Carolyn May wanted _awfully_ to speak to Miss Amanda. The brown lady
with the pretty roses in her cheeks sat on the log by the brook, her
face turned from the path Joseph Stagg and his little niece were coming
along. She must have known they were coming down the glade and who they
were, for nobody could mistake the identity of Prince, and the dog would
not be out in the woods with anybody but his little mistress.
Miss Parlow, however, kept her face steadily turned in the opposite
direction. And Uncle Joe was quite as stubborn. He stared straight ahead
down the path without letting the figure on the log get into the focus
of his vision.
Carolyn May did not see how it was possible for two people who loved
each other, or who ever had loved each other, to act so. They must have
thought a great deal of each other once upon a time, for Chet Gormley's
mother had said so. The very fact that they now acted as they did proved
to the observant child that the situation was not normal.
She wanted to seize Uncle Joe's hand and whisper to him how pretty Miss
Amanda looked. She wanted to run to the lady and talk to her. Thus far
she had found little opportunity for knowing Miss Amanda Parlow well,
although Carolyn May and the old carpenter were now very good friends.
Hanging to Uncle Joe's hand, but looking longingly at the silent figure
on the log, Carolyn May was going down to the stepping-stones by which
they were to cross the brook, when, suddenly, Prince came to a halt
right at the upper end of the log and his body stiffened.
"What is it, Prince?" whispered his little mistress. "Come here."
But the dog did not move. He even growled--not at Miss Amanda, of course,
but at something on the log. And it was just then that Carolyn May
wanted to scream--and she could not!
For there on the log, raising its flat, wicked head out of an aperture,
its lidless eyes glittering, and its forked tongue shooting in and out
of its jaws, was a snake, a horrid, silent, writhing creature, the look
of which held the little girl horror-stricken and speechless.
Uncle Joe glanced down impatiently, to see what made her hold back so.
The child's feet seemed glued to the earth. She could not take another
step.
Writhing out of the hole in the log and coiling, as it did so, into an
attitude to strike, the snake looked to be dangerous, indeed. The fact
that it was only a large blacksnake and non-poisonous made no difference
at that moment to the dog or to the little girl--nor to Joseph Stagg when
he saw it.
It was coiled right at Miss Amanda's back. She did not see it, for she
was quite as intent upon keeping her face turned from Mr. Stagg as he
had been determined to ignore her presence.
After all, it is the appearance of a snake that terrifies some people.
They do not stop to question whether it is furnished with a poison sac
or not. The very look of the creature freezes their blood.
Carolyn May was shaking and helpless. Not so Prince. He repeated his
challenging growl and then sprang at the vibrating head. Miss Amanda
uttered a stifled scream and jumped up from the log, whirling to see
what was happening behind her.
Joseph Stagg dropped Carolyn May's hand and leaped forward with his
walking-stick raised to strike. But the mongrel dog was there first. He
wisely caught the blacksnake behind the head, his strong, sharp teeth
severing its vertebræ.
"Good dog!" shouted Mr. Stagg excitedly. "Fine dog!"
"Oh, Miss Amanda!" shrieked Carolyn May. "I--I thought he was going to
sting you--I did!"
She ran to the startled woman and clung to her hand. Prince nosed the
dead snake. Mr. Stagg looked exceedingly foolish. Miss Amanda recovered
her colour and her voice simultaneously.
"What a brave dog yours is, little girl," she said to Carolyn May. "And
I do so despise snakes!" Then she looked directly at Mr. Stagg and bowed
gravely. "I thank you," she said, but so coldly, so Carolyn May thought,
that her voice might have come "just off an iceberg."
"Oh, I didn't do anything--really I didn't," stammered the man. "It was
the dog."
"Oh!" said Miss Amanda.
"Yes," repeated Mr. Stagg, "it was the dog."
Both looked very uncomfortable. Joseph Stagg began to pick up the
scattered chestnuts from the overturned basket. The lady stooped and
whispered to Carolyn May:
"Come to see me, my dear. I want to know you better."
"And Prince?" asked the little girl.
"And Prince, of course."
Then she kissed Carolyn May and slipped quietly away from the brook,
disappearing very quickly in the undergrowth. Uncle Joe stood up, with
the basket in his hand.
"You'd better call the dog away from that snake, Car'lyn May," he said
in a strangely husky voice. "We'll be going."
The little girl approved.
"You surely don't want to eat it, Prince," she told her canine friend.
"Snakes aren't meat, nor even fish. Are they, Uncle Joe?"
"Humph! what d'you s'pose they are, then?" he demanded.
"Why, they're--they're just insects, aren't they? Not even dogs should
eat them," and she urged Prince away from the snake.
The muscles of the "insect" still twitched, and its tail snapped about.
Prince had his doubts as to whether it was really dead or was "playing
possum."
"Is it true, Uncle Joe," Carolyn May asked, "that snakes can't really
die till the sun goes down? You see, it still wiggles. Do--do you s'pose
it's suffering?"
"I guess Prince fixed Mr. Snake, all right, at the first bite," returned
Mr. Stagg. "He's dead. That old idea about the critters holding the
spark of life till after sunset is just a superstition. We can safely
call that fellow dead and leave him."
Joseph Stagg and the little girl went on across the stepping-stones,
while Prince splashed through the water. Carolyn May was thinking about
Miss Amanda Parlow, and she believed her Uncle Joe was, too.
"Uncle Joe," she said, "would that bad old snake have stung Miss
Amanda?"
"Huh? No; I reckon not," admitted Mr. Stagg absent-mindedly.
"Blacksnakes don't bite. A big one like that can squeeze some."
"But you were scared of it--like me and Prince. And for Miss Amanda,"
said Carolyn May, very much in earnest.
"I guess 'most everybody is scared by the sight of a snake, Car'lyn
May."
"But you were scared for Miss Amanda's sake--just the same as I was,"
repeated the little girl decidedly.
"Well?" he growled, looking away, troubled by her insistence.
"Then you don't hate her, do you?" the child pursued. "I'm glad of that,
Uncle Joe, for I like her very much. I think she's a beautiful lady."
To this Uncle Joe said nothing. He was not to be drawn, badger-like, to
the mouth of his den. What he really thought of Miss Amanda he kept to
himself.
"Anyway," sighed Carolyn May at last, "she invited me to come to see
her, now she's home from nursing. And, if you haven't got any objection,
Uncle Joe, I'm going to see her."
"Go ahead," said Mr. Stagg. "I haven't anything to say against it."
But Carolyn May was far from satisfied by this permission. Child as she
was, somehow she had gained an appreciation of the tragedy in the lives
of Joseph Stagg and Amanda Parlow.
That cry the man had uttered when he sprang to Miss Parlow's aid had
been wrenched from the very depths of his being. Nor had Miss Amanda's
emotion been stirred only by the sight of a snake that was already dead
when she had first seen it. Carolyn May had felt the woman's hand
tremble; there had been tears flooding her eyes when she kissed the
little girl.
"I guess," thought Carolyn May wisely, "that when two folks love each
other and get angry, the love's there just the same. Getting mad doesn't
kill it; it only makes 'em feel worse.
"Poor Uncle Joe! Poor Miss Amanda! Maybe if they'd just try to _look up_
and look for brighter things, they'd get over being mad and be happy
again."
She felt that she would really like to advise with somebody on this
point. Aunty Rose, of course, was out of the question. She knew that
people often advised with their minister when they were in trouble, but
to Carolyn May Mr. Driggs did not seem to be just the person with whom
to discuss a love-affair. Kindly as the minister was disposed, he lacked
the magnetism and sympathy that would urge one to take him into one's
confidence in such a delicate matter.
The little girl quite realised that it was delicate. She longed to help
her uncle and Miss Amanda and to bring them together, but she felt, too,
that whatever she did or said might do more harm than good.
When Uncle Joe and Carolyn May returned from this adventurous walk, Mr.
Stagg went heavily into his own room, closed the door, and even locked
it. He went over to the old-fashioned walnut bureau that stood against
the wall between the two windows, and stood before it for some moments
in an attitude of deep reflection. Finally, he drew his bunch of keys
from his pocket and opened one of the two small drawers in the heavy
piece of furniture--the only locked drawer there was.
It contained a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends--old school
exercises, letters from his sister Hannah, an old-fashioned locket
containing locks of his mother's and of his father's hair, broken
trinkets, childish keepsakes. Indeed, such sentimental remembrances as
Joseph Stagg possessed were secreted in this drawer.
From beneath all this litter he drew forth a tintype picture, faded now,
but clear enough to show him the features of the two individuals printed
on the sensitised plate.
He remembered as keenly as though it were yesterday when and how the
picture had been made--at the county fair so many years ago. His own eyes
looked out of the photograph proudly. They were much younger eyes than
they were now.
And the girl beside him in the picture! Sweet as a wild rose, Mandy
Parlow's lovely, calm countenance promised all the beauty and dignity
her matured womanhood had achieved.
"Mandy! Mandy!" he murmured over and over again. "Oh, Mandy! Why? Why?"
He held the tintype for a long, long time in his hand, gazing on it with
eyes that saw the vanished years rather than the portraits themselves.
Finally, he hid the picture away again, closed and locked the drawer
with a sigh, and with slow steps left the room.