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THAT LITTLE GIRL
OF MISS ELIZA'S
A STORY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
BY
JEAN K. BAIRD
ROCK ISLAND, ILL.
_Augustana Book Concern_
_Printed in the United States of America._
AUGUSTANA BOOK CONCERN, PRINTERS AND BINDERS
ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS
CHAPTER I.
"The poorest farming land in all the country," someone called it. "The
best crop of stones and stumps, I ever saw," someone else had said.
Everyone smiled and drove on, and Shintown and its people passed from
their knowledge.
"Shintown? Where in the name of goodness did they get such a name?" the
elderly gentleman in the touring car asked his companion.
"Have to use your shins to get here. It used to be that Shank's mare was
the only one that could travel the miserable roads. They were mere
foot-paths. Even the railroads have shot clear of it. See over there."
There was truth in the words. Shintown, which was no town at all, but a
few isolated farmhouses, looked down from its heights on one side upon
the main line of the Susquehanna Valley, five miles away. On the other
side, at a little more than half the distance, the branch of the W. N.
P. and P. wound along the edge of the river. Both roads avoided Shintown
as though it had the plague. The name was quite enough to discourage
anyone. Nature had done its best for the place, the people had done
their worst. It stood in the valley, and yet on a higher elevation than
the country adjacent, the mountain being twenty miles distant. It was as
though a broad table had been set in a wide country, with the mountain
peaks as decorous waiters standing at the outer edge.
The houses were sagging affairs. They were well enough at one time, but
were now like a good intention gone wrong. The storm had beaten upon
them for so many years that all trace of paint was gone. The chimneys
sloped as far as the law of gravity allowed. Gates hung on one hinge,
and the fences had the same angle as an old man suffering with lumbago.
The corners of the fields were weed-ridden. The farmers never had time
to plow clear to the corners and turn plumb. The soil had as many stones
as it had had twenty years before. The whole countryside was suffering
from lack of ambition. Crops were small, and food and clothes were
meager. The stock showed the same attributes. It was stunted, dwarfed,
far from its natural efficiency in burden bearing, milk-giving or
egg-laying.
There was one place not quite like this--the old Wells place at the
cross roads. The house was neither so large, nor so rambling as the
others. It stood deep among some old purple beeches, and in summer it
had yellow roses clambering over one entire side. The color was
peculiar, and marked its occupant and owner just a little different from
other people in the community. Everyone conceded that point without a
question. She was just a little different. The house was all in shades
of golden brown; brown that suggested yellow when the sun shone. It was
a color that not a man in Shintown or a painter at the Bend or Port
would have thought of putting on a house. Who ever thought of painting a
house anything but white with green shutters or a good, serviceable
drab? Golden browns in several shades! Why, of course, the woman must be
peculiar. She did the work herself too. She arose at daylight to paint
the upper portion and she quit work when travel on the highway began.
That was another peculiarity which the countryside could not understand;
a woman who could be independent enough to choose what color she would,
in defiance of all set laws, and yet afraid to let folks see her
climbing a ladder to the second story.
If peculiar means being different, Eliza Wells was that. She was thirty,
and never blushed at it. She had even been known to mention her
birthdays as "I was twenty-nine yesterday. How time does fly!" And she
said it after the manner of one who might have said, "To-morrow I set
the old Plymouth Rock on a settin' of Dominick eggs."
But the country folk were kind enough and overlooked her not being as
themselves. There was a knowing smile now and then, a sage nodding of
the head. Now and then someone went as far as to say, "That's Liza's
way. She never did act like other folks."
Eliza knew she was peculiar and tried her best to be like those about
her. She had never known any other kind of people; for she had been born
and bred in the little place. But do as she could, her own self would
break loose every now and then. In spite of her effort to be like other
people, there were times when she could be nothing but her own unusual,
individual self.
It was not that she admired the ways of life of the people about her.
Had she done so, it might have been easier to have become like them. But
she argued in this fashion: if all these hundred souls lived in one way
and declared that to be the right way, then surely she was wrong, and
her ideas had all gone awry somewhere; for one could not stand against a
hundred.
The old Wells place had all the finger-marks of having a peculiar
occupant. Hollyhocks all along the walk to the milk-house, nasturtiums
climbing over a pile of rock; wistaria clinging to the trunk of a dead
tree; wild cucumber vines on a trellis shielding the wood-pile and chip
yard. In the recess of the old-fashioned front entrance were old blue
bowls filled with nasturtiums.
The old blue delft had been in the family of Eliza's grandmother Sampson
for generations. Everybody knew it; but Eliza paraded them and seemed as
proud of them as though they had just been purchased from Griffith's
"five and ten." But she couldn't fool the people of Shintown. They knew
a thing or two and they were certain that the bowls were over a hundred
years old.
On hot days, she ate on her kitchen porch, which she had enclosed with
cotton fly-net, and she stuck a bunch of pansies in a teacup and had
them beside her plate.
That was quite enough to show that she was peculiar. No one else in the
country put flowers on the table. Indeed, no one raised them. What was
the use? They weren't good to eat.
But Eliza's place was not a farm, else she could not have wasted so much
time on worthless things. Two acres was all she owned, and she kept half
of that in yard and flowers.
She would have had more room for garden if she would have cut down one
or more of her purple beeches, but she would not do that. When Sam
Houston suggested it to her, saying in his blunt way, "If you'd plant
less of the 'dern foolishness,' you'd have more room for cabbages," she
replied, with a merry glint in her eye, "Sometimes, I think cabbages is
the worst foolishness of all."
Sam could make no reply to that. A man couldn't reason with a woman who
had no more sense than that.
Eliza Wells could afford to be a little different from anybody else. In
the vernacular of the country, "she was well-fixed." This meant not that
she had millions, or even a hundred thousand, but there was money enough
out at interest to bring her in fifteen dollars each month. This, with
her garden truck and home, made her independent.
To have money in the bank was a distinguishing mark of rank. Not a soul
at Shintown except Eliza could boast so much. Sam Houston was the only
one in the countryside who had tales to tell of a father and a
grandfather who lived on interest money.
Her financial independence made Eliza's peculiarities a little more
bearable. They were the idiosyncracies of the bloated capitalist.
Eliza drove to the Bend the first of each quarter to draw her interest
money. She wore a black silk dress and a little bonnet. How she hated
the stiff shininess of black silk. How miserably awkward she felt with
the caricature of black lace and purple pansies, which custom called a
bonnet, on her head. But she had been reared to believe that black silk
was the only proper dress for a woman, no longer young, and the days
after twenty years were always placed to the credit of age.
So she wore her black silk, although she saw nothing pretty in it. The
women of Shintown envied her the possession of such a mark of gentility
and declared that Eliza had a good bit of style for a woman of her age,
and after a fashion all their own were proud of her.
She always drove Old Prince when she went to the Bend. There was always
a little shopping before she came home. Quarter day fell on the first of
July. The sun was fairly blazing upon the stretch of dusty road which
knew no shadow of tree.
Miss Eliza was anxious to get home. Her hands were sweating in their
heavy gloves. Not a breeze was stirring. The stiff black silk was not an
easy or comfortable dress for a hot day. Yet she let Old Prince take his
time. The flies bothered him considerably, and he shied like a young
colt at every object in the road. He had not been out of the stable-yard
for a week and what energy had been left to him had been bottled up for
this trip to town.
In his youth, some years before, he had been a vicious animal which only
a man with a steady nerve and strong hand could manage. But age had made
him tractable. He went home at a steady gait with the reins hanging
loose on his back, except when Eliza shook them to dislodge an annoying
fly.
As they turned the bend of the road at Farwell, Old Prince shied
suddenly and turned the wheels deep in the ditch. Eliza steadied herself
and seized the reins. "There, old fellow, go quiet. There hain't nothing
here to disturb you."
Her words sounded brave enough, yet she glanced apprehensively about.
The new railroads had brought their following of tramps, and Eliza was
fearful. She peered into the clump of elder bushes which grew up along
the hillside. It was a beautiful rather than a fearful sight which met
her eyes. A big woman with great braids of yellow hair sat in the shade
of the underbrush. Eliza did not notice that her dress was exceedingly
shabby. She did notice, however, that a little child lay in her arms.
Both were sound asleep as though utterly exhausted by their travels.
They were strangers. Eliza knew that at a glance. She knew all the
residents of the valley. A small traveling bag lay beside the woman. Her
hand resting lightly upon it, as though even in sleep she would keep it
in custody.
Miss Eliza spoke to Prince who would persist in frolicking and garotting
about like a colt. The public road was not a safe sleeping place for a
woman and child. Eliza recognized her duty. Leaning forward, she touched
the woman's hand lightly with her whip. She did this several times
before the woman's eyes opened.
"I've been trying to waken you," said Eliza. "The road is not a safe
place to sleep."
The woman looked wonderingly about, yawned and rubbed her eyes. It was
some minutes before she could get her bearings. When her eyes fell on
the child, she smiled and nodded back at Eliza and then got upon her
feet and began to put herself to rights.
"Where are you going?" asked Eliza.
The woman hesitated, puckered her brows and at last said, "I--I bane
gone to Yameston."
"Foreign," said Eliza mentally. She had no idea where 'Yameston' was,
but it was reasonable to suppose that the woman was cutting across
country to take the flyer at the Port where it stopped to change engine
and crews.
"It's no place for a woman to rest. Tramps are thicker than
huckleberries. Climb in and I'll drive you and your baby part of the
way."
The woman could not understand, but she did grasp the meaning of Miss
Eliza's moving to the opposite side of the seat and reaching forth her
hand to help her get into the carriage.
When they were safely seated, Miss Eliza touched Old Prince with the
whip. At that instant, the oncoming flyer, as it entered the yard,
whistled like a veritable demon. The two were too much for the old
horse, who had been a thoroughbred in his time and had never known the
touch of a whip. He reared on his hind feet, and then with a mad plunge
went tearing down the road which was hemmed in on one side by the hills,
and whose outer edge lay on the rocky bluffs of the river.
Miss Eliza held to the reins until they cut into the flesh. Bracing
herself against the dash board, she kept Old Prince to the middle of the
road. Just as she felt sure that she could manage him, the rein on the
hillside snapped. The tension on the other side turned the animal toward
the edge of the bank. Eliza dropped the useless rein, seized the child
in her arms and held it close to her breast, hoping by her own body to
protect it from the fall. It was all the work of a second. She shut her
eyes even as she did this.