After Rose and her father had made their brief toilets, they found the
family at luncheon.
“I was wet to the skin, and through it, I believe,” said Rose. “No, I
sha’n’t take cold, mama. Nobody takes cold here. Tom must be wet through
to his bones—absolutely water-logged.”
“The boys were a-drip like water-rats,” said Mrs. Lyndsay. “I am sure
some of you will have pneumonia.”
“But I got an eighteen-and-a-half-pound salmon,” cried Jack.
“He’s had him in his lap for an hour, like a baby,” said Dick.
“That is capable of olfactory demonstration,” remarked Anne.
“He’ll get that salmon framed,” cried Dick. “Such a fuss—”
“Did you get any, sir?” asked his father.
“No.”
“Are you sorry Jack did?”
“No, I am not that mean,” returned the boy, flushing. “Ned he caught it,
and he let Jack bring it in. Jack wanted it so very bad.”
“Badly, sir?”
“Badly.”
“And it was Ned’s fish, after all.”
As he spoke, Lyndsay nodded gently, smiling at the youngest son, and no
more was said; but the boys understood well enough that neither the
selfishness nor the self-denial had gone unnoticed. This was made more
plain when Mr. Lyndsay said:
“I shall fish the upper pool to-morrow morning—or, rather, you may, Ned,
for I have letters to write.”
“And Jack and Dick?” said Ned.
“Those other fellows may slay trout.” He disliked even the approach to
tale-telling by his boys, and when Mrs. Lyndsay made an appeal, in her
mild way, he said, laughing:
“The laws of the Medes and Persians were never changed. Let it rest
there. My barbarians understand me, I fancy.”
There was a little silence, which Rose broke.
“What is that in the glass, Dick, on the window-ledge?”
“What Pierre calls a lamprey. It is the very lowest of vertebrates. It
has only a cartilaginous skeleton.”
“Must be an awful learned beast,” said Ned.
“It holds on to the side of the salmon, Rosy.”
“Just like a fellow outside of an omnibus,” said Dick.
“What a queer thing!” and Rose got up to look at it. “I wonder if the
salmon likes it. A parasite!”
“Which proves,” laughed Anne, “that even a parasite is capable of
attachment. The obligation is all on one side.”
“Literally,” said Lyndsay.
“Archie, you are worse than Mr. B.,” said Anne. “If you say anything
clever, he begins to dissect it for the benefit of all concerned. The
application of anatomy to humor is one of the lowest of social pursuits.
I loathe that man.”
“You don’t really loathe any one, aunty.”
“If you do not,” said Margaret, “it is a pity to say that sort of
thing.”
“But I do loathe the man—I do; I do. I am honest. He has every quality
of what Dick tenderly calls a G. I. P., except the probability of
ultimate usefulness.”
“Reasonably complete that,” said Lyndsay, while Jack grinned his
appreciation.
“He is a clergyman, Anne,” remarked Margaret, with emphasis.
“That only makes it worse. I have heard him preach. Don’t you think a
man who has no humor must be a bad man?”
“Anne!”
“One moment, dear. Let me finish him. I was going to say, Archie, that
if a mule was to kick that man just for fun, he would never know he was
kicked.”
“That covers the ground. You should have edited a newspaper, Anne. Such
vituperative qualities are wasted here.”
“Indeed, I think so,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, rising at the end of her
luncheon. “It may amuse you, Archie, but for the boys it is bad, dear,
bad.”
Upon this the twins, enchanted to hear of wickedness, became critically
attentive to the matter, and for a moment refrained from their diet.
Anne, a little vexed, smiled as her sister-in-law stood opposite, but
made no other reply.
“I dare say it amuses you, my dear Anne.”
“It does.”
“But should it, dear, and at the cost of temptation to others? Go out,
boys.” The twins went forth merry. “And—and, dear, don’t you think—?”
Between question and answer Lyndsay made swift retreat, with an
explanatory cigar-case in his hand.
“Yes, I think, Margaret”; and then, the gray eyes lighting up, “I think,
Margaret, that you do not always think. If you did, you would criticize
that wicked Archie.”
“Archie! Archie! What do you mean?”
“I admit your premise. Homicide applied to character is bad enough; but
don’t you think that Archie ought to give up killing salmon?”
“What?”
“You see it teaches the boys to be cruel. It is the sad beginning of
murder. There is only a difference of degree in it. Suppose, now, a man
kills a monkey, and then—you follow me, dear—and then—oh, do come here,
Rose—and then he gets a shot somewhere in Africa at the missing link.
You see where killing salmon lands you at last. Where shall we draw the
line?”
Rose laughed, despite her mother’s face of puzzled yet obstinate
gravity.
“What do you mean, Anne?”
Anne rarely argued seriously with this sister-in-law, who, despite their
differences, was very dear to her. Her delight was, like the
cuttle-fish, so to obscure the whole atmosphere of a discussion with
mistiness of vague analogy as to enable her to retreat with honor.
“Good gracious!” Margaret went on, fanning herself violently, as she did
in all weather, and amuseingly indicating by her use of the fan her own
moods, “what did I say to bring out all this nonsense? I think
I—yes—what was it, Rose?”
Any one’s irritation, of which she herself seemed to be the cause,
troubled the little lady, especially if Anne were the person involved.
Nevertheless, no experience sufficed quite to keep Mrs. Lyndsay out of
these risks when her motherly instincts were in action.
Rose smiled, as she replied:
“Dear little mother, Aunt Anne objects to your criticism of her form of
sport, and the naughty aunty is raising a dust of words, in which she
will scuttle away.” As she spoke she cast a loving arm around her
mother, and one on her aunt’s thin shoulders. But Margaret Lyndsay had
the persistency of all instinctive beings.
“I think it bad for the boys. I always shall think it bad. Dick is now
too fond of ridiculing serious things, and they think whatever you do is
right, and whatever you say they think delightful. As for Ned—”
“Ned! my Ned! That boy is an angel. I won’t have a word—”
“As if I did not know it!” said Margaret, with the nearest approach to
wrath of which she was capable. “Really, Anne Lyndsay, may I not even
praise my own boys?”
“I think, my dear Margaret, you lack imagination,” said Anne. Like a
great algebraist, who is apt to skip in his statements a long series of
equations, she was given to omitting the logical steps by which her
swift reason passed to a conclusion satisfactorily true for her, but
obscure enough to her hearers.
“I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Lyndsay.
“Nor I,” echoed Rose.
“My dears,” said Anne, smiling, “the prosperity of life lies largely in
the true use of imagination.”
“You are incorrigible, Anne. But I know I am right.”
“Knowledge and wisdom, far from being one, are ofttimes different,”
quoted Anne, rising, and not over well pleased. “I think I shall go and
lie down.”
“I think I would,” said Mrs. Lyndsay, simply. “You are not looking well
to-day.”
“I am well enough,” said Miss Anne.
“All ready!—and the fish and Polycarp!” cried Lyndsay.
Rose was soon in the canoe, and the men began poling across the river.
As they moved, she sat, reflecting upon the little scene she had
witnessed. It troubled her that two people so dear to her should not
always understand each other. The mother had already ceased to think of
it, and the aunt’s irritability was a matter of minutes. Only Anne
Lyndsay knew how sternly a remarkable intellect had by degrees dictated
terms of reasonable life to a quick temper and a tongue too perilously
skilful. This endless warfare was now rarely visible, but its
difficulties were terribly increased at times when weakness and pain
grew hard to endure and fought on the side of her foes. There were,
indeed, times during the weariness of travel when Rose Lyndsay was
startled by what she saw; times when Anne was striving with constantly
increasing pain. Then it would end with a laugh and a jest, and some
quaint defense of pain as a form of moral education, until Rose, despite
herself, would be reassured, and she
Who would have given a caliph’s gold
For consolation, was herself consoled.
These things troubled her as she crossed the stream. Once ashore she
ceased to think of them. Polycarp, with few words, slung the salmon on
his back, and, leaving Ambrose to pious meditations and the canoe,
indicated the ox-road to Rose, who went on in front.
After twenty minutes of swift walking, Rose came out of the wood-path
into a clearing of some fifty acres, and at last to a cabin set in an
inclosure. Here were a few beds of the commoner flowers and a
squared-log house. The windows were open, the clean white muslin
curtains pulled back, and on the ledges tomato-cans and a broken jug or
two filled with that flower which grows best for the poor, the red
geranium. On the south end of the cabin a Japanese ivy, given by Mrs.
Lyndsay, had made a fair fight with the rigor of a Canadian winter and
was part way up to the gable. Noticing the absence of dirt and of the
litter of chips, rags, egg-shells, and bits of paper, so common where
labor has all it can do to attend to the essential, Rose tapped on the
open door, and then, turning, saw Mrs. Maybrook standing at the well.
She came forward at once to meet her visitor.
“Why, I guess you must be Margaret Lyndsay’s daughter.”
Rose, a little taken aback by the familiar manner of this
identification, perhaps showed it to this shrewd observer in something
about her bearing as she said, “A pleasant evening after the rain,” and
took the proffered hand. “Yes, I am Rose Lyndsay.”
“I’m never quite rid of my Quaker fashion of naming folks without their
handles. Seems to get you nearer to people. Now, don’t you think so?
Come in.”
Rose, as her host stepped aside, entered the cabin. It was bedroom,
kitchen, and sitting-room all in one, like most of these rude homes, but
it was absolutely clean, and just now, as the cooking was done out of
doors, was cool and airy. Mrs. Maybrook was in a much-mended gown, and
bore signs enough of contact with pots and pans. Still the great coils
of hair were fairly neat, and the gray eyes shone clear and smiling. She
made none of the apologies for her house or its furniture such as the
poor are apt to make, nor yet for herself or her dress.
“Come in and sit down. I’m that glad to see you. Oh, Polycarp, is that
you? And your father has sent me a salmon? My old man will like that.
Put it in the brook, Polycarp.”
“But it is my fish,” said Rose. “I killed it and I wanted you to have
it; my father had nothing to do with it, I am glad of a chance to thank
you, Mrs. Maybrook, for—for all you were to my mother—all you did last
summer when our dear Harry died.”
And this fine young woman, in her tailor-made London walking-gown,
thereupon having got to the end of words, and having had this thing in
mind for ten minutes, fell an easy victim to nature, so that her eyes
filled as she spoke. When this came about, Dorothy became as easy a prey
to the despotism of sympathetic emotion, and her tears, too, fell like
ripe apples on a windy November day. Also, upon this, these two “fools
of nature” looked at each other and smiled through their tears, which is
a mysteriously explanatory and apologetic habit among rightly made
women. After this they were in a way friends. The elder woman took the
hand of the younger and said:
“When my last boy died, there was a woman I just hated, and she came and
she cried. It makes a heap of matter who cries,—don’t it, now?”
“Oh, it does—it does,” said Rose, with still a little sob in her voice.
“I didn’t want that woman to cry. But you don’t mind _my_ crying, now,
do you? That was the sweetest little fellow.”
“Please don’t,” said Rose.
“No, no; I won’t, I know. Isn’t it awful lucky men can’t cry? That’s
just the only way we can get even with ’em. How’s mother? And Miss Anne?
Now, that is a woman. Never saw a woman like her in all my born life.
Ain’t she got a way of saying things? Oh, here’s Hiram. Hiram, this is
Miss Rose Lyndsay. I reckon”—Mrs. Maybrook reckoned, calculated, or
guessed with the entire indifference of a woman who had lived south,
north, and east—“I reckon they knew what they was about when they called
you Rose. ’T ain’t easy naming children. They ain’t all like flowers,
that just grow up, according to their kind. If you’d have been called
Becky, there wouldn’t have been no kind of reason in it.“
“I trust not,” laughed Rose.
“How do you do, miss?” said Hiram. He was tall, a little bent, clad in
sober gray, and had a shock of stiff, grizzly hair and a full gray
beard. His eyes, which were pale blue and meaningless, wandered as he
stood.
“Miss Rose has fetched a fish,” said Dorothy. “You might clean it,
Hiram.”
“I’ll do it,” he said, stolidly, and turned to go like a dull boy sent
on an errand.
“And don’t forget to fetch the cows in at sundown.”
“I’ll do it,” and he went out.
“He’s a bit touched in his head,” said his wife. “You see, when we were
at Marysville the war kind o’ upset him. They wanted him to go into the
rebel army, and he wasn’t minded to do it. I got him a place on a
railroad, so he didn’t have to; but he was awful worried, and took to
thinking about it, and his brothers that were in our army,—on the other
side,—and then he got off his head. He ain’t been the same man
since,—and twice he ran away. But I fetched him both times, and then the
fevers took the children. He ain’t been the same man since. I’ve got to
p’int him a good bit,—that’s what he calls it; but if he’s p’inted
right, he goes sure. To my thinking, it is a queer world, Miss Rose. I
wish I was certain there is a better.”
“But there is,” said Rose.
“Well, well. Maybe. Anyhow, I never felt no call to doubt what I was to
do in this one. Old Kitchins used to pray over me. He was an awful
certain man about other folks’ sins; never missed fire. At last, one
day, when he was a-consoling me, and thinking he’d just only got to be a
kind of centurion for a woman’s troubles, and say go and they’d go, I
asked him if he’d any knowledge of the gospel of grinning,—and that
ended him. Come out and see my flowers.”
Rose got up, laughing. “I want you to walk to Colkett’s with me. I told
the men to go up the river, so as to bring us back. You see, I made sure
you would go.”
“Go!—of course I’ll go,” said Dorothy. “No, I won’t want a bonnet. I’ve
got one somewhere, under the bed, I guess,” and, so saying, they set
off. It required little skill to draw from this frank and fearless
nature, as they walked, the history of a wandering life, of the children
dead, of the half-witted husband, of her own long-continued asthma, now
gone, as she hoped. It was told with curious vivacity,—with some sense
of the humorous quality of complete disaster, and when she spoke of her
dead it was with brief gravity, which seemed to deny sympathy or hasten
away from it. As they moved along and her companion talked, Rose glanced
with curiosity at the Quaker-born woman, who had lost nearly every trace
of her origin. She walked well, and there was a certain distinctiveness,
if not distinction, in her erect carriage and refinement of feature,
still visible after years of toil and troubles.
At last, after a pause, Rose spoke for herself.
“It seems to me wonderful that you, who have gone through so much, could
have stood it as you seem to have done.” She herself was at the opening
age of doubts and questions. At times the discontentment of a life
without the definite aims of a man’s career distressed her. Yet she had
surely all that one could ask of existence; and here was this
poverty-haunted woman supremely cheerful under circumstances such as
would have ruined all capacity for happiness in most of her sex. Rose
went on, half surprised at her own frankness:
“I have everything in the world, and sometimes I am not happy. I ought
to be ashamed.”
“Well, Miss Rose, I did use to bother, but I gave it up. As long as
you’re here, you’re here. I’m like a pig Hiram used to have out West. He
was a very enterprising pig, and was always a-trying to get into the
pea-patch and out of his own field. One day I was watching that pig,—I
used to think that pig could laugh,—well, he spied an angle of a great
big, dead cottonwood-tree Hiram had set to stop the gap in a fence. You
see, the two ends of it were in the field, and it was hollow right
through trunk and limb, and the point of it stuck out into my pea-patch.
So, Mr. Pig, in he goes, and after much scratching he got through the
trunk, and then through the big branch, and then out he came, and there
he was in the same field again. Well, he tried it three times and then
he gave it up; looked like he’d have liked to scratch his head; and
after that he was the contentedest pig you ever saw. And when
sticking-time came, at Christmas, he didn’t squeal any morsel louder
than the rest. I guess I’m a good deal like that pig. I’ve quit trying
to get out of my field, and so I just stay here and grin, and take what
comes.”
“Thank you,” said Rose, smiling. “That is a delightful parable, Mrs.
Maybrook.” And with it Rose ceased awhile to hear what her companion
said, and took stern measures with herself, because of the thoughts this
woman’s life and words had brought to her.
Dorothy was at times, when her audience suited her, a person who talked
herself out in liberal amount, finding in self-utterance one of her few
and most distinct pleasures. Yet she was never so full of herself as
entirely to cease to think of others. She saw in a few minutes that Rose
had lost hold of the talk, and was at intervals saying, “Yes, yes,” in
an absent way, so as to keep up a decent appearance of being still
interested in her companion’s words. Dorothy had by no means fine
manners, but she had the automatically active instincts of a woman to
whom tact was a natural gift. She too became silent, and they walked on
for a time without more exchange of words.
Rose, like some young women of her age, was at times the easy prey of
moods of absence, which carried her far enough from the hour or its
company. She had preached herself a severe sermon, and now came back to
the outer world again as they passed a marshy spot where, of a sudden,
the wholesome wood odors rose around her, that delightful commingling of
the scent of moldering trunks, resinous weepings of the pine, and the
sweetness of the breath of the young spruces. Nature said, in her most
tender tones, “Come back to me out of your tangle of self-discussion,
and I will give you rest.” It was a delicately responsive organization
to which this mute appeal was made, and the fine instrument answered to
the call with no more consciousness of the gentle influence than has the
swaying pine stirred to healthful exercise by the northland breeze.
“Don’t you like the wood-smells?” she said.
“Me? I guess I do. That’s queer about Susan Colkett; asked her one day
if she didn’t love the spruce-smells, and she just said they hadn’t
none.”
“That was odd. I could never like that woman, but I am very, very sorry
for her.”
“Like her! Miss Rose, I saw her once killing chickens,—I never _can_ do
that,—and the woman was laughing all the while. I don’t love her,
but—There’s the house; you wait here in the woods; I’ll get her out, and
then you can talk. Sit down on this log. I’ll fetch her.”
“But are you not afraid, Mrs. Maybrook?”
“I? No; I’m old and tough, and it wouldn’t matter much—except for Hiram.
There’d be nobody to p’int him,” and she laughed.
Then Rose took up her sermon again, and Dorothy walked to the back of
the crumbling cabin, through the vileness of the cow-shed, which was
connected with the house to save wintry exposures in caring for the
cattle, now reduced in number to one lank, milkless cow.
Two decrepit chickens fled as she came by, and a long-legged,
high-roofed pig lifted his snout above his empty trough and grunted a
famine-born appeal. Her feet were noiseless in the slough of muck
through which she picked her way with a grimace of disgust. At the open
back door she paused, hearing high voices within. About to enter, she
halted abruptly, and a look of intense attention came upon her face. The
speakers were hidden, but in the dimness at the far end of the room, she
saw the half of the bed,—one broken leg of it tied up to a splint of
wood,—and above, the white sheet upon the figure of the dead child. She
stayed motionless a moment, at first merely shocked at the rude noises
in the chamber of death, but, when about to knock, stopped short again
at the hearing of her own name.
“Dory Maybrook’s a fool; don’t tell me about her!”
“Well, I won’t. Ain’t I goin’ to have no more of that money?” It was Joe
Colkett who spoke.
“You took five dollars last night,” said the woman. Her voice, strident
and high-pitched, sent a shiver of discomfort through Dorothy. “Didn’t
think no man would be mean enough to steal from under a dead child’s
pillow!”
“I might ov took it all,—I’m that miserable. Don’t go to say I’m drunk.
I’m not. What did you do with the rest of it, anyway?”
“I got Bill Churchman’s wife to buy me a white gown down the river, to
put on my child, and a white sheet, and then there’s the money to fetch
the preacher. I couldn’t get no sheet until I paid your reckonin’ for
whisky. There ain’t much left.”
“I’m dreadful sorry,” said the man.
“Oh, don’t go a-whinin’ round me! Just let me alone! I was a fool to
have took a man like you, that ain’t got no sense and no work in him!”
“I wouldn’t ov sayed that, Susie.”
“No? Well, I say it. What did that lawyer man tell you about the
mortgage? When has we got to go?”
“Oh, he says we may bide till next winter; but he’s to have the cow and
the pig.”
“And you said you’d give ’em up?”
“Yes. What could I ov done? Susie, don’t you set there a-cryin’. I can
git a lumber job, and we’ll look about, and Mr. Lyndsay he’ll give us a
bit of money.”
“No, he won’t. Dory Maybrook she’ll tell him Mr. Carington gave you some
money, and Dory she’ll tell him, too, it’s no use helpin’ a drunken
brute.”
“I said I wouldn’t drink no more, and I won’t. You might believe me,
Susie. Ain’t I allus loved you, and slaved for you and them dead
children, and not mine neither? I’m not a bad man, if I do take a drop
now and again.”
“If you was a worse man, I’d ov liked you better. A great strong man
like you, and all these rich folks round here.”
“What!” he exclaimed.
Dorothy started. She would have liked to see those two faces.
“If you was to care for me a little, Susie, I’d do most anything you
wanted.”
“Ain’t that Carington comin’ up in September, and didn’t he ask you to
go into the woods after caribou with him? There ain’t no better hunter
than you in these parts.” As she spoke, her voice became low and softer,
so that the listener scarcely heard it. “Them city folks carries a lot
of money about with ’em, and watches and things. We’ve got to get away,
and we’ve got to live, Joe Colkett,—to live, I say!”
“Do you want me to steal the man’s money?”
“Oh, stealin’ gits found out. Ain’t we been robbed? Who stole our house
and all my man’s earnin’s?”
“What is it you want, Susie?” He spoke timidly.
“I want a man as is a man, and ain’t afeard,—you ain’t him!”
“Didn’t I say I’d do ’most anything for you?”
“’Most anything!”
“Well, anything.” Then there was a moment of utter silence. “You
wouldn’t go to want me to do nothin’ wrong.”
“Well, you are a fool! Ain’t folks lost in them woods sometimes, and
never found?”
“I can’t do it,” said the man, hoarsely. “I said I couldn’t, and I
can’t. I—I can’t,” and he was heard moving to and fro in the agitated
indecision of a great temptation. Dorothy began to fear that she would
come into view.
“I can’t,” he repeated.
“But he will,” murmured Dorothy, falling back noiselessly. Then,
stepping through a break in the rotten boards of the shed, she bent low
among the alders and fled. When away in the woods, she walked until she
came again to Rose. “They’re in,” she said. “Mind, we’ve just come.
Don’t let on I left you—hush—not now. There’s a reason. I can’t explain
now. Come.”
Rose, rather bewildered, followed her. A few paces from the closed door
she stood still, while Dorothy, going on, called gently, “Susie
Colkett,” and knocked as she spoke.
“Oh, it’s you!” said the mistress of the house, as she came forward to
the doorway.
“Yes; Miss Lyndsay came up with me. Dear me! I’m that tired!”
Mrs. Colkett, from her grim height of leanness, looked sharply at the
speaker. “That ain’t common with you.” Then she came out and went up to
Rose. “Won’t you come in?” she said. “It ain’t much of a house, but poor
folks has got to put up with what they can git.” The stooping carriage,
the high, red cheek-bones, and the large, yellow teeth struck the young
woman unpleasantly. That the mother said nothing of the dead child
within seemed strange.
“I—I couldn’t now,—not now,” said Rose, gently. “I wanted to say we were
all so—so very sorry for you. It’s only just a year last week that my
own little brother died, you know.”
“And, Susie, it was the same thing, oh, just the same,” said Dorothy,
softly.
“My father would like to know if there is anything you want;
anything—really anything we can do?”
“No,” she said. At one moment she was filled with eager greed to get all
that was to be had out of these fine people; at the next she was shaken
by a storm of anger at the contrast between these deaths. She had a
crude remembrance of the decencies and order of the funeral of Harry
Lyndsay, and then of Joe coming in with the rough coffin, of the place
back in the woods where her two children lay in unmarked graves. On such
recollections the mere brutalness of love of her offspring dwelt with
savagery of comment. She had seen the small stone which had been set
over the little Lyndsay, in the late spring, just before the family had
come upon the river. These things had been in her mind for days, and now
it was hard to conceal her feelings She would have liked to take an ax
and break the modest memorial of their dead. She said, merely, “No, no!”
to Rose, and then, shortly, “Joe and me are much obliged, miss.”
“You will let us know if we can help you?” Her visible emotion Rose,
very naturally, misinterpreted. Dorothy stood by, grave, silent, and
watchful.
“Where’s your man?” she said, as Rose bade good-by and turned away. Joe,
stunned, half afraid of his masterful temptress, had remained in the
cabin. “Oh, Susie,” added Dorothy, in lower tones, “I hope he hasn’t
been drinking again?”
“What’s that your business?” returned the other woman. “Guess I can take
care of my man.”
“I am not so sure of that; but I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Then you hadn’t ought to have meddled.”
“All right,” said Dorothy; “good-by”; and, turning, she left Mrs.
Colkett and rejoined Rose.
“What a woman!” she said, and then for a time neither spoke.
When they were well on their way to the shore, Rose said: “I am
troubled, Mrs. Maybrook, that I so dislike any one as unfortunate as
that woman. But I don’t like her. I never, never want to go there again,
and I am sorry for her, too. Oh, I am as sorry as I can be; but—”
Dorothy simply said, “I do not wonder.” And then, with a laugh, “The
fact is, Miss Rose, that Colkett woman’s bad; and, for my part, I’m a
right lopsided Christian. I can’t put on mourning for rattlesnakes just
the same as for doves. It’s a kind of comfort to find you aren’t much
better than I am.”
“I,—indeed not!”
Meanwhile Dorothy was debating in her mind how much she should tell her
companion. A side glance at the fresh young maiden face decided her. “I
said along back I would explain what kept me so long. I cannot. They
were talking about me. It wasn’t very pleasant. I overheard something
disagreeable. I reckon I’ll come over and see about it with Mr. Lyndsay.
Do you chance to know Mr. Carington that fishes up to Island Camp?”
“No.” Rose felt that whatever was withheld concerned—must concern—this
gentleman. “But I am immensely curious,” she said.
“Are you?” cried Dorothy, laughing. “I am going to keep my mouth shut
for twenty-four hours, and that’s real, rity-dity penance, I can tell
you! Did you never see Mr. Carington? Why, he’s right up river, just two
or three miles.”
“No,—or yes, with my glass a moment, ever so far away. What is he like?”
“Oh, there’s two.”
“Not twins?”
“No. There’s a Mr. Ellett. He’s a man walks about and—well, he walks
about.”
Rose laughed. She felt the description to be somewhat indistinct, and
said so.
“Kind of man says ‘Oh!’ when you talk to him. Awful neat man,—wears
glasses?”
“And the other?”
“He’s a well-set-up man. Stands up strong on his hind legs.”
“His what?”
“His hind legs. He’s pretty smart with a boat, and a gun, too. He’s got
a way of putting his head back, and sort of looking you over, as if he
was taking stock of you. It’s not as if he was stuck up or saucy. It’s
just a way your father has, too, Miss Rose.”
“Indeed!” Miss Lyndsay was not quite sure she desired any one to
resemble her father. “Here we are at the landing.”
“You won’t mind if I ask you, Miss Rose, not to say—there
was—anything—anything wrong?”
“No, of course not, if you wish it; but I do want to know,” and then
they went away homeward, down the highway of the waters. In fact, as to
this matter of which she was not to speak, Rose was vastly curious, and
lay long awake that night, smiling at times over the description of the
dwellers at the Island Camp.
Dorothy slipped away up the ox-road, from the river-bank opposite the
Cliff Camp, and went with slow and unusually thoughtful steps through
the wood. At the gate of their clearing she found Hiram, as usual,
waiting for her like a patient dog for the master.
“You’ve been a long time,” he said.
“Yes,—I could not help it. Are the cows milked!”
“No. I kind of forgot.”
“Better go and milk them now,” she said; “and don’t forget to feed the
hogs, and put the bars up,—one, two, three things,” and she smiled;
“mind, three things.”
“Oh, now I’m p’inted right. I’ll go. The bars, you said?”
“Yes, the bars.” And he went away, saying, “One, two, three, one, two,
three. I might forget them bars!” And meanwhile the wife moved homeward,
still deep in thought.