THE CROWNING WONDER.
AND they did have the Thanksgiving supper!
It seemed wonderful to Nettie, even then, and long afterwards the
wonder grew, that so many things occurred about that time to help the
scheme along. At first it was to be a very simple little affair; two of
the boys, Rick for instance, and Alf, invited to come in an hour or so
before the room was open for the evening, and have a little supper by
themselves--a chicken, and possibly some cranberry sauce if she could
compass it, though cranberries were very expensive at that season, and
besides, they ate sugar in a way which was perfectly alarming! A pie
of some sort she had quite set her heart on, but whether it would be
pumpkin or not, depended on how they succeeded in saving up for extra
milk. The circumstances of the Deckers were changing steadily, but
when a man has tumbled to the foot of a hill, and lain there quite
awhile, it is generally a slow process to get up and climb back to
where he was before.
Mr. Decker's wages were good, and in time he expected to be able to
support his family in at least ordinary comfort; but when he came fully
to his senses, he stood for awhile appalled before the number of things
which had been sold to pay his bill at the saloon, and the number of
things which in the meantime had worn out, and not been replaced by new
ones; then the rent was two months back, and Job Smith had been all
that stood between him and a home. There was a great deal to do if the
Deckers were to get back to the place from which they began to roll
down hill; so extra expenses for cranberries, or even milk, were not to
be thought of, if they must be drawn from the family funds.
The business of the firm was flourishing; but you must remember that
the central feature of the enterprise was to keep prices very low,
lower than beer and bad cigars, and the enterprise of the dealers in
these things is so great, that if you are willing to put up with the
meanest sorts you can always get them very low indeed. To compete with
them, Jerry and Nettie had to study the most rigid economy to keep
their shelves supplied, and even to sometimes "shut their eyes and make
a reckless dash at apples or peanuts, regardless of expense." This was
the way in which Jerry occasionally apologized for an extra quantity of
these luxuries.
Still, in the most interesting ways the Thanksgiving supper grew.
Mrs. Decker secured within a week of the time, an unexpected ironing
which she could do in two evenings, and she it was who proposed the
wild scheme of having two chickens and having them hot, and stuffing
them with bread crumbs as she used to do years ago, and having gravy
and some baked potatoes. She agreed to furnish the extra potatoes,
and a few turnips, just to make it feel like Thanksgiving. Nettie was
astonished, but pleased. It would be more work, but what of that?
Think of being able to make a real supper for Norm's birthday! Then
Mrs. Smith at just the right moment had a present of two pumpkins from
her country friends; as they could never make away with two pumpkins
before they would spoil, of course the Deckers must take part of one,
at least. About that time the minister bought a cow, and what did he
do but come himself one night to know if Mrs. Decker had any use for
skimmed milk; they were very fond of cream at their house, and skimmed
milk gathered faster than they knew what to do with it.
"Any use for skim milk!" Mrs. Decker could only repeat the words in
a kind of ecstasy at her good luck, and she almost wondered that the
yellow pumpkin standing behind the door in the closet did not laugh
outright.
But the crowning wonder came, after all, on the morning before the
eventful day. Jake, the Farleys' man of all work, brought it in a
basket which was large and closely covered, and very heavy looking. It
was left at the door with Susie, who went to answer the knock, "For
Miss Nettie." Susie repeated the name with a lingering tone as though
she liked the sound of the unusual prefix. Then they gathered about the
basket. A great solemn-looking turkey with a note in his mouth, which
said: "A Thanksgiving token for Nettie, from her friend ERMINA FARLEY."
A turkey in the Decker oven! Mr. Decker surveyed the great fellow in
silence for a few minutes, then said impressively, "If we don't have a
new cook stove before another Thanksgiving day comes around, my name is
not Decker."
Mrs. Job Smith left her pies half-made, and ran in, in a friendly
way, to see the wonder; and at once remarked that he would exactly
fit into their oven, and she wasn't going to cook their turkey till
the day afterwards, because they had got to go to Job's uncle's for
Thanksgiving; so that matter was settled. It was then that the Deckers
decided to make a reckless plunge into society and invite every boy in
Norm's shop to a three o'clock dinner, with turkey and cranberry sauce
and pumpkin pie and turnip, and all the rest.
What a day it was! They grew nearly wild in their efforts to keep all
the secrets from Norm, and act as though nothing unusual was happening.
Especially was this the case after the morning express brought a
package for Nettie from her dear old home, with two mince pies, and a
box of Auntie Marshall's doughnuts, and a bag of nuts, and as much as
two pounds of the loveliest candy she ever saw; sent by the young man
of the home who was clerk in a wholesale confectioner's. It took Mrs.
Decker and Nettie not five minutes to resolve, looking curiously into
each other's faces the while to see if they really had become insane,
that they would have a regular dessert following the dinner!
"It is only once a year," said Nettie apologetically.
"It is only once in five years!" said Mrs. Decker solemnly. "I haven't
had a Thanksgiving in five years, child; and I never expected to have
another."
Everybody was busy all day long. Mrs. Smith was in and out, helping as
faithfully as though Norm was her boy, and Sarah Ann just gave herself
up to the importance of the occasion, and did not go to her uncle's at
all. "I can go there any time," she said good naturedly, "or no time;
they always forget that we are alive till Thanksgiving Day, and then
they ask us because they kind of think they've got to. Uncle Jed is
a clerk, and his wife makes dresses for the folks on Belmont street,
and they feel stuck up four feet above us; I'd rather eat cold pork
and potatoes at home than to go there any day. I'm dreadful glad of an
excuse that father thinks is worth giving."
Susie was a young woman of importance that day. Nettie, who had
discovered exactly how to manage her, gave her work to do which suited
her ideas of what a grown person like herself ought to be about; and
when she wanted the table cleared from the picture papers of the night
before, instead of telling Miss Susie to fold them away, said, "What do
you think, Susie, would it be best for us to fold these papers away in
the closet for to-day, and have this table left clear for the nuts and
the candies?"
"Yes," said Susie, with her grown-up air, "I think it would; I'll
attend to it." And she did it beautifully.
"It is well we have no little bits of folks around," said Nettie, when
the nuts were being cracked, "they would be tempted to eat some, and
then I'm afraid we would not have enough to go around." And Susie,
gravely assenting to this theory, arranged the nuts in Mrs. Smith's
blue saucers, an equal number in each, and ate not one!
Little Sate went with Jerry to give the invitations to the boys, and to
charge them to keep the whole thing a profound secret from Norm; they
came home by way of the Farley woods, and little Sate appeared at the
door with her arms laden with such lovely branches of autumn leaves,
that Nettie exclaimed in wild delight, and left her turnips half-peeled
to help adorn the walls of the front room. This suggested the idea,
and by three o'clock that room was a bower of beauty. Red and golden
and lovely brown leaves mixed in with the evergreen tassels of the
pines, with here and there pine cones, and red berries peeping out from
everywhere. "You little darling," said Nettie, kissing Sate, "you have
made a picture of it, like what they paint on canvas, only a thousand
times lovelier."
And Sate, looking on, with her wide sweet eyes aglow with feeling,
fitted the picture well.
So the feast was spread, and the astonished and hungry boys came,
and feasted. And Norm, too astonished at first to take it in, began
presently to understand that all this preparation and delight were in
honor of his birthday! And though he said not a word, aloud, he kept up
in his soul a steady line of thought; the centre of which was this:
"I don't deserve it, that's a fact; there's mother doing everything for
me, and Nettie working like a slave, and the children going without
things to give me a treat. I'll be in a better fix to keep a birthday
before it gets around again, see if I'm not!"
His was not the only thinking which was done that day. Rick, merry
enough all the afternoon, and enjoying his dinner as well as it was
possible for a hungry fellow to do, nevertheless had a sober look on
his face more than once, and said as he shook hands with Norm at night:
"I'll tell you what it is, my boy, if I had your kind of a home, and
folks, I'd be worth something in the world; I would, so. I ain't sure,
between you and me, but I shall, anyhow; just for the sake of getting
into such Thanksgiving houses once in awhile. By and by a fellow will
have to carry himself pretty straight, or that sister of yours won't
have nothing to do with him; I can see that in her eyes."
Then he went home. And cold though his room was he sat down, even after
he had pulled off his coat, as a memory of some thoughtful word of
Nettie's came over him, and went all over it again; then he brought his
hard hand down with a thud on the rickety table, on which he leaned and
said: "As sure as you live, and breathe the breath of life, old fellow,
you've got to turn over a new leaf; and you've got to begin to-night."
It was less than a week after the Thanksgiving excitements that the
town got itself roused over something which reached even to the
children. Jerry came home from school with it, and came directly to
Nettie, his cheeks aglow with the news. "There's to be the biggest
kind of a time here next Thursday, Nettie; don't you think General
McClintock is coming, to give a lecture, and they are going to give
him a reception at Judge Bentley's and I don't know what all, and the
schools are all going to dismiss and go down to the train in procession
to meet him, and they are going to sing, _Hail to the Chief_, and the
band is to play, _See, the conquering Hero comes_, and I don't know
what isn't going to be done."
"Who is General McClintock?" said ignorant Nettie, composedly drying
her plate as though all the generals in the world were nothing to
her. Then did Jerry come the nearest impatience that Nettie had ever
seen in him; and he launched forth in such a wild praise of General
McClintock and such an excited account of the things which he had done
and said, and prevented, and pushed, that Nettie was half bewildered
and delightfully excited when he paused for breath. Henceforth the talk
of the town was General McClintock.
"It is a wonder they asked him to speak on temperance," said Nettie,
disdain in her voice; she had not a high opinion of the temperance
enthusiasm of the town in which she lived.
"They didn't," said Jerry. "He asked himself; they wanted him to
talk about the war, or the tariff, or the great West, or some other
stupid thing, but he said, 'No, sir! the great question of the day is
temperance, and I shall speak on that, or nothing!'"
"How do you happen to know so much about him?" Nettie questioned one
day when Jerry was at his highest pitch of excitement.
"Ho!" he said, almost in scorn, "I have known about him ever since I
was born; everybody knows General McClintock." Then Nettie felt meek
and ignorant.
Nothing had ever so excited Jerry as the coming of the hero; and indeed
the town generally seemed to have caught fire. General McClintock
seemed to be the theme of every tongue. Connected with these days,
Nettie had her perplexities and her sorrows. In the first place, Jerry
was obstinately determined that she should join the procession with
him to meet General McClintock. In vain she protested that she did not
belong to the public schools. He did, he said, and that was enough.
Then when Nettie urged and almost cried, he had another plan: "Well,
then, we won't go as scholars. We'll go ahead, as private individuals;
I'm only a kind of a scholar, anyhow, just holding on for a few weeks
till my father comes; we'll go up there early and get a good place
before the procession forms and see the whole of it. I know the marshal
real well; he's a good friend of mine, and I know he will give us a
place."
It was of no use for Nettie to protest; to remind him that the girls
would think she was putting herself forward, to say that she had
nothing to wear to such a gathering. She might as well have talked to
a stone for all the impression she made. She had never seen him so
resolute to have his own way. He did not care what she wore, it made
not the slightest difference to him what the girls said, and he _did_
ask it of her as a kindness to him, and he should be hurt so that
he could never get over it if she refused to go; he had never wanted
anything so much in his life, and he _could_ not give it up. So Nettie,
reluctant, sorrowful, promised, and cried over it in her room that
night. She wanted to please Jerry, for his father was coming now in a
few weeks perhaps, and Jerry would go away with him, and she should
never see him again; and what in the world would she do without him?
And here she cried harder than ever.
Then came up that dreadful question of clothes; her one winter dress
was too short and too narrow and a good deal worn. Auntie Marshall had
thought last winter that it would hardly do for a church dress, and
here it was still her best. There was no such thing as a new one for
the present; for mother had not had anything in so long, she must be
clothed, and Nettie was willing to wait; but she was not willing to
take a conspicuous place on a public day and be stared at and talked
about.
However, Jerry continued merciless to the very last; nothing else would
satisfy him. He hurried her in a breathless state down the hill to the
platform, smiled and nodded to his friend the marshal, who nodded back
in the most confidential manner, and perched them on the corner of the
temporary platform, right behind the reception committee! It was every
whit as disagreeable as Nettie had planned that it should be. Of course
Lorena Barstow was among the leaders in the young people's procession,
and of course she contrived to get enough to be heard, and to say in a
most unnecessarily loud voice:
"Do look at that Decker girl perched up there on the platform. If she
doesn't contrive to make herself a laughing stock everywhere! Girls,
look at her hat; she must have worn it ever since they came out of
the ark. What business is she here, anyway? She doesn't belong to the
schools?"
There was much more in the same vein; much pushing and crowding, and
laughing and hateful speeches about folks who crowded in where they
didn't belong, and poor Nettie, the tears only kept back by force
of will, looked in vain for sympathy into Jerry's fairly dancing
eyes. What ailed the boy? She had never seen him so almost wild with
eager excitement before. Judge Barstow and Dr. Lewis were both on
the reception committee, of course, and under cover of this, their
daughters wedged their way to the front, and whispered to the fathers.
Loud whispers:
"Papa, that ridiculous Decker girl and the little Irish boy with her
ought not to be perched up there in that conspicuous place. She doesn't
belong here, anyway; she isn't a scholar."
Then Judge Barstow in good-humored tones to Jerry: "My boy, don't you
think you would find it quite as pleasant down there among the others?
This little girl doesn't want to be up here, I am sure; suppose you
both go down and fall behind the procession? You can see the General
when the carriage passes; it is to be thrown open so every one can see."
Then the marshal: "If you please, Judge Barstow, it won't do for them
to try to get through now. The crowd is so great they might be hurt;
there is plenty of room where they stand. They will do no harm."
_Now_ the tears must come from the indignant eyes. No, they shall not.
Jerry doesn't even wink. He only laughs, in the highest good humor. Has
Jerry gone wild with excitement? "It will all be over in two minutes,"
explains Judge Barstow. "He wished to drive directly to his hotel, and
have perfect quiet for two hours. He declined to be entertained at a
private house, or to say a word at the depot. I suppose he is fatigued,
and doesn't like to trust his voice to speak in the open air; so the
committee are to shake hands with him as rapidly as possible, and show
him to his carriage, and not wait on him for two hours. He has ordered
a private dinner at the Keppler House."
Suddenly there is the whistle of the train, the band plays _See, the
conquering Hero comes!_ With the second strain the train comes to
a halt, and a tall, broad-shouldered man with iron gray hair and a
military air all about him steps from the platform amid the cheers
of thousands. Now indeed there was some excuse for Lorena Barstow's
loud exclamations of disapproval! There was Jerry, pushing his way
among the throng, holding so firmly all the while to Nettie's hand
that escape was impossible--pushing even past the reception committee,
notwithstanding the detaining hand of Judge Barstow, who says,
"See here, my boy, you are impudent, did you know it?"
"I beg pardon," says Jerry respectfully, but he slips past him, just
as General McClintock with courteous words is thanking the committee
of reception, declining their pressing personal invitations, his eyes
meantime roving over the crowd in search of something or somebody.
Suddenly they melt with a tenderness which does not belong to the
soldier, and the firm lips quiver as his voice says: "O my boy!" and
Jerry the Irish boy flings himself into General McClintock's arms, and
the world stands agape!
Just a second, and his hand holds firmly to the sack which covers
Nettie's startled frightened form, then he releases himself and turns
to her: "Father, this is Nettie!"
"Sure enough!" said the General, and his tall head bends and the
mustached lips of the old soldier touch Nettie's cheek, and the
cheering, hushed for a second, breaks forth afresh! It is a moment
of the wildest excitement. Even then Nettie tries to break away and
is held fast. And an officer of the day advances with the military
salute and assures the General that his carriage is in waiting. And the
General himself hands the bewildered Nettie in, with a friendly smile
and an assuring: "Of course you must go. My boy planned this whole
thing three months ago; and you and I must carry out his programme to
the letter." Then Jerry springs like a cat into the carriage, and the
scholars sing, _Hail to the Chief_, and the carriage, drawn by four
horses, rolls down the road made wide for it by the homeguard in full
uniform, and the General lifts his hat and bows right and left, and
smiles on Nettie Decker sitting by his side, and almost devours with
his hungry, fatherly eyes, her friend the Irish boy on the opposite
seat. And the scholars almost forget to sing, in their great and
ever-increasing amazement.