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 that very night after Ham Morris
came home to find the big 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 already too late about starting. There were
perhaps a dozen or so of "eeling" expeditions which 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 waves 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 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's and Miranda's return. He'd have gotten over
that by this time. No more could it have been the fire, though the smell
of the smoldering 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" better wheat 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 Dab, "it wont do to take a
barn for a stove. Not that kind of a barn. But what did Ham Morris mean
by saying 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 had been
wishing for during all those walks and talks and lessons of all sorts
with Ford Foster and Frank Harley ever since the cruise of the
"Swallow."
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 found 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 Mirandy's rose-bushes. They've got their
thorns all on 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 Mrs. Kinzer: "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 her mother 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 ashes 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, 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, though.
I'm afraid the rest would have to take back seats while Mrs. Kinzer was
in the house."
Very likely Ham was right; but just then he heard the voice of Dab
Kinzer 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 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 breeze and the outgoing tide.
Ham actually took a little boat and went on board the "Swallow" when
they reached the landing, and Dab kept close by him.
"She's all right, Ham. But what are you casting loose for?"
"Dab, they wont 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 up all the way 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 aint anything 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 suddenly broke away to discuss other topics, such as blue-fish,
porpoises, crabs, or the sailing qualities of the "Swallow," and Dab
dimly felt it would be better to wait till another time. So he waited.
And then, as they sailed up the inlet, very happy and very hungry, he
suddenly exclaimed: "Ham, do you see that? How could they have guessed
where we had gone? There's the whole tribe, and the boys are with 'em,
and Annie."
"What boys and Annie?"
"Oh, Ford Foster and Frank Harley. Annie is Ford's sister."
"What's become of Jenny?"
"You mean my boat? Why, there she is, hitched a little out, there by the
landing."
And Dabney did not seem to guess the meaning of Ham's queer, quizzical
smile.