A STORM, AND A SHELTER
Ben’s story, here given as a whole, had really been interrupted by
one or two business calls. It was evident, even to Posey, that Ben
was a decided favorite along the route; for in addition to his boyish
good-humor, his obliging ways, as well as his truthfulness and honesty,
had won for him many customers, and many friends among his customers.
Posey could hardly have told if she more admired or was amused by the
brisk, alert way in which he sorted over the bags of rags brought out
to him, made his bargains, and marshalled his array of tinware.
“The fact of the matter is,” he explained to Posey as he was making a
memorandum in his note-book of one quart, and one two-quart basin to
be brought the next trip, “I’m pretty well sold out of stock, except
milk pails, tin dippers, and nutmeg graters and the graters are a
fancy kind at twenty-five cents. That’s a little too high for them to
go easily. I guess I’ll tell Mr. Bruce—he’s the man I work for—that
he’d better not order any more; things that run from ten to twenty
cents sell the best. That’s about what a common bag of rags comes to,
and folks would rather not pay money besides. I’d rather not pay money,
either, for, you see, besides the profit on the rags I buy, there’s the
profit on the goods I sell; so when I haven’t what they want, if they
will wait I bring it next time I come, and I always take pains to pick
out what I think will suit, too.”
As it drew towards noon Posey suggested that they share the rest of the
contents of her basket. But Ben urged, “Wait a little.” And when a few
moments later coming over a hill they entered a small country village
he drew up before its modest hotel with a flourish, remarking as he did
so, “This train stops twenty minutes for refreshments.”
“But, Ben,” expostulated Posey, “I’m sure there’s enough for us both in
the basket.”
“That will do for lunch this afternoon. I tell you, the afternoons are
pretty long.”
“But you know,” and Posey hesitated over the words, “we will have to
pay if we eat here, and I haven’t any money.”
“Ho!” scoffed Ben. “I guess when I ask a young lady to take a ride with
me I can get her a bite to eat; that’s the proper thing to do. Besides,
I never took a girl riding before, that is, except my cousins, and I
want to do it up swell. Why, lots of the boys I know are always asking
the girls to go somewhere, though what they can find to say to each
other is more than I can imagine. And Fred Flood, only a year older’n I
am, has been engaged. He was engaged to Millie Grey for two weeks, then
they quarreled out, he burned all her letters in the back yard, and
they haven’t spoken to each other since.
“I s’pose, though,” Ben’s tone was reflective, “I shall come to it some
day; write notes to the girls, and go after ’em in my best clothes an’
with a choke collar, as Cousin George does. But I guess it will be some
time first,” and Ben laughed.
“It must make one feel real grown-up-like, though, to have a written
invitation,” remarked Posey. “I had a letter from a boy once,” the
dimples in her cheeks showing at the recollection.
“What was in it?”
“Oh, there was a shield made with red and blue crayons, and ‘U. S.’ in
big letters at the top and bottom of the paper; then it said,
“‘DEAR POSEY,
‘If you love me,
As I love you,
No knife can cut
Our love in two.’
The boy sent it to me in school one day.”
“What did you write back?”
“Nothing. I didn’t like the boy, anyway. Besides, I shouldn’t have
known what to write.”
“You might have written,
“‘The rose is red,
The violet blue,
Tansy is horrid,
And so are you.’”
And then they both laughed.
By this time a leisurely landlord in his shirtsleeves had made his
appearance, and with a hand on each hip, stood calmly looking them
over. “I would like my horse fed, and dinner for myself and this lady.”
Ben’s tone had its business accent as he jumped down and helped Posey
from the high seat to the ground.
“All right,” and stepping forward the landlord took the lines. “But
seems to me you’re rather a young couple. Wedding trip, I s’pose?”
“Tin wedding!” and Ben gave a jerk of his thumb towards the cart.
What a sumptuous banquet to Posey seemed that dinner. Surely fried
chicken was never before so good, and baked potatoes and squash so
toothsome, or peaches and cream so delicious; even the decidedly slabby
cake she ate with a relish. She had recovered from her fatigue, her
eyes shone, her cheeks were flushed with pleasant excitement; she was
ready to laugh at all of Ben’s nonsense, and the pleasantries of the
good-natured landlord who served them. While Ben, delighted at her
happy mood, as he looked at her and listened to her merry laugh, could
hardly realize that this was the same woeful little figure he had met
so few hours before.
They had not been long on the road again when Ben began to cast
doubtful glances at a dark cloud swiftly rising in the west. “I’m
afraid we’re going to have a shower,” he said at last. And then after
a few moments, “I know we are. I see the rain coming over those woods
now. It’s a mile or more away, but it’s working this way fast.”
“What will you do?” Posey questioned anxiously.
“I must try and get in somewhere. I’m pretty well fixed for storms,
with a big umbrella and oilcloth apron. I’ve a cover for the load, too,
but the trouble is I’ve got so many rags on now it won’t go over, so I
must find some place to drive in. Hurry up, Billy,” and he shook the
lines over the stout bay’s back. “I don’t know this road, either. I
always go the one next south; it has more houses, but the landlord said
there was a bridge down on it an’ I would have to come this way.”
“It’s beginning to sprinkle,” and Posey held out her hand. “I feel the
drops. But there’s a house just ahead; perhaps you can find a place
there.”
As they neared the white farmhouse they saw that a long woodhouse
stretched from one side, its old-fashioned arched opening toward the
road. “Can I drive under your shed?” Ben shouted to an old lady he saw
just inside. And then as the first gust of the swift-coming storm began
to patter thick about them, hardly waiting for a reply, he turned Billy
at a swinging trot up the drive, and in another moment they were safe
under shelter, while a whitely driving sheet of rain blotted out all
the outer world.
“You was just in the nick o’ time, wasn’t you?” said the little
round-faced old lady, who was busy catching and putting in a box a
flock of little turkeys that flew about the woodhouse squawking and
fluttering, while the mother turkey shook her red head and uttered a
dissonant protest.
“You see,” she explained, “if turkey chicks get wet it’s almost sure
to kill ’em. They’re the tenderest little creatures that ever was to
raise, an’ the hen turk’s no more sense than to trail out in the rain
with ’em, so I’m goin’ to put ’em where they’ll be safe. It’s dreffle
late to have little turks, but that hen beats all to steal her nest,
an’ seein’ she’s hatched ’em I thought I’d try an’ help her raise ’em.
They’ll be good eatin’ along in the winter.”
When the last scantily-feathered, long-necked turkey chick had, with
Ben and Posey’s help, been captured and placed in the box, and the
mother turkey had mounted the edge of it, they had time to notice
the neat rows in which the wood was piled, the ground swept hard and
clean as a floor, and the tin wash-basin hanging over a bench beside
the pump scoured till it shone like silver. “I guess it ain’t nothin’
but a shower,” chirruped their hostess; “come into the house an’ hev
some cheers while you wait. I’m glad you happened along, not that I’m
afraid, but it’s sort o’ lonesome-like to be alone in a storm.”
As she talked she led the way through the kitchen into a big
sitting-room, where a new rag carpet made dazzling stripes on the
floor, and the lounge and rocking-chair were gay with the brightest of
chintz. Posey had already decided that this was almost the nicest old
lady she had ever seen; there was something at once placid and cheerful
in both tone and manner, and a kindly good-nature seemed to radiate
even from her black silk apron. “I declare, for’t, if the rain isn’t
blowin’ in at that winder,” she exclaimed as she lowered a sash.
“Aren’t you afraid the wind will blow down those great trees on the
house?” asked Posey, as she glanced out a little fearfully at the
branches bending and twisting in the storm.
“La, no, child,” was the placid answer; “they’ve stood worse storms
than this. I don’t know what you would have done to have lived here as
I did when I was your age. Right in the woods we was then, with the
tall trees all around the log house; an’ in a big storm you could hear
crash, crash—the trees comin’ down in the woods, an’ didn’t know what
minute one would fall on the house. Once there come a real tornado—a
windfall, they called it them days; a man in the next town just stepped
to the door to look out, an’ a tree struck an’ killed him. Father
cleared away around our house, so there shouldn’t be any danger, as
soon as he could.”
“And did you live here when it was new as that?” asked Ben, whose
interest was at once aroused by anything that smacked of old-time
stories.
“To be sure I did. This part of Ohio was all woods when I come here.
We come all the way from Connecticut in a wagon, for there wasn’t any
other way o’ comin’ then; my father drove a ‘spike team,’ that is, a
horse ahead of a yoke of oxen; we brought what housen goods we could in
the wagon, an’ was forty days on the way. There wasn’t a family in two
miles at first, an’ nights we used to hear the wolves howlin’ ’round
the house.”
“And how did you feel?” asked Posey breathlessly.
The old lady laughed. “I was some scared along at first, though we
hadn’t no great call to be afraid o’ them, it was the sheep an’ young
cattle they was after. Why, along the first o’ father’s keepin’ sheep
he had to shut ’em up every night in a high pen; an’ after neighbors
got so thick we had a school a bear caught a pig one day, right in
sight o’ the schoolhouse.”
“What did you do?” questioned Ben.
“Oh, some of the boys ran for Mr. James, who lived nearest. He came
with his gun, but the bear got away.”
“I wish I could have lived in those days,” and Ben gave a long-drawn
sigh over the safe, commonplace period in which his lot had been cast.
“I think myself mebby we took more comfort then,” the old lady agreed
with fond retrospection. “We spun an’ wove all the cloth we had; the
shoemaker came around from house to house to make the shoes—‘whippin’
the cat,’ they called it; when a deer was killed all the neighbors had
a share of the venison, cooked before the big fireplace. To be sure,
there were _some_ things that wasn’t so pleasant. I remember once we
went without shoes till into December ’cause the shoemaker couldn’t
get around before; an’ another time father went to mill—twenty miles
through the woods it was—he had to wait three days for his grist to be
ground; we hadn’t a mite o’ flour or meal in the house, an’ mother
sifted some bran to get the finest an’ made it into bran bread. I tell
you, the boys an’ girls o’ to-day hain’t much idee o’ them times.”
She paused and looking at her listeners asked Ben abruptly, “Is this
your sister?”
Posey’s heart went pit-a-pat, but Ben answered promptly, “No, ma’am,
but she wanted to go my way, so I’m giving her a ride.”
She nodded. “I thought you didn’t favor one another.”
At that moment the slamming of a blind in an adjoining room called the
old lady away for a moment, and Posey seized the opportunity to whisper
to Ben, “She looks so nice and kind, do you suppose she would let me
live with her?”
“Can’t say,” he whispered back, “but it won’t do any harm to ask her.”
So when she returned, bringing a plate of seed cookies for her guests,
Posey hesitatingly made the request.
“La, child, I don’t live alone,” was the smiling answer. “My daughter
Manda, an’ Henry Scott, her husband, have lived with me ever since my
husband died. Not that I couldn’t live alone,” she added quickly, “for
though I’m seventy-five I hold my age pretty well, an’ chore about a
considerable. The reason I’m alone to-day is that Henry’s mother is
here on a visit. She’s one o’ them wimmen that’s always on the go, an’
to-day there wa’n’t no hold up but they must go over to see Manda’s
cousin Jane. They wanted me to go with ’em, but I said no, I wasn’t
gwine joltin’ off ten mile as long as I had a comfortable place to stay
in. When folks got to my age home was the best place for ’em, and I was
gwine to stay there,” and she gave a chirruping little laugh.
“Henry’s mother is younger’n I be—three years, five months an’ fifteen
days younger, but she don’t begin to be so spry. Has to have a nap
every day; an’ she’s got eight different medicines with her, an’ what
she don’t take she rubs on. It keeps her pretty busy a takin’ an’ a
rubbin’ on,” and she chuckled again at what evidently seemed to her
very amusing in one younger than herself.
“How old be you?” she asked, her mind coming back from Henry’s mother
to Posey, who was waiting with wondering eagerness.
“I shall be fourteen in December.”
“You ain’t very big of your age.”
“But I’m real strong,” urged Posey, who experienced a sudden sense of
mortification that she was not larger.
“You look as though you might be,” and the old lady looked over her
glasses at the well-knit, rounded little figure. “Where have you been
livin’?”
“Some fifteen miles from here,” answered Posey, who felt that exact
information would not be prudent. “But I couldn’t stay there any
longer,” she hastily added, “and as I haven’t any father or mother, I’d
like to find some nice people who wanted a girl to live with and help
them.”
“I really wish I knew of such a place for you, but Mandy, my daughter,
has all the family she can see to; and none of the neighbors needs
any one. But I dare presume you won’t have no trouble in findin’ some
one who wants just such a little girl.” So the old lady cheerfully
dismissed the subject without dreaming how absolutely homeless she
really was; and as the storm had now passed over filled both their
hands with cookies and with a smiling face watched the tin-wagon on its
way again.