NOVEMBER
The mystery that will never be solved for the human race is why some
days must be dark and dreary and why those days sometimes stretch
themselves into weeks.
The weather that had been so perfect when our Carters first came to
Valhalla had held for a long time. Frosty, crisp autumn mornings that
made the blood tingle in one's veins, followed by warmer days and then
cold bracing nights when a fire in the great chimney of the living-room
was most acceptable, had become so much the rule that when the exception
occurred no one was prepared to accept it.
Morning after morning Nan and Lucy had trudged cheerfully over the
fields and through the lane to Grantly Station to catch the early train,
enjoying the walk and not minding at all that the quarter of a mile was
really three-quarters. Coming home was happy, too. The train reached
Grantly by half-past three, the pleasantest time in an autumn afternoon,
and the girls would loiter along the road, stopping to eat wild grapes
or to crack walnuts or maybe to get some persimmons, delicious and
shriveled from the hard frosts. Sometimes Billy and Mag would have the
good news for them that the Suttons' car was to be at Preston and that
meant that our girls were to get out at that station and be run home by
Billy.
They were great favorites with both Mr. and Mrs. Sutton who encouraged
the intimacy with their son and daughter. Suitable companions are not
always to be found in rural communities and the coming of the Carters
to the neighborhood was recognized by that worthy couple as a great
advantage to their children.
"Nan is a charming girl, William," Mrs. Sutton had said to her husband,
"and even if Billy fancies himself to be in love with her it will do him
no harm, only good, since she has such good sense and breeding."
"Of course it will do him good and maybe it is not just fancy on his
part. We Suttons have a way of deciding early and sticking to it. Eh,
Margaret? I remember you had your hair in a plait and wore quite short
skirts when I began to scheme how best to get a permanent seat by you on
the train, and here I've got it!" and Mr. Sutton gave his portly wife a
comfortable hug.
"And Mag is having a splendid time with Lucy," continued that lady,
accepting the hug with a smile. "Lucy is so quick and clever, no one
could help liking her. I, for one, am glad the Carters have come."
"What do you think is the matter with their mother? They always speak of
her as an invalid. She looks well enough to me, although of course not
robust like one beautiful lady I know." Mr. Sutton admired his wife so
much that the flesh she was taking on just made her that much more
beautiful in his eyes. He thought there could not be too much of a good
thing.
"Invalid indeed! She is just spoiled and lazy," declared Mrs. Sutton who
was all energy and industry. "She is attractive enough but I should
hate to be her daughter."
"Yes, and I'd hate to be her husband, too!"
The Suttons had been most pleasant and hospitable to their new
neighbors, although there could not have been two women brought together
so dissimilar as Mrs. Sutton and Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter considered her
mission in life to be as beautiful as possible and also charming. Mrs.
Sutton had never had time to think what her mission in life was, she was
so busy doing the things it seemed important to do. She was first of all
the wife of a successful farmer and that meant eternal vigilance on her
part, as the success of a farm depends so much on the management of
women. Next she was the mother of two healthy, normal children who must
be trained in the way they should go. After that she was an important
member of a community where her progressive spirit was needed and
appreciated. Her home, Preston, was where the Ladies' Aid met and worked
and kept the little church out of debt; there was headquarters for the
Traveling Library; there the Magazine Club read and swapped periodicals.
She was president of the Preston Equal Suffrage League, a struggling but
valorous band, and now that work of organizations was sorely needed for
suffering humanity, this same league was rolling bandages and making
comfort kits for the Allies, showing that votes for women was not the
only thing it could work for. Truly Mrs. Sutton was a busy and happy
woman.
But we are forgetting that the weather seemed destined to become our
topic! Certainly the Suttons are a more agreeable subject than the
weather our girls were fated to endure. Of course the sun can't shine
all the time and in the natural course of events October days must
shorten into November days and they in turn into December, with nights
growing longer and longer and days shorter and shorter and both of them
colder and colder. Drizzling rains must fall, even if a trusting family
has taken its abode in a weather-beaten old house, up a muddy lane that
must be walked through to reach the station.
"'In winter I get up at night
And dress by early candle light,'"
yawned Nan one morning as the alarm went off, warning her it was time to
rouse herself and Lucy. Lucy had curled up in a little ball, having gone
to bed without quite enough cover. It had turned cold and damp during
the night, a heavy rain had kept up for hours and now at six in the
morning it was drizzling dismally.
"I don't see how we can go to town to-day," sighed Nan, peering out of
the window. "It is so dark and gloomy."
"I reckon the lane will be awfully muddy," said Lucy, reluctantly
uncurling herself, "and I believe I left my rubbers at school that time
I took them in when I thought it was going to rain and it didn't."
"You'll have to borrow Helen's."
"Gee! Isn't it cold?" and Lucy drew back the foot she had tentatively
poked out of bed. "I wish we could live in a steam-heated house again."
Valhalla was heated by open fireplaces, drum stoves and the Grace of
God, according to Chloe. There was a small stove in the younger girls'
room, but up to this time they had not felt the necessity of having a
fire.
It seemed difficult on that rainy morning for everyone to awaken.
Chloe's feet and then her reluctant legs came through the trap-door of
her attic room and slowly down the chicken steps leading into the
kitchen long after Helen had started the kerosene stove and put on the
kettle.
"I ain't slep' none," she declared when Helen remonstrated with her
because of her tardiness. "The rain done leaked in on my haid an' I
reckon I's gonter die er the ammonia."
"Oh, I fancy not! A little water won't hurt you," said Helen, flying
around the kitchen like a demented hen trying to scratch up a breakfast
for her brood. "Hurry up and set the table, it is so late."
"Won't hurt me! Lawsamussy, Miss Helen! Don't you know that niggers
can't wash they haids in winter time? They do say they wool has deeper
roots than what white folks' hair is got an' the water what touches they
haids dreens plum down inter they brains."
"Brains, did you say?" said Helen, but her sarcasm was lost on Chloe.
"If it leaked on your head why didn't you move your bed? It leaked on
Miss Douglas and me, too, but we moved the bed."
"Well, I was in a kinder stupid an' looks like I couldn't raise han' or
foot."
"I can well believe it," muttered Helen. "Please set the table as fast
as you can!"
"Helen," cried Lucy, hurrying into the dining-room, "you'll have to lend
me your rubbers! I left mine in town."
"Have to?"
"Well, please to!"
"I hate for you to stretch my rubbers all out of shape."
"Stretch 'em much! Your feet are bigger than mine."
"That being the case I certainly won't lend them to be dropped off in
the mud."
"Children! Children!" admonished Douglas, hurrying to breakfast. "What
are you quarreling about?"
"Who shall be Cinderella!" drawled Nan. "And it seems a strange subject
to dispute about on such a morning. For my part, I wish my feet were a
quarter of a mile long and I could take three steps and land at the
station."
"It leaked in our room last night," said Lucy.
"And ours!" chorused Helen and Douglas.
"Mine, too! But I ain't a-keerin'," from Bobby.
"My haid is done soaked up with leaks," grinned Chloe.
"I really think Miss Ella and Miss Louise should have had the roof
mended before we came," said Douglas.
"Well, tonight we can go to bed with our umbrellas up," suggested Nan.
"Yes! An' wake up a corp!" said Chloe dismally, as she handed the
certainly not overdone biscuit. "It am sho' death ter hist a umbrell in
the house."
Nan and Lucy were finally off, forlorn little figures with raincoats and
rubbers and dripping umbrellas. Helen's rubbers were a bit too small,
much to that young lady's satisfaction and to Lucy's chagrin.
"My feet will slim down some as I grow older, the shoe man told me. I
betcher when I am as old as you are my feet will be smaller," said Lucy
as she paddled off with the rubbers pulled on as far as she could get
them.
The road was passable until they got within a hundred yards of the
station and then they struck a soft stretch of red clay that was the
consistency of molasses candy about to be pulled. Nan clambered up an
embankment, balancing herself on a very precarious path that hung over
the road, but Lucy kept to the middle of the pike.
"I hear the train!" cried Nan. "We must hurry!"
"Hurry, indeed! How can anyone hurry through fudge?" and poor Lucy gave
a wail of agony. She was stuck and stuck fast.
"Come on!" begged Nan, but Lucy with an agonized countenance looked at
her sister.
"I'm stuck!"
"If I come pull you out, I'll get stuck, too! What on earth are we to
do?"
"Throw me a plank," wailed Lucy in the tones of a drowning man. Her feet
were going in deeper and deeper. Helen's rubbers were almost submerged
and there seemed to be nothing to keep Lucy's shoes and finally Lucy
from going the way of the rubbers.
Nan dropped her books, umbrella and lunch on the bank and pulled a rail
from the fence. Lucy clutched it and with a great pull and a sudden
lurch which sent Nan backwards into the blackberry bushes, the younger
girl came hurtling from what had threatened to become her muddy grave.
The train was whistling, so they had to forego the giggling fit that
was upon them and run for the station. The small branch that they
must pass before they got there, was swollen beyond recognition, but
one stepping-stone obligingly projected above water and with a mighty
leap they were over. The accommodating accommodation train reached
the station of Grantly before they did, but the kindly engineer and
conductor waited patiently while the girls, puffing and panting, raced
up the hill.
They had hardly recovered their breath when Billy and Mag boarded the
train at Preston.
"Well, if you girls aren't spunky!" cried Billy admiringly as he sank in
the seat by Nan, which Lucy had tactfully vacated, sharing the one with
Mag. "Mag and I were betting you couldn't make it this morning."
"We just did and that is all," laughed Nan, recounting the perils of the
way.
"And only look at my boots! Did you ever see such sights?" cried Lucy.
"Oh, Heavens! One of Helen's rubbers is gone!"
"That must have happened when I fished you out with the fence rail. I
heard a terrible sough but didn't realize what it meant. They were so
much too small for you," said Nan.
"Small, indeed! They were too big. Their coming off proves they were too
big," insisted Lucy.
"I'm glad your feet didn't come off too, then," teased Nan. "At one time
I thought they were going to."
Billy produced a very shady handkerchief from a hip pocket and proceeded
to wipe off the girls' shoes, while he sang the sad song of the Three
Flies:
"'There were three flies inclined to roam,
They thought they were tired of staying at home,
So away they went with a skip and a hop
Till they came to the door of a grocer-ri shop.
"'Away they went with a merry, merry buz-zz,
Till they came to a tub of mo-las-i-uz,
They never stopped a minute
But plunged right in it
And rubbed their noses and their pretty wings in it.
"'And there they stuck, and stuck, and stuck,
And there they cussed their miserable luck,
With nobody by
But a greenbottle fly
Who didn't give a darn for their miser-ri.'"
"But what I am worrying about," he continued when his song had been
applauded, "is how you are going to get home. Our car has been put out
of commission for the winter. Mag and I had to foot it over the hill
this morning, but our path is high and dry, while the road to Grantly is
something fierce. If you get off at Preston and go home with us, I'll
get a rig and drive you over."
"No, indeed, we couldn't think of it," objected Nan. "This is only the
beginning of winter and we can't get off at Preston every day and impose
on you and your father's horses to get us home. We shall just have to
get some top boots and get through the mud somehow."
"But you don't know that stream. If it was high this morning, by
afternoon it will be way up. The Misses Grant should have told you what
you were to expect. They should have a bridge there, but it seems Miss
Ella wants a rustic bridge and Miss Louise thinks a stone bridge would
be better, so they go a century with nothing but a ford."
"Going home I mean to pull another rail off the fence and do some pole
vaulting," declared Lucy. "I hope I can find Helen's big old rubber I
left sticking in the mud."
"It may stay there until the spring thawing," said Mag. "You had better
stick to the path going home. It is better to stick than get stuck."
"I wish I had some stilts," sighed Nan. "They would carry me over like
seven league boots."
"Can you walk on them?" asked Billy.
"Sure! Walking on stilts is my one athletic stunt," laughed Nan. "I
haven't tried for years but I used to do it with extreme grace."
That afternoon Billy had a mysterious package that he stowed under the
seats in the coach.
"What on earth is that?" demanded Mag.
"Larroes to catch meddlers!"
"Please, Billy!"
"Well, it's nothing but some fence rails to help Nan and Lucy get home.
I'm afraid the Misses Grant will object if they pull down a fence every
time they get stuck in the mud."
The parcel proved to contain two pairs of bright red stilts found at a
gentleman's furnishing store. They had been used to advertise a certain
grade of very reliable trousers, of an English cut. Just before the
train reached Preston Billy unearthed them and presented Nan and Lucy
each with a pair.
"Here are some straps, too, to put on your books to sling them over your
shoulders. You can't walk on stilts and carry things in your hands at
the same time. Tie your umbrellas to the stilts! So long!" and Billy
fled from the coach before the delighted girls could thank him.
Going home over the muddy road was very different from the walk they had
taken that morning. In the first place it had stopped raining and their
umbrellas could be closed and tied to the stilts. The air was cold and
crisp now and there was a hint of snow. They stopped in the little
station long enough to strap their books securely and get their packs on
their backs, and then, mounting their steeds, they started on their way
rejoicing.
"I wonder if I can walk," squealed Nan. "It has been years and years
since I tried," and she balanced herself daintily on the great long red
legs.
"Of course you can! Once a stilt walker, always a stilt walker!" cried
Lucy, starting bravely off.
Nan found the art was not lost and followed her sister down the muddy
hill to the branch. Billy was right: it had been high in the morning but
was much higher in the afternoon. The one stepping-stone that had kept
its nose above water on their trip to town was now completely submerged.
"Ugggh!" exclaimed Lucy. "My legs are floating!" And indeed it was a
difficult feat to walk through deep rushing water on stilts. They have a
way of floating off unless you put them down with a most determined push
and bear your whole weight on them as you step.
"Look at me! I can get through the water if I goose step!" cried Nan.
"Isn't this the best fun ever? Oh, Nan, I pretty near love Billy for
thinking of such a thing. Don't you?"
"Well, I wouldn't say love exactly."
"I would! I can't see the use in beating 'round the bush about such
matters. He is certainly the nicest person we know and does more kind
things for us."
"He is nice and I do like him a lot," confessed Nan.
"Better than the count and Mr. Tom Smith?"
"I don't see what they have to do with it," and Nan got rosy from her
exertion of goose stepping through the water and up the muddy hill.
"Well, the old count talked about taking a trip with you to the land of
dreaming, wherever that is, and Tom Smith took you on fine flying bats,
but Billy here, he gets some stilts for you and lets you help yourself
through the mud. I say, give me Billy every time!"
"Billy is a nice boy; but Count de Lestis is an elegant, cultured
gentleman; and Tom Smith--Tom Smith--he--he----"
"I guess you are right--Tom Smith, Tom Smith he he! But flying machines
wouldn't do much good here in the mud, and stilts will get us over the
branch dry shod. There's Helen's rubber!" and Lucy adroitly lifted the
little muddy shoe out of the mire on the end of one of her stilts and
with a skillful twist of the wrist flopped it onto dry ground.
When they reached the top of the hill where the road became better they
hid their stilts in the bushes, up close to the fence, carefully
covering them with dry leaves and brush.
"Our flamingo legs," Nan called them. During that winter many times the
girls crossed the swollen stream on those red stilts and truly thanked
the kind Billy Sutton who had thought of them. They would cache them
under the little station, there patiently and safely to await their
return.
It was always hard to walk through the water and on one dire occasion
when the stream was outdoing itself, having burst all bounds and spread
far up on the road, poor Nan goose stepped too far and fell backwards in
the water. Fortunately it was on her homeward journey and she could get
to Valhalla and change her dripping garments. She came across the
following limerick of Frost's which she gleefully learned, feeling that
it suited her case exactly:
"'There was once a gay red flamingo
Who said: By the Great Jumping Jingo!
I've been in this clime
An uncommon long time
But have not yet mastered their lingo.'"