Helen and Henry Knapp were skipping home from school, hand in hand, to
the tune of
“Skippety hop to the barber-shop
To buy a stick of candy.
One for you and one for me
And one for ...”
They were interrupted by their Aunt Mattie Farnham, who ran out of the
house and pounced on them. “For goodness’ sakes, Helen ’n’ Henry, tell
me about your folks! I’ve been worried to death about you all.”
She stopped, looked down at the new black dress she wore and said, with
a decent sigh, “Poor Aunt Emma passed away a week ago, you know. The
funeral was day before yesterday. I just got home this morning.”
The children tried, not very successfully, to put on a decent soberness
to match her sigh, and were silent, not knowing what comment to make.
They had, as a matter of fact, heard (although they had long since
forgotten it) that Aunt Mattie had been called away clear up to Maine
by a telegram announcing the sickness of her husband’s old aunt.
Usually they missed Aunt Mattie fearfully when she was away from town.
But this time the two months of her absence had been filled far too
full with other events.
Due respect to the abstract idea of death having been paid, after their
fashion, by each of the three, they reëntered ordinary life with the
exclamation from Aunt Mattie, “Now do tell me how ever in the living
world you’ve managed! How do you get along? I haven’t heard a thing,
not really to say heard. Mr. Farnham means to do all right, but he’s no
hand to write letters. I’d write and write and ask him about a million
questions about you all, and all he’d write back would be some little
smitch of news and a lot about the weather! He did tell me that your
Momma has got a job down at Willing’s and is doing fine. She would!
She’s a wonderful woman, your Momma is. Everybody knows that. But
however do you _manage_ with your poor Momma away all day and your
Poppa the way he is. How _is_ he? Awful bad?” Her kind fair face bent
anxiously towards them.
It was again as if the children tried, not very successfully, to put on
a decent soberness to match her expression. They hesitated as if they
did not know exactly what was decorous to say. Then Helen murmured,
“Father was awfully bad at first, they said. Mother sent us children
off to Brandville to stay with Gramma and Grampa Houghton so we didn’t
know anything about that first part. But Gramma got sick, and we had to
come home. And Father was lots better by that time.”
“But how do you manage?” queried Aunt Mattie again. “How can you, with
your poor Momma away? I never thought that house could run a minute
without her. She did _ev_erything!”
“Oh, we manage all right,” said Helen. “Father and us children keep the
house.”
“Your father! I thought he was in bed!”
“No, he’s able to be up in a wheel chair now. The janitor of the
store’s old father had a wheel chair and they didn’t sell it after he
died and it was up attic and he brought it to Father. He said Father
had helped him out at the store when his little boy was sick. Oh, lots
of the folks from the store have come to help out. The delivery driver,
he said he couldn’t ever forget what Father did for him one time. He
won’t tell what it was because he’s ashamed. Only he wanted to help
out, too, and as long as we had to have a furnace fire he came in every
morning and night to look out for the furnace. And he steps in daytimes
now, when he’s going by, to see if everything is all right. And old
Mrs. Hennessy, she’s the cleaning woman, she kept coming all the time
to help and bring in things to eat, pies, you know! She came in nights
and mornings when Father was so bad to do up the work and wouldn’t take
any pay for it. She doesn’t have to now, do the work, I mean. But she
still does the washings. Only we pay her, of course.”
Aunt Mattie’s look of bewilderment sharpened to distraction. “You
have only got me more mixed up than ever!” she cried vacantly. “Mercy
me! the furnace, the washings.... Yes, I see about those. But all the
rest! The meals! The housework! _Stephen!_ When I think of how your
poor mother slaved to....” She looked at them almost sternly as if
suspecting them of levity.
Henry said, “Father and all of us get along. You see Father’s all right
now, only his legs. He can do anything except walk. And Helen and I do
the walking for him.”
Mrs. Farnham made an exasperated gesture at their refusal to take in
her meaning. “_Who does the cooking?_” she shouted desperately, getting
down to bed-rock.
“Father does. We all do,” said Helen. “Father’s a lovely cook. He’s
learning out of the cook-book. And so am I--learning, I mean. We’re
learning together.”
Aunt Mattie’s face instantly smoothed into comprehension of
everything. She had wondered how they managed without a woman to keep
house for them. Now she knew. They didn’t manage.
“_Oh_ ...” she said, and, “Well....”
She looked at them compassionately. “I’ll have to get over to your
house as fast as ever I can,” she said as if to herself.
As her eyes dwelt half-absently on the children, she observed aloud,
“Seems to me Henry’s looking better. Not so peaked. Did that pepsin
treatment of Dr. Merritt’s really do him some good? I never thought
much of pepsin, myself.”
The children looked at each other as if surprised by something they had
not noticed before.
“Why, Henry, that’s so. You haven’t had one of your sick spells for
ever so long, have you?” said Helen. To her Aunt Mattie she explained,
“We’ve had so much else to think about we haven’t noticed.”
Mrs. Farnham rejected pepsin for another diagnosis. “_I_ know what
’tis. The visit to your Gramma and Grampa Houghton! I always told your
Momma that what Henry needed was country air. There’s nothing like a
change of air, _nothing_!”
Helen said now, “We’ve got to run along, Aunt Mattie. We help about
lunch. Father gets it ready, but we clear off and take Stephen out to
play a while.”
“Oh, that reminds me. How about Stephen? What does.... Is he.... How
does your....”
Her ingenuity was not enough to contrive a presentable form for her
inquiry, but the child came to her rescue understandingly, “Why,
Stephen seems to be growing out of those naughty streaks,” said Helen.
“He’s lots better, somehow. He still has a tantrum once in a while, but
not nearly so often, nor so bad. You see, he _likes_ Father’s being
sick!” She knew how shocking this was on Stephen’s part, and added
apologetically, “He’s so little, you know. He doesn’t understand how
terrible it is for poor Father. And Father tells him stories. All the
time, almost. Stephen loves them. Mother was always too busy to tell
stories, you know.”
“Well, I should say so indeed!” cried Aunt Mattie, outraged at the
picture, even hypothetical, of poor Evangeline’s attempting to tell
stories on top of everything else she had to do.
“Step along with you, children,” she said now. “I hadn’t ought to have
kept you so long, as ’tis. But I’ve been worrying my head off about you
all. Tell your Poppa that I’m coming right over there this afternoon to
see him just as soon as I get my trunk unpacked and things straightened
around a little.”