_The Old Garden._
JABE AND SAMANTHA EXCHANGE HOSTILITIES, AND THE FORMER SAYS A GOOD WORD
FOR THE LITTLE WANDERERS.
"God Almighty first planted a garden, and it is indeed the purest of all
human pleasures," said Lord Bacon, and Miss Vilda would have agreed with
him. Her garden was not simply the purest of all her pleasures, it was
her only one; and the love that other people gave to family, friends, or
kindred she lavished on her posies.
It was a dear, old-fashioned, odorous garden, where Dame Nature had
never been forced but only assisted to do her duty. Miss Vilda sowed her
seeds in the springtime wherever there chanced to be room, and they came
up and flourished and went to seed just as they liked, those being the
only duties required of them. Two splendid groups of fringed "pinies,"
the pride of Miss Avilda's heart, grew just inside the gate, and hard
by the handsomest dahlias in the village, quilled beauties like carved
rosettes of gold and coral and ivory. There was plenty of feathery
"sparrowgrass," so handy to fill the black and yawning chasms of summer
fireplaces and furnish green for "boquets." There was a stray peach or
greengage tree here and there, and if a plain, well-meaning carrot
chanced to lift its leaves among the poppies, why, they were all the
children of the same mother, and Miss Vilda was not the woman to root
out the invader and fling it into the ditch. There was a bed of yellow
tomatoes, where, in the season, a hundred tiny golden balls hung among
the green leaves; and just beside them, in friendly equality, a tangle
of pink sweet-williams, fragrant phlox, delicate bride's-tears,
canterbury bells blue as the June sky, none-so-pretties, gay cockscombs,
and flaunting marigolds, which would insist on coming up all together,
summer after summer, regardless of color harmonies. Last, but not least,
there was a patch of sweet peas,
"on tiptoe for a flight,
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white."
These dispensed their sweet odors so generously that it was a favorite
diversion among the village children to stand in rows outside the fence,
and, elevating their bucolic noses, simultaneously "sniff Miss Cummins'
peas." The garden was large enough to have little hills and dales of its
own, and its banks sloped gently down to the river. There was a gnarled
apple tree hidden by a luxuriant wild grapevine, a fit bower for a
"lov'd Celia" or a "fair Rosamond." There was a spring, whose crystal
waters were "cabined, cribbed, confined" within a barrel sunk in the
earth; a brook singing its way among the alder bushes, and dripping here
and there into pools, over which the blue harebells leaned to see
themselves. There was a summer-house, too, on the brink of the hill; a
weather-stained affair, with a hundred names carved on its venerable
lattices,--names of youths and maidens who had stood there in the
moonlight and plighted rustic vows.
If you care to feel a warm glow in the region of your heart, imagine
little Timothy Jessup sent to play in that garden,--sent to play for
almost the first time in his life! Imagine it, I ask, for there are some
things too sweet to prick with a pen-point. Timothy stayed there
fifteen minutes, and running back to the house in a state of intoxicated
delight went up to Samantha, and laying an insistent hand on hers said
excitedly, "Oh, Samanthy, you didn't tell me--there is shining water
down in the garden; not so big as the ocean, nor so still as the harbor,
but a kind of baby river running along by itself with the sweetest
noise. Please, Miss Vilda, may I take Gay to see it, and will it hurt it
if I wash Rags in it?"
"Let 'em all go," suggested Samantha; "there's Jabe dawdlin' along the
road, and they might as well be out from under foot."
"Don't be too hard on Jabe this morning, Samanthy,--he's been to see the
Baptist minister at Edgewood; you know he's going to be baptized some
time next month."
"Well, he needs it! But land sakes! you couldn't make them Slocums pious
'f you kep' on baptizin' of 'em till the crack o' doom. I never hearn
tell of a Slocum's gittin' baptized in July. They allers take 'em after
the freshets in the spring o' the year, 'n' then they have to be
turrible careful to douse 'em lengthways of the river. Look at him, will
ye? I b'lieve he's grown sence yesterday! If he'd ever stood stiff on
his feet when he was a boy, he needn't 'a' been so everlastin' tall; but
he was forever roostin' on fences' with his laigs danglin', 'n' the heft
of his feet stretched 'em out,--it couldn't do no dif'rent. I ain't got
no patience with him."
"Jabe has considerable many good points," said Miss Cummins loyally;
"he's faithful,--you always know where to find him."
"Good reason why," retorted Samantha. "You always know where to find him
'cause he gen'ally hain't moved sence you seen him last. Gittin'
religion ain't goin' to help him much. If he ever hears tell 'bout the
gate of heaven bein' open 't the last day, he won't 'a' begun to begin
thinkin' 'bout gittin' in tell he hears the door shet in his face; 'n'
then he'll set ri' down's comf'table's if he was inside, 'n' say, 'Wall,
better luck next time: slow an' sure 's my motto!' Good-mornin',
Jabe,--had your dinner?"
"I ain't even hed my breakfast," responded Mr. Slocum easily.
"Blessed are the lazy folks, for they always git their chores done for
'em," remarked Samantha scathingly, as she went to the buttery for
provisions.
"Wall," said Laigs, looking at her with his most irritating smile, as he
sat down at the kitchen table, "I don't find I git thru any more work by
tumblin' out o' bed 't sun-up 'n I dew 'f I lay a spell 'n' let the
univarse git het up 'n' runnin' a leetle mite. 'Slow 'n' easy goes fur
in a day' 's my motto. Rhapseny, she used to say she should think I'd be
ashamed to lay abed so late. 'Wall, I be,' s' I, 'but I'd ruther be
ashamed 'n git up!' But you're an awful good cook, Samanthy, if ye air
allers in a hurry, 'n' if yer hev got a sharp tongue!"
"The less you say 'bout my tongue the better!" snapped Samantha.
"Right you are," answered Jabe with a good-natured grin, as he went on
with his breakfast. He had a huge appetite, another grievance in
Samantha's eyes. She always said "there was no need of his being so
slab-sided 'n' slack-twisted 'n' knuckle-jointed,--that he eat enough in
all conscience, but he wouldn't take the trouble to find the victuals
that would fat him up 'n' fill out his bag o' bones."
Just as Samantha's well-cooked viands began to disappear in Jabe's
capacious mouth (he always ate precisely as if he were stoking an
engine) his eye rested upon a strange object by the wood-box, and he put
down his knife and ejaculated, "Well, I swan! Now when 'n' where'd I see
that baby-shay? Why, 't was yesterday. Well, I vow, them young ones was
comin' here, was they?"
"What young ones?" asked Miss Vilda, exchanging astonished glances with
Samantha.
"And don't begin at the book o' Genesis 'n' go clean through the Bible,
's you gen'ally do. Start right in on Revelations, where you belong,"
put in Samantha; for to see a man unexpectedly loaded to the muzzle with
news, and too lazy to fire it off, was enough to try the patience of a
saint; and even David Milliken would hardly have applied that term to
Samantha Ann Ripley.
"Give a feller time to think, will yer?" expostulated Jabe, with his
mouth full of pie. "Everything comes to him as waits 'd be an awful good
motto for you! Where'd I see 'em? Why, I fetched 'em as fur as the
cross-roads myself."
"Well, I never!" "I want to know!" cried the two women in one breath.
"I picked 'em up out on the road, a little piece this side o' the
station. 'T was at the top o' Marm Berry's hill, that's jest where 't
was. The boy was trudgin' along draggin' the baby 'n' the basket, 'n' I
thought I'd give him a lift, so s' I, 'Goin' t' the Swamp or t' the
Falls?' s' I. 'To the Falls,' s' 'e. 'Git in,' s' I, ''n' I'll give yer
a ride, 'f y' ain't in no hurry,' s' I. So in he got, 'n' the baby tew.
When I got putty near home, I happened ter think I'd oughter gone roun'
by the tan'ry 'n' picked up the Widder Foss, 'n' so s' I, 'I ain't goin'
no nearer to the Falls; but I guess your laigs is good for the balance
o' the way, ain't they?' s' I. 'I guess they be!' s' 'e. Then he thanked
me 's perlite's Deacon Sawyer's first wife, 'n' I left him 'n' his folks
in the road where I found 'em."
"Didn't you ask where he belonged nor where he was bound?"
"'T ain't my way to waste good breath askin' questions 't ain't none o'
my bis'ness," replied Mr. Slocum.
"You're right, it ain't," responded Samantha, as she slammed the
milk-pans in the sink; "'n' it's my hope that some time when you get
good and ready to ask somebody somethin' they'll be in too much of a
hurry to answer you!"
"Be they any of your folks, Miss Vildy?" asked Jabe, grinning with
delight at Samantha's ill humor.
"No," she answered briefly.
"What yer cal'latin' ter do with 'em?"
"I haven't decided yet. The boy says they haven't got any folks nor any
home; and I suppose it's our duty to find a place for 'em. I don't see
but we've got to go to the expense of takin' 'em back to the city and
puttin' 'em in some asylum."
"How'd they happen to come here?"
"They ran away from the city yesterday, and they liked the looks of this
place; that's all the satisfaction we can get out of 'em, and I dare say
it's a pack of lies."
"That boy wouldn't tell a lie no more 'n a seraphim!" said Samantha
tersely.
"You can't judge folks by appearances," answered Vilda. "But anyhow,
don't talk to the neighbors, Jabe; and if you haven't got anything
special on hand to-day, I wish you'd patch the roof of the summer house
and dig us a mess of beet greens. Keep the children with you, and see
what you make of 'em; they're playin' in the garden now."
"All right. I'll size 'em up the best I ken, tho' mebbe it'll hender me
in my work some; but time was made for slaves, as the molasses said when
they told it to hurry up in winter time."
Two hours later, Miss Vilda looked from the kitchen window and saw Jabez
Slocum coming across the road from the garden. Timothy trudged beside
him, carrying the basket of greens in one hand, and the other locked in
Jabe's huge paw; his eyes upturned and shining with pleasure, his lips
moving as if he were chattering like a magpie. Lady Gay was just where
you might have expected to find her, mounted on the towering height of
Jabe's shoulder, one tiny hand grasping his weather-beaten straw hat,
while with the other she whisked her willing steed with an alder switch
which had evidently been cut for that purpose by the victim himself.
"That's the way he's sizin' of 'em up," said Samantha, leaning over
Vilda's shoulder with a smile. "I'll bet they've sized him up enough
sight better 'n he has them!"
Jabe left the children outside, and came in with the basket. Putting his
hat in the wood-box and hitching up his trousers impressively, he sat
down on the settle.
"Them ain't no children to be wanderin' about the earth afoot 'n' alone,
'same 's Hitty went to the beach;' nor they ain't any common truck ter
be put inter 'sylums 'n' poor-farms. There's some young ones that's so
everlastin' chuckle-headed 'n' hombly 'n' contrairy that they ain't
hardly wuth savin'; but these ain't that kind. The baby, now you've got
her cleaned up, is han'somer 'n any baby on the river, 'n' a reg'lar
chunk o' sunshine besides. I'd be willin' ter pay her a little suthin'
for livin' alongside. The boy--well, the boy is a extra-ordinary boy. We
got on tergether's slick as if we was twins. That boy's got idees,
that's what he's got; 'n' he's likely to grow up into--well, 'most
anything."
"If you think so highly of 'em, why don't you adopt 'em?" asked Miss
Vilda curtly. "That's what they seem to think folks ought to do."
"I ain't sure but I shall," Mr. Slocum responded unexpectedly. "If you
can't find a better home for 'em somewheres, I ain't sure but I'll take
'em myself. Land sakes! if Rhapseny was alive I'd adopt 'em quicker 'n
blazes; but marm won't take to the idee very strong, I don't s'pose, 'n'
she ain't much on bringin' up children, as I ken testify. Still, she's a
heap better 'n a brick asylum with a six-foot stone wall round it, when
yer come to that. But I b'lieve we ken do better for 'em. I can say to
folks, 'See here: here's a couple o' smart, han'some children. You can
have 'em for nothin', 'n' needn't resk the onsartainty o' gittin'
married 'n' raisin' yer own; 'n' when yer come ter that, yer wouldn't
stan' no charnce o' gittin' any as likely as these air, if ye did.'"
"That's true as the gospel!" said Samantha. It nearly killed her to
agree with him, but the words were fairly wrung from her unwilling lips
by his eloquence and wisdom.
"Well, we'll see what we can do for 'em," said Vilda in a non-committal
tone; "and here they'll have to stay, for all I see, tell we can get
time to turn round and look 'em up a place."
"And the way their edjercation has been left be," continued Mr. Slocum,
"is a burnin' shame in a Christian country. I don' b'lieve they ever see
the inside of a school-house! I've learned 'em more this mornin' 'n
they ever hearn tell of before, but they're 's ignorant 's Cooper's cow
yit. They don' know tansy from sorrel, nor slip'ry ellum from
pennyroyal, nor burdock from pigweed; they don' know a dand'lion from a
hole in the ground; they don' know where the birds put up when it comes
on night; they never see a brook afore, nor a bull-frog; they never
hearn tell o' cat-o'-nine-tails, nor jack-lanterns, nor see-saws. Land
sakes! we got ter talkin' 'bout so many things that I clean forgot the
summer-house roof. But there! this won't do for me: I must be goin';
there ain't no rest for the workin'-man in this country."
"If there wa'n't no work for him, he'd be wuss off yet," responded
Samantha.
"Right ye are, Samanthy! Look here, when 'd you want that box you give
me to fix?"
"I wanted it before hayin', but I s'pose any time before Thanksgivin'
'll do, seein' it's you."
"What's wuth doin' 't all 's wuth takin' time over, 's my motto," said
Jabe cheerfully, "but seein' it's you, I'll nail that cover on ter night
or bust!"