and doubtless be worth as much," said Joshua, pausing a second with a
potato speared on his fork, while he gave his wife a stern, silencing
look that was so rare that whenever she saw it, she gave heed at once,
"but in this here matter I'd advise you to keep 'em good and close to
yourself. We've got plenty ahead to shoulder this summer, besides which
if papers had been found, 'tain't likely any lawyer hereabouts would
risk taking the matter without money to back him, and 'Biram Slocum to
face."
So saying, Joshua, having put himself outside of the potato, a final
piece of pie, and the tea that had been cooling in his saucer, pushed
back his chair and drew on his coat, saying as he went out: "The first
strawberries over ter Aunt Jimmy's 'll be ready for marketing on Monday,
and this is Thursday. I must look around and engage pickers. That acre
bed of the new-fangled kind is a week ahead of Lockwood's earliest.
Aunt Jimmy was no fool when it came to foresighted fruit raisin'."
"I never said she was, nor in other things either if her meanin' could
be read. What time did you say the fire started?" she added in an
unconcerned sort of way, as she stooped to pick up the scattered cups,
which were so substantial that they had not been broken by their fall.
"Let me see--it must hev been close to two o'clock when I drove out of
the yard; the mail carrier had just passed, and he's due at the corner
at two, and at the rate I went I wasn't fifteen minutes from the fire.
From the way it had holt, it must have been goin' all of half an hour.
Queer 'Biram didn't scent it sooner workin' in the corn patch back of
the wood lot as he appeared to be, leastways he came down the lane from
there.
"Fire couldn't hev ketched before one o'clock, for the hands up at
Lockwood's go up that way before and after noon as well as of mornings,
and if Nellis had left anything smouldering, they'd have surely smelt
it, first or last."
Joshua paused a moment, but, as Mrs. Lane asked no more questions, went
out, closing the door. No sooner did she hear the latch catch than she
jumped up, saying to herself: "Appeared to come from the corn patch,
did he? I wonder what he was doin' there? He planted late, so the corn
can't be set for hoeing; he _might_ be watchin' for crows or riggin' a
scarecrow." As she pronounced the last word she had reached the dresser
where hung a large square calendar that advertised one of the husky
sorts of breakfast foods that taste as if they might have been the
stuffing of Noah's pillow.
Lifting this down she carried it to the table, and, after hunting in
the dresser drawer for the pencil with which she kept her various egg
and butter accounts, she proceeded to put a series of dots about the
particular day of the month (it was June 10th), and then reversing the
sheet, she covered the back with a collection of curiously spelled and,
to the casual observer, meaningless words.
She had barely time to replace the calendar when the boys came in for
their supper, and she fell vigorously to rearranging the table and
brewing fresh tea.
The elder boys spoke of the fire as a bit of "old Slocum's usual luck,"
for it was known that the house would need a great deal of repairing
before any one but the artist, whose thoughts were always in the
clouds, would be willing to hire it. Lammy alone rejoiced in the fire
because, as he said, "When Bird comes back, the house won't be there for
her to see and make her sorry."
"Better not say that outdoors," warned Nellis, "or Slocum 'll say you
fired it on purpose--he'd like nothing better. By the way, mother," he
continued, as Mrs. Lane glanced keenly at Lammy, "what do you think I
heard at the shop to-day?"
"Concernin' what?"
"The Mill Farm."
"I can't think. Those Larkin folks hev worked the land these two years
past, but the mill hasn't run this long while,--not since the winter
Mis' O'More died and the ice bulged the dam; the fodder trade has all
gone away, and I don't know what 'Biram Slocum can turn it to 'nless he
can insure the water an' then let it loose somehow."
"There is a party of engineer fellows, or something of the sort, just
come to camp out up by Rooster Lake,--sort of a summer school, I guess,
for there are some older men along that they call professors. They
scatter all over the country surveyin' and crackin' up the rocks with
little hammers to see what they are made of.
"This afternoon half a dozen of them came down to the shop to see some
new kind of a boring tool that our foreman has designed, and Mr. Clarke
was with them,--you know he is the man who started the Art and Trade
School in Northboro, and has his finger in a dozen pies. Pretty soon
the superintendent called me and said, 'Here, Lane, you live out at
Laurelville; these gentlemen wish to see the old Turner Mill Farm place.
I'll let you off the rest of the day if you'll show them the way over.'
"I got in the runabout with Mr. Clarke and the others followed in a
livery six-seater. The old gentleman asked me all sorts of questions
about the water-power, and how low the stream fell in summer, and if the
pond ever froze clear through, and one thing and another.
"When we got to the Mill Farm, there was no one at home but the dogs and
hens; I suppose the folks had all gone to Northboro to the circus."
"Sure enough, it is circus day! How did I forget it?" ejaculated Mrs.
Lane. "That accounts for why there were so few folks on the roads this
noon!"
"Yes, everybody seems to have gone but ourselves, even Lockwood's
field-hands took a day off."
"They did? Then they didn't go up and down the cemetery hill road this
noon?"
"Of course not, why should they?" replied Nellis.
"You didn't remember that it was circus day, did you, and I guess it is
the first time you ever forgot it," said Mrs. Lane to Lammy.
"I knew--all right, but I'm savin' up for--you know," replied Lammy,
wriggling out of his chair and going to the door where he began crumbing
bread and throwing it to some little chickens that had strayed up out of
bounds.
"I do wish you had mentioned it, anyhow; it would hev done us all good
to have a change, though to be sure I _do_ suppose some folks would
have turned our going into disrespect to Aunt Jimmy,--Mis' Slocum in
particular."
"She went, and Ram, and Mr. Slocum, though he came home early. I saw him
down in the turnpike store back of the schoolhouse this noon; he was
sayin' he'd had to come back early on account of havin' a lot of things
to attend to over at the Mill Farm this afternoon," said Lammy.
"The turnpike store? He doesn't trade there--it's a mile out of his
way," said Mrs. Lane, thoughtfully.
"He didn't get to the Mill Farm, anyway," said Nellis, "because I was
there from after dinner until I came home just now. Where was I? You
got me all off the track."
"You were sayin' that Mr. Clarke asked you all sorts of questions about
the mill stream," said Mrs. Lane, who now seemed to have lost interest
in Nellis's story.
"Oh, yes,--well, Mr. Clarke and that Mr. Brotherton,--that is
superintendent of the engine shop in Northboro,--poked about a lot
together, measuring things and figuring in a little book he had in his
pocket. It looked as if they were going to make an afternoon of it, and
as I saw a fishin' pole inside one of the open sheds, I thought I'd go
down the sluice way and try for a mess of perch. I was lyin' quiet out
along a willow stump, thinkin' the folks were in the mill, when I heard
voices on the dam above. Mr. Clarke said: 'I tell you what, Brotherton,
I want you to negotiate this affair for me. That Slocum is a tricky
fellow. I saw him a month ago and told him I'd not touch the property
until that snarl about the mortgage foreclosure was untangled, the price
he asked was outrageous for two hundred acres, of course the buildings
are only fit for kindling. Now I want you to either buy me the farm and
water right, or else lease it for say twenty years; then I will run a
spur of the Northboro Valley railroad down here, move the locomotive
works and the paper-mill, and enlarge both plants. This is the right
place; plenty of room to build houses for the hands, and close enough to
my place to be under my eye without being annoying.
"'It will suit my daughter Marion, too. She has all sorts of ideas about
building a model village. Of course this is between ourselves, for if
that old Slocum rat dreamed that I was behind you, he would ask a dollar
a blade for every spear of run-out wire-grass on the farm.'"
"To think of it!" sighed Mrs. Lane, sitting down so suddenly in the big
rocking-chair that it nearly turned a somersault in surprise, "and it
was only a scrap of a mortgage, not more'n $2500, that was the cause of
workin' the O'Mores out of property that had been in her family near two
hundred years. Everybody knows there was crooked business if it could
only be proved. But your father can't find any papers, and now just as
he was going this afternoon to search through poor O'More's furniture
and things at the house, it had to go and burn down, and the hopes we
had that something might be worked out for Bird hev all gone up in
smoke," she said, addressing the stove solemnly.
The boys went out together to take a stroll up to the scene of the
fire. Hardly had they disappeared when Mrs. Lane jumped from the chair
with such a bound that it completed the somersault and stood on its head
facing the wall.
"I wonder!" she ejaculated, addressing the pump by the sink, and shaking
her finger at it as if the gayly painted bit of iron was her husband.
"Yes, it must be it. All along I allowed 'Biram Slocum fired that house
for the insurance. Now, by a new light I read he did it so in case there
was any papers or letters to and fro about that mortgage that they'd get
burned.
"I've noticed he and she hev made plenty of excuses to get into the
house alone, but I never reckoned it was for anything else but for
general meddlin', and pa's keepin' everything so close, even nailing up
the cellar doors and winders, balked 'em.
"He knew the auction was ter-morrow, and that he'd rather burn the
papers and furniture than risk Joshua or others finding 'em is my firm
belief, and I'd like to prove it. Not that it'll do Bird any good now,
but it would be a satisfaction, even though, as Joshua says, 'We've got
enough business of our own to shoulder before fall and settlin' time
comes.' I wonder if 'Biram 'll hev the cheek to ask for the rent now.
"Yes, I'm going to do a little nosing on my own account,--yes I be!"
she continued, adding more mysterious words to the back of the calendar
and nodding determinedly at the pump as if it had contradicted. "Knowing
never does come amiss, even if it is salted down for a spell. Shoo!" she
cried presently, waving the dish towel at the chickens who had boldly
ventured in, and then the tumult, caused by Twinkle's chasing them back
to their yard with much barking and sundry nips, brought her back to the
present and the work of dish-washing and tidying the kitchen for the
evening.
Even then her head and hands did not work together. She hung the biscuit
in a pail down the well and set away the butter in the bread-box, put
sugar instead of salt into the bread sponge she was setting; and,
finally, before she sat down to rest remembering that the pantry door
locked hard and creaked when it opened, she poured toothache drops
instead of oil upon both hinges and key, and presently began to sniff
about and wonder if Dinah Lucky, who had been in that day to do the
weekly laundry, was doctoring for "break-bone pains" again, and hoped
she had used the laudanum outside instead of in, otherwise nobody could
tell when she would turn up to do the ironing.
* * * * *
Next morning if Joshua Lane and Lammy had not been in such a hurry to
get down to the fruit farm to prepare the crates and small boxes for the
coming strawberry picking, they would have noticed that Lauretta Ann
seemed to be quite excited and anxious to get them out of the way.
But Joshua was unusually absorbed and quiet--he was disappointed at
not finding the papers--but he had a hard summer's work ahead of him
with plenty of thinking in it; while as for Lammy,--he was trying to
calculate how many strawberries he must pick at a cent and a half a
quart to buy a round-trip ticket from Laurelville to New York, so that
he might invite Bird to come up for a Fourth of July visit; also as
to whether it would be possible to do this and have anything left to
buy fire-crackers. Yet, after all, crackers were of small account, for
Bird did not care much for noisy pleasure, and if she didn't come, he
wouldn't care for even cannon crackers himself.
"I suppose 'Biram Slocum will go over to Northboro smart and early to
collect his insurance," Mrs. Lane remarked, apparently looking out of
the window, but stealing a side glance at her husband's face.
"Mebbe he will; but when I turned the cows out an hour ago, I saw
him driving Milltown way in his ordinary clothes with a plough and a
dinner-pail along, so I reckoned he was goin' to work on that patch of
early corn he's got down at the Mill Farm."
At this Mrs. Lane's eyes glistened, and she plunged some dishes into the
tub of suds with a splash that was an unmistakable signal that breakfast
was over and all but lazy people should be out.
This morning she bustled so that a half hour did all the work of
"redding" up that usually took two at the very least, and when Dinah
Lucky came to do the ironing with no sniff of laudanum about her, though
the kitchen was still heavy with it, Mrs. Lane looked puzzled, then much
to that fat aunty's astonishment popped the batch of six plump loaves
into the oven and, leaving Dinah to tend the baking,--a thing that save
for illness she had never trusted to other hands in her twenty years of
housekeeping,--she took a small basket, a knife, and her crisp gingham
sunbonnet, and muttering something about trying to get one more mess of
dandelion greens, even if it was counted late, disappeared through the
woodshed door.
Dandelions grew in plenty in the moist meadow below the cow barn, but
Mrs. Lane crossed the road and took a winding path through the woods.
After following this for some distance and crossing several fields
where she filled her basket with greens, cutting only the very youngest
tufts with the greatest deliberation, she turned into the highway
through the cemetery gate and walked rapidly past the "four corners,"
never stopping until she stood in the enclosure that had once been Bird
O'More's garden. Then she set down the basket, and, seating herself on
the scorched chopping-block, looked about her.
The house had burned down to the foundation; some of the heavy chestnut
beams had not been wholly consumed but lay in a heap on the hard dirt
floor of the cellar. Otherwise the only bits of woodwork remaining were
the frames of two cellar windows that had been protected by the deep
stone niches in which they rested. The great centre chimney, around
which so many old houses are built, held its own, and its various
openings, most of them long unused, marked the location of the different
rooms; several of these, such as the smoke closet and brick oven, being
closed by rusty iron doors.
Presently Mrs. Lane set out on a tour of inspection. The half dozen
outbuildings were quickly explored, for, with the exception of the barn,
they were quite open to the weather and as rickety as card houses. Tall
weeds struggled with the straggling sweet-william and fiery, hardy
poppies in the strip before the lilac bushes that Bird had called her
garden, and the rusty wire of the henyard fence enclosed a crowd of
nettles that stretched toward the light like ill-favoured prisoners in
a pen. The grass and low bushes had been trampled by the people who had
gathered to watch the fire, as well as by the cows that had strayed in
through the latchless gate.
Clearly there was nothing to be discovered here. Next Mrs. Lane walked
about the ruined foundation looking for a likely spot to get down into
the cellar. The old chimney with its nooks and crannies was the only
thing left to examine, and she had made up her mind to do it even if it
meant a rough climb, bruised knees, and scratched fingers.
In some places little heaps of ashes were still smouldering, but by
picking her way carefully down the stone steps that had been under the
flap-door, she reached the base of the chimney and tried the first iron
door. It was warped with the heat, but after some difficulty she opened
it, only to find the ample closet absolutely empty. Talking to herself
and saying that it was not likely that anybody, even an artist, would
hide papers in a cellar, Mrs. Lane looked up to see how it would be
possible to reach what had been the kitchen level, where the chances
looked brighter; for there was the brick oven and a wide fireplace,
closed by sheet iron through which a stove-pipe had pierced. There was
no way up but to use the chinks between the big stones for stairs and
climb. True, she had seen an old ladder in the barn, but Lauretta Ann
was too practical a woman to trust a dozed rickety ladder--she preferred
to cling with her fingers and climb, and cling and climb she presently
did.
To young people it seems a very small feat to climb the outside of a
broad, rough, stone chimney that slopes gradually from a wide base
toward the top. For Mrs. Lane--stout, thick of foot and nearer fifty
than forty--it was a terrible exertion, and she paused between every
step she took to catch her breath, muttering, "Lauretta Ann Lane, you
are a fool if ever there was one. Suppose folks should pass by and see
you creepin' up here like a squawkin' pigeon woodpecker hanging to a
tree?"
She, however, did not in the least resemble even that heavy-bodied bird.
Did you ever see a woodchuck mount a low tree when cornered by dogs?
That was what Mrs. Lane looked like as she climbed. And did you ever see
the same woodchuck scramble, slip, and flop down, flatten himself, and
then amble to his hole, when he thought his pursuers had ceased their
hunt? Well, that was the way in which Mrs. Lane came down to the cellar
bottom, when she found that the brick oven had been used merely to hold
broken crockery and such litter.
For a minute or two she sat flat on the floor, resting, nursing her
bruised hands, and gazing idly at the outline of the sky through one
of the window holes in the stone wall. Then, as she recovered herself,
a bit of something fluttering from a broken staple in the scorched
window-frame attracted her attention. She picked herself up and examined
it. The glass had broken and fallen in, while the bit of metal had
caught a narrow rag of woollen material some six inches in length. This
was singed at the edges, but enough remained to show that it was a
herring-bone pattern of brown and gray such as is often seen in men's
suitings.
Mrs. Lane looked at the rag thoughtfully for a moment, then, detaching
it, pinned it carefully inside the lining of her waist, picked up her
basket of greens which were by this time rather withered, freshened
them with water from the well, and trudged home openly by the
highway, saying, as she walked, "'Tain't much, and most likely it's
nothin'--still maybe it's a stitch in the knittin', and if it is,
another 'll turn up sooner or later to loop on to it."
At dinner Mr. Lane gave his wife an odd look saying: "Why, mother,
where've you been? You look as if you'd gone a berryin' on all fours!
You're scratched on the nose and chin, let alone your hands."
"Be I?" answered "mother," so fiercely that Joshua quailed, and
remembered guiltily that he had forgotten her request to clear a tangle
of cat brier from over a tumble-down stone wall in the turkey pasture,
where his wife passed many times a day to herd this most contrary and
uncertain of the poultry tribe, so he said nothing more, but held his
quarter of dried apple pie before his face like a fan, while he slowly
reduced its size by taking furtive bites at the corners.
About four o'clock Mrs. Lane seated herself on the front porch to sew.
She was dressed in a clean print gown, with her collar fastened by a
large photograph "miniature" pin of Janey when a baby, a sign that she
considered herself dressed for callers. True it was Saturday and Dinah
Lucky was still pounding the ironing board, but that was because she had
"disappointed" on the two first week-days sacred to such work, and not
through any slackness on Mrs. Lane's part.
The weekly mending was always a knotty bit of business, and to-day
doubly so, for now that Lammy was working at the fruit farm, it
seemed as if he fairly moulted buttons and shed the knees and seats of
his trousers as crabs do their shells. Spreading a well-worn pair of
knickerbockers on the piazza floor, she trimmed the edges of the holes
and dived into a big piece bag for material for the patches.
"Seems to me I can't find two bits alike and I do hate to speckle him up
all colours and kinds as if he was a grab-bag. I know what I'll do--I'll
put in what I've got and clip down to the store for some blue jean, and
run him up a couple o' pairs of long overalls to cover him, same as his
brother's and Joshua's. Wonder I didn't think of 'em before, only I
can't realize that Lammy is big enough to be at work."
A man's shadow crossed the piazza. Mrs. Lane looked up quickly; she had
not heard the gate click, and Twinkle, who kept both eyes open as well
as ears cocked most of the time, was down at the fruit farm with Lammy.
"Buy something to-day? Nice goots, ver' cheap," said a voice in broken
English, and a pedler stood on the broad step and swung two heavy packs
down to the floor, while he wiped his face and asked if he might get
some water from the well.
[Illustration: "'_Buy something to-day? Nice goots ver' cheap._'"]
"Certainly, 'nless you'd prefer milk," said Mrs. Lane, cheerfully, for
she was naturally cheerful and generous, unless she was imposed upon.
The pedler, a foreigner, had a full-moon face, that looked both young
and tired, two things that always appealed to her, besides which his
packs were temptingly fat, and she had a weakness for pedlers. So after
getting the milk, she leaned back in her rocker, folded her arms, and
prepared to enjoy the exhibition, saying in the same breath: "I don't
know as I care to buy. What have you got?"
The packs contained a little of everything in addition to the usual
tinsel jewellery and cheap finery which she motioned aside, while she
selected half a dozen gingham shirts, the overalls, which the man
assured her truthfully were only what the goods would cost in the
village, and some stout red handkerchiefs.
"You don'd need trouble vit him," he said, pointing to the tattered
trousers. "I sells you somedings vot you can make down schmall," said
the pedler, growing confidential and pulling a stout pair of long pants
from a separate compartment in his pack. "Only a dollar, and I give the
schentlemens ninety cents for him,--yes, I did. I keep dem for mineself
if I home vas going, but I joust stard out. Only von dollar, and only
von leetle place broke."
"I don't like to trust to buy second-hand clothes; nobody knows what
kind of folks have wore 'em," objected Mrs. Lane, yet at the same time
fingering the substantial goods lovingly. "Where are they tore?"
"Here it vas, joust by der side leg ver you can schmaller make him, and
so help me gracious it vas no dirdy peoples wore dem. It vas a rich mans
to sell so fine a pants for ninety cents for such a break. Maybe you
knows him alretty, for he live"--pointing eastward--"in a big what you
call red house by the road there farther."
"Slocum's!" ejaculated Mrs. Lane, her hands trembling with excitement.
"Yes, dat vas his name. You take de pants, hein?"
For a moment Mrs. Lane was silent, examining the rent, for the trousers
though bright and new were of the same brown and gray herring-bone
pattern as the dingy rag she had brought from the cellar window of the
burned house.
"Yes, I'll take 'em. They _could_ be cut to advantage, and you may leave
me a box of that machine cotton, too; I'm clean out. Now, pack up and
move on, my man; I've got to see to supper."
"She vas very glad of dose pants," thought the pedler to himself, as he
trudged away, smiling at the sales he had made.
Up in the attic Mrs. Lane presently stood by a gigantic cedar chest, the
lid of which she lifted with difficulty, next the top tray. In the one
below she spread the pair of pants to the torn leg of which was pinned
_the_ rag.
"It does seem a shame to lay away a pair of 'Biram Slocum's pants
so near my weddin' shawl, but so must it be. Well, now, there's two
stitches in the garter I've set up to knit for the hobbling of 'Bi
Slocum's pace; the third stitch will be to show why he crawled in that
cellar window before the fire for he surely didn't do it after, and why
he was afeared to let his wife mend his torn pants."
VI
BIRD'S COUSINS