"You ought to be very thankful that we haven't," she said severely.
"That Graveyard Day is a heathenish custom, anyhow. They make a
regular picnic of it, and it makes me sick to hear those school girls
chattering about what they mean to plant, each one trying to outblow
the other. If I _had_ a grave there, I wouldn't make a flower garden
of it!"
Freda did not go to the graveyard the next day, although it was a
holiday. But in the evening, when everybody had gone home, she crept
over the hill and through the beech grove to see what had been done.
The plots were all very neat and prettily set out with plants and
bulbs. Some perennials were already in bud. The grave of Katie Morris'
great-uncle, who had been dead for forty years, was covered with
blossoming purple pansies. Every grave, no matter how small or old,
had its share of promise--every grave except one. Freda came across it
with a feeling of surprise. It was away down in the lower corner where
there were no plots. It was shut off from the others by a growth of
young poplars and was sunken and overgrown with blueberry shrubs.
There was no headstone, and it looked dismally neglected. Freda felt a
sympathy for it. She had no grave, and this grave had nobody to tend
it or care for it.
When she went home she asked Mrs. Wilson whose it was.
"Humph!" said Mrs. Wilson. "If you have so much spare time lying round
loose, you'd better put it into your sewing instead of prowling about
graveyards. Do you expect me to work my fingers to the bone making
clothes for you? I wish I'd left you in the asylum. That grave is
Jordan Slade's, I suppose. He died twenty years ago, and a worthless,
drunken scamp he was. He served a term in the penitentiary for
breaking into Andrew Messervey's store, and after it he had the face
to come back to North Point. But respectable people would have nothing
to do with him, and he went to the dogs altogether--had to be buried
on charity when he died. He hasn't any relations here. There was a
sister, a little girl of ten, who used to live with the Cogswells over
at East Point. After Jord died, some rich folks saw her and was so
struck with her good looks that they took her away with them. I don't
know what become of her, and I don't care. Go and bring the cows up."
When Freda went to bed that night her mind was made up. She would
adopt Jordan Slade's grave.
Thereafter, Freda spent her few precious spare-time moments in the
graveyard. She clipped the blueberry shrubs and long, tangled grasses
from the grave with a pair of rusty old shears that blistered her
little brown hands badly. She brought ferns from the woods to plant
about it. She begged a root of heliotrope from Nan Gray, a clump of
day lilies from Katie Morris, a rosebush slip from Nellie Bell, some
pansy seed from old Mrs. Bennett, and a geranium shoot from Minnie
Hutchinson's big sister. She planted, weeded and watered faithfully,
and her efforts were rewarded. "Her" grave soon looked as nice as any
in the graveyard.
Nobody but Freda knew about it. The poplar growth concealed the corner
from sight, and everybody had quite forgotten poor, disreputable
Jordan Slade's grave. At least, it seemed as if everybody had. But one
evening, when Freda slipped down to the graveyard with a little can
of water and rounded the corner of the poplars, she saw a lady
standing by the grave--a strange lady dressed in black, with the
loveliest face Freda had ever seen, and tears in her eyes.
The lady gave a little start when she saw Freda with her can of water.
"Can you tell me who has been looking after this grave?" she said.
"It--it was I," faltered Freda, wondering if the lady would be angry
with her. "Pleas'm, it was I, but I didn't mean any harm. All the
other little girls had a grave, and I hadn't any, so I just adopted
this one."
"Did you know whose it was?" asked the lady gently.
"Yes'm--Jordan Slade's. Mrs. Wilson told me."
"Jordan Slade was my brother," said the lady. "He went sadly astray,
but he was not all bad. He was weak and too easily influenced. But
whatever his faults, he was good and kind--oh! so good and kind--to me
when I was a child. I loved him with all my heart. It has always been
my wish to come back and visit his grave, but I have never been able
to come, my home has been so far away. I expected to find it
neglected. I cannot tell you how pleased and touched I am to find it
kept so beautifully. Thank you over and over again, my dear child!"
"Then you're not cross, ma'am?" said Freda eagerly. "And I may go on
looking after it, may I? Oh, it just seems as if I couldn't bear not
to!"
"You may look after it as long as you want to, my dear. I will help
you, too. I am to be at East Point all summer. This will be our
grave--yours and mine."
That summer was a wonderful one for Freda. She had found a firm friend
in Mrs. Halliday. The latter was a wealthy woman. Her husband had died
a short time previously and she had no children. When she went away in
the fall, Freda went with her "to be her own little girl for always."
Mrs. Wilson consented grudgingly to give Freda up, although she
grumbled a great deal about ingratitude.
Before they went they paid a farewell visit to their grave. Mrs.
Halliday had arranged with some of the North Point people to keep it
well attended to, but Freda cried at leaving it.
"Don't feel badly about it, dear," comforted Mrs. Halliday. "We are
coming back every summer to see it. It will always be our grave."
Freda slipped her hand into Mrs. Halliday's and smiled up at her.
"I'd never have found you, Aunty, if it hadn't been for this grave,"
she said happily. "I'm so glad I adopted it."