MOLLIE
When Jeannette, according to her promise, arrived the next afternoon,
the impatient Captain, who wished he had said _morning_, escorted her
inside the old box-car. Sammy and Annie were at her heels; but Patsy was
having a nap. The rough table was nicely decorated with folded squares
of gorgeous calico. The cards of buttons, spools of thread, and
glittering thimbles formed a sort of fancy border along the edge. The
packets of needles were placed for safety in the exact center of the
table.
"Them's yourn," said the Captain. "This here's a pattern. You spread it
on you to see if it fits. It's your size."
"But," said Jeanne, "I wanted the clothes for the _children_."
"That's all right. You cut it out like this here paper. Then you just
chop a piece off the end, wherever it's too long. There's enough for you
and the little chaps, too. I'll get my shears and we'll do like it says
on the back of the pattern."
The old shears, unfortunately, declined to cut; but the Captain
sharpened the blade of his jack-knife, and, after Jeanne had laid the
pieces, according to the printed directions, succeeded in hacking out
the pink dress. The Captain insisted that Jeanne should begin on the
pink one. He liked that best. Fortunately the shop girl had been wise
enough to choose a very simple pattern; and Jeanne was bright enough to
follow the simple rules.
"With one of them there charts," declared Old Captain, admiringly, "I
could make a pair o' pants or a winter overcoat--all but the sewin'. My
kind's all right in summer; but 'twouldn't do in winter--wind'd get in
atween the stitches. Here, you ain't makin' that knot big enough!"
"Don't you think a smaller one would do?" asked Jeanne, wistfully. "I
don't like such big, black ones. See, this little one doesn't; come
through when I pull."
"Well, just add an extry hitch or two when you begin--that's right. Why,
you're a natural born sewer."
It was a strange sight--the big red Captain and the slight dark girl,
side by side on the old bench outside the battered freight car; Old
Captain busy with his net, the eager little girl busy with her pink
calico. If it seemed almost _too_ pink, she was much too polite to say
so. She had decided that Annie should have the purple and that Sammy
should have the blue. Little Patsy wouldn't mind the big black spots. As
for the red stripes, that piece could wait.
"You see," thought Jeanne, "I'll ask Father to buy Michael some regular
boys' clothes. A pair of trousers anyhow. If he doesn't get him a shirt
too, I suppose I _can_ make him one out of that, but I'd _rather_ have
it for Annie. And I do hope I can squeeze out a pair of knickerbockers
for Sammy. There was enough pink left for one leg--but I'll do his blue
clothes before I plan any _extra_ ones."
Jeanne's fingers were as busy as her thoughts; and, as the Captain had
hoped, the seams certainly looked better when done with the proper
tools.
"I _like_ to sew," said Jeanne.
"Well," confided the Captain, "I can't say as how I _do_."
Suddenly, wild shrieks rent the air. Sammy was jumping up and down in a
patch of crimson clover. One grimy hand clasped a throbbing eyelid.
"Sammy smelled a bumby-bee," explained Annie, when Jeanne, dropping her
pink calico, rushed to the rescue.
There were many other interruptions, happily not all so painful, before
the new garments were finished; but, for many weeks, Jeanne's sewing
traveled with her from end to end of the old dock; while she kept a
watchful eye on her restless small charges.
"Father," asked Jeanne, one evening, when the pink dress was finished
and Michael had received what the Captain called "a real pair of store
pants," "aren't Michael and Sammy and Annie and Patsy your children,
too?"
"Why, yes," replied Mr. Duval.
"Then why don't you take as much pains with them as you do with me? You
never scold Michael for eating with his knife or for not being clean or
for saying bad words. You didn't like it at all the day I said those bad
words to Mollie's mother. _You_ remember. The words I heard those men
say when their boat ran into the dock. You said that ladies _never_ said
bad ones. Of course you couldn't make a lady out of Michael; but there's
Annie. Why _is_ it, Daddy?"
"Well," returned Mr. Duval, carefully shaved and very neat and tidy in
his shabby clothes, "they are Mollie Shannon's children. You are the
daughter of Elizabeth Huntington. Your full name is Jeannette Huntington
Duval. I want you to live up to that name."
"Do you mean," asked Jeanne, who was perched on the old trunk, "that
Mollie's children _have_ to be like Mollie?"
"Something like that," admitted Mr. Duval.
"That's a pity," said Jeanne. "I _like_ those children. They're _sweet_
when they're clean. And Michael's almost always good to the others."
"Perhaps it wouldn't be right," said her father, "to make Mollie's
children better than she is. They might despise her and be unkind to
her. It is best, I fear, to leave things as they are."
"Don't you _love_ those other children?" queried Jeanne.
"You are asking a great many questions," returned her father. "It is my
turn now. Suppose you tell me through what states the Mississippi River
flows?"
Mr. Duval admitted to himself, however, that he did _not_ love those
other children as he loved Jeanne. He tried hard, in fact, not to hate
them. They were so dreadfully like Mollie; so dirty, so untidy, so
common. Dazed from his long illness, half crazed by the death of his
beautiful young wife, he had married Mollie Shannon without at all
realizing what he was doing. He hadn't wanted a wife. All he thought of
was a caretaker for wailing Jeannette, who seemed, to her inexperienced
father, a terrifying responsibility.
Mollie, in her younger days, with a capable, scheming mother to
skillfully conceal her faults--her indolence, her untidiness, her lack
of education--had _seemed_ a fitting person for the task of rearing
Jeanne. Bolstered by her mother, Mollie looked not only capable, but
even rather pleasing with the soothed and contented baby cuddled in her
soft arms. At the moment, the arrangement had seemed fortunate for both
the Duvals and the Shannons.
Duval, however, was not really so prosperous as his appearance led the
Shannons to believe. He had arrived in Bancroft with very little money.
Time had proved to his grasping mother-in-law that he was not and never
would be a very great success as a money-maker. Some persons aren't,
you know. As soon as Mrs. Shannon had fully grasped this disappointing
fact, she suffered a surprising relapse. She began to show her true
colors--her vile temper, her lack of breeding, her innate coarseness.
Her true colors, in fact, were such displeasing ones that Léon Duval was
not surprised to learn that Mollie's only brother, a lively and rather
reckless lad, by all accounts, had run away from home at the age of
fourteen--and was perhaps still running, since he had given no proof of
having paused long enough to write. When his absence had stretched into
years, Mrs. Shannon became convinced that John was dead; but Mollie was
not so sure. The runaway had had much to forgive, and the process, with
resentful John, would be slow.
Of course, without her mother's aid, easy-going Mollie resumed her
former slovenly habits, neglected her hair, her dress, and her finger
nails. Most of her rather faint claim to beauty departed with her
neatness.
After a time, when his strength had fully returned and his mental powers
with it, Duval realized that he had made a very dreadful mistake in
marrying Mollie; but there seemed to be nothing that he could do about
it. After all, the only thing in life that he had ever really cared for
was buried in Elizabeth Huntington's grave.
At first, Jeanne had been precious only because she was Elizabeth's
daughter. As for Mollie's children, they were simply little pieces of
Mollie. With the years, Mollie had grown so unlovely that one really
couldn't expect a fastidious person to like four small copies of her.
Unfortunately, perhaps, Léon Duval was a _very_ fastidious person.
Mrs. Shannon, perpetually crouched over the battered stove for warmth,
had a grievance.
"If Duval earned half as much as any other fisherman around here," said
she, in her harsh, disagreeable voice, "we'd be livin' in a real house
on dry land. And what's more, Mollie, you ain't gettin' all he earns.
He's savin' on you. He's got money in the bank. I seen a bankbook
a-stickin' out of his pocket. You ain't gettin' what you'd ought to
have; I _know_ you ain't."
"Leave me be," returned Mollie. "We gets enough to eat and more'n a body
wants to cook. Clothes is a bother any way you want to look at 'em."
"He's a-saving fer _Jeanne_," declared the old lady. "'Tain't fair to
you. 'Tain't fair to your children."
"Well," said Mollie, waking up for a moment, "I dunno as I blame him. I
likes Jeanne better myself. She's got _looks,_ Jeanne has; an' she's
always been a _good_ child, with nice ways with her. Neither me nor mine
has much more looks nor a lump o' putty."
"You'd have _some_, if you was tidy."
"Well, I ain't," returned Mollie, truthfully. "You got to lace yourself
in, an' keep buttoned up tight an' wear tight shoes an' keep your
stockings fastened up an' your head full o' hairpins if you wants to
look neat, when you're fat, like I be. I hates all of them things. I'd
ruther be comfortable."
Jeanne had often wondered how soft, plump Mollie _could_ be comfortable
with strands of red hair straggling about her face, with her fat neck
exposed to the weather, her uncorseted figure billowing under her
shapeless wrapper, her feet scuffling about in shoes several times too
large. Even when dressed for the street, she was not much neater. But
that was Mollie. Gentle as she was and thoroughly sweet-tempered, it was
as impossible to stir her to action as it was to upset her serenity. As
for wrath, Mollie simply hadn't any.
"You could burn the house down," declared Mrs. Shannon, "an' Mollie'd
crawl into the Cinder Pond an' set there an' _sleep_. Her paw died just
because he was too lazy to stay alive, and she's just like him--red hair
and all. If it was _red_ red hair, there'd be some get up and go to them
Shannons; but it _ain't_. It's just _carrot_ red, with yaller streaks."
"When Annie's hair has just been washed," championed Jeanne, after one
of Mrs. Shannon's outbursts against the family's red-gold locks, "it's
lovely. And if Sammy ever had a lazy hair in _his_ head, I guess Michael
pulled it out that time they had a _fight_ about the fish-pole."
"Where's Sammy now?" asked his grandmother, suspiciously. "'Tain't safe
to leave him alone a minute. He's always pryin' into things."
"He and Michael are trying to pull a board off the dock for firewood."
That was one convenient thing about the wharf. You could live on it and
use it for firewood, too, provided you were careful not to take portions
on which one needed to walk. To anyone but the long-practiced Duvals,
however, most of the dock presented a most uninviting surface--a
dangerous one, in fact. If you stepped on the end of a plank, it was
quite apt to go down like a trap-door, dropping you into the lake below.
If you stepped in the middle, just as likely as not your foot would go
through the decayed board. But only the long portion running east and
west was really dangerous. The section between the Duvals and dry land,
owing to the accumulation of cinders and soil, bound together with roots
of growing plants, was fairly safe.
"Of course," said Jeanne, who sometimes wished for Patsy's sake that
there were fewer holes in the wharf, "if it were a _good_ dock, we
wouldn't be allowed to live on it. And if people _could_ walk on it,
people _would_; and that would spoil it for us. As it is, it's just the
loveliest spot in the whole world."