BOB LEARNS SOMETHING
Grandma Watterby considered gravely.
"Saunders? Saunders?" she repeated reflectively, while Betty squeezed
Bob's arm in an agony of hopeful excitement. "Seems to me--now wait a
minute, and don't hurry me. When you hurry me, I get mixed in my
mind."
Betty and Bob waited in respectful silence. The old woman rubbed her
forehead fretfully, but gradually her expression cleared.
"There was a Saunders family," she murmured, half to herself. "Three
girls, wasn't there--or was it four? No, three, and only one of 'em
married. What was her name--Faith? Yes, that's it, Faith. A pretty
girl she was, with eyes as blue as a lake and ripply hair she wore in
a big knot. I always did want to see that hair down her back, and one
day I told her so.
"'How long is it, Faith?' I asked her. 'When I was a girl we wore our
hair down our backs in a braid and was thankful to our Creator for
the blessing of a heavy head of hair.'
"Faith laughed and laughed. I can see her now; she had a funny way
of crinkling up her eyes when she laughed.
"'I'll take it down for you, Mrs. Watterby,' she says; and, my land,
if she didn't pull out every pin and let her hair tumble down her
back. It was a foot below her waist, too. I never saw such a head o'
hair."
Bob looked up at the old woman with shining eyes.
"That was my mother," he said quietly.
"Your mother!" Grandma Watterby's tone was startled. Then her face
broke into a wrinkled smile.
"Well, now, ain't I stupid?" she demanded eagerly. "My head isn't
what it used to be. Course you are Faith Saunders' son. She married
David Henderson, a likely young carpenter. Dear, dear, to think
you're Faith's boy. My, wouldn't your grandma have been proud to see
you!"
"Did you know her?" asked Bob hungrily. Deprived of kin for so many
years, even the claim to relatives, he was pathetically starved for
the details taken for granted by the average boy.
"Your grandpa and your grandma," pronounced Grandma Watterby, "died
'bout a year after your ma was married. I guess they never saw you.
Your aunties was all of twenty years older than she was. Your ma was
the youngest of a large family of children, but they all died babies
'cept the two oldest and the youngest. Funny wasn't it?"
Betty waved her braiding wildly.
"Bob was told he had two aunts," she cried excitedly. "They're still
living, aren't they, Grandma Watterby? Do they live near here?"
"I dunno whether they're living or not," said the old woman
cautiously. "Seems like I would 'a' heard if they had died, but mebbe
not. I don't go out much any more, and Emma's no hand for news. Mebbe
they died. I ain't heard a word 'bout the Saunders family for years
and years. Where's your father, boy?"
"He died," said Bob simply. "He was killed in a railroad wreck, and I
guess my mother nearly lost her mind. They found her wandering around
the country, with only her wedding certificate and a few other papers
in a little tin box. And she was sent to the poorhouse. That night I
was born, and she died."
"Dear! dear!" mourned Grandma Watterby, a mist gathering on her
spectacles. "Poor, pretty Faith Saunders! In the poorhouse! The
Saunders was never what you might call rich, but I guess none of 'em
ever saw the inside of the almshouse. And David Henderson was as fine
a young man as you'd want to see. When Faith married him and he took
her away from here, folks thought they'd go far in the world. I
wonder if Hope and Charity ever tried to find out what became of
her?"
"Hope and Charity?" repeated Bob. "Are those my aunts?"
"Yes, Hope and Charity Saunders--they was twins," said the old lady.
"Nice girls, too; and they thought everything of Faith. She was so
much younger and so pretty, and they were like mothers to her. And
she died in the poorhouse! Why didn't they send her baby back to the
girls? They'd 'a' taken care of you and brought you up like their
own."
Bob explained that his mother's mental condition had baffled the
endeavors of the authorities to get information from her regarding
her home and friends, and that she had evidently walked so many miles
from the scene of the wreck that no attempt was made to identify his
father's body. A baby was no novelty in the poorhouse, and no one was
greatly interested in establishing a circle of relatives for him,
and, except for a happy coincidence, he might have remained in
ignorance of his mother's people all his life.
"I must find out where my aunts live," he concluded. "I overheard
some chaps on the train talking about the Saunders place, and Betty
and I decided that that must be the homestead farm. They may not live
there now, but surely whoever does, could give me a clue. Do you
know of a place so called around here? Or would Mr. Watterby?"
"I don't know where the Saunders place is," replied Grandma Watterby,
genuinely troubled. "Will wouldn't know, 'cause he's only farmed here
five years, having his own place till his pa died. If I recollect
right, the Saunders didn't live round here, not right round here,
that is. Let's see, it's all of fifteen years since Faith was
married. I lost sight of the girls after she left, and they stopped
driving in to see us. Where was their place? I know I went to old
Mrs. Saunders' funeral. Well, anyway, I got this much straight--there
was three hills right back of the house. I'd know 'em if I saw 'em in
Japan--them three hills! You watch for 'em, boy, and when you lay
eyes on 'em you'll know you've found the Saunders place!"
And that was the most definite direction Bob could hope for. Grandma
Watterby had the weight of years upon her, and she could not remember
the road that led to the farm she had often visited. Though in the
days that followed she recollected various bits of information about
Bob's mother and her life as a girl, to which he listened eagerly,
she was utterly unable to locate the farm. She kept mentioning the
three hills, however, and her son, overhearing, smiled a little.
"Mother never did pay much attention to roads and like-a-that," he
commented dryly. "She always found her way around like the Babes in
the Wood--by remembering something she had passed coming over."
The Watterby place was a curious mixture of primitive farming
methods, ranching tactics, and Indian folklore, with a sprinkling of
furtherest East and West for good measure. Will Watterby attributed
his cosmopolitan plan of work to the influence of the ever-changing
hired man.
"They come and they go, mostly go," he was fond of saying. "It's
easier for me to do the hired man's way, 'cause I can't go off when
things don't suit me. Our place seems to be a half-way station for
all the tramps in creation. I reckon they get off at Flame City, and,
headed east or west, have to earn the money for the rest of their
trip. Well, anyway, I don't believe in being narrow; if a man can
show me a better way to do a job, I'm willing to be shown."
"I simply have to have a clean middy blouse to wear to-morrow when
Uncle Dick gets back," Betty confided to Bob. "And I don't intend to
let Mrs. Watterby wash and iron it for me. Can't you fix me a tub of
water somewhere out in the barn? I'll do it myself and spread it on
the grass to dry. Then, when she's getting supper, I can heat an iron
and press it."
Bob was willing; indeed he needed clean collars himself, and had
reached the decision that there was only one way to get them. Inquiry
had established the fact that there was no laundry in Flame City, and
the genus washwoman was practically unknown.
Betty went in to get her middy blouse, and Bob pumped pail after pail
of water and carried it to the barn. One pump supplied the whole
farm, house and barns. The two cows, three horses, and the pigs and
chickens were watered thrice daily by the patient Ki.
Cold water was not the only difficulty Betty encountered when she
came to the actual washing. The soap would not lather, and a thick
white scum formed on the water when she tried to churn up a suds.
"Hard," said Bob laconically. "Got to have something to put in to
soften it. Borax is good; know where there is any?"
Betty remembered having seen a box of borax on the kitchen shelf, and
Bob volunteered to go for it. When he returned with it, he brought
the news that there was a peddler at the back door with a bewildering
"assortment of everything," Bob said.
"Put a lot of this in," he directed, handing the box to Betty, who
obediently shook in half the contents. "Now we'll put the stuff to
soak, and go and look at this fellow's stuff. When you come back to
wash, all you'll have to do will be to rinse 'em out and put them out
to dry."
This sounded plausible, and the middy blouse and collars were left to
soak themselves clean.
The peddler proved to have a horse and wagon, and he carried dress
goods, notions, kitchen wear, books, stationery and candy. Bob and
Betty had never seen a wagon fitted up like this, and they thought it
far better than a store.
"I might buy that dotted swiss shirtwaist," whispered Betty, as Mrs.
Watterby ordered five yards of apron gingham measured off. "My middy
blouse might not dry in time."
"All right. And I'll get a clean collar," agreed Bob. "These aren't
much and I suppose they're too cheap to last long, but at any rate
they're clean."
The peddler drove on at last, and then Bob and Betty hurried back to
their washing. Alas, the tub had disappeared. At supper that night,
Mrs. Watterby had missed it and demanded of her husband if he had
seen it.
"Sure, I had Ki spraying the hen house this afternoon," Watterby
rejoined. "Thought you'd mixed the soapsuds and washing soda for him.
It was standing in the barn."
Betty explained. Of her blouse and Bob's collars, there remained a
few ragged shreds, for she had poured enough washing powder in to
eat the fabric full of holes. She took her loss good-naturedly and
was thankful she had the new blouse to wear.
Uncle Dick, when he heard the story, went into gales of laughter.
"Tough luck, Kitten," he comforted her. "We'll go to see an oil fire
this afternoon and that'll take your mind off your troubles."