"Robinson Crusoe didn't have stores, did he? He found things and lived
on the land. And I am Lady Crusoe."
"Really?" I asked her.
"I've another name--but--if people around here question you--you won't
tell them, will you, that I am here--?"
She said it in such a pretty pleading fashion that of course we
promised. It was late when we had to go. I insisted that we should leave
what remained of the supper, and she seemed glad to get it. "You are
nice friendly savages," she said, with that twinkle in her eyes, "and I
am very grateful. Come into the house and let me show you my clock--"
She showed us more than the clock. I hadn't dreamed in those days when
Billy and I sat alone on the steps of the treasures that were shut up
behind us. The old furniture was dusty, but all the dust in the world
couldn't hide its beauty. The dining-room was hung with cobwebs, but
when the candles were lighted we saw the Sheffield on the old
sideboard, the Chinese porcelains, the Heppelwhite chairs, the painted
sheepskin screen--
She picked out a lovely little pitcher and gave it to me. I did not
learn until afterward that it was pink lustre and worth a pretty penny.
She paid in that way, you see, for her supper, and something in her
manner made me feel that I must not refuse it.
She did not ask us to come again, yet I was sure that she liked us. I
felt that perhaps it was the grocery store which had made her hesitate.
But whatever it was, I must confess that I was a little lonely as I went
away. You see we had come to look forward to our welcome at the Empty
House. We had known that we were the honored guests of the flying
squirrels and the lizards and of old Prince Charming. But now that the
house was no longer empty, we would not be welcome. I was sorry that I
had accepted the pink pitcher. I should have preferred to feel that I
owed no favor to the lady with the twinkling eyes.
It wasn't long after our adventure at the Empty House that Billy asked
William Watters to take a big load to a customer two miles out. But
William couldn't. He was working, he said, at a regular place. We
couldn't imagine William as being regular about anything. He and his
mule were so irregular in their habits. They came and went as they
pleased, and they would take naps whenever the spirit moved them. But
now, as William said, he was "wukin' regular," and he refused to say for
whom he worked. But we found out one day when he drove Lady Crusoe down
in a queer old carriage with his mule as a prancing steed.
He helped her descend as if she had been a queen, and she came in and
talked to Billy. "You see, I've hunted up my friendly savages," she
said. "I've reached the end of my resources." She gave a small order,
and told Billy that she wasn't at all sure when she could pay her bill,
but that there were a lot of things in her old house which he could have
for security.
Billy said gallantly that he didn't need any security, and that her
account could run as long as she wished and that he was glad to serve
her. And he got out his pad and pencil and stood in that nice way of his
at attention.
I listened and looked through a window at the back. I had seen her drive
up, and she was stunning in the same tan motor-coat that she had worn
when we first saw her. But she had on a brown hat and veil and brown
shoes instead of the lace cap and rosy slippers.
She asked about me, and Billy told her that I was in the garden. And I
was in the garden when she came out; but I had to run. She sat down in a
chair on the other side of my little sewing-table and talked to me. It
is such a scrap of a garden that there is only room for a tiny table and
two chairs, but a screen of old cedars hides it from the road, and
there's a twisted apple-tree, and the fields beyond and a glimpse of the
mountains.
"How is the island?" Billy asked her.