KIT’S CONNECTICUT HOME.
The Huntington stage was the same old weather-beaten stage that Kit had
left a month before, but its wheels were gone. Fairfield County, all
the way from Bridgeport back to Huntington and beyond, was white with
snow, and the frozen roads were packed hard. The body of the stage had
been lifted from its wheels and put on runners, and the bells on its
two gaunt horses jingled merrily through the Bridgeport streets and
over the Connecticut hills.
“My folks all well, Silas?” was the first question that Kit asked when
he found the stage nearly ready to start.
“They was right peart when I come down this mornin’,” the driver
replied, “so I guess they hain’t gone into a decline since. Sakes
alive, but won’t they be surprised to see you, though! They was lookin’
for a letter. But what’s this, Kit? No overcoat! Here, wrap this hoss
blanket ’round you snug.”
“Oh, you don’t know how good the cold feels, Silas,” Kit laughed,
though he was glad enough to accept the blanket. “I’ve just come from a
country where the sun burns like a hot iron, and the trees were full
of fruit, ten days ago.”
Involuntarily he looked around to see that his barrel was safe.
“Now don’t you give yourself no consarn ’bout that thar bar’l!” the
driver exclaimed. “When Silas lashes a bar’l on behind his sleigh, you
can just make up your mind it’s thar to stay. While you youngsters
goes out an’ sees the world, old Silas he stays to hum an’ ’tends to
business, an’ carries your letters back to Hunt’n’ton.”
The only other passenger was Henry Steele, the Huntington shoemaker,
who had been down to Bridgeport to buy leather, and had it in a big
roll beside his feet; and he and the driver plied Kit with so many
questions about his travels that he was kept busy answering.
“What was you aboard this _North Cape_?” Silas asked.
Kit felt for a moment that considering the work he had been doing he
was entitled to lay claim to some higher position than the one he
really occupied; but he soon smothered that down.
“Cabin boy,” he answered; and added to himself, “There’s no use of a
fellow being ashamed of a good honest job, and one that he likes.”
“And you got good and seasick at the start, I’ll warrant!” Mr. Steele
laughed.
“No, sir, I wasn’t sick a single minute on the whole voyage,” Kit
answered.
“Well, Kit,” said the shoemaker, “if some boys were to tell me that,
I’d think they were drawing the long bow. But I’ve known you since you
were knee-high to a grasshopper, and I must say I’ve never known you to
speak anything but the truth.”
“Th-th-thank you!” Kit tried to say it with a laugh, but the laugh
turned into a shiver. It was all very well to feel at home in the
cold, but there were some holes in the horse blanket. And he was
growing impatient to see the familiar faces. He had not felt so down in
Yucatan, because there he knew it was impossible; but now that every
minute took him nearer, the minutes became dreadfully long.
Manly young sailor as he was, his heart beat faster as the stage
drew into the outskirts of Huntington--if so small a place can be
said to have outskirts. He had had already a glimpse of the white
church steeple from a distant hilltop. And now there was the church
itself! And he could have told with his eyes shut just how the land
lay opposite the church. First there was a little store, with some
empty barrels and boxes always in front. Then there was Dr. Thomas’s
big white house, with the white fence in front. And then came a small
house a story and a half high, with a light piazza across the front,
standing about thirty feet back from the street, with a weather-beaten
picket fence in front, and some big trees on each side extending their
thick limbs over its mossy roof. House and fence had once been brown,
but both were sadly in need of paint, and one end of the cornice was
coming loose. But in Kit’s eyes, that was the cosiest place of all; for
that was home!
There were no tracks in the deep snow between the road and the walk
in front of the house, and when Silas guided the horses in toward the
sidewalk they sank halfway to their knees. Then Kit unwrapped his
blanket and sprang out. Some one in the front room of the house saw
the stage stop, and that was a matter to be inquired into. All the
neighbors take an interest in it when the Huntington stage stops in
front of a house. The door opened, and a rosy-cheeked young girl of
about fourteen looked out.
“Hello, Vieve!” Kit cried, waving his hand to her. A tropical hurricane
could not have made his heart jump like that.
The girl paused long enough to cry out:--
“Mother! Mother! Quick! Here’s Kit!”
And the next moment she was down the walk, and the sailor boy was
smothered with hugs and kisses in a way that made old Silas and the
shoemaker feel quite young again, and Turk was barking a noisy welcome.
In another minute Mrs. Silburn joined them, and all the hugging was
repeated.
“Now don’t trouble yourself about the bar’l,” Silas insisted when Kit
at length made his way back to the stage. “’Taint no weight at all;”
and he took it by the rims and carried it to the piazza, then rolled it
into the house.
“I’ve brought you something better than the letter you was lookin’ for,
Mrs. Silburn,” he said, as he returned to the stage.
But Mrs. Silburn hardly heard. She had eyes only for Kit, ears only for
what he said.
“You’re not sick, Kit, that you’ve come home?” she asked, when the
three were in the sitting-room together. “No,” she added, “I need
hardly ask that; I never saw you look better. Why, you’re as brown as
an Indian.”
“Never was ‘weller’ in my life,” Kit answered as well as he could, for
his mother was holding fast to him while Vieve was trying to drag him
up to the stove to warm him. “A week’s leave of absence, that’s all,
while the ship discharges cargo.”
“Oh, a whole week!” Vieve cried, jumping around him in her glee.
“That’s the reason you’ve brought your baggage!” and she glanced toward
the barrel.
“Did he bring that in here?” Kit asked. “That won’t do. It came from a
hot place, but it must stay in the cool up here. Have you got a cool
room we can put it in?”
“I think you’ll find all the other side of the house cool enough,” Mrs.
Silburn laughed. “We don’t keep any fires across the hall now; it saves
both wood and trouble.”
Kit rolled the barrel across the hall into the cold parlor, and hurried
back to the stove. But he could not stay in one place long--not for
the first hour or two. He had to go to the windows to see how the
yard looked, and into the kitchen to look at the familiar pans hanging
against the wall, and upstairs to the little room with the sloping
ceiling where he had slept so many years. When he came down again,
Vieve was putting on her hat and coat.
“Say, avast there, now,” he cried; “you’ll have to take another tack.
(I suppose you’ll expect me to talk sea talk, now I’m a sailor.) I know
what you’re after, Vieve, and it won’t do. No going out to buy more
things for supper. I’m not the prodigal calf, you know--the prodigal
son, I mean. Whatever you were going to have for your own suppers is
just what I want.”
“Just put yourself in that chair, Mr. Silburn,” Vieve laughed, pointing
to her father’s armchair, that she had drawn up to the fire for him,
“and don’t begin to interfere so soon;” and she was gone before he
could stop her. And Mrs. Silburn brought her husband’s slippers, that
were carefully laid away, and would have untied Kit’s shoes if he had
let her.
“You’ve had a hard time of it, Kit,” she said, “and we must make you
comfortable at home.”
“Indeed, I’ve not, mother,” he answered; “you mustn’t spoil me on that
account. I’ve had a splendid time, and enjoyed every minute. I’ve made
some good friends, too, since I went away.”
“I’m sure you would do that, Kit,” she answered, her face full of
motherly pride. “And you’ve grown so, too!”
It was not long before supper was ready, for Vieve was both cook and
errand girl while her mother was busy sewing.
“You’ll not mind eating in the kitchen, Kit?” his mother asked. “We eat
there now, while we’re alone.”
“Mind it!” Kit exclaimed; “it’s just what I wanted to do. Oh, look
here, Vieve!” he went on, as he took his mother by the arm and led
her into the kitchen, “have you cooked all these things so quick?
Beefsteak, and fried potatoes, and ham and eggs, and coffee? Why, we
ought to have you for cook aboard ship.”
“Ah, you don’t know how good it all tastes!” he declared, when they
had set to work at the eatables. “We have good fare on the ship, first
rate; but it’s not like home. No such coffee as this, I tell you.
Coffee is always bad at sea, they say.”
“And do you have to eat out of a little mess pan, like the other
sailors?” Vieve asked.
“Do I!” Kit laughed. “I guess you don’t know what a dignified position
your big brother holds, my child. Why, I eat in the cabin, with silver
forks and spoons, and a monogram on all the dishes. And in the evening
I sit at the Captain’s desk and do my writing.”
“Oh, Kit!” Mrs. Silburn expostulated. She was not quite sure whether he
was joking with them or not.
“It’s a fact,” he answered, laughing to think how grand he could make
everything appear if he felt inclined to boast. “And I wash the dishes
afterwards, and clean the spoons; but that part we don’t speak of in
polite society.”
They were done eating, but still busy talking, when Vieve suddenly
asked:--
“What’s in that barrel, Kit?”
“Ah, Miss Curiosity!” he laughed. “You’re the same old Vieve, ain’t
you? I suppose that’s the way your relation Eve prodded poor Adam on to
his ruin. But to tell you the truth, Vieve, I don’t exactly know what’s
in it myself. Suppose I bring it in and we find out.”
No sooner said than done; the barrel was rolled in, and Vieve had the
hammer and chisel ready.
“Now shut all the doors, Vieve,” he said, as he unfastened the head;
“if it should be anything alive, it might get away.”
Vieve hastened to obey, but seeing him laughing at her, she threw them
open again.
When the head was raised from the barrel, the room was instantly filled
with a delightful tropical aroma that was familiar enough to Kit, but
that is seldom found in a house in Huntington.
“Just crush these in your hands, and then smell them,” he said to both,
taking up a handful of the fragrant lemon leaves with which the top
of the barrel was covered; and they thought they had never smelled
anything so sweet.
When he brushed the leaves aside, he found more than half a bushel
of lemons, limes, and oranges. Then a little partition nailed in,
and beneath it a great assortment of southern fruits--sugar apples,
loquats, sapadillos, sour sops, jelly cocoanuts, tamarinds, guavas,
and bananas. Then another partition, and beneath that a dozen of the
largest and finest pineapples he had ever seen. By the time the barrel
was emptied, every table and chair in the kitchen was covered with
luscious fruit.
“Where in the world did you get all these things, Kit?” his mother
asked.
“A present from one of my friends in Yucatan,” he replied; and then he
had to tell all about Mr. Ysnard and how kind he had been. While he
talked he was busy gathering up the fruit and laying it on the pantry
shelves, where it would neither freeze nor be too warm, and Vieve and
her mother fell to and washed the dishes.
“We’ll try one of these pineapples in the sitting-room,” he said; and
he took a sharp knife and began to pare off the rough outer skin. “I
want you to taste a real pine fresh from the orchard. They’re very
different from the hard little things we buy here.” When it was peeled
he took two forks and tore it apart into small pieces, as he had been
taught on the ship; and around the sitting-room stove they were all
agreed that no better or sweeter fruit could be grown.
But alas for Kit’s intentions to tell all his adventures that evening!
He had had little sleep on the tug, and before the pineapple was
finished, he caught himself nodding several times.
“There’s no use talking,” he laughed; “I’ve got to go to bed. The
wonderful adventures and hairbreadth escapes of Christopher Silburn,
Esq., will keep for another time. I guess I’m in a hurry to feel my old
bed.”
And before many minutes he was sound asleep in it, to know no more of
ships, or tropics, or home, till he sprang up in the morning, thinking
that he must hurry to clean the cabin.
Breakfast was hardly over before Harry Leonard, one of Kit’s old chums,
called to see him; for by that time it was known all over Huntington
that Kit was home. Harry was a good companion in every respect but one:
the boys called him the biggest boaster in Fairfield County.
“I’m thinking of going to sea myself,” he said, after they had talked
a few minutes. “I know where I can get a berth as second mate of a
bark, after I’ve made a voyage or two. What do you do on the _North
Cape_, Kit?”
“I’m assistant to the Captain,” Kit answered, with a sly wink at Vieve;
“I write out the manifests and such things. He and I were the only ones
who went ashore, and I spent several days with our agent in Sisal. I
want you to try an orange out of the barrel of fruit the agent sent out
to the ship for me. Oh, yes, I have to be back in five days more. I
don’t know who’d make out all the papers if I didn’t get there.”
With Vieve hiding her face and shaking, it was hard for Kit to keep
from laughing, but he did.
“Didn’t I give him a dose?” he roared, after Harry was gone. “He’s such
an awful bragger I thought I’d pay him in his own coin. But isn’t it
funny how you can change things by telling only one side of a story.
Everything I said was true, only I didn’t tell it all.”
That afternoon Kit was out in the snow with a ladder and hammer and
nails, fastening the end of the cornice that was loose; and before dark
he had mended the shaky front gate, and replaced some missing pickets,
and put a new hinge on the kitchen door.
“I’m not going to let you work so when you come home for a little
holiday, Kit,” his mother said in the evening when they were sitting
around the fire again. “You must rest.”
“Oh, that’s nothing at all,” Kit retorted. “I want the place to look
shipshape for a particular reason. Somebody may be coming home one
of these days, and he must find everything in good order. I know you
don’t like to talk about that, mother, but it has to be talked about
sometimes. As long as there is the least chance, we must not lose
hope; and both Captain Griffith and Mr. Ysnard think there is still
a possibility of father’s being alive. Of course it is a very slight
chance, but still it is a chance, and we must not give up.”
“Oh, Kit, I am so glad to hear you say so!” Vieve exclaimed. “You know
that’s what I have always said. And your Captain thinks so too!”
“Ah, don’t deceive yourselves, children,” Mrs. Silburn sighed. “How
could your father be alive without coming home or even sending us word
for nearly a year? And we know that his ship was lost.”
“Yes, there is no doubt his ship was lost, mother,” Kit admitted, “but
still there are many things that may have happened through which he may
be alive and yet not be able to get home, or even to write to us. Mr.
Ysnard has a friend whose ship was lost at sea, but who got home more
than two years after he had been given up. They took to the boats, of
course, and all the boats were swamped but the one he was in. That one
was picked up by a Norwegian brig bound for Honolulu. When they got
into the Pacific, after going around Cape Horn, the brig was wrecked
also, and the crew got to one of the little desert islands in the
Pacific where ships never touch. They were there over a year before
they got away. And there was an ending to that that won’t be likely to
happen in our case. When the man got home, he found his ‘widow’ just
about to be married to some other man.”
“No, I don’t think that will happen in our case!” Mrs. Silburn said,
smiling in spite of herself. “Such remarkable escapes happen sometimes
at sea, but we have no right to expect them. You may as well make up
your mind that you will have to be the head of the family, Kit.”
“A poor head at present, I am afraid,” Kit answered. “But I think the
day will come when I shall be able to take care of you both, if father
doesn’t come back. That’s what I am planning for, at any rate. It’s not
much of a position to be a cabin boy, but I expect to have a better one
some day. It sha’n’t be my fault if I don’t. If I can show them that I
am fit for a better place, I think I will get it in time. But even now
I can do a little bit toward helping things along; I nearly forgot that
part of the business.”
He put his hand in his pocket and took out some money, and laid a
bright new two-dollar note in Genevieve’s lap.
“You know the dollar’s worth of stamps you sent me, Vieve. I was
awfully glad to get them, too, for I felt pretty poor just then. So
there’s the dollar, with a little interest added.”
He had not the heart to tell her that he had been robbed of the stamps.
In all his accounts of his adventures he had not said a word about the
hardships he had gone through. When he told about how nearly he had
been arrested, it was only to turn it into a joke.
“No, I don’t want it, Kit,” Vieve protested, trying to hand him back
the note. “I sent you that for a present.”
“No back talk to the head of the family, miss!” he laughed, giving
his sister’s wavy hair a playful pull. “And here’s a little for you,
mother. I can leave you only three dollars this time, as it will cost
me a dollar to get back to the ship. But I hope before long to do
better than that. If I could only make a little more money, I’d like to
have some paint put on the house.”
“I’m not going to touch a cent of it,” Mrs. Silburn declared. “I don’t
need it, but you do. I want you to buy a cheap overcoat with that
money; you can’t be going about in winter without an overcoat.”
“I don’t need one,” Kit protested. “I tried on my old one up in my room
this morning, and it fits first rate. It’s plenty good enough till I
get in with the ‘Four Hundred’ in New York, and none of the Vanderbilts
or Astors have invited me to dinner so far. But I don’t need an
overcoat at all unless we go to some cold country next voyage.”
“And where do you expect to go next time?” Vieve interrupted.
“There’s no telling,” Kit answered; “it just depends upon who charters
the ship. We might go to China, or to Australia, or Bombay, or most any
seaport in the world. Maybe it will be back to Sisal, for all I know.
Even the Captain did not know, when I left.”
Kit had his own way about the money in the end, and made his mother
accept the three dollars.
“I’d be a nice head of a family if I couldn’t leave you any money!”
he argued. “You know I have no expenses like other fellows; and if
I should need money at any time I could draw against my wages. The
sailors nearly all do that; indeed, they have generally spent their
pay for the voyage before they start, so they have to work to pay the
bill.”
He was acting very much like the head of the family when he looked over
the old house one morning and announced that he thought it could be
made very comfortable for them as soon as he had more money.
“I like the arrangement of it,” he said; “this sitting-room in front
with the kitchen behind it is very handy. Then the parlor across the
hall and your bedroom behind that is very handy, too. When father comes
back, Vieve can take the other room upstairs.”
“Oh, it’s a shame to let you work so hard just to make us comfortable!”
Vieve exclaimed. “Other boys have such good times with their skating
and swimming and football and such things. I’m going to work myself
just as soon as I get a chance.”
“I hope you will,” Kit laughed. “Go to school and work there just as
hard as you can. If mother hadn’t made me go to school and attend
to my lessons, I’d be just an ordinary cabin boy now. I mean,” he
explained, blushing a little at the way he had put it, “I shouldn’t be
able to copy manifests for the Captain, or do a supercargo’s work for
him on shore. We don’t see at the time how much good study does us,
but I tell you we see it afterward, Vieve. And skating and football
and such things! Pshaw, don’t you think I got enough of them when I
was at home? When a fellow gets to my age” (and he drew himself up a
little taller, which made Vieve smile), “he has other things to think
of. I want to push myself ahead, Vieve, and earn enough to take care
of you both. And swimming, did you say? Who do you think has a better
chance for swimming than a sailor when his ship is in port? Oh, you
needn’t sympathize with me, my child. I’d rather go off and see foreign
countries than play football.”
On Sunday morning he and Vieve went together to the old white church
across the broad street, “just like old times,” as they said; and after
Sunday school he had to explain to a score of friends where he had been
and what he had been doing. His boy friends, he noticed, did not seem
to think it any hardship to go to sea in a fine steamship; most of them
would have jumped at the chance to go with him.
A whole week seemed so long when he left the _North Cape_ to go
home! And it seemed so short when the last day came! But the stage was
coming down the hill, and Kit had his old overcoat on, which was a
trifle short, but very warm. And under his arm was a little bundle of
shirts and things that his mother had made for him.
“I may have a chance to get home after the next voyage,” he said, when
they were half smothering him with good-bys in the cold hall, “and I
may be gone for six months; there’s no telling. But I’ll write whenever
I can, you may be sure, and tell you where to send letters. Turk,
you’re pawing me all to pieces, old fellow. Good-by, Vieve; good-by,
mother. I’d keep father’s chair and things ready for him, if I were
you, for he might walk in most any day. Good-by, Turk. He knows I’m
going away, doesn’t he?”
In a minute more he was in the stage, his mother waving to him from the
door, Vieve throwing kisses to him from the gate, and Turk jumping in
the snow, barking furiously.
“That’s a pretty little sister you’ve got,” said Silas, when a turn in
the road hid the old house from sight.
“I’m glad you think so,” Kit laughed, “for everybody says she is the
image of me!”
He was not the first boy who has tried to laugh on leaving home, to
conceal very different feelings.