THE HIRED MAN
"Claire, darling--
"It's after ten o'clock at night and here on North Hero that's like
four in the morning in New York, but I can't wait another minute to
write to you. The _funniest_ thing has happened--only I'll save it for
the end of my letter.
"I haven't written to you since that letter with the crazy postscript,
like a nightcap, on it. Well, instead of being deported from Happy
House, bag and baggage, I seem to become more of a fixture, each day.
And each day, Claire Wallace, I grow more and _more_ to think I belong
here. Just so often I have to shake myself and say 'don't
forget--you're pretending.' And, I scarcely dare write this--I believe
they are all growing a _little_, wee bit fond of me--the real me. Of
course Webb loved me at first sight and so did old Jonathan--_he's_ a
dear! And precious little Aunt Milly, who is getting the prettiest
pink in her cheeks and can laugh now, truly laugh, and is as proud as
can be over her first washcloth, she wants me with her all the time. I
can tell by the way she looks at me. And I am really growing
embarrassed, to say nothing of fat, with the good things B'lindy cooks
and if you knew B'lindy, you'd understand that that is _her_ way of
showing sentiment. But as to Aunt Sabrina--I am not so sure!
"Things have changed since I wrote to you--there was an awful clashing
of wills in Happy House and Aunt Sabrina came out on the bottom and
since then she has an air of 'having washed her hands of me.' And
she's stopped the lessons on Leavitts, too, just when we'd gotten to
Ezekiel. But I've learned more than she wanted me to--I've found out
about the mystery, as I wrote before, only I can't explain until our
own Anne says I may--because it's about her grandfather!
"I believe in my last letter I said, too, that I hated Happy House.
Well, I don't believe I do. It's a funny place--just when you think
its dismal and prisony you see something you just love--like one of
Jonathan's rose ramblers, all pinky, climbing up an old gray tree
trunk. I can't explain it, there's a sort of an appeal about the whole
place that's spooky, as though it was something human and--wanted me!
Isn't that a silly notion, especially when I'm just here acting Anne's
part so that she can go off to Russia?
"And this whole village is just like Happy House--it is proudly
clinging to what it has been in the past and defying the advance of the
new things of the present. When I walk along the main street (and only
street) of the village I stare at the shutup houses, for, bless me, no
one would dream of opening any blinds, and I wonder if there's a
marble-topped table in every one of those best-parlors and a family
Bible on every table filled with pages of ancestors. I suppose I'm
wickedly disrespectful--when I see my dear Dad, and oh, how I want,
want, want to see him--I shall tell him that now I know he didn't bring
me up right.
"I am a 'honery' member of a club--and now I'm approaching the exciting
part of my letter. It is called Cove's Club and has rules that forbid
my swearing, talking back, smoking, lying, stealing bird's eggs,
hurting dumb animals, and that make me fight (and lick) every enemy to
the club (which, alas, seem to be mostly mothers) kill pirates and
defend my country. Isn't that heavenly? It meets whenever Liz
Hopworth has to clean the 'meetin' house' which is always on Mondays
and after there's a social. And to attend the meetings you have to
slide down thirty feet of bank to what is known around here as Falling
Water Cove, though I don't believe water ever fell there. Anyway, it
is a historic spot for reasons besides the club--one is that it was
from there Robert Leavitt and the women of the household, with little
Justine, escaped when Freedom was attacked by the Indians and it was
there, one dark night, Ethan Allen himself landed in a boat for a
secret conference with Jacob Leavitt before an attack upon the Yorkers.
(90 plus in American History.)
"And the members of the Club are (please read slowly) Me, Davy
Hopworth, Dick Snead, Jim Davis, Kirk Brown and Peter Hyde--the hired
man.
"Peter Hyde and I are the 'honery' members."
"I can hear you, Claire. 'That is just like you, Nancy Leavitt--swear
you're going to do one thing and doing another.' Yes, darling, it is
like me, I'll admit! But this time it's different. I really did
intend to be very haughty and distant each time I saw the man but--I
couldn't. Could you, if you had just been running a race which
included vaulting a stone wall? I had to run the race to win Davy's
respect and I had to jump the wall--well, to show I could! And of
course I never dreamed the creature was anywhere around. But he sprang
up from the earth, I believe, and was there at the finish. And could
_you_ look haughty with every hair pin dropping out of your head?
"And, anyway, afterwards, he explained something that has made
everything different, but that comes later in my story.
"Today it rained for the first time since I've been in North Hero. A
sort of steady pitter-patter, not the kind of a downpour that makes you
hug shelter, but a splashy sort you long to run out in with your face
turned up. All morning long I sat with the aunts (Aunt Milly was so
disappointed when she saw the rain that I brought her down to the
hollyhock porch and made her all comfy there) and I simply couldn't
stand it all afternoon so, after lunch, I stole away. Now Happy House
is divided (thank goodness) into two parts, so if the aunts are on one
side it is easy to slip out of the other. I put on my slicker and cap
and slipped away. I frisked around in the rain drops for awhile, then,
I started toward the orchard to see if my water-proof box was
water-proof. And as I walked down the path I heard the sound of
hammering from the direction of my Nest. 'A-ha,' says I, 'I will
surprise nice Mr. Webb at his work!' So I crept up on tiptoe. And,
oh, Claire, it wasn't Mr. Webb _at all--it was Peter Hyde_! There he
was with a hammer and a saw and some nails in a funny apron he had tied
around him working away with the rain spattering through the leaves
right into his face.
"I was so surprised I thought I'd run back, but just at that moment he
saw me. And of course, the way I always do when I shouldn't, I began
to laugh. And he laughed, too, though he _was_ embarrassed.
"I am sure he didn't want me to find out that he had made the seat.
But for a hired man he met the situation with ease. He simply asked me
to stand there while he drove one more nail; then, he said, his work
would be complete. When he'd finished he held out his hand and invited
me to climb into the nest. All this with the rain spattering on us!
Of course I had to tell him that it was perfectly lovely and had been
such a jolly surprise and that I had thought Webb had made it. And now
comes the funny part. He explained in a sort of sheepish way that he
thought _I was a little girl_! Jonathan had told him that Miss
Sabrina's little niece was coming to Happy House. When he caught a
glimpse of me in the stage (he dared to say this) he thought I looked
like a 'jolly sort of a kid.' Then that very afternoon he saw me turn
a handspring in the orchard--and climb the tree! He said he got to
thinking what a sort of dull place Happy House would be for any
youngster, and that it would be fun for him to do some little thing to
make it jollier for her. He admitted, to use his own words, that he
was flabbergasted to find that I wasn't a kid after all! I'm glad, in
a 'close-up' I _do_ look my years!
"But can't you see that that explains _everything_ and that he _wasn't_
impertinent, after all?
"Of course, living in cities all my life, I've always had an impression
that hired men were just big, clumsy, dirty looking creatures who ate
with knives and always smelled horsey. This Peter Hyde isn't that way
at all. He's tanned copper-color but his face and hands look clean and
except for his clothes, he doesn't look much different from any one
else. And now that he knows I am quite grown-up (at least in years) he
treats me very nicely.
"We're going to do all sorts of nice things for Davy Hopworth, who is a
very nice, bright youngster, but, just because he's a Hopworth, the
other boys get punished for playing with him and that makes both Peter
Hyde and me indignant.
"Isn't the world funny, Claire, how the sins of the fathers and the
grandfathers are visited upon the children--at least in places like
this? Of course my beloved Finnegans are too busy just keeping the
present generation going, to think much about the past, and the world
they live in rushes too fast to stop to think that Timmy Finnegan,
maybe's, going to rob a bank because his great-great-grandfather, over
in County Cork, ran off with a pig.
"It is too late in the evening to philosophize, and I mustn't let my
wick burn too low or Aunt Sabrina will know I'm using the midnight oil.
Don't be cross, dear Claire, if you don't hear from me every day;
although you might suppose that up here I'd have a great deal of
leisure time, somehow each day seems to bring something unexpected.
And as I said on page 2 of this voluminous letter, I am growing fond of
Happy House and there is a sort of fascination about everything here.
Dear Anne, with her noble dreams, never longed to bring about the
reforms that I do! One is to throw out the dreadful waxed flowers and
peacock feathers and old grasses from Happy House and fill the vases
with fresh flowers. Another is to sweep through the whole blessed
village and open every blind and let in today!
"And then when I'm bursting with my longing to make the whole world
better, I'm suddenly reminded that I'm just a little next-to-nothing
that can't even remember to act grown-up, masquerading in our Anne's
shoes and daring to find flaws in Miss Sabrina Leavitt with all the
noble heritage of Leavitt tradition flowing in her veins.
"Good night, littlest pal, I wish I could be with you long enough for a
good, long gossip. But, by and by--"