CHAPTER V

E-text prepared by Michelle LaPointe, Kincardine Ontario Canada 2007

THE SECOND CHANCE

by

NELLIE L. McCLUNG

Author of

"Sowing Seeds in Danny"

Frontispiece by Wladyslaw T. Benda

_"Then I went down to the potter's house and behold

he wrought a work on the wheels.

"And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in

the hand of the potter; so he made it again another vessel

as seemed good to the potter to make it."_

----Jeremiah xviii, 3-4.

TORONTO

WILLIAM BRIGGS

PUBLISHER

Copyright, Canada, 1910. by

WILLIAM BRIGGS

TO MY MOTHER

MRS. LETITIA McCURDY MOONEY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. Martha

II. The Rising Watsons

III. "Knowledge Is Power"

IV. Something More than Gestures

V. At the Chicken Hill School

VI. Pearl's Unruly Conscience

VII. The Second Chance

VIII. A Good Listener

IX. Mrs. Perkins's Turn

X. The New Pupils

XI. The House of Trouble

XII. Pearl Visits the Parsonage

XIII. The Ladies' Aid Meeting

XIV. "In Case----"

XV. The Sowing

XVI. Spiritual Advisors

XVII. The Pioneers' Picnic

XVIII. The Lacrosse Match

XIX. The End of the Game

XX. On the Quiet Hillside

XXI. Frozen Wheat

XXII. Autumn Days

XXIII. Pearl's Philosophy

XXIV. True Greatness

XXV. The Coming of Thursa

XXVI. In Honour's Ways

XXVII. The Wedding

XXVIII. A Sail! A Sail!

XXIX. Martha's Strong Arguments

XXX. Another Match-maker

XXXI. Mrs. Cavers's Neighbours

XXXII. Another Neighbour

XXXIII. The Correction Line

XXXIV. The Contrite Heart

XXXV. The Lure of Love and the West

CHAPTER I

MARTHA

In the long run all love is paid by love,

Tho' undervalued by the hosts of earth.

The great eternal government above

Keeps strict account, and will redeem its worth.

Give thy love freely; do not count the cost;

So beautiful a thing was never lost

In the long run.

_----Ella Wheeler Wilcox._

THOMAS PERKINS was astonished beyond words. Martha had asked for

money! The steady, reliable, early-to-bed, early-to-rise Martha--the

only one of his family that was really like his own people. If he

could believe his senses, Martha had asked for two dollars in cash,

and had distinctly said that due bills on the store would not do!

If Martha had risen from her cradle twenty-five years ago and banged

her estimable parent in the eye with her small pink fist, he could

not have been more surprised than he was now! He stared at her with

all this in his face, and Martha felt the ground slipping away from

her. Maybe she shouldn't have asked for it!

She went over the argument again. "It's for a magazine Mrs. Cavers

lent me. I would like to get it every month--it's--it's got lots of

nice things in it." She did not look at her father as she said this.

Thomas Perkins moistened his lips.

"By George!" he said. "You youngsters never think how the money

comes. You seem to think it grows on bushes!"

Martha might have said that spring frost must have nipped the buds

for the last twenty-five years, but she did not. Ready speech was not

one of Martha's accomplishments, so she continued to pleat her apron

into a fan and said nothing.

"Here the other day didn't I send thirty-nine dollars into Winnipeg

to get things for the house, and didn't I get you an eighteen-dollar

wallaby coat last year, and let you wear it week days and all, and

never said a word?"

Martha might have reminded him that she was watering and feeding the

stock, and saving the wages of a hired man, while she was wearing the

wallaby coat, but she said not a word.

"You get a queer old lot more than I got when I was a young shaver,

let me tell you. I've often told you young ones how I left home, when

I was nine years old, with the wind in my back--that's all I got from

home--and with about enough clothes on me to flag a train with. There

wasn't any of these magazines then, and I don't know as they do any

good, anyway. Poor old Ann Winters sent away her good, hard-earned

dollar to some place in the States, where they said: 'Send us a

dollar, and we'll show you how to make fifty; light employment; will

not have to leave home; either ladies or gentlemen can do it.' She

saw this in a magazine and sent her dollar, and what she got was a

pretty straight insult, I think. They wrote back, 'put an

advertisement like ours in some paper, and get fifty people like

yourself to answer it.' There's a magazine for you!"

Martha looked at him helplessly. "I promised Mrs. Cavers I'd take it.

She's making a little money that way, to get a trip home this

Christmas," she said, locking and unlocking her fingers, the rough,

toil-worn joints of which spoke eloquently in her favour, if the old

man had had eyes to see them.

"You women are too easy," he said. "You'll promise anything. Yer poor

grandmother let a man put a piano in the shed once when it was

raining, and he asked her to sign a paper sayin' it was there, and he

could 'come any time he liked to get it; and, by Jinks! didn't a

fellow come along in a few days wantin' her to pay for it, and

showing her her own name to a note. She wasn't so slow either, for

she purtended she doubted her own writin', and got near enough to

make a grab for it, and tore her name off; but it gave me father such

a turn he advertised her in the paper that he would not be

responsible for her debts, and he never put his name to paper of any

kind afterward. There was a fellow in the old Farmers' Home in

Brandon that asked me father to sign his name in a big book that he

showed up in front of him, and I tell you it was all we could do to

keep the old man from hittin' him. Of course, Martha, if ye didn't

put it down in writin' she can't hold ye; but puttin' it down is the

deuce altogether."

"But I want to give it," Martha said slowly. "I want the magazine,

and I want to help Mrs. Cavers."

"Now, Martha, look a here," the old man said, "you're a real good

girl, and very like my own folks--in the way you handle a hoe yer

just like my poor sister Lizzie that married a peddler against all

our wishes. I mind well, the night before she ran away, how she

kissed me and says she: 'Good-bye, Tommy, don't forgit to shut the

henhouse door,' and in the mornin' she was gone."

Lizzie's bereaved brother wiped his eyes with a red handkerchief, and

looked dreamily into the fire.

Martha, still pleating her apron, stood awkwardly by the table, but

instinctively she felt that the meeting had closed, and the

two-dollar bill was still inside.

She went upstairs to her own room. It was a neat and pretty little

room, and the pride of Martha's heart, but to-night Martha's heart

had nothing in it but a great loneliness, vague and indefinite, a

longing for something she had never known.

A rag carpet in well-harmonized stripes was on the floor; a blue and

white log-cabin quilt was on the bed; over the lace-edged pillow

covers there hung embroidered pillow shams. One had on it a wreath of

wild roses encircling the words "I slept and dreamed that life was

Beauty," while its companion, with a similar profusion of roses, made

the correction: "I woke and knew that, life was Duty." Martha had not

chosen the words, for she had never even dreamed that life was

beauty. A peddler (not the one that had beguiled her Aunt Lizzie) had

been storm-stayed with them the winter before and he had given her

these in payment for his lodging.

She sat now on a little stool that she had made for herself of empty

tomato cans, covered with gaily flowered cretonne, and drawing back

the muslin frilled curtains, looked wearily over the fields. It was a

pleasant scene that lay before Martha's window--a long reach of

stubble field, stretching away to the bank of the Souris, flanked by

poplar bluffs. It was just a mile long, that field, a wonderful

stretch of wheat-producing soil; but to Martha it was all a weariness

of the flesh, for it meant the getting of innumerable meals for the

men who ploughed and sowed and reaped thereon.

To-night, looking at the tall elms that fringed the river bank, she

tried to think of the things that had made her happy. They were

getting along well, there had been many improvements in the house and

out of it. She had better clothes than ever she had; the trees had

been lovely this last summer, and the garden never better; the lilacs

had bloomed last spring. Everything was improving except herself, she

thought sadly; the years that had been kind to everything else were

cruel to her.

With a sudden impulse, she went to the mirror on her dressing table,

and looked long and earnestly at her image there. Martha was

twenty-five years old, and looked older. Her shoulders were slightly

bent, and would suggest to an accurate observer that they had become

so by carrying heavy burdens. Her hair was hay-coloured and broken.

Her forehead and her eyes were her best features, and her mouth, too,

was well formed and firm, giving her the look of a person who could

endure.

To-night, as she sat leaning her head on the window-sill, Martha's

thoughts were as near to bitterness as they had ever been. This,

then, was all it came to, all her early rising and hard work, all her

small economies. She had not been able to get even two dollars when

she wanted it. She sat up straight and looked sadly out into the

velvet dusk, and the tears that had been long gathering in her heart

came slowly to her eyes; not the quick, glittering tears of childhood

that can be soon chased away by smiles--not that kind, no, no; but

the slow tears that scald and wither, the tears that make one old.

It was dark when Martha lifted her head. She hastily drew down the

blind, lit the lamp, and washed away, all traces of her tears. Going

to a cupboard that stood behind the door, she took out a piece of

fine embroidery and was soon at work upon it.

Hidden away in her heart, so well hidden that no one could have

suspected its presence, Martha cherished a sweet dream. To her stern

sense of right and wrong it would have seemed improper to think the

thoughts she was thinking, but for the fact that they were so idle,

so vain, so false, so hopeless. It had all begun the fall before,

when, at a party at one of the neighbours', Arthur Wemyss, the young

Englishman, had asked her to dance. He had been so different from the

young men she had known, so courteous and gentle, and had spoken to

her with such respect, that her heart was swept with a strange, new

feeling that perhaps, after all there might be for her the homage and

admiration she had seen paid to other girls. In her innocence of the

worlds ways, good and bad, she did not know that young men like

Arthur were taught to reverence all women, and that the deference of

his manner was nothing more than that.

Martha fed her heart with no false hope-she never forgot to remind

herself that she was a dull, plain girl--and even when she sat at her

embroidery and let the imagination of her heart weave for her a

golden dream, it was only a dream to her, nothing more!

When Arthur bought Jim Russell's quarter-section and began farming

independently, the Perkinses were his nearest neighbours. Martha

baked his bread for him, and seldom gave him his basket of newly made

loaves that it did not contain a pie, a loaf of cake, or some other

expression of her good-will, all of which Arthur received very

gratefully.

He never knew what pleasure it gave her to do this for him, and

although she knew he was engaged to be married to a young lady in

England, it was the one bright evening of the week for her when he

came over, to get his weekly allowance.

Martha had never heard of unrequited love. The only books she had

read were the Manitoba Readers as far as Book IV, and they are

noticeably silent on the affairs of the heart. In the gossip of the

neighbourhood she had heard of girls making "a dead set for fellows

who did not care a row of pins" for them, and she knew it was not

considered a nice thing for any girl to do; but it came to her now

clearly that it was not a subject for mirth, and she wondered why any

person found it so.

As for Martha herself, the tricks of coquetry were foreign to her,

unless flaky biscuits and snowy bread may be so called; and so, day

by day, she went on baking, scrubbing, and sewing, taking what

happiness she could out of dreams, sweet, vanishing dreams.

CHAPTER II

THE RISING WATSONS

There is ever a song somewhere, my dear,

There is ever a something sings alway:

There's a song of the lark when the skies are clear

And the song of the thrush when the skies are gray.

_----James Whitcomb Riley._

WHILE Martha Perkins was weaving sweet fancies to beguile the tedium

of her uneventful life, a very different scene was being enacted, a

few miles away, in the humble home of John Watson, C. P. R.

section-man, in the little town of Millford, where he and his wife

and family of nine were working out their own destiny. Mrs. Watson up

to this time had spent very few of the daylight hours at home, having

a regular itinerary among some of the better homes of the town, where

she did half-day stands at the washtub, with, a large grain sack

draped around her portly person, while the family at home brought

themselves up in whatever way seemed best to them.

One day the fortunes of the Watson family suddenly changed, and in

such a remarkable way it would convince the most sceptical of the

existence of good working fairies. A letter came to Pearl, the eldest

girl, from the Old Country, and the letter contained money!

When it became known in the community that Pearl Watson had received

a magnificent gift of money from the parents of the young Englishman

she had nursed while she was working for Mrs. Sam Motherwell, it

created no small stir in the hearts of those who had to do with other

young Englishmen. Parents across the sea, rolling in ancestral gold

and Bank of England notes, acquired a reality they had never enjoyed

before. The young chore boy who was working for five dollars a month

at George Steadman's never knew why Mrs. Steadman suddenly let him

have the second helping of butter and also sugar in his tea. Neither

did he understand why she gave him an onion poultice for his aching

ear, and lard to rub into his chapped hands. Therefore, when she

asked him out straight about his folks in the Old Country, and "how

they were fixed," he, being a dull lad, and not quick to see an

advantage, foolishly explained that he "didn't 'ave nobody belongink

to him"--whereupon the old rule regarding second helpings was as

suddenly restored.

On the Monday morning after Pearl's return home she was the first

person up in the house. She made the porridge and set the table for

breakfast, and then roused all the family except Danny, who was still

allowed the privilege of sleeping as long as he wished and even

encouraged in this.

After the family had eaten their breakfast Pearl explained her plans

to them. "Ma," she said, "you are not to wash any, more, and isn't it

lucky there's a new Englishwoman across the track there in 'Little

England,' that'll be glad to get it to do, and no one'll be

disappointed, and we'll go to the store to-day and get Sunday suits

all round for the wee lads and all, and get them fixed up to go to

Sunday-school and church twice a day. Ye'll have to learn what ye can

while the clothes last. Mary'll have a new fur collar, and Ma'll have

the fur-lined cape; and yer old coat, Ma, can be cut down for me.

Camilla'll help us to buy what we need, and now, Ma, let's get them

ready for school. Money's no good to us if we haven't education, and

it's education we'll have now, every last wan of us. Times has

changed for the Watsons! It seems as if the Lord sent us the money

Himself, for He can't bear to have people ignorant if there's any way

out of it at all, at all, and there's nearly always a way if

people'll only take it. So, Ma, get out a new bar of soap and let's

get at them!"

But in spite of all Pearl and her mother could'do, there was only

enough clothing for two little boys, and Patsey had to stay at home;

but Pearlie beguiled him into good-humour by telling him that when he

grew to be a man he would keep a big jewellery store, and in

preparation therefor she set him at work, draped, in a nightdress of

his mother's, to cut watches and brooches from an old Christmas

catalogue.

"Now, Mary, alanna," Pearl continued, "you're to go to school, too,

and make every day count, There's lots to learn, and it's all good.

Get as much as ye can every day. I'm goin' myself, you bet, when I

get things fixed up, and Teddy and all of us. We've got the money to

git the clothes, and we'll go as far with it as the clothes'll last."

When Pearl, Mrs. Watson, and Camilla went that day to purchase

clothes for the family, they received the best of attention from the

obliging clerks. Mr. Mason, the proprietor, examined the cheque, and

even went with Pearl to the bank to deposit it.

Then came the joyous work of picking out clothes for the whole

family. A neat blue and white hairline stripe was selected for Jimmy,

in preference to a pepper-and-salt suit, which Pearl admitted was

nice enough, but would not do for Jimmy, for it seemed to be making

fun of his freckles. A soft brown serge with a white belt with two

gold bears on it was chosen for Danny, and gray Norfolk jacket suits

for Tommy and Patsey--just alike, because Pearl said everybody knew

they were twins, and there was no use denying it now. A green and

black plaid was bought to make Mary a new Sunday dress, and a red and

black plaid for "days." Pearl knew that when Mary was telling a story

to the boys she always clothed her leading lady in plaid, and from

this she inferred how Mary's tastes ran! Stockings and shoes were

selected, and an assortment of underclothes, towels, toques, scarfs,

and overshoes assembled.

It was like a dream to Pearl, the wildest, sweetest dream, the kind

you lie down and try to coax back again after you wake from it. She

could not keep from feeling Danny's brown suit and stroking lovingly

his shiny brown shoes.

Then came a "stuff" dress for Ma, and Sunday suits for Pa, Teddy, and

Billy. By this time the whole staff were busy helping on the good

work. Mr. Mason had no fur-lined capes in stock, but he would send

for one, he said, and have it still in time for Sunday, for Pearl was

determined to have her whole family go to church Sunday morning.

"My, what an outburst of good clothes there'll be," Camilla said.

"Now, what are you going to have for yourself?"

Pearl had always dreamed of a wine-coloured silk, but she hesitated

now, for she had heard that silk did not wear well, and was a

material for rich people only, but that did not prevent the dream

from coming back. While Pearl was thinking about it, Mr. Mason and

Camilla held a hurried conference.

"What about your favourite colour, now, Pearl?" Camilla asked. "Isn't

it a wine-coloured silk you always wish for when you see the new

moon?"

Pearl admitted that it had been her wish for quite a while, but she

wanted to see overcoats first; so overcoats were bought and overcoats

sent on approval. There were yards and yards of flannelette bought to

be made into various garments. Pearl was going to have a dressmaker

come to the house, who, under Camilla's direction, would make all

sorts of things for the Watsons.

Pearl's purchases were so numerous that two packing boxes were sent

up on the dray wagon, and it was a proud moment for her when she saw

them carried in and placed in the middle of the floor of the "room."

"Now, set down," Pearl said firmly; "every wan of ye set on the

floor, so none of yer stuff can fall, and I'll give ye what's for ye.

But ye can't put them on till Sunday morning, that is the Sunday

things, and ye can't put on any of them till, to-morrow morning, when

ye'll be as clean as hot water and bar soap can make ye; for me and

Ma are going at ye all to-night. There's nothin' looks more

miserabler than a good suit of clothes with a dirty neck fornenst

it."

Everybody did as Pearl said, and soon their arms were full of her

purchases. Danny was so delighted with the gold bears that he quite

neglected to look at his suit. Tommy was rubbing his chin on his new

coat to see how it felt. Patsey was hunting for pockets in his, when

some one discovered that Bugsey was in tears, idle, out-of-place

tears! Mrs. Watson, in great surprise, inquired the cause, and, after

some coaxing, Bugsey whimpered: "I wish I'd always knew I was goin'

to get them!"

Mrs. Watson remonstrated with him, but Purl interposed gently. "L'ave

him alone, Ma; I know how he feels! He's enjoyin' his cry as much as

if he was laughin' his head off!"

An hour was spent in rapturous inspection, and then everything was

placed carefully back in the boxes. That night, after supper, there

came a knock at the door, and a long pasteboard box, neatly tied with

wine-coloured ribbon, was handed in. On its upper surface it bore in

bold characters the name of "Miss P. Watson," and below that, "With

the compliments of Mason & Meikle."

Excitement ran high.

"Open it, Pearlie dear," her mother said. "Don't stand there gawkin'

at it. There'll be something in it, maybe."

There was something in it for sure. There was a dress length of the

softest, springiest silk, the kind that creaks when you squeeze it,

and it was of the shade that Pearl had seen in her dreams. There were

yards of silk braid and of cream net. There were sparkling buttons

and spools of thread, and a "neck" of cream filling with silver

spangles on it, and at the bottom of the box; rolled in tissue paper,

were two pairs of embroidered stockings and a pair of glittering

black patent leather slippers that you could see your face in!

"Look at that now!" Mrs. Watson exclaimed. "Doesn't it beat all?"

But Pearl, breathing heavily, was in a state of wordless delight.

"It's just as well I wasn't for scoldin' Bugsey for cryin' over his

suit," she said at length; "for if it wasn't that I'm feart o'

spottin' some of these, I'd be for doin' a cry myself. I've got such

a glad spot here in me Adam's apple. Reach me yer apron, Ma--it's

comin' out of me eyes in spite of meself. Camilla must ha' told them

what I would like, and wasn't it kind of them, Ma, to ever think o'

me? And who'd ever 'a' thought of Mr. Mason being so kind, and him so

stern lookin'?"

"Ye never can tell by looks, Pearlie," her mother said sententiously.

"Many's the kind heart beats behind a homely face." Which is true

enough in experience, though perhaps not quite in keeping with the

findings of anatomical science.

That night there were prohibitory laws made regarding the taking of

cherished possessions to bed by the owners thereof; but when the

lights were all out, and peaceful slumber had come to the little

house, one small girl in her nightgown went quietly across the bare

floor to the lounge in the "room" to feel once more the smooth

surface of her slippers and to smell that delicious leathery smell.

She was tempted to take one of them back with her, but her conscience

reminded her of the rule she had made for the others, and so she

imprinted a rapturous kiss on the sole of one of them, where it would

not show, and went back to her dreams.

All week the sound of the sewing machine could be heard in the Watson

home, as Mary Barner, Camilla, Mrs. Watson, and one real dressmaker

fashioned various garments for the young Watsons. Even Mrs. Francis

became infected with the desire to help, and came over hurriedly to

show Mrs. Watson how to put a French hem on her new napery. But as

the only napery, visible or invisible, was a marbled oilcloth tacked

on the table, Mrs. Francis was unable to demonstrate the principle of

French hemming. Camilla, however, showed her mistress where to work

the buttonholes on Patsey's nightshirt, and later in the afternoon

she felled the seams in Mary's plaid dress.

Saturday night brought with it arduous duties, for Pearl was

determined that the good clothes of her family would not be an

outward show only.

On Sunday morning, an hour before church time, the children were all

dressed and put on chairs as a precaution against accidents. Mrs.

Watson's fur-lined cape had come the night before, and Camilla had

brought over a real winter hat in good repair, which Mrs. Ducker had

given her. Mrs. Ducker said it was really too good a hat to give

away, but she could not wear it with any comfort now, for Mrs.

Grieves had one almost the same. Mrs. Ducker and Mrs. Grieves had had

a slight unpleasantness at the last annual Ladies' Aid dinner, the

subject under discussion being whether chickens should be served with

or without bones.

Camilla came for the boys on Sunday morning, and took them for Mrs.

Francis to see, and also for the boys to see themselves in the long

mirror in the hall. Danny sidled up to Mrs. Francis and said in a

confidential whisper: "Ain't I the biggest dood in the bunch?"

When the others had admired their appearance sufficiently and filed

back to the dining-room, Bugsey still stood before the glass,

resolutely digging away at a large brown freckle on his cheek. He

came out to Camilla and asked her for a sharp knife, and it was with

difficulty that he was dissuaded from his purpose. When Mrs. Francis

saw the drift of Bugsey's intention, she made a note in her little

red book under the heading, "The leaven of good clothes."

Just as they went into church Pearlie gave them her parting

instructions.

"Don't put yer collection in yer mouths, ye might swallow it; I'ave

it tied up in yer handkerchiefs, and don't chew the knot. Keep yer

eye on the minister and try to understand all ye can of it, and look

like as if ye did, anyway!"

John Watson, coached by Pearl, went first and waited at the end of

the seat to let the whole flock march past him. There was one row

full and four in the row behind. Pearl sat just behind Danny, so that

she could watch his behaviour from a strategic point.

The minister smiled sympathetically when he saw the Watson family

file in. He had intended preaching a doctrinal sermon on baptism, but

the eager faces of the Watson children inspired him to tell the story

of Esther. Even Danny stayed awake to listen, and when it came to an

end and Mr. Burrell told of the wicked Haman being hanged on the

scaffold of his own making, Patsey whispered to Bugsey in a loud "pig

whisper:" "That's when he got it in the neck!" Mrs. Watson was

horrified beyond words, but Pearl pointed out that while it was

beyond doubt very bad to whisper in church, still what Patsey said

showed that he had "sensed what the story was about."

The next week she dramatized the story for the boys. Jimmy was always

the proud and haughty Ahasuerus, his crown made of the pasteboard of

the box his father's new cap came in. Bugsey was the gentle Esther

who came in trembling to see if she would suit his Majesty. The

handle of a dismembered parasol was used for the golden sceptre, and

made a very good one after Mary had wound it around with the yellow

selvage that came off her plaid dress.

"You lads have got to play educated games now," Pearl had said, when

she started them at this one. "'Bull-in-the-ring,' 'squat-tag,'

'button, button, who's got the button?' are all right for kids that

don't have to rise in the world, but with you lads it's different.

Ye've got to make yer games count. When I get to school I'll learn

lots of games for ye, but ye must all do yer best now."

CHAPTER III

"KNOWLEDGE IS POWER"

Pap wunct he scold and says to me,

Don't play too much, but try

To study more and nen you'll be

A great man by and by.

Nen Uncle Sidney says: "You let

Him be a boy and play.

The greatest man on earth, I bet,

'Ud trade with him to-day."

_----James Whitcomb Riley._

PEARL started to school one Monday morning. She felt very brave until

she got into the girls' hall, where the long row of "store" coats,

fur caps and collars seemed to oppress her with their magnificence.

Maudie Ducker's 'coon coat and red scarf seemed to be particularly

antagonistic, and she hung her mother's cut-down coat and her new

wool toque as far from them as possible.

Outwardly calm, but with a strong tendency to bolt for home, Pearl

walked into the principal's room, and up to his desk, where he sat

making his register.

He looked up inquiringly and asked curtly: "What-do you want?"

"I am comin' to school, if you please," Pearl said calmly.

"What do you know?" he asked, none too gently, for it was one of his

bad days.

"Not much yet," Pearl said, "but I want to know a whole lot."

He put down his pen and looked at her with interest. "We've plenty of

room for people who don't know things, but want to. We're short of

that kind. We've plenty of people here who think they know a lot and

don't want to know any more, but you're an entirely new kind."

Pearl laughed--the easy, infectious laugh that won for her so many

friends.

"You see," she said, "I've got to learn as fast as I can, now while

the money lasts, for there's so many of us. I'm ignorant for me age,

too. I'm thirteen now, and I haven't been to school since I was ten,

but I should be able to learn a whole lot, for I'm going to come as

long as this dress lasts anyway, and I've got sateen sleeves to put

on over it past the elbows to save it, for that's where it'll likely

go first, and I'm takin' long steps to keep my boots from wearin'

out, and I'm earnin' a little money now, for I've got the job of

takin' care of the school, me and Jimmy."

The schoolmaster forgot that he was discouraged, forgot that he had

been having a hard time with Grade VIII's geography, forgot that he

had just made up his mind to quit teaching. He saw nothing but a

little girl standing eagerly before him, telling him her hopes, and

depending on him to help her to realize them.

He put out his hand impulsively, and took hers.

"Pearl," he said, "you're all right!"

That night, when Pearl went home, she gave her family the story of

the Magna Charta, drawing such a vivid picture of King John's general

depravity that even her father's indignation was stirred.

"That lad'll have to mend his ways," he said seriously, as he opened

the stove door to get a coal for his pipe, "or there will be trouble

coming his way."

"And you bet there was," Pearl replied. "What did they do but all git

together one day, after they got the crop cut, and they drawed up a

list of things that he couldn't do, and then they goes to him, and

says they: 'Sign this, yer Highness;' and he takes the paper and

wipes his glasses on his hanky, and he reads them all over polite

enough, and then he says, says he, handing it back: 'The divil I

will!'"

"Did he really say that, Pearlie?" her Mother asked.

"Did he?" Pearl said scornfully. "He said worse than that, Ma; and

then they says, says they: 'Sign it, or there'll be another man on

yer job.' And says he, brave as ye please: 'I'll see ye some place

before I sign it,' and with that what did they do but jist sit down

where they were, lit their pipes, as unconcerned as could be, and

says they: 'Take yer time, your Highness, we're not in a hurry; we

bro't our dinners,' says they, 'an' we'll stay right here till ye

find yer pen,' and they just sat there on their hunkers talkin' about

the crops and the like o' that, until he signed it; which he did very

bad-mannered, and flung it back at them and says he: 'There now, bad

cess to yez, small good it'll do yez, for I'm the King,' says he,

'an' I'll do as I blame please, so I will. The King can do no wrong,'

says he. 'Well, then,' says one of them, foldin' up the Magna Charta

and puttin' it away careful in his breast pocket, 'the King can't

break his word, I guess,' and wid that he winks at the rest of them,

and they says, says they: 'That's one on you, yer Majesty!' But they

couldn't put him in good humour, and they do say, Ma, that when the

company was gone that that man cut up somethin' rough, cursed and

swore, and chewed up sticks, and frothed at the mouth like a mad dog,

and sure, the very next day, when he was driving through a place

called 'The Wash,' drunk as an owl, he dropped his crown, and his

little satchel wid all his good clothes in it, and him being the way

he was he never heard them splash. When he missed them he felt awful,

and went back to hunt for them, puddlin' round in his bare feet for

hours, and some say he had et too many lampreys, whatever that is,

for his breakfast, but anyway, he got a cowld in his head and he

died, so he did."

"Wasn't that a bad state for the poor man to die in, childer dear,"

said Mrs. Watson, wishing to give Pearl's story a moral value; "and

him full of wickedness and cursin'!"

"And lampwicks, too, Ma!" Bugsey added.

"Where he wuz now?" asked Danny, who had a theological bent.

"Faith, now, that's not an easy thing to say for certain," said the

father gravely. "Things look pretty bad for him, I'm thinkin'."

After some discussion as to John's present address, Pearlie summed it

up with a fine blending of charity and orthodoxy by saying: "Well, we

just hope he's gone to the place where we're afraid he isn't."

The days passed fleet-footed with the Watson family--days full of

healthy and happy endeavour, with plenty to eat, clothes to wear, Ma

at home, and everybody getting a chance to be somebody. Pearl was the

happiest little girl in the world. Every night she brought home

faithfully what she had learned at school, at least the interesting

part of it, and when the day's work had been dull and abstract, out

of the wealth of her imagination she proceeded to make it

interesting.

Under Pearl's sympathetic telling of it, they wept over the untimely

fate of Mary, Queen of Scots, and decided that Elizabeth was a bad

lot, and Mrs. Watson declared that if she "had aknowed all this

before, she would never ha' called Mary, Mary Elizabeth, because that

just seems like takin' sides with both parties," and she just

couldn't "abear people that do that!"

Lady Jane Grey, the Princes in the Tower, Oliver Cromwell, the

unhappy Charles I, were their daily guests, and were discussed with

the freedom and interest with which dwellers in small towns are

popularly supposed to discuss their neighbours.

All of the evening was not given up to pleasure. Pearl saw to it that

each child did his stint of home work, and very often a spelling

match was held, with Pearl as the teacher and no-fair-to-try-over.

The result of this was that Teddy Watson, Class V; Billy Watson,

Class III; Tommy and Jimmy Watson, Class IIA; Patsey and Bugsey

Watson, Class I, were impregnable rocks at the head of their classes

on whom the troublesome waves of "ei's" and "ie's," one "l" or two

"l's," beat in vain.

Even John Watson, hard though his hands were with the handling of a

shovel, was not immune from this outburst of learning, and at

Pearlie's suggestion even he was beginning to learn! He filled pages

of her scribbler with "John Watson," in round blocky letters, and

then added "Millford, Manitoba."

"Now, Pa," Pearlie said one night, "ain't there some of yer friends

ye'd like to write to, seein' as yer gettin' on so fine?"

John had not kept up a close touch with his friends down east since

he came to Manitoba.

"It's fifteen year," he said, "since I left the Ottaway valley, but

I'm thinkin' me sister Katie is alive. Katie was me oldest sister,

but I'm thinkin' it would take a lot to kill her!"

"What was she like, Pa?" Pearl asked.

John smoked on reminiscently. "She was a smart girl, was Kate, wid

her tongue. I always liked to hear her usin' it, on someone else. I

mind once me poor, father and Katie went to a circus at Arnprior and

father got into a bean and shell game. It looked rale easy at first

sight, and me father expected to make a bunch o' money, but instead

o' that, he lost all he had on him, and his watch, and so he came to

Katie and told her what had happened. Well, sir, they say that Katie

just gave a le'p and cracked her heels together, and, sir, she went

at yon man, and he gave back the money, every cent of it, and me

father's watch, too. The people said they never heerd language like

Katie used yon time."

"She didn't swear, did she, John?' Mrs. Watson asked, in a shocked

tone, giving him a significant look which, interpreted, meant that

was not the time to tell the truth if the truth were incriminating.

"No," John said slowly, "Katie would not waste her breath swearin'.

She told the man mostly what she thought of him, and how his looks

struck her, and what he reminded her of. I mind she said a rang o'

tang would lose friends if he changed faces with him, and a few

things like that, but nobody could say that Katie used language

unbecomin' a lady. She was always partick'ler that way."

"Would you like to write to her and see how she is, Pa?" Pearl asked.

"Well, now I don't care if I do," her father answered.

The letter was written with infinite pains. The composition was

Pearlie's, and Pearlie was in her happiest mood, and so it really was

a very pleasant and alluring picture she drew of how John Watson had

prospered since coming west, and then, to give weight to it, she sent

a snapshot that Camilla had taken of the whole family in their good

clothes.

"It seems to me," Mrs. Watson said one night, "like as if we are

gettin' on too prosperous. The childer have been gettin' on so well,

and we're all so happy like, I'm feart somethin' will happen. This is

too good to last."

Mrs. Watson had a strain of Highland blood in her, and there was a

Banshee in the family two generations back, so it was not to be

wondered at that she sometimes indulged in gloomy forebodings.

Every day she looked for something to happen. One day it did. It was

Aunt Katie from "down the Ottaway!"

Aunt Kate Shenstone came unannounced, unheralded by letter, card, or

telegram. Aunt Kate said you never could depend on the mails--they

were like as not to open your letter and keep your stamp! So she

came, carrying her two telescope valises and her handbag. She did not

believe in having anything checked--that was inviting disaster!

Aunt Kate found her way to the Watson home under the direction of

Wilford Ducker, who had all his previous training on the subject of

courtesy to strangers seriously upset by the way Jimmy Watson talked

to him when they met a few days afterward.

"You see, John," Mrs. Shenstone said to her brother, when he came

home, "it seemed so lucky when I got your letter. I always did want

to come to Manitoba, but Bill, that's my man, John, he was a sort of

a tie, being a consumptive; but I buried Bill just the week before I

got your letter."

"Wus he dead?" Bugsey asked quickly.

"Dead?" Aunt Kate gasped. "Well, I should say he was."

"My, I'm glad!" Bugsey exclaimed.

Aunt Kate demanded an explanation for his gladness.

"I guess he's glad, because then you could come and see us, Auntie,"

Mary said. Mary was a diplomat.

"'Tain't that," Bugsey said frankly. "I am glad my Uncle Bill is

dead, cos it would be an awful thing for her to bury him if he

wasn't!"

Mrs. Shenstone sat down quickly and looked anxiously around her

brother's family.

"John," she said, "they're all right wise, are they?"

"Oh, I guess so," he answered cheerfully, "as far as we can tell yet,

anyway."

At supper she was given the cushioned chair and the cup and saucer

that had no crack. She made a quick pass with her hand and slipped

something under the edge of her plate, and it was only the keen eyes

of Danny, sitting beside her, that saw what had happened, and even he

did not believe what he had seen until, leaning out of his chair, he

looked searchingly into his aunt's face.

"She's tuck out her teeth!" he cried. "I saw her."

Pearlie endeavoured to quiet Danny, but Mrs. Shenstone was by no

means embarrassed. "You see, Jane," she said to Mrs. Watson, "I just

wear them when I go out. They're real good-lookin' teeth, but they're

no good to chew with. There must be something wrong with them. Mother

never could chew with them, either--they were mother's, you know and

I guess they couldn't ha' been made right in the first place."

Patsey, who was waiting for the second table, came around and had a

look at them.

"Them's the kind to have, you bet," he said to Tommy, who was also

one of the unemployed; "she can take them out if they ache, and let

them ache as much as they've' a mind to." Tommy had had some

experience with toothache, and spoke with feeling.

Mrs. Shenstone was a woman of uncertain age, and was of that variety

of people who look as old when they are twenty-five as they will ever

look. She was dressed in rusty mourning, which did not escape the

sharp eyes of her young nephews.

"When did you say Uncle Bill died?" Jimmy asked.

"Just four weeks to-morrow," she said, and launched away into an

elaborate description of Bill's last hours.

"Did you get yer black dress then?" Mary asked, before Pearl could

get her nudged into silence.

"No; I didn't," Aunt Kate answered, not at all displeased with the

question, as Pearl was afraid she might be. "I got this dress quite a

while agone. I went into black when mother died, and I've never seen

fit to lay it off. Folks would say to me: 'Oh, Mrs. Shenstone, do lay

off your mournin',' but I always said: 'Mother's still dead, isn't

she? and she's just as dead as she ever was, isn't she? Well, then,

I'll stick to my crape,' says I; and besides, I knew all along that

Bill was goin' sooner or later. He thought sometimes that he was

gettin' better, but, land! you couldn't fool me, him coughin' that

dreadful hollow cough and never able to get under it, and I knew I

was safe in stickin' to the black. I kept the veil and the black

gloves and all laid away. They say keep a thing for seven years and

you'll find a use for it, if you've any luck at all. I kept mine just

six years, and you see, they did come in good at last."

"I guess you were good and glad, weren't you, Auntie?" asked Tommy.

Mrs. Watson and Pearl apologized as best they could for Tommy.

"That's all right, now, Jane," Mrs. Shenstone said, chuckling

toothlessly; "youngsters will out with such things, and, now since

you've asked me, Tommy, I am not what you'd call real glad, though I

am glad poor Bill's gone where there ain't no consumption, but I miss

him every minute. You see, he's been with me sittin' in his chair for

the last four years, as I sat beside him sewin', and he was great

company, Bill was, for all he was so sick; for he had great sperrits,

and could argue somethin' surprisin' and grand. 'You're a good girl,

Katie,' was the last words he ever said. I never was no hand to make

a big palaver, so just as soon as the funeral was over I went right

on with my sewin' and finished up everything I had in the house, for

I needed the money to pay the expenses; and, besides, I made the

first payment on the stone--it's a lovely one, John, cost me $300,

but I don't mind that. I just wish Bill could see it. I often wish

now I had set it up before he went, it would ha' pleased him so. Bill

was real fond of a nice grave, that is, fixed up nice--he took such

an interest in the sweet alyssum we had growin' in the garden, and he

showed me just how he wanted it put on the grave. He wanted a

horseshoe of it acrost the grave with B. S. inside, made of pansies.

You see B. S. stands for Bill Shenstone, Blacksmith!

"He was a real proud man, yer Uncle Bill was, and him just a

labourin' man, livin' by his anvil. Mind you, when I made him

overalls I always had to put a piece of stuff out on the woodpile to

fade fer patches. Bill never could bear to look at a patch of new

stuff put on when the rest was faded."

"Well, he couldn't see the patch, could he, auntie?" Jimmy asked,

making a shrewd guess at the location of it.

"Maybe he couldn't," Bill's wife answered proudly. "But he knew it

was there."

"Where he wuz now?" Danny asked, his mind still turning to the

ultimate destiny.

Mrs. Shenstone did not at once reply, and the children were afraid

that her silence boded ill for Bill's present happiness. She stirred

her tea absent-mindedly. "If there's a quiet field up in heaven, with

elm-trees around it," she said at last; "elm-trees filled with

singin' birds, a field that slopes down maybe to the River of Life, a

field that they want ploughed, Bill will be there with old Bess and

Doll, steppin' along in the new black furrow in his bare feet,

singin':

There's a city like a bride,

just beyond the swellin' tide.

He always said that would be heaven for him 'thout no harp or big

procession, and I am sure Bill would never hear to a crown or such as

that. Bill was a terrible quiet man, but a better-natured man never

lived. So I think, Tommy, that your Uncle Bill is ploughin' down on

the lower eighty, where maybe the marsh marigolds and buttercups

bloom all the year around--there's a hymn that says somethin' about

everlasting spring abides and never witherin' flowers, so I take it

from that that the ploughin' is good all the year around, and that'll

just suit Bill."

When the meal was over, Aunt Katie complacently patted her teeth back

into place. "I never like no one to see me without them," she said,

"exceptin' my own folks. I tell you, I suffer agonies when there's a

stranger in for a meal. Now, Jane, let's git the children to bed.

Mary and Pearl, you do the dishes. Hustle, you young lads, git off

your boots now and scoot for bed. I never could bear the clatter of

children. Come here, and I'll loosen your laces"--this to Bugsey, who

sat staring at her very intently. "What's wrong with you?" she

exclaimed, struck by the intent look on his face.

"I'm just thinkin'," Bugsey answered, without removing his eyes from

the knothole on the door.

"And what are you thinkin'?" she demanded curiously.

"I'm just thinkin' how happy my Uncle Bill must be up

there...ploughin'...without any one to bother him."

Mrs. Shenstone turned to her brother and shook her head gravely:

"Mind you, John," she said, "you'll have to watch yon lad--he's a

deep one."

Aunt Kate had only been a few days visiting at her brother John's

when the children decided that something would have to be done. Aunt

Kate was not an unmixed blessing, they thought.

"She's got all cluttered up with bad habits, not havin' no family of

her own to raise," Pearl said. "She wouldn't jump up and screech

every time the door slams if she'd been as used to noises as Ma is,

and this talk about her nerves bein' all unstrung is just plain

silly--and as for her not sleepin' at nights, she sleeps as sound as

any of us. She says she hears every strike of the clock all night

long, and she thinks she does; but she doesn't, I know. Anyway, I'm

afraid Ma will get to be like her if we don't get her stopped."

"Ma backed her up to-day when she said my face was dirty just after I

had washed it, so she did," Mary said with a grieved air.

Nearly every one of them had some special grievance against Aunt

Kate.

"Let's make her sign a Charta," Tommy said, "like they did with

John."

The idea became immensely popular.

"She won't sign it," said Bugsey, the pessimist. "Let her dare to

not," said Jimmy gravely, "and she shall know that the people are the

king."

Pearl said that it would do no harm to draw up the paper anyway, so a

large sheet of brown paper was found, and Pearl spread it on the

floor. Mrs. Watson and Aunt Kate had gone downtown, so every person

felt at liberty to speak freely. Pearl wasn't sure of the heading and

so wrote:

Mrs. Kate Shenstone

Please take notice of these things, and remember them to do them, and

much good will follow here and hereafter.

She read it over to the others, and everybody was well pleased with

it.

After receiving suggestions from all, the following by-laws were

recommended to govern the conduct of Aunt Kate in future:

1. Keep your nerves strung.

2. Don't screech at every little noise. It don't help none.

3. Don't make nobody wash when they are already done so.

4. Sleep at night, snore all you want to, we don't stay awake to

listen to you.

5. Don't bust yourself to think of things for us to do. We kep the

wood-box full long before we ever saw you, also waterpail and

other errings.

6. Don't make remarks on freckles. We have them, and don't care,

freckles is honourable. (This was Jimmy's contribution.)

7. Don't always say you won't live long, we don't mind, only Mrs.

Jane Watson is picking it up now from you. We don't like it,

it ain't cheerful.

8. Don't interfere about bedtime. We don't with you.

9. Don't tell about children raised in idleness that turned out

bad. It ain't cheerful, and besides we're not.

Just then the cry was raised that she was coming, and the Magna

Charta was hastily folded up, without receiving the signatures.

Aunt Kate, who was very observant, suspected at once that the

children had been "up to something."

"What have you youngsters been up to now, while we were away?" she

demanded.

There was a thick silence. Mrs. Watson asked the children to answer

their Auntie.

Mary it was who braved the storm. "We've been drawing up a list of

things for you," she said steadily.

Aunt Kate had seen signs of rebellion, and had got to the place where

she was not surprised at anything they did.

"Give it here," she said.

"Wait till it's signed," Pearl said. "It's Charta, Aunt Kate," she

went on, "like 'King John to sign."

"I didn't hear about it. Pearl explained.

"Let me see it, anyway."

Pearl gave her the document, and she retired to her room with it to

look it over.

"Say, Pearl," said Jimmy, "go in there and get out my catapult, will

you? She may sign it and then cutup rough."

There was no more said about it for several days, but Aunt Kate was

decidedly better, though she still declared she did not sleep at

night, and Pearl was determined to convince her that she did. Aunt

Kate was a profound snorer. Pearl, who was the only one who had ever

heard her, in trying to explain it to the other children, said that

it was just like some one pulling a trunk across the room on a bare

floor to see how they would like it in this corner, and then, when

they get it over here, they don't like it a bit, so they pull it back

again; "and besides that," Pearl said, "she whistles comin' back and

grinds her teeth, and after all that she gets up in the mornin' and

tells Ma she heard every hour strike. She couldn't hear the clock

strike anyway, and her kickin' up such a fuss as she is, but I'm

going to stop her if I can; she's our aunt, and we've got to do our

best for her, and, besides, there's lots of nice things about her."

The next morning Pearl was very solicitous about how her aunt had

slept.

"Not a bit better," Aunt Kate said. "I heard every hour but six. I

always drop off about six."

"Did you really hear the clock last night, Auntie?" Pearl asked with

great politeness.

"Oh, it's very little you youngsters know about lying awake. When you

get to the age of me and your mother, I tell you, it's different I

get thinkin', thinkin', thinkin', and my nerves get all unstrung."

"And you really heard the clock?" Pearl said. "My, but that is

queer!"

"Nothin' queer about it, Pearl. What's queer about it, I'd like to

know?"

"Because I stopped the clock," Pearl said, "just to see if you could

hear it when it's stopped," and for once Aunt Kate, usually so ready

of speech, could not think of anything to say.

Aunt Kate went to bed early the next night, leaving the children

undisturbed to enjoy the pleasant hour as they had done before she

came. The next morning she handed Pearl the sheet of brown paper, and

below the list of recommendations there it was in bold writing:

"Kate W. Shenstone."

"See that, now," said Pearl triumphantly, as she showed it to the

children, "what it does for you to know history!"

"Say," said Jim, "where could we get some of them things, what did

you call them, Pearl?"

"'Twouldn't do any good, she wouldn't eat them," Billy said.

"Lampreys or lampwicks, or somethin' like that."

"Now, boys," said Pearl, "that's not right. Don't talk like that. It

ain't cheerful."

CHAPTER IV

SOMETHING MORE THAN GESTURES

Wanting is--what?

Summer redundant,

Blueness abundant.

Where is the blot?

_----Robert Browning._

PEARLIE WATSON, the new caretaker of the Milford school, stood broom

in hand at the back of the schoolroom and listened. Pearlie's face

was troubled. She had finished the sweeping of the other three rooms,

and then, coming into Miss Morrison's room to sweep it, she found

Maudie Ducker rehearsing her "piece" for the Medal Contest. Miss

Morrison was instructing Maudie, and Mrs. Ducker would have told you

that Maudie was doing "beautifully."

Every year the W. C. T. U. gave a silver medal for the best reciter,

and for three consecutive years Miss Morrison had trained the winner;

so Mrs. Ducker was naturally anxious to have Maudie trained by so

successful an instructor. Miss Morrison had studied elocution and

"gesturing." It was in gesturing that Maudie was being instructed

when Pearlie came in with her broom.

It was a pathetic monologue that Miss Morrison had chosen for Maudie,

supposed to be given by an old woman in a poorhouse. Her husband had

died a drunkard and then her only son, "as likely a lad as you ever

saw," had also taken to "crooked ways and left her all alone." One

day a man came to visit the poorhouse, and poor "old Nan," glad of

any one to talk to, tells all her story to the sympathetic stranger,

asking him at last wouldn't he try to find and save her poor Jim,

whom she had never ceased to pray for, and whom she still believed in

and loved. Then she discovered the man to be in tears, and of course

he turns out to be the long-lost Jim, and a happy scene follows.

It is a common theme among temperance reciters, but to Pearlie it was

all new and terrible. She could not go on with her sweeping--she was

bound to the spot by the story of poor old Nan and her woes.

Miss Morrison was giving Maudie instruction on the two lines:

"It is the old, sad, pitiful story, sir,

Of the devil's winding stair."

Neither of them had time to think of the meaning--they were so

anxious about the gestures. Maudie did a long, waving sweep with

three notches in it, more like a gordon braid pattern than a stair,

but it was very pretty and graceful, and Miss Morrison was pleased.

"And men go down and down and down

To darkness and despair."

Maudie scalloped the air three times evenly to indicate the down

grade.

"Tossing about like ships at sea

With helm and anchor lost."

Maudie certainly gave the ships a rough time of it with her willowy

left arm. Miss Morrison said that to use her left arm to toss the

ships would add variety.

"On and on thro' the surging waves,

Not caring to count the cost."

Maudie rose on the ball of her left foot and indicated "distance"

with the proper Delsarte stretch.

* * *

It was dark when Pearl got home. "Maudie Ducker has a lovely piece,"

she began at once; "but she spoils it--she makes a fool of it."

The family were just at supper, and her mother said reprovingly, "O

Pearlie! now, sure Miss Morrison is teaching her, and they do be

sayin' she's won three medals herself.'"

"Well," Pearlie said, unconvinced, "them kind of carrin's-on may do

fine for some pieces, but old women wid their hearts just breakin'

don't cut the figger eight up in the air, and do the Dutch-roll, and

kneel down and get up just for show--they're too stiff, for one

thing. Ye can't listen to the story the way Maudie carries on, she's

that full of twists and turnin's. Maudie and Miss Morrison don't care

a cent for the poor owld woman."

"Tell us about it, Pearlie," the young Watsons cried. "Well," Pearl

began, as she hung up her thin little coat behind the door, "this Nan

was a fine, purty girl, about like Mary there, only she didn't have a

good pa like ours; hers used to come home at night, full as ye plaze,

and they were all, mother, too, scairt to death purty near. Under the

bed they'd go, the whole bilin' of them, the minute they'd hear him

comin' staggerin' up to the cheek of the dure, and they'd have to

wait there 'ithout no supper until he'd go to sleep, and then out

they'd come, the poor little things, eyes all red and hearts beatin',

and chew a dry crust, steppin' aisy for fear o' wakin' him."

"Look at that now!" John Watson exclaimed, pausing with his knife

half way to his mouth.

"That ain't all in the piece," Pearl explained; "but it's understood,

it says something about 'cruel blows from a father's hand when rum

had crazed his brain,' and that's the way poor Nan grew up, and I

guess if ever any girl got a heart-scald o' liquor, she did. But she

grew up to be a rale purty girl, like Mary Barrier, I think, and one

day a fine strappin' fellow came to town, clerkin in a store, steady

enough, too, and he sees Nan steppin' out for a pail of water one day

and her singin' to herself, and sez he to himself: 'There's the girl

fer me!' and he was after steppin' up to her, polite as ye plaze

(Pearl showed them how he did it), and says he: 'Them pails is heavy

for ye, miss, let me have them."

"And after that nothin' would do him but she must marry him, and he

was as fine a lookin' upstandin' fellow as you'd see any place, and

sure Nan thought there had never been the likes of him. After that

she didn't mind the old man's tantrums so much, for she was thinkin'

all the time about Tom, and was gittin' mats and dish-towels made.

And they had a fine weddin', with a cake and a veil and rice, and the

old man kept straight and made a speech, and it was fine. And now,

Ma, here's the part I hate to tell yez--it seems so awful. They

hadn't been married long before Tom began to drink, too."

"The dirty spalpeen!" John angrily.

"Ye may well say that, Pa, after all she had to stand from the old

man. But that's what the piece said:

"But Tom, too, took to drinkin';

He said 'twas a harmless thing;

So the arrow sped and my bird of hope

Came down with a broken wing."

The Watson family were unanimous that Tom was a bad lot!

"Tom cut up worse than the old man, and she used to have to get some

of the neighbours to come in and sit on his head while she tuk his

boots off, and she'd have clean give up if it hadn't been for her

little boy, like Danny there; but if I ever thought that our Danny

would go back on us the way that young Jim went back on his ma, I

don't know how I'd stand it."

"What did he do, Pearlie?" Mary asked.

"Soon as he got big enough nothin' would do him but he'd drink too,

and smoke cigarettes and stay out late, and one day stole somethin',

and had to scoot, and she says so pitiful:

'I've never seen my poor lost boy

From that dark day to this.'

Then the poorwoman goes to the poorhouse, mind you!"

"God help us!" cried Mrs. Watson, "did it come to that?"

"Yes, Ma; but what d'ye think? One day a finelookin' man came in to

see all the old folks, silk hat and kid gloves on him and all that,

and this poor woman got talkin' to him, and didn't she up and tell

him the whole story, same as I'm tellin' you, only far more pitiful,

and sure didn't she end up by beggin' him to be kind to her poor

Jimmy if he ever comes across him; and tellin' him how she always

prays for him and knows he'll be saved yet. She never held it against

the young scamp that he never writ back even the scratch of a pen,

just as full of excuses for him as Ma would be if it was one of you

lads," and Pearl's voice quivered a little.

"But sure, now, it is wonderful how things turn out!" Pearlie went

on, after she had wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her checked apron,

"for wasn't this Jim all the time forninst her, and her not knowin'

it, and didn't he grab her in his arms and beg her to forgive him;

and he cried and she cried, and then he took her away with him, and

she had a good time at last."

The next day Pearl borrowed the book from Maudie Ducker and learned

the words, and for several evenings recited them to her admiring and

tearful family. Then, to make it more interesting, Pearl let the

young Watsons act it. Jimmy spoke right up and says he: "I bo'r to be

the old man, and come home drunk," but as this was the star part,

Jimmy had to let Tommy and Billy have it sometimes.

The first scene was the father's spectacular homecoming. The next

scene was the wedding, and Jimmy made the speech after Pearl had

coached him, and in most feeling terms he warned his son-in-law

against the flowing bowl, and told what a good girl his little Nancy

was, and what a bad pa he'd been; and then he broke down and cried

real tears, which Pearl said was "good actin'." The third scene was

where Tom came home drunk. It was somewhat marred by Mary, who was

playing the part of the broken-hearted bride, and was supposed to

burst into tears when she saw the condition of her husband, and say:

"So the arrow has sped and my bird of hope

Comes down with a broken wing."

Now Mary had her own ideas of how intemperate husbands should be

dealt with, and she had provided herself with a small, flat stick as

she sat waiting in what was supposed to be joyful anticipation for

her liege lord's homecoming. When she discovered his condition she

cut out the speech about the "bird of hope," and used the stick with

so much vigour that it seemed he was in more danger than the bird of

hope of having a broken wing. Billy, the bridegroom, was naturally

indignant, but his father was disposed to approve of Mary's methods.

"Faix, I'm thinkin'," he said, "there'd be less of it if they got

that every time they cum home that way."

Scene IV was the young son (Patsey) fleeing from the hands of

justice. Pearlie hid him behind the flour-barrel until the two

sleuths of the law, Danny and Tommy, passed by, and then he was

supposed to do his great disappearing act through the cellar window.

Scene V was the most important of all. It was the poorhouse, and

required a good deal of stage-setting. All evidences of wealth had to

be carefully eradicated. The cloth was taken from the table, and the

one mat lifted off the floor. Newspapers were pinned over the

windows, and the calendars were turned with their faces to the wall.

The lamp with the cracked chimney was lighted instead of the "good

lamp," and then Pearlie, with her mother's old black shawl around her

shoulders, ceased to be Pearlie Watson and became poorhouse Nan,

widowed, deserted, old as the world itself, with heartbreak and

tears.

John Watson sat and listened to her with a growing wonder in his

heart, but as the story went on even he forgot that it was Pearl, and

shed many unashamed tears over the sorrows of poorhouse Nan.

Camilla came in one night and heard Pearl recite it all through.

The morning of the contest an emergency meeting of the W. C. T. U.

was hurriedly called at the home of Mrs. Francis. What was to be

done? Maudie Ducker and Mildred Bates had the measles, and could not

recite, which left only four reciters. They could do with five, but

they could not go on with four. The tickets were sold, the hall

rented, the contest had been advertised over the country! Who could

learn a recitation in a day? Miss Morrison was sent for. She said it

was impossible. A very clever pupil might learn the words, but not

the gestures, and "a piece" was nothing without gestures. Mrs. White

again exclaimed: "_What shall we do?_"

Mrs. Francis said: "We'll see what Camilla says."

Camilla came and listened attentively while the woes of the W. C. T.

U. were told her. It was with difficulty that she restrained an

exclamation of delight when she heard that they were short of

reciters. "Pearl Watson knows Maudie's selection," she said quietly,

"and recites it very well, indeed!'

"Impossible!" Miss Morrison exclaimed. "She has had no lessons."

"I think she watched you training Maudie," Camilla ventured.

"Only once," Miss Morrison replied, "and she can not possibly know

the gestures; but we will be glad to have any one fill in. People

will not expect her to do very well when she has had no training,"

she added charitably.

When Camilla returned to the kitchen she was smiling gently. "There's

a surprise coming to little Miss Morrison," she said.

* * *

That night the hall was full to the door, and people stood in the

aisles. Everybody loves a contest. Pearl and the other four

contestants sat in a front seat. The latter were beautifully dressed

in white net over silk, with shoes and stockings of white, and

numerous bows of ribbon.

By the draw that Miss Morrison made, Pearl came last on the

programme, and Miss Morrison kindly asked the chairman to explain

that Pearl had had no training whatever, and that she had only known

that she was going to recite that morning Miss Morrison wished to be

quite fair!

Camilla sat beside Pearl. She had dressed Pearl for the occasion, and

felt rather proud of her work as she sat beside Contestant No. 5.

Pearl's brown hair was parted and brushed smoothly back, and tied

with two new bright red ribbons--Camilla's gift. It did not occur to

Pearl that she was in the race for the medal. She was glad of a

chance to fill in and help the contest along.

John Watson, Mrs. Watson, and all the little Watsons were present,

and filled two side seats. Mr. Francis had heard something from

Camilla that caused him to send tickets to the whole Watson family,

and even come himself, which was an unprecedented event.

Lucy Bates was the first contestant, and made her parents and many

admiring relatives very proud of the a flutter of lace.

Maude Healy--the star reciter of the Hullett neighbourhood--recited

"How Father Signed the Pledge," in a good, clear, ringing voice, and

the Hullett people thought they were just as sure of the medal as if

they saw the chairman pinning it on Maude.

Two other girls recited, with numerous gestures, selections of the

same class; in which wayward sons, stormy nights, and railway

accidents figured prominently.

Then the chairman made the explanation in regard to Pearl's

appearance, and asked her to come forward and recite. Camilla gave

her hand an affectionate little squeeze as she left the seat, and,

thus fortified, Pearlie Watson faced the sea of faces unflinchingly.

Then came that wonderful change--the little girl was gone, and an old

woman, so bowed, so broken, began to tell her story, old enough to

most of us, but strong always in its gripping pathos--the story of a

child cheated of her birthright of happiness because some men will

grow rich on other men's losses and fatten on the tears of little

children. The liquor traffic stood arraigned before the bar of God as

the story went on, unfolding darker and darker chapters in the

woman's life. It had been the curse that had followed her always, had

beaten and bruised her, never merciful.

The people saw it in its awfulness, and the pity of it rolled over

them as they listened to that sad, old, cracked voice.

When she came to the place where she begged the well-dressed stranger

to try and save her boy, and, clasping her trembling hands besought

the God of Heaven to bear with her Jim a little longer, and let her

see the desire of her heart, her son redeemed and forgiven, there was

an audible sob from some one in the back of the hall, and many a boy

away from home, careless and forgetful of his own mother, remembered

her now with sudden tenderness. The words of the prayer were stiff

and unnatural, but when did the Spirit of God depend upon felicity of

expression? It can abound wherever there is the honest heart, and

when Pearl, with tears flowing down her cheeks, but with voice steady

and clear, thanked the God of all grace for sending her the answer to

her prayers, even the dullest listener got a glimmering of the truth

that there is "One behind the shadows who keeps watch above His own."

When Pearl had finished, the audience sat perfectly motionless, and

then burst into such a tornado of applause that the windows rattled

in their casings.

John Watson sat still, but his heart was singing within him "Pearlie,

Pearlie, God bless her!"

When the judges met for their decision it was found that they had

forgotten to mark Pearl as to memory, gesture, pronunciation, etc.,

as their rules required them to do.

Father O'Flynn, the little Irish priest, wiping his eyes

suspiciously, said: "Gentlemen, my decision is for Number 5." The

other two nodded.

And so it came about that Pearlie Watson was once more called to face

the large and cheering audience, while Father O'Flynn, with many kind

words, presented her with the W. C. T. U. oratorical prize.

Miss Morrison went home that night disturbed in spirit, wondering if,

after all, there might not be something more in it than gestures,

voice, memory, and articulation.

CHAPTER V

AT THE CHICKEN HILL SCHOOL

Ho! I'm going back to where

We were youngsters! Meet me there,

Dear old barefoot chums, and we

Will be as we used to be,

Lawless rangers up and down

The old creek behind the town.

_----James Whitcomb Riley._

IF a river is measured by the volume of water in its current, the

Souris River, on whose southern bank the little town of Millford is

built, is but an insignificant stream; but if bold and precipitous

banks, sheer cliffs, and a broad valley are to be considered, then

the Souris may lay claim to some distinction. For a few weeks in the

spring of the year, too, it is a swift and mighty flood that goes

sweeping through the valley, carrying on its turbulent waters

whirling ice-jams, branches of trees, and even broken bridge-timbers

from the far country known as the "Antlers of the Souris." When the

summer is very dry, the river shrinks to a gentle, trickling thread

of water, joining shallow pools, overhung with gray-green willows

that whiten in the breeze.

At Millford, the Souris flows almost straight east and keeps this

direction for about three miles, and then turns sharply north toward

the Sand Hill country, where six miles farther on it joins the

Assiniboine.

On one of its banks, just before it takes the northern turn, stands

the farmhouse of Thomas Perkins, a big white frame house, set in a

grove of maples; a mile south is the big stone house of Samuel

Motherwell, where Pearlie Watson wiped out the stain on her family's

honour by working off the old ten-dollar debt of her father's.

Two miles farther east, on the old Turtle Mountain trail, stands the

weather-beaten schoolhouse where Martha Perkins got her meagre

education, and where Bud, her brother, was now attending. The

schoolhouse is bare and unlovely, without tree or flower. The rain

and the sun, the scorching winds of spring and winter's piercing

blizzards have had their way with it for many years, and now it

defies them all, for its paint is all gone, and it has no beauty for

them to fade.

A straggling woodpile and a long straw covered shed stand near it.

Three windows, curtainless and staring, are in each side, and a small

porch with two steps leading up to it is at the south end. Here the

gophers frolic in the quiet summer afternoons, and steal what is left

of the children's dinners from the tin pails behind the door. The

porch smells of crumbs.

Away to the east, Oak Creek runs through a wooded belt of fertile

lands, its tall elms and spruce giving a grateful shade to the

farmers' cattle. To the north are the sand-hills of the Aissinboine,

where stiff spruce trees stand like sentinels on the red sand; but no

tiny seedling had ever been brought to the school-yard, no kind hand

had ever sought to relieve that desolate grayness, bleak and lonely

as a rainy midnight in a deserted house.

Inside, the walls are dull with age, so dark and smoked you would

think they could become no darker shade, but on the ceiling above the

long stovepipe that runs from the stove at the door to the chimney at

the other end, there runs a darker streak still. The stove is a big,

square box, set on four stubby feet, and bears the name "Sultana."

Some small effort has been made to brighten the walls. One of Louis

Wain's cat pictures, cut from a London Graphic, is stuck on the wall

with molasses. There is a picture of the late King Edward when he was

the Prince of Wales, and one of the late Queen Victoria framed with

varnished wheat. There is a calendar of '93 showing red-coated

foxhunters in full chase. Here the decorations end abruptly.

The teacher's desk is of unpainted wood, and on its lid, which lifts

up, revealing the mysteries of mysteries below, there run ancient

rivers of ink, pointing back to a terrible day when Bud Perkins

leaned against the teacher's desk in class. A black spot on the floor

under the teacher's chair shows just how far-reaching was Bud's

offence.

The desks are all ink-stained and cut and inscribed with letters and

names. Names are there on the old desks that can be read now on

business and professional signs in Western cities, and some, too,

that are written in more abiding type still, on the marble slabs that

dot the quiet field on the river-bank.

The dreariness of the school does not show so much in the

winter-time, when the whole landscape is locked in snow, and the

windows are curtained by frost-ferns. The big boys attend school in

the winter-time, too, for when there is nothing for them to do at

home the country fathers believe that it is quite proper to pay some

attention to education.

It was a biting cold day in January. The Christmas and New Year's

festivities were over, and the Manitoba winter was settling down to

show just what a Manitoba winter can do in the way of weather. The

sky was sapphire blue, with fleecy little strings of white clouds,

an innocent-looking sky, that had not noticed how cold it was below.

The ground was white and sparkling, as if with silver tinsel, a

glimmer of diamonds. Frost-wreaths would have crusted the trees and

turned them into a fairy forest if there had been trees; but there

was not a tree at the Chicken Hill School, so the frost-wreaths lay

like fairy lace on the edges of the straw-covered shed and made

fairy frills around the straggling woodpile. Everything was

beautiful, blue and silver, sparkle and dance, glitter and glimmer.

Out on the well-tramped school-yard the boys and girls were playing

"shinny," which is an old and honourable game, father or uncle of

hockey.

Big Tom Steadman was captain of one side, and his fog-horn voice, as

he shouted directions and objurgations to his men and his opponents,

was the only discordant note in all that busy, boisterous, roaring

scene.

Libby Anne Cavers was on the other side, and Libby Anne was a force

to be reckoned with, for she was little and lithe, and determined and

quick, with the agility of a small, thin cat. She was ten years old,

but looked about seven.

Big Tom had the ball, and was preparing to shoot on the opposing

goal. He flourished his stick in the air with a yell of triumph, and

in his mind the game was already won. But he had forgotten Libby

Anne, who, before his stick reached the ground, had slipped in her

own little crook, and his stick struck the empty snow, for Libby Anne

was fast flying up the field with the ball, while the players

cheered. It was neatly done.

Tom Steadman ran after her in mad pursuit, and overtook her just as

she passed the ball to Bud Perkins, who was the captain of her side.

Then Tom Steadman, coward that he was, struck her with his heavy

stick, struck fair and straight at her poor little thin shins, a

coward's blow. Libby Anne doubled up into a poor little whimpering,

writhing ball.

A sudden horror fell on the field, and the game stopped. Bud Perkins

looked at her poor quivering little face, white as ashes now, his own

face almost as pale, and then, pulling of his coat, ran over to'

where Tom Steadman stood.

"Drop yer stick, you coward, and stand up to me," he said in a voice

that rang with the blood-lust.

Tom Steadman was older and bigger, and he felt very sure that he

could handle Bud, so his manner was full of assurance.

The school closed in around them and watched the fight with the

stolid indifference of savages or children, which is much the same

thing. Big Tom Steadman dealt his cruel sledge-hammer blows on Bud,

on his face, head, neck, while Bud, bleeding, but far from beaten,

fought like a cornered badger. The boys did not cheer; it was too

serious a business for noisy shouting, and besides, the teacher might

be aroused any minute, and stop the fight, which would be a great

disappointment, for every boy and girl, big and little, wanted to see

Tom Steadman get what was coming to him.

Bud was slighter but quicker, and fought with more skill. Big Tom

could hit a knockout blow, but there his tactics ended. He knew only

the one way of dealing with an antagonist, and so, when one of his

eyes suddenly closed up and his nose began to bleed, he began to

realize that he had made a big mistake in hitting Libby Anne when Bud

Perkins was there. With a clever underarm hold, Bud clinched with

him, and he fell heavily.

Libby Anne, limping painfully, put her "shinny" stick into Bud's

hand.

"Sock it to him now, Bud," she said, "now you've got him."

Bud dropped the stick and tried to laugh, but his mouth would not

work right.

"Get up, Tom," Bud said. "I won't hit you when you're down. Stand up

and let me at you again."

Tom swore threateningly, but showed no disposition to get up.

"I guess he's had enough," Bud said. "He's sorry he hit you now,

Libby Anne. He sees now that it's a dirty shame to hit a little girl.

He never thought much about it before. Come away, kids, and let him

think."

When school was called, the whole story of the fight came out.

Tom Steadman was the only son of one of the trustees--_the_ trustee,

indeed, the one who lived in the biggest house, was councillor of the

municipality, owned a threshing-machine, boarded the teacher, and

made political speeches--and so Bud's offence was not a slight one.

A school meeting was called, to see what was to be done. Young Tom

was there, swollen of lip and nose, and with sunset shades around

both eyes. Libby Anne was there, too, but she had been warned by her

father, a poor, shiftless fellow, living on a rented farm, that she

must not say anything to offend the Steadmans, for Mr. Steadman owned

the farm that they were living on.

The trial was decided before it began. The teacher, Mr. Donald, was

away attending the Normal, and his place was being filled by a young

fellow who had not enough courage to stand for the right.

The question to be decided was this: Did Tom Steadman strike Libby

Anne with intent to hurt; or did he merely reprimand her gently to

"shinny on her own side"; or did she run under his stick when he

struck at the ball? Tom Steadman said she ran under his stick, and he

didn't see her, whereupon some of the children who were not living on

rented farms groaned. Several of the children gave their testimony

that Tom had without doubt struck her "a-purpose!" Then Mr. Steadman,

Tom's father, a big, well-fed man, who owned nineteen hundred acres

of land and felt that some liberty should be allowed the only son of

a man who paid such a heavy school-tax, took charge and said, fixing

his eyes on Bill Cavers, his poverty-stricken tenant: "Let us see

what Libby Anne has to say. I should say that Libby Anne's testimony

should have more weight than all these others, for these young ones

seem to have a spite at our Tom. Libby Anne, did Tom strike you

a-purpose?"

"Be careful what you say, Libby Anne," her father said miserably, his

eyes on the ground. He owed Steadman for his seed-wheat.

Libby Anne looked appealingly at Bud. Her eyes begged him to forgive

her.

Mr. Steadman repeated the question.

"Speak, Libby Anne," her father said, never raising his eyes.

"Did Tom hit you a-purpose?"

Libby Anne drew a deep breath, and then in a strange voice she

answered: "No."

She flung out the word as if it burned her.

Libby Anne was a pathetic figure in her much-washed derry dress,

faded now to the colour of dead grass, and although she was clean and

well-kept, her pleading eyes and pale face told of a childhood that

had been full of troubles and tears.

Bud stared at her in amazement, and then, as the truth flashed on

him, he packed up his books, hot with rage, and left the schoolhouse.

Bill Cavers hung his head in shame, for though he was a shiftless

fellow, he loved his little girl in his better moments, and the two

cruel marks on her thin little shins called loudly for vengeance; but

must live, he told himself miserably.

When Bud left the school Libby Anne was in her seat, sobbing

bitterly, but he did not give her a glance as he angrily slammed the

door behind him.

Two days after this, Bud was drawing wood from the big bush north of

the Assiniboine, and as he passed the Cavers home Libby Anne, with a

thin black shawl around her, came running out to speak to him.

"Bud," she called breathlessly, "I had to say it. Dad made me do it,

'cos he's scairt of old man Steadman."

Bud stopped his horses and jumped down. They stood together on the

shady side of the load of poles.

"That's all right, kid," Bud said. "Don't you worry. I liked lickin'

him."

"But Bud," Libby Anne said wistfully, "you can't ever forget that I

lied, can you? You can't ever like me again?"

Bud looked at the little wind-blown figure, such a little troubled,

pathetic face, and something tender and manly stirred in his heart.

"Run away home now, Libby Anne," he said kindly. "Sure I like you,

and I'll wallop the daylight out of anybody that ever hurts you.

You're all right, Libby Anne, you bet; and I'll never go back on

you."

The bitter wind of January came down the Souris valley, cold and

piercing, and cut cruelly through Libby Anne's thin shawl as she ran

home, but her heart was warmed with a sweet content that no winter

wind could chill.