soap box) much too small for such a supply, it had grown quite dark,
and the two, still disinclined to talk, went to their beds--if the
rough bunks they occupied may be dignified by that name.
But not to sleep--at least not Jack, who tumbled and tossed all night
and got up in the morning with an energy and life he had not shown for
weeks.
After breakfast Tom shouldered his pick and said:
"I'll go on, Jack, while you clear up." Yet he felt in his heart he
should never see Jack again; for there was a homestruck look in his
face that the man of experience in the ways of runaway boys knew well.
He was not surprised that Jack did not join him, nor that when he
returned at night to the cabin he found him gone and a note pinned up
on the door:
I can't stand it--I'm off for home. You may have my
share of everything.
JACK.
It was a cold evening in early December, and there seemed to be
an undercurrent of excitement in the Jarvis household. The table
was spread in the dining-room with the best silver and linen. Mrs.
Jarvis was better, and had even been able to go into the kitchen to
superintend the preparations for dinner.
Jessie went around with a shining face that no one understood and she
could not explain.
Betty was strangely nervous, and had made several blunders that morning
which mortified the faithful servant very much. An air of expectancy
pervaded the whole house, though the two heads of it had not a hint of
the cause.
Jessie heard the train she had decided to be the important one. She
could hardly contain herself for expectation. She tried hard to sober
herself now and then by the thought, "Perhaps he won't come," but she
couldn't stay sobered, for she felt as certain that he would as that
she lived.
You all know how it happened. The door opened and Jack walked in. One
instant of blank silence, and then a grand convulsion.
Jack fell on his knees with his face in his mother's lap, though he
had not thought a moment before of doing any such thing. Jessie hung
over him, frantically hugging him. Mr. Jarvis, vainly trying to join
this group, could only lay his hands on Jack's head and say in a broken
voice: "My son! My son!" while Betty performed a war dance around the
party, wildly brandishing a basting spoon in one hand and wiping her
streaming eyes on the dishcloth which she held in the other.
It was long before a word could be spoken, and the dinner was totally
ruined, as Betty declared with tears (though they were not for sorrow),
before any one could calm down enough to eat.
Then the reaction set in, and justice was done to the dinner, while
talk went on in a stream. Jack did not tell his adventures; he only
said that he had come from the city, where he had made arrangements
for a situation with Uncle John--at which Jessie's eyes sparkled. His
looks, even after a week of comfort and hope, spoke for his sufferings.
There is little more to tell. Jack Jarvis at seventeen was a different
boy from the Jack who at sixteen started out to seek his fortune. You
may be sure that Jessie had her music lessons after all, and that a new
Winnie with a fine young brood at her heels stalked about the Jarvis
grounds the next spring.
FOOTNOTE:
[28] From "Kristy's Surprise Party," Houghton, Mifflin Co.
WHO ATE THE DOLLY'S DINNER?[29]
BY ISABEL GORDON CURTIS.
A good story for the Big Sister to read to the little
boys and girls.
"WHY can't dollies have a Thanksgiving dinner as well as real folks?"
asked Polly Pine.
"I don't know why," said mamma, laughing; "go and dress them in their
best clothes, get the dolls' house swept and dusted and the table
ready. Then I'll fix their dinner before we go downstairs."
"Oh, how nice!" said Polly Pine.
The doll house stood in the nursery. It was very big and very
beautiful. It was painted red; it had tall chimneys, and a fine front
door with R. Bliss on a brass plate. There were lace curtains at the
windows, and two steps led up to the cunning little piazza. Polly Pine
swept the rooms with her tiny broom and dusted them. Then she set the
table in the dining-room with the very best dishes and the finest
silver. She set a teeny vase in the middle of the table, with two
violets in it, and she put dolly table napkins at each place.
When the house was all nice and clean she dressed Lavinia in her pink
muslin, and Dora Jane in her gray velvet, and Hannah Welch in her
yellow silk; then she seated them around the table, each one in her
own chair. Polly was just telling them about company manners, how they
must not eat with their knives, or leave their teaspoons in their cups
when they drank their tea, when the door opened and in came mamma with
a real dolls' Thanksgiving dinner.
There was a chicken bone to put on the platter before Hannah Welch,
for Hannah always did the carving. There were cunning little dishes of
mashed potato and cranberry sauce, and some celery in a tiny tumbler,
and the smallest squash pie baked in a patty pan. Polly Pine just
hopped up and down with delight when she saw it. She set everything on
the table; then she ran away to put on her nicest muslin frock with the
pink ribbons, and she went downstairs to her own dinner.
There were gentlemen there for dinner--gentlemen Polly was very fond
of--and she had a nice time visiting with one of them. He could change
his table napkin into a white rabbit, and she forgot all about the
dolls' Thanksgiving dinner until it was dessert-time, and the nuts and
raisins came in.
Then Polly remembered, and she jumped down from her chair and asked
mamma if she might go upstairs and see if the dolls had eaten their
dinner. When mamma told about the doll house Thanksgiving, all the
family wanted to go, too, to find out if the dolls had enjoyed their
dinner.
The front door of the doll house was open, and there sat the dolls just
as their little mistress had left them--only they had eaten nearly all
the dinner! Everything was gone except the potato and the cranberry
sauce. The chicken leg was picked bare, the bread was nibbled, and the
little pie was eaten all around.
"Well, this is funny," said papa.
Just then they heard a funny, scratching noise in the doll house, and a
little gray mouse jumped out from under the table. He ran out the front
door of the doll house, and over the piazza, and down the steps before
you could say "Jack Robinson." In a minute he was gone--nobody knew
where. There was another tiny mouse in the doll house under the parlour
sofa, and a third one under Lavinia's bed, with a poor, frightened gray
tail sticking out. They all got away safe. Papa would not allow mamma
to go for the cat. He said:
"Why can't a poor little mouse have a Thanksgiving dinner as well as
we?"
FOOTNOTE:
[29] From "For the Children's Hour," Milton Bradley Company.
AN OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVING[30]
BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
A long story about a family of hardy New England
pioneers in Revolutionary days. It will be most enjoyed
by the older children.
"Pile in, Hannah. Get right down 'long o' the clock, so's to kinder
shore it up. I'll fix in them pillers t'other side on't, and you can
set back ag'inst the bed. Good-bye, folks! Gee up! Bright. Gee! I tell
ye, Buck."
"Good-bye!" nodded Hannah, from the depths of the old calash which
granny had given her for a riding-hood, and her rosy face sparkled
under the green shadow like a blossom under a burdock leaf.
This was their wedding journey. Thirty long miles to be travelled, at
the slow pace of an oxcart, where to-day a railroad spins by, and a log
hut in the dim distance.
But Hannah did not cry about it. There was a momentary choking,
perhaps, in her throat, as she caught a last view of granny's mob cap
and her father's rough face, with the red head of her small stepbrother
between them, grouped in the doorway. Her mother had died long ago, and
there was another in her place now, and a swarm of children. Hannah was
going to her own home, to a much easier life, and going with John. Why
should she cry?
Besides, Hannah was the merriest little woman in the country. She had a
laugh always lying ready in a convenient dimple.
She never knew what "blues" meant, except to dye stocking yarn. She
was sunny as a dandelion and gay as a bobolink. Her sweet good nature
never failed through the long day's journey, and when night came she
made a pot of tea at the campfire, roasted a row of apples, and broiled
a partridge John shot by the wayside, with as much enjoyment as if
this was the merriest picnic excursion, and not a solitary camp in the
forest, long miles away from any human dwelling, and by no means sure
of safety from some lingering savage, some beast of harmful nature, or
at least a visit from a shambling black bear, for bears were plentiful
enough in that region.
But none of these things worried Hannah. She ate her supper with hearty
appetite, said her prayers with John, and curled down on the featherbed
in the cart, while John heaped on more wood, and, shouldering his
musket, went to lengthen the ropes that tethered his oxen, and then
mounted guard over the camp. Hannah watched his fine, grave face, as
the flickering light illuminated it, for a few minutes, and then slept
tranquilly till dawn. And by sunset next day the little party drew up
at the door of the log hut they called home.
It looked very pretty to Hannah. She had the fairy gift, that is so
rare among mortals, of seeing beauty in its faintest expression; and
the young grass about the rough stone doorstep, the crimson cones on
the great larch tree behind it, the sunlit panes of the west window,
the laugh and sparkle of the brook that ran through the clearing, the
blue eyes of the squirrel caps that blossomed shyly and daintily beside
the stumps of new-felled trees--all these she saw and delighted in.
And when the door was open, the old clock set up, the bed laid on the
standing bedplace, and the three chairs and table ranged against the
wall, she began her housewifery directly, singing as she went. Before
John had put his oxen in the small barn, sheltered the cart and the
tools in it, and shaken down hay into the manger, Hannah had made a
fire, hung on the kettle, spread up her bed with homespun sheets and
blankets and a wonderful cover of white-and-red chintz, set the table
with a loaf of bread, a square of yellow butter, a bowl of maple sugar,
and a plate of cheese; and even released the cock and the hen from
their uneasy prison in a splint basket, and was feeding them in the
little woodshed when John came in.
His face lit up, as he entered, with that joyful sense of home so
instinctive in every true man and woman. He rubbed his hard hands
together, and catching Hannah as she came in at the shed door, bestowed
upon her a resounding kiss.
"You're the most of a little woman I ever see, Hannah, I swan to man."
Hannah laughed like a swarm of spring blackbirds. "I declare, John,
you do beat all! Ain't it real pleasant here? Seems to me I never saw
things so handy."
Oh, Hannah, what if your prophetic soul could have foreseen the
conveniences of this hundred years after! Yet the shelves, the pegs,
the cupboard in the corner, the broad shelf above the fire, the great
pine chest under the window, and the clumsy settle, all wrought out of
pine board by John's patient and skilful fingers, filled all her needs;
and what can modern conveniences do more?
So they ate their supper at home for the first time, happy as
new-nested birds, and far more grateful.
John had built a sawmill on the brook a little way from the house,
and already owned a flourishing trade, for the settlement about the
lake from which Nepasset Brook sprung was quite large, and till John
Perkins went there the lumber had been all drawn fifteen miles off, to
Litchfield, and his mill was only three miles from Nepash village. Hard
work and hard fare lay before them both, but they were not daunted by
the prospect....
By and by a cradle entered the door, and a baby was laid in it....
One baby is well enough in a log cabin, with one room for all the
purposes of life; but when next year brought two more, a pair of stout
boys, then John began to saw lumber for his own use. A bedroom was
built on the east side of the house, and a rough stairway into the
loft--more room perhaps than was needed; but John was called in Nepash
"a dre'dful forecastin' man," and he took warning from the twins.
And timely warning it proved, for as the years slipped by, one after
another, they left their arrows in his quiver till ten children bloomed
about the hearth. The old cabin had disappeared entirely. A good-sized
frame house of one story, with a high-pitched roof, stood in its stead,
and a slab fence kept roving animals out of the yard and saved the
apple trees from the teeth of stray cows and horses.
Poor enough they were still. The loom in the garret always had its web
ready, the great wheel by the other window sung its busy song year in
and year out. Dolly was her mother's right hand now; and the twins,
Ralph and Reuben, could fire the musket and chop wood. Sylvy, the
fourth child, was the odd one. All the rest were sturdy, rosy, laughing
girls and boys; but Sylvy had been a pining baby, and grew up into a
slender, elegant creature, with clear gray eyes, limpid as water, but
bright as stars, and fringed with long golden lashes the colour of her
beautiful hair--locks that were coiled in fold on fold at the back of
her fine head, like wreaths of undyed silk, so pale was their yellow
lustre. She bloomed among the crowd of red-cheeked, dark-haired lads
and lasses, stately and incongruous as a June lily in a bed of tulips.
But Sylvy did not stay at home. The parson's lady at Litchfield came to
Nepash one Sunday, with her husband, and seeing Sylvy in the square
corner pew with the rest, was mightily struck by her lovely face,
and offered to take her home with her the next week, for the better
advantages of schooling. Hannah could not have spared Dolly; but Sylvia
was a dreamy, unpractical child, and though all the dearer for being
the solitary lamb of the flock by virtue of her essential difference
from the rest, still, for that very reason, it became easier to let her
go. Parson Everett was childless, and in two years' time both he and
his wife adored the gentle, graceful girl; and she loved them dearly.
They could not part with her, and at last adopted her formally as their
daughter, with the unwilling consent of John and Hannah. Yet they knew
it was greatly "for Sylvy's betterment," as they phrased it; so at last
they let her go.
But when Dolly was a sturdy young woman of twenty-five the war-trumpet
blew, and John and the twins heard it effectually. There was a sudden
leaving of the plow in the furrow. The planting was set aside for the
children to finish, the old musket rubbed up, and with set lips and
resolute eyes the three men walked away one May morning to join the
Nepash company. Hannah kept up her smiling courage through it all.
If her heart gave way, nobody knew it but God and John. The boys she
encouraged and inspired, and the children were shamed out of their
childish tears by mother's bright face and cheery talk.
Then she set them all to work. There was corn to plant, wheat to sow,
potatoes to set; flax and wool to spin and weave, for clothes would be
needed for all, both absent and stay-at-homes. There was no father to
superintend the outdoor work; so Hannah took the field, and marshalled
her forces on Nepasset Brook much as the commander-in-chief was doing
on a larger scale elsewhere. Eben, the biggest boy, and Joey, who came
next him, were to do all the planting; Diana and Sam took on themselves
the care of the potato patch, the fowls, and the cow; Dolly must spin
and weave when mother left either the wheel or loom to attend to the
general ordering of the forces; while Obed and Betty, the younglings
of the flock, were detailed to weed, pick vegetables (such few as
were raised in the small garden), gather berries, herbs, nuts, hunt
the straying turkeys' nests, and make themselves generally useful.
At evening all the girls sewed; the boys mended their shoes, having
learned so much from a travelling cobbler; and the mother taught them
all her small stock of schooling would allow. At least, they each
knew how to read, and most of them to write, after a very uncertain
fashion. As to spelling, nobody knew how to spell in those days....
But they did know the four simple rules of arithmetic, and could say
the epigrammatic rhymes of the old New England Primer and the sibyllic
formulas of the Assembly's Catechism as glibly as the child of to-day
repeats "The House That Jack Built."
So the summer went on. The corn tasselled, the wheat ears filled well,
the potatoes hung out rich clusters of their delicate and graceful
blossoms, beans straggled half over the garden, the hens did their duty
bravely, and the cow produced a heifer calf.
Father and the boys were fighting now, and mother's merry words were
more rare, though her bright face still wore its smiling courage.
They heard rarely from the army. Now and then a post rider stopped
at the Nepash tavern and brought a few letters or a little news; but
this was at long intervals, and women who watched and waited at home
without constant mail service and telegraphic flashes, aware that news
of disaster, of wounds, of illness, could only reach them too late to
serve or save, and that to reach the ill or the dying involved a larger
and more disastrous journey than the survey of half the world demands
now--these women endured pangs beyond our comprehension, and endured
them with a courage and patience that might have furnished forth an
army of heroes, that did go far to make heroes of that improvised,
ill-conditioned, eager multitude who conquered the trained bands of
their oppressors and set their sons "free and equal," to use their own
dubious phraseology, before the face of humanity at large.
By and by winter came on with all its terrors. By night wolves howled
about the lonely house, and sprung back over the palings when Eben
went to the door with his musket. Joe hauled wood from the forest
on a hand-sled, and Dolly and Diana took it in through the kitchen
window when the drifts were so high that the woodshed door could not
be opened. Besides, all the hens were gathered in there, as well for
greater warmth as for convenience in feeding, and the barn was only to
be reached with snowshoes and entered by the window above the manger.
Hard times these were. The loom in the garret could not be used, for
even fingers would freeze in that atmosphere; so the thread was wound
off, twisted on the great wheel, and knit into stockings, the boys
learning to fashion their own, while Hannah knit her anxiety and her
hidden heartaches into socks for her soldier boys and their father.
By another spring the aching and anxiousness were a little dulled, for
habit blunts even the keen edge of mortal pain. They had news that
summer that Ralph had been severely wounded, but had recovered; that
John had gone through a sharp attack of camp-fever; that Reuben was
taken prisoner, but escaped by his own wit. Hannah was thankful and
grateful beyond expression. Perhaps another woman would have wept and
wailed, to think all this had come to pass without her knowledge or
her aid; but it was Hannah's way to look at the bright side of things.
Sylvia would always remember how once, when she was looking at Mount
Tahconic, darkened by a brooding tempest, its crags frowning blackly
above the dark forest at its foot and the lurid cloud above its head
torn by fierce lances of light, she hid her head in her mother's
checked apron, in the helpless terror of an imaginative child; but,
instead of being soothed and pitied, mother had only laughed a little
gay laugh, and said gently, but merrily:
"Why, Sylvy, the sun's right on the other side, only you don't see it."
After that she always thought her mother saw the sun when nobody else
could. And in a spiritual sense it was true.
Parson Everett rode over once or twice from Litchfield that next
summer to fetch Sylvia and to administer comfort to Hannah. He was a
quaint, prim little gentleman, neat as any wren, but mild-mannered as
wrens never are, and in a moderate way kindly and sympathetic. When
the children had haled their lovely sister away to see their rustic
possessions, Parson Everett would sit down in a high chair, lay aside
his cocked hat, spread his silk pocket handkerchief over his knees, and
prepare to console Hannah.
"Mistress Perkins, these are trying times, trying times. There is a
sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees--h-m! Sea and waves
roaring of a truth--h-m! h-m! I trust, Mistress Perkins, you submit to
the Divine Will with meekness."
"Well, I don't know," replied Hannah, with a queer little twinkle in
her eye. "I don't believe I be as meek as Moses, parson. I should like
things fixed different, to speak truth."
"Dear me! Dear me--h-m! h-m! My good woman, the Lord reigneth. You must
submit; you must submit. You know it is the duty of a vessel of wrath
to be broken to pieces if it glorifieth the Maker."
"Well, mebbe 'tis. I don't know much about that kind o' vessel. I've
got to submit because there ain't anything else to do, as I see. I
can't say it goes easy--not'n' be honest; but I try to look on the
bright side, and to believe the Lord'll take care of my folks better'n
I could, even if they was here."
"H-m! h-m! Well," stammered the embarrassed parson, completely at his
wit's end with this cheerful theology, "well, I hope it is grace that
sustains you, Mistress Perkins, and not the vain elation of the natural
man. The Lord is in His holy temple; the earth is His footstool--h-m!"
The parson struggled helplessly with a tangle of texts here; but the
right one seemed to fail him, till Hannah audaciously put it in:
"Well, you know what it says about takin' care of sparrers, in the
Bible, and how we was more valerable than they be, a lot. That kind o'
text comes home these times, I tell ye. You fetch a person down to the
bedrock, as Grandsir Penlyn used to say, and then they know where they
be. And ef the Lord is really the Lord of all, I expect He'll take care
of all; 'nd I don't doubt but what He is and does. So I can fetch up on
that."
Parson Everett heaved a deep sigh, put on his cocked hat, and blew his
nose ceremonially with the silk handkerchief. Not that he needed to:
but as a sort of shaking off of the dust of responsibility and ending
the conversation, which, if it was not heterodox on Hannah's part,
certainly did not seem orthodox to him.... He did not try to console
her any more, but contented himself with the stiller spirits in his
own parish, who had grown up in and after his own fashion.
Another dreadful winter settled down on Nepasset township. There was
food enough in the house and firewood in the shed; but neither food nor
fire seemed to assuage the terrible cold, and with decreased vitality
decreased courage came to all. Hygienics were an unforeseen mystery
to people of that day. They did not know that nourishing food is as
good for the brain as for the muscles. They lived on potatoes, beets,
beans, with now and then a bit of salt pork or beef boiled in the pot
with the rest; and their hearts failed, as their flesh did, with this
sodden and monotonous diet. One ghastly night Hannah almost despaired.
She held secret council with Dolly and Eben, while they inspected the
potato bin and the pork barrel, as to whether it would not be best for
them to break up and find homes elsewhere for the winter. Her father
was old and feeble. He would be glad to have her with him and Betty.
The rest were old enough to "do chores" for their board, and there were
many families where help was needed, both in Nepash and Litchfield,
since every available man had gone to the war by this time. But while
they talked a great scuffling and squawking in the woodhouse attracted
the boys upstairs. Joe seized the tongs and Diana the broomstick.
An intruding weasel was pursued and slaughtered; but not till two
fowls, fat and fine, had been sacrificed by the invader and the tongs
together. The children were all hungry, with the exhaustion of the
cold weather, and clamoured to have these victims cooked for supper.
Nor was Hannah unmoved by the appeal. Her own appetite seconded.
The savoury stew came just in time. It aroused them to new life and
spirits. Hannah regained courage, wondering how she could have lost
heart so far, and said to Dolly, as they washed up the supper dishes:
"I guess we'll keep together, Dolly. It'll be spring after a while, and
we'll stick it out together."