GRANDMA’S REQUEST
For three weeks the weather had been chilly and disagreeable. “The
winter will set in early,” the oldest inhabitants were prophesying,
when suddenly the full glory of the Indian summer burst upon the city.
Berty was delighted. “Dear Grandma will get better now,” she kept
saying, hopefully. “This is what she wants--just a little warm sunshine
before the winter comes.”
Grandma’s health had for some time been a cause of anxiety to her many
friends. All through the autumn she had been ailing, and strangely
quiet, even for her. And she had complained of feeling cold, a thing
she had never done before in her life. Nothing seemed to warm her,
not even the blazing fires that Berty kept in some of the many open
fireplaces with which the old house was well supplied.
To-day there was a change. When the warm, lovely sunshine came
streaming into her room, Grandma had got out of bed. She had come
down-stairs, and, very quietly, but with a gentle smile that sent Berty
into an ecstasy of delight, she had visited every room in the house.
The guinea-pigs and pigeons in the wood-shed, the two women working in
the kitchen, had been made glad by a call from her, and now she was
resting on a sofa in the parlour.
“I feel twenty years younger to see you going about!” exclaimed Berty,
delightedly, as she tucked a blanket round her.
“Twenty years!” murmured Grandma.
“Of course that’s exaggeration,” explained Berty, apologetically. “I
know that you know I’m not twenty yet. I just wanted you to understand
how glad I feel.”
“Go out on the veranda,” said Grandma, “and breathe the fresh air. You
have been in the house too much with me lately.”
Berty’s upper lip was covered with a dew of perspiration. She was hot
all the time, partly from excitement and anxiety about Grandma, and
partly from her incessant activity in waiting on her in the heated
atmosphere of the house.
Berty reluctantly made her way to the veranda, where she promptly
dislodged from a rocking-chair the mongrel pup, who, after long
hesitation, had finally chosen to take up his abode with her.
The pup, however, crawled up beside her after she sat down, and she
gently swayed to and fro in the rocking-chair, absently stroking his
head and gazing out at the stripped grain-fields across the river.
“The ripened sheaves are garnered in,
Garnered in, garnered in,”
she was singing softly to herself, when some one remarked in an
undertone, “Well, how goes it?”
“Oh,” she said, looking up, “it is you, is it, the omnipresent Tom?”
“Yes, I just slipped up for a minute to see how Grandma is. Won’t this
sunshine set her up?”
“You saw her as you came through the room?”
“Yes, but she was asleep, so I did not speak. How is she?”
“Better, much better, and I am so glad.”
“So am I,” responded Tom, heartily; “it makes us all feel bad to have
her ill, but, I say, Berty, you must not take it so to heart. You’re
looking thin.”
“I can’t help worrying about Grandma, Tom.”
“How long since you’ve been out?”
“Two weeks.”
“That’s too long for one of your active disposition to stay in the
house. Come, take your dog and walk back to town with me. See, he is
all ready to come.”
Mugwump, indeed, was fawning round Tom in a servile manner.
“He’s liked me ever since he had a taste of my coat,” observed the
young man.
“If you won’t take a walk with me, let me row you over to Bobbetty’s
Island this afternoon,” pursued Tom.
Berty shook her head, but said, eagerly, “Do tell me how Mafferty is
getting on.”
“Finely--he says that’s a first-class shanty we put up for him--the
stove is a beauty, and, Berty, another consignment of cats has arrived.”
“Oh, Tom, what are they like?”
The young man launched into a description of the new arrivals. “There
are four white kittens--one pair yellow eyes, three pairs blue, for
which you should charge twenty dollars to intending purchasers; three
black Persian kings, worth thirty dollars, and a few assorted kittens
from five dollars up.”
Berty listened in rapt attention. When he had finished, she said,
“You’ve been tremendously good about my tramp, Tom.”
“I like partnerships,” he said, modestly; “in fact, I--”
“That reminds me,” interrupted Berty, unceremoniously; “has he had
another letter from his wife?”
“Yes, she is coming in ten days.”
The girl clasped her dog so energetically round the neck that he
squealed in protest. “Isn’t it just lovely, that we have been able to
do something for that man? Oh, do you suppose he will be happy there
with his wife and the cats?”
“No, certainly not,” said Tom, coolly. “He’s going to have his bursts,
of course.”
“And what are we to do?” asked Berty, sorrowfully.
“Forgive him, and row him back to the island,” said Tom, hopefully.
“It’s as much our business to look after him as anybody’s.”
Berty turned in her chair, and stared at him long and intently. “Tom
Everest, you are changing.”
“Pray Heaven, I am,” he said earnestly, and something in the bright,
steady gaze bent on her made her eyes fill with tears.
“I have learned a lot from you,” he continued, in a low voice. “When
I heard you talking to those men the other day, it stirred my heart.
It seemed pitiful Berty, that a girl like you, who might think only of
amusing herself, should be so touched by her neighbours’ woes that she
should give up her own peace of mind in order to try to help them. Then
I heard that though you could not move the men, the women of the street
were much put out at the thought of your leaving, and so exasperated
with the men, that they told them they had got to do something to help
their families. I said to myself, ‘I’ve only been giving Berty a half
assistance up to this. She shall have my whole assistance now.’”
Berty’s face was glowing. “Tom,” she said, gently, “if we live, we
shall see great reforms on River Street.”
“I hope so,” he replied, heartily.
“We shall see,” and she upraised one slim brown hand, “perhaps, oh,
perhaps and possibly, but still, I trust, truly, we shall see this our
city one of the best governed in America.”
“Oh, I hope so,” returned Tom, with a kind of groan.
“Don’t doubt it,” continued the girl. “Who lives will see. I tell you,
Tom, the women are desperate. The River Street houses are growing older
and older. What woman can endure seeing her children die, and know that
they are poisoned out of existence? I tell you, Tom, the men have got
to do something or emigrate.”
“They’ll not emigrate,” said Tom, shortly, “and upon my word,” and he
looked round about him, “I don’t know but what I’d be willing to live
on River Street myself, to help reform it.”
Berty was silent for a long time, then she said, in a low voice, “You
will not regret that speech, Tom Everest.”
“All right, little girl,” he replied, cheerfully, and jumping up from
his low seat. “Now I must get back to work. Come, Mugwump, I guess your
missis will let you have a walk, even if she won’t go herself.”
The lawless dog, without glancing at Berty for permission, bounded to
his side and licked his hand.
“You haven’t very good manners, dog,” said Tom, lightly, “but I guess
your mistress likes you.”
“I always did like the bad ones best,” said Berty, wistfully. “It
seems as if they had more need of friends--good-bye, Tom.”
“Good-bye, little girl,” he returned, throwing her a kiss from the tips
of his fingers. “Maybe I’ll run up this afternoon.”