The roan ponies dashed through the slab settlement, past the blacksmith
and wheelwright shop and the ugly red building Tom told Nan was the
school, and reached a large, sprawling, unpainted dwelling on the
outskirts of the village.
There were barns back of the Sherwood house; there was no fence between
the yard and the road, the windows of the house stared out upon the
passerby, blindless, and many of them without shades. There was such a
painful newness about the building that it seemed to Nan the carpenters
must have just packed their tools and gone, while the painters had not
yet arrived.
“Well! Here we are,” announced Mr. Henry Sherwood, as Tom held in the
still eager ponies. He stepped out and offered Nan his hand. “Home
again, little girl. I reckon Kate will be mighty glad to see you, that
she will.”
Nan leaped out and began to stamp her feet on the hard snow, while Uncle
Henry lifted out the trunk and bags. Just as the ponies sprang away
again, a door in the ugly house opened and a tall, angular woman looked
forth.
“Bring her in, Hen!” she cried, in a high-pitched voice. “I want to see
her.”
Nan went rather timidly up the path. Her aunt was almost as tall as her
husband. She was very bony and was flat-chested and unlovely in every
way. That is, so it seemed, when the homesick girl raised her eyes to
Aunt Kate's face.
That face was as brown as sole-leather, and the texture of the skin
seemed leathery as well. There was a hawklike nose dominating the
unfeminine face. The shallows below the cheekbones were deep, as
though she had suffered the loss of her back molars. The eyebrows were
straggly; the eyes themselves of a pale, watery blue; the mouth a thin
line when her colorless lips were closed; and her chin was as square and
determined as Uncle Henry's own.
As Nan approached she saw something else about this unlovely woman. On
her neck was a great, livid scar, of a hand's breadth, and which looked
like a scald, or burn. No attempt was made to conceal this unsightly
blemish.
Indeed, there was nothing about Aunt Kate Sherwood suggesting a
softening of her hard lines. Her plain, ugly print dress was cut low at
the throat, and had no collar or ruff to hide the scar. Nan's gaze was
fastened on that blemish before she was half way to the door, and she
could see nothing else at first.
The girl fought down a physical shudder when Aunt Kate's clawlike hands
seized her by both shoulders, and she stooped to kiss the visitor.
“Welcome, dear Nannie,” her sharp voice said, and Nan thought that, with
ease, one might have heard her in the middle of the village.
But when Aunt Kate's lips touched the girl's forehead they were
Warm, and soft as velvet. Her breath was sweet. There was a wholesome
cleanliness about her person that pleased Nan. The ugly dress was
spotless and beautifully laundered. She had a glimpse of the unplastered
kitchen and saw a row of copper pots on the shelf over the dresser that
were scoured to dazzling brightness. The boards of the floor were
white as milk. The big, patent range glistened with polish, and its
nickel-work was rubbed till it reflected like a mirror.
“Welcome, my dear!” said Aunt Kate again. “I hope you will be happy
while you stay with us.”
Happy! With Momsey and Papa Sherwood on the ocean, and the “little
dwelling in amity” closed and deserted? Nan feared she would break down
and cry.
Her Aunt Kate left her to herself a minute just then that she might
overcome this weakness. Uncle Henry came up the path with the bags,
smiling broadly.
“Well, old woman!” he said heartily.
“Well, old man!” she returned.
And then suddenly, Nan Sherwood had a new vision. She was used to
seeing her pretty mother and her handsome father display their mutual
affection; it had not seemed possible that rough, burly Uncle Henry and
ugly Aunt Kate could feel the same degree of affection for each other.
Uncle Henry dropped the bags. Aunt Kate seemed to be drawn toward him
when he put out his hands. Nan saw their lips meet, and then the giant
gently, almost reverently, kissed the horrid scar on Aunt Kate's neck.
“Here's Nan!” cried the big lumberman jovially. “The pluckiest and
smartest little girl in seven states! Take her in out of the cold, Kate.
She's not used to our kind of weather, and I have been watching for the
frost flowers to bloom on her pretty face all the way from the forks.”
The woman drew Nan into the warm kitchen. Uncle Henry followed in a
minute with the trunk.
“Where'll I put this box, Kate?” he asked. “I reckon you've fixed up
some cozy place for her?”
“The east room, Hen,” Aunt Kate replied. “The sun lies in there
mornings. I took the new spring rocker out of the parlor, and with the
white enameled bedstead you bought in Chicago, and the maple bureau
we got of that furniture pedlar, and the best drugget to lay over the
carpet I reckon Nannie has a pretty bedroom.”
Meanwhile Nan stared openly around the strange kitchen. The joists and
rafters were uncovered by laths or plaster. Muslin, that had once been
white, was tacked to the beams overhead for a ceiling. The smoke from
the cookstove had stained it to a deep brown color above the stove and
to a lighter, meerschaum shade in the corners.
The furniture was of the rudest plainest kind much of it evidently
home-made. Uncle Henry was not unhandy with tools. She learned, later,
that he and the boys had practically built the house by themselves. They
were finishing it inside, as they had time. In some of the rooms the
inside window and door frames were not yet in place.
There was an appetizing smell from the pots upon the stove, and the
long table was set for dinner. They would not let Nan change from her
traveling dress before sitting down to the table. Tom and Rafe came in
and all three men washed at the long, wooden sink.
Rafe was of slighter build than his brother, and a year or more younger.
He was not so shy as Tom, either; and his eyes sparkled with mischief.
Nan found that she could not act “grown up” with her Cousin Rafe.
The principal dish for dinner was venison stew, served with vegetables
and salt-rising bread. There was cake, too, very heavy and indigestible,
and speckled with huckleberries that had been dried the fall previous.
Aunt Kate was no fancy cook; but appetite is the best sauce, after all,
and Nan had her share of that condiment.
During the meal there was not much conversation save about the wonderful
fortune that had fallen to Nan's mother and the voyage she and her
husband were taking to Scotland to secure it. Nan learned, too, that
Uncle Henry had telegraphed from Tillbury of Nan's coming to Pine Camp,
and consequently Aunt Kate was able to prepare for her.
And that the good woman had done her best to make a nest for her little
niece in the ugly house, Nan was assured. After dinner she insisted upon
the girl's going to the east room to change her dress and lie down. The
comparison between this great chamber and Nan's pretty room at home was
appalling.
The room had been plastered, but the plaster was of a gray color and
unfinished. The woodwork was painted a dusty, brick red with mineral
paint. The odd and ugly pieces of furniture horrified Nan. The drugget
on the floor only served to hide a part of the still more atrociously
patterned carpet. The rocking chair complained if one touched it. The
top of the huge maple dresser was as bald as one's palm.
Nan sat down on the unopened trunk when her aunt had left her. She
dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. Home certainly was never like
this! She did not see how she was ever going to be able to stand it.