A LOAD OF DIRT
"Nor knowest thou what argument
Thy life to thy neighbour's creed hath lent."
IT was Saturday morning and a great hammering was going on in the
Hennesy yard. Whenever the hammering ceased for a moment, a boyish
whistle took its place. It was a cheerful whistle and an infectious
one. The minister in his study was working up his sermon for Sunday
morning. It was called "The Simple Life," but it was growing all too
complex and knotty, and the minister leaned back in his chair with
relaxed muscles and contemplated his work with a troubled air. The
whistle burst into song and floated in through the window with the
sunshine:
"Ev'ry Sunday, down to her home we go,--
All the girls and all the boys they love her so:
Always jolly,--heart that is true, I know,--
She's the sunshine of Paradise Al-ley."
The minister sat straight again and dipped his pen in the ink.
Life was so simple after all. "Love ye one another and keep my
commandments." The sermon smoothed itself out and flowed evenly along
to the tune of "Paradise Alley."
Miss Billy was on the side of the house stirring the virgin soil with
an axe preparatory to putting in her pansies. Theodore came jauntily
out of the door, his hat and shoes well brushed and shaking out a
clean handkerchief.
"Well!" exclaimed Miss Billy reproachfully, "I thought you were going
to help me to-day."
"Would that I could!" said Theodore, waving the handkerchief
gracefully at her. "But Mistress Billy, gaze upon my shoes."
"I see they are your patent leathers. I should think you would wear
your others Saturday."
"That's the beginning of the story," said Theodore, lowering his
voice confidentially. "These are my all,--and hush, Billy,--these
are busted. I've got exactly nineteen cents in the world, but I've
recorded a vow to buy my own clothes and schoolbooks, hereafter. I'll
not ask father for another cent of money. Therefore I go hence to
seek a job."
"Well, go on then, and good luck to you," said Miss Billy, taking up
the axe again. "But this soil--" and she made a savage chop at the
ground with each word, "--is--just--all--stones--and--clay."
As Theodore departed, the hammering in the Hennesy yard waned and the
melody lifted again.
"When Maguire's little lad had the fever so bad
That no one would dare to go near him,
This maiden so brave said, 'Perhaps I can save,
At least I can comfort and cheer him.'"
Miss Billy's face brightened, and throwing down the axe she went
to the fence and stood looking over at the panorama which unfolded
itself.
The Hennesy house, in years past, had evidently done duty as a store.
It was a dilapidated old brick building, set crookedly on its lot,
with two disproportionately large front windows in the lower half,
and a big deep-set front door. Above the second story the house
terminated abruptly in a flat tin roof without ornamentation of any
kind. In the rear of the lot there were a barn, a wagon shed, and a
chicken house, all shedding various coats and colours of whitewash,
and all in the last stages of disrepair. Scattered promiscuously
about the yard were broken wagon wheels, wood-racks, chickens, pine
wood, and old tin cans,--while a lame horse, a boy, a leaning pump,
a dilapidated clothes-reel and two wobbly puppies further graced
the scene. Grass, flower or shrub there was none,--but there was
mud,--plenty of it; mud wet and mud dried. And the deep ruts in the
ground, together with the broken wheels lying around, and the strong
barny smell pervading the place, gave testimony that Mr. Hennesy
followed "teaming" for a living.
The hammering was beginning again when Miss Billy spoke:
"What are you making?" she asked pleasantly.
John Thomas Hennesy looked up. As to turned up nose and freckles, he
much resembled Marie Jean, but his mouth was firmer. He gave Miss
Billy a long penetrating stare, and the colour did not begin to creep
into his cheeks until after he had dropped his head.
"I'm fixin' a new kennel fer my dog," he said shamefacedly.
"Goodness!" thought Miss Billy, "he's older than I thought. He must
be at least fifteen." Then she went on aloud, "I wonder if it is a
white bulldog with a black spot on its back?"
"Yes,--that's her," answered the boy, looking up with quick interest.
"Then she's been calling on me a week steadily, for bones," declared
Miss Billy gaily. "I'm so glad to know her."
John Thomas took up his hammer again and began to search irresolutely
through his nail box at his side, but Miss Billy stood her ground
with her arms behind her and her chin resting on the top of the fence.
"He's wishing I would go," she thought, "but I am not going. I shall
stand right here until I get courage enough to ask him to come over
and help me with the pansy bed. But it's awkward,--awfully awkward. I
can't think of a thing to say."
"I liked your dog the moment I saw her," she went on: "I owned one
like her three years ago."
John Thomas, having found his nail, hesitated no longer, but began to
drive it into the frame with ringing strokes. Miss Billy waited until
the hammering subsided.
"A friend of father's gave her to me when she was a little bow-legged
puppy. She was a beautiful dog, white, with nice burnt sienna spots,
and a lovely disposition. I named her Serena on account of that
disposition. But she had the funniest looking tail, with three queer
kind of corkscrews in it." (Miss Billy illustrated with a whirl of
her forefinger that was entirely lost upon John Thomas.)
"But I didn't care,--I loved Serena, if her tail did go in a
corkscrew. But one summer my cousin, who was studying medicine, came
to visit us, and Serena's tail seemed to bother him an awful lot.
He kept making remarks about it all the time, and said it had been
broken and ought to come off. So at last I consented."
John Thomas had picked out another nail, but now for the first time
began to display interest in the story, and looked up from his work
as Miss Billy went on:
"We gave her chloroform: I held the sponge myself while my cousin
performed the operation. It didn't hurt her at all, and she really
seemed handsomer without the tail, but a sorry sequel followed. I
went to Philadelphia soon after, and while I was there my uncle took
me to a dog show. I never before saw so many beautiful dogs and among
them was one almost exactly like my Serena, and with three twists in
her tail."
"'You have a dog just like mine,' I said to the man who owned her.
"'Has your dog a tail like this?' he asked.
"I told him 'yes,' and was just going on to explain to him how I had
had it operated upon when he interrupted me. 'Then it was a good
breed,' he said. 'That tail is the mark of a fine dog. Each curl in
the tail adds fifteen dollars to the value of the animal.'"
Miss Billy's eyes looked solemnly down into John Thomas's widely
distended orbs: "Think of it!" she said: "Forty-five dollars cut off
at one fell swoop! I can assure you my cousin has never heard the
last of it."
"Where's the dog now?"
"Dead. Run over by a street car. I cried for months. I don't expect
to ever own another like Serena."
John Thomas drew a long breath, and turning to his box began a search
for a leather hinge.
Miss Billy felt herself distinctly dismissed, but she still held on
to the fence.
"I want to ask you,--" she began again,--"what I can do about a
flower bed that's just all stones. I'm trying to dig it, you know."
"Take the stones out," said John Thomas laconically.
"But there wouldn't be anything left! It's _all_ stones!"
"Maybe it's just a fillin', an' there's good dirt underneath,"
suggested the boy.
"Won't you please step over and look at it?" entreated Miss Billy: so
John Thomas, with open reluctance, laid down his hammer and nails,
and climbed as awkwardly as possible over the fence.
"If it's fillin' it goes awful deep," he decided, after a quarter of
an hour of hard work. "Nothin' can't grow in here."
"But I must have some flowers!" wailed Miss Billy, in despair.
"Why, that was one reason that I wanted to come and live on Cherry
Street,--because there was a big yard here, you know."
John Thomas was regarding the rocky flower bed musingly. "I'll tell
you what I can do," he said at last. "There's more than a foot of
this out already,--an' I'll go down to where my father has got some
teams hauling dirt from a cellar they're digging, an' I'll bring you
a load, if you'd like it. It's good black dirt."
"John Thomas Hennesy!" exclaimed Miss Billy, clasping her hands in
ecstasy: "A load,--_a whole load_,--of black dirt?"
"Why sure," said John Thomas, reddening with pleasure. "They're just
dumping it into an old quarry."
"A whole load of black dirt!" said Miss Billy, musingly. "I'll have
pansies, and sweet-peas, and geraniums, and I'll sow grass seed on
the bad places in the yard. John Thomas Hennesy, you're a prize!"
* * * * *
That evening, as the Lee family assembled around the tea-table, the
minister said cheerily, "I had a peculiar thing to be thankful for
to-day. It was the song and whistle of a light-hearted boy. It helped
me with my sermon."
"I have to be thankful for a daughter who took the cake baking off my
hands and helped me with the mending," said Mrs. Lee, smiling over at
Beatrice.
"I am thankful for John Thomas Hennesy and black dirt!" declared Miss
Billy fervently.
"And I," wound up Theodore proudly, "for getting a steady Saturday
job, taking care of Brown's soda fountain, at a dollar a day!"