ARCTURA’S STORY
[Illustration]
SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.
Polly Prentiss is an orphan who, for the greater part of her life, has
lived with a distant relative, Mrs. Manser, the mistress of Manser
Farm. Miss Hetty Pomeroy, a maiden lady of middle age, has, ever since
the death of her favorite niece, been on the lookout for a little
girl whom she might adopt. She is attracted by Polly’s appearance and
quaint manners, and finally decides to take her home and keep her
for a month’s trial. In the foregoing chapters, Polly has arrived at
her new home, and the great difference between the way of living at
Pomeroy Oaks and her past life affords her much food for wonderment.
In the meantime Miss Pomeroy has inwardly decided that she will keep
Polly with her, but as yet she has not spoken to the little girl of
her intention.
Arctura’s prediction came true, for the first sound Polly heard when
she woke the next morning was a soft, steady patter on her window-pane;
the trunk of the elm tree was wet and black as if it had been raining
all night. Polly was reminded of that stormy afternoon not quite two
weeks ago when she had sat close to Uncle Blodgett in the old shed at
Manser Farm and heard him tell about his brave young nephew who had
gone to the war and died for his country.
“I wonder if they miss me?” thought the little girl at Pomeroy Oaks.
“Maybe they do, because they used to say I made all the noise there
was in the house. It seems a pretty long time till next winter, but
if I get real well acquainted with Miss Pomeroy so I can tell her
that my loving the Manser Farm folks won’t make me stop wanting to be
like Eleanor, maybe she’ll let me go to see them by Thanksgiving. I
wonder how my rag dollie likes it up in the garret in that tight box
where Mrs. Manser put her. I expect she’s lonesome, poor dolly! And
Ebenezer--I don’t persume anybody gets down on the floor to play with
him, because they’ve all got rheumatism except Mrs. Manser, and she has
pains in her head.”
There was no trip to the village for Miss Pomeroy and Polly that
morning. Toward noon Hiram drove off in the light wagon, holding a
large umbrella over his head, and returned well splashed with mud an
hour or so later.
Polly spent part of the morning in the library with Miss Pomeroy,
darning some stockings and a rent in the old red frock. Miss Pomeroy
had a book in her hands, but almost every time the little girl looked
up from her work she found the keen, gray eyes fixed on her face, and
it made her uneasy. She thought there must be something unsatisfactory
about her appearance, for her kind friend looked grave and troubled.
Polly decided to speak.
“My hair isn’t quite as flat as it is sometimes,” she ventured, after a
long silence. “Mrs. Manser used to say that she believed Satan got into
it when the weather was damp, and perhaps he does. I suppose the nicest
folks all have straight hair, don’t they, Miss Pomeroy?”
The only answer was a smile and a stroke of the brown curls, and Polly
was instantly confirmed in her opinion, while Miss Hetty’s mind was far
away.
“But, perhaps, as I get more and more like Eleanor, my hair will change
just as my cheeks are changing,” she thought, hopefully. “And I think
I’m stretching out a little bit, too, practicing the way Ebenezer did.”
The library was a delightful room, but the hour with Arctura before the
kitchen fire in the afternoon had a different sort of charm for Polly.
“You’re so comfortable, Miss Arctura,” she said, confidingly, to Miss
Green, when they were fairly settled with their work. Polly’s task was
an iron-holder, and that of her hostess the flaming sock designed for
Hiram’s ample foot. Miss Pomeroy was in her room, writing letters; she
had many correspondents in the world outside the little town, and they
kept her busy. Besides that, she had a purpose in leaving Polly with
the faithful Arctura a good deal of the time.
“The child is happier with you, and I want her to be happy,” she said,
with perfect frankness. “She’s a little afraid of me for some reason,
and though it hurts my vanity, I don’t want to hurry her confidence. I
believe I shall win it in time.”
“Of course, you will,” said Arctura, stoutly. “I can’t quite make her
out sometimes. She’ll seem real gay for a few minutes and then sober
down all of a sudden, as if she remembered something. She’s just as
anxious to please you as ever a child could be. Do you suppose that
Manser woman could have scared her any way? Told her you were set on
having her act any particular way, or anything?”
Miss Pomeroy’s life had been singularly apart from the current of
village gossip; she stared blankly at this suggestion and then shook
her head.
“It wouldn’t be possible,” she said, decidedly. “Mrs. Manser never
spoke to me until I waylaid her after church that Sunday, three or
four weeks ago. And there is nobody to tell her anything of me or
my ways of living. She simply knows that I took a fancy to Mary,
and--since yesterday--that I wish to adopt her.”
“M-m,” said Arctura, softly, as Miss Pomeroy turned away. “I shouldn’t
want to be too sure what folks know and what they don’t, in any place
where there’s a post-office, two meat-men, and a baker’s cart.”
“I’ve written my letter to go with the candy to-morrow morning,” said
Polly, as she basted a strip of turkey-red binding around a square of
ticking after Miss Green’s instructions. “It took me ’most an hour and
a half by the big clock, and I made four blots and had to look in the
dictionary three times, and now I expect it’s just full of mistakes. I
carried it to Miss Pomeroy, but she said she wanted Aunty Peebles to
have the first reading of it, and she helped me seal it with a great
splotch of red sealing-wax, and marked it with her big stamp.”
“Won’t it mix ’em all up to see a ‘P’ on the letter?” inquired Arctura.
“Why, no; what am I thinking of? ‘P’ stands for Prentiss just as well
as Pomeroy.”
“Yes, and for--for other names, too,” said Polly, remembering just in
time. “Polly Perkins--that’s in your song--it stands for both of her
names.”
“To be sure it does,” said Arctura. Then the chairs rocked in silence
for a few minutes. Arctura stole a glance at the face so near hers. The
little mouth was shut firmly, but there was a downward droop at the
corners, and it certainly appeared to Arctura that something glistened
in the long lashes that hid the great brown eyes.
“H-m--it’s a kind of a dull day for little folks and big folks, too,”
she said, poking vigorously at the ashes in the grate with her back to
Polly. “I don’t know as there’ll ever come a better time for me to tell
you about the Square and me when I was your age.”
When she turned around the brown eyes were shining to match the eager
voice, and Arctura smiled with satisfaction.
“This occurred forty-five years ago,” she began, briskly. “I might as
well break it to you that I’m all but fifty-five. I suppose you’ve met
folks as old as that, haven’t you?”
“Why, everybody at Manser Farm is ever and ever so much older, except
Mrs. Manser and Father Manser, and Bob Rust,” said Polly, earnestly.
“They’re all traveling on toward their end, Uncle Blodgett says, and
he doesn’t care how soon he gets his marching orders for the heavenly
land, but I care,” and the brown curls danced, “for I just love Uncle
Blodgett.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Arctura, heartily. “Well now, about the
Square and me. You see, my mother--‘marm,’ we all called her--was a
notable cook. I don’t approach her on pie crust nor muffins, and there
was a sort of rye drop cake,” said Miss Green, lowering her voice,
“that nobody but her could ever make. And she was a great one to invent
cake receipts, and then invite folks in to take a dish of tea in the
afternoon and test the new cake.
“The Square’s wife was a good deal younger than he--she’d only be
seventy if she was alive to-day, while he was eighty-five when he
died--and she’d often accept marm’s invitations, and come to our old
house--’twas burned years ago--and spend the best part of an afternoon
just as friendly as you please. Not that ’twas any great come down,
either,” said Arctura, with proper pride, “for my marm was of excellent
stock, and I’m the first woman in the family records to work for pay.
“But that’s nothing to do with the story. One morning when John and I
were starting off for school--Hiram was only a baby--marm gave us each
an errand to do on the way. I can remember I stood barefoot in the
grass--what did you say?” as Polly made a sound.
“Nothing but ‘oh!’” said Polly, quickly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,
Miss Arctura.”
“Never mind, I’m glad to have you take an interest,” said the
story-teller. “I can remember standing there in the grass waiting
for John, and saying over and over to myself, ‘Please, Mrs. Pomeroy,
marm sends her compliments and would like to have--no, that isn’t
right--please, Mrs. Pomeroy, marm sends her compliments and would be
happy to have you take tea with her this afternoon.’
“Pretty soon John came running out, and we took hold of hands and
started for school. John said marm had told him to get an ounce of
camphor at the store, and he was wishing she’d said a pound instead of
such a stingy little mite, and I had to set forth to him how much an
ounce of camphor could do before he was anyways reconciled.
“We had nearly two miles to go to school, and that morning when we got
to the fork in the woods I ran across lots to get there quicker, and
John went on down to the store. It was way out at the corners, not
where the Burcham block is now,” explained Arctura. “Folks expected the
village would grow this way, but it went the other.
“I ran to the front door, as marm had charged me to, and reached up
for the knocker and gave it a good bang. And what should I see but
the Square, instead of Mrs. Pomeroy that I was prepared for. He was
tall and stern looking, and my ideas just fled away when I saw him,
but I managed to remember my manners. I dropped a courtesy and said,
‘Please, marm wants Mrs. Pomeroy’s tea, and she’d be happy to have her
compliments this afternoon.’”
“Then it came over me what I’d said, and with being scared and all I
began to cry. And the Square just reached down and took my hand and led
me into the house, and Mrs. Pomeroy understood the message right off,
and said she’d be most happy to come. The Square kept hold of my hand
all the time, and when the message was straightened out he said, ‘May I
walk with you as far as our ways lie together, my little maid?’”
“Oh, wasn’t that beautiful!” cried Polly. “‘May I walk with you as far
as our ways lie together, my little maid?’ That’s something like Mr.
Shakespeare’s works that Uncle Blodgett has.”
“’Twas pretty fine talk, I think myself,” said Miss Green, “and ’twas
followed up by finer, though I can’t recall anything else word for
word. But we kept together hand in hand, he taking long strides and I
running alongside, as you might say, till we reached a house where the
Square had to stop. He took off his hat to me when he said good-bye
and shook my hand, and said, ‘I beg you to accept this trifling
remembrance, my little maid,’ and when I came to, there was a shining
gold-piece in my hand.”
“‘I beg you to accept this trifling remembrance, my little maid,’”
repeated Polly. “I think that’s even beautifuller than what he said at
first. I guess Uncle Blodgett and Grandma Manser, too, would like to
hear that. They love beautiful language.”
“When I got to school,” continued Arctura, after an appreciative
smile at Polly, “John was in the middle of a group of children on the
green. He’d taken off his coat and was showing ’em his first pair of
‘galluses’--bright red, they were, about the shade of this very yarn.
One of the children ran up to me and said, ‘I suppose your brother John
thinks he’s a man now, for he says his suspenders are just like your
father’s.’”
“I never answered her, but I just opened out my palm to let her see
the gold-piece, and I said, ‘The Square walked with me ’way to Mrs.
Brown’s, and gave me this.’”
“John had considerable interest for the boys that day, but the girls
were all taken up with me, and for weeks afterward when we got tired
playing, somebody’d say, ‘Arctura, now you tell about your marm’s
message, and the Square walking part way to school with you.’”
“Oh, I think it was ever so much more interesting than John’s
suspenders,” said Polly, breathlessly. “I never heard anything so
wonderful that happened to a little girl, Miss Arctura.”
Miss Green loosened the ruffle at her neck and slowly drew up a slender
chain on the end of which something dangled.
“Suspenders wear out, even the best of ’em,” she said, softly leaning
toward her little guest. “You look at that. My father bored a hole in
it, and marm gave me this chain that was her marm’s, and I’ve worn it
from that day to this.”
“And mind you,” said Miss Green, as Polly looked with awe at the little
gold-piece, kept shining by Arctura’s loving care, “whenever the Square
was a mite cross or unreasonable those last years, from his mind
getting tangled, I’d put my hand over this little dangling thing, and
I’d say to myself, ‘Arctura Green, who gave you the proudest day you
ever knew as a little girl?’ and ’twould warm my heart up in a minute.
There’s some that forgets, but, with all my faults, I ain’t one of the
number.”