Two important events calendared the next week. The school year ended
and Pennyroyal, the "hired help," who had been paying her annual visit
to her sister, came back to the farm. There are two kinds of
housekeepers, the "make-cleans" and the "keep-cleans." Pennyroyal was
a graduate of both classes. Her ruling passions in life were scrubbing
and "redding" up. On the day of her return, after making onslaught on
house and porches, she attacked the pump, and planned a sand-scouring
siege for the morrow on the barn. In appearance she was a true
exponent of soap and water, and always had the look of being freshly
laundered.
At first Pennyroyal looked with ill favor on the addition that had
been made to the household in her absence, but when David submitted to
the shampooing of his tousled mass of hair, and offered no protest
when she scrubbed his neck, she became reconciled to his presence.
On a "town day" David, carrying a huge bunch of pinks, paid his second
visit to the Judge.
"Did she tell you," asked the tall man, gazing very hard at the
landscape without the open window, "to give these flowers to some one
who needed them?"
There was a perilous little pause. Then there flashed from the boy to
the man a gaze of comprehension.
"She picked them for you," was the response, simply spoken.
The Judge carefully selected a blossom for his buttonhole, and then
proceeded to draw David out. Under the skillful, schooled questioning,
David grew communicative.
"She's always on the west porch after supper." He added naively:
"That's the time when Uncle Barnabas smokes on the east porch, Jud
goes off with the boys, and I play with Janey in the lane."
"Thank you, David," acknowledged the Judge gratefully. "You are quite
a bureau of information, and," in a consciously casual tone, "will you
take a note to your aunt? I think I will ride out to the farm
to-night."
David's young heart fluttered, and he went back to the farm invested
with a proud feeling of having assisted the fates. The air was filled
with mystery and an undercurrent of excitement that day. After David
had delivered the auspicious note, a private conference behind closed
doors had been held between M'ri and Barnabas in the "company parlor."
David's shrewd young eyes noted the weakening of the lines of finality
about M'ri's mouth when she emerged from the interview. Throughout the
long afternoon she performed the usual tasks in nervous haste, the
color coming and going in her delicately contoured face.
When she appeared at the supper table she was adorned in white,
brightened by touches of blue at belt and collar. David's young eyes
surveyed her appraisingly and approvingly, and later he effected a
thorough effacing of the family. He obtained from Barnabas permission
for Jud to go to town with the Gardner boys. His next diplomatic move
was to persuade Pennyroyal to go with himself and Janey to Uncle
Larimy's hermit home. When she wavered, he commented on the eclipse of
Uncle Larimy's windows the last time he saw them. That turned the tide
of Pennyroyal's resistance. Equipped with soft linen, a cake of strong
soap, and a bottle of ammonia, she strode down the lane, accompanied
by the children.
The walk proved a trying ordeal for Pennyroyal. She started out at her
accustomed brisk gait, but David loitered and sauntered, Janey of
course setting her pace by his. Pennyroyal, feeling it incumbent upon
herself to keep watch of her young companions, retraced her steps so
often that she covered the distance several times.
At Uncle Larimy's she found such a fertile field for her line of work
that David was quite ready to return when she pronounced her labors
finished. She was really tired, and quite willing to walk home slowly
in the moonlight.
It was very quiet. Here and there a bird, startled from its hiding
place, sought refuge in the higher branches. A pensive quail piped an
answer to the trilling call from the meadows. A tree toad uttered his
lonely, guttural exclamation. The air, freshening with a coming covey
of clouds, swayed the tops of the trees with mournful sound.
David, full of dreams, let his fancy have full play, and he made a
little story of his own about the meeting of the lovers. He pictured
the Judge riding down the dust-white road as the sunset shadows grew
long. He knew the exact spot--the last bit of woodland--from where
Martin, across level-lying fields, could obtain his first glimpse of
the old farmhouse and porch. His moving-picture conceit next placed
M'ri, dressed in white, with touches of blue, on the west porch. He
had decided that in the Long Ago Days she had been wont to wear blue,
which he imagined to be the Judge's favorite color. Then he caused the
unimpressionable Judge to tie his horse to the hitching post at the
side of the road and walk between the hedges of sweet peas that
bordered the path. Their pink and white sweetness was the trumpet
call sounding over the grave of the love of his youth. (David had read
such a passage in a book at Miss Rhody's and thought it very fine and
applicable.) His active fancy took Martin Thorne around the house to
the west porch. The white figure arose, and in the purple-misted
twilight he saw the touches of blue, and his heart lighted.
"Marie!"
The old name, the name he had given her in his love-making days, came
to his lips. (David couldn't make M'ri fit in with the settings of his
story, so he re-christened her.) She came forward with outstretched
hand and a gentle manner, but at the look in his eyes as he uttered
the old name, with the caressing accent on the first syllable, she
understood. A deep sunrise color flooded her face and neck.
"Martin!" she whispered as she came to him.
David threw back his head and shut his eyes in ecstatic bliss. He was
rudely roused from his romantic weaving by the sound of Barnabas'
chuckle as they came to the east porch.
"You must a washed every one of Larimy's winders!"
"Yes," replied Janey, "and she mopped his floors, washed and
clean-papered the shelves, and wanted to scrub the old gray horse."
"Pennyroyal," exclaimed Barnabas gravely, "I wonder you ain't
waterlogged!"
"Pennyroyal'd rather be clean than be President," averred David.
"Where's M'ri?" demanded Pennyroyal, ignoring these thrusts.
"On the west porch, entertaining company," remarked Barnabas.
"Who?"
Pennyroyal never used a superfluous word. Joe Forbes said she talked
like telegrams.
Barnabas removed his pipe from his mouth, and paused to give his words
greater dramatic force.
"Mart Thorne!"
The effect was satisfactory.
Pennyroyal stood as if petrified for a moment. Than she expressed her
feelings.
"Hallelujah!"
Her tone made the exclamation as impressive as a benediction.
M'ri visited the bedside of each of her charges that night. Jud and
Janey were in the land of dreams, but David was awake, expecting her
coming. There was a new tenderness in her good-night kiss.
"Aunt M'ri," asked the boy, looking up with his deep, searching eyes
and a suspicion of a smile about his lips, "did you and Judge Thorne
talk over my education? He said that he was going to speak to you
about it."
Her eyes sparkled.
"David, the Judge is coming to dinner Sunday. We will talk it over
with you then."
"Aunt M'ri," a little note of wistfulness chasing the bantering look
from his eyes, "you aren't going to leave us now?"
"Not for a year, David," she said, a soft flush coming to her face.
"He's waited seven," thought David, "so one more won't make so much
difference. Anyway, we need a year to get used to it."
After all, David was only a boy. His flights of romantic fancy
vanished in remembrance of the blissful certainty that there would be
ice cream for dinner on Sunday next and on many Sundays thereafter.