THERE IS COMPANY TO SUPPER
Miss Miflin wondered day after day why the Wenner twins did not come to
school. She knew that their father had died,--that would account for
three or four days, but why had they not come back after the funeral?
It was true that their absence made Miss Miflin's life much easier.
They were not only very active themselves, but they were able to
incite the best-behaved of schools to mischief. When Miss Miflin heard
confusion behind her as she put a problem on the board, she needed only
to call out, "Ellen Louisa!" and then "Louisa Ellen!" and the noise
ceased.
When they were approached in private, the twins were as shy as rabbits.
They stood twisting their aprons and looking at each other as though
Miss Miflin were an ogress. There seemed to be in them the same strange
quality that Miss Miflin had discovered in William and Sarah,--a
certain standing on guard. It had prevented Miss Miflin from writing
to William to try to straighten out the miserable tangle which they
had made of their friendship; it made her think of Sarah as a rather
reserved young woman, instead of a lonely little girl. It made her
hesitate even to offer her sympathy now that Sarah's father was dead.
She was not a Pennsylvania German, and it seemed to her that they did
not thoroughly trust her.
She was always prepared for the unexpected in the twins' behavior;
but when, one morning late in March, they appeared at the school-door
carrying an old shot-gun, the same which had done such deadly execution
upon the frightened Jacob Kalb, she said aloud, "Well, what next!" Then
she went down the aisle to speak to them.
"I am glad to see you back, Ellen Louisa and Louisa Ellen." She had
long since discovered that any attempt to abbreviate the names of the
twins was not received with favor.
"Yes, ma'am," the twins answered politely. They could not have told
why they were so mischievous; it was a Topsy-like obsession which they
could not control. They both blindly adored Miss Miflin.
"And why do you come to school armed as though you were going to war?"
The twins giggled. The idea of going to war pleased them.
"So nobody shall carry us off," answered Louisa Ellen.
"Is anybody likely to carry you off?" asked Miss Miflin, smiling. She
had seen at once that the gun was useless as a weapon.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Ellen Louisa.
Miss Miflin smiled again. It was time to begin school, and she supposed
it was all one of the twins' tricks.
"Put the gun in the corner and go to your seats," she said.
An hour later Miss Miflin heard a stir in the back of the room.
"Ellen--" she began. Then she followed the children's gaze toward the
window.
Sarah Wenner stood there, looking in, as though she only meant to
assure herself of the twins' presence. But what a changed, wild-eyed
Sarah! Miss Miflin dropped chalk and ruler and went to the door.
"Sarah!" she called.
Sarah came hurriedly from the other side of the schoolhouse.
"I didn't mean anything," she explained. "I wanted just to see if Ellen
Louisa and Louisa Ellen were in school, that was all."
She did not say that the twins had added another frightened hour to
those which had made her face so white. They had slipped away while she
went to the barn.
"Didn't you want them to come to school?" asked Miss Miflin.
"Ach, yes!" cried Sarah. "I want them to go every day in the school."
Belief and the sight of Miss Miflin were already patting some color
into her cheeks.
"Are you well, Sarah?" asked Miss Miflin.
"Ach, yes!" answered Sarah. "But now I must go home. You must excuse me
while I disturbed the school for you. Here is lunch for Ellen Louisa
and Louisa Ellen, then they need not come all the way home for dinner.
Will you--will you watch them, so they do not go off to play at recess?
Just give it to them if they are not good. I will then walk a piece way
along to meet them when they come home from school."
Sarah was gone before Miss Miflin could ask any more questions. She saw
her look back as she tramped along the muddy road, then she vanished
behind a hedge of alders. Miss Miflin was puzzled and disturbed.
It was almost an hour before Sarah reached the Eberts' door. She was
inexpressibly tired, and the roads were deep with mud. She had not
been sleeping well at night. Uncle Daniel had made no farther move,
but she felt that the delay was only a truce. She had seen nothing of
Albert, though it had been several weeks since his uncle had carried
him away. They were guarding him well.
Ebert had not come to plough, and Sarah was worried. She had looked for
him day after day, and now she feared that he was sick.
She could get no answer when she knocked at the door. The house was
closed, yet in the field near by the earth had been turned up that
morning. Why did they not answer? She could not know that Mrs. Ebert
watched her from an upper window, with tears in her eyes.
"I wasn't going to tell her that you wouldn't plough for her," she said
to her husband at noon.
"Well, I guess I am not going to plough and then let Swartz have the
benefit," answered Ebert.
Troubled and anxious, Sarah went on toward home. As she turned to go
up the lane she saw a man at work in the north field. Ah, Ebert had
begun! Then her flying feet halted. The horses were Uncle Daniel's
grays, the man was Jacob Kalb. Sarah cried out as though she had been
struck.
Then she saw that the fence was down. It was not a worm-fence, which
could be put up again in a little while, but a stout "post and rail."
The posts had been taken out. The two fields formed together a great
slope which ran from the Wenners' garden to the edge of the Swartzes'
yard.
Sarah gathered her shawl a little closer about her and ran on.
"Get out, Jacob Kalb!" she called.
For a minute Jacob looked as though he meant to run. He had protested
against coming to plough so near the house, for fear that Sarah might
"do him something." Now he saw that Sarah did not carry a gun. He
mocked her rudely.
"Get out, Sarah Wenner!"
"I tell you, you shall go away, Jacob Kalb," she shouted. "This is not
your land."
Jacob laughed. "_You_ will have to go pretty soon away," he said.
Sarah could eat no dinner, but sat at the window watching. Already the
boundary between the two farms was fast disappearing. How would they be
able ever to find it again? What would her mother and father have said?
What would William say when he came home?
_When_ he came home. It was growing to be _if_ he came home in Sarah's
mind. Anxiety was doing its work.
She remembered things which she had heard as a child and
forgotten,--her mother's sharp criticism of Daniel Swartz's meanness,
her father's good-natured laughter. She did not know how easily that
same dear, thoughtless father might have made it impossible for his
brother-in-law to interfere with them. He might easily have provided
another guardian for his children. He had meant to,--that much must be
said for him,--but he was a procrastinator, and at the end there had
been no time.
Sarah could not go now to meet the twins when they came from school;
she did not dare to leave the house. Jacob Kalb might take possession
while she was away.
The afternoon passed slowly. Toward evening, there was a late flurry
of snow. And the twins did not come. Sarah ran part way down the
lane,--they were not yet in sight,--then she went to the barn to
milk, her ears straining to hear any unfriendly sound. It soothed and
comforted her to be with the friendly beasts which she loved. Both
"Mooley" and "Curly" had been born on the place, they were part of the
living fibre of the homestead.
It was fortunate that the twins called to Sarah before they ran up to
the door of the barn, for another shock was more than Sarah could have
borne at that moment. The twins' voices trembled with some exciting
news.
"She came along home with us," said Louisa Ellen.
"She carried the gun for us," said Ellen Louisa.
"She is waiting at the front door."
"Who is waiting at the front door?" asked Sarah. Then she added
fearfully, "Aunt Mena?"
"No, teacher."
"Teacher!" repeated Sarah. "Wh-what did she come for? Have you then not
been smart?"
"For to see us," said Louisa Ellen impatiently. "She is coming for
company. She--"
Sarah had crossed the lane, a milk-pail in either hand.
"Come," she called, in a voice which was meant to be a whisper, but
which Miss Miflin, waiting on the broad doorstep, heard clearly. "Hurry
yourselves, and fix a little up. Perhaps--" Sarah could scarcely speak
for excitement. "Perhaps she will stay for supper."
A moment later, she opened the front door. Her black hair was brushed
back a little more closely to her head, her face shone, the great white
apron which she had hastily put on over her gingham one was much longer
than her dress, and from the back her gray-stockinged ankles could be
seen outlined against it in pathetic thinness.
"Come in, teacher," she begged shyly. "Come once into the room [parlor]
and I will hurry make a fire."
"Oh no," said Miss Miflin. "I'll come back to the kitchen with you. I
didn't come to be company. I came to bring the twins home, and the gun."
"The gun!" repeated Sarah. "Did they then take the gun along? Come
in. It doesn't look here so good like always. I--I didn't work this
afternoon so very much. I--" And Sarah ushered Miss Miflin into the
immaculate kitchen.
Miss Miflin breathed a sigh of relief. The chill of the house had
struck into her heart. Could William have lived _here_? Then she saw
the glow of the fire, the bright rag carpet, the blooming geraniums in
the window. This looked like William. Miss Miflin put out her hand and
drew Ellen Louisa, in a clean white apron, to her side. She, too, was
William's.
"I wonder whether you would let me stay for supper?" she asked.
The glow in Sarah's face answered her.
"If it is you good enough," answered Sarah humbly.
"Good enough!" laughed Miss Miflin. She pulled off her over-shoes and
slipped out of her coat. She had no home of her own, and had been
boarding at a country hotel for three years. "But you children don't
stay here alone at night!"
"Yes," said Sarah.
"But aren't you afraid?"
"Ach, no! Nobody would do us anything," stammered Sarah. She could not
tell this stranger any of their troubles.
"But haven't you a little brother?" Miss Miflin looked round the
kitchen.
"Yes, ma'am," answered Sarah. She suddenly put out her hand, and laid
it on Louisa Ellen's shoulder, and Louisa Ellen closed her lips as
though she had meant to speak, but had changed her mind. "Yes, Albert.
He is now by my uncle."
"And don't any of your uncle's people come to stay with you at night?"
"Ach, no!" answered Sarah. Suddenly she felt her voice give way. There
was something in Miss Miflin's brown, astonished eyes which made her
feel that she might cry. But that would never do. "T-take a ch-chair.
I-I guess you had to laugh at how the twins learned their lessons. I
taught them while they were at home."
"They learned them well," replied Miss Miflin. "Now I am going to help
get supper."
The twins could scarcely believe their eyes. It was as though a fairy
had come to the farmhouse, a dear, capable fairy, who could dry dishes
and cut bread, and magically change tired, care-worn Sarah into the
gay, cheerful Sarah of old. It was almost nine o'clock when Ellen
Louisa turned from the window, against which she had been flattening
her nose.
"It's snowing again," she announced.
Miss Miflin looked up in dismay. She had forgotten how fast the time
was passing. Sarah never knew that, summoned by her stories and her
love, it seemed to Miss Miflin that William was there with them.
"I shall have to go at once," she cried. "I had no idea it was so late."
Sarah clasped her hands together.
"You are welcome to stay here," she said. "If it is you good enough,
you are welcome to stay here!"
Miss Miflin crossed the room to look out of the window.
"I guess I'll have to. Then I can take the twins with me to school in
the morning and they won't need the gun. And why do they want to run
away, where some one might pick them up? And who wants to pick them up?"
It was a second before Sarah answered. Suppose she should tell Miss
Miflin about Uncle Daniel, and about Jacob Kalb, and all her anxieties
and fears? But, no, it would never do. It made her ashamed to think of
Uncle Daniel. She did not believe William would like her to tell. She
frowned again at Louisa Ellen.
"Ach, they are a little wild," she explained. "They like their school,
but they are a little wild."
By this time Miss Miflin had a delighted and sleepy twin on each side
of her on the settle.
"But they are not going to be wild any more," she said.
Sarah was asleep that night almost before her head touched the pillow.
It seemed to her that peace had descended upon her heart, and hopes
for a better day.
It was midnight when she suddenly awoke. Miss Miflin was standing
beside the bed.
"Sarah! Sarah, dear, wake up. Your uncle is here and wants you."
Sarah tried to open her drowsy eyes.
"He can't have them," she said, bewildered. "Tell him he must go away."
"But listen, Sarah. He says Albert is sick and they want you."
Sarah sat up at once.
"He is waiting for you at the door. Come, I'll help you with your
clothes. Don't come back to-night. I'll get breakfast for the twins.
No, Sarah, the other shoe. No, you must put on all your warm clothes.
There! Now, I'll come downstairs with you."
Sarah was too dazed with fright and sleep to speak. Miss Miflin was
shocked at the anguish in her face. She put out her arms, and for one
blessed moment Sarah felt the close pressure of sympathy and love.
"There, Sarah, dear! I'll look after the twins and the house, and
to-morrow you must tell me everything, Sarah."
Miss Miflin opened the door, and told Uncle Daniel who she was, and
Sarah went out. With confidence which touched even Uncle Daniel
himself, she put her hand in his.
"Come, let us hurry," she whispered.