ON THE WAY TO THE BEEBES.
“I’m going down to see dear Mr. Beebe and dear Mrs. Beebe,” cried Elyot
suddenly the next morning; and he threw down the small trowel with
which he had been spatting his mud-pie into shape, and jumped up, “Come
along, Barby, you may go too,” he said. “We won’t trouble anybody to
take us, ’cause they’re all busy. I know the way.”
“I know the way too,” declared Barby sturdily; and deserting the
spatting of her mud-pie which she had been engaged in without the aid
of a trowel, she stood straight, and thoughtfully rubbed her fingers on
her brown linen pinafore.
“Huh--you’re too little to know the way,” laughed Elyot; “but then I’m
here, I can take you down,” he added patronizingly.
“I don’t want to be tooken; I’m going myself,” said Barby decidedly;
“this very one minute I’m going;” and she trudged off in the direction
of the high road, not once looking back.
Elyot ran after her in alarm, and twitched her pinafore, “That isn’t
the way; we’ve got to go down through the lane.”
“I’m going to see my own Mr. Beebe, and my very own Mrs. Beebe, all
alone by myself,” declared Barby, keeping on. And presently, coming to
a descent in the ground, she dropped flat, and rolled over and over,
her usual method of going down hill; at the bottom picking herself up
to resume her journey.
“I’ll scream right out, and then they’ll come after us, and we won’t
either of us get there,” said Elyot, taking long steps down the bank
after her.
Barby stopped at this, and waited for him to come up. “You may come
too,” she said; and she put out her fat little hand to him.
Elyot took it contentedly. “You see, Barby,” he said, “you couldn’t get
along without me. We must keep out of the road at first, because it
would worry folks to see us going alone. But I know the way perfectly;
and then how glad dear Mr. Beebe and dear Mrs. Beebe will be when they
see us coming in.”
“Oh, so glad!” hummed Barby; “I guess they’ll be very glad, Elyot. And
I shall just kiss dear Mr. Beebe, and say, ‘How do you do, dear Mr.
Beebe, pretty well I thank you mostly.’”
“No, Barby, you don’t say the things together like that,” corrected
Elyot; “that isn’t right.”
“Yes, it is,” contradicted Barby sturdily. “And I shall say, ‘How
do you do, my dear very own Mrs. Beebe, and pretty well I thank you
mostly.’ I’ve heard Mrs. Higby say it.”
“You mustn’t say such things, Barby,” ordered Elyot, shaking her small
sleeve with determination. “You don’t know how to make calls yet. Mamma
wouldn’t like you to talk that way.”
“My mummy would,” declared Barby, shaking herself free, and panting
from her exertions. “My mummy loves dear Mr. Beebe and dear Mrs. Beebe,
and Barby loves them too. And I shall see all the shoes, all the little
wee baby ones, and the great big ones, and I’m going to stay all day,
and have pink sticks for dinner.” She turned her hot little face up at
him, and struck off bravely again, but her feet dragged.
“You’re getting awfully tired,” said Elyot; “let’s go back.”
“No, no, no!” protested Barby, making all possible speed. So Elyot had
nothing to do but to follow, which he did smartly, keeping close at her
side.
“And they’ll be so s’prised to see us,” went on Barby, growing
confidential. “Oh, dear me! why don’t their home ever come, I wonder.”
“Oh! we’re not half way there yet,” said Elyot cheerfully; “it’s off
that way, so,” waving his arm down the winding road, “then it’s down
this way,” sweeping off in the opposite direction.
“Oh, dear me!” said Barby, with a small sigh she could not suppress,
“why is it so long, I wonder? Won’t it come sooner?”
“You better give me your hand,” said Elyot, looking down into the tired
little face.
So Barby gave him her hand; and not caring much where she planted her
feet, she pattered unsteadily on over the dusty road, letting Elyot do
all the talking.
Presently she said, “I’m tired, Elyot, truly I am,” and tumbled down, a
sleepy little heap, in a thicket of blackberry-bushes.
“Oh, you mustn’t!” cried Elyot, pulling her arm; “wake up, Barby.
Mamsie wouldn’t like you to go to sleep here by the road.” But Barby
only hummed once, “I’m so tired, truly I am;” and tucking her hand
under her chin, she fell fast asleep.
Elyot looked up and down the road. There was nobody in sight. It
was too far to carry her, that he knew from his recollection of the
distance as he had been taken there in the carriage. Nevertheless, he
got her somehow up in his arms, and staggered off a few steps; but she
slipped out, and rolled up more of a heap than ever on the ground.
At last he ran out into the middle of the road, and watched for some
one to come by; and as no one appeared, he gathered up his small soul
with the best courage he could muster, and sat down on a big stone by
the side of the road.
“Some one has got to come by pretty soon,” he said.
How long he waited no one knew. It seemed to him hours, when,
“Gee-lang--there, sho, now,” struck upon his ears, and an old farmer
came around a bend in the road with a wagon-load of grain.
Elyot got off his stone, and dashed over to him on unsteady little
legs. “Oh, say, Mr. Man! please would you take us, my sister and me,
please?”
“Sho,” cried the farmer, pulling up his old gray horse, “sho
there--why, who be ye?” staring at him.
[Illustration: Elyot gathered up his small soul with the best courage
he could muster, and sat down on a big stone by the side of the road.]
“Oh, please, Mr. Man, take us in your wagon!” begged Elyot quickly, and
not thinking it best to answer any questions, “I’ll bring her;” and
he ran over to Barby. “Sit up now, you must; there’s a good, kind man
going to carry us in his wagon,” while the farmer rested his hands,
with the ends of the old leather reins, in his lap, and scratched his
shock of light hair in perplexity.
“We’re coming,” cried Elyot at last, tugging Barby along. Her eyes were
half closed, and she protested every inch of the way, but he got her up
to the side of the wagon.
“Land o’ Goshen!” exclaimed the farmer, jumping out, “I’ll help
ye; there ye be.” He picked Barby up, and lifted her over among
the grain-bags. “Curl up, now--she can sleep easy as a kitten,” he
said. Elyot had already clambered up to the driver’s seat in great
satisfaction; so presently they were off, rattling down the turnpike.
“Wher’ ye goin’ to in Hingham?” at last asked the farmer; “mebbe now ye
want to be dropped this side o’ th’ town?”
“We don’t want to be dropped at all,” cried Elyot, hanging to the
wagon-seat with both hands. “Oh, please don’t drop us, Mr. Man!” He
glanced over his shoulder at Barby, peacefully asleep, her head on a
grain-bag.
“I mean, where d’ye want to be let out? Mebbe this side o’ th’ town,”
explained the farmer; “or shall I carry ye to Hingham?”
“Oh, we don’t want to go to Hingham at all,” said Elyot, hanging on for
dear life.
The old farmer pulled up so suddenly that despite his care, Elyot
nearly fell out. “Don’t want to go to Hingham!” he roared; “what did ye
ask me to take ye there for, then?”
“Oh, I didn’t!” said Elyot stoutly; “I asked you to take us in your
wagon. And you’re so good, thank you, Mr. Man.”
“Well, an’ that’s the same thing; for my wagon’s goin’ to Hingham;
that’s where I live. Where in thunder do you want to go, you an’ th’
girl?” he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to Barby.
“Oh! we want to go to see dear Mr. Beebe and dear Mrs. Beebe, you know.
We’ve been wanting to go for a good many days; and Johnny couldn’t come
over to our house this morning, and everybody was busy, so it was a
good time;” Elyot kept on talking, under the impression that the farmer
wouldn’t look so if conversation went on.
“Well, where’s Mr. Beebe live?” demanded the farmer after an interval
of despair.
“Why, don’t you know? I know the place just as easy,” exclaimed Elyot
with a little laugh.
“Where is’t?”
“It’s down about there;” Elyot gave a wide sweep to his arm, thereby
almost knocking off the farmer’s broad-brimmed straw hat; “and he has
such lots and lots of shoes”--as an after-thought.
“Shoes? be ye talkin’ of a shoe-shop?” asked the farmer.
“Why, of course. I thought you knew that,” remarked Elyot in disdain.
“And dear Mr. Beebe will say”--
“Never mind what he’ll say till he gets ye,” said the farmer grimly.
“Now, can’t ye remember where that Mr. Beebe lives? I’ll be switched,
if I don’t b’lieve it’s Badgertown.”
“Yes, yes, that’s it; of course he lives there,” said Elyot, nodding
furiously. “And please, aren’t we most there? I like your wagon; but we
ought to hurry, ’cause Mr. and Mrs. Beebe will ask us to dinner, and”--
“Land o’ Goshen, I am in a scrape!” exclaimed the old farmer, slapping
his knee with a dingy hand. “Here I be with two young ones on my
hands, an’ don’t know no more’n one o’ them what to do. An’ I can’t go
clear back to them shoe-shop Beebes, an’ I don’t durst go forrards.
Well, mebbe some one’ll heave along, who’s goin’ to Badgertown, an’ll
take ’em.”
But no one “heaving along” for a good half-hour, the old farmer was
just about to turn his old gray horse in despair, when an ancient gig
appeared, whose swaying top gave him a delicious hope long before it
came within talking distance; and he cried joyfully, “Well, if this
here ain’t luck! Now, there’s Miss Sally an’ Belindy Scrannage a-goin’
over to Badgertown of course.”
Long before the old gig got alongside the wagon, the farmer had begun
to shout out the story; and by the time it was all over, Miss Belinda,
who wasn’t driving, had made a place on the old leather seat between
her sister and herself; and sleepy little Barby being set thereon, the
small head was cuddled up against that lady’s spencer waist, with one
mitted hand put carefully around the little figure to hold her close.
“You get up an’ set on that basket,” said Miss Sally, who held the
reins, and who was always under the impression that the ancient horse
was just going to run away. “It’s good we took the flat-covered one
to-day; ’twon’t hurt it; there’s some garden-sass we’re a-carryin’ to
our folks in Badgertown. There, get up.”
“Can’t I sit on behind?” begged Elyot, who didn’t view the basket with
great affection. It would be fine to swing his legs in freedom, instead
of being cooped up with the old ladies.
“No, you can’t,” said Miss Sally with authority; “we might drop you off
and never know it. I’m a-goin’ to have you where I can see you. Get in,
an’ set still.”
“They’re to go to Mr. Beebe’s shoe-store, ye know, on High Street,”
roared the old farmer after them from his high wagon.
“Yes, yes, we’re goin’ right past there,” called back Miss Sally in a
thin, high voice, firmly grasping the reins, and keeping an eye for
danger ahead. “Go easy there, Billy.”
Elyot, from his perch on the flat basket, with his back to Billy,
surveyed her carefully. He could tell by the big mole on her chin
that it was no one whom he had ever seen before. He was quite sure he
should have remembered that mole; and then he looked Miss Belinda over.
Meantime he had to cling to the basket tightly; for the cover, even
though flat, was quite slippery, and Billy had a way of putting his
heels down unexpectedly with a thud, and not always so evenly as one
ought to expect.
“Now, ain’t that a nice seat?” asked Miss Sally briskly, when they had
plodded along in this fashion for a mile or so.
“No; I do not think it is,” said Elyot, hanging on, and wishing he
could turn around, or jump out and rest his legs just once.
“Tush-tush! little boys shouldn’t be so free with their tongues,” said
Miss Sally, slapping the reins smartly up and down Billy’s back. “Land!
when I was a little girl I always set in front on a basket like that
when pa and ma took me ridin’.”
“Was it slippery?” asked Elyot, feeling a little less miserable since
some one would talk, “just like this one?” patting it.
“Yes, just as like it as two peas. Sho, now, Billy! An’ I remember when
pa took me to Cornwall Centre, and I never moved once on my basket,
but sat just as pretty. An’ I didn’t muss my pelisse a mite. Don’t you
remember their telling on’t when we got home, Belindy?” turning to her
sister in pride.
“Yes, I remember,” said Miss Belinda, with a glance of veneration at
the big square figure; “an’ I know ma alwus said you were a proper
child to take away, Sally.”
“Didn’t you ask to get down once, and just stretch your legs just
once?” asked Elyot, who felt that the time had now arrived when he must
beg that favor.
“Oh, dear me, no!” said Miss Sally in horror. “Why, that wouldn’t have
been proper, child. No, indeed, I just set pretty all the way.”