The Humours of Trading
NELL had been busy since morning, and a great spread of pies, cakes, and
bread in small loaves testified to her industry.
She had been equally busy yesterday; but had sold everything out before
going to bed, and had awakened this morning with a bareness of cupboards
almost equal to Old Mother Hubbard of nursery fame. In fact, she and
Patsey had made their breakfast from corn porridge and fried potatoes,
because there was nothing else in the house to eat.
It was just one week ago to-day since they had arrived at the new house
at Camp’s Gulch. They had found to their amazement when they arrived
that Mrs. Peters had already opened shop for them in the bare new house,
and was serving pies and pots of stew to the tired miners trailing home
from work.
“The next two hours are the busy time; I’ve been nearly run off my feet
every evening. Sam comes along to help when the last cars are gone; but
by that time the rush is nearly over,” Mrs. Peters said, as she stirred
the great dish of stew that was being kept hot on a kerosene heater in
the window.
“But what made you begin it?” asked Nell, slipping off her hat and coat
and appearing quite at home already, even though “home” as yet had not a
stick of furniture in it, saving a rough table with a few borrowed
cooking utensils in the kitchen, which was also shop during the hours of
buying and selling.
“Two things. The first was that I was afraid a rival shop might start
before you could begin; and the second was that I was so sorry for the
men with no proper food when their day’s work was done. It is enough to
make any ordinary man take to drink when he can’t get decent food to
eat; and the whisky sold by that man at the Settlement saloon is just
rank poison and nothing else, if you’ll believe me,” said Mrs. Peters.
Then she turned to attend to the wants of two men who had just entered
the kitchen.
“We want some supper, if you please, ma’am. What have you got?” asked
the foremost man, sniffing hungrily, for the odours of the little
kitchen were very appetizing to hungry men.
“Not much to-night except pies and stew. We haven’t got straight yet;
but just wait until next week and then you’ll see a difference,” replied
Mrs. Peters, with a wag of her head towards Nell, as if to emphasize
where the difference came in.
“Well, we can’t very well wait until next week for our supper, so we’ll
take what you’ve got and be thankful,” said the man. And the two walked
off with a couple of tin basins of stew, two pies, and a small loaf of
bread, for which they paid half a dollar, and thought themselves well
off.
“You must come over to our place to sleep; you just can’t lie on the
boards,” Mrs. Peters had said in hospitable invitation, although the
little house at the depot was already as full as it could hold with any
degree of comfort.
But neither Nell nor Gertrude would consent to this, and they spent the
night comfortably enough each rolled in a rug and lying on a big sack of
shavings, while Patsey had a similar sack all to himself in the kitchen.
Since then the days had been full of hard and constant work. It was
fortunate for Nell that by this time she had regained the use of her
hand. Leaving Gertrude to unpack and arrange the furniture she had
devoted herself to the business of catering for her numerous customers,
and had found more than enough to keep her busy.
As soon as the house had been arranged in comfortable order, Gertrude
departed to fetch her mother and the children from Nine Springs, while
Patsey remained to help Nell.
The question of school loomed largely in their minds just now—the
Settlement school was three miles away. But with the Peters children and
the young Lorimers, there were nearly enough children to start a school
near the depot. If another family came to live at Camp’s Gulch this
might be done; meanwhile it seemed easier for Patsey to go up and down
to Bratley on the cars every day than for him to wear out his boots on
the long walk to the Settlement.
Just at present he was not attending school, but had been out picking
berries with which to make pies the next day. Nell’s customers appeared
perfectly indifferent as to what pies were made of; the main thing was
to get a pie.
“There ought to be enough to-day, Patsey; just look at them!” she
exclaimed, as he came in laden with the berry baskets.
“My! Just don’t they look good!” exclaimed the boy, looking hungrily at
them, for he had had nothing since breakfast; and although corn porridge
with potatoes had been sufficiently satisfying at the time, he was
conscious of very keen hunger at the present moment.
“There is a big one for you on the corner of the stove; sit down and eat
it now, then you can get in the wood for to-morrow’s cooking. It is
nearly three o’clock already; and the cars come up before six, you
know,” Nell said, as she dusted down the baking board and put the things
tidily away for the next day.
“I’ve got it all chopped, so it won’t take long to bring it down to the
house in the truck,” Patsey said, attacking his pie with great gusto,
and thinking that it was if anything even nicer than it looked; but then
he was so very hungry that this imparted a special flavour to the homely
viands.
Nell looked out through the open door with a sudden longing. The
afternoon sunshine lay warm and bright on the cleared space before the
house. It was late October, but the winter was holding off; the days
were soft and pleasant, although the nights had mostly a touch of frost
in them. She wanted to be out-of-doors, to feel the strong wind lifting
her hair, to be dazzled with the sunshine, and to watch the darting
chipmunks hunting and hoarding their winter store of nuts.
“Patsey, if I go to fetch in the wood, would you dust the sitting-room
and your mother’s bedroom? I haven’t had time even to look in there
since breakfast. If I go to do it now I shall not have a minute for
out-of-doors; then I shall have that horrid buzzing in my head all the
evening.”
“It is horrid work for a girl hauling that wood-truck down the slope,”
said Patsey, with a rueful face, although, to be strictly honest, he
deemed it still more horrid work for a boy to be obliged to dust a
sitting-room and a bedroom.
“Oh, I don’t mind the wood-hauling. I simply could not go out walking
for the sake of walking when there is so much to do in other ways; but
to go backwards and forwards with the wood-truck is such an extremely
virtuous way of taking the air that I shall not have any trouble with my
conscience over the matter. Mind you dust the legs of the chairs,
Patsey, and don’t round off the corners, for that isn’t good style in
dusting.”
“What am I to do if customers come?” asked the boy, in a mumbling tone,
his mouth fuller of pie than good manners warranted.
“Serve them, of course. But please don’t sell all the loaves before I
get back, for I want a nice one for your mother’s supper. It won’t do to
treat her badly on her first night at home, you know,” Nell said
brightly; and she started up the slope at the back of the house,
carrying her hat in one hand and dragging the wood-truck with the other.
Just over the hill at the back of the house was a strip of ground heaped
with fallen trees, which some fierce storm in the previous winter had
levelled to the ground. This wood might be had for bringing home; and
Nell had determined to have her wood-shed filled with it before the bad
weather came. With the rapid increase of population threatening Camp’s
Gulch just now, the price of firing would be sure to go up, so it
behoved them to secure as much as they could possibly get while it could
be had for nothing.
Every morning Patsey went over the hill, hacking and hewing, until the
sun was high enough for berry-gathering; then, bringing home a
truck-load of wood, he left the remainder to be brought in the evening.
Nell loved this sort of work. The squealing of the wheels of the
wood-truck as they cried out for grease troubled her not at all, because
it seemed perfectly natural for the wheels of wood-trucks to make a
noise; then there was the pleasant smell of bark, of falling leaves, and
all the mingled perfumes of the forest.
Oh, it was good to be out! Nell loaded her truck with the cut wood
Patsey had left ready; then raced down the slope, while the noisy wheels
shrieked and groaned behind her. Tipping out her load of wood, she
started up the slope again, going more slowly now as if the keen edge of
her energy had worn off. Five times she made the journey; then, warned
by the sinking of the sun that it was time for her to be going indoors
again, she hauled the last load into the shed, then went in to see how
Patsey was getting on at housekeeping.
To her surprise she found him talking to some one who was not a customer
but a visitor.
“Dr. Russell!” she exclaimed.
“I thought I should surprise you,” he said, with a laugh. “I came up on
the noon cars to see a patient at the Settlement, so I thought I would
stay and see Mrs. Lorimer comfortably settled after her journey.”
“That is very good of you,” said Nell; adding, a little doubtfully, “but
how will you get back to Bratley? Will the cars wait for you?”
“They will have to. I shall threaten Sam Peters that he will have to
work me along to the junction on a hand-car if he lets the train go
without me; and the thought of pumping me for sixteen miles will make
him quite willing to hold the cars back for five or ten minutes if
necessary. Why, pumping would be harder work than the stoking he did on
the memorable night when we came in such a hurry to help you out of a
fix,” replied the doctor, with a laugh.
“But there isn’t a hand-car at this depot; at least, I don’t think so. I
know there wasn’t one at Bratley last winter when the inspector wanted
to go up the Roseneath track, and we went on snow-shoes instead,” said
Nell.
“A much pleasanter way of getting along—when there is snow, that is.
But the cars will be here soon and I must be going. Are you coming over
to the depot to welcome the arrivals?”
“No; I cannot leave now because my customers will be coming in, but
Patsey will go; he is going to put some cushions in the wood-truck and
bring his mother across from the cars, for she is much too weak to walk
even such a short distance,” explained Nell.
“A wood-truck? That is a box on wheels without any springs, I suppose.
It is not to be thought of. Is Mrs. Lorimer a heavy woman?”
“No; she is about my height, but, of course, much thinner; indeed, she
has wasted fearfully of late,” replied Nell.
“Well, I have carried heavier people than you, so I ought to manage Mrs.
Lorimer. Patsey can be at the depot with the wood-truck, but we will
hope that we shall not need him for the invalid,” said the doctor. Then
putting on his cap, he strode away in the gathering dusk.
Nell watched him with a smile quivering about her lips.
“Very kind of him to come up to meet the invalid; but I expect right
down at the bottom of his heart it was Gertrude that he thought most
about, poor man, though he does not seem to have the courage to tell her
so.”
She sighed in a quick, impatient fashion, for well she understood the
great barrier which Abe Lorimer’s death had raised between Gertrude and
Dr. Russell. The doctor had his little son to keep, and only a poor and
casual practice to depend upon; while Gertrude, with an invalid mother,
a delicate sister, and three young brothers, was more heavily burdened
still.
“If only they would understand how willing I am to take Gertrude’s
family off her hands they might get along very well. But I can’t go and
say so right out in plain speech; and, oh dear, they are so stupid!” she
muttered in impatient speech, as she put some more wood on the
sitting-room fire, lighted the lamp standing on the well-spread
supper-table, then went back to the kitchen to serve a couple of
customers who had just come in on their way back from the mines.
“How nice your food smells; why, it is worth a quarter just to stand
inside and sniff,” said one of the men, who had evidently come down in
the world, for he spoke with the cultured tone of a man of education and
bore himself with the upright carriage of one who has been well drilled.
“That would be one way of making money, certainly; but I fancy it would
hardly pay in the long run, because when I am very busy cooking I should
find it an intolerable nuisance to have a lot of people crowding in to
smell the savoury odours from my oven and stew-pans,” Nell answered,
with a smile, as she served the two customers as quickly as she could.
There was a great bowl of beans being kept hot on the stove, flanked by
another great bowl of potatoes which had been steamed with their skins
on; and the stream of customers coming in soon disposed of the contents
of both bowls.
But, without doubt, the most popular portion of Nell’s stock-in-trade
were the pies. These were of varied sorts; there were meat-pies,
apple-pies, huckleberry-pies, blueberry-pies, and pies filled with a
savoury mess of vegetables and herbs chopped fine and mixed with suet.
The last-named were, perhaps, the most popular of all; one of them, with
a couple of good-sized potatoes, made a comfortable meal for a man at a
very small cost indeed.
There was no Irish stew to-night, for Nell thought it well to vary the
menu as much as she could. A nine-quart boiler of soup was fizzing and
bubbling on the stove—very good soup it was, too; the rough cookery
which Nell had learned during those lonely years on Blue Bird Ridge was
standing her in good stead now, since it had taught her the art of
making good soup from next to nothing.
The door from the kitchen to the living-room was kept closely shut this
evening, for Nell did not want Mrs. Lorimer to be worried by the
commotion of buying and selling, or by the odours of the hot little
kitchen.
Nell heard the bustle of arrival; but the kitchen was thronged just then
with men buying their suppers, so she could not go to give the
travellers a welcome. But she was relieved when, a little later, Patsey
slipped out from the sitting-room and helped her by ladling the soup
from the boiler. She was so tired that even a little help was welcome.
By this time the potatoes had all gone; there were only a very few beans
left; the stock of pies had diminished until there were only six or
seven left, and the kitchen looked as if an invading army had swept
through it.
Nell left Patsey in charge then, and stole into the next room to welcome
her family. Teddy and the baby were sitting in front of the fire eating
jam and bread, licking sticky fingers and enjoying themselves generally,
watched over by Flossie, who was hovering about them like an anxious,
motherly hen guarding her chickens.
“Oh, Nell, what a lovely house this is!” cried the little girl, as she
gave Nell a rapturous welcome.
“It is lovely now you have all come to make it look homely; but it was
rather lonely before,” said Nell, stooping to kiss the rather jammy
faces of the two small boys.
“Poor mother cried, and was so bad when she got here that Gertrude has
taken her off to bed,” said Flossie, resting her head against Nell in
supreme content.
The last week had been such a hard one for the poor little girl that
to-night seemed like the beginning of a new life.
“I am just going to have a look at your mother, Flossie, then I must
come back and have a peep at you again; but I shall not be free of the
kitchen for another half-hour, I expect. Have you had anything to eat
yourself, dearie?”
“I’m not hungry,” said Flossie, with a sigh, as she turned her head
sharply at the sound of a moaning wail from the next room.
Nell gave the child a loving hug; then crept softly into the chamber
where Gertrude was getting her mother into bed and patiently soothing
the feeble complainings of the poor sick woman, who was far too ill to
be reasonable.
“I tell Gertrude all this dragging me about will just kill me; but no
one seems to care,” said Mrs. Lorimer, looking up at Nell with imploring
eyes.
“You shall not be dragged about any more, and to-morrow you can stay in
bed all day. This is such a pleasant room when the sun shines, and the
view is lovely,” Nell murmured, in a consoling tone. Then she helped to
lift the invalid into a more comfortable position in the bed.
Gertrude was patient and tender as the most loving daughter could be.
Nell, stealing a look at her, saw the flush on her cheeks and the
radiant happiness in her eyes, and guessed that for her the sadness of
that home-coming had been lifted and brightened by the kindly
consideration of the doctor, who had arranged to be on the spot to help
with the invalid when the cars came in.
“Where are we all to sleep, Nell?” asked Flossie, in a weary tone, when
Nell went back through the sitting-room.
“Patsey and the little boys have got the room behind the kitchen, and I
will either make you up a bed in your mother’s room, or you can come up
in the loft and sleep with me,” Nell said.
“I should love to sleep with you; but I didn’t know there was a loft. Is
it a ladder or steps?” asked the child, eagerly.
“Steps. But I will show you presently. I am going to send Patsey to put
Teddy and the baby to bed, but you are to rest until I come in.”
“I can put the children to bed—I always do,” replied Flossie, with a
patient sigh, for her small arms and feet were very weary to-night.
“No, no; you are too tired. Patsey will do it,” said Nell, with a brisk
nod. Then she hurried into the kitchen, where Patsey was just draining
the last of the soup into the tin pot of a man who was a late-comer, and
so had to be satisfied with what he could get.
“There is not nearly a pint, so we will charge you half price,” said
Nell, politely.
“That won’t suit me at all, for I don’t want half a supper. Ain’t you
got anything you can fill it up with?” said the man, sending a hungry
gaze round the bare kitchen in search of something eatable.
“There are the beans—they are filling,” suggested Patsey, with a wag of
his head towards the big bowl, which still had a handful or so of beans
lurking at the bottom.
“Right you are, boy. Beans is filling. Shove ’em into the soup, if you
please, miss, and give it a stir, then I shall have a supper fit for a
millionaire,” said the man, and, tossing down the money, he departed in
great content.