THE WILD STREAK
The valley where the Gordons lived had narrowly escaped having a
village at the corner. The surrounding district held all the
requirements of one, but they did not happen to be placed near enough
to one another. At the cross-roads in the center of the valley stood a
store and post-office. But the blacksmith's shop, which should have
been opposite, was missing. In the early days the blacksmith, being a
Highland Scot, had refused to work opposite the storekeeper, who was
only a Lowlander, and had set up his business over on the proud
seclusion of the next concession. The school, too, had got mislaid
somehow, away to the south out of sight. So the valley was left to the
farms and orchards, and contained only five homes in all its length.
But where man had been neglectful, nature had lavished wealth,
performing great feats in the way of landscape gardening. On all
sides, the vale was held in by encircling hills. The eastern boundary
was steep and straight and was known as Arrow Hill. On its summit
stood a gaunt old pine stump, scarred and weather-beaten. Here, an old
Indian legend said, the Hurons were wont to tie a captive while they
showered their arrows into his quivering body. The children of the
valley could point out the very holes in the old trunk where certain
arrows, missing their victim, had lodged. Away opposite, forming the
western wall, rose the Long Hill, with a moss-fringed road winding
lingeringly up its face. Down through the cedars and balsams that
hedged its side tumbled a clear little brook, singing its way through
the marigolds and musk that lovingly strove to hold it back. Reaching
the valley, it was joined by the waters that oozed from a great dark
swamp to the south, and swelling into a good-sized stream, it wound its
way past The Dale, held in by steep banks, all trilliums and pinks and
purple violets and golden touch-me-not, and hedged by a double-line of
feathery white-stemmed birches.
From east to west of the valley stretched a straight road, hard and
white. Old Indian tales hung about it also. It was an early Huron
trail, they said, and the one followed by Champlain when he marched
over from the Ottawa valley and found Lake Simcoe hanging like a
sapphire pendant from the jewel-chain of the Great Lakes. It was still
called Champlain's Road, and had in it something of the ancient Indian
character. For it cut straight across country over hill and stream,
all unmindful of Government surveys or civilized lines.
Just a few miles beyond Arrow Hill it ran into the little town of
Cheemaun, and on market-days its hard, white surface rang with the beat
of hoofs and the rattle of wheels. In the early morning the procession
rolled forward, strong and eager for the day's bargaining, and at night
it swept back bearing some weary ones, some gleeful over their
money-getting, some jealous and dissatisfied because of the wealth and
ease they had seen, and some glad to return to the quiet and peace of
their farm homes. And there were always the few who lurched along,
caring not whether they reached home or fell by the wayside, having
sold their manhood over the bar of one of Cheemaun's many hotels.
And thus the tide of rural life ebbed and flowed, beating ceaselessly
against the town, leaving its impress both for good and ill, bringing
back on its waves treasure-trove to be swallowed by the deep of the
country, and often, too, carrying on its surface some of the urban
community's slime and filth.
On this May evening Champlain's Road stretched across the valley, not
white and hard, but softened by the rain, and looking like a great
broad lilac ribbon, set here and there with sparkling jewels made by
the pools of water. The sun had slipped behind the cedars of the Long
Hill and the valley was clothed in a wonderful combination of all
shades of blue--the cloak Mother Nature so often throws round her
shoulders after a shower. The towering elms, the glossy beeches, and
the spreading maples, that grew on either side of the highway, were all
bathed in the blue radiance. The old snake fences, smothered in
raspberry and alder bushes, were a deep purple, and the white rapture
of the cherry-trees and the orchards by the farm-houses had turned a
delicate lilac. The valley had taken on heaven's own blue this
evening, and smiled back at the gleaming skies with something of their
own beauty.
On every side the robins shouted their joy from the treetops, the
bob-o'-links tinkled their fairy bells as they wheeled above the
clover-fields; and from the dainty line of white-stemmed birches that
guarded the stream came the mingled even-song of the frogs and the
veeries.
There was but one pedestrian on Champlain's Road this quiet evening.
This was a small person who had just emerged from a farm gate at the
foot of the Long Hill. Back from the gate stood an old farm-house and
at its door a woman was standing. She was knitting a long gray sock,
holding her ball under her arm, knitting swiftly, even while her eyes
followed lovingly the little figure skipping along the lavender road.
The soft blue light touched her silver hair and her white apron and
turned the gray homespun dress into a royal robe of purple worthy of
the owner's wearing. The little figure danced out of sight behind a
clump of cedars and the woman turned from the doorway with a tender
smile that ended in a sigh. One evening her own little girl had passed
down the lane and along Champlain's Road to the churchyard beyond the
hills, and this little one filled somewhat the dreary space in the
mother's heart.
Meanwhile, the one pedestrian on the lavender road was going swiftly
on. She was clothed in a blue checked pinafore and a sunbonnet of the
same material, which absorbed the blue light and glowed with vivid
color. Beneath the sunbonnet hung a long heavy braid of shiny brown
hair, with a reddish streak down the middle of it. The pinafore was
tucked up round the owner's waist to form a bag, in which were carried
a pair of stockings and strong, copper-toed boots, three very wrinkled
apples, a bunch of wilted marigolds, and a cake of maple-sugar. The
small person clutched this bundle in her arms and held up her short
skirts in a highly improper manner, while she went splashing through
the puddles singing a loud and riotous song.
This was Elizabeth. And this unseemly manner of peregrination
displayed just one of Elizabeth's trying peculiarities. For four years
she had been faithfully taught that little girls should never go
barefoot outside their own gardens, and that when they were on the
public highway they must walk quietly and properly on the grass by the
roadside. When she remembered, Elizabeth strove to conform to the laws
of home and social usage, for she was very docile by nature; but then
Elizabeth seldom remembered. When she did, it was only to recall
hopelessly her aunt's many times reiterated statement that Lizzie had
the wild streak of the MacDuffs in her, and what could you expect? The
Gordon family had generally been genteel enough to keep this
objectionable MacDuff connection hidden, but occasionally it came out
in red hair, deep gray eyes, and a wild, erratic disposition. To be
sure, little Elizabeth's hair was not red, but a deep nut-brown,
shading to rich yellow at the ends, where it curled upwards. But down
the middle of her heavy brown braid ran a thick strand of reddish gold,
quite enough to account for the vagaries of her behavior. And there
was no doubt about Elizabeth's eyes--those unfathomable gray eyes that
looked steel blue or soft gray or deep black, according to the owner's
mood. Yes, Elizabeth had the two fatal badges of the wild MacDuffs,
coupled with dear knows what inheritance from her mother's people, the
fighting MacDonalds, who had been the scandal of the whole countryside
in the early days.
Having heard all this many, many times from her aunt, Elizabeth had
finally accepted the sad fact that she had "a wild streak" in her, just
as she accepted the variegated color of her hair, not without much
rebellion against her fate though, and many tears of repentance, and
frequent solemn pledges to walk in unstreaked propriety for the rest of
her days.
At other times she recklessly concluded that it was impossible to
battle against destiny. For one never knew just how one was going to
act. For a very chameleon was this strange Elizabeth, always the color
of her surroundings. Being just ten-and-a-half, she would act with the
wisdom of an ancient sage when in company with Mrs. MacAllister, and
the foolishness of a spring lamb when left to gambol with her little
brother. To-night her spirit had caught the joyous note of the
wonderful spring evening, and she was like the valley, gay and
sparkling and noisy with delight. Besides, this was the first time she
had ever been allowed to go home alone from Mother MacAllister's, and
the sense of freedom went to her head.
So, along the lavender road she skipped, holding her skirts very high,
splashing mud over her pinafore and even her sunbonnet, and singing
loudly:
"_She's ower the border an' awa
Wi' Jock o' Hazeldean!_"
Mr. MacAllister had sung this song after supper, between the puffs of
his pipe, as he sat on the wash bench by the door, and Mother
MacAllister had told them the story, as she and Elizabeth washed up the
dishes, the story of the lady of high degree who had cast aside wealth
and noble lovers to hie awa wi' Jock o' Hazeldean.
Charles Stuart, who was Mother MacAllister's really, truly child, had
interrupted to inquire what "ower the border an' awa'" meant, and
Elizabeth had felt impatient enough to slap him had she dared. Charles
Stuart was very stupid about some things, though he could spell and
always got the right answer to a sum in school. Elizabeth knew exactly
what it meant, though she could not have explained. It was just what
she was doing now, as she leaped from pool to pool with her skirts and
her pinafore in a string about her waist--fleeing in ecstasy away,
away, to that far-off undiscovered country of dreams, "Ower the border."
Her joyous abandon was rudely checked. There was a quick splash from a
pool not a yard ahead of her, where a stone hit the water sharply.
Elizabeth stopped in alarm. She whirled round towards the low fence
bordering the highway. Its innocent appearance, all draped in woodbine
and fringed with alder and raspberry bushes, did not deceive her in the
least. "You're a nasty, mean, mean boy, Charles Stuart MacAllister!"
she cried indignantly to the thickest clump of alders. She dropped her
dress and stepped to the grassy side of the road, filled with rage. Of
course it was Charles Stuart. He was always in the direction whence
stones and abuse came. It had ever seemed to Elizabeth the strangest
injustice that a dear, lovely lady like Mother MacAllister should have
been so shabbily treated both in the quantity and quality of the family
Providence had given her. For while there were eight Gordons, and
every one of them fairly nice at times, there was but one single
solitary MacAllister, and a boy at that; yes, and sometimes the very
nastiest boy that went to Forest Glen School!
She walked along with a haughtiness her Aunt Margaret might have envied
and took not the smallest notice when a little turbulent fox-terrier,
with many squeaks and squirms, wriggled through a hole in the fence and
came bounding towards her. And she turned her head and gazed
absorbedly across the fields when it was followed by a boy who pitched
himself over the fence and crossed to her side.
"Hello, Lizzie!" he cried, his brown eyes dancing in his brown face in
the friendliest manner. "Mother says I've got to see you home."
Elizabeth's head went higher. She fixed her eyes on the line of
white-stemmed birches that guarded the stream. Neither did she deign
to notice "Trip," who frisked and barked about her.
Charles Stuart came a step nearer and took hold of the long, heavy
braid. "Mud-turtle, Lizzie!" he hissed. "Mud-turtle! Look out there!
Your neck's gettin' that long you'll hit the telegraph wires in another
minute."
Elizabeth's shoulders came up towards her ears with a quick, convulsive
movement. Her dignity vanished. Her long neck, her long hair, her
long fingers, and her gray eyes were features over which much teasing
had made her acutely sensitive.
She whirled round, made a slap at her tormentor, which he dodged,
stumbled over Trip, who was always in the way, and fell full length
upon the wet grass, scattering her treasures far and wide. Trip
snatched up a boot and began worrying it; Charles Stuart shouted with
laughter; and Elizabeth picked herself up, sank upon a stone, and began
to cry.
The boy was all repentance immediately. He gathered up the apples, the
stockings, the maple sugar, and even the faded bunch of marigolds,
rescued the boot from Trip, and handed them all to their owner,
remembering contritely how his mother had said he must be kind to
little Lizzie on the way home and, above all things, not to make her
cry.
Elizabeth received her treasures with averted face. "I wish you'd go
back home and leave me alone," she wailed, as she wiped away her tears
with the muddy skirt of her pinafore.
"Well, I'd like to," said Charles Stuart honestly; "but mother said I'd
got to see you home. Hurrah, Lizzie! Aw, come on, I won't tease you
any more."
So Elizabeth rose, not without much of the dignity of a broken heart in
her attitude, and walked forward in a very stately fashion indeed.
Charles Stuart did his best to make amends. He pointed out the
oriole's little cradle that swung from the elm bough high above their
heads. He showed her the ground-hogs' hole beside the hollow stump and
the wasps' nest in the fence corner, until at last friendly relations
were once more established.
They walked along side-by-side: he, splashing through the blue
rainpools; she, envious and proper, stepping over the soft, wet grass.
She was slightly disconcerted, too; for a Charles Stuart that walked
beside you on the public highway, and did not run and hide nor throw
stones, nor even pull your hair, was something to raise even more
apprehension than when he behaved naturally.
But the young man was really trying to atone for his sins, for a reason
Elizabeth could never have guessed, and he now sidled up to her holding
something in his hand.
"Say, Lizzie?"
"What?"
"Don't you want this?" He handed her, with an embarrassed attempt at
nonchalance, a very sticky little candy tablet. It was pretty and pink
and had some red printing on it. Elizabeth took it, quite overwhelmed
with surprise and gratitude. She was just about to put it into her
mouth when she thought of Jamie. The little brother loved sweeties so.
Of course she had saved her cake of maple sugar for him, all but one
tiny bite; but a pink candy was ever so much better. With a hasty
"thanks," she slipped it into her pinafore with her other treasures.
Charles Stuart looked disappointed. He picked up some stones, shied
one at the telegraph wires, and another at the green glass fixture at
the top of the pole. This last proceeding caused Elizabeth to scream
and beseech him to stop. For Malcolm had said that a dreadful man
would come out from town and put you in jail if you committed this
crime. Charles Stuart, having accomplished his purpose in fixing
Elizabeth's attention upon himself once more, desisted, and cast his
last stone with a crash into the raspberry bushes by the roadside.
"Ain't you goin' to read it?" he asked, with his back towards her.
"Read what, the candy?"
"O' course."
Elizabeth paused and rummaged in her pinafore. She bundled shoes and
stockings aside and fished out the little pink tablet. The legend,
inscribed in red letters, was, "Be my girl." She read it aloud quite
impersonally. She did not object to it, for fear of hurting Charles
Stuart's feelings; but she wished that it had been, "Be my boy,"
instead. It would have been so appropriate for Jamie. For every day
she bribed and coaxed him to be "Diddy's boy," in preference to Mary's
or Jean's or even Annie's.
Charles Stuart waited for some comment, feeling that Elizabeth was
certainly very dull. No wonder she could never get a sum right at
school, and was always foot of the spelling class. He flung another
stone to relieve his feelings; this time in the direction of a pair of
chiming bob-o'-links that, far over the clover-meadow, went up and down
in an airy dance. He felt he must put forth another effort to make his
position clear to Elizabeth's dull wits.
"Say, Lizzie, did anybody ever--ever see you home before?"
Elizabeth stared. Surely Charles Stuart must be wandering in his mind,
for how could he help knowing that his mother or father or Long Pete
Fowler, the hired man, often accompanied indeed by Charles Stuart
himself, had always, heretofore, seen her home?
"Of course," she answered wonderingly. "But I'm a big girl now, I'm
going on eleven, and I'm too old to have anybody see me home."
This was worse than ever. Charles Stuart looked at her in perplexity.
Then he came straight to the point in the wise old way.
"Say, Lizzie, I think you're the nicest girl in all Forest Glen School."
Elizabeth stared again; not so much at the remark, though it was
extremely absurd, for Charles Stuart hated all girls, as at his
uncomfortable subdued manner, which she now began to notice. She felt
vaguely sorry for him. Charles Stuart never acted like that unless his
father had been giving him a scolding. Her sympathy made her
responsive.
"Do you?" she cried. "Oh, I'm so glad, Charles Stuart."
This was making fine progress. The young man looked vastly encouraged.
"I'm going away to the High School, in Cheemaun, if I pass next
summer," he said, with not so much irrelevance as might appear.
Elizabeth was all interest. To "pass" and go to the High School in the
neighboring town was the grand ambition of every boy and girl in Forest
Glen School.
"Oh, are you, Charles Stuart? Maybe John is, too."
"Yes." He was getting on famously now. "Father says I can. And I'm
going to college after."
"And what'll you be?" asked Elizabeth admiringly.
"I'm not sure," said Charles Stuart grandly. "Mother wants me to be a
minister, but I think I'd rather be a horse-doctor."
Elizabeth looked dubious. She did not like to differ from Mother
MacAllister, but she could not see how it would be possible to make
anything like a minister out of such an uncomfortable, hair-pulling
stone-thrower as Charles Stuart.
"You'd best be a horse-doctor, Charles Stuart," she advised wisely.
After all, that was a very noble calling, Elizabeth felt. Once a
horse-doctor had come out from town to Rosie Carrick's place and
Rosie's pussy had been sick, and he had given it medicine which cured
it. She related the incident for Charles Stuart's encouragement, but
he did not seem very favorably impressed. Pulling pussy-cats' tails
was more in Charles Stuart's line. He began to show leanings towards
the ministry.
"Mother says it's a grander thing to be a minister than anything else
in the world," he asserted. "But you have to know an awful lot, I
guess."
"And you have to be most awful good," said Elizabeth emphatically.
"Mother says you have to be most awful good no matter what you are,"
said Charles Stuart, with greater wisdom.
Elizabeth nodded; but she could not allow the ministry to be belittled.
"My father was nearly a minister once, but he said he wasn't good
enough, and he's the very, very goodest man that ever lived."
"It'll be easy to be good when we're grown up," said Charles Stuart.
"Oh, yes, ever so easy," said Elizabeth comfortably.
"And, say--Lizzie."
"What?"
Charles Stuart was looking embarrassed again. "I'm--I'm nearly twelve,
you know."
They had reached the big gate between the willows by this time.
Elizabeth flung her treasure trove upon the grass and, springing upon
the gate, swung out on to the road again.
"Well, I know that," she said, wondering what such gratuitous
information had to do either with being a minister or riding a gate,
"and I'm going on eleven."
Charles Stuart mounted on the other side and swung, too. It was rather
childish, but he was bound to be agreeable until he got something off
his mind.
"Well, you know--when I'm done going to college, and we've grown up
we'll have to get married, you and me. Long Pete Fowler said so."
Elizabeth did not look at all impressed. Such a proposition did not
appeal to her. It was too vague and intangible. People all got
married, of course, some day, but not until you were very, very old and
staid, and all the joy of life had departed from it--just as everybody
died some day. But, though death was inevitable, Elizabeth did not
borrow trouble from that solemn fact. Besides, she had far other and
greater ambitions than were dreamed of in Charles Stuart's philosophy.
She was going to be grand and famous some day--just how, Elizabeth had
not yet decided. One day she would be a great artist, the next a
missionary in darkest Africa. But Joan of Arc's life appealed to her
most strongly, and oftenest her dreams pictured herself clad in
flashing armor, mounted on a prancing charger, and leading an army of
brave Canadians to trample right over the United States.
So there was nothing very alluring in the prospect of exchanging all
this to settle down with Charles Stuart, even though one would be
living with dear Mother MacAllister, with whom one was always happy.
She looked at Charles Stuart, about to speak out her disdain, when the
expression of his face suddenly checked her. Even as a child Elizabeth
had a marvelous intuition, which told her when another's feelings were
in danger of being hurt. It gave her a strange, quite unacknowledged
feeling that she was far older and wiser than the children she played
with. There was always an inner self sitting in judgment on all
childishness, even when she was on the highroad to every sort of
nonsense by way of the wild streak.
That inner self spoke now. It said that Charles Stuart was very young
and silly, but he was also very nervous, and she must not hurt him.
She must pretend that she thought him very wise. It would not be very
wicked, for was she not always pretending? When Jamie said, "Be a
bear, Diddy," or "Be a bogey-man," Elizabeth would go down on her knees
and growl and roar, or pull her hair over her face, make goggle-eyes,
and hop madly about until the little brother was screaming with
ecstatic terror. So when Charles Stuart said, "We'll get married," it
required less effort to comply than to be a bogey-man, and she nodded
radiantly, and said, "All right."
Charles Stuart looked equally radiant, and they swung back and forth
smiling at each other over the top of the gate. Elizabeth began to
think it would not be such a bad bargain after all. If Charles Stuart
was really going to like her, how much happier life would be! For, of
course, he would never plot with John to run away from her any more,
and they three would play one perpetual game of ball for ever and ever.
They had swung some moments in happy silence when Charles Stuart, with
masculine obtuseness, made a blunder that shattered the airy fabric of
their dream. He had been looking down into Elizabeth's deep eyes, and
exclaimed in honest surprise:
"Say, Lizzie, your eyes are green, I do declare!"
Elizabeth's face turned crimson. To accuse her of having black eyes,
as many people did by lamplight, was horrid, horrid mean; to say her
eyes were gray was a deadly insult. But to be told they were green!
She had only a minute before delicately spared Charles Stuart's
feelings, and now he had turned and trampled upon her most tender
sensibilities.
"They're not! They're not!" she cried indignantly. "They're blue, and
I won't play with you ever again, Charles Stuart MacAllister, you
nasty, nasty boy!"
She flung down off the gate and swept up her treasures from the wet
grass. The sight of her roused all Charles Stuart's desire to tease.
She really looked so funny snatching up a shoe or stocking and dropping
it again in her wrath, while Trip grabbed everything she dropped and
shook it madly. Charles Stuart jumped from the gate and began
imitating her, catching up a stone, letting it fall, with a shriek and
crying loudly at the top of his voice, while Trip, enjoying the noise
and commotion, went round and round after his tail just because he
could think of nothing else to do.
This was too much for Elizabeth. Charles Stuart was heaping insult
upon insult. She got the last article of her bundle crushed into her
pinafore, and as the boy, going through the same motions, raised his
head, she gave him a sounding slap in the face, turned, darted through
the gate, and went raging down the lane, dropping a shoe, a stocking,
an apple, or a piece of maple sugar at every bound. She was blinded
with tears and choking with grief and anger--anger that Charles Stuart
should have cajoled her into thinking he intended to be nice to her,
and grief that she could have been so cruel. Oh, what a terrible blow
she had struck! Her hand tingled from it yet. It must have hurt poor
Charles Stuart dreadfully, and after such conduct she could never hope
to be a lady. Her aunt would be disgraced, and that wonderful lady,
whose name she bore, would never come to see her. She was an outcast
whom nobody loved, for not even Mother MacAllister could like her now!
She could not go home, so she flung herself down upon the wet grass in
a corner of the lane and wept bitterly. It was always so with
Elizabeth. She was up in the clouds one moment and down in the depths
the next. Her heart was breaking over the injury she had done. For
the first time in her life she experienced a feeling of warm regard
towards Charles Stuart, simply because she had hurt him.
She stopped sobbing, and, raising herself from the ground, peeped out
through her tears to see if he were in sight. Perhaps he was stunned
by the blow and was lying beneath the gate. She could see no sign of
him and her heart stood still with dread. She had been vaguely
conscious of joyous shouts and cries from the field behind the house
and had heard the rifle-crack of a baseball against the bat, telling
that there was a game in progress. She was now made aware that the
joyous shouts were growing into a noisy clamor of welcome. Above the
din she could hear John's roar: "Charles Stuart on our side! I bar
Charles Stuart!" And there was her false lover speeding across the
field towards her home, Trip at his heels! Elizabeth arose from the
ground, dry-eyed and indignant. She wished she had hit him harder.
Charles Stuart MacAllister was without doubt the horridest, horridest
boy that ever lived and she would never speak to him again--no, not if
she lived to be two hundred and went over to his place every Saturday
for a thousand years. Just see if she would!
As she passed an alder clump and caught a glimpse of her aunt standing
near the garden gate talking with Mr. Coulson, Elizabeth became
suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of her shoeless and disheveled
condition. She knew that, while untidy hair and a dirty pinafore were
extremely reprehensible, bare feet put one quite beyond the possibility
of being genteel. That word "genteel" had become the shibboleth of the
Gordon family in the last four years. It was poor Elizabeth's chief
burden in life. For how could anyone hope to live up to it when she
was possessed of a wild streak?
Fortunately, her aunt was in deep conversation with Mr. Coulson, and
had not spied her. She dropped upon the grass, safely hidden by the
alders, and began to drag her damp stockings over her muddy feet.
There would arise dire consequences from this later, but Elizabeth
found the evil of the hour sufficient unto it and never added the
troubles of the future. As she sat thus busily engaged, she was
startled by the sound of footsteps and drew back further behind her
flowery screen. The next moment Mr. Coulson strode rapidly past her
and up the lane without glancing to the right or left. Elizabeth
stared after him. He had passed so close she might have touched him,
and how pale and angry he looked! The schoolmaster was one of the
objects upon which Elizabeth showered the wealth of her devotion, and
she was vaguely disturbed for him. He looked just as if he had been
whipping someone in school. Then her own uncomfortable condition
obtruded itself once more, and she arose. She straightened her
sunbonnet, smoothed down her crumpled skirts and slowly and fearfully
took her way down the lane. She dreaded to meet her aunt, knowing by
sad experience that as soon as that lady's eye fell upon her, not only
would all the misdemeanors of which she was conscious appear
silhouetted against Miss Gordon's perfection, but dozens of unsuspected
sins would spring to light and stand out black in the glare.
She peeped through the tangle of alders and saw that Aunt Margaret was
now talking to Annie, with her back to the lane, and the same instant
she spied a way of escape. The lane ran straight past the big stone
house and down to the line of birches that bordered the stream, forming
the road by which Mr. MacAllister reached his old mill, lying away down
there in the hollow. Down in the lower part of the lane where the
birches grew, William Gordon was wont to walk in the evenings, and here
Elizabeth, with infinite relief, spied him just coming into view from
beyond a curve. He was walking slowly with bent head, his long, thin
hands clasped behind him. At his side was a young man, of medium
height, thick-set, and powerful-looking. This was Mr. Tom Teeter, who
worked the farm upon which The Dale stood, and lived only a few hundred
yards from the Gordons. Mr. Teeter was an Irishman, with a fine gift
for speech-making. He was much sought after, for tea-meetings and
during political campaigns, and had won the proud alliterative name of
Oro's Orator. Tom was now holding forth hotly upon the "onparalleled
rascality and treachersome villainousness" of the Opposition in the
Ontario Legislature.
Elizabeth, her eyes alight, ran swiftly past the gate towards her
father. She loved each member of her family with all the might of her
passionate heart; but she held for her father an especially tender
regard. Her love for him had in it something of the sacred grief that
clung about the memory of her dead mother, something too of mother-love
itself, felt in a longing to comfort and protect him. The stoop of his
thin shoulders, the silvering hair on his bowed head, and the sound of
his gentle voice all appealed to Elizabeth's heart in the same way as
when Jamie cried from a hurt. Whenever he looked unusually sad and
abstracted, his little daughter yearned to fling her arms about his
neck and pet and caress him. But Elizabeth knew better. Such conduct
would be courting death by ridicule at the hands of the Gay Gordons.
She ran to him now, and, as there was only Tom Teeter to see, ventured
to slip her hand into his as she walked by his side. Tom Teeter was
the bosom friend of every young Gordon, and he pulled her sunbonnet and
said:
"Hello, Lizzie! How's the wild streak behavin'?"
Her father looked down at her, apparently just conscious of her
presence. His eyes brightened.
"Well, well, little 'Lizbeth," he said. "And where have you been?"
"Over to Mother MacAllister's. And look, I've got three apples and
some maple sugar, and there's a piece of it for you, father, and I
found the marigolds at the crick."
"Well, well, yes, yes." He seemed suddenly to remember something.
"What was it your aunt was saying? Oh, yes, that I must go to the gate
and meet you. And here you are!"
Elizabeth beamed. "Come and tell her we're home then," she said
warily; and thus fortified, but still fearful, she walked slowly up the
garden path to the front door, where Aunt Margaret was standing.
But to Elizabeth's amazement and infinite relief, Aunt Margaret was all
smiles and graciousness, even to Tom Teeter. She took no notice of her
niece's disheveled appearance, but said cordially:
"Run away in, Elizabeth. Sarah Emily has come back, and she has some
news for you. I hope it will help to make you a very good, thankful
little girl."
Entranced at this marvelous escape, Elizabeth flew through the old
echoing hall and bounded wildly into the kitchen. She welcomed Sarah
Emily rapturously, listened with wonder and awe to the news that the
fairy god-mother was no dream after all, but was really and truly
coming to see her, and finally went shrieking out to join in the game
of ball, on Charles Stuart's side, too, all forgetful that not ten
minutes before she had vowed against him an undying enmity.