AN ACCIDENT.
FILLED with shame and confusion, Seth made no resistance when Aunt
Hannah ordered him back to bed; but obeyed silently, moving stealthily
as when he began the flight. He was trembling as with a sudden chill
when he undressed and laid himself down, while Snip lost no time in
curling his tiny body into a good imitation of a ball, wondering,
perhaps, why he had thus been needlessly disturbed in his “beauty
sleep.”
Seth was no longer capable of speculating upon the problem in which he
had been involved through a lead nickel and an advertisement in the
newspapers. He could only realize that Aunt Hannah had good reason to
believe him a thief, or worse, otherwise she would not have been
waiting to discover if he attempted to prowl around the house while
she was supposed to be asleep, and his cheeks burned with shame at the
thought.
He wished that the night might never come to an end, and then he
would not be forced to meet her face to face, as he must when the sun
rose.
“Of course she’ll tell Gladys where she found me, an’ both of ’em will
believe I’m the worst feller that ever lived!” he whispered to
himself; and then tears, bitter and scalding, flowed down his cheeks,
moistening the spotless linen, but bringing some slight degree of
comfort, because sleep quickly followed in their train.
Seth was awakened next morning by Aunt Hannah’s voice, as she called
gently:
“It’s time to get up, my dear. The sun is out looking for boys an’
dogs, an’ you mustn’t disappoint him.”
Snip ran eagerly down the stairs as if to greet some one for whom he
had a great affection, and Seth heard the little woman say to him:
“I really believe Gladys was in the right when she said I would come
to like you almost as much as if you were a cat. Do you want a saucer
of milk?”
“She won’t talk so pleasantly when I get there,” Seth said to himself.
“I’d rather take a sound flogging than have her look at me as if I was
a thief!”
The lad soon came to know Aunt Hannah better than to accuse her of
being cruel even in the slightest degree.
When he entered the kitchen she greeted him with a kindly smile, and
said, much as if the events of the previous night were no more than a
disagreeable dream:
“You see I’m beginning to depend on you already, Seth. Gladys isn’t up
yet, and I’ve left White-Face in the barn thinkin’ you’d take her to
the pasture. The grass is wet with dew, an’ I’m gettin’ so old that I
don’t dare take the chances of wetting my feet.”
Seth did not wait to make his toilet, but ran swiftly to the barn,
rejoicing because of the opportunity to perform some task.
When the cow had been cared for he loitered around outside, picking up
a stick here and a stone there as if it was of the highest importance
that the lawn in front of the house be freed from litter of every kind
before breakfast.
His one desire was to avoid coming face to face with Aunt Hannah until
it should be absolutely necessary, and while he was thus inventing
work Gladys came out in search of Snip.
Seth understood at once that the girl was yet ignorant of his attempt
to run away, and his heart swelled with gratitude toward the little
woman who had thus far kept secret what he would have been ashamed to
tell.
Just then Snip was of far more importance in the eyes of Aunt Hannah’s
niece than was his master, and after a hasty “good-morning” she ran
away with the dog at her heels for the accustomed exercise before
breakfast.
“Come in an’ wash your face, my dear. Breakfast will be cooked by the
time you are ready to eat it, and such work as you are doing may as
well be left until a more convenient season.”
Seth felt forced to obey this summons promptly; but he did not dare
meet the little woman’s glance. Had he observed her closely, however,
it would have been seen that she studiously avoided looking toward
him. Aunt Hannah was averse to causing pain, even to the brutes which
came in her way, and at this particular time she understood very much
of what was in the boy’s mind.
Seth feared lest in the “prayer before breakfast” some reference might
be made to what he had attempted to do during the night; but his fears
were groundless. The little woman asked that her Father’s blessing
might fall upon the homeless; but the words were spoken in the same
fervent, kindly tone as on the evening previous, and again the boy
thanked her in his heart.
When the morning meal had come to an end Gladys was eager Seth should
join her and Snip on an excursion through the grove where squirrels
were said to be “thick as peas,” and under almost any other
circumstances the guest would have been delighted to accept the
invitation; but now he insisted that there was very much work to be
done before nightfall, which would force him to remain near the house.
“We’ve only to plant the garden,” Aunt Hannah interrupted, “an’ then
there’s no reason why you shouldn’t enjoy a stroll among the trees.”
Seth remained silent, but determined to do all in his power to atone
for what seemed to him very nearly a crime, and Gladys decided that
she must also take part in the sowing of the seeds.
Until noon the three, with Snip as a most interested spectator, worked
industriously, and then, as Aunt Hannah said, “there was nothing to be
done save wait patiently until the sun and the rain had performed
their portion of the task.”
Seth did not join Gladys and Snip in their afternoon romp, but
continued at his self-imposed tasks until night had come, doing quite
as much work with his mind as his hands. Twenty times over he resolved
to tell the little woman exactly why he was forced to run away from
New York, and as often decided he could not confess himself such a
criminal as it seemed certain, because of the advertisement, he really
was.
“I couldn’t stand it to have her look at me after she knew
everything,” he repeated again and again.
There was no idea in his mind as to how the matter might end, save
when now and then he had the faintest of faint hopes that perhaps she
might forget, or learn the truth from some one other than himself.
During three days he struggled between what he knew to be duty and his
own inclination, and in all that time the little woman never showed by
word or look that there was any disagreeable secret between them.
Seth tried to ease his conscience by working most industriously during
every moment of daylight, and then came the time when it was
absolutely impossible to find anything more for his hands to do. He
had swept the barn floor until it was as clean as a broom could make
it; the wood in the shed had been piled methodically; a goodly supply
of kindlings were prepared, and not so much as a pebble was to be seen
on the velvety lawn.
Gladys had tried in vain to entice him away from what she declared was
useless labor, and Snip did all within the power of a dog to coax his
master into joining him in the jolly strolls among the trees or across
the green fields, and yet Seth remained nearabout the little house in
a feverish search for something with which to employ his hands.
“It’s no use, Snippey dear,” he said on the fourth night of his stay
at the farm, after the family had retired, “I can’t stay an’ not tell
Aunt Hannah, an’ it’s certain we won’t be allowed to stop more’n a
minute after she knows the truth. If I could talk to her in the dark,
when I couldn’t see her face, it wouldn’t seem quite so bad; but we go
to bed so early there’s no chance for that. We must have it out mighty
soon, for I can’t hang ’round here many hours longer without tellin’
all about ourselves.”
He was not ready for bed, although an hour had passed since he bade
Aunt Hannah and Gladys good-night.
The moon had gilded the rail fence, the shed, and the barn until they
were transformed into fairy handiwork; the road gleamed like gold with
an enamel of black marking the position of trees and bushes, and Seth
had gazed upon the wondrous picture without really being aware of
time’s flight.
Having repeated to Snip that which was in his mind, the boy was on the
point of making himself ready for a visit from the dream elves when he
heard, apparently from the room below, what sounded like a fall, a
smothered exclamation, and the splintering of glass.
Only for a single instant did he stand motionless, and then, realizing
that some accident must have happened, he ran downstairs, Snip
following close behind, barking shrilly.
Once in the kitchen an exclamation of terror burst from his lips.
The room was illumined by a line of fire, seemingly extending entirely
across the floor, which was fringed by a dense smoke that rose nearly
to the ceiling, and, beside the table, where she had evidently fallen,
lay Aunt Hannah, struggling to smother with bare hands the yellow,
dancing flames that had fastened upon her clothing.
It needed not the fragments of glass and brass to tell Seth that the
little woman had accidentally fallen, breaking the lamp she carried,
and that the fire was fed by oil.
Like a flash there came into his mind the memory of that night when
Dud Wilson overturned a lamp on the floor of his news-stand, and he
had heard it said then that the property might have been saved if the
boys had smothered the flames with their coats, or any fabric of
woollen, instead of trying to drown it out with water.
He pulled off his coat in a twinkling, threw it over the prostrate
woman, and added to the covering rag rugs from the floor, pressing
them down firmly as he said, in a trembling voice, much as though
speaking to a child:
“Don’t get scared! We can’t put the fire out with water; but I’ll soon
smother it.”
“You needn’t bother about me, my child; but attend to the house! It
would be dreadful if we should lose the dear old home!”
“I’ll get the best of this business in a jiffy; but it won’t do to
give you a chance of bein’ burned.”
“There is no fire here now.” And Aunt Hannah threw back the rugs,
despite Seth’s hold upon them, to show that the flames were really
quenched. “For mercy’s sake, save the house! It’s the only home I ever
knew, an’ my heart would be wellnigh broken if I lost it!”
Before she had ceased speaking Seth was flinging rug after rug on the
burning oil, for Aunt Hannah, like many another woman living in the
country, had an ample supply of such floor coverings.
Not until he had entirely covered that line of flame, and had danced
to and fro over the rugs to stamp out the last spark of fire, did he
venture to open the outside door, and it was high time, for the
pungent smoke filled the kitchen until it was exceedingly difficult to
breathe.
The little woman remained upon the floor where Seth had first found
her, and it was only after the night breeze was blowing through the
room, carrying off the stifling vapor, that the boy had time to wonder
why she made no effort to rise.
“Are you hurt?” he cried anxiously, running to her side.
“Never mind me until the fire is out.”
“There is no more fire, an’ I’m bound to mind you! Are you hurt?”
“It doesn’t seem possible, my dear, an’ yet I can’t use either ankle
or wrist. Of course the bones are not broken; but old people like me
don’t fall harmlessly as do children.”
Seth was more alarmed now than when he saw the flames of the burning
oil threatening the destruction of the building, and he dumbly
wondered why Gladys did not make her appearance.
The first excitement was over, and now he had time in which to be
frightened.
“What can I do? Oh, what can I do?” he cried, running to and fro, and
then, hardly aware of his movements, he shouted loudly for Gladys.
“Don’t waken her!” Aunt Hannah cried warningly. “If you can’t help me
there is nothing she can do.”
“Ain’t she in the house?” Seth asked nervously.
He feared Aunt Hannah might die, and even though she was in no real
danger, to stand idly by not knowing how to aid her was terrible.
He failed to observe that Snip was no longer in the room; but just at
that moment his shrill barking was heard in an adjoining apartment,
and Seth knew the dog had gone to find his little playmate.
“You mustn’t get frightened after the danger is all over, my dear,”
Aunt Hannah said soothingly. “But for you the house would have been
destroyed, and now we have nothing to fear.”
“But you can’t get up!” Seth wailed.
“That wouldn’t be a great misfortune compared with losing our home,
even if I never got up again,” the little woman said quietly. “But I’m
not going to lie here. Surely you can help me on to the couch.”
“Tell me how to do it,” Seth cried eagerly, and at that moment Gladys
appeared in the doorway.
“Lean over so that I may put my arms around your neck,” Aunt Hannah
said, giving no heed to the girl’s cry of alarm.
“She fell an’ hurt herself,” Seth said hurriedly to Gladys, as he
obeyed the little woman’s injunction. And then, as the latter put her
uninjured arm over his neck, he tried to aid the movement by clasping
her waist.
“If you can help me just a little bit we’ll soon have her on the
couch,” he cried to Gladys, who by this time was standing at his side.
Aunt Hannah was a tiny woman, and the children, small though they
were, did not find it an exceedingly difficult task to raise her
bodily from the floor.
Then Gladys lighted a lamp, and it was seen that, in addition to the
injuries received by the fall, Aunt Hannah had been grievously burned.
“Yes, I’m in some pain,” she said in reply to Seth’s anxious
questioning; “but now that the house has been saved I have no right to
complain. Get some flour, Gladys, and while you are putting it on the
worst of the burns, perhaps Seth will run over to Mrs. Dean an’ ask if
she can come here a few minutes.”
“Where does Mis’ Dean live?” the lad asked hurriedly, starting toward
the door; and he was already outside when Gladys replied:
“It’s the first house past the grove where Snip and I went this
afternoon!”
Seth gave no heed to his lameness as he ran at full speed down the
road; the thought that now was the time when he might in some slight
degree repay Aunt Hannah for having given shelter to him and Snip,
lending speed to his feet.
The Dean family had not yet retired when he arrived at the farmhouse,
and, stopping only sufficiently long to tell in fewest possible words
of what had happened, Seth ran back to help Gladys care for the
invalid, for he was feverishly eager to have some part in the nursing.
Aunt Hannah was on the couch with her wounds partially bandaged when
the boy returned, and although her suffering must have been severe,
that placid face was as serene as when he bade her good-night.
“Mis’ Dean is comin’ right away. What can I do?”
“Nothing more, my dear,” the little woman replied quietly. “You have
been of such great service to me this night that I can never repay
you.”
“Please don’t say that, Aunt Hannah,” Seth cried, his face flushing
with shame as he remembered the past. “If I could only do somethin’
real big, then perhaps you wouldn’t think I was so awful bad.”
“I believe you to be a good boy, Seth, and shall until you tell me to
the contrary. Even then,” she added with a smile, “I fancy it will be
possible to find a reasonable excuse.”
The arrival of Mrs. Dean put an end to any further conversation, and
Seth was called upon to aid in carrying Aunt Hannah to the foreroom,
in which was the best bed, although the little woman protested
against anything of the kind.
“I am as well off in my own bed, Sarah Dean. Don’t treat me as if I
was a child who didn’t know what was best.”
“You are goin’ into the foreroom, Hannah Morse, an’ that’s all there
is about it. That bed hasn’t been used since the year your brother
Benjamin was at home, an’ I’ve always said that if anything happened
to you, an’ I had charge of affairs, you should get some comfort out
of the feathers you earned pickin’ berries. We’ll take her into the
foreroom, boy, for it’s the most cheerful, an’ she deserves the best
that’s goin’.”
“You can bet she does!” Seth exclaimed with great emphasis; and then
he gave all his attention to obeying the many commands which issued
from Mrs. Dean’s mouth.
When the little woman had been disposed of according to her neighbor’s
ideas of comfort, Seth was directed to build a fire in the kitchen
stove; Gladys received instructions to bring all the old linen to be
found; and Snip was ordered into the shed.
Aunt Hannah protested vehemently against this last order, with the
result that the dog was banished to Gladys’ chamber, and then Mrs.
Dean proceeded to attend to the invalid without giving her a voice in
any matter, however nearly it might concern herself.
Seth took up his station in the kitchen when other neighbors arrived,
summoned most likely by Mr. Dean, and here Gladys joined him after
what had seemed to the boy a very long time.
“How is she?” he asked when the girl came softly into the room as if
thinking he might be asleep.
“Her hands and arms are burned very badly. Why, Seth, there are
blisters as big as my hand, and Mrs. Dean says she suffers terribly;
but the dear old woman hasn’t made the least little complaint.”
“That’s ’cause she’s so good. If I was like her I needn’t bother my
head ’bout what was goin’ to happen after I died. It would be a funny
kind of an angel who wasn’t glad to see Aunt Hannah!”
“She’d have burned to death but for you.”
“That ain’t so, Gladys. I didn’t do very much, ’cept throw the rugs
an’ my coat over her.”
“She’s just been telling Mrs. Dean that you saved her life, and the
house.”
“Did she really?” Seth cried excitedly. “Did she say it in them very
same words?”
“Aunt Hannah made it sound a good deal better than I can. She said God
sent you to this house to help her in the time of trouble, an’ she’s
goin’ to see that you always have a home here.”
“Wasn’t she kind’er out of her head?” Seth asked quickly. “I’ve heard
Mother Hyde say that folks got crazy-like when they ached pretty bad.”
“Aunt Hannah knew every word she was saying, and it’s true that she
might have burned to death if you hadn’t been in the house, for I
never heard a thing till Snippey came into my room barking.”
“I hope I did do as much; but it don’t seem jest true.”
“Don’t you think the house would have burned if some one hadn’t put
out the fire very quickly?”
“Perhaps so, ’cause the flames jumped up mighty high.”
“And since she couldn’t move, wouldn’t she have been burned to death?”
“I hope so.”
“Why, Seth Barrows, how wicked you are!”
“No, no, Gladys, I didn’t mean I hoped she’d have burned to death; but
I hoped I really an’ truly saved her life, ’cause then she won’t jump
down on me so hard when I tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
“Why Snip an’ I had to run away from New York.”
“Is it something you’re ashamed of?” Gladys asked quickly and in
surprise.
Seth nodded, while the flush of shame crept up into his cheeks.
Gladys gazed at him earnestly while one might have counted ten, and
then said, speaking slowly and distinctly:
“I don’t believe it. Aunt Hannah says you’re the best boy she ever
saw; an’ she knows.”
“Did Aunt Hannah tell you that, or are you tryin’ to stuff me?” And
Seth rose to his feet excitedly.
“I hope you don’t think I’d tell a lie?”
“Of course I don’t, Gladys; but if you only knew how much it means to
me—Aunt Hannah’s sayin’ what you claim she did—there wouldn’t be any
wonder I had hard work to believe it.”
“She said to me those very same words——”
“What ones?”
“That you was the best boy she ever saw, an’ it was only yesterday
afternoon, when you were splitting kindling wood, that she said it.”
Then, suddenly, to Gladys’ intense surprise, Seth dropped his head on
his arm and burst into a flood of tears.