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NOT QUITE EIGHTEEN.
[Illustration: The fox stared at her, and she stared back at the
fox.--PAGE 16.]
NOT QUITE EIGHTEEN.
BY SUSAN COOLIDGE,
AUTHOR OF "WHAT KATY DID," "THE NEW YEAR'S BARGAIN,"
"THE BARBERRY BUSH," "A GUERNSEY LILY,"
"IN THE HIGH VALLEY," ETC.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
1894.
_Copyright, 1894_,
BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. HOW BUNNY BROUGHT GOOD LUCK 7
II. A BIT OF WILFULNESS 30
III. THE WOLVES OF ST. GERVAS 42
IV. THREE LITTLE CANDLES 62
V. UNCLE AND AUNT 83
VI. THE CORN-BALL MONEY 111
VII. THE PRIZE GIRL OF THE HARNESSING CLASS 123
VIII. DOLLY PHONE 142
IX. A NURSERY TYRANT 165
X. WHAT THE PINK FLAMINGO DID 179
XI. TWO PAIRS OF EYES 200
XII. THE PONY THAT KEPT THE STORE 211
XIII. PINK AND SCARLET 227
XIV. DOLLY'S LESSON 239
XV. A BLESSING IN DISGUISE 252
XVI. A GRANTED WISH 269
HOW BUNNY BROUGHT GOOD LUCK.
It was Midsummer's Day, that delightful point toward which the whole
year climbs, and from which it slips off like an ebbing wave in the
direction of the distant winter. No wonder that superstitious people in
old times gave this day to the fairies, for it is the most beautiful day
of all. The world seems full of bird-songs, sunshine, and flower-smells
then; storm and sorrow appear impossible things; the barest and ugliest
spot takes on a brief charm and, for the moment, seems lovely and
desirable.
"That's a picturesque old place," said a lady on the back seat of the
big wagon in which Hiram Swift was taking his summer boarders to drive.
They were passing a low, wide farmhouse, gray from want of paint, with a
shabby barn and sheds attached, all overarched by tall elms. The narrow
hay-field and the vegetable-patch ended in a rocky hillside, with its
steep ledges, overgrown and topped with tall pines and firs, which made
a dense green background to the old buildings.
"I don't know about its being like a picter," said Hiram, dryly, as he
flicked away a fly from the shoulder of his horse, "but it isn't much
by way of a farm. That bit of hay-field is about all the land there is
that's worth anything; the rest is all rock. I guess the Widow Gale
doesn't take much comfort in its bein' picturesque. She'd be glad
enough to have the land made flat, if she could."
"Oh, is that the Gale farm, where the silver-mine is said to be?"
"Yes, marm; at least, it's the farm where the man lived that, 'cordin'
to what folks say, said he'd found a silver-mine. I don't take a great
deal of stock in the story myself."
"A silver-mine! That sounds interesting," said a pretty girl on the
front seat, who had been driving the horses half the way, aided and
abetted by Hiram, with whom she was a prime favorite. "Tell me about it,
Mr. Swift. Is it a story, and when did it all happen?"
"Well, I don't know as it ever did happen," responded the farmer,
cautiously. "All I know for certain is, that my father used to tell a
story that, before I was born (nigh on to sixty years ago, that must
have been), Squire Asy Allen--that used to live up to that red house on
North Street, where you bought the crockery mug, you know, Miss
Rose--come up one day in a great hurry to catch the stage, with a lump
of rock tied in his handkerchief. Old Roger Gale had found it, he said,
and they thought it was silver ore; and the Squire was a-takin' it down
to New Haven to get it analyzed. My father, he saw the rock, but he
didn't think much of it from the looks, till the Squire got back ten
days afterward and said the New Haven professor pronounced it silver,
sure enough, and a rich specimen; and any man who owned a mine of it had
his fortune made, he said. Then, of course, the township got excited,
and everybody talked silver, and there was a great to-do."
"And why didn't they go to work on the mine at once?" asked the pretty
girl.
"Well, you see, unfortunately, no one knew where it was, and old Roger
Gale had taken that particular day, of all others, to fall off his
hay-riggin' and break his neck, and he hadn't happened to mention to any
one before doing so where he found the rock! He was a close-mouthed old
chap, Roger was. For ten years after that, folks that hadn't anything
else to do went about hunting for the silver-mine, but they gradooally
got tired, and now it's nothin' more than an old story. Does to amuse
boarders with in the summer," concluded Mr. Swift, with a twinkle. "For
my part, I don't believe there ever was a mine."
"But there was the piece of ore to prove it."
"Oh, that don't prove anything, because it got lost. No one knows what
became of it. An' sixty years is long enough for a story to get
exaggerated in."
"I don't see why there shouldn't be silver in Beulah township," remarked
the lady on the back seat. "You have all kinds of other minerals
here,--soapstone and mica and emery and tourmalines and beryls."
"Well, ma'am, I don't see nuther, unless, mebbe, it's the Lord's will
there shouldn't be."
"It would be so interesting if the mine could be found!" said the pretty
girl.
"It would be _so_, especially to the Gale family,--that is, if it was
found on their land. The widow's a smart, capable woman, but it's as
much as she can do, turn and twist how she may, to make both ends meet.
And there's that boy of hers, a likely boy as ever you see, and just
hungry for book-l'arnin', the minister says. The chance of an eddication
would be just everything to him, and the widow can't give him one."
"It's really a romance," said the pretty girl, carelessly, the wants and
cravings of others slipping off her young sympathies easily.
Then the horses reached the top of the long hill they had been climbing,
Hiram put on the brake, and they began to grind down a hill equally
long, with a soft panorama of plumy tree-clad summits before them,
shimmering in the June sunshine. Drives in Beulah township were apt to
be rather perpendicular, however you took them.
Some one, high up on the hill behind the farmhouse, heard the clank
of the brakes, and lifted up her head to listen. It was Hester
Gale,--a brown little girl, with quick dark eyes, and a mane of curly
chestnut hair, only too apt to get into tangles. She was just eight
years old, and to her the old farmstead, which the neighbors scorned
as worthless, was a sort of enchanted land, full of delights and
surprises,--hiding-places which no one but herself knew, rocks and
thickets where she was sure real fairies dwelt, and cubby-houses sacred
to the use of "Bunny," who was her sole playmate and companion, and the
confidant to whom she told all her plans and secrets.
Bunny was a doll,--an old-fashioned doll, carved out of a solid piece of
hickory-wood, with a stern expression of face, and a perfectly
unyielding figure; but a doll whom Hester loved above all things. Her
mother and her mother's mother had played with Bunny, but this only made
her the dearer.
The two sat together between the gnarled roots of an old spruce which
grew near the edge of a steep little cliff. It was one of the loneliest
parts of the rocky hillside, and the hardest to get at. Hester liked it
better than any of her other hiding-places, because no one but herself
ever came there.
Bunny lay in her lap, and Hester was in the middle of a story, when she
stopped to listen to the wagon grinding down-hill.
"So the little chicken said, 'Peep! Peep!' and started off to see what
the big yellow fox was like," she went on. "That was a silly thing for
her to do, wasn't it, Bunny? because foxes aren't a bit nice to
chickens. But the little chicken didn't know any better, and she
wouldn't listen to the old hens when they told her how foolish she was.
That was wrong, because it's naughty to dis--dis--apute your elders,
mother says; children that do are almost always sorry afterward.
"Well, she hadn't gone far before she heard a rustle in the bushes on
one side. She thought it was the fox, and then she _did_ feel
frightened, you'd better believe, and all the things she meant to say to
him went straight out of her head. But it wasn't the fox that time; it
was a teeny-weeny little striped squirrel, and he just said, 'It's a
sightly day, isn't it?' and, without waiting for an answer, ran up a
tree. So the chicken didn't mind _him_ a bit.
"Then, by and by, when she had gone a long way farther off from home,
she heard another rustle. It was just like--Oh, what's that, Bunny?"
Hester stopped short, and I am sorry to say that Bunny never heard the
end of the chicken story, for the rustle resolved itself into--what do
you think?
It was a fox! A real fox!
There he stood on the hillside, gazing straight at Hester, with his
yellow brush waving behind him, and his eyes looking as sharp as the row
of gleaming teeth beneath them. Foxes were rare animals in the Beulah
region. Hester had never seen one before; but she had seen the picture
of a fox in one of Roger's books, so she knew what it was.
The fox stared at her, and she stared back at the fox. Then her heart
melted with fear, like the heart of the little chicken, and she jumped
to her feet, forgetting Bunny, who fell from her lap, and rolled
unobserved over the edge of the cliff. The sudden movement startled the
fox, and he disappeared into the bushes with a wave of his yellow brush;
just how or where he went, Hester could not have told.
"How sorry Roger will be that he wasn't here to see him!" was her first
thought. Her second was for Bunny. She turned, and stooped to pick up
the doll--and lo! Bunny was not there.
High and low she searched, beneath grass tangles, under "juniper
saucers," among the stems of the thickly massed blueberries and
hardhacks, but nowhere was Bunny to be seen. She peered over the ledge,
but nothing met her eyes below but a thick growth of blackish, stunted
evergreens. This place "down below" had been a sort of terror to
Hester's imagination always, as an entirely unknown and unexplored
region; but in the cause of the beloved Bunny she was prepared to risk
anything, and she bravely made ready to plunge into the depths.
It was not so easy to plunge, however. The cliff was ten or twelve feet
in height where she stood, and ran for a considerable distance to right
and left without getting lower. This way and that she quested, and at
last found a crevice where it was possible to scramble down,--a steep
little crevice, full of blackberry briers, which scratched her face and
tore her frock. When at last she gained the lower bank, this further
difficulty presented itself: she could not tell where she was. The
evergreen thicket nearly met over her head, the branches got into her
eyes, and buffeted and bewildered her. She could not make out the place
where she had been sitting, and no signs of Bunny could be found. At
last, breathless with exertion, tired, hot, and hopeless, she made her
way out of the thicket, and went, crying, home to her mother.
She was still crying, and refusing to be comforted, when Roger came in
from milking. He was sorry for Hester, but not so sorry as he would have
been had his mind not been full of troubles of his own. He tried to
console her with a vague promise of helping her to look for Bunny "some
day when there wasn't so much to do." But this was cold comfort, and, in
the end, Hester went to bed heartbroken, to sob herself to sleep.
"Mother," said Roger, after she had gone, "Jim Boies is going to his
uncle's, in New Ipswich, in September, to do chores and help round a
little, and to go all winter to the academy."
The New Ipswich Academy was quite a famous school then, and to go there
was a great chance for a studious boy.
"That's a bit of good luck for Jim."
"Yes; first-rate."
"Not quite so first-rate for you."
"No" (gloomily). "I shall miss Jim. He's always been my best friend
among the boys. But what makes me mad is that he doesn't care a bit
about going. Mother, why doesn't good luck ever come to us Gales?"
"It was good luck for me when you came, Roger. I don't know how I should
get along without you."
"I'd be worth a great deal more to you if I could get a chance at any
sort of schooling. Doesn't it seem hard, Mother? There's Squire Dennis
and Farmer Atwater, and half a dozen others in this township, who are
all ready to send their boys to college, and the boys don't want to go!
Bob Dennis says that he'd far rather do teaming in the summer, and take
the girls up to singing practice at the church, than go to all the
Harvards and Yales in the world; and I, who'd give my head, almost, to
go to college, can't! It doesn't seem half right, Mother."
"No, Roger, it doesn't; not a quarter. There are a good many things that
don't seem right in this world, but I don't know who's to mend 'em. I
can't. The only way is to dig along hard and do what's to be done as
well as you can, whatever it is, and make the best of your 'musts.'
There's always a 'must.' I suppose rich people have them as well as poor
ones."
"Rich people's boys can go to college."
"Yes,--and mine can't. I'd sell all we've got to send you, Roger, since
your heart is so set on it, but this poor little farm wouldn't be half
enough, even if any one wanted to buy it, which isn't likely. It's no
use talking about it, Roger; it only makes both of us feel bad.--Did you
kill the 'broilers' for the hotel?" she asked with a sudden change of
tone.
"No, not yet."
"Go and do it, then, right away. You'll have to carry them down early
with the eggs. Four pairs, Roger. Chickens are the best crop we can
raise on this farm."
"If we could find Great-uncle Roger's mine, we'd eat the chickens
ourselves," said Roger, as he reluctantly turned to go.
"Yes, and if that apple-tree'd take to bearing gold apples, we wouldn't
have to work at all. Hurry and do your chores before dark, Roger."
Mrs. Gale was a Spartan in her methods, but, for all that, she sighed a
bitter sigh as Roger went out of the door.
"He's such a smart boy," she told herself, "there's nothing he couldn't
do,--nothing, if he had a chance. I do call it hard. The folks who have
plenty of money to do with have dull boys; and I, who've got a bright
one, can't do anything for him! It seems as if things weren't justly
arranged."
Hester spent all her spare time during the next week in searching for
the lost Bunny. It rained hard one day, and all the following night; she
could not sleep for fear that Bunny was getting wet, and looked so pale
in the morning that her mother forbade her going to the hill.
"Your feet were sopping when you came in yesterday," she said; "and
that's the second apron you've torn. You'll just have to let Bunny go,
Hester; no two ways about it."
Then Hester moped and grieved and grew thin, and at last she fell ill.
It was low fever, the doctor said. Several days went by, and she was no
better. One noon, Roger came in from haying to find his mother with her
eyes looking very much troubled. "Hester is light-headed," she said; "we
must have the doctor again."
Roger went in to look at the child, who was lying in a little bedroom
off the kitchen. The small, flushed face on the pillow did not light up
at his approach. On the contrary, Hester's eyes, which were unnaturally
big and bright, looked past and beyond him.
"Hessie, dear, don't you know Roger?"
"He said he'd find Bunny for me some day," muttered the little voice;
"but he never did. Oh, I wish he would!--I wish he would! I do want her
so much!" Then she rambled on about foxes, and the old spruce-tree, and
the rocks,--always with the refrain, "I wish I had Bunny; I want her so
much!"
"Mother, I do believe it's that wretched old doll she's fretted herself
sick over," said Roger, going back into the kitchen. "Now, I'll tell you
what! Mr. Hinsdale's going up to the town this noon, and he'll leave
word for the doctor to come; and the minute I've swallowed my dinner,
I'm going up to the hill to find Bunny. I don't believe Hessie'll get
any better till she's found."
"Very well," said Mrs. Gale. "I suppose the hay'll be spoiled, but we've
got to get Hessie cured at any price."
"Oh, I'll find the doll. I know about where Hessie was when she lost it.
And the hay'll take no harm. I only got a quarter of the field cut, and
it's good drying weather."
Roger made haste with his dinner. His conscience pricked him as he
remembered his neglected promise and his indifference to Hester's
griefs; he felt in haste to make amends. He went straight to the old
spruce, which, he had gathered from Hester's rambling speech, was the
scene of Bunny's disappearance. It was easily found, being the oldest
and largest on the hillside.
Roger had brought a stout stick with him, and now, leaning over the
cliff edge, he tried to poke with it in the branches below, while
searching for the dolly. But the stick was not long enough, and slipped
through his fingers, disappearing suddenly and completely through the
evergreens.
"Hallo!" cried Roger. "There must be a hole there of some sort. Bunny's
at the bottom of it, no doubt. Here goes to find her!"
His longer legs made easy work of the steep descent which had so puzzled
his little sister. Presently he stood, waist-deep, in tangled hemlock
boughs, below the old spruce. He parted the bushes in advance, and moved
cautiously forward, step by step. He felt a cavity just before him, but
the thicket was so dense that he could see nothing.
Feeling for his pocket-knife, which luckily was a stout one, he stood
still, cutting, slashing, and breaking off the tough boughs, and
throwing them on one side. It was hard work, but after ten minutes a
space was cleared which let in a ray of light, and, with a hot, red face
and surprised eyes, Roger Gale stooped over the edge of a rocky cavity,
on the sides of which something glittered and shone. He swung himself
over the edge, and dropped into the hole, which was but a few feet deep.
His foot struck on something hard as he landed. He stooped to pick it
up, and his hand encountered a soft substance. He lifted both objects
out together.
The soft substance was a doll's woollen frock. There, indeed, was the
lost Bunny, looking no whit the worse for her adventures, and the hard
thing on which her wooden head had lain was a pickaxe,--an old iron
pick, red with rust. Three letters were rudely cut on the handle,--R. P.
G. They were Roger's own initials. Roger Perkins Gale. It had been his
father's name also, and that of the great-uncle after whom they both
were named.
With an excited cry, Roger stooped again, and lifted out of the hole a
lump of quartz mingled with ore. Suddenly he realized where he was and
what he had found. This was the long lost silver-mine, whose finding and
whose disappearance had for so many years been a tradition in the
township. Here it was that old Roger Gale had found his "speciment,"
knocked off probably with that very pick, and, covering up all traces of
his discovery, had gone sturdily off to his farm-work, to meet his death
next week on the hay-rigging, with the secret locked within his breast.
For sixty years the evergreen thicket had grown and toughened and
guarded the hidden cavity beneath its roots; and it might easily have
done so for sixty years longer, if Bunny,--little wooden Bunny, with her
lack-lustre eyes and expressionless features,--had not led the way into
its tangles.
Hester got well. When Roger placed the doll in her arms, she seemed to
come to herself, fondled and kissed her, and presently dropped into a
satisfied sleep, from which she awoke conscious and relieved. The "mine"
did not prove exactly a mine,--it was not deep or wide enough for that;
but the ore in it was rich in quality, and the news of its finding made
a great stir in the neighborhood. Mrs. Gale was offered a price for her
hillside which made her what she considered a rich woman, and she was
wise enough to close with the offer at once, and neither stand out for
higher terms nor risk the chance of mining on her own account. She and
her family left the quiet little farmhouse soon after that, and went to
live in Worcester. Roger had all the schooling he desired, and made
ready for Harvard and the law-school, where he worked hard, and laid
the foundations of what has since proved a brilliant career. You may be
sure that Bunny went to Worcester also, treated and regarded as one of
the most valued members of the family. Hester took great care of her,
and so did Hester's little girl later on; and even Mrs. Gale spoke
respectfully of her always, and treated her with honor. For was it not
Bunny who broke the long spell of evil fate, and brought good luck back
to the Gale family?
A BIT OF WILFULNESS.
There was a great excitement in the Keene's pleasant home at Wrentham,
one morning, about three years ago. The servants were hard at work,
making everything neat and orderly. The children buzzed about like
active flies, for in the evening some one was coming whom none of them
had as yet seen,--a new mamma, whom their father had just married.
The three older children remembered their own mamma pretty well; to the
babies, she was only a name. Janet, the eldest, recollected her best of
all, and the idea of somebody coming to take her place did not please
her at all. This was not from a sense of jealousy for the mother who
was gone, but rather from a jealousy for herself; for since Mrs. Keene's
death, three years before, Janet had done pretty much as she liked, and
the idea of control and interference aroused within her, in advance, the
spirit of resistance.
Janet's father was a busy lawyer, and had little time to give to the
study of his children's characters. He liked to come home at night,
after a hard day at his office, or in the courts, and find a nicely
arranged table and room, and a bright fire in the grate, beside which he
could read his newspaper without interruption, just stopping now and
then to say a word to the children, or have a frolic with the younger
ones before they went to bed. Old Maria, who had been nurse to all the
five in turn, managed the housekeeping; and so long as there was no
outward disturbance, Mr. Keene asked no questions.
He had no idea that Janet, in fact, ruled the family. She was only
twelve, but she had the spirit of a dictator, and none of the little
ones dared to dispute her will or to complain. In fact, there was not
often cause for complaint. When Janet was not opposed, she was both kind
and amusing. She had much sense and capacity for a child of her years,
and her brothers and sisters were not old enough to detect the mistakes
which she sometimes made.
And now a stepmother was coming to spoil all this, as Janet thought. Her
meditations, as she dusted the china and arranged the flowers, ran
something after this fashion:
"She's only twenty-one, Papa said, and that's only nine years older than
I am, and nine years isn't much. I'm not going to call her 'Mamma,'
anyway. I shall call her 'Jerusha,' from the very first; for Maria said
that Jessie was only a nickname, and I hate nicknames. I know she'll
want me to begin school next fall, but I don't mean to, for she don't
know anything about the schools here, and I can judge better than she
can. There, that looks nice!" putting a tall spike of lilies in a pale
green vase. "Now I'll dress baby and little Jim, and we shall all be
ready when they come."
It was exactly six, that loveliest hour of a lovely June day, when the
carriage stopped at the gate. Mr. Keene helped his wife out, and looked
eagerly toward the piazza, on which the five children were grouped.
"Well, my dears," he cried, "how do you do? Why don't you come and kiss
your new mamma?"
They all came obediently, pretty little Jim and baby Alice, hand in
hand, then Harry and Mabel, and, last of all, Janet. The little ones
shyly allowed themselves to be kissed, saying nothing, but Janet, true
to her resolution, returned her stepmother's salute in a matter-of-fact
way, kissed her father, and remarked:
"Do come in, Papa; Jerusha must be tired!"
Mr. Keene gave an amazed look at his wife. The corners of her mouth
twitched, and Janet thought wrathfully, "I do believe she is laughing at
me!" But Mrs. Keene stifled the laugh, and, taking little Alice's hand,
led the way into the house.
"Oh, how nice, how pretty!" were her first words. "Look at the flowers,
James! Did you arrange them, Janet? I suspect you did."
"Yes," said Janet; "I did them all."
"Thank you, dear," said Mrs. Keene, and stooped to kiss her again. It
was an affectionate kiss, and Janet had to confess to herself that this
new--person was pleasant looking. She had pretty brown hair and eyes, a
warm glow of color in a pair of round cheeks, and an expression at once
sweet and sensible and decided. It was a face full of attraction; the
younger children felt it, and began to sidle up and cuddle against the
new mamma. Janet felt the attraction, too, but she resisted it.
"Don't squeeze Jerusha in that way," she said to Mabel; "you are
creasing her jacket. Jim, come here, you are in the way."
"Janet," said Mr. Keene, in a voice of displeasure, "what do you mean by
calling your mother 'Jerusha'?"
"She isn't my real mother," explained Janet, defiantly. "I don't want to
call her 'Mamma;' she's too young."
Mrs. Keene laughed,--she couldn't help it.
"We will settle by and by what you shall call me," she said. "But,
Janet, it can't be Jerusha, for that is not my name. I was baptized
Jessie."
"I shall call you Mrs. Keene, then," said Janet, mortified, but
persistent. Her stepmother looked pained, but she said no more.
None of the other children made any difficulty about saying "Mamma" to
this sweet new friend. Jessie Keene was the very woman to "mother" a
family of children. Bright and tender and firm all at once, she was
playmate to them as well as authority, and in a very little while they
all learned to love her dearly,--all but Janet; and even she, at times,
found it hard to resist this influence, which was at the same time so
strong and so kind.
Still, she did resist, and the result was constant discomfort to both
parties. To the younger children the new mamma brought added happiness,
because they yielded to her wise and reasonable authority. To Janet she
brought only friction and resentment, because she would not yield.
So two months passed. Late in August, Mr. and Mrs Keene started on a
short journey which was to keep them away from home for two days. Just
as the carriage was driving away, Mrs. Keene suddenly said,--
"Oh, Janet! I forgot to say that I would rather you didn't go see Ellen
Colton while we are away, or let any of the other children. Please tell
nurse about it."
"Why mustn't I?" demanded Janet.
"Because--" began her mother, but Mr. Keene broke in.
"Never mind 'becauses,' Jessie; we must be off. It's enough for you,
Janet, that your mother orders it. And see that you do as she says."
"It's a shame!" muttered Janet, as she slowly went back to the house. "I
always have gone to see Ellen whenever I liked. No one ever stopped me
before. I don't think it's a bit fair; and I wish Papa wouldn't speak to
me like that before--her."
Gradually she worked herself into a strong fit of ill-temper. All day
long she felt a growing sense of injury, and she made up her mind not to
bear it. Next morning, in a towering state of self-will, she marched
straight down to the Coltons, resolved at least to find out the meaning
of this vexatious prohibition.
No one was on the piazza, and Janet ran up-stairs to Ellen's room,
expecting to find her studying her lessons.
No; Ellen was in the bed, fast asleep. Janet took a story-book, and sat
down beside her. "She'll be surprised when she wakes up," she thought.
The book proved interesting, and Janet read on for nearly half an hour
before Mrs. Colton came in with a cup and spoon in her hand. She gave a
scream when she saw Janet.
"Mercy!" she cried, "what are you doing here? Didn't your ma tell you?
Ellen's got scarlet-fever."
"No, she didn't tell me _that_. She only said I mustn't come here."
"And why did you come?"
Somehow Janet found it hard to explain, even to herself, why she had
been so determined not to obey.
Very sorrowfully she walked homeward. She had sense enough to know how
dreadful might be the result of her disobedience, and she felt humble
and wretched. "Oh, if only I hadn't!" was the language of her heart.
The little ones had gone out to play. Janet hurried to her own room, and
locked the door.
"I won't see any of them till Papa comes," she thought. "Then perhaps
they won't catch it from me."
She watched from the window till Maria came out to hang something on the
clothesline, and called to her.
"I'm not coming down to dinner," she said. "Will you please bring me
some, and leave it by my door? No, I'm not ill, but there are reasons.
I'd rather not tell anybody about them but Mamma."
"Sakes alive!" said old Maria to herself, "she called missus 'Mamma.'
The skies must be going to fall."
Mrs. Keene's surprise may be imagined at finding Janet thus, in a state
of voluntary quarantine.
"I am so sorry," she said, when she had listened to her confession.
"Most sorry of all for you, my child, because you may have to bear the
worst penalty. But it was brave and thoughtful in you to shut yourself
up to spare the little ones, dear Janet."
"Oh, Mamma!" cried Janet, bursting into tears. "How kind you are not to
scold me! I have been so horrid to you always." All the pride and
hardness were melted out of her now, and for the first time she clung to
her stepmother with a sense of protection and comfort.
Janet said afterwards, that the fortnight which she spent in her room,
waiting to know if she had caught the fever, was one of the nicest times
she ever had. The children and the servants, and even Papa, kept away
from her, but Mrs. Keene came as often and stayed as long as she could;
and, thrown thus upon her sole companionship, Janet found out the worth
of this dear, kind stepmother. She did _not_ have scarlet-fever, and at
the end of three weeks was allowed to go back to her old ways, but with
a different spirit.
"I can't think why I didn't love you sooner," she told Mamma once.
"I think I know," replied Mrs. Keene, smiling. "That stiff little will
was in the way. You willed not to like me, and it was easy to obey your
will; but now you will to love me, and loving is as easy as unloving
was."
THE WOLVES OF ST. GERVAS.
There never seemed a place more in need of something to make it merry
than was the little Swiss hamlet of St. Gervas toward the end of March,
some years since.
The winter had been the hardest ever known in the Bernese Oberland. Ever
since November the snow had fallen steadily, with few intermissions, and
the fierce winds from the Breithorn and the St. Theodule Pass had blown
day and night, and the drifts deepened in the valleys, and the icicles
on the eaves of the chalets grown thicker and longer. The old wives had
quoted comforting saws about a "white Michaelmas making a brown
Easter;" but Easter was at hand now, and there were no signs of
relenting yet.
Week after week the strong men had sallied forth with shovels and
pickaxes to dig out the half-buried dwellings, and to open the paths
between them, which had grown so deep that they seemed more like
trenches than footways.
Month after month the intercourse between neighbors had become more
difficult and meetings less frequent. People looked over the white
wastes at each other, the children ran to the doors and shouted messages
across the snow, but no one was brave enough to face the cold and the
drifts.
Even the village inn was deserted. Occasionally some hardy wayfarer came
by and stopped for a mug of beer and to tell Dame Ursel, the landlady,
how deep the snows were, how black clouds lay to the north, betokening
another fall, and that the shoulders and flanks of the Matterhorn were
whiter than man had ever seen them before. Then he would struggle on
his way, and perhaps two or three days would pass before another guest
crossed the threshold.
It was a sad change for the Kroene, whose big sanded kitchen was usually
crowded with jolly peasants, and full of laughter and jest, the clinking
of glasses, and the smoke from long pipes. Dame Ursel felt it keenly.
But such jolly meetings were clearly impossible now. The weather was too
hard. Women could not easily make their way through the snow, and they
dared not let the children play even close to the doors; for as the wind
blew strongly down from the sheltering forest on the hill above, which
was the protection of St. Gervas from landslides and avalanches, shrill
yelping cries would ever and anon be heard, which sounded very near. The
mothers listened with a shudder, for it was known that the wolves,
driven by hunger, had ventured nearer to the hamlet than they had ever
before done, and were there just above on the hillside, waiting to make
a prey of anything not strong enough to protect itself against them.
"Three pigs have they carried off since Christmas," said Mere Kronk,
"and one of those the pig of a widow! Two sheep and a calf have they
also taken; and only night before last they all but got at the Alleene's
cow. Matters have come to a pass indeed in St. Gervas, if cows are to be
devoured in our very midst! Toinette and Pertal, come in at once! Thou
must not venture even so far as the doorstep unless thy father be along,
and he with his rifle over his shoulder, if he wants me to sleep of
nights."
"Oh, dear!" sighed little Toinette for the hundredth time. "How I wish
the dear summer would come! Then the wolves would go away, and we could
run about as we used, and Gretchen Slaut and I go to the Alp for
berries. It seems as if it had been winter forever and ever. I haven't
seen Gretchen or little Marie for two whole weeks. _Their_ mother, too,
is fearful of the wolves."
All the mothers in St. Gervas were fearful of the wolves.
The little hamlet was, as it were, in a state of siege. Winter, the
fierce foe, was the besieger. Month by month he had drawn his lines
nearer, and made them stronger; the only hope was in the rescue which
spring might bring. Like a beleaguered garrison, whose hopes and
provisions are running low, the villagers looked out with eager eyes for
the signs of coming help, and still the snows fell, and the help did not
come.
How fared it meanwhile in the forest slopes above?
It is not a sin for a wolf to be hungry, any more than it is for a man;
and the wolves of St. Gervas were ravenous indeed. All their customary
supplies were cut off. The leverets and marmots, and other small
animals on which they were accustomed to prey, had been driven by the
cold into the recesses of their hidden holes, from which they did not
venture out. There was no herbage to tempt the rabbits forth, no tender
birch growths for the strong gray hares.
No doubt the wolves talked the situation over in their wolfish language,
realized that it was a desperate one, and planned the daring forays
which resulted in the disappearance of the pigs and sheep and the attack
on the Alleene's cow. The animals killed all belonged to outlying houses
a little further from the village than the rest; but the wolves had
grown bold with impunity, and, as Mere Kronk said, there was no knowing
at what moment they might make a dash at the centre of the hamlet.
I fear they would have enjoyed a fat little boy or girl if they could
have come across one astray on the hillside, near their haunts, very
much. But no such luck befell them. The mothers of St. Gervas were too
wary for that, and no child went out after dark, or ventured more than a
few yards from the open house-door, even at high noon.
"Something must be done," declared Johann Vecht, the bailiff. "We are
growing sickly and timorous. My wife hasn't smiled for a month. She
talks of nothing but snow and wolves, and it is making the children
fearful. My Annerle cried out in her sleep last night that she was being
devoured, and little Kasper woke up and cried too. Something must be
done!"
"Something must indeed be done!" repeated Solomon, the forester. "We are
letting the winter get the better of us, and losing heart and courage.
We must make an effort to get together in the old neighborly way; that's
what we want."
This conversation took place at the Kroene, and here the landlady, who
was tired of empty kitchen and scant custom, put in her word:--
"You are right, neighbors. What we need is to get together, and feast
and make merry, forgetting the hard times. Make your plans, and trust me
to carry them out to the letter. Is it a feast that you decide upon? I
will cook it. Is it a _musiker fest_? My Carl, there, can play the
zither with any other, no matter whom it be, and can sing. _Himmel_! how
he can sing! Command me! I will work my fingers to the bone rather than
you shall not be satisfied."
"Aha, the sun!" cried Solomon; for as the landlady spoke, a pale yellow
ray shot through the pane and streamed over the floor. "That is a good
omen. Dame Ursel, thou art right. A jolly merrymaking is what we all
want. We will have one, and thou shalt cook the supper according to thy
promise."
Several neighbors had entered the inn kitchen since the talk began, so
that quite a company had collected,--more than had got together since
the mass on Christmas Day. All were feeling cheered by the sight of the
sunshine; it seemed a happy moment to propose the merrymaking.
So it was decided then and there that a supper should be held that day
week at the Kroene, men and women both to be invited,--all, in fact, who
could pay and wished to come. It seemed likely that most of the
inhabitants of St. Gervas would be present, such enthusiasm did the plan
awake in young and old. The week's delay would allow time to send to the
villagers lower down in the valley for a reinforcement of tobacco, for
the supply of that essential article was running low, and what was a
feast without tobacco?
"We shall have a quarter of mutton," declared the landlady. "Neils
Austerman is to kill next Monday, and I will send at once to bespeak
the hind-quarter. That will insure a magnificent roast. Three fat geese
have I also, fit for the spit, and four hens. Oh, I assure you, my
masters, that there shall be no lack on my part! My Fritz shall get a
large mess of eels from the Lake. He fishes through the ice, as thou
knowest, and is lucky; the creatures always take his hook. Fried eels
are excellent eating! You will want a plenty of them. Three months
_maigre_ is good preparation for a feast. Wine and beer we have in
plenty in the cellar, and the cheese I shall cut is as a cartwheel for
bigness. Bring you the appetites, my masters, and I will engage that the
supply is sufficient."
The landlady rubbed her hands as she spoke, with an air of joyful
anticipation.
"My mouth waters already with thy list," declared Kronk. "I must hasten
home and tell my dame of the plan. It will raise her spirits, poor soul,
and she is sadly in need of cheering."
The next week seemed shorter than any week had seemed since Michaelmas.
True, the weather was no better. The brief sunshine had been followed by
a wild snowstorm, and the wind was still blowing furiously.
But now there was something to talk and think about besides weather.
Everybody was full of the forthcoming feast. Morning after morning Fritz
of the Kroene could be seen sitting beside his fishing-holes on the
frozen lake, patiently letting down his lines, and later, climbing the
hill, his basket laden with brown and wriggling eels. Everybody crowded
to the windows to watch him,--the catch was a matter of public interest.
Three hardy men on snow-shoes, with guns over their shoulders, had
ventured down to St. Nicklaus, and returned, bringing the wished-for
tobacco and word that the lower valleys were no better off than the
upper, that everything was buried in snow, and no one had got in from
the Rhone valley for three weeks or more.
Anxiously was the weather watched as the day of the feast drew near; and
when the morning dawned, every one gave a sigh of relief that it did not
snow. It was gray and threatening, but the wind had veered, and blew
from the southwest. It was not nearly so cold, and a change seemed at
hand.
The wolves of St. Gervas were quite as well aware as the inhabitants
that something unusual was going forward.
From their covert in the sheltering wood they watched the stir and
excitement, the running to and fro, the columns of smoke which streamed
upward from the chimneys of the inn. As the afternoon drew on, strange
savory smells were wafted upward by the strong-blowing wind,--smells of
frying and roasting, and hissing fat.
"Oh, how it smells! How good it does smell!" said one wolf. He snuffed
the wind greedily, then threw back his head and gave vent to a long
"O-w!"
The other wolves joined in the howl.
"What can it be? Oh, how hungry it makes me!" cried one of the younger
ones. "O-w-w-w!"
"What a dreadful noise those creatures are making up there," remarked
Frau Kronk as, under the protection of her stalwart husband, she hurried
her children along the snow path toward the Kroene. "They sound so
hungry! I shall not feel really safe till we are all at home again, with
the door fast barred."
But she forgot her fears when the door of the inn was thrown hospitably
open as they drew near, and the merry scene inside revealed itself.
The big sanded kitchen had been dressed with fir boughs, and was
brightly lighted with many candles. At the great table in the midst sat
rows of men and women, clad in their Sunday best. The men were smoking
long pipes, tall mugs of beer stood before everybody, and a buzz of
talk and laughter filled the place.
Beyond, in the wide chimney, blazed a glorious fire, and about and over
it the supper could be seen cooking. The quarter of mutton, done to a
turn, hung on its spit, and on either side of it sputtered the geese and
the fat hens, brown and savory, and smelling delicious. Over the fire on
iron hooks hung a great kettle of potatoes and another of cabbage.
On one side of the hearth knelt Gretel, the landlord's daughter,
grinding coffee, while on the other her brother Fritz brandished an
immense frying-pan heaped with sizzling eels, which sent out the loudest
smells of all.
The air of the room was thick with the steam of the fry mingled with the
smoke of the pipes. A fastidious person might have objected to it as
hard to breathe, but the natives of St. Gervas were not fastidious, and
found no fault whatever with the smells and the smoke which, to them,
represented conviviality and good cheer. Even the dogs under the table
were rejoicing in it, and sending looks of expectation toward the
fireplace.
"Welcome, welcome!" cried the jolly company as the Kronks appeared.
"Last to come is as well off as first, if a seat remains, and the supper
is still uneaten. Sit thee down, Dame, while the young ones join the
other children in the little kitchen. Supper is all but ready, and a
good one too, as all noses testify. Those eels smell rarely. It is but
to fetch the wine now, and then fall to, eh, Landlady?"
"Nor shall the wine be long lacking!" cried Dame Ursel, snatching up a
big brown pitcher. "Sit thee down, Frau Kronk. That place beside thy
gossip Barbe was saved for thee. 'Tis but to go to the cellar and
return, and all will be ready. Stir the eels once more, Fritz; and
thou, Gretchen, set the coffee-pot on the coals. I shall be back in the
twinkling of an eye."
There was a little hungry pause. From the smaller kitchen, behind, the
children's laughter could be heard.
"It is good to be in company again," said Frau Kronk, sinking into her
seat with a sigh of pleasure.
"Yes, so we thought,--we who got up the feast," responded Solomon, the
forester. "'Neighbors,' says I, 'we are all getting out of spirits with
so much cold and snow, and we must rouse ourselves and do something.'
'Yes,' says they, 'but what?' 'Nothing can be plainer,' says I, 'we
must'--_Himmel_! what is that?"
What was it, indeed?
For even as Solomon spoke, the heavy door of the kitchen burst open,
letting in a whirl of cold wind and sleet, and letting in something else
as well.
For out of the darkness, as if blown by the wind, a troop of dark swift
shapes darted in.
They were the wolves of St. Gervas, who, made bold by hunger, and
attracted and led on by the strong fragrance of the feast, had forgotten
their usual cowardice, and, stealing from the mountain-side and through
the deserted streets of the hamlet, had made a dash at the inn.
There were not less than twenty of them; there seemed to be a hundred.
As if acting by a preconcerted plan, they made a rush at the fireplace.
The guests sat petrified round the table, with their dogs cowering at
their feet, and no one stirred or moved, while the biggest wolf, who
seemed the leader of the band, tore the mutton from the spit, while the
next in size made a grab at the fat geese and the fowls, and the rest
seized upon the eels, hissing hot as they were, in the pan. Gretchen and
Fritz sat in their respective corners of the hearth, paralyzed with
fright at the near, snapping jaws and the fierce red eyes which glared
at them.
Then, overturning the cabbage-pot as they went, the whole pack whirled,
and sped out again into the night, which seemed to swallow them up all
in a moment.
And still the guests sat as if turned to stone, their eyes fixed upon
the door, through which the flakes of the snow-squall were rapidly
drifting; and no one had recovered voice to utter a word, when Dame
Ursel, rosy and beaming, came up from the cellar with her brimming
pitcher.
"Why is the door open?" she demanded. Then her eyes went over to the
fireplace, where but a moment before the supper had been. Had been; for
not an eatable article remained except the potatoes and the cabbages and
cabbage water on the hearth. From far without rang back a long howl
which had in it a note of triumph.
This was the end of the merrymaking. The guests were too startled and
terrified to remain for another supper, even had there been time to cook
one. Potatoes, black bread, and beer remained, and with these the braver
of the guests consoled themselves, while the more timorous hurried home,
well protected with guns, to barricade their doors, and rejoice that it
was their intended feast and not themselves which was being discussed at
that moment by the hungry denizens of the forest above.
There was a great furbishing up of bolts and locks next day, and a
fitting of stout bars to doors which had hitherto done very well without
such safeguards; but it was a long time before any inhabitant of St.
Gervas felt it safe to go from home alone, or without a rifle over his
shoulder.
So the wolves had the best of the merrymaking, and the villagers
decidedly the worst. Still, the wolves were not altogether to be
congratulated; for, stung by their disappointment and by the unmerciful
laughter and ridicule of the other villages, the men of St. Gervas
organized a great wolf-hunt later in the spring, and killed such a
number that to hear a wolf howl has become a rare thing in that part of
the Oberland.
"Ha! ha! my fine fellow, you are the one that made off with our mutton
so fast," said the stout forester, as he stripped the skin from the
largest of the slain. "Your days for mutton are over, my friend. It will
be one while before you and your thievish pack come down again to
interrupt Christian folk at their supper!"
But, in spite of Solomon's bold words, the tale of the frustrated feast
has passed into a proverb; and to-day in the neighboring chalets and
hamlets you may hear people say, "Don't count on your mutton till it's
in your mouth, or it may fare with you as with the merry-makers at St.
Gervas."
THREE LITTLE CANDLES.
The winter dusk was settling down upon the old farmhouse where three
generations of Marshes had already lived and died. It stood on a gentle
rise of ground above the Kittery sands,--a low, wide, rambling
structure, outgrowth of the gradual years since great-grandfather Marsh,
in the early days of the colony, had built the first log-house, and so
laid the foundation of the settlement.
This log-house still existed. It served as a lean-to for the larger
building, and held the buttery, the "out-kitchen" for rougher work, and
the woodshed. Moss and lichens clustered thickly between the old logs,
to which time had communicated a rich brown tint; a mat of luxuriant
hop-vine clothed the porch, and sent fantastic garlands up to the
ridgepole. The small heavily-puttied panes in the windows had taken on
that strange iridescence which comes to glass with the lapse of time,
and glowed, when the light touched them at a certain angle, with odd
gleams of red, opal, and green-blue.