Then we all laughed together, and so got acquainted very pleasantly;
for I have observed that a little ripple of fun sets people nearer
together than a whole ocean of calm conversation.
After supper Uncle Jacob read the paper aloud, while the girls washed up
the dishes. All were eager to hear; and I found they kept the run of
affairs quite as well as townspeople. When there was too much rattling
of dishes for Uncle Jacob to be heard, and the girls lost some important
item, he was always willing to read it over. Little Tommy was rolled up
in a shawl and set down in the rocking-chair (that cushion did come out
of it) while his mother mended his clothes. This was the way he usually
got punished for tearing them. He was done up in a shawl, arms and all,
and kept in the rocking-chair while the clothes were being mended, and
he was obliged to remain pretty quiet, or the chair would tip. Aunt
Phebe said Tommy was so careless, something must be done, and keeping
him still was the worst punishment he could have.
When the girls finished their dishes and took out their sewing, and were
going to light the large lamp, their mother said that we mustn’t think
of settling ourselves for the evening. She said we must all go in to
grandmother’s, for she’d be dreadful lonely, missing Billy so.
Then Aunt Phebe told me how her nephew, Billy, a ten-year old boy, had
gone away to school only the day before, and how they all missed him.
“Isn’t he pretty young to go away to school?” I asked.
“That’s what I told his father,” said she.
“His father sent him away to keep him,” said Uncle Jacob. “Grandmother
was spoiling him.”
“Ruining the boy with kindness?” said Lucy Maria.
“Well,” said Aunt Phebe, “I suppose ’t was so. I know ’t was so. But we
did hate to have Billy go!”
Uncle Jacob then took me across the garden, and introduced me to Mr.
Carver, the father of William Henry, and to Grandmother,--old Mrs.
Carver, as the neighbors called her.
She was a smiling, blue-eyed old lady, though with a little bit of an
anxious look just between the eyes. I thought there was no doubt about
her being a grandmother that would spoil boys.
“Why, there’s Towser, now?” said Uncle Jacob. “He didn’t come to meet me
to-night.”
“He’s been there, off and on, pretty much all day,” said grandmother.
“You see what he’s got his head on don’t you?”
“Billy’s old boots!” said Uncle Jacob.
“Yes. He set a good deal by Billy. I haven’t put the boots away yet,”
she said, with a sigh.
“Here, Towser! come here, sir!” cried Uncle Jacob.
Towser was a big, shaggy, clever-looking dog. He got up slowly, sniffed
at my trousers, then walked to Uncle Jacob, then round the room, then to
the door, then up stairs and down again, and then back he went and lay
down by the boots.
“He misses my grandson,” said grandmother to me, trying to smile about
it.
The little girl, Georgiana, sat on a cricket, holding a kitten, tying
and untying its ribbon. A square of patchwork had fallen on the floor.
She stooped to pick it up and dropped her spool. That rolled away
towards the door, and kitty jumped for it and soon got the thread in a
tangle. The door opened so suddenly that she hopped up about two feet
into the air and tumbled head over heels.
It was Lucy Maria who opened the door. The other girls came soon after;
and when Tommy was asleep Aunt Phebe came too. We had a very sociable
time. I don’t call myself a talker, but I didn’t mind talking there,
they seemed so easy, just like one’s own folks. I told grandmother many
things about the contrabands, and about Southern life, and Southern
people, and about soldier life and battles and rations and making raids,
and the Washington hospitals, and how needy the contrabands were, and
about my barrel. “Poor creatures!” said she. “I must look up some things
for them to-morrow.” Aunt Phebe thought there might be a good many
things lying about that would be of use to folks who hadn’t anything.
“Billy’s boots!” cried Hannah Jane.
“Why, yes,” said her mother, “no use keeping boots for a growing boy.”
This and other remarks brought us back to William Henry again, and
grandmother seemed glad of it. She liked to keep talking about her boy.
“I shall feel very anxious,” she said. “I hope he will write soon as he
gets there. I told him he’d better write every day, so I could be sure
just how he was. For if well one day, he mightn’t be the next.”
“O grandmother, that’s too bad!” said Lucy Maria. “’T is cruel to ask a
boy to write every day!”
“I wouldn’t worry, mother,” said Aunt Phebe. “Billy’s always been a well
child.”
“These strong constitutions,” said grandmother, “when they do take
anything, ’t is apt to go hard with ’em.”
“He’s taken pretty much everything that can be given to him already,”
said Aunt Phebe.
“I suppose they’ll put clothes enough on his bed,” said grandmother. “I
can’t bear to think of his sleeping cold nights.”
“Perhaps they have blankets in that part of the country,” said Uncle
Jacob.
“But people are not always thoughtful about it,” said grandmother. “I
really hope he’ll take care of himself, and not be climbing up
everywhere. Houses and trees were bad enough; but now they have
gymnastic poles and everything else, to tempt boys off the ground. O
dear! when we think of everything that might happen to boys, ’t is a
wonder one of them ever lives to grow up. Isn’t there a pond near by?”
“O yes,” said Lucy Maria, “Crooked Pond. That’s what gives the name to
the school,--Crooked Pond School.”
“I hope he won’t be whipped,” said his little sister.
“Whipped!” cried Aunt Phebe, “I should like to see anybody whipping our
Billy!”
“O mother, I shouldn’t,” said Matilda.
“’T isn’t an impossible thing,” said grandmother. “He’s quick. Billy’s
good-hearted, but he’s quick. He might speak up. I gave him a charge how
to behave. But then, what’s a boy’s memory? I don’t suppose he’ll
remember one half the things I told him. I meant to have charged him
over again, the last thing, not to stay out in the rain and get wet,
where there’s nobody to see to his clothes being dried.”
“Well,” said Uncle Jacob, “if a boy doesn’t know enough to go into the
house when it rains, he better come home?”
“What I hope is,” said Aunt Phebe, “that he’ll keep himself looking
decent.”
“If he does,” said Lucy Maria, “then ’twill be the first time. The poor
child never seemed to have much luck about keeping spruced up. If
anybody here ever saw William Henry with no buttons off and both shoes
tied, and no rip anywhere, let ’em raise their hands!”
Everybody laughed. I thought grandmother’s eye wandered round the
circle, as if half taking it all in earnest, and half hoping some hand
would go up. But no hand went up.
“Billy always was hard on his clothes,” she said, with a sigh. “If he
only keeps well I won’t say a word; but there’s always danger of boys
eating unwholesome things, where there’s nobody to deny them.”
“Billy’s stomach’s his own, and he must learn to have the care of it,”
said Mr. Carver.
Mr. Carver seemed a very quiet, thoughtful man, and of quite a different
turn from his brother.
I suggested that boarding-house diet was apt to be plain; and then told
grandmother about a nephew of mine, a nice boy, who was rather older
than her grandson, who was named after me, and of whom I thought
everything. I told her he had been away at school a year, and that he
enjoyed himself, and went ahead in his studies, and never had a sick
day, and came home with better manners than he had when he went away. As
this pleased her, I said everything I could think of about my nephew,
including some anecdotes of little Silas, when he was quite small; and
she told a few about William Henry, the others helping her out, now and
then, with some missing items.
Uncle Jacob said he shouldn’t dare to say how many times she’d been
frightened almost to death about Billy. Many and many a time she was
sure he was lost, or drowned, or run over, or carried off, and would
never come back alive; but he always managed to come out straight at
last. Uncle Jacob said that if all the worry that was worried in this
world were piled up together, ’t would make a mountain; but if all of it
that needn’t be worried were knocked off, what was left wouldn’t be
bigger than a huckleberry hill.
Mr. Carver said there was one thing which made him entirely willing to
trust William Henry away, and that was, he had always been a boy of
principle. “I have watched him pretty closely,” said Mr. Carver, “and
have noticed that he has a kind of pride about him that will not permit
him to lie, or equivocate in any way.”
“That’s true!” cried Aunt Phebe. “True enough! Billy don’t always look
fit to be seen, but he isn’t deceitful. I’ll say that for him!”
“When he went to our school,” said Matilda, “and was in the class below
me, and there was a fuss among the boys, and all of ’em told it a
different way, the teacher used to say she would ask William Henry, and
then she could tell just how it happened.”
“He couldn’t have a better name than that,” said Mr. Carver.
Grandmother wiped her eyes, she seemed so gratified that her boy’s good
qualities were remembered at last.
I am almost certain that an editor should not be so long in telling his
story. But I should like to say a little more about that first
night,--just a very little more.
* * * * *
Grandmother wouldn’t hear of my going to a hotel. Anybody that had been
a soldier, and was doing good, should never go from her house to find a
night’s lodging. And she might as well have said, particularly anybody
that had a little Silas away at school, for I saw she felt it.
It required very little urging to make me stay; for in all my travels I
had never met with a pleasanter set of people. My choice was offered me,
whether to lodge in the front chamber, or in the little back chamber
where Billy slept. Of course I chose the last; for people’s best, front,
spare chambers never suit me very well.
[Illustration]
Billy’s room was a snug little room, low in the walls, and papered with
flowery paper. There were two windows, the curtains to which were made
of paper like that on the walls. You had to roll them up with your
hands, and tie them with a string that went over the top. The room was
over the sink-room, and in going into it we stepped one step down. There
was no carpet on the floor, excepting a strip by the bedside and a mat
before the table. Grandmother said the table Billy and she made
together, so the legs didn’t stand quite true. It was covered with
calico, and more calico was puckered on round the edge and came down to
the floor. That was done, she said, to make a place for his boots and
shoes. She thought ’t was well for a boy to have a place for his things,
even if he did always leave them somewhere else. There was nothing
under the table but one rubber boot, with the rubber mostly cut off, and
some pieces of new pine, easy to whittle, that Billy had picked up and
stowed away there. A narrow looking-glass hung over the table. It had a
queer picture at the top, of two Japanese figures. The glass had a
little crack in one corner,--cracked by his ball bouncing up when he was
trying it. Some green tissue-paper hung around this fracture with a very
innocent, ornamental air. Not far from the glass I observed a rusty
jack-knife stuck in the wall, close to the window-frame; and on its
handle was hanging a string of birds’-eggs. In stepping up to examine
these I stumbled against an old hair-covered trunk, quite a large one.
The cover seemed a little askew, and not inclined to shut. This trunk
was the color of a red cow, and for aught I know was covered with the
skin of a red cow. In the middle of the cover the letters W. C. were
printed in brass nails, which led me to guess that the trunk had
belonged to William Henry’s father. Grandmother raised the cover, to see
what kept it from shutting, and found ’t was a great scraggly piece of
sassafras (saxifax) root, which lay on top.
There was everything in that trunk,--everything. Of course I don’t mean
meeting-houses, or steamboats, or anacondas; but everything a boy would
be likely to have. I saw picture papers, leather straps, old
pocket-books, a pair of dividers, the hull of a boat, a pair of
boot-pullers, a chrysalis, several penholders, a large clam-shell, a few
pocket combs,--comb parts gone,--fishing-lines, reels, bobs, sinkers, a
bullet-mould, arrows, a bag of marbles, a china egg, a rule, hammers, a
red comforter, two odd mittens, “that had lost the mates of ’em,” a
bird-call, a mask, an empty cologne-bottle, a dime novel, odd
cards,--all these, and more, were visible by merely stirring the top
layer a little. Also several tangles of twine, twining and intertwining
among the mass. Grandmother shook up the things some,--by means of a
handle which probably belonged to a hatchet, but the hatchet part was
buried,--and I saw that the bottom was covered with marbles, dominos,
nails, bottles, slate-pencils, bits of brass clock machinery, and all
the innumerable nameless, shapeless things which would be likely to
settle down to the bottom of a boy’s trunk. Grandmother said she should
set it to rights if it weren’t for fish-hooks; but anybody’s hands going
in there would be likely to get fish-hooks stuck into them.
In one end of the trunk was quite a fanciful box. It was nothing but a
common pine box, painted black, with “cut out” pictures pasted on it.
There were ladies’ faces, generals’ heads, bugs, horses, butterflies,
chairs, ships, birds, and in the centre of the cover, outside, there was
a large red rose on its stalk. At the centre, inside, was a laughing, or
rather a grinning face, cut from some comic magazine. In this box was
kept some of his more precious treasures,--a little brass anchor, a
silver pencil-case, a whole set of dominos, and a ball, very prettily
worked, orange-peel pattern, in many colors. This was a present from his
teacher. There was also a curious pearl-handled knife, with the blades
broken short off. She said he never felt so badly about breaking any
knife as when that got broken, for it was one his cousin brought him
home from sea. He was keeping it to have new blades put in.
“How much this trunk reminds me of little Silas’s bureau-drawer!” I
said, taking up an old writing-book. As I spoke several bits of paper
fell out and among them were some very funny pictures, done with a
lead-pencil and then inked over.
“What are these?” I asked. “Does he draw?”
“Well--not exactly,” she answered,--“nothing that can be called drawing.
He tries sometimes to copy what he sees.”
“I suppose I may look at them,” I said, picking up one of the bits of
paper. “Pray what is this?”
Grandmother put on her spectacles, and turned the paper round, as if
trying to find the up and down of it.
[Illustration]
“O, this is Uncle Jacob chasing the calf,” said she; “those things that
look like elbows are meant for his legs kicking up. And on this piece
he’s tried to make the old gobbler flying at Georgiana. You see the
turkey is as big as she is. But maybe you don’t know which the turkey
is! That one is the fat man, and that one is the cat and kittens. And
that one is a dandy, making a bow. He saw one over at the hotel that he
took it from.”
She was sitting by the bed, and as she named them, spread them out upon
it, one by one, along with some others I have not mentioned, all very
comical. When I had finished laughing over them I said,--
“I should like to send these pictures in my barrel. ’T would give the
little sick contrabands something to laugh at.”
“Well, I’ll tell Billy when he comes,” she answered, then gathered them
up and smoothed the quilt again.
The bedstead was a low one, without any posts, except that each leg
ended at the top with a little round, flat head or knob. The quilt was
made of light and dark patchwork. Grandmother told me, lowering her
voice, that Billy’s mother made that patchwork when she was a little
girl just learning to sew; but ’t was kept laid away, and about the last
work she ever did was to set it together. And ’t was her request that
Billy should have it on his bed. She said Billy was a very _feeling_
boy, though he didn’t say much. One time, a couple years ago, she hung
that quilt out to blow, and forgot to take it in till after the dew
began to fall, so, being a little damp, she put on another one. But next
morning she looked in, and there ’t was, over him, spread on all skewy!
“Sometimes I think,” she added, “that boys have more feeling than we
think for!”
“I know they have!” I answered.
A picture of William Henry’s mother hung opposite the bed. It was not a
very handsome face, nor a pretty face. But it had such an earnest,
loving, wistful expression, that I could not help exclaiming,
“Beautiful!”
“Yes, she was a beautiful woman. We all loved her. She was just like a
daughter to me. Billy doesn’t know what he’s lost, and ’t is well he
don’t. I try to be a mother to him; but they say,” said the
tender-hearted old lady,--“they say a grandmother isn’t fit to have the
bringing up of a child! Billy has his faults.”
“Now if I were a child,” I exclaimed, “I should rather you would have
the bringing up of me than anybody I know of! And ’t is my opinion, from
what I hear, that you’ve done well by Billy. Of course boys are boys,
and don’t always do us they ought to. Now there’s little Silas. He’s
been a world of trouble first and last. But then boys soon get big
enough to be ashamed of all their little bad ways. The biggest part of
’em like good men best, and mean to be good men. And I think Billy’s
going to grow up a capital fellow! A capital fellow! If a boy’s
true-hearted he’ll come out all right. And your boy is, isn’t he?”
“O very!” she said. “Very!”
I was so glad to think, after the old lady had gone down, that I’d said
something which, if she kept awake, thinking about the boy, would be a
comfort to her.
* * * * *
Next morning grandmother brought out quite an armful of old clothes. A
poor old couple, living near, she said, took most of hers and Mr.
Carver’s; but what few there were of Billy’s that were decent to send I
might have. A couple of linen jackets, a Scotch cap, two pairs of thin
trousers, not much worn, but outgrown, a small overcoat, several pairs
of stockings, and some shoes. And the boots also, and some
underclothing, that William Henry might have worn longer, she said, if
he were only living at home, where she could put a stitch in ’em now and
then.
Grandmother sighed as she emptied the pockets of crumbles, green apples,
reins, bullets, and knotted, gray, balled-up pocket-handkerchiefs. Among
the clothes she brought out a funny little uniform, which I had seen
hanging up in his room,--one that he had when a soldier, or trainer, as
she called it, in a military company, formed near the beginning of the
war. It consisted of a blue flannel sack, edged with red braid, red
flannel Zouave trousers, and a blue flannel cap, bound with red, and
having a square visor. That uniform would fit some little contraband,
she said.
“Hadn’t you better keep those?” I asked. “Won’t he want them?”
“O no,” she said. “He’s outgrown them. And ’t is no use keeping them for
moths to get into.”
She gave me some picture-books, and two primers, a roll of linen, and
quite a good blanket, all of which I received thankfully.
In rolling up the different articles, I saw her eye resting so lovingly
on the little uniform, that I said, “Here, grandmother, hadn’t you
better take back these?”
“O, I guess not,” she answered. “I guess you better send them. But,” she
added a moment after, “perhaps they might as well stay till you send
another barrel.”
“Just exactly as well,” I said. And the old lady seemed as if she had
recovered a lost treasure.
Aunt Phebe added a good many valuable articles, so that by the time
Uncle Jacob was ready to start I had collected two immense bundles, and
felt almost brave enough to face another barrel. For they all said they
would beg from their friends, and save things, and that I must certainly
come again.
“For you know,” said Aunt Phebe, “’t is a great deal better to hear you
tell things than to read about them in the newspapers.”
They stood about the door to see us off, and Matilda stroked the old
horse, and talked to him as if he understood. She broke off two heads
of phlox, red and white, and fastened them in behind his ear. Uncle
Jacob told me, as we rode along, that the old horse really expected to
be patted and talked to before starting. And indeed I noticed myself
that after being dressed up he stepped off with an exceedingly satisfied
air, just as I have seen some little girls,--and boys too, for that
matter, and occasionally grown people.
* * * * *
But it is quite time to give you the Letters. There should be more of
them, for the correspondence covers a period of about two years. ’T is
true that, after the first, William Henry did not write nearly as often.
But still there are many missing. Little Tommy cut up some into strings
of boys and girls, and at one time when grandmother wasn’t very well,
and had to hire help, the girl look some to kindle fire with. The old
lady said she was sitting up in her arm-chair, by the fireplace one day,
when she saw, in the corner, a piece of paper with writing on it, half
burnt up. She poked it out with a yardstick, and ’t was one of Billy’s
letters! Quite a number which were perfect have been omitted. This is
because that some coming between were missing; and so, as the children
say, there wouldn’t be any sense to them. Others contained mostly
private matters. Very few were dated. This is, however, of small
importance, as the Letters probably will never be brought forward to
decide a law case.