The house to which Harry Cornwall was carried after he had been thrown
from his pony was in Pumpkin Delight Lane. You will perhaps think that
this name is not a “real true” name of a “real true” lane, but it is,
and it will lead you through many a wild, solitary place, past farm lots
and salt meadows, down at last to Peconick Point; but Grandma Dobson
lived at the upper end of it, nearly to the village. Her house was one
of the oldest in the town. It was the loveliest brown in color, because
no man’s paint had touched it. The modern improvements had not marched
down Pumpkin Delight Lane, and I am sorely afraid that, had they, dear
Grandma Dobson would have shut her door against them.
Grandma Dobson was grandma to the children thereabout, although she had
no grandchildren of her own. Long years ago, thirty—nearly forty—she was
a bright young maiden, and Charlie Dobson was a brave sailor lad. He was
going on a long voyage, and he was going as ship’s master for the first
time. His ship was ready to sail. So, one day they were married, and the
young captain went to sea without his bride, because he did not wish to
risk her life in the _Snow_. _Snow_ was the name of his ship. The next
voyage he was to have a new ship, and then her home should be on it. She
went down to the harbor to bid him farewell. The _Snow_ lifted her sails
and sailed away—no man knew whither, and no man knoweth to-day, for the
ship never was heard from any more.
The little wife lived in the old farm home, waiting, waiting—many, many
years. There was one window, high up in the garret, close to the roof,
where she used to sit and sew from morning until night, and wear her
poor eyes dim with looking out, past a little island that lay just
outside, for the _Snow_ to come sailing into the bay. She was a
dressmaker. If the dresses she made, sitting up there, could tell the
story of the hopes and fears that went out and in with the stitches and
the tides, how sweet, and sad, and hopeless, the history.
When the men, looking out for the nearest house to take Harry Cornwall
into, after his fall from the pony, espied Grandma Dobson’s habitation,
that dear old soul was at that window looking out over the bar, past the
island, away across the miles of sea, thinking it just possible—at least
she would look once more, it could do no harm, for the _Snow_.
She saw the men bearing a burden. Some one was drowned, perhaps. She
went down to see, and met them at the door.
“Dear me! what’s happened?” she asked.
“A boy is hurt. May we bring him in?”
“The poor lad! Yes, indeed. Lay him right here! He isn’t dead, is he?”
She opened the window to let in the breeze coming up from the sea; and
they laid Harry down, sawdust and all, on Grandma Dobson’s white
coverlet.
Then the doctor came hurrying down the lane, and left his horse standing
in front of the house. Spry was the name of the animal, in whom the
doctor had full confidence. Now Spry had, when the May clover was at its
sweetest, carried the doctor along the shore and out across the bar to
the little island, where the clover is sweeter than any that grows on
the old main land. Spry fully appreciated the clover at the time, and
remembering it still, off he started for the island.
The tide was rising fast. The bar was almost covered, but Spry got upon
it safely and trotted along the stony way, not minding in the least the
spray that met about his feet. He gained Cloverland Paradise at last,
and when his master, having dressed Harry’s wounds and properly disposed
of his broken arm, went out to find him, Spry was wandering in fields of
sweetness, and the poor puzzled doctor walked home.
Great was the consternation on the island to find the doctor’s horse
feeding there and without his master, and great was the fear lest the
doctor had been drowned. Spry had to pay for his clover by crossing the
bar at the first moment the tide permitted. The water poured into the
doctor’s carriage, and the man who drove kept his eyes roving about on
every side, to find some trace of the missing man. It was nearly dark
when he, urging Spry on to his highest speed, went rushing villageward.
As he came to the principal street, the overhanging elms, whose branches
met, made it seem quite dark.
At first the man thought he would stop and inquire if the doctor had
reached home, but finally deciding to go at once to the doctor’s house,
he gave Spry a touch with the whip, which sent the beast on faster than
ever.
Just as he gave the stroke he was passing a cornerstore, before which a
group of loungers was standing.
In the darkness every one of them recognized the doctor’s horse,
although not one of them recognized the man who drove.
“There goes the doctor’s horse, this minute,” cried one.
“The rascal thinks he’ll get off safe,” cried another, while all
together they set up such a shout and cry, that instantly the street
seemed to resound with cries of “Stop him! Stop him! He’s running off
with the doctor’s horse. Stop, thief!”
While the crowd ran on, pursuing as fast as it could, two men jumped
into a wagon and started on another road. They intended to head the
escaping thief and turn him back, to effect which, they spared not the
horse they drove, but at the end of a mile and a half, turned
triumphantly into the New Haven turnpike, saying “Now we have him! Spry
hasn’t speed enough to have passed this point. We’ll meet him presently.
He’s one of them good-for-nothing circus fellows, without any doubt.”
To their intense disgust and astonishment Spry’s white face did not
appear on the road, nor did they see it until they reached the doctor’s
house, whither they went to inform him that the horse-thief had escaped.
They were met as they drove up with shouts of laughter from the group
assembled in the doctor’s yard. Looking about in the darkness for the
cause, Spry was discerned quietly standing at his accustomed post, while
his master, who had had an unusual amount of walking to do that
afternoon, was waiting to get his tea, and for the moon to rise before
taking the man back to the island.
The next morning Mrs. Hallock’s carriage and the doctor’s gig met at the
brown house in Pumpkin Delight Lane.
“I am so glad to meet you,” said Mrs. Hallock to the doctor, who was in
the act of tying Spry to a fence-post, not venturing to trust him within
smelling distance of the clover across the sea.
“Yes,” said the doctor, in his straightforward, brusque way, “you are
just the right person in the right place, but I think these little folks
had better stay in the carriage and take a turn down on the sands, while
you come in.”
Frank and Kate were already on the ground, in their eagerness to see
Harry Cornwall.
“O doctor, please won’t you let him come to our house?” pleaded Kate.
“You’ll have chance enough, my child, to see the poor fellow. All in
good time. Run away now, both of you.”
Mrs. Hallock bade Hugo drive on, and return in half an hour.
“Dear me!” sighed Kate. “It’s too bad we happened to meet that provoking
old doctor, isn’t it? I’m just crazy to see that boy.”
“I’ll take a run over by myself, by-and-by,” said Frank, quite loftily.
“I dare say there will be something to fetch over after mamma sees him.”
“You’ll let me come, too, Frank?” asked Kate beseechingly, with her eyes
following the darkness and light of a bobolink’s twinkling across the
green lane.
“No, Kate; it isn’t just _the thing_”—with an air of superiority quite
exasperating to his sister.
“Wasn’t it _the thing_, as you say, when you wanted a crust last night?
You thought so when you asked me to fetch it, didn’t you?”
“O—well. My! Wasn’t that a good dash?” as a red-winged blackbird shook
its dazzle on the blue air; and then Frank did not seem to think it
worth while to return to the subject, but began to talk quite fast. “My!
Kate,” he ran on, “how I wish you were a boy—twin-brother to me! I’ll
tell you what we’d do.”
“What?” came eagerly from Kate, who was so anxious to do whatever her
brother wished, that she had already secretly resolved to join him in
his enterprise, even though only a girl.
“We’d run away and go to sea.”
“O!” exclaimed Kate, quite overcome by surprise.
“Well, what do you think about it?”—after a minute.
“It would be just splendid!” said Kate. “Only boys and girls don’t do
such things _now_; they used to, you know, when they didn’t know any
better.” Kate was thinking just then of the “Children’s Crusade” and its
sad disasters.
“Of course, not _girls_,” said Frank; “but I dare say it’s just as jolly
for boys as ever—jollier, maybe, ’cause if one don’t like it, why
there’s any number of ships coming back about every day.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t let _you_ sail in them though, Frank; and that
would be bad—awful bad! If I was with you now, ’twould be different.
They’d let me sail with them, ’cause I am a girl, and they’d take you
along to take care of me. Don’t you see?”
“Come, now, Kate, don’t be foolish. You didn’t suppose I’d let you run
away with me, did you?”
“I might go if you didn’t _let_ me, Mr. Frank. Girls do lots of things
now that they didn’t use to do. Mamma says so; and she’s glad I’m going
to have more chances at something or other—I forget what—than she had
when she was little.”
“At grammar, perhaps, Kate. Grammar is good for little girls—keeps them
out of mischief.”
“There, now!” cried Kate, making a mischievous dash at Frank’s ear, and
missing it. She hit his straw hat with a force that sent it careering,
helped on by the strong sea-breeze, over the wet sands, along which they
were driving. “See how your hat likes going to sea all alone, sir,
before you start,” laughed Kate; while Frank sprang down, and went in
hot pursuit of his hat.
Kate clapped her hands, and shouted encouraging words to Frank as he
made frantic endeavors to catch it. The hat seemed like a hunted thing,
driven on from point to point, until reaching a creek running down from
the salt meadows, it rolled airily into it, and went sailing off slowly
toward the sea.
“Stop it! stop it!” shouted Frank to Hugo, who drove ahead of it, and
stopped the carriage midway in the stream; while Kate, getting down on
the carriage steps, fished it out with the handle of her parasol,
thereby saving Frank from getting his feet wet.
“Saved by a girl!” laughed Kate, when they had driven to land and Frank
was again by her side.
“Set adrift by a girl!” exclaimed Frank, who was really in a bad humor
at having his hat wet and dripping, so that he could not put it upon his
head.
“Hang it up to dry,” suggested Kate, offering the point of her parasol
to hoist it on in the sun.
Frank tied it on, and telling Hugo not to hurry, so that it might have a
chance to be wearable by the time they reached the brown house, they
turned toward it.
The doctor was already at the gate untying Spry when they reached it.
“Now, my little folks,” said he, “is your chance to see the poor fellow.
He’s a plucky lad, and will make a glorious pull through life, I know.”
“Thank you,” said Frank, although he could not have told what he was
thanking the doctor for, while Kate, who had made up her mind that Harry
was a kind of hero—what kind she did not know—could have kissed the old
doctor, for just thinking well of the lad.
“There! there! It’s all over now, and you’ll have a nice long rest,”
Grandma Dobson was saying, while she softly patted and petted Harry; and
there, right in the room, having entered like two healthy spirits, stood
Kate and Frank.
Harry did not see them, for his eyes were covered by a bandage.
Frank went close to him, saying “I’m the boy who helped you wash dishes,
and, I say, it’s too bad you fell and got hurt. Here’s my sister Kate
come to see you, too.”
“I’m very sorry I can’t see her,” said Harry. “My head will be all right
in a little while. I’m not much hurt. I felt ashamed to make a noise
when the doctor touched my arm. If you could have seen the poor folks in
the fire, and how brave they were—one woman carrying her baby two miles
with her hands burned awfully in trying to get it out of the house, you
wouldn’t feel so sorry for me.”
“I should, Harry,” spoke up Kate, “and I’m Kate Hallock. I saw you over
the stone wall when you were riding into town on that pony.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t better worth seeing,” said Harry, “and I’m much
obliged to you for coming here to-day.”
“I wanted to come,” said Kate.
“O!” exclaimed Harry, wondering why, but not venturing to ask the
question.
Mrs. Dobson, mistaking Harry’s exclamation for one of pain or weariness,
adroitly asked Kate and Frank if they would go out into the field beyond
the garden and help their mother to find some skullcap for Harry.
Away they ran, eager and anxious to do something, anything to help.
“Mamma! we’ve seen him. Doctor Hill said we might,” cried Kate,
springing over the low stone wall that separated Mrs. Dobson’s bit of
vegetable garden from the meadow in which Mrs. Hallock was searching for
skullcap.
“Poor boy! I am very sorry for him,” said Mrs. Hallock. “No mother, and
no home, and it might have been our Frank, Kate.”
“But, mother, it isn’t, you know; and now he’s going to have a mother
and a home, and a brother and a sister, too. O, I’m so glad the circus
came, and Frank ran away, and everything happened. I’m glad Harry got
hurt, too,” she said, almost under her breath, “if he’ll only make haste
and get well now. There! is this skullcap?” holding up a cluster of
something green, that she had gathered close to the wall.
“No, child! that is young golden-rod, just out of the ground. Frank!
Frank! come here, and jump over the wall and get this for me,” called
Mrs. Hallock, but Frank was in great excitement over a young snake that
he had found warming its wriggling, uncanny self on the stone wall.
“He’s whipping something!” returned Kate.
“O, Frank, don’t, don’t do it!” and Kate ran as fast as she could
through the tall June grass toward the spot where Frank was vigorously
switching.
“Go back! Go back, Kate!” shouted Frank. “It’s a snake!”
Kate did go back as fast as she could, springing over the wall right
into the midst of Grandma Dobson’s currant bushes.
“Run! run, mamma!” she shouted, out of breath, and trembling as only a
girl can tremble, at the thought of a snake.
“Don’t be frightened! it’s only a young black snake. There’s lots of ’em
in the grass down the lane,” said Frank, after he had killed the reptile
and approached his mother, who, to tell the exact truth, was standing
quite still, and was afraid to take another step into the long grass
about her feet.
“Give me your hand, Frank?” she said, trying to smile, but looking very
white.
“Why, mamma, what is the matter? You haven’t been bitten, have you?” and
with the words, Frank reached her side and took hold of her outstretched
hand.
“No, Frank.” She tried to smile, but the trial was such a miserable
failure, that she nearly cried instead of smiling.
“Why, mother,” in a voice of mingled pity and regret, “I thought you had
more courage!”
“I have about some things—bearing a headache, for instance,” she
replied, trying two or three times before she could get over the low
wall into the garden. By the time she reached the house, she was very
glad to sit down on the broad stone steps at the back door.
“Fetch me some water,” she said, but instead of going for the water,
Kate ran for Mrs. Dobson, who presently appeared on the scene with a
glass of foaming root beer. “Don’t be afraid of it, Mrs. Hallock. I made
it with my own hands, and I know just what is in it. I don’t know what
to do about the snakes, I’m sure. Everybody else is afraid of them, but
they never hurt me.”
“You don’t go near them, do you?” gasped Kate, with her soft brown eyes
expressive of extreme horror at the thought.
“Go near snakes! Yes, indeed I do, and talk to them, too.”
“Talk to snakes!” echoed Frank and Kate in chorus, and even Mrs. Hallock
looked up interested.
Grandma Dobson was standing in the doorway. “There! dear me! I near
forgot the egg I was beating up for the lad,” she said, stepping back
and taking up the plate upon which she had the white of an egg.
“Let me do that,” urged Kate; “I know how, I do it often for mamma. All
that she has to say, is ‘Whiff, Kate!’ and I’m on the spot; and I’m
there now; so, please?” extending her hand for the plate and knife, and
adding, “I’m in an awful hurry to hear what you say to snakes.”
“It’s a bit of a story, and a true one, too,” said Mrs. Dobson, sitting
down in a chair that Frank had the politeness to offer to her.
“You little folks will wonder that I know about Indians,” she began,
“but there were perhaps a dozen of the Wepawaugs living here when I was
a little girl, eight years old, or thereabouts.
“One Indian woman I remember very well—she was a granddaughter of
Ansantawae, a Sachem, and very, very proud of her ancestors. Her uncle
had been the great medicine man of his tribe: from him, she learned to
make syrups of roots, barks, and herbs, that she gathered from far and
near. She was a clever soul, everybody trusted her, and when she was
going off once, in the early summer, up to the Southington mountains to
get the things she wanted for her syrups, I ran away to go with her.”
“Grandma Dobson!” with bated breath from Kate and Frank; while Kate from
that instant forgot all about the egg she was beating.
“Yes, children, I did, but I was sorry enough before I got back, I can
tell you. I knew when she was going, for I had been down to see her and
to carry to her some things from my mother, the night before. I had
never seen a mountain, and the very name of one sounded so grand, that I
thought I’d give anything to see the real thing; so the next morning,
when it was about time for her to start, I started, too, and went along
the road I knew she was going to take—for I had asked her that. Well,
when I got out of the town where there were no more houses, it seemed so
lonely that I was frightened, and I went behind a big rock and waited
for her to come along.
“I hadn’t long to wait. She came very fast, standing up as straight as a
pine tree when the wind is still, and over her shoulder a stout stick
with two bundles on it—one hanging behind, and one before. I knew if she
met me there, she would send me back; so I ran on behind her. She never
looked back once, but walked so fast that at last I lost sight of her;
but I kept on and on, over hills and down by streams, until I was tired
as I could be. The sun was hot, and I was hungry, and I came to a place
where a road turned off, and I didn’t know which road she had taken.”
“Wasn’t there any trail?” asked Frank.
“I was only a little girl, and I never thought to look for footprints;
but just as I was standing there, something spoke to me out of the woods
on my left. I jumped, I can tell you, to hear my name called—‘Dorothy!
Dorothy Ford!’—out of the dark woods.
“‘Where are you going?’ came next; and then I knew the voice. Anawa was
sitting over there, eating her dinner. I told her I was going with her.
At first she said ‘No, I must go back; yes, the first horse she met on
the road, she would send me home to my mother.’ She made me sit down on
the rock by her, and eat some of my own mother’s bread and cake.
“After awhile we got up and went on, but all day long we did not meet
one horse going toward Wepawaug. Anawa was a good deal vexed when she
had to walk slow, because I was tired. She muttered away to herself in
the Indian language, and now and then scowled at me, until I was so
frightened that I wanted to cry. It began to grow dark at last, and I
longed to see Pumpkin Delight Lane more than I had wanted to see the
mountains at any time in my life.
“I did not see any houses anywhere about, and when I asked Anawa where
she was going to sleep, she scowled worse than ever, and I said no more
until we reached an Indian cabin—a little more than a wigwam, but not
much like any house that I had ever stayed in. There was no one in it.
The Indian broke up dry twigs and branches, and made a fire, and cooked
some salt fish that she had in one of her bundles. We ate the fish and
some more of my mother’s bread, which almost choked me, I remember; and
then Anawa went out of the hut, and left me alone. I don’t think she was
gone long, but it seemed a great while to me—so long that if it hadn’t
been for the bundles that she left, I should have been afraid she didn’t
mean to come back at all. When she did come in, she had her arms so full
of hemlock boughs, that I couldn’t tell whether she was pleased or
angry. She made a pile of them on the floor, and bade me ‘to bed’ with
an air of authority that I did not dare to resist. I lay down and went
to sleep. Before the sun was up, she called me, gave me a crust to eat,
shouldered her staff, with its bundle made fast to either end, and
strode on. I followed her.
“Pretty soon we met a boy driving a cow to pasture, although there was
plenty of grass all along the highway; and then when we had climbed
another long hill, there was a red house in sight. I couldn’t help
saying I wanted a mug of milk. Anawa gave a grunt for answer; but when
she came to the gateway, she went in.
“Mr. Primrose lived in the red house, and when I found out that the
Indian wished me to stay there until there was a chance to send me home,
I cried, and made such a fuss about it, that she took hold of my hand,
twitched me out of the house, and down the next hill as fast as she
could go; but as it was not until I had a nice warm breakfast, I did not
care much about it. After that Anawa begun to talk to me about
everything we saw along the way, and when I got very tired she sat down
and waited until I had rested. After three days we came to the
Southington mountains.
“‘You’ll see snakes pretty soon,’ she said. Then I began to be terribly
afraid, and to cling to her gown.
“‘Snakes won’t hurt you, if you’re good,’ she said. ‘Keep still now.
Hear me!’ She went on a few steps and stopped by a big rock and began to
say ‘Good, nice snakes! beautiful creatures! pretty little rattlesnakes!
Anawa won’t hurt you, and you mustn’t hurt her.’
“While she said this, I had hidden behind her, and was so frightened
that I could do nothing but gaze at the snakes on the rock. Anawa’s
voice seemed to charm them. They did not stir or sound a rattle, and we
went on. We were all day on the mountains, and saw maybe a hundred
snakes. She would kneel right down by the side of a snake and dig roots
from the ground, crooning away to it like a mother to a baby. Since then
I haven’t been very near many snakes, but I am not afraid of one. I tell
a snake just as Anawa did, that I won’t hurt it if it doesn’t hurt me,
and somehow it seems to understand.”
“I never should stay near enough to a snake to speak to it,” said Mrs.
Hallock.
“Nor I,” said Kate, while Frank said,
“I couldn’t keep from killing a snake long enough to speak to it.”
“I suppose boys couldn’t,” said Mrs. Dobson, who, suddenly remembering
the poor lad in the next room, arose quickly to go to him.
“There comes Josh this minute with a snake,” she cried, looking toward
the garden.
Josh—Mrs. Dobson’s shepherd dog—leaped the stone wall, dragging after
him an enormous black snake that he had met and killed. The good fellow
towed it along to the door, dropped it, and looked up, wagging his tail,
as much as to say, “Praise me, I’ve done well, the very best I knew
how.”