ALL SERENE AGAIN
"I think," said Richard, judiciously, "I'll carry you up to the barn
and wash you off; your mother might think you were permanently
disfigured if she saw you now."
Sarah was truly a forlorn-looking object, but he tucked her under his
arm and set off for the barn, trying in vain to soothe her as they
went. Sarah wept continuously and only stopped when she was put down
on the barn floor. She stopped then because someone was making more
noise than she could possibly make.
"I don't want to hear another word," Mr. Hildreth was saying in a cold,
loud voice. "Not another word. You left those grain bins open and the
least you can do is to admit it like a man."
"I did not leave them open!" Warren's voice was as passionate and
shaken as the other's was cold. "I tell you I did not! I haven't been
in the barn this morning, except once to get the oil can. I wasn't
near the bins."
Richard was pumping water into a basin and Sarah was glad he was not
looking at her; She had forgotten to put the lids of the grain bins
down! The door of the small washroom was jerked violently open and
Warren strode in. Mr. Hildreth had evidently terminated the argument
by leaving the barn.
"Hello, you look about as amiable as a thunder storm," Richard greeted
his chum. "Got a clean handkerchief handy?"
Warren grimly extended a clean square.
"What's the matter with Sarah?" he asked curiously.
"Oh, she's had a hard morning--thought I'd wash off some of the worst
of it before she scared everyone at the house into fits," explained
Richard, beginning gently on Sarah's face, with the clean handkerchief
dipped in water. "What was the row?"
Warren's face darkened. He bit his lip.
"Mr. Hildreth found the whole flock of hens having a Thanksgiving
dinner out of the grain bins this morning," he said in a tone which he
strived to make light and even. "He insists I left the lids up and I
am just as sure I didn't. In a moment of madness I might leave one up,
but I never had all the bins open at the same time since I've worked
here."
"If Mr. Hildreth had a grain of sense," pronounced Richard, looking
dubiously at Sarah who still presented a sad appearance notwithstanding
his ministrations, "he'd know better than to accuse you. Of course
some of these children have been fooling around the bins."
Sarah jumped at this uncanny penetration. She wanted nothing in the
world so much as to get out of that washroom, away from Richard's
straightforward gaze.
She edged carefully toward the door--but there was to be no escape.
"Sarah, were you in the barn this morning?" asked Richard.
Her answer was a look that Doctor Hugh would have been able to
instantly interpret--it meant that Sarah had retreated into one of her
obstinate, sulky silences and had made up her mind not to be forced
into speech.
Richard turned and shot the bolt across the door.
"Were you in the barn this morning?" he repeated. "Answer me--but I
know you were; and you must have left the grain bins open."
Sarah remained silent. Richard took a step toward the obdurate little
figure, but Warren's voice halted him.
"Quit it, Rich," he said quietly. "Open that door. Run along, Sarah,
and next time you climb an apple tree, have a pillow on the ground
ready to catch you."
Sarah stepped over the sill, turned around, seemed about to speak and
then went silently out of the barn. She heard Richard say something
and Warren's reply:
"Oh, what difference does it make, if she did?"
Mrs. Willis knew what to do for the yellow jacket stings and she knew
how to cure scratched hands and arms and soothe aching little heads.
She knew, too, the signs of a hurt heart--when it was Sarah's. Shirley
thought her sister was merely "cranky" when she pushed her out of the
swing and Rosemary decided to let Sarah severely alone when that small
girl hurled her music from the piano rack and began a violent
performance of "chop sticks." But Mrs. Willis waited patiently.
It can not be denied that Sarah made the remainder of the day a
veritable "blue Monday" for her family. Secure in the privileges
accorded her as an invalid, she quarreled with Shirley and Rosemary,
drove Winnie to distraction with repeated requests for cookies and
lemonade and answered Mrs. Hildreth snappishly when that good woman
stopped in for a moment's chat and generally behaved, as Winnie put it
"like all possessed."
And yet, when Rosemary announced at supper that Richard and Warren were
going to walk to the "Center" to see a man at the creamery and that
they would be back before dark and had said the girls might go with
them, Sarah's refusal to go immediately convinced her sisters that she
must be really ill.
They set off as soon as the meal was over, Rosemary and Shirley and the
two boys, and Sarah curled herself, a disconsolate little heap, in the
porch swing. And there her mother found her and in less than two
minutes had the whole story, from the pathetic beginning. "The hen was
awfully sick, Mother," down to the "queer feelings" Sarah had
experienced when Richard, always so good-natured and kind, had turned
into an entirely different person.
"And I'm afraid of Mr. Hildreth," wailed Sarah, the tears flowing again
as she ended her recital. "He'll yell at me, if I tell him, the way he
did at Warren."
"Why no," said Mrs. Willis, in the most matter-of-fact tone. "Why no,
he won't, Sarah. Certainly not. And you're not one bit afraid of him.
He'll he sitting out on the porch now, smoking his pipe and quite ready
to listen to whatever you have to tell him. You don't want Mother to
go with you, do you?"
"Of course not," said Sarah, almost as matter-of-factly. "I'll go now,
before the boys get back, Mother."
And away she marched to the bungalow, confidently, if not cheerfully.
She had meant to ask her mother whether it would be necessary to
confess that she had been the one who left the bins open, but Mrs.
Willis had so evidently taken for granted that Sarah meant to do this
at once, that the question had never been asked. Well, if Mr. Hildreth
wasn't going to yell at her and if she wasn't afraid of him--and her
mother had said he wouldn't and she wasn't--there was no earthly reason
why she should not admit that she had been careless.
It all happened exactly as Mrs. Willis had said. Mr. Hildreth was
sitting on his porch, smoking comfortably and resting after a hard day.
He was surprised to see Sarah, but he did not yell at her. Instead he
listened silently while she stammered out that she had been to blame
for the hens feasting in the bins. She told him about the sick hen and
she outlined her eventful day, culminating in the tumble from the apple
tree and Richard's attempt to render first aid in the washroom.
"Well," Mr. Hildreth spoke for the first time, when she had finished.
"Well, I'm glad you came to me and told me--though that's the natural
thing to do. Own up when you're wrong--isn't it?"
"Is it?" asked Sarah doubtfully.
"Only square thing to do," the farmer assured her. "I'll tell Warren
before I turn in to-night, then we'll be above board all around. You
like animals, don't you?" he added suddenly.
"When I grow up," she announced, "I'm not going to do a thing but take
care of animals. I'm going to have a farm, like yours, Mr. Hildreth,
and I'm going to have seven automobiles with men to drive 'em. They'll
go through all the cities and take the poor sick horses and dogs and
cats and--and birds and things and bring 'em back to my farm. Then
I'll doctor them up and cure them."
"So you think you'll be a doctor, hey?" said the farmer lazily.
"An animal doctor," Sarah affirmed. "I won't take care of sick folks,
'cause they're cross; Shirley is going to be that kind of a doctor
maybe. Animals are never cross, no matter how sick they are. Did you
know that, Mr. Hildreth?"
"Come to think of it, I do," Mr. Hildreth admitted, enjoying the
conversation immensely. "But where'll you get money to run this farm,
Sarah? Don't you think you ought to raise some crops?"
Sarah pondered.
"Rich and Warren can do that," she decided easily. "They'll be through
agricultural college by then and perhaps they'll like to run my farm.
But Warren will have to buy a tractor, because I won't let my horses
plow. None of the animals are going to work, when I take care of them."
Mr. Hildreth glanced at her queerly.
"You're just like the rest," he said grimly. "You think of work as
something to side-step, don't you? Let me tell you, Sarah, that unless
you give these animal friends of yours something to do and train them
to do it regularly, you will have to spend all your days dosing them."
"You mean they'll be sick?" asked Sarah, worried at once.
"Of course they'll be sick," declared Mr. Hildreth. "Animals and
people need work to keep them well. Ask your brother."
"Then I'll let my animals work just enough," said Sarah thoughtfully.
"Not too much, but just enough. And maybe I'll let Warren plow with
the horses."
"I would, if I were you," agreed Mr. Hildreth. "You work pretty hard
yourself, don't you, Sarah?"
Sarah stared at him suspiciously. Apparently he was serious.
"Of course," continued Mr. Hildreth, "you call it play. But when I see
you flying over this farm and trying to be in two places at once and
cram half a hundred experiences into one short day, I think you work as
hard as I do. Maybe harder. Don't you ever get tired, Sarah?"
"When I go to bed," responded that active person. "But I'm not tired
when I first go," she added hastily. "Mother or Hugh or Winnie are
always making me go to bed before I'm sleepy. I want to study the
insects on the lawn, but how can I when I have to go to bed?"
"You're not the first person who has wanted to turn night into day,"
said Mr. Hildreth calmly. "It's lucky for some of us that you're not
successful. If we had to keep an eye on you all night, Sarah, as well
as during the waking hours, think how little else we'd get done."
Sarah had a shrewd suspicion that he was laughing at her. She turned
to go.
"Wait a minute--wouldn't you like a pet?" said the farmer quickly.
"Oh, yes!" replied Sarah.
"I was thinking you might like a baby pig," Mr. Hildreth informed her.
"There's one in the last litter that isn't getting a fair chance. He's
a runt and crowded out. If you want to take him and bring him up on a
bottle, you can have him for your own."
"I'll take him," said Sarah quickly. "I can learn how to feed him,
can't I? And he can sleep with me--or at least in my room--I knew a
girl who had a little puppy and he slept in her doll's bed. Thank you
ever so much, Mr. Hildreth."
So it was arranged that Sarah was to have her pig in the morning and
she and Mr. Hildreth parted excellent friends.
She did not go back to the house but, instead, started off down the
road over which, she knew, Warren and Richard, Rosemary and Shirley,
must come. She had walked perhaps half a mile, when she saw them.
Sarah became unaccountably shy. She walked more and more slowly and,
reaching Rosemary, who was ahead, she found she had nothing to say.
"Hello, dear," Rosemary greeted her, wondering why Sarah had changed
her mind and come to meet them. "Do you feel better?"
"Come back and walk with me, Sarah," said Warren pleasantly, for he had
determined to put Sarah at her ease about the grain bins.
"A fuss like that is nothing to worry about," he had told Richard, "and
I don't like to see a kid unhappy over such trifles."
Sarah waited till the other three were a little ahead and then she
slipped a confiding hand into Warren's.
"I told Mr. Hildreth," she whispered, "and he wasn't cross one bit; and
I'm going to have a baby pig for my own and bring it up on a bottle."
Warren's face was as bright as the one she lifted to his.
"Why Sarah Willis!" he said joyfully. "Why Sarah! You went to Mr.
Hildreth about those silly grain bins? You needn't have done that--I
meant to tell you not to worry. But, of course, I'm glad you did tell
him."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Shirley, looking back. "Did
Sarah tell Mr. Hildreth something?"
Richard's glance rested sharply on Sarah. He smiled, grasping what had
happened with his usual quickness.
"You're a brick, Sarah!" he complimented her. "A brick--that's what
you are."
But Sarah was eager to tell about her pig and Warren wished to change
the topic so no more was said then. Instead Richard addressed himself
to the three Willis girls collectively.
"I think you've about explored Rainbow Hill," he announced, "at least
Sarah has. She's exhausted its possibilities, if I'm a fair judge. I
think you need some new interests."
"Yes," agreed Shirley with perfect gravity and not the slightest idea
of his meaning, "yes we do, Richard."
They all laughed, but Richard was not to side-tracked.
"There's the Gay family," he said. "You don't know them, but some of
the children must be about your own age."
Rosemary thought "Gay" a pretty name and said so while Sarah reproved
her. "Gay isn't a name, silly; it means they always have a good time.
Doesn't it, Richard?"
"Well no, not in this case," replied Richard, "but I'm going over there
to-morrow morning and, if you like, you may come along and get
acquainted."