SAWS, HAMMERS AND NAILS--TWO KINDS!
Prue sat back on her heels, her thumb in her mouth and that mouth
sagging at its corners.
Mark was sawing on the side of a packing case, making a cheerful
whistling through his teeth, but the saw was slender; it swayed and
bent a good deal, and the course it had so far followed through the
side of the box was as scalloped as if it had been cut by a cheese
scoop.
Isabel and Poppy were tacking bright colored chintz in deep pleats over
a much smaller box. Isabel was silent; she looked pale and her lips
were closed in a line that was almost grim. Poppy on the other hand was
red even to the tips of her ears, and she betrayed a decided tendency
to scold some one, any one who gave her the least opening.
As no one paid any attention to Prue, who had been hammering nails out
backward from a third box, she was forced to voice her woes in a bid
for pity.
“I shouldn’t be surprised if I had lockjaw,” she said plaintively.
Isabel looked up, saw her best friend’s miserable face and the thumb in
her mouth, around which she had spoken indistinctly, and jumped up to
run over to her.
“Did you hurt yourself, Prue darling?” she asked.
“I struck my nail like--like--I struck my thumb nail _awful_ hard,
Isabel! Do you suppose it doesn’t hurt? I just about can’t stand the
way it aches. I think likely I’ll have lockjaw, or lose the nail, or
something.” Prue struggled to keep back the tears, but her voice was
sadder than tears.
“Oh, no, dear!” cried Isabel. “It must be fearful, but it won’t come
off, or make lockjaw. Let me see. Poor, poor thumbling! It’s a dark
red!”
Isabel examined the short, sturdy little thumb with the air of a whole
college of physicians, and Prue bitterly turned it and bent it back and
forth as if newly introduced to it.
“I was not meant for a carpenter,” she said, feeling unjustly put upon.
“Well, who was?” exploded Poppy. “I can’t get these darned----”
“Poppy! You _must not_ say darned!” cried Prue, forgetting her pain in
her passionate desire to keep Poppy straight.
“They are!” said Poppy. “Well then: These sweet pretty red and blue
chintz parrots, or hens, or something! I can’t get ’em on straight. And
Isa keeps a-pulling the stuff all round and how can I?”
“Some job to saw through this box straight with a saw like a lemonade
straw, if you want to know,” Mark added to the lamenting chorus.
“Let’s chuck it!” cried Poppy. “It’s too hard to make our own
furniture, and ’twon’t be one bit of good if we do fuss and muss it,
and all our poor fids get pounded bust!”
“We’ve got to furnish this room, and where’d we get the money? It would
cost a lot. Mother bought some new piazza chairs, and she said the kind
that used to be about three and a half she paid seven for,” said Prue
removing her thumb to say this. It was like Prue to know about high
prices, and like her to be ready to keep on with the work in hand,
though for her it had proved to be work _on_ hand, most painful to
endure.
The instant she had spoken she jabbed her thumb quickly between her
lips again and wriggled the fingers on the same hand because it hurt so
much.
“Let’s go out and do stunts in the streets and people’d give us money
for it, and we’d buy furniture,” cried Poppy.
“Oh, Poppy! They’d know us!” Isabel’s voice was horrified.
“Sure. And not be afraid we’d be gypsies, or something, if they gave
it to us,” Poppy answered as if being known were a good thing, but she
understood Isabel nevertheless.
“’Course we couldn’t go around like that,” said Mark. “Maybe we could
get some stuff out of people’s attics; I mean maybe people have things
they don’t use and we could borrow them, or pay for ’em by doing
errands or weeding--if they’d sell them. I’m kind of thinking we shan’t
make much of a go at tinkering boxes into chairs and tables, and by the
time we got done we’d be too old to sit down if we could do it. By the
time we got ’em done we’d be ninety-nine, and stiff from old age.”
Isabel laughed. “Prue and I would be only ninety-eight when you were
ninety-nine, and Pops would be a young thing of ninety-six, nearly!
We’d have to stand, and let our callers sit down. Well, then, what are
we to do, Jack-in-the-Box? You’re the one that was so keen to make the
furniture, and Motherkins has given us this lovely chintz that I know
she wanted herself.”
“Beg,” said Prue. She found it sounded like “beck” with her thumb in
her mouth, so she removed it, and went on.
“My mother has lots of kind of wobbly chairs in the attic; so has
yours, Isa. It would be easier to brace ’em up than to fuss like this.
Besides there are some kind of outgrown, odd ones, that used to be
pretty. They are strong, but they got ugly. I don’t see why, but mother
always says when we go up there: ‘Do see those really awful chairs! And
when I was first married, and my mother bought them for me, we thought
they were beautiful!’ So they’d do for us; we’d be younger’n she was
when she was married, and maybe we’d think they were beautiful. Anyway
they’re chairs, and they’re heaps prettier than our packing box ones
would ever be, and I know mother’d let us have them.”
“Well, so would mother,” said Isabel, her meaning, if not her
expression clear. “I suppose--But we were planning to do it all
ourselves.”
“It’s awful silly to do things when you can’t,” said Poppy decisively.
“I think that would be pretty clever, Miss Gladys!” laughed Mark. “All
right, then; jig’s up! Jig saw? Mine wasn’t that kind. We’ll gather up
these tools and put them all back in dad’s bench drawer. Nothing gets
my sweet-tempered dad going like having me use his tools and not put
them back! Then we’ll go out begging furniture, like survivors of a
fire.”
“I know!” cried Poppy hopping around on her right foot, holding her
left ankle in her hand. “We’ll dress up! We must put on funny tastic
things and pretend we were all burnt up--I mean all we had in our
houses.”
“Trust you to see a chance to dress up, Popsy!” laughed Mark. “The
word is fantastic, my dear, but I shouldn’t wonder if funny tastic was
better when you’re the one dressing up!”
“It don’t make no odds to me, Mark Hawthorne,” said Poppy with dignity.
“I’m getting my learning as I go along, and I’m not near done with it,
and I don’t put on one single luggs, making believe I was to college.”
Isabel dove into one of the packing cases, pretending to be searching
for a screwdriver; it never would do to let Poppy see her laugh when
Poppy was so solemnly in earnest as she then was.
Isabel emerged flushed and short breathed.
“We might go right to Prue’s house and mine and see what’s there,” she
said.
[Illustration: POPPY HELD THE LINES AND ISABEL AND PRUE JOUNCED UP AND
DOWN SINGING.]
The spring was coming on so fast that now, on the 27th of April,
the sunshine was warm enough to do away with the necessity of much
preparation for going out. Prue and Isabel and Poppy needed no more
than their blue serge coats, all similar, and their hats. Mark pulled
a slip-on sweater over his head, caught up a cap, and they were ready.
Stopping only long enough to put the borrowed tools back in their
place, the four sallied out.
The big house, the old Hawthorne house, stood just beyond the woods.
There was a subterranean passage that had been made in Revolutionary
days, leading up to the house from the woods. It was because Mark knew
this passage and used mysteriously to appear and disappear through it,
to the wonder of Prue and Isabel, who almost suspected him of being
Peter Pan, or another citizen of fairyland, that they had dubbed Mark
Jack-in-the-Box when they had first seen him.
Now they did not go through the hidden passage, though they had come
to use it freely themselves, but they did go by the woods; no matter
where they were going, these four children nearly always were able to
persuade themselves that the nearest way to get there was to start by
going through the woods. Much as they loved them, well as they knew
them, there was always more to love, more to discover in the woods
each time that they went into them. To-day, with the buds swelling to
bursting on the trees, the willows, distant along the brook, showing
a golden mist through the shadows; the maples red in bud; the ferns
palely green, with brown caps on their full heads, turned over like a
bishop’s shepherd-crozier, the woods were lovely as a dream, a dream
that was at the same time an assured promise of joys to come. And the
air was fragrant with arbutus, lying deep under the damp brown deposit
of last year’s leaves, modestly anxious to hide its perfection, but,
like a lovely soul, revealing itself by its sweetness as it hid.
Isabel drew a long, inward breath. “Oh, how can it be so heavenly!” she
sighed.
“We must go down to the brook soon and see how Château Branche is
getting on,” said Prue, forgetting to nurse her thumb.
“Dad said we must not get up into it till he examines it, to make sure
it is strong after the winter,” said Mark. “But I’m sure it’ll be all
right. Dad built it to last. Say, isn’t it pretty nice to have a house
like that in a pine tree waiting for us when spring comes back? We’re
lucky kids!”
“Of course it is only a platform in the branches, really,” said Prue,
the exact. “But that’s nicer than a house with a roof--and it doesn’t
rain on us unless it simply pours down.”
“Château Branche is a house; don’t you spoil it, Prue Wayne, calling
it a platform,” cried Poppy. Prue’s literal way of getting everything
labelled exactly exasperated Poppy, and there was always within her
heart jealousy of Isabel’s affection for Prue; to Poppy Isa was
adorable perfection. On the other hand Prue had less patience with
Poppy than Isa had; her impatience, her flaming quick temper, her
sudden extremes of mood tried sensible Prue; she had to struggle to
be just to Poppy. It is to Prue’s credit that she did struggle to do
her justice, kept in mind her unfortunate childhood, and did not let
Poppy feel coolness toward her. Prue was a thoroughly good little girl,
though she was not as interesting as brilliant Mark, nor as exquisite
Isabel, nor as clever, wild little Poppy herself.
“I won’t spoil Château Branche, Poppy; I just was thinking it was a
platform after all. But I always think of it as our house in the tree,
same’s you do,” Prue answered gently.
“You can get some rustle in the dry places, but not like in the fall,”
said Poppy. She had forgotten her warning about Château Branche, and
was going along scuffling her feet through the piles of leaves which
eddying winter winds had heaped in places.
“I’ll be glad when we can come here and sit around; it’s a little
weeny bit damp yet,” said Isabel with a slight shiver.
“Race me out, the way we always did; you’ll get cold,” said Prue with
an anxious look at more delicate Isa.
“Oh, but I can’t go straight to your house, either of your houses,”
said Poppy unexpectedly, and with trouble as to her plurals. “I forgot!
Motherkins told me this morning I had to go to the store for her some
time to-day, and this is the last chance. Come with me.”
“Why didn’t you say so before, Poppy?” cried Prue.
“Well, what’s the odds? We’d go through the woods anyway, and turn
around,” Poppy reminded her.
“Nice to know,” observed Isabel, but they did “turn around,” and struck
out of the woods by another path leading to the business end of the
town, instead of keeping on toward Prue and Isabel’s homes.
Poppy’s errand was at the grocer’s, but she also went to the druggist
to get an insect destroyer for Motherkins’ beloved garden, to do away
with the hungry slugs waiting for her plants to put up their tender
shoots. The drug store was next to the post office. Greenacres’
postmaster was a character, a small, weazened, deformed man named
Babcock, toward whom all the children of Greenacres held two distinct
attitudes of mind in the first and second stages of their knowing him.
When they were small they were all afraid of him; his deformed body,
and sharp, curious face filled them with terror. After they were past
seven they swung from fear of him to love for Mr. Babcock; he was
eccentric, but kind, and did many things for the children that won
their gratitude; it mingled with pity for him to make them love him.
Now, as Isabel, Prue, Poppy and Mark came out of the drug store they
saw Mr. Babcock in the post office doorway.
“Saw you out of my private office,” he said. “How are you, Hawthorne
sprig? And how are you, Isabel Lindsay and Prudence Wayne? And you,
Miss Meiggs? Want a horse, Poppy?”
“Oh, my gracious!” gasped Poppy. “What do you mean?”
“A horse, a horse, a horse,” Mr. Babcock thrice repeated. “H-o-r-s-e,
an animal that used to be common, but got side-tracked by gasoline
engines and the farmers’ flivvers, but is still useful, and to my
mind beats autos. I’ve got a horse, a buckboard--old-time, sagging
buckboard!--to give away, and I sort of picked you out as the one to
have it.”
“Me! Me!” Poppy sat straight down on the sidewalk regardless of
everything.
“I won’t sell him. I could, to some one who’d get what was left in him
out of him in a year and let him starve after that,” said Mr. Babcock,
in a fury at his own imagining. “I won’t sell him. He’s twenty-two
years old, but he’s good for a long time, decently treated; sound and
can trot right along, not a bad looking fellow, chestnut, came of good
stock. Think your folks’d let Poppy have him, Mark?”
“I think so, I’m sure so,” said Mark, as surprised as Poppy, but rising
to the occasion as she was too overcome to do. “My father said he’d
like to have a horse on the place. I think he’d keep yours for Poppy,
if she’d let dad use him sometimes.”
“I won’t sell him,” said Mr. Babcock again, shaking his head hard. “I’d
just’s lieves as not Gilbert Hawthorne’d use him. When he was a littler
boy’n you are now he was as kind to animals as a lamb! But he’s to be
Poppy’s horse, mind that! _And_ her buckboard! Want to see him? Will
you have him, Poppy?”
“Oh, my days, my days!” cried Poppy, bursting into excited tears. “I
don’t want to see him! He’s a horse, he’s alive, he goes, don’t he? Oh
my, a horse! Say, I’ll die! He’ll haul me to the cemetery first thing!
Oh, Mr. Babcock, you ain’t postmaster, you’re an angel, just an angel!
Le’me hug you! Oh my land of lollypops, I’ll bust!”
“Well, come along to the stable; it’s better for busting than the
street, and you can see the horse,” said Mr. Babcock, laughing. “Here,
get up off the walk! I’ll hitch him up, or do you want to ask your
father first, Mark?”
“No. Dad’ll say yes, but if he doesn’t I’ll bring the horse back. I’d
better take a bag of oats home on the buckboard,” said Mark.
Isabel and Prue had not spoken. This was too amazing to allow of
speech. They silently followed to the stable, and were introduced to
the horse, whose long brown nose thrust itself forward over the stall
door as they entered, showing that it was used to sugar in the pockets
of visitors.
“I’ve done my best for you, old man; I’d keep you if I could, but
you’ll be all right where you’re going. I wouldn’t sell you,” Mr.
Babcock said with a quaver in his voice.
Poppy solemnly took the brown face between her palms and kissed the
middle of the boney nose.
“My little darling, you are to be my child,” she said with rapturous
tears running down her own short, freckled nose.
Mr. Babcock led the horse out. He proved to be decidedly well-built,
with fine, straight legs, a full tail, a good head.
Mr. Babcock put on the harness and led the horse out to be backed into
the shafts of the buckboard, standing in the stable yard.
“Get up on the seat, Poppy. He’s yours, so you drive home. He won’t
play a trick on any one, not for the world. Mark, you might get up
along side of her. Good-by, all of you. Good-by, old friend. I’ve done
my best for you. I wouldn’t sell you,” Mr. Babcock said, handing Poppy
the lines.
Isabel and Prue climbed up on the buckboard. There was no question in
their minds of not going back to the Hawthorne house; this was too
exciting an adventure to leave unfinished.
As the horse began to move, obedient to Poppy’s tightening of the
lines, and Mark’s order to: “Get up,” Poppy being unable to speak,
Isabel found her tongue for the first time.
“What’s his name, Mr. Babcock?” she asked.
“Hurrah. He was born on the day of Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay,” said
Mr. Babcock.
He did not smile, but Isabel, Prue and Mark fell over rocking with
laughter.
Poppy was unable so much as to hear the horse’s name.
The quest of furniture was completely forgotten. Slowly and with
decorum, the buckboard started away, drawn by Hurrah and watched and
watched out of sight by Mr. Babcock whose eyes glistened with moisture.
After they had gone beyond the business streets, Hurrah voluntarily
began to trot.
Poppy held the lines and Isabel and Prue jounced up and down on the
body of the buckboard, singing with Mark at the tops of their voices:
“Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah!”