A SURPRISE.
It was a lovely August morning. Hildegarde and Rose had the peas to
shell for dinner, and had established themselves under the great
elm-tree, each with a yellow bowl and a blue-checked apron. Hildegarde
was moreover armed with a book, for she had found out one can read and
shell peas at the same time, and some of their pleasantest hours were
passed in this way, the primary occupation ranging from pea-shelling to
the paring of rosy apples or the stoning of raisins. So on this occasion
the sharp crack of the pods and the soft thud of the "Champions of
England" against the bowl kept time with Hildegarde's voice, as she read
from Lockhart's ever-delightful "Life of Scott." The girls were enjoying
the book so much! For true lovers of the great Sir Walter, as they both
were, what could be more interesting than to follow their hero through
the varying phases of his noble life,--to learn how and where and under
what circumstances each noble poem and splendid romance was written; and
to feel through his own spoken or written words the beating of one of
the greatest hearts the world ever knew.
Hildegarde paused to laugh, after reading the description of the first
visit of the Ettrick Shepherd to the Scotts at Lasswade; when the good
man, seeing Mrs. Scott, who was in delicate health, lying on a sofa,
thought he could not do better than follow his hostess's example, and
accordingly stretched himself at full length, plaid and all, on another
couch.
"What an extraordinary man!" cried Rose, greatly amused. "How could he
be so very uncouth, and yet write the 'Skylark'?"
"After all, he was a plain, rough shepherd!" replied Hildegarde. "And
remember,
'The dewdrop that hangs from the rowan bough
Is fine as the proudest rose can show.'
Leyden was a shepherd, too, who wrote the 'Mermaid' that I read you the
other day; and Burns was a farmer's boy. What wonderful people the Scots
are!"
"On the whole," said Rose, after a pause, "perhaps it isn't so strange
for a shepherd to be a poet. They sit all day out in the fields all
alone with the sky and the sheep and the trees and flowers. One can
imagine how the beauty and the stillness would sink into his heart, and
turn into music and lovely words there. No one ever heard of a
butcher-poet or a baker-poet--at least, I never did!--but a shepherd!
There was the Shepherd Lord, too, that you told me about, and the
Shepherd of Salisbury Plain, in a funny little old book that Father had;
by Hannah More, I think it was. And wasn't there a shepherd painter?"
"Of course! Giotto!" cried Hildegarde. "He was only ten years old when
Cimabue found him drawing a sheep on a smooth stone."
"It was in one of my school-readers," said Rose. "Only the teacher
called him Guy Otto, and I supposed it was a contraction of the two
names, for convenience in printing. Then," she added, after a moment,
"there was David, when he was 'ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance.'"
"And Apollo," cried Hildegarde, "when he kept the flocks of Admetus, you
know."
"I don't know!" said Rose. "I thought Apollo was the god of the sun."
"So he was!" replied Hildegarde. "But Jupiter was once angry with him,
and banished him from Olympus. His sun-chariot was sent round the sky as
usual, but empty; and he, poor dear, without his golden rays, came down
to earth, and hired himself as a shepherd to King Admetus of Thessaly.
All the other shepherds were very wild and savage, but Apollo played to
them on his lyre, and sang of all the beautiful things in the world,--of
spring, and the young grass, and the birds, and--oh! everything lovely.
So at last he made them gentle, like himself, and taught them to sing,
and play on the flute, and to love their life and the beautiful world
they lived in. And so shepherds became the happiest people in the
world, and the most skilful in playing and singing, and in shooting with
bow and arrows, which the god also taught them; till at last the gods
were jealous, and called Apollo back to Olympus. Isn't it a pretty
story? I read it in 'Telemaque,' at school last winter."
"Lovely!" said Rose. "Yes, I think I should like to be a shepherd." And
straightway she fell into a reverie, this foolish Rose, and fancied
herself wrapped in a plaid, lying in a broad meadow, spread with heather
as with a mantle, and here and there gray rocks, and sheep moving slowly
about nibbling the heather.
And as Hildegarde watched her pure sweet face, and saw it soften into
dreamy languor and then kindle again with some bright thought, another
poem of the Ettrick Shepherd came to her mind, and she repeated the
opening lines, half to herself:--
"Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen;
But it wasna to meet Duneira's men,
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be."
"Oh, go on, please!" murmured Rose, all unconscious that she was the
Kilmeny of her friend's thoughts:--
"It was only to hear the yorlin sing,
And pu' the cress-flower round the spring;
The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye,
And the nut that hung frae the hazel-tree:
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the greenwood shaw;
Lang the Laird of Duneira blame,
And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame.
"When many a day had come and fled,
When grief grew calm, and hope was dead;
When mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung,
When the bedesman had prayed and the dead-bell rung;
Late, late in a gloamin', when all was still,
When the fringe was red on the westlin hill,
The wood was sear, the moon i' the wane,
The reek o' the cot hung over the plain,
Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane;
When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme,
Late, late in the gloamin' Kilmeny cam hame."
Here Hildegarde stopped suddenly; for some one had come along the road,
and was standing still, leaning against the fence, and apparently
listening. It was a boy about eleven years old. He was neatly dressed,
but his clothes were covered with dust, and his broad-brimmed straw hat
was slouched over his eyes so that it nearly hid his face, which was
also turned away from the girls. But though he was apparently gazing
earnestly in the opposite direction, still there was an air of
consciousness about his whole figure, and Hildegarde was quite sure that
he had been listening to her. She waited a few minutes; and then, as the
boy showed no sign of moving on, she called out, "What is it, please? Do
you want something?"
The boy made an awkward movement with his shoulders, and without turning
round replied in an odd voice, half whine, half growl, "Got any cold
victuals, lady?"
"Come in!" said Hildegarde, rising, though she was not attracted either
by the voice, nor by the lad's shambling, uncivil manner,--"come in, and
I will get you something to eat."
The boy still kept his back turned to her, but began sidling slowly
toward the gate, with a clumsy, crab-like motion. "I'm a poor feller,
lady!" he whined, in the same disagreeable tone. "I ain't had nothin' to
eat for a week, and I've got the rheumatiz in my j'ints."
"_Nothing to eat for a week!_" exclaimed Hildegarde, severely. "My boy,
you are not telling the truth. And who ever heard of rheumatism at your
age? Do you think we ought to let him in, Rose?" she added, in a lower
tone.
But the boy continued still sidling toward the gate. "I've got a wife
and seven little children, lady! They're all down with the small-pox and
the yeller--" But at this point his eloquence was interrupted, for Rose
sprang from her seat, upsetting the basket of pods, and running forward,
seized him by the shoulders.
"You scamp!" she cried, shaking him with tender violence. "You naughty
monkey, how could you frighten us so? Oh, my dear, dear little lad, how
do you do?" and whirling the boy round and tossing off his hat, she
revealed to Hildegarde's astonished gaze the freckled, laughing face and
merry blue eyes of Zerubbabel Chirk.
Bubble was highly delighted at the success of his ruse. He rubbed his
hands and chuckled, then went down on all-fours and began picking up
the pea-pods. "Sorry I made you upset the basket, Pink!" he said. "I
say! how well you're looking! Isn't she, Miss Hilda? Oh! I didn't
suppose you were as well as this."
He gazed with delighted eyes at his sister's face, on which the fresh
pink and white told a pleasant tale of health and strength. She returned
his look with one of such beaming love and joy that Hildegarde, in the
midst of her own heartfelt pleasure, could not help feeling a momentary
pang. "If my baby brother had only lived!" she thought. But the next
moment she was shaking Bubble by both hands, and telling him how glad
she was to see him.
"And now tell us!" cried both girls, pulling him down on the ground
between them. "Tell us all about it! How did you get here? Where do you
come from? When did you leave New York? What have you been doing? How
is Dr. Flower?"
"Guess I've got under Niag'ry Falls, by mistake!" said Bubble, dryly.
"Let me see, now!" He rumpled up his short tow-colored hair with his
favorite gesture, and meditated. "I guess I'll begin at the beginning!"
he said. "Well!" (it was observable that Bubble no longer said "Wa-al!"
and that his speech had improved greatly during the year spent in New
York, though he occasionally dropped back into his former broad drawl.)
"Well! it's been hot in the city. I tell you, it's been hot. Why, Miss
Hilda, I never knew what heat was before."
"I know it must be dreadful, Bubble!" said Hildegarde. "I have never
been in town in August, but I can imagine what it must be."
"I really don't know, Miss Hilda, whether you can," returned Bubble,
respectfully. "It isn't like any heat I ever felt at home. Can you
imagine your brains sizzling in your head, like a kettle boiling?"
"Oh, don't, Bubble!" cried Rose. "Don't say such things!"
"Well, it's true!" said the boy. "That's exactly the way it felt. It was
like being in a furnace,--a white furnace in the day-time, and a black
one at night; that was all the difference. I had my head shaved,--it's
growed now, but I'm going to have it done again, soon as I get
back,--and wore a flannel shirt and those linen pants you made, Pinkie.
I tell you I was glad of 'em, if I did laugh at 'em at first--and so I
got on. I wrote you that Dr. Flower had taken me to do errands for him
during vacation?" The girls nodded. "Well, I stayed at his house,--it's
a jolly house!--and 't was as cool there as anywhere. I went to the
hospital with him every day, and I'm going to be a surgeon, and he says
I can."
Hildegarde smiled approval, and Rose patted the flaxen head, and said,
"Yes, I am sure you can, dear boy. Do you remember how you set the
chicken's leg last year?"
"I told the doctor about that," said Bubble, "and he said I did it
right. Wasn't I proud! I held accidents for him two or three times this
summer," he added proudly. "It never made me faint at all, though it
does most people at first."
"Held accidents?" asked Hildegarde, innocently. "What do you mean,
laddie?"
"People hurt in accidents!" replied the boy. "While he set the bones,
you know. There were some very fine ones!" and he kindled with
professional enthusiasm. "There was one man who had fallen from a
staging sixty feet high, and was all--"
"Don't! don't!" cried both girls, in horror, putting their fingers in
their ears.
"We don't want to hear about it, you dreadful boy!" said Hildegarde.
"_We_ are not going to be surgeons, be good enough to remember."
"Oh, it's all right!" said Bubble, laughing. "He got well, and is about
on crutches now. Then there was a case of trepanning. Oh, that _was_ so
beautiful! You _must_ let me tell you about that. You see, this man was
a sailor, and he fell from the top-gallantmast, and struck--" But here
Rose's hand was laid resolutely over his mouth, and he was told that if
he could not refrain from surgical anecdotes, he would be sent back to
New York forthwith.
"All right!" said the embryo surgeon, with a sigh; "only they're about
all I have to tell that is really interesting. Well, it grew hotter and
hotter. Dr. Flower didn't seem to mind the heat much; but Jock and
I--well, we did."
"Oh, my dear little Jock!" cried Hildegarde, remorsefully. "To think of
my never having asked for him. How is the dear doggie?"
"He's all right now," replied Bubble, "But there was one hot spell last
month, that we thought would finish the pup. Hot? Well, I should--I
mean, I should think it was! You had to put your boots down cellar every
night, or else they'd be warped so you couldn't put 'em on in the
morning."
"Bubble!" said Hildegarde, holding up a warning finger. But Bubble would
not be repressed again.
"Oh, Miss Hilda, you don't know anything about it!" he said; "excuse me,
but really you don't. The sidewalks were so hot, the bakers just put
their dough out on them, and it was baked in a few minutes. All the
Fifth Avenue folks had fountain attachments put on to their carriages,
and sprinkled themselves with iced lavender water and odycolone as they
drove along; and the bronze statue in Union Square melted and ran all
over the lot."
"Rose, what shall we do to this boy?" cried Hildegarde, as the youthful
Munchausen paused for breath. "And you aren't telling me a word about my
precious Jock, you little wretch!"
"One night," Bubble resumed,--"I'm in earnest now, Miss Hilda,--one
night it seemed as if there was no air to breathe; as if we was just
taking red-hot dust into our lungs. Poor little Jock seemed very sick;
he lay and moaned and moaned, like a baby, and kept looking from the
doctor to me, as if he was asking us to help him. I was pretty nigh beat
out, too, and even the doctor seemed fagged; but we could stand it
better than the poor little beast could. I sat and fanned him, but that
didn't help him much, the air was so hot. Then the doctor sent me for
some cracked ice, and we put it on his head and neck, and _that_ took
hold! 'The dog's in a fever!' says the doctor. 'We must watch him
to-night, and if he pulls through, I'll see to him in the morning,' says
he. Well, we spent that night taking turns, putting ice on that dog's
head, and fanning him, and giving him water."
"My dear Bubble!" said Hildegarde, her eyes full of tears. "Dear good
boy! and kindest doctor in the world! How shall I thank you both?"
"We weren't going to let him die," said Bubble, "after the way you saved
his life last summer, Miss Hilda. Well, he did pull through, and so did
we; but I was pretty shaky, and the morning came red-hot. The sun was
like copper when it rose, and there seemed to be a sort of haze of
heat, just pure heat, hanging over the city. And Dr. Flower says,
'You're going to git out o' this!' says he."
"I don't believe he said anything of the kind!" interrupted Rose, who
regarded Dr. Flower as a combination of Bayard, Sidney, and the
Admirable Crichton.
"Well, it came to the same thing!" retorted Bubble, unabashed. "Anyhow,
we took the first train after breakfast for Glenfield."
"Oh, oh, Bubble!" cried both girls, eagerly. "Not really?"
"Yes, really!" said Bubble. "I got to the Farm about ten o'clock, and
went up and knocked at the front door, thinking I'd give Mrs. Hartley a
surprise, same as I did you just now; but nobody came, so I went in, and
found not a soul in the house. But I knowed--I _knew_ she couldn't be
far off; for her knitting lay on the table, and the beans--it was
Saturday--were in the pot, simmering away. So I sat down in the farmer's
big chair, and looked about me. Oh, I tell you, Miss Hilda, it seemed
good! There was the back door open, and the hens picking round the big
doorstep, just the way they used, and the great willow tapping against
the window, and a pile of Summer Sweetings on the shelf, all warm in the
sunshine, you know,--only you weren't there, and I kept kind o' hoping
you would come in. Do you remember, one day I wanted one of them
Sweetings, and you wouldn't give me one till I'd told you about all the
famous apples I'd ever heard of?"
"No, you funny boy!" said Hildegarde, laughing. "I have forgotten about
it."
"Well, I hain't--haven't, I mean!" said the boy. "I couldn't think of a
single one, 'cept William Tell's apple, and Adam and Eve, of course, and
three that Lawyer Clinch's red cow choked herself with trying to
swallow 'em all at once, being greedy, like the man that owned her. So
you gave me the apple, gave me two or three; and while I was eating 'em,
you told me about the Hesperides ones, and the apple of discord, and
that--that young woman who ran the race: what was her name?--some
capital of a Southern State! Milledgeville, was it?"
"Atlanta!" cried Hildegarde, bursting into a peal of laughter; and
"Atlanta! you goosey!" exclaimed Rose, pretending to box the boy's ears.
"And it wasn't named for Atalanta at all, was it, Hildegarde?"
"No!" said the latter, still laughing heartily. "Bubble, it is
delightful to hear your nonsense again. But go on, and tell us about the
dear good friends."
"I'm coming to them in a minute," said Bubble; "but I must just tell you
about Jock first. You never saw a dog so pleased in all your life. He
went sniffing and smelling about, and barking those little, short
'Wuffs!' as he does when he is tickled about anything. Then he went to
look for his plate. But it wasn't there, of course; so he ran out to see
the hens, and pass the time o' day with them. They didn't mind him much;
but all of a sudden a cat came out from the woodshed,--a strange cat,
who didn't know Jock from a--from an elephant. Up went her back, and out
went her tail, and she growled and spit like a good one. Of course Jock
couldn't stand that, so he gave a 'ki-hi!' and after her. They made time
round that yard, now I tell you! The hens scuttled off, clucking as if
all the foxes in the county had broke loose; and for a minute or two it
seemed as if there was two or three dogs and half-a-dozen cats. Well,
sir!--I mean, ma'am! at last the cat made a bolt, and up the big maple
by the horse-trough. I thought she was safe then; but Jock, he gave a
spring and caught hold of the eend of her tail, and down they both come,
kerwumpus, on to the ground, and rolled eend over eend." (It was
observable that in the heat of narration Bubble dropped his school
English, and reverted to the vernacular of Glenfield.) "But that was
more than the old cat could stand, and she turned and went for _him_.
Ha, ha! 't was 'ki, hi!' out of the other side of his mouth then, I tell
ye, Miss Hildy! You never see a dog so scairt. And jest then, as 't
would happen, Mis' Hartley came in from the barn with a basket of eggs,
and you may--you may talk Greek to me, if that pup didn't bolt right
into her, so hard that she sat down suddent on the doorstep, and the
eggs rolled every which way. Then I caught him; and the cat, she lit out
somewhere, quicker 'n a wink, and Mis' Hartley sat up, and says she,
'Well, of all the world! Zerubbabel Chirk, you may just pick up them
eggs, if you _did_ drop from the moon!"