A GREAT UNDERTAKING.
JERRY turned away whistling. Did you ever notice how apt boys are to
whistle when something has stirred their feelings very much, and they
don't intend that anybody but themselves shall know it?
Nettie went back into the little brown house to see if her mother was
comfortable for the night. Her heart was lighter than she had thought
it ever would be again.
Everything was quiet within the house. The children with their arms
tossed about one another, and their cheeks flushed with sleep, looked
sweeter than they often did awake. The heartsick mother had forgotten
her sorrow again for a little while, in sleep. Where father and Norm
were, Nettie did not know. It seemed strange to go away and leave the
light burning, and the door unfastened. At home, they always gathered
at about this hour, in the neat sitting-room, and sang a hymn and
repeated each a Bible verse, and then Mr. Marshall prayed, and after
that she kissed Auntie Marshall and the others, and tripped away to her
pretty room. The contrast was very sharp. If it had not been for that
new friend whose voice she heard at this moment softly singing a cheery
tune, I think the tears would have come again.
As it was, she slipped into Mrs. Job Smith's neat kitchen. What a
contrast that was to the kitchen next door! The first thing she saw was
the tall old clock in the corner. "Tick-tock, tick-tock." She had never
seen so large a clock before; she had never heard one speak in such a
slow and patronizing tone, as though it were managing all the world.
She looked up into its face and smiled. It seemed like a great strong
friend.
There was nothing very remarkable about that kitchen. At least I
suppose you would not have thought so, unless you had just spent
an afternoon in the Decker kitchen. Then you might have felt the
difference. The floor was painted a bright yellow, and had gay rugs
spread here and there. The stove shone brilliantly, and the two chairs
under the window were painted green, with dazzling white seats. A high,
old-fashioned, wooden-backed rocker occupied a cosey corner near the
clock. A table set against the wall had a bright spread on it, and
newspapers, and a book or two, and a pair of spectacles lay on it. The
lamp was in the centre, and was clear and beautifully trimmed.
Simple enough things, all of them, but they spoke to Nettie's heart of
home.
There was a brisk step on the stair; the door opened, and Mrs. Smith's
strong, homely face appeared in sight. "Here you are," she said
cheerily, "tired enough to go to sleep, I dare say. Well, the room is
all ready for you. I guess you won't be lonesome, for it is right out
of Sarah Ann's room, and my boy Jerry is across the hall. You've got
acquainted with Jerry, I guess? I saw you and him talking, out in the
moonlight. I'm glad of it. Jerry is good at chirking a body up; and
there never was a better boy made than he is.
"Now you get right to sleep as goon as you can, and dream of all the
nice things you can think of. It is good luck to have nice dreams in a
new room, you know."
"Poor little soul!" she said to herself as the door closed after
Nettie. "I hope she will be so sound asleep that she won't hear her
father and Norm come stumbling home. Isn't it a mean thing, now, that
the father of such a little girl as that should go and disgrace her?"
Mrs. Smith was talking to nobody, and so of course nobody answered her;
and in a little while that house was still for the night. Nettie, in
the clean, sweet-smelling woodhouse chamber, was soon on her knees; not
sobbing out a homesick cry, as she thought she would, as soon as ever
she had a chance, but actually thanking God for these new friends; and
asking Him to be One in this new society, and show them just what and
how to do. Then she went into sound sleep; and heard no stumbling, nor
grumbling, though both father and brother did much of it when at last
they shambled home.
The new plans came up for consideration early the next morning. Before
Nettie had opened her eyes to the neatly whitewashed walls in the
woodhouse chamber, she heard the sound of merry whistling, keeping time
to the swift blows of an axe. Jerry was preparing kindlings. In a very
short time after that, he looked up to say good-morning, as Nettie was
making her way across the yard to the other house.
"Don't you want some of these nice chips? They will make your kettle
boil in a jiffy."
This was his good-morning; he held out both hands to her, full of broad
smooth chips. "Aunt Jerusha likes them better than any other kind; I
keep her supplied. Wait, I'll carry them in."
"Oh, you needn't," Nettie said in haste, and blushing. What would he
think of the Decker kitchen after being used to Mrs. Smith's! But he
took long springs across the walk, vaulted the fence and stood at the
kitchen door waiting for her. It looked even more desolate, in contrast
with the sunny morning, than it had the night before. Nettie resolved
to blacken the stove that very day. "Do you know how to make a fire?"
Jerry asked. "I do. I made aunt Jerusha's for her, two mornings, but it
is hard work to get ahead of her."
Yes, Nettie knew how. She had made the fire for the supper, in Mrs.
Marshall's boarding house, many a time. She proceeded to show her skill
at once; Jerry, looking on admiringly, admitted that she knew more
about it than he did.
"You see, father and I board," he said apologetically, "and there
isn't much chance to learn things. I'll tell you what I can do--get you
a fresh pail of water."
Before she could speak, he darted away. There was a sound of feet
coming down the unfinished stairs, and Norm lounged into the room,
rubbing sleepy eyes, and looking as though he had not combed his hair
in a week. He stared at Nettie as though he had never seen her before,
and answered her good-morning, with:
"I'll be bound if I didn't forget you! Where have you been all night?"
"Asleep," said Nettie, brightly. "Now I want to have breakfast ready by
the time mother comes out, to surprise her. Will you tell me whether
you have tea or coffee?"
Norm laughed slightly. "We have what we can get, as a rule. I heard
mother say there wasn't any tea in the house. And I don't believe
we have had any coffee for a month. I'd like some, though; I know
that. I've got a quarter; I'll go and get some, if you will make us a
first-rate cup of coffee."
"Well," said Nettie, "I'll do my best."
She spoke a little doubtfully, having a shrewd suspicion that the
quarter ought to be saved for more important things than coffee;
but she did not like to object to Norm's first expressed idea of
partnership; so he went away, and when the fresh water came, the
teakettle was filled, the table set, the potatoes washed and put in the
oven; by the time Mrs. Decker appeared, Nettie, with a very flushed
face, was bending over her hot griddle, testing the cake she had baked.
"Well, I do say!" said Mrs. Decker, and the tone expressed not only
surprise, but gratitude. There was a pleasant odor of coffee in the
room, and the potatoes were already beginning to hint that they would
soon be done. The cake that Nettie had baked was as puffy and sweet as
her heart could desire.
"I believe you're a witch," said Mrs. Decker. "I couldn't think of a
thing for breakfast. Where did you get them cakes?"
"Made them," said Nettie; "I found a cup of sour milk; Auntie Marshall
used to let me make them often for breakfast. Norm went after the
coffee; and I guess it is good. I saved my egg shell from the cakes to
settle it."
"You're a regular little housekeeper," said Mrs. Decker. "And so Norm
went after coffee! Did you ask him to? Went of his own accord! That's
something wonderful for Norm. He used to think of things for me but he
don't any more."
Altogether, it was really almost a comfortable breakfast, though it
seemed to Nettie that she would never get it ready. She was not used
to managing with so few dishes. Her father drank three cups of coffee,
said it was something like living, and gave Nettie twenty-five cents,
with the direction that he hoped there would be something decent to eat
when they came home at noon.
Nettie's cheeks were red with more than the baking of cakes, then. She
was ashamed of her father. How could he speak in a way to insult his
wife! They went off hurriedly at last, Norm and the father; and the
children who had been silent, began to chatter the moment the door
closed after them. Mrs. Decker, too, began to talk.
"He thinks twenty-five cents will buy a dinner for us all, and keep us
in clothes, and get new furniture, and dishes! He will have it that it
is because things are wasted that we have such poor meals. As if I had
anything to waste! I don't know what to do, nor which way to turn. We
need everything."
"Don't you think we had better clean house to-day?" Nettie asked a
little timidly, as they rose from the table and she began to gather the
dishes.
"Clean house!" repeated the dazed mother. "Why, yes, child, I suppose
so. It needs it badly enough. Oh, we can wash up the floor, and the
shelf. It doesn't take long; there are not many things in the way.
No furniture to move. But it doesn't stay clean long, I can tell
you. Just one room in which to do everything! I might have kept it
looking better, though, if I had not been sick. I have just had to let
everything go, child. Lying awake nights, and worrying, have used me
up."
She took the broom as she spoke and began to sweep vigorously,
scurrying the children out of her way.
It was a long day, and a busy one. And at night, the room certainly
looked better. The floor had been scrubbed with hot lye to get off the
grease, and the stove had been blackened until the children shouted
that it would do for a looking-glass. Several other improvements had
been made. But after all, to Nettie's eyes it was dreadfully bare and
comfortless. Not a cushioned chair, nor a rocker, nor anything that to
her seemed like home. All day she had been casting glances at a closed
door which opened from the kitchen, and thinking her thoughts about
the room in there. A large square room, perfectly empty. Why wasn't it
used? If for nothing else, why didn't Norm sleep in it, instead of in
that dreadful unfinished attic where the rats must certainly have full
sweep? Or why did not her mother move in there with the trundle bed,
instead of being cooped up in that small bedroom? Or why had they not
prepared it for her to sleep in, if they really did not want it for
anything else? She gathered courage at last, to ask questions.
"Oh, that room," her mother said with bitterness, "when I first came
here to live, we pleased ourselves nights, after the children were in
bed, telling what we would have in it. We meant to furnish it for a
parlor. We were going to have it carpeted; he wanted a red carpet, and
I wanted a brown one with a little bit of pink in, but land! I would
have taken one that was all yellow, just to please him. And we were
going to have a lounge, and two rocking chairs, and I don't know what
not. And there it is, shut up. I might have had it for a bedroom at
first, but I wouldn't. I wanted to save it. And then, when I gave that
all up, there was nothing to fix it with. Norm couldn't sleep there
without curtains to the windows; no more could we; it is right on the
street, almost.
"And things keep getting worse and worse, so I just shut the door and
locked it and let it go. If I had had a spare chair to put in, I might
have gone in there and cried, now and then, but I hadn't even that. I
tried to rent it; but the woman who was hunting rooms heard that your
father drank, and was afraid to come. Oh, we have a splendid name in
the place, you'll find. We are just going to ruin as fast as a family
can; that's the whole story."
In the middle of the afternoon, when Nettie had done everything she
could think of, unless some money could be raised, and some clothes
made, so that the children could have the ones washed which they were
wearing, she stood in the back door, wondering how that could be
brought about, when Jerry appeared in his favorite seat on the sawhorse.
"Everything done up for the day?" he asked.
Nettie laughed.
"Everything has stopped for the want of things to do with," she said.
"I don't see but that will be the trouble with what we want to do. Why,
you can't do a single thing without money; and where is it to come
from?"
"That is one of the things we must think up," Jerry said gravely. "I
have thought about it some. This temperance business needs money. One
of the troubles with boys like Norm is that they have no nice places
to go to. Boys like to meet together and talk things over, you know,
and have a good time, and how are some of them going to do it? The
church isn't the place, nor the schoolhouse, and those fellows haven't
pleasant homes; the only spot for them is the saloons. I don't much
wonder that they get in the habit of going there. I have heard my
father say that saloons were the only places that were fixed up, and
lighted, where folks without any pleasant homes were made welcome. Why,
just look at it in this town. There's your Norm. There are two fellows
who go with him a great deal. If you meet one, you may be sure that
the other two are not far away. Their names are Alf Barnes and Rick
Walker. Neither of them have as decent a home as Norm's, oh! not by a
good deal. And he doesn't feel like inviting them into your kitchen to
spend the evening. Should you think he would?"
Warm as the day was, Nettie shivered. "I should think they would rather
stay out in the street than to come there," she said.
"Well, now you see how it is. They don't stay in the streets, such
fellows don't. Not all the time. They get tired, and sometimes it
rains, and in winter it is cold, and they look about them for somewhere
to go. There's a saloon, bright and clean; comfortable chairs, and
good-natured people. It is the only place that says Come in! to such
fellows. Why shouldn't they go in?
"I've heard my father talk about this by the hour. In big cities they
have rooms warmed and lighted, and nicely furnished, on purpose for
such young men; only father is always saying that they don't begin to
have enough of them; but in such a town as this, I would like to know
what the boys who haven't nice homes to stay in, are expected to do
with themselves evenings? One of these days, when I am a man, that
is the way I am going to use all my extra money. I'll hunt out towns
where the fellows have just been left to stay in the streets, or else
go to the rum-holes, and I'll fit up the nicest kind of a room for
them. Bright as gas can make it, and elegant, you know, like a parlor;
and I'll have cakes, and coffee, and lemonades, and all those things,
cheaper than beer, and serve them in fine style. Wouldn't that be a
fine thing to do?"
"Then the first thing," said Nettie, "is a room."
Jerry turned round on his horse and looked full at her and laughed.
"You talk as though it was to be done now," he said. "I was telling
what I would do in that dim future, when I become a man."
"We might begin pieces of it now. Norm will be too old when you are a
man; and so will those others. There is our front room. If we only had
some furniture to put in it. My Auntie Marshall made some real pretty
seats once, out of old boxes; she padded them with cotton, and covered
them with pretty calico, and you can't think how nice they were. I
could make some, if I had the boxes and the calico."
"I could get the boxes," said Jerry. "I know a man in the blacksmith
shop who has a brother in the grocery down at the corner, and he could
get boxes for us of him, I'm pretty sure. He is a nice man, that
blacksmith. I like him better than any man in town, I believe. I could
fix covers on the boxes myself, and do several other things. I have a
box of tools, and I often make little things. I say, Nettie, let's fix
up the front room. I've often wondered what there was in there. Would
your mother let us have it?"
"She would let us have most everything, I guess," Nettie said
thoughtfully, "if she thought it would do any good."
"All right. We'll make it do some good. Let's set to work right away.
The first thing as you say, is a room. No, we have the room; the first
thing is furniture. I'll go and see Mr. Collins this very evening. He
is the blacksmith."
In less than half an hour from that time Jerry stood beside Mr. Collins.
That gentleman had on his big leather apron, and was busy about his
work as usual.
"Boxes?" he said to Jerry. "Why, yes, there are piles of them in his
cellar, and out by his back door. I should think he would be glad to
get rid of some. But what do you want of them? Furniture? How are you
going to make furniture out of boxes? What put such a notion as that
into your head, and what do you want of furniture, anyhow?"
So Jerry sat down on a box and told the whole story. Mr. Collins
listened, and nodded, and shook his head, and smiled grimly,
occasionally, and sighed, and in every possible way showed his interest
and appreciation.
"And so you two are going to take hold and reform the town?" he said
at last. "Humph! Well, it needs it bad enough! if old boxes will help,
it stands to reason that you ought to have as many as you want. I'll
engage to see that you get them."
When Mr. Collins told his brother-in-law, the grocer, the two laughed
a good deal, but the blacksmith finished his story with, "Well, now I
tell you what it is--something is better than nothing, any day; there's
been nothing done here for so long that I think it is kind of wonderful
that those two young things should start up and try to do something."
"So do I, so do I," assented the grocer, heartily, "and if old boxes
will help 'em, why, land, they're welcome to as many as they can use.
Tell the chap to step around here and select his lumber, and I'll have
it delivered."
This message Jerry was not slow to obey; so it happened that the very
next afternoon Mrs. Job Smith stood in her back door and watched with
curious eyes the unloading of the grocer's wagon. Six, seven, eight
empty boxes! "For the land's sake, what be you going to do with them?"
she asked Jerry.
Mrs. Job Smith had a great warm heart, but no education to speak of;
and no mother had, in her childhood, begged her a dozen times a day not
to use such expressions as "for the land's sake!" she knew no better
than to suppose they added emphasis to her words; Jerry laughed.
"It is for the room's sake, auntie," he said. "We are going to have a
cabinet shop in the barn loft. Mr. Smith said I might. I shall make
some nice things, auntie, see if I don't. Come up in the loft, will
you, and see my tool chest?"
This last sentence was addressed to Nettie who had appeared in her
back door to admire the boxes. So the two climbed the ladder stairs,
Nettie a little timidly as one unused to ladders, and Jerry with quick
springs, holding out his hand to her at the top, to help her in making
the final leap. Then he took from his pocket a curious little key which
he explained to Nettie would open that tool chest provided you knew
how to use it; but he supposed that a man who had stolen it might try
for a week, and yet not get into the chest.
A skilful touch, and the handsome chest was open before her, displaying
its wonders to her pleased eyes. It was a well-stocked chest. Chisels,
and saws, and hammers, and augers, and sharp, wicked-looking little
things for which Nettie had no name, gleamed before her.
"How nice!" she said at last. "How splendid! It looks as though
somebody who knew how, could make splendid things with them."
"And I know how," said Jerry. "At least, I know some things. I spent a
summer down in a little country town where father had some business;
and the man we boarded with kept a small shop, where all sorts of
things were made. Not a great factory, you know, where they make a
thousand chairs of one kind, and a thousand of another, and never
make anything but chairs. This was just a little country shop, where
they made a table one day, and a chair the next, and a bedstead the
next; and you could watch the men at work, and ask questions and learn
ever so much. I got so I could use tools, as well as the next one,
Mr. Braisted said, whatever he meant by that. Father liked to have
me learn. He said tools were the cleanest sharp things that he knew
anything about. I can make ever so many things. I like to do it. I
wonder I have not been about it since I came here. Now what shall we go
at first? What does your mother say about the room?"
"She is willing," said Nettie, "only she doesn't see how much of
anything can be done. She is most discouraged, you see, and nothing
looks possible to her, I suppose."
"That's all right. She can't be expected to know we can do things until
we show her. If she will let us try, that is all we need ask."
"She says the room ought to have some kind of a carpet; they always
have carpets in home-like rooms, she says; and I guess that is so.
Except in kitchens, of course."
Nettie hastened to say this, apologetically, thinking of Mrs. Job
Smith's bright yellow floor.
Jerry whistled.
"That is so, I suppose," he said thoughtfully; "and they don't make
carpets out of boxes, nor with saws and hammers, do they? I don't know
how we would manage that. There must be a way to do it, though. Let's
put that one side among the things that have got to be thought about."
"And prayed about," said Nettie.
"Yes," he said, flashing a very bright look at her, "I thought that,
but somehow I did not like to say it out, in so many words."
"I wonder why?" said Nettie thoughtfully; "I mean, I wonder why it is
so much harder to say things of that kind than it is to speak about
anything else?"
"Father used to say it was because people didn't get in the habit of
talking about religion in a common sense way. They don't, you know;
hardly anybody. At least hardly anybody that I know; around here,
anyway. Now my father speaks of those things just as easy as he does of
anything."
"So does Auntie Marshall; but I used to notice that not many people
did. Your father must be a good man."
"There never was a better one!"
Notwithstanding Jerry said all this with tremendous energy, his voice
trembled a little, and there came one of those dashes of feeling over
him which made him think that he must drop everything and go to that
dear father right away.
"When he comes after you and takes you away, what will I do?"
Nettie's mournful tone restored the boy's courage.
He laughed a little. "No use in borrowing trouble about that. He is
afraid he cannot come back before winter, if he does then. I'm going
to get him to let me stay here until he does come, though. And now we
must attend to business. What will you have first in my line? Chairs,
tables, sofas--why, anything you say, ma'am."
And both faces were sunny again.