DAB HAS A WAKING DREAM, AND HAM GETS A SNIFF OF SEA-AIR.
Sleep? One of the most excellent things in all the world, and very few
people get too much of it nowadays.
As for Dabney Kinzer, he had done his sleeping as regularly and
faithfully as even his eating, up to the very night after Ham Morris
came home to find the old barn afire. There had been a few, a very few,
exceptions. There were the nights when he was expecting to go
duck-shooting before daylight, and waked up at midnight with a strong
conviction that he was late about starting. There were, perhaps, a dozen
of "eeling" expeditions, that had kept him out late enough for a full
basket and a proper scolding. There, too, was the night when he had
stood so steadily by the tiller of "The Swallow," while she danced,
through the dark, across the rough billows of the Atlantic.
But, on the whole, Dab Kinzer had been a good sleeper all his life till
then. Once in bed, and there had been for him an end of all wakefulness.
On that particular night, for the first time, sleep refused to come,
late as was the hour when the family circle broke up.
It could not have been the excitement of Ham and Miranda's return. He
would have gotten over that by this time. No more could it have been the
fire, though the smell of smouldering hay came in pretty strongly at
times through the wide-open windows. If any one patch of that great
roomy bed was better made up for sleeping than the rest of it, Dab would
surely have found the spot; for he tumbled and rolled all over it in his
restlessness. Some fields on a farm will "grow" wheat better than
others, but no part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep. At last Dab got
wearily up, and took a chair by the window.
The night was dark, but the stars were shining; and every now and then
the wind would make a shovel of itself, and toss up the hot ashes the
fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns
for a moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell of
burnt hay.
"If you're going to burn hay," soliloquized Dabney, "it won't do to take
a barn for a stove. Not that kind of a barn. But what did Ham Morris
mean by saying that I was to go to boarding-school? That's what I'd like
to know"
The secret was out.
He had kept remarkably still, for him, all the evening, and had not
asked a question; but, if his brains were ever to work over his books as
they had over Ham's remark, his future chances for sound sleep were all
gone. It had come upon him so suddenly, the very thing he thought about
that night in "The Swallow," and wished for and dreamed about during all
those walks and talks and lessons of all sorts with Ford Foster and
Frank Harley, ever since they came in from that memorable cruise.
It was a wonderful idea, and Dab had his doubts as to the way his mother
would take to it when it should be brought seriously before her. Little
he guessed the truth. Ham's remark had gone deep into other ears as well
as Dabney's; and there were reasons, therefore, why good Mrs. Kinzer was
sitting by the window of her own room, at that very moment, as little
inclined to sleep as was the boy she was thinking of. So proud of him
too, she was, and so full of bright, motherly thoughts of the man he
would make, "one of these days, when he gets his growth."
There must have been a good deal of sympathy between Dab and his mother;
for by and by, just as she began to feel drowsy, and muttered, "Well,
well, we'll have a talk about it to-morrow," Dab found himself nodding
against the window-frame, and slowly rose from his chair, remarking,--
"Guess I might as well finish that dream in bed. If I'd tumbled out o'
the window I'd have lit among Miranda's rose-bushes. They've got their
thorns all out at this time o' night."
It was necessary for them both to sleep hard, after that; for more than
half the night was gone, and they were to be up early. So indeed they
were; but what surprised Mrs. Kinzer when she went into the kitchen was
to find Miranda there before her.
"You here, my dear? That's right. I'll take a look at the milk-room.
Where's Ham?"
"Out among the stock. Dab's just gone to him."
Curious things people will do at times. Miranda had put down the
coffee-pot on the range. There was not a single one of the farm "help"
around, male or female; and there stood the blooming young bride, with
her back toward her mother, and staring out through the open door. And
then Mrs. Kinzer slipped forward, and put her arms around her daughter's
neck.
Well, it was very early in the morning for those two women to stand
there and cry; but it seemed to do them good, and Miranda remarked at
last, as she kissed her mother,--
"O mother, it is all so good and beautiful, and I'm so happy!"
And then they both laughed, in a subdued and quiet way; and Miranda
picked up the coffee-pot while Mrs. Kinzer walked away into the
milk-room. Such cream as there seemed to be on all the pans that
morning!
As for Ham Morris, his first visit on leaving the house had been to the
relics of the old barn, as a matter of course.
"Not much of a loss," he said to himself; "but it might have been, but
for Dab. There's the making of a man in him. Wonder if he'd get enough
to eat, if we sent him up yonder? On the whole, I think he would. If he
didn't, I don't believe it would be his fault. He's got to go; and his
mother'll agree to it, I know. Talk about mothers-in-law! If one of
'em's worth as much as she is, I'd like to have a dozen. Don't know
'bout that, though. I'm afraid the rest would have to take back seats as
long as Mrs. Kinzer was in the house."
Very likely Ham was right; but just then he heard the voice of Dab,
behind him,--
"I say, Ham, when you've looked at the other things, I want to show you
'The Swallow.' I haven't hurt her a bit, and her new grapnel's worth
three of the old one."
"All right, Dab. I think I'd like a sniff of the water. Come on. There's
nothing else I know of like that smell of the shore with the tide half
out."
No more there is; and there have been sea-shore men, many of them, who
had wandered away into the interior of the country, hundreds and
hundreds of long miles, and settled there, and even got rich and old
there, and yet who have come all the way back again, just to get another
smell of the salt marshes and the sea-air and the out-going tide.
Ham actually took a little boat, and went on board "The Swallow," when
they reached the landing, and Dab kept close to him.
"She's all right, Ham. But what are you casting loose for?"
"Dab, they won't all be ready for breakfast in two hours. The stock and
things can go: the men'll tend to 'em. Just haul on that sheet a bit.
Now the jib. Look out for the boom. There! The wind's a little ahead,
but it isn't bad. Ah!"
The last word came out in a great sigh of relief, and was followed by a
chuckle which seemed to gurgle all the way up from Ham's boots.
"This is better than railroading," he said to Dabney, as they tacked
into the long stretch where the inlet widened toward the bay. "No
pounding or jarring here. Talk of your fashionable watering-places! Why,
Dab, there ain't any thing else in the world prettier than that reach of
water and the sand-island, with the ocean beyond it. There's some ducks
and some gulls. Why, Dab, do you see that? There's a porpoise, inside
the bar!"
It was as clear as daylight that Ham Morris felt himself "at home"
again, and that his brief experience of the outside world had by no
means lessened his affection for the place he was born in. If the entire
truth could have been known, it would have been found that he felt his
heart warm toward the whole coast and all its inhabitants, including the
clams. And yet it was remarkable how many of the latter were mere empty
shells when Ham finished his breakfast that morning. He preferred them
roasted, and his mother-in-law had not forgotten that trait in his
character.
Once or twice in the course of the sail, Dabney found himself on the
point of saying something about boarding-schools; but each time his
friend broke away to the discussion of other topics, such as blue-fish,
porpoises, crabs, or the sailing qualities of "The Swallow," and Dab
dimly felt that it would be better to wait until another time. So he
waited.
It was a grand good time, however, to be had before breakfast; and as
they again sailed up the inlet, very happy and very hungry, Dab suddenly
exclaimed,--
"Ham, do you see that? How could they have guessed where we'd gone?
There's the whole Kinzer tribe, and the boys are with them, and Annie."
"What boys and Annie?"
"Oh! Ford Foster and Frank Harley. Annie is Ford's sister. They live in
our old house, you know."
"What's become of Jenny?"
"You mean my boat? There she is, hitched a little out, just beyond the
landing."
There was nothing on Dab's face to lead any one to suppose that he
guessed the meaning of the quizzical grin on Ham's.
It is barely possible, however, that there would have been fewer people
at the landing, if Ham and Dab had not been keeping a whole house-full
of hungry mortals, including a bride, waiting breakfast for them.