trees as it went down, while below
it was all in shadow--and I had been there with so many dear friends
who have died, or who are very far away. I told Miss Cynthia, what I
never had told anybody else, that I loved those trees so much that I
went over the hill on the frozen snow to see them one sunny winter
afternoon, to say good-by, as if I were sure they could hear me, and
looked back again and again, as I came away, to be sure I should
remember how they looked. And it seemed as if they knew as well as I
that it was the last time, and they were going to be cut down. It was
a Sunday afternoon, and I was all alone, and the farewell was a reality
and a sad thing to me. It was saying good-by to a great deal besides
the pines themselves.
We stopped a while in the little garden, where Miss Cynthia gave me
some magnificent big marigolds to put away for seed, and was much
pleased because I was so delighted with her flowers. It was a gorgeous
little garden to look at, with its red poppies, and blue larkspur, and
yellow marigolds, and old-fashioned sweet, stray things,--all growing
together in a tangle of which my friend seemed ashamed. She told me
that it looked as orderly as could be, until the things begun to grow
so fast she couldn't do any thing with 'em. She was very proud of one
little pink-and-white verbena which somebody had given her. It was not
growing very well; but it had not disappointed her about blooming.
Georgie had come back from his ramble some time before. He had cracked
the lobster which Miss Hannah had promptly put on to boil, and I saw
the old gray cat having a capital lunch off the shells; while the horse
looked meeker than ever, with his headstall thrown back on his
shoulders, eating his supper of hay by the fence; for Miss Hannah was a
hospitable soul. She was tramping about in the house, getting supper,
and we went in to find the table already pulled out into the floor. So
Miss Cynthia hastened to set it. I could see she was very much ashamed
of having been gone so long. Neither of us knew it was so late. But
Miss Hannah said it didn't make a mite o' difference, there was next to
nothing to do, and looked at me with a little smile, which said, "You
see how it is. I'm the one who has faculty, and I favour her."
I was very hungry; and, though it was not yet six, it seemed a whole
day since dinner-time. Miss Hannah made many apologies; and said, if I
had only set a day, she would have had things as they ought to be. But
it was a very good supper and she knew it! She didn't know but I was
tired o' lobsters. And when I had eaten two of the biscuits, and had
begun an attack on the hot gingerbread, she said humbly that she didn't
know when she had had such bad luck, though Georgie and I were both
satisfied. He did not speak more than once or twice during the meal.
I do not think he was afraid of me, for we had had many a lunch
together when he had taken me out fishing; but this was an occasion,
and there was at first the least possible restraint over all the
company, though I'm glad to say it soon vanished. We had two kinds of
preserves, and some honey besides, and there was a pie with a pale,
smooth crust, and three cuts in the top. It looked like a very good
pie of its kind; but one can't eat every thing, though one does one's
best. And we had big cups of tea; and, though Miss Hannah supposed I
had never eaten with any thing but silver forks before, it happened
luckily that I had, and we were very merry indeed. Miss Hannah told us
several stories of the time she kept school, and gave us some
reminiscences of her life at the Port; and Miss Cynthia looked at me as
if she had heard them before, and wished to say, "I know she's having a
good time." I think Miss Cynthia felt, after we were out in the woods,
as if I were her company, and she was responsible for me.
I thanked them heartily when I came away, for I had had such a pleasant
time. Miss Cynthia picked me a huge nosegay of her flowers, and
whispered that she hoped I wouldn't forget about lending her the book.
Poor woman! she was so young,--only a girl yet, in spite of her having
lived more than fifty years in that plain, dull home of hers, in spite
of her faded face and her grayish hair. We came away in the rattling
wagon. Georgie sat up in his place with a steady hand on the reins,
and keeping a careful lookout ahead, as if he were steering a boat
through a rough sea.
We passed the house were the auction had been, and it was all shut up.
The cat sat on the doorstep waiting patiently, and I felt very sorry
for her; but Georgie said there were neighbours not far off, and she
was a master hand for squirrels. I was glad to get sight of the sea
again, and to smell the first stray whiff of salt air that blew in to
meet us as we crossed the marshes. I think the life in me must be next
of kin to the life of the sea, for it is drawn toward it strangely, as
a little drop of quicksilver grows uneasy just out of reach of a
greater one.
"Good-night, Georgie!" said I; and he nodded his head a little as he
drove away to take the horse home. "Much obliged to you for my ride,"
said he, and I knew in a minute that his father or one of the aunts had
cautioned him not to forget to make his acknowledgments. He had told
me on the way down that he had baited his nets all ready to set that
evening. I knew he was in a hurry to go out, and it was not long
before I saw his boat pushing off. It was after eight o'clock, and the
moon was coming up pale and white out of the sea, while the west was
still bright after the clear sunset.
I have a little model of a fishing dory that Georgie made for me, with
its sprit-sail and killick and painter and oars and gaff all cleverly
cut with the clumsiest of jackknives. I care a great deal for the
little boat; and I gave him a better knife before I came away, to
remember me by; but I am afraid its shininess and trig shape may have
seemed a trifle unmanly to him. His father's had been sharpened on the
beach-stones to clean many a fish, and it was notched and dingy; but
this would cut; there was no doubt about that. I hope Georgie was
sorry when we said good-by. I'm sure I was.
A solemn, careful, contented young life, with none of the playfulness
or childishness that belong to it,--this is my little fisherman, whose
memory already fades of whatever tenderness his dead mother may have
given him. But he is lucky in this, that he has found his work and
likes it; and so I say, "May the sea prove kind to him! and may he find
the Friend those other fishermen found, who were mending their nets on
the shores of Galilee! and may he make the harbour of heaven by and by
after a stormy voyage or a quiet one, whichever pleases God!"
[Illustration: decoration]
HOW LILY GOT THE CAT.
When the twins were about as big as last year's chickens, they had the
measles.
It was in the month of May, and there was a great deal to be done just
then.
There was Celestia's flower-bed to dig into; there were Mary's chickens
to kiss to death, and Aunt Ann's bowls of starch and gravy to upset.
And in the shop there was the cinnamon-jar to be filled up with Scotch
snuff, and the cream of tartar to mix with the soda, and the molasses
to be set running.
Besides these, there were a great many dry wells to be dug in the yard,
and brick-paint to be pounded, and the gate to be pulled off its
hinges, and as many more pieces of mischief as there were minutes in a
day.
It was Davie who had all these things to do, though. Lily, sweet
little blossom, only followed around after him and said "Yes."
But as for Davie, he would willingly have done everybody's work all
over the city, from the President of the University, wearing his
four-cornered hat on Commencement Day, down to the charcoal man who
went by a great many times a day making the prettiest noise you ever
heard, and looking as though he were having the best time in the world,
with nobody to worry him about washing his face or keeping his clothes
clean.
But the mischief had to wait now; for the twins were lying in the
cradle all day long, with their faces as red as poppies, and their poor
little eyes shut up and swollen.
"It is as good as a poor play to see how beautifully the measles have
come out. Davie and Lily will get along all right now, as sure as A is
apple-dumpling, only we must see to it that they don't take any cold,"
said Aunt Ann, giving them a good drink of thoroughwort, and then
hurrying off to attend to the duties of the shop, with her glasses in
her hand and a pair of scissors dangling at her side by a long green
braid.
It didn't seem much like a poor play, or any kind of a play, though to
the twins to lie there in a bed of nettles with their eyes full of hot
cotton and their throats full of pepper, and the air full of people
making up dreadful faces at them, all with sore eyes and horrid red
noses.
So there they lay in the cradle while a blue-bottle-fly buzzed shrilly
from a dark corner where a fat gray spider had tied him up by his feet
and was sharpening her bill ready to make chops of him.
The milkman whopped at the back gate; the cracked school-bell around
the corner rang out long and loud; somewhere a carpenter was pounding
stroke upon stroke; and, as a background, beneath all came up the heavy
grinding roll of wheels and the clashing beat of hoofs upon the rough
pavement.
The tall brass clock ticked and ticked and held up its hands in solemn
surprise at finding it was only ten o'clock after all. Why! it seemed
already as long as a whole day since the bell on the First Baptist
church had struck nine.
Then Lily began to cry with a gentle little noise, about as though a
humming-bird was fluttering his wings against the cup of a
trumpet-flower.
"What is the matter, Lily?" asked Davie, feebly. "What you crying for?"
What was the _matter_? What _wasn't_ the matter, one would think!
But Lily only whimpered, "I want the cat."
"I'll get her for you, Lily," said Davie, trying to fumble his blind
way out of the cradle and start in search of her.
Fortunately for the ending of the story, somebody was in the room and
was ready to pick Davie up when his weak little legs suddenly doubled
up like a pocket-knife and dropped him on the nursery floor. So,
though Lily did not get the cat, neither did Davie get, what Aunt Ann
called "his death o' cold."
In due time, the measles turned and went their way wandering off around
after other children, one generation and then another. Lily's cat
lived out her nine lives and then turned into sage and catnip in the
back garden.
And now, after a long, long while, Davie and Lily have a birthday. Not
the next one, nor the second, nor the third, nor, if the truth must be
told, the fiftieth. But a birthday that came running to meet them with
glasses on and a flourishing of the almond-tree.
This time the twins' birthday is not kept in the gray old mansion, with
the shop below and the garden behind, where Aunt Ann rattled her keys
and lived out her bustling life. Nor does Aunt Ann come to help keep
it. Her hands have long been folded in quiet rest; and it is years,
too, since Mary and Celestia went where the shining is brighter than
the sunlight and softer than the moon.
But the twins are not alone. Bless you! I should think not! First,
here is Amy Starbird, with a pair of pictures she has painted from the
very paint-box Davie gave her on her own last birthday. And here is
Amy's daughter Rose, with twin marble babies tucked up in a marble crib
on top of a marble match box; and Rose, all this time, is Davie's
daughter as well as Amy's.
And here is a bright bevy of boys and girls, some of them with Lily's
blue eyes and Lily's fair hair, each bringing some double gift for
their mother and Uncle Davie.