The rather strained relations between Jud and David were eased the
next day by the excitement attending the big package Barnabas brought
from town. It was addressed to David, but the removal of the outer
wrapping disclosed a number of parcels neatly labeled, also a note
from Joe, asking him to distribute the presents.
David first selected the parcel marked "Janey" and handed it to her.
"Blue beads!" she cried ecstatically.
"Let me see, Janey," said M'ri. "Why, they're real turquoises and with
a gold clasp! I'll get you a string of blue beads for now, and you can
put these away till you're grown up."
"I didn't tell Joe what to get for you, Aunt M'ri; honest, I didn't,"
disclaimed David, with a laugh, as he handed the freezer to her.
"We'll initiate it this very day, David."
David handed Barnabas his pipe and gave Jud a letter which he opened
wonderingly, uttering a cry of pleasure when he realized the
contents.
"It's an order on Harkness to let me pick out any rifle in his store.
How did he know? Did you tell him, Dave?"
"Yes," was the quiet reply.
"Thank you, Dave. I'll ride right down and get it, and we'll go to the
woods this afternoon and shoot at a mark."
"All right," agreed David heartily.
The atmosphere was now quite cleared by the proposed expenditure of
ammunition, and M'ri experienced the sensation as of one beholding a
rainbow.
David then turned his undivided attention to his own big package,
which contained twelve books, his name on the fly-leaf of each.
Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson, Andersen's Fairy Tales,
Arabian Nights, Life of Lincoln, Black Beauty, Oliver Twist, A
Thousand Leagues under the Sea, The Pathfinder, Gulliver's Travels,
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Young Ranchers comprised the selection. His
eyes gleamed over the enticing titles.
"You shall have some book shelves for your room, David," promised
M'ri, "and you can start your library. Joe has made a good foundation
for one."
His eyes longed to read at once, but there were still the two
packages, marked "Uncle Larimy" and "Miss Rhody," to deliver.
"I can see that Uncle Larimy has a fishing rod, but what do you
suppose he has sent Rhody?" wondered M'ri.
"A black silk dress. I told him she wanted one."
"Take it right over there, David. She has waited almost a lifetime for
it."
"Let me take Uncle Larimy's present," suggested Jud, "and then I'll
ask him to go shooting with us this afternoon."
David amicably agreed, and went across fields to Miss Rhody's.
"Land sakes!" she exclaimed, looking at the parcel. "M'ri ain't
a-goin' to hev another dress so soon, is she?"
"No, Miss Rhody. Some one else is, though."
"Who is it, David?" she asked curiously.
"You see Joe Forbes sent some presents from Chicago, and this is what
he sent you."
"A calico," was her divination, as she opened the package.
"David Dunne!" she cried in shrill, piping tones, a spot of red on
each cheek. "Just look here!" and she stroked lovingly the lustrous
fold of shining silk.
"And if here ain't linings, and thread, and sewing silk, and hooks and
eyes! Why, David Dunne, it can't be true! How did he know--David, you
blessed boy, you must have told him!"
Impulsively she threw her arms about him and hugged him until he
ruefully admitted to himself that she had Jud "beat on the clutch."
"And say, David, I'm a-goin' to wear this dress. I know folks as lets
their silks wear out a-hangin' up in closets. Don't get half as many
cracks when it hangs on yourself. I b'lieve as them Episcopals do in
lettin' yer light shine, and I never wuz one of them as b'lieved in
savin' yer best to be laid out in. Oh, Lord, David, I kin jest hear
myself a-rustlin' round in it!"
"Maybe you'll get a husband now," suggested David gravely.
"Mebby. I'd orter ketch somethin' with this. I never see sech silk.
It's much handsomer than the one Homer Bisbee's bride hed when she
come here from the city. It's orful the way she wastes. Would you
b'lieve it, David, the fust batch of pies she made, she never pricked,
and they all puffed up and bust. David, look here! What's in this
envylope? Forever and way back, ef it hain't a five-doller bill and a
letter. I hain't got my glasses handy. Read it."
"Dear Miss Rhody," read the boy in his musical voice, "silk is none
too good for you, and I want you to wear this and wear it out. If you
don't, I'll never send you another. I thought you might want some more
trimmings, so I send you a five for same. Sincerely yours, Joe."
"I don't need no trimmin's, excep' fifty cents for roochin's."
"I'll tell you what to do, Miss Rhody. When you get your dress made
we'll go into town and you can get your picture taken in the dress and
give it to Joe when he comes back."
"That's jest what I'll do. I never hed my likeness took. David, you've
got an orful quick mind. Is Joe coming home? I thought he callated to
go West."
"Not until fall. He's going to spend the summer in his shanty boat on
the river."
"I'll hurry up and get it made up afore he comes. Tell me what he sent
all your folks."
"Joe's a generous boy, like his ma's folks," she continued, when he
had enumerated their gifts. "I am glad fer him that his pa and his
stepmother was so scrimpin'. David, would you b'lieve it, in that
great big house of the Forbeses thar wa'n't never a tidy on a chair,
and not a picter on the wall! It was mighty lucky for Joe that his
stepmother died fust, so he got all the money."
David hastened home and sought his retreat in the orchard with one of
his books. M'ri, curious to know what his selection had been, scanned
the titles of the remaining eleven volumes.
"Well, who would have thought of a boy's preferring fairy tales!"
David read until dinner time, but spent the afternoon with Uncle
Larimy and Jud in the woods, where they received good instruction in
rifle practice. After supper he settled comfortably down with a book,
from which he was recalled by a plaintive little wail.
"I haven't had a bit of fun to-day, Davey, and it's Saturday, and you
haven't played with me at all!"
The book closed instantly.
"Come on out doors, Janey," he invited.
The sound of childish laughter fell pleasantly on M'ri's ears. She
recalled what Joe Forbes had said about her own children, and an
unbidden tear lingered on her lashes. This little space between
twilight and lamplight was M'ri's favorite hour. In every season but
winter it was spent on the west porch, where she could watch the moon
and the stars come out. Maybe, too, it was because from here she had
been wont to sit in days gone by and watch for Martin's coming. The
time and place were conducive to backward flights of memory, and
M'ri's pictures of the past were most beguiling, except that last one
when Martin Thorne, stern-faced, unrelenting, and vowing that he would
never see her again, had left her alone--to do her duty.
When the children came in she joined them. Janey, flushed and
breathless from play, was curled up on the couch beside David. He put
his arm caressingly about her and began to relate one of Andersen's
fairy tales. M'ri gazed at them tenderly, and was weaving a future
little romance for her two young charges when Janey said petulantly:
"I don't like fairy stories, Davey. Tell a real one."
M'ri noted the disappointment in the boy's eyes as he began the
narrating of a more realistic story.
"David, where did you read that story?" she asked when he had
finished.
"I made it up," he confessed.
"Why, David, I didn't know you had such a talent. You must be an
author when you are a man."
Late that night she saw a light shining from beneath the young
narrator's door.
"I ought to send him to bed," she meditated, "but, poor lad, he has
had so few pleasures and, after all, childhood is the only time for
thorough enjoyment, so why should I put a feather in its path?"
David read until after midnight, and went to bed with a book under his
pillow that he might begin his pastime again at dawn.
After breakfast the next morning M'ri commanded the whole family to
sit down and write their thanks to Joe. David's willing pen flew in
pace with his thoughts as he told of Miss Rhody's delight and his own
revel in book land. Janey made most wretched work of her composition.
She sighed and struggled with thoughts and pencil, which she gnawed at
both ends. Finally she confessed that she couldn't think of anything
more to say. M'ri came to inspect her literary effort, which was
written in huge characters.
"Dear Joe--"
"Oh," commented M'ri doubtfully, "I don't know as you should address
him so familiarly."
"I called him 'Joe' when we rode to school. He told me to," defended
Janey.
"He's just like a boy," suggested David.
So M'ri, silenced, read on: "I thank you for your beyewtifull present
which I cannot have."
"Oh, Janey," expostulated M'ri, laughing; "that doesn't sound very
gracious."
"Well, you said I couldn't have them till I was grown up."
"I was wrong," admitted M'ri. "I didn't realize it then. We have to
see a thing written sometimes to know how it sounds."
"May I wear them?" asked Janey exultingly. "May I put them on now?"
"Yes," consented M'ri.
Janey flew upstairs and came back wearing the adored turquoises, which
made her eyes most beautifully blue.
"Now I can write," she affirmed, taking up her pencil with the
impetus of an incentive. Under the inspiration of the beads around her
neck, she wrote:
"DEAR JOE:
"I am wareing the beyewtifull beeds you sent me around my neck.
Aunt M'ri says they are terkwoyses. I never had such nice beeds
and I thank you. I wish I cood ride with you agen. Good bye.
From your frend,
"JANEY."