AT THE BEEBES.
When they turned the corner of High Street, which was the former
post-road of the old town, and began to descend its somewhat crooked
slope, Elyot flew off from his basket, and began to shout excitedly,
“Oh, there it is--there it is, oh, _please_ stop!”
“Set down, child!” commanded Miss Sally sharply; and gathering the
leather reins in one hand, she picked him energetically by the blouse.
Miss Belinda exclaimed faintly, “Oh, he’ll fall out!” and put out her
mitted fingers to help.
“You keep quiet, Belindy,” said Miss Sally brusquely; “you got one
child to look after; I’ll see to this one. Now, set still,” to Elyot,
“till we get there. Then, goodness knows I’ll be glad enough to let you
out.”
Elyot tried to still his throbbing heart and hang to the basket,
craning his neck to watch the Beebe shop, while Billy leisurely picked
his way over the cobble-stones.
“There, here you be!” exclaimed Miss Sally, as at last they drew up in
front of the little shop, “to home; and, my land, I’m thankful enough!”
Elyot was out over the wheel long before she finished, and holding up
his arms for Barby.
“That boy can’t carry her,” cried Miss Belinda nervously from the
depths of the gig; “let me get out, Sally, and take her in.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Miss Sally, who knew very well what settling Miss
Belinda in again would be; “she’ll wake up soon’s she’s on the ground.
And her folks’ll come out and get her. Give her to me.”
With that she bundled Barby out, a sleepy little heap, into Elyot’s
outstretched arms. “Now, run right along in to home,” she commanded;
and slapping the reins over Billy’s back, the gig passed slowly down
the street, Miss Belinda working her spare figure around to apply her
eye to the square of dingy glass at the back.
“I hope they’ll get in safe,” she breathed anxiously.
“Nonsense!” said Miss Sally again. “Well, now, Belindy,” and she took
up the interrupted thread of their morning’s business, “I b’lieve we
better not take up this jell to Mrs. Jasper King’s till afternoon.
Seein’ we’re here, we better do a mite o’ tradin’.”
“Very well,” said Miss Belindy meekly, who would have said, “Very well”
if the other way had been proposed.
Meanwhile Elyot, not taking one blissful moment to stretch his legs,
staggered over the uneven pavement, and set Barby on the broad, flat
doorstone. Then he doubled up his little fist, being too short to reach
the old knocker, and too polite to enter the shop without any summons
at all, and rapped with all his force on the green door. Nobody coming,
he propped Barby safely up against the upper step so that she would not
fall over on her nose, and ran and peered into the little window strung
with shoes and boots and rubbers of every description.
“Mr. Beebe!” he cried in a shrill little voice, and plastering his face
against the small panes of glass, “oh, my dear Mr. Beebe, please let me
in!”
“Open the door, and go in, child,” said a good-natured woman coming
along; “folks don’t knock when they’re going to th’ shop. Th’ knocker’s
for Sundays, when you’re goin’ to call.” With that she reached over
Barby, and threw wide the door. “Mr. Beebe,” she called, “here’s
somebody wants to see you.”
“Oh, let me tell ’em first!” screamed Elyot, running past her, and
precipitating himself into a fat old lady in a white cap with a good
deal of pink ribbon. “We’ve come all this way to see you!”
“Oh, my good gracious me!” exclaimed Mrs. Beebe, raising both hands
in astonishment, then clasping him close. “Pa! pa!” she screamed,
“here’s the little King boy come to see us! Is your ma out there in the
carriage?” all in the same breath.
“Oh, no!” cried Elyot, in the greatest pride; “we came all alone by
ourselfs--and Barby’s out on the step;” and he dragged Mrs. Beebe along
by the apron.
Old Mr. Beebe, a good deal slower than he used to be, came leaning on
his cane, out from the little room at the back, and over to the green
front door.
[Illustration: He propped Barby up against the upper step, and ran and
peered into the little window strung with shoes.]
“Well, now, my little dear,” he kept saying all the way with a pleased
smile, and beaming kindly over his big silver spectacles, “that’s nice
to see you to-day.”
“You poor lamb, you,” Mrs. Beebe was saying to Barby, and trying to
lean over to lift her up, “there, there, oh, you pretty creeter, you!
Pa, I don’t s’pose you can carry her. Oh, dear, I’m such a stout old
woman, an’ good for nothin’!”
“Oh! I’ll get her in,” said Elyot, really afraid that Mrs. Beebe would
tumble over; and before Mr. Beebe could remonstrate, he had lifted
Barby, and rolled her in over the sill, both of the Beebes “ohing” and
“ahing” all the time.
“Now, dear, there ain’t no manner o’ use in askin’ you how you come,”
said Mrs. Beebe, restraining her curiosity, “the first thing to do is
to see after that poor lamb there. Do you s’pose, Elyot, you could
manage to get her onto the sofy, an’ I’ll off with her shoes an’ bathe
them poor tired little feet. Oh, you poor lamb, you!”
“Yes, I can,” said Elyot manfully; and between the help that old Mr.
Beebe gave and old Mrs. Beebe contributed, Barby was soon on the old
chintz sofa.
“Now, says I,” declared old Mr. Beebe, rubbing his hands, “that’s
something like it. I’ll take off her shoes, wife, that’s in my line;
an’ you get the hot water an’ bathe her feet.” So he drew up a chair
to the side of the sofa, and putting Barby’s little dusty boots on his
knee, he drew them off, and the stockings; and Mrs. Beebe, coming out
with a big bowl, and a towel over her arm, sat down in the chair that
Elyot drew up for her. “Oh, me! oh, my!” she exclaimed compassionately,
“the poor precious little toes!” caressing them.
Elyot threw himself on the floor, and rolled and stretched in perfect
abandon.
“And he’s so tired too,” said old Mrs. Beebe, stopping in her work to
peer at him over her spectacles.
“Yes, I am,” declared Elyot; “so awfully tired sitting on a basket.”
“Sitting on a basket!” ejaculated both of the Beebes together.
Elyot nodded, and took another roll.
Just then Barby pulled away the white toes that Mrs. Beebe had
submerged with the warm cloth. “Oh!” she exclaimed, opening her eyes
dewy with sleep, and regarding them fixedly, “I want some pink sticks
for dinner; I’m hungry, truly I am.”
“I’d rather have one of the sugar doughnuts, please,” said Elyot, now
that his legs began to feel better, finding that he was very hungry too.
Old Mr. Beebe laughed till his sides shook and his spectacles tumbled
off, and Mrs. Beebe laughed too, and Elyot began to laugh, for he
was so comforted with it all, and he knew the doughnuts were coming;
and Barby laughed too, and it was so very jolly, that no one heard a
customer come in, until he said rather gruffly, “Is my boot half-soled,
Mr. Beebe?”
“Oh, bless you, yes!” said Mr. Beebe, getting up and hobbling over to
the other side of the room, and he lifted a curtain that concealed a
shelf where the repaired articles were kept; “yes, I had that done
yist’day, Mr. Coombs,” he said, bringing it out.
“You come along with me,” whispered old Mrs. Beebe to Elyot, “an’ we’ll
git the doughnuts. Lucky I made a big lot yist’day; I must ’a’ known
you were comin’;” and she laughed again.
“And bring the pink sticks,” cried Barby after them. Then she leaned
back on the old chintz pillow, and gazed entranced at the beautiful
rows and rows of shoes dangling from strings across the room, and
strung across the little window. And great green things, that afterward
old Mr. Beebe showed her were boxes that contained shoes and rubbers;
each had one of the articles hanging to it. And there, on the top shelf
of all, was a long row of big rubber boots--oh, and it smelt so very
lovely! Barby lay quite still, and sniffed and sniffed in delight.
And even when a long pink cinnamon stick was brought and put into her
chubby little hand, she held it loosely and still gazed on.
“It’s a pink stick,” shouted Elyot at her, his mouth full, and taking
his face out from behind a big doughnut.
“Isn’t it beautiful!” hummed Barby in delight. “An’ oh! how do you
do, my dear very own Mrs. Beebe, and pretty well I thank you mostly,”
remembering her manners.
“She will say such dreadful things,” broke in Elyot, quite mortified,
notwithstanding his satisfaction; “but you must excuse her, dear Mrs.
Beebe, ’cause she’s very little, you know.”
“You blessed dear!” cried old Mrs. Beebe, quite overcome with
admiration, and covering the little round face with kisses till her
cap-border trembled.
“And I shall say just the very same thing to dear Mr. Beebe,” declared
Barby decidedly. Then she began on her pink stick.
“There ain’t no mortal use askin’ them blessed dears how they come
here nor anythin’, till they gits rested, Jotham,” said Mrs. Beebe,
taking her good man by the arm as the customer departed, and whispering
violently. “And my! they’re as hungry--” she glanced around at them as
she spoke.
“They better ’a’ had somethin’ more solid ’n candy,” said old Mr.
Beebe, critically eying them too.
“Goodness me!” cried old Mrs. Beebe, “I wouldn’t ’a’ kept that blessed
child from her pink stick a minute more’n I could help. Look at her
suck it now!”
Barby’s face was wreathed in smiles, as she lay on her back, in the
fullest enjoyment of her pink stick, that was rapidly melting, and
adding considerable of itself to the dust that the mud-pie baking and
the travel had given her small countenance.
“Time enough to give ’em somethin’ solid when they’ve got what they
wanted,” said the old lady wisely. “Now, Jotham, we must let Mrs. King
know as soon as we can that them childern are here. Think how she’s
a-worritin’.”
“To be sure--to _be_ sure!” exclaimed old Mr. Beebe thoughtfully;
“well, how’ll we do it, Sarah. I can’t get down there, an’ now we don’t
keep no horse--well, I d’no what to do.”
“We must get some one to go for us,” said Mrs. Beebe determinedly; and
going to the door, she peered anxiously up and down the street. “Now,
there’s them two old ladies who come over from Hingham every week or
so,--the Scrannages,--I see their gig in front o’ Simons’s shop. I
wonder if they’d go for us. I mean to ask ’em.”
She untied her apron, and threw it over her shoulders, it being more
elegant than to go out with nothing over her waist, and waddled down
the street.
The Misses Scrannage were selecting a new calico dress apiece at Mr.
Simons’s shop; and he had taken them down to the extreme end, to see
the beautiful new stock he had just gotten in. They were now in a
complete state of bewilderment, not knowing whether or no to get a
bright pink with purple spots on it for Sally, as they were afraid it
wouldn’t wash, Mr. Simons solemnly assuring them every minute in which
there was a lull in their consultations, that he knew for an absolute
certainty that it _couldn’t_ fade. And when this was decided and cut
off, there was the choosing of Miss Belinda’s gown. She had set her
heart on two shades of green worked in together, with little white dots
all over the whole.
“I know that won’t wash,” declared Miss Sally scornfully; “an’ then how
’twill look when it streaks,” she was saying as old Mrs. Beebe stepped
into the shop.
“It never’ll do to interrupt ’em when they’re choosin’ caliker gownds,”
said the old lady to herself; “s’posin’ they shouldn’t get the right
ones, they’d blame me every blessed time they put ’em on. Oh, dear me!
I must wait; p’r’aps they’re most through.”
But it was a good three-quarters of an hour before Mr. Simons clicked
his scissors through the two pieces of calico, and they were torn off
beyond recall. Every minute old Mrs. Beebe had been on the point of
rushing home, or rather waddling, and had restrained herself, thinking
she heard the supreme moment of decision approaching. “Pa knows where
the cold meat, an’ the pies, an’ the bread is,” she comforted herself,
when she got nervous sitting on the wooden stool they brought her to
wait on. Now she hurried as fast as she could down to the end of the
shop.
“How d’ye do, Miss Sally and Miss Belindy Scrannage?” she said in her
most polite way, “I want to ask a gret favor;” trying to pull Miss
Sally, as the woman of business in the family, aside, that no one might
overhear.
“The little King children, Mrs. Jasper King’s, are at my house. Poor
things! they must ’a’ walked clear down here, when no one knew it,
and”--
“I brung ’em in our gig,” proclaimed Miss Sally in a loud voice. “Oh,
my land, an’ good gracious me!”