Grandma Dobson, with a snowy white cap sitting demurely upon her silver
curls, sat in the blue rocking chair, knitting a gray sock. She was in
the open doorway and it was near sunset. The golden light was all about
the placid face, whose lines of sweet patience seemed drawn clearer and
fairer than on any other afternoon of her life.
She knitted away with her busy fingers, her eyes taking harvest of all
the beauty lying toward the setting sun. Now and then, looking at the
quince trees that grew along the garden wall, she made anew a little
calculation concerning the quantity of quinces she could gather when the
time for gathering should come. There was always a good market for
quinces. Beyond the garden wall, concealed by the quince trees that lay
between, was the apple orchard, now heavy with fruitage. Mrs. Dobson
always enjoyed the apple harvest, when there was an apple harvest to
enjoy. She remembered gathering apples from that orchard for Captain
Dobson to take away on the _Snow_, in the year before they were married.
The fingers knitted slower and slower, stumbling over the stitches at
last; then they ceased from effort, and the gray sock was let fall
across her dress. A shadow came over the slant sunlight. Mrs. Dobson
caught up the sock, a half-guilty color suffusing face and throat.
“Did I frighten you, grandma?” questioned Harry. “I’m sorry.”
“I am afraid it was my wicked thoughts that frightened me, laddie. I was
foolish enough to go contrary to what God thinks best for me, and when
you came so quick around the corner, I was wondering what on earth I
should do if Captain Dobson should come back—so foolish, after more than
thirty years!”
“And you wouldn’t even know him, would you?” questioned Harry, dropping
his hat on the door stone and sitting down beside it.
“Yes, Harry, I think I should. I’m sure I’d feel very bad if Captain
Dobson didn’t remember _me_, and I never doubt that he would remember me
as long as he did anything about this world.”
“And nobody ever was known to come back after being gone thirty years,
was there, grandma?”
“Nobody that I ever heard of; and, Harry, it is only when I sit down and
dream awake, or in my sleep, that I ever believe that he can. I haven’t
let myself play he comes in a long time before, and I shouldn’t now, but
I was waiting for you to come home to tea.”
“I almost hope he won’t come,” said Harry, “’cause if he did, I should
have to move on somewhere.”
“Then you don’t care to go?” questioned Mrs. Dobson, with a little
breath of eagerness. “I was afraid, when there was so much talk of
Frank’s going off to the grand school, that my boy would grow
discontented.”
“Not a bit of it, grandma. I got grandeur enough at the circus to last
me a lifetime. I’m sorry sometimes, though, because I see so much
make-believe in ’most everything. I wonder if it is wicked to hate
make-believe as much as I do.”
“Dear me! Harry Cornwall, what can I do if you begin to hate me?”
exclaimed Mrs. Dobson, thrusting the knitting-needles into parallel
lines through the sock and looking with severity at him.
“No danger of that, grandma. You are as transparent as the water in this
well—and you know it is relied on always for pure clearness. I must have
a drink, and while we are at tea I’ve something to tell you.”
At the table Harry related nearly everything that had happened at the
Point during his little visit there, together with his thoughts and
fears of what might happen.
“Dear, dear me!” sighed Mrs. Dobson. “What can we—you and I, Harry—do
for our friends?”
“We can wait and watch for a chance, grandma. It won’t do to let on what
we’ve found out. When everybody knows about the trouble, then we can
seem to know it, too.”
“I thought you hated make-believe, my laddie.”
“That isn’t what I mean by making believe. I found Kate sobbing away and
telling her grief to her pony, and I more than half think that Neptune
understood every word she said, too.” Then suddenly turning his bright
face upon Mrs. Dobson, the boy said: “I know one way to help them, a
little.”
“What is that?” she asked, eagerly.
“Oh! a way?”
“Tell it!” with a near approach to impatience for Mrs. Dobson.
“To have your dream come true, grandma! because, then, you would not
need me. I should be in the way here, and I’ve an immense good opinion
of myself—I could make myself very useful over at the Point, and save
money in a good many ways for Mr. Hallock that Hugo never thinks of.”
“I can get along beautifully without you,” said Mrs. Dobson, after a
pause, “that is, until the spring; after you get the crops all in, I
mean; and you could come over once in a while by running across your
bridge, even if it was cold weather.”
“Now, grandma, you’re making believe you’d get along comfortably without
me,” said Harry, reproachfully.
“No, I am not,” she said, trying very hard to steady her voice. “I
didn’t say there wouldn’t be _very hard_ days and unpleasant hours. I
said I could get along nicely, and so I can, and will, if it seems
best.”
“And here we are a-dreaming away, when perhaps I am not wanted at all,”
said Harry, “and Primrose is waiting by this time at the bars for me. If
Captain Dobson should come before I get through milking, grandma, you
swing the strainer—here it is” (catching it from a gooseberry bush by
the door and tossing it to her), “white as snow—for I want a chance to
run upstairs and put myself in order to do you honor before a visitor.”
“What dreamers we are, to be sure,” sighed Mrs. Dobson, as she watched
the lad go his way past the quince trees and through the orchard to the
meadow-bars, where Primrose waited.
The sun was just dropping out of sight. She watched it with eyes that
grew misty with wistfulness.
“Foolish! foolish!” she murmured, smiling the very ghost of a smile, as
she turned to gather up the cups and plates from the tea table.
When Harry fetched in the milk she was washing them, just as usual, he
thought, while she was thinking that if Harry could be of more service
at the Point than in the Lane, he ought to go there.
The next morning Frank Hallock went bounding into the brown house to
exhibit himself in the uniform which had arrived the night before. “The
swamp-bridge is a capital institution, Harry,” he said. “When I go to
Congress, I’ll vote for swamp-bridges all along the coast. How do you
like me in my fine feathers?”
Mrs. Dobson surveyed Frank’s fine figure and erect carriage, and
pronounced the uniform “fit for any gentleman.”
Harry remarked: “My mother used to say that real soldiers are always
gentlemen, and never” (he added on his own account) “leave a lady to
find her way alone across a marsh, as our soldier left his sister just
now.”
“Oh! you mean Kate,” said Frank, too well pleased at the moment to
resent anything that anyone might say. “Kate had no need to come. She
only wanted to hear what you would say to my new clothes.”
And just here Kate presented herself, panting for breath and
disappointed. She had lost that first expression of pleased surprise
that she longed to see. However, her enjoyment was too simple and
genuine to be long delayed at any time, and one or two laughing
sentences from her precious brother made far away the wrong of a few
moments ago.
“Don’t be so grand, Frank, that you can’t come to see me. I am afraid
the military school will spoil you for the old brown house and Grandma
Dobson,” Mrs. Dobson said, as they were about to go home.
“I’ll come at the Christmas vacation,” replied Frank, “and bring three
or four of the fellows and spend the day here. You see if I don’t! I’ll
be civil enough, though, to let you know when, for four or five of us
would eat an awful sight of your rye bread.”
“I’ll come over the day before and help you make it, grandma, and then
I’ll come that day and help eat it,” said Kate, kissing the dear soul
good-bye, and departing in jubilant spirits with Frank.
“Let us go home by the way of the town wharf,” said Frank. “I want to
find out if there’s any chance of getting to the island to-day; and
maybe we’ll catch Captain Green or some of the fishermen there.”
Frank had left unexpressed his strong motive for going, but Kate added:
“O, yes, Frank, and then they can see your perfectly lovely uniform. You
can’t think how fine you look and how proud of you in it I am. I’d
rather not have a single new thing to wear this winter and be able to
see you in it.”
“What an admiring duck you are!” observed Frank. “In return, I’ll get
together the best set of adjectives I can muster to do you honor in your
next finery”—with which promise they came within sight of the pier. On
it a stranger was walking and peering with interest into every little
boat thereabout.
“I wonder who that is,” said Frank, straightening himself and walking
down the wharf as though he owned it and the harbor also. Kate
straightened her hat and walked demurely by his side. Kate could not
assume airs and graces that were not her own.
“Good morning, my lad,” said the stranger to Frank.
“Good morning,” returned Frank, a little stiff at having been called “my
lad” by the man.
“That uniform looks very well, indeed. I didn’t think it could be so
exact a fit as it is,” remarked the man. “You are the son of Mr. Hallock
at the Point yonder. I know,” he added with a smile, “for I sent that
suit to him yesterday.”
“Then you are Mr. North,” returned Frank, not quite so freezing in his
air of boyish consequence.
“Yes, and perhaps you can help me. I come out to this region very often
during the fall and winter for duck-shooting, and I have so great
difficulty in securing a boat that I wish to buy one. Do you know of one
for sale?”
“Yes,” spoke up impulsive Kate; “there is your own boat, Frank.”
“I’ll lend it to you to-day,” said Frank pleasantly to Mr. North, adding
with a lordly look in Kate’s direction, “but my boat is not for sale.”
Mr. North walked to the Point with the children, and, having secured the
boat, soon departed for the day. He returned at evening and was a good
deal surprised at seeing the young girl he had noticed with Frank in the
morning, waiting at the little boathouse, apparently to meet him. He was
astonished when she questioned him thus:
“Do you wish to buy my brother’s boat?”
“Yes, if he will sell it to me; it is a good little affair and answers
my purpose nicely: that is, if it can be taken care of here for me until
the spring.”
“O, yes,” said Kate. “But how much will you give for it?”
“How much does your brother ask for it?”
“O, I don’t know as he will sell it; but I know how much my father paid
for it. He gave forty dollars in the spring, and Frank named it to
please me; but I wish he would sell it and you would buy it.” Then with
a quick impulse, Kate asked, “How much did Frank’s new clothes cost?”
Without giving direct reply, Mr. North said: “We will make an exchange,
if your brother pleases—I will take the boat for the uniform.”
“What a good way! Thank you,” said Kate softly, and before the words had
died away upon the air, she was off to the house with the good news to
Frank, but Frank was not at home. When he did arrive, he was cross and
peevish, and would not take with a grain of good sense or amiability one
word that Kate said; and so she resolved to keep her secret about the
boat until morning.