PATTY had been searching for eggs in the barn chamber, and coming down
the ladder from the haymow spied her father washing the wagon by the
well-side near the shed door. Cephas Cole kept store for him at meal
hours and whenever trade was unusually brisk, and the Baxter yard was so
happily situated that Old Foxy could watch both house and store.
There never was a good time to ask Deacon Baxter a favor, therefore this
moment would serve as well as any other, so, approaching him near enough
to be heard through the rubbing and splashing, but no nearer than was
necessary Patty said:--
“Father, can I go up to Ellen Wilson's this afternoon and stay to tea? I
won't start till I've done a good day's work and I'll come home early.”
“What do you want to go gallivantin' to the neighbors for? I never saw
anything like the girls nowadays; highty-tighty, flauntin', traipsin',
triflin' trollops, ev'ry one of 'em, that's what they are, and Ellen
Wilson's one of the triflin'est. You're old enough now to stay to home
where you belong and make an effort to earn your board and clothes,
which you can't, even if you try.”
Spunk, real, Simon-pure spunk, started somewhere in Patty and coursed
through her blood like wine.
“If a girl's old enough to stay at home and work, I should think she
was old enough to go out and play once in a while.” Patty was still too
timid to make this remark more than a courteous suggestion, so far as
its tone was concerned.
“Don't answer me back; you're full of new tricks, and you've got to stop
'em, right where you are, or there'll be trouble. You were whistlin'
just now up in the barn chamber; that's one of the things I won't have
round my premises,--a whistlin' girl.”
“'T was a Sabbath-School hymn that I was whistling!” This with a
creditable imitation of defiance.
“That don't make it any better. Sing your hymns if you must make a noise
while you're workin'.”
“It's the same mouth that makes the whistle and sings the song, so I
don't see why one's any wickeder than the other.”
“You don't have to see,” replied the Deacon grimly; “all you have to do
is to mind when you're spoken to. Now run 'long 'bout your work.”
“Can't I go up to Ellen's, then?”
“What's goin' on up there?”
“Just a frolic. There's always a good time at Ellen's, and I would so
like the sight of a big, rich house now and then!”
“'Just a frolic.' Land o' Goshen, hear the girl! 'Sight of a big, rich
house,' indeed!--Will there be any boys at the party?”
“I s'pose so, or 't wouldn't be a frolic,” said Patty with awful daring;
“but there won't be many; only a few of Mark's friends.”
[Illustration: “Well, there ain't going to be no more argyfyin’!”]
“Well, there ain't goin' to be no more argyfyin'! I won't have any girl
o' mine frolickin' with boys, so that's the end of it. You're kind
o' crazy lately, riggin' yourself out with a ribbon here and a flower
there, and pullin' your hair down over your ears. Why do you want to
cover your ears up? What are they for?”
“To hear you with, father,” Patty replied, with honey-sweet voice and
eyes that blazed.
“Well, I hope they'll never hear anything worse,” replied her father,
flinging a bucket of water over the last of the wagon wheels.
“THEY COULDN'T!” These words were never spoken aloud, but oh! how Patty
longed to shout them with a clarion voice as she walked away in perfect
silence, her majestic gait showing, she hoped, how she resented the
outcome of the interview.
“I've stood up to father!” she exclaimed triumphantly as she entered the
kitchen and set down her yellow bowl of eggs on the table. “I stood up
to him, and answered him back three times!”
Waitstill was busy with her Saturday morning cooking, but she turned in
alarm.
“Patty, what have you said and done? Tell me quickly!”
“I 'argyfied,' but it didn't do any good; he won't let me go to Ellen's
party.”
Waitstill wiped her floury hands and put them on her sister's shoulders.
“Hear what I say, Patty: you must not argue with father, whatever he
says. We don't love him and so there isn't the right respect in our
hearts, but at least there can be respect in our manners.”
“I don't believe I can go on for years, holding in, Waitstill!” Patty
whimpered.
“Yes, you can. I have!”
“You're different, Waitstill.”
“I wasn't so different at sixteen, but that's five years ago, and I've
got control of my tongue and my temper since then. Sometime, perhaps,
when I have a grievance too great to be rightly borne, sometime when you
are away from here in a home of your own, I shall speak out to father;
just empty my heart of all the disappointment and bitterness and
rebellion. Somebody ought to tell him the truth, and perhaps it will be
me!”
“I wish it could be me,” exclaimed Patty vindictively, and with an equal
disregard of grammar.
“You would speak in temper, I'm afraid, Patty, and that would spoil all.
I'm sorry you can't go up to Ellen's,” she sighed, turning back to her
work; “you don't have pleasure enough for one of your age; still, don't
fret; something may happen to change things, and anyhow the weather is
growing warmer, and you and I have so many more outings in summer-time.
Smooth down your hair, child; there are straws in it, and it's all rough
with the wind. I don't like flying hair about a kitchen.”
“I wish my hair was flying somewhere a thousand miles from here; or at
least I should wish it if it did not mean leaving you; for oh. I'm so
miserable and disappointed and unhappy!”
Waitstill bent over the girl as she flung herself down beside the table
and smoothed her shoulder gently.
“There, there, dear; it isn't like my gay little sister to cry. What is
the matter with you to-day, Patty?”
“I suppose it's the spring,” she said, wiping her eyes with her apron
and smiling through her tears. “Perhaps I need a dose of sulphur and
molasses.”
“Don't you feel well as common?”
“Well? I feel too well! I feel as if I was a young colt shut up in an
attic. I want to kick up my heels, batter the door down, and get out
into the pasture. It's no use talking, Waity;--I can't go on living
without a bit of pleasure and I can't go on being patient even for
your sake. If it weren't for you, I'd run away as Job did; and I never
believed Moses slipped on the logs; I'm sure he threw himself into the
river, and so should I if I had the courage!”
“Stop, Patty, stop, dear! You shall have your bit of pasture, at least.
I'll do some of your indoor tasks for you, and you shall put on your
sunbonnet and go out and dig the dandelion greens for dinner. Take the
broken knife and a milkpan and don't bring in so much earth with them as
you did last time. Dry your eyes and look at the green things growing.
Remember how young you are and how many years are ahead of you! Go
along, dear!”
Waitstill went about her work with rather a heavy heart. Was life going
to be more rather than less difficult, now that Patty was growing up?
Would she he able to do her duty both by father and sister and keep
peace in the household, as she had vowed, in her secret heart, always to
do? She paused every now and then to look out of the window and wave an
encouraging hand to Patty. The girl's bonnet was off, and her uncovered
head blazed like red gold in the sunlight. The short young grass was
dotted with dandelion blooms, some of them already grown to huge disks
of yellow, and Patty moved hither and thither, selecting the younger
weeds, deftly putting the broken knife under their roots and popping
them into the tin pan. Presently, for Deacon Baxter had finished the
wagon and gone down the hill to relieve Cephas Cole at the counter,
Patty's shrill young whistle floated into the kitchen, but with a
mischievous glance at the open window she broke off suddenly and began
to sing the words of the hymn with rather more emphasis and gusto than
strict piety warranted.
“There'll be SOMEthing in heav-en for chil-dren to do,
None are idle in that bless-ed land:
There'll be WORK for the heart. There'll be WORK for the mind,
And emPLOYment for EACH little hand.
“There'll be SOME-thing to do,
There'll be SOME-thing to do,
There'll be SOME-thing for CHIL-dren to do!
On that bright blessed shore where there's joy evermore,
There'll be SOME-thing for CHIL-DREN to do.”
Patty's young existence being full to the brim of labor, this view of
heaven never in the least appealed to her and she rendered the hymn with
little sympathy. The main part of the verse was strongly accented by
jabs at the unoffending dandelion roots, but when the chorus came she
brought out the emphatic syllables by a beat of the broken knife on the
milkpan.
This rendition of a Sabbath-School classic did not meet Waitstill's
ideas of perfect propriety, but she smiled and let it pass, planning
some sort of recreation for a stolen half-hour of the afternoon. It
would have to be a walk through the pasture into the woods to see what
had grown since they went there a fortnight ago. Patty loved people
better than Nature, but failing the one she could put up with the other,
for she had a sense of beauty and a pagan love of color. There would
be pale-hued innocence and blue and white violets in the moist places,
thought Waitstill, and they would have them in a china cup on the
supper-table. No, that would never do, for last time father had knocked
them over when he was reaching for the bread, and in a silent protest
against such foolishness got up from the table and emptied theirs into
the kitchen sink.
“There's a place for everything,” he said when he came back, “and the
place for flowers is outdoors.”
Then in the pine woods there would be, she was sure, Star of Bethlehem,
Solomon's Seal, the white spray of groundnuts and bunchberries. Perhaps
they could make a bouquet and Patty would take it across the fields
to Mrs. Boynton's door. She need not go in, and thus they would not
be disobeying their father's command not to visit that “crazy Boynton
woman.”
Here Patty came in with a pan full of greens and the sisters sat down in
the sunny window to get them ready for the pot.
“I'm calmer,” the little rebel allowed. “That's generally the way it
turns out with me. I get into a rage, but I can generally sing it off!”
“You certainly must have got rid of a good deal of temper this morning,
by the way your voice sounded.”
“Nobody can hear us in this out-of-the-way place. It's easy enough to
see that the women weren't asked to say anything when the men settled
where the houses should be built! The men weren't content to stick them
on the top of a high hill, or half a mile from the stores, but put them
back to the main road, taking due care to cut the sink-window where
their wives couldn't see anything even when they were washing dishes.”
“I don't know that I ever thought about it in that way”; and Waitstill
looked out of the window in a brown study while her hands worked with
the dandelion greens. “I've noticed it, but I never supposed the men did
it intentionally.”
“No, you wouldn't,” said Patty with the pessimism of a woman of ninety,
as she stole an admiring glance at her sister. Patty's own face,
irregular, piquant, tantalizing, had its peculiar charm, and her
brilliant skin and hair so dazzled the masculine beholder that he took
note of no small defects; but Waitstill was beautiful; beautiful even
in her working dress of purple calico. Her single braid of hair, the
Foxwell hair, that in her was bronze and in Patty pale auburn, was wound
once around her fine head and made to stand a little as it went across
the front. It was a simple, easy, unconscious fashion of her own, quite
different from anything done by other women in her time and place, and
it just suited her dignity and serenity. It looked like a coronet, but
it was the way she carried her head that gave you the fancy, there was
such spirit and pride in the poise of it on the long graceful neck. Her
eyes were as clear as mountain pools shaded by rushes, and the strength
of the face was softened by the sweetness of the mouth.
Patty never let the conversation die out for many seconds at a time and
now she began again. “My sudden rages don't match my name very well,
but, of course, mother didn't know how I was going to turn out when she
called me Patience, for I was nothing but a squirming little bald, red
baby; but my name really is too ridiculous when you think about it.”
Waitstill laughed as she said: “It didn't take you long to change it!
Perhaps Patience was a hard word for a baby to say, but the moment you
could talk you said, 'Patty wants this' and 'Patty wants that.”'
“Did Patty ever get it? She never has since, that's certain! And look
at your name: it's 'Waitstill,' yet you never stop a moment. When you're
not in the shed or barn, or chicken-house, or kitchen or attic, or
garden-patch, you are working in the Sunday School or the choir.”
It seemed as if Waitstill did not intend to answer this arraignment of
her activities. She rose and crossed the room to put the pan of greens
in the sink, preparing to wash them.
Taking the long-handled dipper from the nail, she paused a moment before
plunging it into the water pail; paused, and leaning her elbow on a
corner of the shelf over the sink, looked steadfastly out into the
orchard.
Patty watched her curiously and was just going to offer a penny for
her thoughts when Waitstill suddenly broke the brief silence by saying:
“Yes, I am always busy; it's better so, but all the same, Patty, I'm
waiting,--inside! I don't know for what, but I always feel that I am
waiting!”