THE PIONEERS' PICNIC
It is always fair weather
When good fellows get together.
_----Old Song._
THE Pioneers' Picnic was the great annual social event of the Souris
Valley, and was looked forward to by young and old. It was held each
year on the first day of July, on the green flats below the town of
Millford. In John Watson's home, as in many others, preparations for
it began early.
One very necessary part of the real enjoyment of a holiday is cash,
cold, hard cash, for ice-cream, lemonade; and "Long Toms" can only be
procured in that way.
Tommy and Patsey for the first time bitterly regretted their country
residence, for if they had been in Millford, they said, they could
have delivered parcels and run errands and have had a hundred dollars
saved easy. Pearl suggested the black bottles that were so numerous
in the bush as a possible source of revenue, and so every piece of
scrub and the bluff behind the house were scoured for bottles.
Thirty-seven were found, and were cleaned and boxed ready for the
day.
Then Bugsey's conscience woke up and refused to be silenced. "Lib
Cavers ought to have them," he said sadly.
The others scouted the idea. Bugsey was as loath to part with them as
the others; but they had their consciences under control and Bugsey
had not.
"She couldn't take them in and sell them," said Tommy, speaking very
loudly and firmly, to drown the voice of his conscience. "It wouldn't
be dacent, everybody knowin' where they came from, and what was in
them, and where it went to, and who it was, and all."
Tommy had ideas on what constituted good form.
Pearl was called upon to settle it and, after some thought, gave her
decision.
"If you give Lib Cavers one package of 'Long Tom' popcorn and one of
gum for a present, it'll be all right. Don't tell her why yer givin'
it to her--just say, 'Present from a friend,' when you hand it to
her."
"Maybe she don't like popcorn, anyway," Bugsey said, beginning to
hope; "and I don't believe her ma will let her chew gum; and it don't
look nice for little girls," he added virtuously.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Tommy, who was a diplomat. "We'll
give it to her ma to give to her."
"Offer it, you mean," corrected Patsey; '"give it' means she tuk it."
Aunt Kate had been busy making suits for her young nephews all
spring, for Aunt Kate was very handy with the needle. She had made
shirts for Teddy and Billy with elaborate "flossin'" down the front,
so elaborate indeed that it threatened to upset the peace of the
family. Billy rebelled openly, and Teddy said when he was out of his
Aunt's hearing, that he would rather go without a shirt than wear
that scalloped thing. Aunt Kate was serene through it all, and told
them how fond their Uncle Bill had been of that same pea-vine
pattern. Pearl saw at once that there was going to be a family jar,
and so saved the situation by getting Martha Perkins to make wide
silk ties for the two boys, wide enough to hide the ramifications of
the pea-vine--and then to avoid the uncomfortable questioning of Aunt
Kate, she hid her glasses on the evening of June the thirtieth.
"Anyway," Pearl said to herself, "she might get them broke on a big
day like the 'First,' and she can see plenty without them, so she
can."
The 'morning of July the first broke clear and sparkling, and before
six o'clock the whole Watson family were stirring. Out in the garden
the four little boys were pulling radishes and tying them into
bunches. Mary, her hair done in many tight little pigtails, was doing
a flourishing business' in lettuce. Jimmy was at the head of the
green onion department. The Watsons had the contract of supplying
green vegetables to the hotel for the day.
Pearl and Aunt Kate were sorting out clothes, while Mrs. Watson got
the breakfast.
Down on the river-bank John Watson was cutting down poles for the new
stable that he was going to put up in the fall. There was a great
contentment in his heart as he looked at his twenty acres of wheat
and the same of oats. The season had been so favourable that although
the grain had been sown late, it was now well advanced. A field of
fifteen acres farther up the river had been cleared and ploughed and
would be in crop next year, and as he looked at his land in the
sparkling morning sunshine something of Pearl's optimistic vision
came to him, and in his fancy he saw all the roots and scrub cleared
away and replaced by magnificent fields of grain, dappled with light
and shade, his pasture full of cattle, a comfortable house instead of
the weatherworn one before him, himself and the "Missus" enjoying
peace and plenty; and the children growing up in wisdom's ways; and
Pearlie--his heart's treasure, little Pearl, with the "natest fut in
the country, and the sparrow shins of her"--Pearlie getting her
chance.
"Faith, there's few of them can bate our Pearlie, I'm thinkin', if
she can only get the chance."
By ten o'clock active preparations began on the junior members of the
family. Mary's hair showed that putting in fourteen hard braids the
night before is worth the trouble. She had a lovely barred muslin
made out of an old one of Aunt Kate's that she couldn't wear now,
being in mourning.
There were new suits for some, clean suits for all, and the only
disturbance that occurred was when Danny would not "hold still" while
Pearl fastened the front of his blouse; but just a hint of leaving
him at home, made a better boy of Danny at once.
Bugsey, who was the first one dressed, went out to watch the weather,
and in a short time came running in, in tears. There was a cloud
coming up, and Bugsey, the pessimist, knew it was going to rain.
Pearl backed Danny out of the door, holding tight by his tie-strings,
to look at the weather. Sure enough, black clouds had formed in the
west, and were marching relentlessly up the sky. The whole family
came out to look. In the east the sun blazed bright and unconcerned.
The old pig ran past them carrying a wisp of hay in her mouth, and by
common impulse three of the boys threw sticks after her. She was just
trying to make it rain--she couldn't go to the picnic herself, and
she'd just like to see it rain! Little whirls of wind circled around
in the hip-yard, and there was an ominous roll of distant thunder.
Loud wails broke from Bugsey, Danny, and Mary, and when the edge of
the cloud went over the sun and the whole landscape darkened the
wails became general.
"Come into the house," commanded Pearl, "it's only goin' to be a
shower and lay the dust. Cheer up, there's enough blue 'sky to make a
pair of pants, and it's not time for us to be goin' yet, anyway."
The tearful family followed her into the house and sat in doleful
silence watching the big drops that began to beat on the western
window.
Pearl was a strong believer in work as a remedy for worry. Jimmy was
put to tightening up the buttons on his new suit. Tommy blackened
boots with lampblack and lard, and Bugsey, who was weeping copiously,
was put to counting radishes as a little bit of "busy work."
Pearl kept up a brave show of confidence in the weather, but Mrs.
Watson's and Aunt Kate's contributions to the conversation were all
of a humid character and dealt with spoiled feathers, parasols blown
inside out, and muslin dresses so spattered with mud that they were
not worth bringing home.
Pearl continued her preparations in the face of great discouragement.
Aunt Kate foretold a three days' rain--it looked to be settlin' that
way, and besides, look at that old gray hen, she hadn't gone in, and
that was a sure sign of a long rain. This brought a renewed downpour
in the house.
Pearl grew desperate. "Look at all the other hens that did go in,"
she said, as she tied the bows in her own hair. "I don't see the
sense of taking that crazy old ike of a hen's word for it against all
the other hens that have gone in. She's a mournful old thing, and is
staying out to make the other ones feel bad, or else she don't know
enough to go in. Hurry up, Mary, and get all that stuff in; it's a
quarter to eleven now, and we've got Tommy to do yet when he's done
with the boots. It's none of our business whether it rains now or
not. We're not wantin' to go just now."
"Pearlie, dear," her mother said, "you're raisin' too many hopes in
them."
"Hopes!" Pearl cried. "Did you say hopes, Ma? They look like a bunch
with too many hopes, settin' there blubberin' their eyes out and
spoiling their looks."
By eleven o'clock everything was ready but the weather, and then, as
if it suddenly dawned on the elements that this was hardly a square
deal on Pioneers' Picnic day, the clouds parted right over John
Watson's house, and a patch of blue sky, ever widening, smiled down
encouragingly. Sorrow was changed to joy. Bugsey dried his eyes when
he saw the sun shining on the Brandon Hills.
A little breeze frolicked over the trees and flung down the raindrops
in glittering showers, and at exactly a quarter past eleven the
Watson family, seated on three seats in the high-boxed waggon, drove
gaily out of the yard.
"Sure, we enjoy it all the better for getting the scare," said Mary
the philosopher.
The Perkinses, in their two-seated buggy, were just ahead on the
road. Even Martha, encouraged by Pearl, was coming to the picnic.
Behind the Watsons came the Caverses and the Motherwells.
"Let's ask Libby Anne to ride with us," said Tommy, but Mary, with
fine tact, pointed out that she would see the bottles, and it might
hurt her feelings, "for, mind you," said Mary, "she knows, young and
all as she is."
Mary was one year younger herself.
Along every trail that led into the little town came buggies and
waggons, their occupants in the highest good humour. There was a
laughing ripple in the meadowlark's song, as if he were declaring
that he knew all the time that the rain was only a joke.
Across the river lay the Horsehoe slough, a crescent of glistening
silver, over which wild ducks circled and skimmed and then sank into
its clear waters, splashing riotously, as if they, too, were holding
an "Old Boys' Reunion." It was the close season for wild fowl, and
nobody knew it better than they.
Coming down into the valley, innumerable horses, unhitched and tied
to the wagons, were to be seen. The rain had driven away the
mosquitoes, and a cool breeze, perfumed with wild roses and cowslips,
came gently from the West. The Watsons drove to a clump of poplar
trees which seemed to offer shade for the horses. Bugsey and Tommy
carried the box of bottles to the drug-store, admonished by Pearl to
drive a close bargain.
Pearl went with Jimmy and Patsey, who took the green vegetables to
the hotel. Jimmy had been accustomed to bringing milk to the back
door and was quite an admirer of Mr. Braden, the genial proprietor.
Mr. Braden himself came into the kitchen just as they knocked at the
door. He was faultlessly dressed, and in a particularly happy mood,
for the first of July was one of his richest harvests, both in the
dining-room and in the bar, where many a dollar would be laid on the
altar of "auld lang syne"; and besides this, Sandy Braden was really
glad to see all the old timers, apart from any thought of making
money. He paid Jimmy for the vegetables, and gave him an extra
quarter for a treat for himself and the others.
Acting on a sudden impulse, Pearl said: "Mr. Braden, you know Bill
Cavers, don't you?"
Mr. Braden said he did.
"Well," said Pearl, "they've all come to town to-day. Mrs. Cavers
hasn't been here for ever so long, but Bill promised to stay sober
to-day if she'd come."
Pearl hesitated.
"Well, what else?" he said.
"They're goin' to have a photo taken to send home to her folks in
Ontario. Mrs. Cavers is all fixed up, with her hair curled, and Libby
Anne has a new dress made out of her mother's weddin' one, and Bill
is lookin' fine--he hasn't been drunk since that Sunday you took him
away from the school when we were havin' church."
Mr. Braden suddenly stopped smiling.
"And what I want to ask you, Mr. Braden, as a real favour, is not to
fill Bill up until they get the photo taken, anyway. You know how his
lip hangs when' he's drunk--he wouldn't look nice in a photo to send
home. Mrs. Cavers went all white and twitchy that day you took him
away from church. I was right behind her, and I guess that's how
she'd look in a photo if he got drunk, and she wouldn't look nice,
either; and even Libby Anne wouldn't be lookin' her best, because she
gets mad when her father is drunk, and says she'd like to kill you,
and burn up all your whiskey, and lots of things like that that ain't
real Christian. So you see, it would spoil the whole picture if you
let him get drunk."
Sandy Braden was not a hard-hearted man, and so, when Pearl told him
all this with her eyes on him straight and honest and fearless, he
was distinctly uncomfortable.
He tried to get a grip on himself. "Who told you to come to me about
it?" he asked suspiciously.
"Nobody told me," Pearl said. "I never thought of it myself until I
saw you lookin' so fine and such fine clothes on you, and you so full
of good humour, and I thought maybe you're not as bad as I always
thought you were, and maybe you don't know what a bad time Mrs.
Cavers and Libby Anne have when Bill drinks.
"You see," Pearl continued, after she had waited in vain for him to
speak, "you've got all Bill had anyway. You mind the money they saved
to go home--you got that, I guess, didn't you? And you'll not be
losin' anything to-day, for Bill hasn't got it. He gave all the money
he had to Mrs. Cavers--he was afraid he'd spend it--and that's what
they're goin' to get the photo with."
Sandy Braden continued to look at the floor, and seemed to be
unconscious of her presence.
"That's all I was wantin' to say," Pearl said at last. He looked up
then, and Pearl was struck with the queer white look in his face.
"All right, Pearl," he said. "I promise you Bill won't get a drop
here to-day." He tried to smile. "I hope the photo will turn out
well."
"Thank you, Mr. Braden," Pearl said. "Good-bye."
Sandy Braden went back to the bar-room and told his bartender not to
sell to Bill Cavers under any consideration. The bartender, who owned
a share the business, became suspicious at once.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I don't want Bill Cavers to get drunk, that's all," he said
shortly.
"Out with it, Sandy. Who's been at you? the W. C. T. U. been
interviewing you?"
"That's none of your business Bob. If I choose to shut down on Bill
Cavers it's nobody's business, is it?"
"Well, now, I guess it's some of my business," the bartender said.
"Don't forget that I have a little interest in this part of the
joint; and besides, you know my principles. I'll sell to any one who
has the money--we're out for the coin, and we're not runnin' any Band
of Hope."
"Now, see here, Bob, this man Cavers drinks up every cent he earns,
and to-day I happen to know that he is trying to keep straight.
They've come in to get a photo taken, and she hasn't been off the
farm for years."
The bartender laughed.
"Bill will take a hot photo when he gets about two finger-lengths in
him! No, it's not our business who buys. We're here to sell. That's
one thing I don't believe in, is refusin' liquor to any man. Every
man has a perfect right to as much liquor as he wants."
Sandy Braden was about to make a spirited reply, but some one called
him in the office and in the excitement of the day's events he forgot
all about Bill Cavers until his attention was called toward him later
in the day.
* * *
Meanwhile the boys had disposed of their bottles to the drug-store,
receiving in payment a bountiful supply of gum, licorice, and
drug-store candies, and a Union Jack for each one. There was quite
a run on bottles before an hour, for the Hogan twins cornered the
market by slipping around to the alley at the back of the store and
securing the bottles that stood in a box in the back shed. Then
they came around to the front and sold them again, flags being the
consideration every time, for the twins were loyal sons of the
Dominion.
The drug-store man had bought his own bottles twice before he found
out, but it is a proof of the twins' ability as financiers that they
did not come back after he found it out. Lots of silly little boys
would, but there is an advantage in being twins!
Down below the town, on the river-flat, the old timers were getting
together. Under a grove of tall elms a group of the older men were
recounting the stirring scenes of the boom days, when flour was ten
dollars a bag, and sugar twenty-five cents a pound; and the big flood
of '82, when the Souris, the peaceful little murmuring stream that
now glinted through the trees below them, ran full from bank to bank
and every house in Millford had a raft tied to its back door.
In the picnic grounds, which had been cleared out for this purpose
years before, the women, faded and worn, most of them, with many long
years on the prairie, but wonderfully brightened up by meeting old
friends, spread their table-covers on the long, rough tables, and
brought out the contents of their baskets.
Mrs. Watson introduced her sister-in-law to all the old friends, who
at once received her into the sisterhood, and in a few minutes Aunt
Kate was exchanging opinions on lemon pies with the best of them.
Then, speaking of pies, some one recalled Grandma Lowry's vinegar
pies-that triumph of housewifely art, whereby a pie is made without
eggs or milk or fruit, and still is a "pie!"
"Wasn't she a wonder? Did you ever see the beat of old Grandma
Lowry?" they asked each other, looking up the hillside where they had
laid her the year before, and hushing their voices reverently as if
they were afraid that they might disturb her slumbers.
"I brought some of the vinegar pies to-day," Mrs. Slater said. "I
thought it would be nice to remember her that way. She brought me
over two of them the first Christmas we were in the country. I never
will forget Grandma Lowry."
A little old woman in black stopped cutting the cake suddenly and
looked up. Then she began to speak in a slow, monotonous voice. "She
came to me," she said, "when my three boys were down with diphtheria
in the dead of winter, and sat with my little Charlie the last night
he was on earth. I says to her: 'Lie down, Mrs. Lowry'--she'd been up
two nights already--but she says--I'll never forget just the way she
said it--she says: 'Mary, I helped little Charlie to come into the
world, and if it so be that he's goin' to leave it, who's got a
better right than me to' be with him?'"
The shade of the elm-trees was getting smaller and smaller as the sun
rose higher, and some of the old-timers were sitting in the sun
before they noticed it, so interested were they in Mr. Slater's story
of the surveying party that crossed the Assiniboine that fateful
night in November, '79, when only five out of the eight got over.
Then the women announced, by beating on a dishpan, that dinner was
ready, and every tree and bush gave answer--it was the old miracle of
Roderick Dhu's men rising from copse and heath and cairn. Gray-haired
men came running like boys, catching at each other's coat-tails,
tripping each other, laughing, care-free, for it was Pioneers' Picnic
day, and that is the one day when gladness and good-fellowship have
full play, and cares and years with their bitter memories of hail and
frost fall from them like a garment. Hungry little boys fell down out
of trees, asking where was the pie! Little girls in fluffy skirts
stood shyly around until some motherly soul ushered them down the
line where she said there was plenty of room and lots of good eating.
Demure young ladies, assisted by young fellows in white aprons,
poured tea and coffee from huge white pitchers, making frequent
journeys to the stove over among the trees, and sometimes forgetting
to come back until some one had to go for them!
There were roast chicken and boiled ham set in beds of crispest
lettuce and parsley. There were moulds of chicken jelly with sprigs
of young celery stuck in the top. There were infinite varieties of
salads and jellies and pickles; there were platters full of
strawberry tarts, made from last year's wild strawberries, which had
been kept for this very occasion; there were apple pies covered with
a thick mat of scalded cream. There was Mrs. Motherwell's half-hour
cake, which tradition said had to be beaten for that length of
time "all the one way"; there were layer cake, fig cake, rolled
jelly cake, election cake, cookies with a hole, cookies with a
raisin instead of a hole; there were dough nuts, Spanish bun and
ginger-bread. No wonder that every one ate until they were able to
eat no more.
Pearl helped to wait on the others. Danny did not say a word, but
just laid about him. At last he called Pearl to him, and, in a
muffled whisper, asked: "What is there now that I haven't had?" Pearl
then knew that he was approaching the high-water mark.
* * *
Having overruled Martha's objections to mingling with her fellow-men
at picnics, and having persuaded her to come and see for herself if
picnics were not a good thing, Pearl felt responsible for her
enjoyment of it.
Pearl had some anxious thoughts on the subject of a proper dress for
Martha for the picnic, when she found that her best summer dress was
a black muslin, which to Pearl seemed fit only for a funeral.
She wondered how to bring forward the subject without appearing rude,
when Martha saved her from all further anxiety one day by coming over
to ask her to help her to pick out a dress from the samples she had
sent for. The magazine had begun to bear fruit.
They decided on a white muslin with a navy blue silk dot in it, and
then Pearl suggested a blue ribbon girdle with long ends, a hat like
Camilla's, a blue silk parasol, and long blue silk gloves.
When Pearl saw Martha the day of the picnic, it just seemed too good
to be true that Martha could look so nice. She had braided her hair
the night before and made it all fluffy and wavy, and under the broad
brim of her blue hat it didn't look the colour of last year's hay at
all, Pearl thought. Martha herself seemed to feel less constrained
and awkward than she ever did before. Mrs. Francis would have called
it the "leaven of good clothes."
Pearl was wondering what she was going to do with Martha, now that
she had got her there, when she saw Arthur Wemyss, the young
Englishman.
She took him aside and said: "Arthur, you are the very fellow I want
to see. I've got Martha Perkins with me to-day, and she's pretty shy,
you know--never been to any of these picnics before--and I'm so busy
looking after all our young lads that I haven't time to go around
with her. Now, I wonder if you would take her around and be nice to
her. Martha's just a fine girl and young, too, if she only knew it,
and she should be having a good time at picnics."
Arthur expressed his willingness to be useful. He would be glad, he
said, to do his best to give Miss Martha a pleasant time.
And so it came about that Arthur, in his courteous way, escorted
Martha through the throng of picnickers, found a seat for her at the
table, and waited on her with that deference that seems to come so
easy to the well-bred young Englishman.
Arthur was an open-hearted young fellow, and finding Martha very
sympathetic, told her about his plans. Thursa was coming from England
in December to marry him, and he was going to have a house put up
just as soon as the harvest was over. His father had sent him the
money, and so he was not depending entirely on the harvest. He showed
her the plan of the house and consulted her on the best position for
the cellar door and the best sort of cistern. He showed her a new
photo of Thursa that he had just received. She was a fluffy-haired
little thing in a much befrilled dress, holding a fan coquettishly
behind her head. Martha noticed how fondly he looked at it, and for a
moment a shivering sense of disappointment smote her heart. But she
resolutely put it from her and feasted her eyes on the lovelight in
his, even though she knew it was the face of another woman that had
kindled it.
Arthur was a wholesome-looking young man, with a beaming face of
unaffected good-humour, and to Martha it seemed the greatest
happiness just to be near him and hear his voice. She tried to forget
everything save that he was here beside her, for this one dear sweet
afternoon.
When the thought of Thursa's coming would intrude on her, or the
bitterer thought still that she was only a plain, sunburnt, country
girl, with rough hands and uncouth ways, she forced them away from
her, even as you and I lie down again, and try to gather up the
ravelled threads of a sweet dream, knowing well that it is only a
dream and that waking time is drawing near, but holding it close to
our hearts as long as we can.