I
The Bar Harbor train slowly came to a stop beside a little wooden
station. From over the marshes crept a breath of salty freshness that
tried vainly to steal in through the open windows of the Pullman, only
intensifying the stifling heat inside.
McAllister arose and made his way to the platform in search of air. A
spare, wrinkled octogenarian was in the difficult act of lifting a small
girl in a calico dress to the platform of the day coach, the child
clinging obstinately to the old gentleman's neck and refusing to
disentangle herself.
"Mercy, Abby! Do leggo!" he remonstrated. "Thar, ef ye don't, I'll ask
that man thar to hoist ye!"
The little girl reluctantly let go her hold and allowed herself to be
placed on the lowest step.
"That's a good girl," continued her guardian; then addressing
McAllister, he inquired conversationally:
"Be ye goin' to Bangor?"
"How's that? Ye-es, I believe I am. At least the train passes through,"
responded McAllister doubtfully, apprehensive of undesirable
complications.
The old fellow produced from his waistcoat-pocket a ticket which he
placed in the child's hand. Then he turned her around and gave her a
little push up the steps.
"Wall, jest keep an eye on Abby, will ye?"
"Good-by, Uncle!" cried the little girl, climbing laboriously up to
where the clubman stood and making a little bow, which he gravely
returned.
"I don't know . . ." he began.
"That's all right," explained the farmer. "Her aunt'll meet her. Jest
see she don't bother no one. Lemme pass ye her duds."
The octogenarian forthwith handed up to McAllister a cloth valise, a
pasteboard box, and a large paper bag.
"Her lunch is in the bag," said he. "Don't let her drink none o' that
ice-water. My wife says it hez germs into it."
"But I don't . . ." gasped our friend.
"Be keerful o' that box," interrupted her uncle. "There's two dozen
hen's eggs in it. If she's good, you might buy her a cent's worth o'
peppermints to Portland." He fumbled uncertainly in his breeches'
pocket.
"Do you expect me . . ." ejaculated McAllister.
"Give my love to yer aunt," added the other as the train started.
"Good-by!" And pulling a large red pocket-handkerchief from his
coat-tails he fanned the air vaguely as they moved slowly away from him.
"Oh, isn't it nice!" cried the little girl, who appeared quite at ease
with her new acquaintance.
"Ye-es--certainly--of course," he replied, wondering what he should do
with his charge. "I suppose we had better go in and sit down, don't you
think?"
He stood aside waiting for her to precede him into the parlor car.
"What a lovely place!" she exclaimed as her eyes rested upon the
rosewood and the velvet chairs. "Am I really to ride in this?"
"Why, where should you ride, to be sure?" he inquired, beginning to
regain his self-possession.
"The car had iron seats before," she informed him.
"How extraordinary!"
"This is an ever so much prettier train," she added. "I'm afraid I'll
hurt the plush." She took out a diminutive handkerchief and spread it
out to sit upon. The clubman with an amused expression swung round
another chair and sat down opposite.
"My name's Abigail Martha Higgins," she said, taking off her little
straw hat. "I live in Bangor with my aunt. That old man was Uncle Moses
Higgins. Aunt doesn't love his wife."
"Dear me!" sympathized McAllister.
"My father and mother are in heaven," she continued in matter-of-fact
tones. "Up there. Wouldn't you hate to live up in the sky and do
nothin'?"
"I certainly should," he answered with gravity.
"We all came down from there, you know. Do you think we were born all in
one piece, or put together afterward?"
McAllister pondered.
"What's your name?"
"McAllister," he replied.
"That's a funny name!" she commented. "It sounds like McCafferty--that's
Deacon Brewer's hired man's name."
"Do you think so?" asked the clubman apologetically, feeling that his
parents had done him an irreparable injury.
"I'll call you Mister Mac," added the child, "and you may call me Abby,
'cause I'm only eight. Do you live to Boston?"
"No; New York. An awful way off."
"Have they got a Free-Will Meetin'-house there?" she inquired knowingly.
"I'm sure I don't know," he answered, feeling wofully ignorant of all
matters of real importance.
"Then it must be a very small place," she decided. "All big places have
a Free-Will Meetin'-house, Uncle Moses says."
At this moment Wilkins approached to inquire if his master wanted
anything.
"Is there a Free-Will Meetin'-house in New York?" inquired the clubman.
"Yes, sir; I believe so, sir. That is to say, a Baptist place of
worship, sir," he answered solemnly.
"Is that your brother?" inquired Abby.
"No--" hesitated McAllister, doubtful as to what the valet's equivalent
would be in his little friend's world.
"What's your name?" inquired Abby.
"Wilkins, miss," answered the valet.
"What a lovely name!" cried Abby. "It's much nicer than his'n."
Wilkins stepped back a few paces aghast.
"That box is chuck full of eggs," announced Abby. "I wonder where the
hens get them."
"I give it up," said the clubman.
"We have a black horse on our farm," she continued. "It used to be a
girl, but now it's a boy."
"Indeed!" exclaimed McAllister.
"Yes, aunt had her tail cut off. Boys have short hair, you know--that's
how you tell."
At this Wilkins disappeared rapidly into the background.
"Uncle Moses' wife don't love children," the child continued. "She has
the rheumatiz in her thigh."
"But she must like _you_, Abby," urged her new friend.
"No, she don't. She don't love me 'cause I love Aunt Abby, an' Aunt Abby
don't love her."
"I see," said McAllister.
The clubman soon became acquainted with Abby's entire family history,
and rapidly realized that the mind of a child was a thing undreamed of
in his philosophy. As she pattered on he conversed gravely with her,
trying to answer her multitudinous questions. All her world was good
save Uncle Moses' wife, and her confidence in the clubman was entire.
She admired his clothes, his watch-chain, and his scarf-pin, and ended
by directing him to read to her, which McAllister obediently did. None
of the magazines seemed to contain suitable articles, so with some
misgivings he purchased various colored weeklies, remembering vaguely
his own delight in the misadventures of certain chubby ladies and stout
gentlemen upon rear pages, perused furtively when waiting at the
barber's to get his hair cut as a child. For half an hour her interest
remained tense, but then she wearied of using her eyes, and, patting
McAllister's fat chin, ordered him to tell her a story. Here was a new
difficulty. He had never told a story in his life, but there was no help
for it, no escape, as she climbed into his lap.
"Begin with once onup-a-time," she ordered.
"Well," he obeyed "Once 'onup' a time there was a man who lived in a
club----"
"A what?" sharply interrupted Abby.
"A big white house with heaps of rooms," he corrected. "And as he had
nobody dependent on him, all he had to do was to eat and sleep and look
at the sky."
"Didn't he have any children?"
"Nobody in the world," answered McAllister.
"Poor man!" sighed Abby. "Didn't he keep any hens?"
"Not even a hen!"
"I know a big house just like that," said Abby. "Old Captain Barnard
used to live in it. Wasn't he lonely?"
"Sometimes."
"Did anyone live with him?"
"His hired man," answered the clubman with a smile, looking down the car
to where Wilkins sat in solitary grandeur. "And by and by he got so old
and so fat that nobody would marry him, while the wives of other men he
knew forgot to ask him to dinner."
"Poor dear man!" murmured Abby, "I should think he'd have wished he
hadn't been born."
"Sometimes he did," answered the story-teller. "And he longed for some
people to really care for him, and for some little children to keep him
company."
"Did he have a cow?"
"No, not even a cow."
Abby laughed sleepily.
"But didn't he ever have any fun?"
"He thought he did, but he didn't, really."
"I'm awful sorry for him!" said Abby. "If I met him I would give him my
white hen."
"He used to pay for dinners for people, and send them flowers and candy
and go to see them----"
"Sunday afternoons?"
"Yes; Sunday afternoons."
"He was really very nice," said Abby.
"Do you think so?" asked McAllister eagerly.
"Why, of course. Don't you think so?"
"So-so," said the clubman.
"But he never hurt anyone?"
"No, never."
"And gave the hired man plenty of victuals?"
"Much more than was good for him," said McAllister with conviction.
"I like that man," said Abby. "He was a good man."
"But some people said he was an idle fellow," insisted McAllister.
"But that didn't do anybody any harm," said Abby.
"No, certainly not."
"And he wasn't cross?"
"No, almost never."
"Then," said Abby, "he was a good man, and I will marry him if he asks
me."
And with that she dropped her head on his arm and fell fast asleep.
"Can't I hold the young--person, for you, sir?" inquired the valet in a
whisper.
"Certainly _not_," responded McAllister.
Over the flitting pines circled the crows, black dots against the deep
blue; lazy cows stood knee-deep in fields frosted with daisies and
watched seemingly without interest the passing train; little puffs of
white in serried ranks moved slowly out of the north, never approaching
nearer, dissolving at the meridian; on the near horizon a line of indigo
mountains tumbled southward; white farm-houses swept slowly by; at
dusty crossings gray-whiskered farmers sat loosely holding the reins in
amiable conformity with the injunction painted upon weather-worn signs
to "Look out for the engine"; at times the train passed over rocky
bedded streams dammed for milling, and once or twice across rivers half
choked with logs upon which men ran like water-bugs; then through red
brick towns, and towns with square granite stores and offices, and towns
of white and green, marking the three disconnected periods of the
architectural development of Maine; and everywhere the pines.
In the midst of a stretch of thick woods the engine began to whistle
frantically. A brakeman, followed closely by a conductor, hurried
through the car. The wheels ground harshly and the train gradually
ceased to move. Ahead could be heard the loud pounding of the engine and
the roar of escaping steam. Volumes of smoke, white and black, rolled
over the pines and cast rapidly changing shadows upon the ground.
Wilkins, who had gone forth to seek information, now returned.
"There's a freight wreck just a'ead, sir. The conductor says as how we
shall be delayed 'ere at least nine hours."
McAllister glanced down at the little form in his arms. It had not
moved. Gently he carried her along the aisle, out upon the platform,
and down the steps to the ground. Still she did not awake. Up the track
he could see groups of excited passengers gesticulating around grotesque
piles of wreckage upon which a locomotive lay with its wheels in the
air. Beside the track stretched a pine grove, its soft carpet of needles
flecked with sunlight. At the foot of one giant tree, on a bed of gray
moss, the clubman laid his little charge and threw himself at her feet.
An irritable family of nervous crows flapped noisily away to the other
side of the track, assembled in angry consultation in a hemlock, deputed
a spy, who cautiously reconnoitred, and, on the latter's report,
returned. At a safe distance Wilkins sat upon a windfall, and with one
eye upon his sleeping master smoked rapidly one of McAllister's cigars.