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[Illustration: “MORTON FOUND TIME TO ANSWER ALL HER QUESTIONS.”]
WHEAT AND HUCKLEBERRIES
Or
Dr. Northmore's Daughters
by
CHARLOTTE M. VAILE
Illustrated by Alice Barber Stevens
BOSTON AND CHICAGO
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
Copyright, 1899,
By W. A. Wilde Company.
_All rights reserved._
WHEAT AND HUCKLEBERRIES.
To J. F. V.
This Story
TOO SLIGHT TO BE AN OFFERING TO HIM, BUT WRITTEN
IN DEAR REMEMBRANCE OF HIS EARLY HOME
AND OF MINE
Is Lovingly Dedicated
C. M. V.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I—HARVEST AT THE FARM
CHAPTER II—TALKING IT OVER
CHAPTER III—BETWEEN TIMES
CHAPTER IV—AT THE OLD PLACE
CHAPTER V—AUNT KATHARINE SAXON
CHAPTER VI—AUNT KATHARINE—CONTINUED
CHAPTER VII—HUCKLEBERRYING
CHAPTER VIII—A PAIR OF CALLS
CHAPTER IX—A GLIMPSE FROM THE INSIDE
CHAPTER X—SOME BITS OF POETRY
CHAPTER XI—AN OUTING AND AN INVITATION
CHAPTER XII—WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK
CHAPTER XIII—INTO THE WEST AGAIN
CHAPTER XIV—THE NABOB MAKES AN IMPRESSION
CHAPTER XV—ESTHER GOES TO PRAYER-MEETING
CHAPTER XVI—IN WHICH SEVERAL PEOPLE GET HOME
ILLUSTRATIONS.
“Morton found time to answer all her questions”
“He leaned on the gate when he had opened it for the girls”
“She opened the door in person”
“Tom and Kate watched them go”
“‘It has been delightful to see you in this lovely old home’”
CHAPTER I
HARVEST AT THE FARM
Just how Dr. Philip Northmore came to be the owner of a farm had never
been quite clear to his fellow-townsmen. That he had bought it—that
pretty stretch of upland five miles from Rushmore—in some settlement
with a friend, who owed him more money than he could ever pay, was the
open fact, but how the doctor had believed it to be a good investment
for himself was the question. The opportunity to pay interest on a
mortgage and make improvements on those charming acres at the expense of
his modest professional income was the main part of what he got out of
it. The doctor, as everybody knew, had no genius for making money.
However, he had never lamented his purchase. On the principle perhaps
which makes the child who draws most heavily on parental care the object
of dearest affection, this particular possession seemed to be the one on
which the good doctor prided himself most. Its fine location and natural
beauty were points on which he grew eloquent, and he sometimes referred
to its peaceful cultivation as the employment in which he hoped to spend
his own declining years, an expectation which it is safe to say none of
his acquaintances shared with him.
So much for Dr. Northmore’s interest in the farm. It had a peculiar
interest for the feminine part of his household in the early days of
July, when wheat harvest had come and the threshing machine was abroad
in the land. It was too much to expect of Jake Erlock, the tenant at the
farm, who, since his wife’s death had lived there alone, that he would
provide meals for the score of threshers who would bring the harvesting
appetite to the work of the great day. Clearly this fell to the
Northmores, and the doctor’s wife had risen to the part with her own
characteristic energy. But for once, on the very eve of the threshing,
she found herself facing a sudden embarrassment. Relatives from a
distance had made their unexpected appearance as guests at her house,
and to leave them behind, or take them into the crowded doings at the
farm, seemed alike impossible. The prompt proposal of her daughters,
that they, with the combined wisdom of their seventeen and nineteen
years, should manage the harvest dinner, hardly seemed a plan to be
adopted, and would have found scant attention but for the unlooked-for
support it received from one of the neighbors.
“Now why don’t you let ’em do it?” said Mrs. Elwell, who had happened in
at the doctor’s an hour after the arrival of the guests. “You’ve got
everything planned out, of course, and there’ll be lots of the neighbor
women in to help. There always is.”
She caught the look of entreaty in the eyes of the girls and the doubt
in the eyes of their mother, and added, “Now I think of it, I could go
out there myself just as well as not. There isn’t anything so very much
going on at our house to-morrow, and I’d be right glad to take a hand in
it. I’ll risk it but what the girls and I can manage.”
Manage! There was no question on that score. Mrs. Northmore’s eyes grew
moist and she opened her lips to speak, but her good friend was before
her, her pleasant face at that moment the express image of neighborly
kindness. “Now, with all you’ve done for us, you and the doctor, to make
a fuss over a little thing like this!” she said. And Mrs. Northmore,
with the grace which can receive as well as render a favor, accepted the
offer without a protest.
That was how it happened that Esther and Kate Northmore went to the
harvesting at the farm, in their mother’s stead, the next morning. Kate,
at least, carried no anxiety, but Esther, as the older, could not lay
aside some uneasiness, not so much lest things should go wrong as lest
their generous friend might be too much burdened, and the thought of all
there was to do lent an unusual gravity to her sensitive face.
It was a perfect July day, with the sky an unbroken blue except for the
clouds which floated like golden chaff high in the zenith. The great
machine, flaming in crimson against a background of gold, stood among
the ripened sheaves, and a score of sunburned men urged the labor which
had begun betimes.
Ah, there is no harvest like this of the wheat. It comes when the year
is at its flood, and the sun, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race,
holds long on his course against the slow-creeping night. What
ingathering of the later months, when the days have grown short and
chilly, can match it in joy? The one is like the victory that comes in
youth, when the success of to-day seems the promise for to-morrow; the
other is the reward that comes to the worn and enfeebled man, who
whispers in the midst of his gladness: “How slight at best are the gains
of life!”
Esther was too young to moralize and too busy with the very practical
work of helping with the dinner to grow poetical over the harvest scene,
but the beauty of it did hold her for a minute with a long admiring gaze
as she stood by the well, where she had gone for a pitcher of fresh
water.
A man in gray jeans had hurried from the edge of the field at sight of
her, to lower the buckets hanging from the old-fashioned windlass. She
detained him a moment when he had handed her the dripping pitcher.
“We couldn’t have had a better day than this, could we?” she said. “And
what a good thing it is that you and father decided to put in the wheat!
He was speaking of that at breakfast this morning, and he says it was
all your doing. There was such a poor crop last year that for his part
he was almost afraid to try it again.”
The man’s face shone with gratified pride. “Well, I reckon the doctor
ain’t fretting over it much now that I had my way,” he said. And then he
added modestly: “But I might have missed it. You never can tell how a
crop’ll come out till you see the grain in the measure.”
“Well, we’re seeing that to-day,” said the girl. “How much will there
be?”
“We can’t rightly tell till it’s all threshed out,” said the man; “but
Tom Balcom ’lows it’ll average as well’s anything they’ve threshed, and
they’ve had thirty-five bushels to the acre.”
Figures did not mean much to Esther, but her “Oh!” had a note of
appreciation. Then, as he was turning away, she said earnestly: “I hope
we shall have a good dinner for you, Mr. Erlock. Mother was ever so
sorry she couldn’t come out to-day herself; I believe she was afraid you
wouldn’t fare as well as you ought without her. But Mrs. Elwell came,
and between us all we won’t let you suffer.”
“I hain’t a bit o’ doubt about the victuals being good,” said the man,
gallantly. “I hope you found things all right in the house. I tried to
red up a little for you.”
“Oh, everything was in beautiful order, and the women are all praising
your good housekeeping,” said Esther, smiling.
He looked at once pleased and embarrassed. “I did the best I could,” he
said, then turned with an awkward nod and hurried again to his work.
She remembered hers too, and hastened with her pitcher back to the
house. It was a one-story frame, with gray shingled sides and a deep
drooping roof whose forward projection formed a porch across the entire
front. Ordinarily it wore an expression of shy reserve, but to-day, with
doors and windows open, and the hum of voices sounding through and round
it, it seemed to have taken a new interest in life and looked a willing
part of the cheerful scene.
The kitchen which the girl entered was full of country women, so full
indeed that it seemed a wonder they could accomplish any work, but every
one was busy except a young woman with a baby in her arms, who sat
complacently watching the labors of the others.
It is the neighborly fashion in the middle West for the women of
adjoining farms to help each other in the labors of this busiest time in
the year, and the custom had not been omitted to-day because there was
no one to return the service. It was rendered willingly as ever, partly
from regard for Dr. Northmore, and partly from sympathy with the lonely
householder who managed his farm.
“I had to stop and talk a minute with Jake Erlock,” said Esther,
apologetic for her slight loitering now that she felt the hurry of the
work again. “He came up to draw the water for me, and you ought to have
seen him blush when I told him you all thought he was a good
housekeeper.”
“Well, if he has any doubt what we think on that point, he’d better come
in here and we’ll tell him,” said a woman who was grinding coffee at a
mill fixed to the wall. “I don’t believe there’s another man in this
township that would manage as well as he does. I wouldn’t answer for the
way things would look at our house if ’twas _my_ man that had the
running of ’em.”
Groans and headshakings followed this remark. Apparently none of the
women present felt any confidence in the ability of their respective men
to run the domestic machinery.
“Well, Mis’ Erlock was a mighty good housekeeper herself,” observed one
of them. “And I reckon Jake thinks it wouldn’t be showing proper respect
to her memory to let everything go at loose ends now she’s gone. I tell
you, Jake’s an uncommon good man in more ways than one. ’Tain’t
everybody that would stay single as long as he has, but that’s just what
I expected from the feelings he showed at the funeral, and it coming so
long afterward too.”
A murmur of assent showed that the speaker was not the only one who
remembered the emotion of the bereaved man on that mournful occasion,
which, as had been suggested, occurred some time after his wife’s death,
the delay of the sermon devoted to her memory being occasioned, as often
happens in country districts of the West and South, by the absence of
the preacher proper, whose extended circuit gives him but a portion of
the year in one place.
“Well, ’twas to his credit, of course,” observed an elderly woman who
was shelling peas; “but I must say I don’t like this way of putting off
the funeral so long. I think burying people and preaching about ’em
ought to go together, and if you can’t have your own preacher, you’d
better put up with somebody else, or go without.”
“I don’t know about that,” said the young woman with the baby. “It looks
to me as if folks were in a mighty hurry to get the last word said when
they can’t wait for the right one to say it. I shouldn’t want my husband
to be so keen to get through with it all, if ’twas me that was taken.”
“Maybe you’d want him to do like the man that took his second wife to
hear his first wife’s funeral,” retorted the other.
The defender of local custom admitted, in the midst of a general laugh,
that this was carrying it too far, and then the conversation turned on
the probability of Jake Erlock’s marrying again, the various suitable
persons to be found should he feel so inclined, and the importance in
general of men having some one to take care of them, and of women having
men and their houses to take care of.
The subject which, with its ramifications, seemed fairly inexhaustible
was making Kate Northmore yawn and had fairly driven Esther from the
room, when a young man with a bright, sunburned face and a pair of
straight, broad shoulders looked in at the window.
“My, how good it smells in here!” he exclaimed in a voice that went well
with the face. “What all are we going to have for dinner, Aunt Jenny?”
Mrs. Elwell, who was testing the heat of the oven on a plump bare arm,
turned a flushed face and motherly smile on the speaker.
“Everything nice,” she said. “You never saw a better dinner than the
girls have brought out for you. What do you say to fried chicken, and
new potatoes, and green peas, with pie and doughnuts to top off, and
lots of other good things thrown in extra?”
The young man smacked his lips and sent a devouring glance around the
room. “Say!” he repeated. “Why, I say it’s enough to make a fellow feel
like John Ridd and thank the Lord for the room there is in him. When are
you going to give us a chance at all that?”
“When the bell rings, of course,” said Kate Northmore, looking up at him
with a saucy glance from the meal she was sifting. “You didn’t expect to
get anything to eat now, I hope.”
“Oh, not anything much,” said the young man, helping himself to a
doughnut from a plate which stood within easy reach. “I just looked in
to tell you that while you’re getting, you’d better get us a plenty.
We’re a fearful hungry crowd, and there won’t be much left over; but if
there should be, it might come in handy to-morrow.”
“_To-morrow!_” repeated Kate, letting the meal which was whirling under
her hand fall level in the pan. “You don’t mean that there’s any danger
of your being here to-morrow, do you?”
The young man brushed the chaff from the shoulders of his blue flannel
shirt, and set his straw hat a little further on the back of his head
before he answered. Kate’s “_To-morrow_” had put a complete pause on the
talk of the room, and every woman there was looking at him anxiously.
“Well, I wouldn’t really say that there’s any need of worrying about it
_yet_” he said, lowering his voice to a confidential tone; “but you see
the men have heard that you and Esther are such stunning good cooks
that—well, of course, I don’t want to give ’em away, but I don’t know as
you can blame ’em any for wanting to make the work hold out so as to get
in an extra meal or two here, if they can. That’s all.”
There was a shout at this, and Mrs. Elwell said reproachfully, “Now,
Morton, quit your fooling. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to come
scaring the girls with your talk about to-morrow? Why, we thought the
machine had broken down, or something of that sort.”
He did look a little conscience-smitten just then, as Esther, who had
caught some hint of excitement in the dining room, where she was setting
the table, appeared in the doorway, looking really troubled. Kate was
facing him with a different expression.
“Well, since you’re so anxious about to-morrow, Mort Elwell, you needn’t
eat any more of those doughnuts,” she said, snatching up the plate
toward which his hand was moving a second time, and setting it out of
his reach. “We may want them, you know.”
He drew down his face to an injured expression. “That’s the way you
treat a body, is it, when he comes to give you a friendly warning? All
right, I’ll go now. I see I’m not wanted.”
He shifted his position as he spoke, and the next moment the pitchfork,
on which he had been leaning, was thrust through the window, and as
quickly withdrawn, with a doughnut sticking on every point. “Good-by,
Kate,” he shouted, as he disappeared. “If the doughnuts don’t hold out,
you can make some cookies for to-morrow.”
He had the best of it, and after a moment, apparently, even Kate forgave
him, “the rascal,” as she called him, with a toss of her pretty head.
And then the talk of the kitchen took a new turn, suggested by the
thought of all the ills which would have followed if an accident had
really happened to the machine. There had been such accidents in the
experience of most of those present, and they were recounted now with
much fulness of detail and some rivalry as to the amount of agony
endured in the several cases by the workers in the culinary department.
“It’s the worst thing there is about threshing,” said the woman who had
related the most harrowing tale of all. “I don’t care how many men there
are, and I don’t mind cooking for ’em, and setting out the best I’ve
got,—seems as if a body warn’t thankful for the crop if they don’t,—but
when the machine gets out of order, and the work hangs on, and you have
the men on your hands for three or four days running, just eating you
out of house and home, and keeping you on the jump from morning to
night, getting things on the table and off again, I tell you it’s
something awful.”
There was no demur to this sentiment, but there was still another phase
of distress to be mentioned.
“No,” said one of the others, “there ain’t anything quite as bad as
that, but it’s the next thing to it to have the threshers come down on
you without your having fair warning that they’re coming. I never _will_
forget what a time we had last year. Abe had been telling me all along
that they were going to stack the wheat and thresh in the fall, when one
day, ’most sundown, up comes the threshing machine right into our barn
lot. I told the men there must be some mistake, but they said, no,
they’d just made a bargain with Abe, and were going to begin on our
wheat in the morning. I tell you I was that mad I couldn’t see straight.
Abe he tried to smooth it over, said he found the men had been thrown
out at one place, and he thought he’d better close right in on ’em, and
I needn’t to worry about the victuals—just give ’em what I had.”
She paused with an accent of inexpressible contempt, and covered her
husband’s remarks on that point with the words, “You know how men talk!
Why, even our side meat was most gone, and I hadn’t a single chicken
frying size. Well, I tell you I didn’t let the grass grow under my feet
nor under Abe’s neither. I made him hitch up and put himself into town
the liveliest ever he did, and what with me sitting up most all night to
brown coffee, and churn, and make pies, we somehow managed to put things
through. I was plumb wore out when ’twas all over, but they do say the
men bragged all the rest of the season on the dinner I gave ’em.”
Great applause followed this story, and an elderly woman remarked:
“That’s one good thing about having the threshers. You’re sure to get
your name up for a good cook if your victuals suit the men. I’ll warrant
you’ll get a recommend after to-day, girls,” she said, with a nod at
Kate and Esther. “And it ain’t a bad thing to have at your age,” she
added, with a knowing wink.
Esther flushed, with a look of annoyance, but Kate responded gayly: “All
right. Don’t any of you tell that they made the pies and doughnuts at
home, and don’t you ever let it out that you fried the chickens, Mrs.
Elwell.”
There was a sisterly resemblance between the two girls. Each was fair,
with dark hair and eyes, but Esther was generally counted the prettier.
She had a delicate, oval face, with soft, responsive eyes, and a color
that came and went as easily as ripples in a wheat-field; the sort of
face which, without the slightest coquetry of expression, was almost
sure to hold and draw again the interested glance of those who met her.
Kate’s was of the commoner type, and yet there was nothing too common in
its strong, pleasant lines, or the straightforward frankness of her
ready smile.
With so many to help, the preparations for dinner could not but move
briskly. At sharp twelve o’clock the farm bell, mounted on a hickory
post at the corner of the house, rang out its invitation, and almost
instantly the engine stopped puffing, the whir of labor in the fields
slackened, and the men had turned their faces toward the house. They
were not a company of common laborers. Many of them were well-to-do
farmers, who gave their services here in repayment or anticipation of
similar aid in their own time of need. Most of them knew the Northmore
girls, and had a friendly greeting for Kate as they passed her, standing
by the swinging bell.
“Well, Miss Kate,” said one of them, a tall, angular man, who, in spite
of his office in the district as the New Light preacher, was one of the
most active workers, “I’ll wager you never rang a bell before for such a
hard-looking crowd. We’re ‘knaves that smell of sweat.’ But there’s
folks that look better in worse business, and I reckon you don’t mind
the looks of us as long as we behave ourselves. How many do you want at
once? I s’pose we can’t all sit down at the first table.”
“Well, then,” broke in a hearty young farmer, with a twinkle in his
eyes, “I move that the preacher goes in with the last crowd. We don’t
any of us want to run our chances after he gets through.”
“Oh,” said the preacher, good-naturedly, “I was calculating to wait,
anyhow. Shan’t have any scruples then against taking the last piece.”
“Well, I’ll engage that the last piece shall lie as good as the first,”
said Kate; “but we can’t give more than ten of you elbow-room at once. I
might count ‘Eeny, meny, miny, mo,’ to see which of you shall come in
now, but there’s a pan of corn-bread in the oven that I’m watching, and
I think you’d better settle it yourselves.”
Apparently there was no difficulty, for in an extraordinarily short
space of time the toilets made at the well were finished, and the dinner
was furnished with guests. Loaded as the table was with good things, it
might have seemed part of a Thanksgiving scene but that the holiday air
was quite wanting to the men who sat around it. There was not much
conversation. Some observations on crops and the price of wheat, or an
occasional bit of good-natured raillery, filled the infrequent pauses in
the business of eating, but the latter was carried on with a heartiness
which spoke well for those who had spread the feast.
Outside, however, in the shadow of the great beech by the kitchen door,
there was a waiting group who found time for talking, and the preacher,
whose long, lank figure was stretched in the midst, was easily taking
the leading part. Some remark had evidently started him on a train of
reminiscences, and his mellow, half-drawling tones floated through the
kitchen door, and mingled with the clatter of the dishes.
“Yes, there’s been a heap o’ change in this country since I came here
twenty years ago. ’Twas pretty much all timber through here then, and
there warn’t a foot o’ tile in this end o’ the county. I hired out to
old Jim Rader. He was just clearing up his farm. Lord, he used to have
me up by four o’clock in the morning, grubbing stumps, with the fog so
thick you couldn’t tell stump from fog before you.”
“I reckon you made the acquaintance of the ager ’bout that time,”
observed one of the group as the preacher paused.
“Ague!” repeated the other, raising himself on his elbow and eying the
speaker. “Wall, I reckon! If there’s any kind I didn’t get on speaking
terms with, I’d like to know the name of it. I’ve had the third-day
ague, and the seventh-day ague, the shaking ague, and the dumb
ague—though why ’twas ever called ‘dumb’ beats me. If there’s anything
calculated to make a man open his mouth and express his mind freely on
the way things go in this neck o’ wilderness, it’s that particular kind.
Lord! My bones have ached so, I’d have given any man a black eye that
said there was only two hundred of ’em. However, I got shet of it at
last, taking quinine. Reckon this country couldn’t have been settled up
without quinine, and I stayed with Rader two years and helped him break
in the land. Didn’t like the business much, but I had a notion in my
head that I wanted to make a preacher of myself, and I didn’t quit till
I had the means to do it. Didn’t get over-much schooling, but I wouldn’t
take a heap for what I did get. Mort!” he exclaimed, turning abruptly to
the young man at his side, “how have you been getting on at college?
They say you’re going to stick right to it.”
“I haven’t had to give up yet,” said the young man, quietly; “and I
don’t think it’s likely any part of the course will be harder than the
first two years.”
“Reckon your uncle don’t come down very heavy with the stamps yet,” said
the preacher, grimly.
The young man flushed. “’Tisn’t my uncle’s business to send me to
college,” he said; “I never asked him to.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” said the preacher, heartily. “I like your
grit. For that matter, you might as well spend your breath trying to
blow up a rain as trying to persuade him to spend any money on schooling
that he didn’t haf to. But how did you make it? You must have found it
hard pulling at first.”
“Oh, at first I sawed wood,” said the other, lightly, “and I’ll own that
was hard pulling. Half a cord before breakfast is a pretty fair stint,
but I managed to make it. After that ’twas different things. I never had
any trouble getting work. It was one man’s horse and another man’s lawn,
and in the spring I had a great run helping the women at house-cleaning.
Got quite a reputation for laying carpets. This year there hasn’t been
quite as much variety in my jobs, for I taught school in the winter.”
The preacher’s sallow face was tense and the shrewd gray eyes gleamed as
he listened. “You’ll do, Mort Elwell!” he said. “If I was a betting man,
I’d bet on you and take all the chances going.”
At that moment, Mrs. Elwell, who was standing in the kitchen doorway for
a moment’s rest and coolness, was saying to Esther Northmore, with a
little sigh, “I don’t wonder he had all he could do at house-cleaning.
If he knew how I missed him last spring! There’s nobody ’round here that
can put down carpets equal to him.” And then she sighed again, this time
more heavily. Every one knew that if she had her way, her husband’s
nephew, who had grown up as one of their own family, would not be
working his way through college in this stern fashion.
As for Morton himself, perhaps, being a young fellow not much given to
talking of his private affairs in public, he was glad to see a stream of
men issuing just then from the house, and it was but a few minutes later
when a second call summoned him and his fellows to their places.
It was hardly an hour that the wheels of the great machine stood still.
At the end of that time the workers were all at their places again. And
now that the masculine appetites were satisfied, the women sat down to
eat, an occupation which they prolonged far beyond the time of their
predecessors. To the Northmore girls, indeed, it seemed as if it would
never be over, but there came an end to it at last, and even to the
washing of the dishes.
Esther would not consent to the proposal of the women that they should
do the work without her, but Kate—with better wisdom perhaps—accepted it
with the frankest pleasure. She was a girl who had a healthy curiosity
about everything that went on around her, and no one was surprised to
see her presently standing in the field, beside the engine that made the
wheels of the threshing machine go round, getting points from the man in
charge as to how they did it. After that an invitation from Morton
Elwell, who was on the feed board, to come up and watch the work from
that point was instantly accepted, amid the laughing approval of the
crowd. For her sake the speed of the work was slackened a little, the
bundles were thrown from the loaded wagon more slowly, and Morton found
time, while cutting their bands and thrusting them in at their place, to
answer all her questions.
It was a pretty picture she made, standing in her blue gingham dress on
this crimson throne, her sunbonnet fallen on her shoulders and her dark
hair blowing about her face, but she knew nothing of this. She was
thinking only of that wonderful machine, and she knew before she left
her place how it whirled the loosened sheaves from sight, rubbed out the
grain in its rough iron palms, sent the free clean wheat in a rushing
stream down to the waiting measure, and flung out the broken straw to be
caught on the pitchforks of the laborers behind and pressed to its place
on the growing stack.
There was an exhilaration in it not to be dreamed of by her sister, who
glanced at her occasionally from the kitchen windows and wondered how
she could bear to be in the midst of all that heat and noise. For her
part, she was quite content to let the machine stand merely as part of
the picture. And perhaps for her it wore the greater dignity from her
vague idea of its internal workings.
The afternoon wore away swiftly. There was a five o’clock supper to be
served to the men, but this was not the elaborate affair the dinner had
been, and by sunset of the long bright day the work indoors and out had
been brought to a successful finish. The shining stubble of the field
lay bare except for the fresh clean straw stack. The machine was
rumbling on its way to another farm, and Jake Erlock’s kitchen had been
restored to a state of order equal to that in which his kindly neighbors
had found it.
It had been expected that Dr. Northmore would come for his daughters,
but, as he had not appeared when the work was finished, they accepted
the offer of a ride home with a farmer who was going their way. The
sight of them sitting in the big Studebaker wagon must have acted as a
prompter to Morton Elwell’s memory, for he suddenly recalled that he had
an important errand in town, and proposed to go along too, a proposal to
which the owner of the wagon agreed with the greatest good will. There
was not a chair for him,—the girls had been established in the only
two,—and the farmer and his hired man occupied the seat, but the young
man settled him on a bundle of straw in the bottom of the wagon, with an
air of supreme content.
They were old comrades, he and the Northmore girls; the girls could not
remember the time when he had not been their escort and champion, their
Fidus Achates, all the more free to devote himself to their service
because he had no sisters or even girl cousins of his own. He was two
years older than either of them, and his years at college seemed to make
him older still, but if his absence had made any difference in the
perfect freedom of their relations, he, at least, had not guessed it.
“Well, you girls must be glad to be through with this,” he said, as the
team started at a rattling pace down the road. “I know you’re awfully
tired.”
He included them both in his glance, but it rested longest on Esther’s
face, which certainly looked a little weary under the shadow of her wide
straw hat.
“You must be tired yourself, Mort,” she said, looking down at him.
“You’ve been working ever since daylight, haven’t you?”
“Oh, but I’m used to that,” he said gayly, “and this is new business for
you. I must say, though, I never saw things go better. There won’t be
anybody round here to beat you at housekeeping if you keep on like
this.”
She frowned slightly. “It was your aunt who managed everything,” she
said; “all we did was to help a little.”
“That isn’t what she’ll say about it,” said the young man, and then he
added warmly: “but my Aunt Jenny’s a host wherever you put her. There’s
no doubt about that. My, what a good place this world would be if
everybody in it was made like her!” And there was an assent to this
which ought to have made the good woman’s ears burn, if there is any
truth in the old saying.
For a while the talk ran lightly on the incidents of the day; then it
grew more personal, and plans for the summer fell under discussion.
Morton’s were all for work. He was of age, master of his own time, and
he meant to make a good sum toward the expenses of the coming year at
college. He talked of his hopes with the utmost frankness, and then
questioned of theirs as one who had the fullest rights of friendship.
“Will you go away anywhere?” he asked; “or are you going to stay at home
all summer?”
“That depends,” said Kate, answering for both. “We may go up to
Maxinkuckee for a little while; but what we’d like to do, what we’d like
best—” she paused upon the words with a lifting of her hands and the
drawing of a long ecstatic breath, “would be to make a visit at
grandfather’s. You can’t think how he’s urging us to come.”
“Do you mean go to New England?” he exclaimed, sitting up straight on
his bundle of straw.
“Yes, to mother’s old home,” said Kate. “Just think, we haven’t been
there since we were little girls. Mother’s been trying to persuade
grandfather to come out here, but he says he’s too old to make the
journey, and that we must come there. He has fairly set his heart on
it.”
“And so have the others too,” said Esther. “Stella’s letters have been
full of it for the last six months.”
“Stella’s that cousin of yours who’s such an artist, isn’t she?” said
Morton. He was looking extremely interested.
“Oh, she’s an artist and everything else that’s lovely,” said Esther. “I
don’t suppose you ever saw the kind of girl that she is. She has a
studio in Boston in the winters. She sent me a picture of it once, and
it’s perfectly charming. And only think, she’s been in Europe twice—once
she was studying over there. And she’s seen those wonderful old places
and the famous pictures, and been a part of everything that’s
beautiful.”
“That’s the sort of thing you’d like to do yourself, I suppose,” said
the young man, drawing a wisp of straw slowly through his fingers.
“Like it!” she cried. “To travel, to study, to see beautiful things, to
hear beautiful music, and to be in touch every day with charming,
cultivated people! Oh, if I had half a chance, wouldn’t I take it!”
There was something very wistful in her voice as she said it, but not
more wistful than the look that came into Morton Elwell’s eyes at that
moment. He turned them away from her face, and the rattle of the big
wagon filled the silence.
“You ought to show Mort that picture of Stella you got the other day,”
said Kate, suddenly.
Esther took a letter from her pocket. “I brought it out to the farm
to-day on purpose to show your aunt,” she said, and she handed him a
photograph which he regarded for a moment with a bewildered expression.
“Why, it looks like a picture of Greek statuary,” he said; “one of the
old goddesses, or something of that sort.”
“That’s just the way she meant to have it look,” said Esther,
triumphantly. “You see how artistic she is.”
The young man still looked mystified. “But is her hair really white,
like that?” he asked.
“Why, of course not,” said Esther, in a rather disgusted tone. “She
powdered it and did it in a low coil for the sake of the picture. Then
she put the white folds over her shoulders to make it look like a bust
against the dark background, and she had the lights and shadows arranged
to give just the right effect. Isn’t it exquisite?”
“I can’t say I admire it,” said the young man, grimly; “I’d rather see
people look as if they were made of flesh and blood.”
Kate laughed. She had privately expressed the same opinion herself, but
she did not choose to encourage him in criticising her relatives.
“You’re an insensible Philistine, Mort Elwell,” she said, with a sly
glance at her sister. “That’s what Stella’d call you, and she knows.”
The point of the taunt was lost on the young man, but he had an
impression, derived from early lessons in the Sabbath School, that the
Philistines were a race of heathen idolaters, and he resented the charge
with spirit.
“You’d better call your cousin the Philistine,” he retorted; “I’m sure I
have no liking for graven images.”
This was too much for Esther. She snatched the picture from his hand and
bent a look of admiration upon the shapely white head, with its classic
profile and downcast eyes, which made ample amends for the cold scrutiny
to which it had just been subjected.
“It is perfectly beautiful,” she said, with slow emphasis; “I don’t see
how you can be unappreciative.”
Morton did not press his obnoxious opinion. He grew rather silent, and
except for an occasional sally from Kate, conversation was at a low ebb
for the rest of the way.
Meanwhile the sunset flamed and faded in the west. The evening breeze
sprang up, and cool, restful shadows fell on the wide, rich landscape.
“Home at last!” cried Kate, as a bend in the road brought them suddenly
upon a house of the colonial style, shaded by fine old trees, at the
edge of town. “And there’s mother in the doorway looking for us.”