SAW AND AXE.
"Celia," said Miss Linn, the next day, "I understand it perfectly;
Elinor has been sick so much that the younger children have been left
with the servants and this is the result. Now we must make May over."
Miss Linn and Miss Celia were sewing in their morning room. They were
old-fashioned gentlewomen, not altogether in touch with modern habits
and they held to their needlework of a forenoon as religiously as
though it had been a practise ordained by a bishop, and when Miss Linn
said, "We must make May over," she spoke as though the petticoated
fraud was a misfit garment.
Now Miss Celia never opposed the will or wishes of her elder sister.
Contradiction was not a weapon to be used with stately Miss Linn, who
was, in the phrase of their servant, Margery, "terrible sot in her
way!" But Miss Celia did venture to say,—
"May is a trifle hoydenish, perhaps, but time will remove that blemish
from her bearing without our assistance, sister."
"She is incorrigible!" sighed Miss Linn. "I saw her this morning
jumping over the fence—the front fence! Of course I stopped that,
but when I asked her if she wasn't ashamed, she said, 'No'm, that's
the best standing jump I ever made!' I admit I can't understand how
Elinor's daughter can be such a tomboy!"
"We have left youth far behind us, Beulah; you must remember that. We
can't realize just what it is to be young and full of life."
"I like a girl to have some sense of propriety. May is entirely without
any. I saw her not an hour ago with her arm around Patsy Dunn's neck.
I called her into the house at once and told her that it was highly
improper for her to be so familiar with boys. What do you think she
said?"
"I can't imagine."
"'Patsy is a dandy, auntie! I'd like to put on the gloves with him!' I
didn't understand what she meant, but I took her desire for gloves to
be a favorable omen and I told her I hoped she would put on gloves and
keep them on all the time when she was out of doors. But I doubt if she
will do it—she only laughed and said she hadn't 'quite sand enough for
that'—whatever that means."
Miss Celia groped for the meaning of this speech and failing to grasp
it said nothing, but sewed on diligently.
"My mind is made up," continued Miss Linn. "That girl shall be made
over before she goes home to Elinor. I have planned it all out. I never
closed my eyes last night!—and I shall begin at once."
"What is your plan?"
"You will see," said Miss Linn, mysteriously. She laid her sewing aside
and rang a small silver bell, peremptorily.
A moment later old Margery appeared at the door. "Did you ring, mem?"
"Where is Miss May?"
"In the back yard, mem," answered Margery with reluctance that did not
escape Miss Linn's keen eyes.
"What is she doing?"
Margery hesitated. Tale-bearing was against her principles, but no
one hesitated long before replying to Miss Linn, and the old servant
answered, "She's helping John saw wood, mem."
If a bombshell had exploded in that quiet room the effect upon the
Misses Linn could not have been more startling.
"Do you hear that, Celia? Is that merely a little hoydenish? Margery,
send Miss May to me."
"Yes, mem," answered Margery, wishing with all her heart that she had
not heard Miss Linn's bell.
When Gay flashed into the room a moment later both aunts were sewing
composedly and neither looked up immediately. Wasting time in the house
when the outside world was flooded with August sunshine was not to
Gay's taste, but politeness demanded it, so he shifted from one foot to
the other like an uneasy chicken, until Miss Linn said,—
"Won't you sit down?"
"I will," said Gay, with emphasis that said, "I will but I don't want
to."
"What have you been doing?" questioned Miss Linn.
"Sawing wood," Gay replied, animatedly. "I can saw a stick quite
straight. Did you ever try to saw wood, Aunt Beulah?"
Miss Linn did not answer at once; such a question deprived her of
speech, but at length she said,—
"Most assuredly not."
"I think you'd like it," said Gay, with increasing animation. "First
you put your saw on the stick and it wobbles all around before you can
make it stay anywhere. Then, when you have made a little place for the
saw, the saw sticks right in it and you pull and up comes the stick
and your foot flies off it! Then you begin again and work a little way
into the stick and everything goes beautifully till you strike a knot
or something and the old saw won't budge an inch! So you lift it out of
the hole and begin again—sawing wood is all beginning again; that's
the way it's done and pretty, soon away goes the saw, squealing and
creaking, and you are so excited at that time that you work away like
mad, and, then, all of a sudden the saw goes through, with a sort of
surprise and you go on top of it, the stick falls apart—and there you
are!"
As Gay illustrated his description as he gave it, using a Venetian
dagger for a saw, a Swiss paper-cutter for a stick of wood and a Fayal
foot-stool for a saw-horse, the ladies were clearly instructed in the
mysteries of wood sawing.
"My dear niece," said Miss Linn, slowly and impressively, "sawing wood
is not a fitting employment for a little girl who wants to be a lady
when she grows up. I suppose that is what you aspire to be, isn't it?"
Gay's eyes twinkled in appreciation of the situation, as he said,—
"I don't think I care anything about it; and I don't think I could be a
lady if I tried."
"But you are willing to try?"
"Yes, I'll try," said Gay, still dimpling.
Poor Miss Linn was so agitated by this brief encounter with her
supposed niece that she resolved to postpone the "making over," so she
said,—
"You may go out again, but you must not saw any more wood."
"Not just one stick?"
"Not one."
"Very well, Aunt Beulah."
When Gay left the room Miss Linn said, meekly,—
"I really don't know where to begin with her!"
"She has one excellent trait, Beulah; she obeys without question or
rebellion."
"I must think about it," said Miss Linn, referring, of course, to
"making May over."
But the good lady did not have an opportunity to think about it then;
a loud shriek ran through the house, and Margery ran into the room,
crying,—
"She's cut off her foot! She's cut off her foot!"
The ladies followed Margery through the house into the back yard, where
they saw Gay dancing wildly around on one foot, holding the other up
with both hands.
"May, didn't you promise me not to saw wood?"
"I didn't saw it; I chopped it."
"There is no difference," said Miss Linn, meaning in the spirit of the
offense.
"Oh, yes, there is; you do one with a saw and the other with an ax!"
Then the hopping ceased suddenly; Gay sank to the ground and there
was a great flurry. John ran for the doctor, and Margery bore Gay
up-stairs, into the little, white guest-chamber, and laid him on the
bed.