FIRST IMPRESSIONS
There was a long, well-shaded yard behind the house, bordered on the
upper hand by the palings of the garden fence. Had this fence not been
so overgrown by vines, wandering hens could have gone in and out of the
garden at pleasure.
Robins were whisking in and out of the tops of the trees, quarreling
over the first of the cherry crop. Janice heard Marty's hoe and she
opened the garden gate. About half of this good-sized patch was given
over to the "'tater" crop; the remainder of the garden seemed--to the
casual glance--merely a wilderness of weeds. There may have been rows of
vegetable seeds planted there in the beginning; but now it was a perfect
mat of green things that have no commercial value--to say the least.
Marty was about halfway down the first row of potatoes. He was cleaning
the row pretty well, and the weeds were wilting in the sun; but the rows
were as crooked as a snake's path.
"Hullo!" said the boy, willing to stop and lean on the hoe handle.
"Don't you want to help?"
"I don't believe I could hoe, Marty," said Janice, doubtfully.
"If you'd been a boy cousin, I wouldn't have minded," grunted Marty. "He
and me could have had some fun."
"Don't you think _I_ can be any fun?" demanded Janice, rather amused by
the frankness of the youth.
"Never saw a gal that was," responded Marty. "Always in the way. Marm
says I got to be perlite to 'em----"
"And is that such a cross?"
"Don't know anything about no cross," growled Marty; "but a boy cousin
that I could lick would ha' been a whole lot more to my mind."
"Oh, Marty! we're not going to quarrel."
"I dunno whether we are or not," returned the pessimistic youth. "Wait
till there's only one piece o' pie left at dinner some day. You'll have
ter have it. Marm'll say so. But if you was a boy--an' I could lick
ye--ye wouldn't dare take it. D'ye see?"
"I'm not so awfully fond of pie," admitted Janice. "And I wouldn't let a
piece stand in the way of our being good friends."
"Oh, well; we'll see," said Marty, grudgingly. "But ye can't hoe, ye
say?"
"I don't believe so. I'd cut off more potato plants than weeds, maybe.
Can't you cultivate your potatoes with a horse cultivator? I see the
farmers doing that around Greensboro. It's lots quicker."
"Oh, we got a horse-hoe," said Marty, without interest. "But it got
broke an' Dad ain't fixed it yet. B'sides, ye couldn't use it 'twixt
these rows. They're too crooked. But then--as the feller said--there's
more plants in a crooked row."
"What's all that?" demanded Janice, waving a hand toward the other half
of the garden.
"Weeds--mostly. Right there's carrots. Marm always _will_ plant carrots
ev'ry spring; but they git lost so easy in the weeds."
"_I_ know carrots," cried Janice, brightly. "Let me weed 'em," and she
dropped on her knees at the beginning of the rows.
"Help yourself!" returned Marty, plying the hoe. "But it looks to me as
though them carrots had just about fainted."
It looked so to Janice, too, when she managed to find the tender little
plants which, coming up thickly enough in the row, now looked as livid
as though grown in a cellar. The rank weeds were keeping all the sun and
air from them.
"I can find them, just the same," she confided to Marty, when he came
back up the next row. "And I'd better thin them, too, as I go along,
hadn't I?"
"Help yourself," repeated the boy. "But pickin' 'tater bugs wouldn't be
as bad as _that_, to my mind."
"'Every one to his fancy,
And me to my Nancy.'
as the old woman said when she kissed her cow," quoted Janice, laughing.
"You can have the bugs, Marty."
"Somebody'll have to git 'em pretty soon, or the bugs'll have the
'taters," declared her cousin. "Say! you'd ought to have somethin'
besides your fingers ter scratch around them plants."
"Yes, and a pair of old gloves, Marty," agreed Janice, ruefully.
"Huh! Ain't that a girl all over? Allus have ter be waited on. I wisht
you'd been a boy cousin--I jest _do_! Then we'd git these 'taters done
'fore night."
"And how about getting the carrots weeded, Marty?" she returned,
laughing at him.
Marty grunted. But when he finished the second row he threw down his hoe
and disappeared through the garden gate. Janice wondered if he had
deserted her--and the potatoes--for the afternoon; but by and by he
returned, bringing a little three-fingered hand-weeder, and tossed on
the ground beside her a pair of old kid gloves--evidently his mother's.
"Oh, thank you, Marty!" cried Janice. "I don't mind working, but I hated
to tear my fingers all to pieces."
"Huh!" grunted Marty. "Ain't that jest like a girl?"
Grudgingly, however, as his interest in Janice was shown, the girl
appreciated the fact that Marty was warming toward her. Intermittently,
as he plodded up and down the potato rows, they conversed and became
better acquainted.
"Daddy has a friend who owns a farm outside of Greensboro, and I loved
to go out there," Janice ventured. "I always said I'd love to live on a
farm."
"Huh!" came Marty's usual explosive grunt. "You'll git mighty tired of
livin' on _this_ one--I bet you!"
"Why should I? You've got horses, and cows, and chickens, and--and all
that--haven't you?"
"Well, we've got a pair of nags that you can plow with. But they ain't
fit for driving. Jim Courteval, who lives up the road a piece, now
_he's_ got some hossflesh wuth owning. But our old crowbaits ain't
nothing."
"Don't you love to take care of them--and brush them--and all that?"
cried the girl, eagerly.
"Not much I don't! I reckon if old Sam and Lightfoot felt a currycomb
once more they'd have a fit. And you ought to see our cow! Gee! Dad
tried to trade her the other day for a stack of fodder, and the man
wouldn't have her. He'll have ter trade her off 'sight unseen' if he
ever gits rid of her. Ye see, we never _do_ raise feed enough, an' she
certainly come through the winter in bad shape; an' our paster fence is
down in places so we can't let her get the grass."
"Why, the poor creature!" murmured Janice. "Why don't you mend the
fence, Marty, so the cow can feed in the pasture?"
"Me? Huh! I guess not," snarled Marty, starting down the potato row
again. "Let the old man do it."
It was not long after this that Marty got tired of hoeing and threw down
the implement altogether, to seek the shadow of the cherry tree in the
fence corner.
"Why don't ye quit?" he asked Janice. "You're getting all hot and mucky.
And for what? Them things will only have ter be weeded again."
Janice laughed. "I'll keep them clean as far as I can go. I won't let a
lot of old weeds beat _me_."
"Huh! what's the odds?"
"Why, Marty!" she cried. "Don't you like to see 'a good task well
done?'"
"Ya-as,--by somebody else," grinned that young hopeful. "Come on an' sit
down, Janice."
"Haven't got time," laughed his cousin.
"Pshaw! 'Time was made for slaves'--that's what Walky Dexter says. Say!
let's go up to see the Shower Bath."
"How about the potatoes?"
"Shucks! I've done a good stint, ain't I? Dad can't expect me to work
all the time. An' I bet he ain't doin' a livin' thing himself but
settin' down talkin' somewhere."
Janice, though shaking her head silently, thought this was more than
likely to be true. And Marty would not leave her in peace; so she was
willing to desert the carrot patch. But she had cleaned up quite a piece
of the bed and was proud of it.
Marty sauntered along by her side as they passed through the barnyard
and paddock. It was plain that what Marty had said about currying the
horses was quite true. The beasts' winter coats still clung to them in
rags. And the poor cow!
A couple of lean shoats squealed in a pen.
"What makes them so noisy, Marty?" asked his cousin.
"I guess they're thirsty. Always squealin' about sumthin'--hogs is. More
nuisance than they're worth."
"But--I s'pose if _you_ wanted water, you'd squeal?" suggested Janice.
"Huh! smart, ain't ye?" growled Marty. "I'd go down ter Dickerson's an'
git a drink. So'll them shoats if Dad don't mend that pen pretty soon."
It was no use to suggest that Marty might make the needed repairs; so
Janice made no further comment. The trail of shiftlessness was over
everything. Fences were down, doors flapped on single hinges, roofs were
caved in, heaps of rubbish lay in corners, here and there broken and
rusted farm implements stood where they had last been used. Neglect and
Decay had marked the Day farm for their own.
The fields were plowed for corn and partly worked up with the harrow.
But nothing further had been done for several days past, and already the
weeds were sprouting.
Most of the fences were of stone; but the pasture fence was of three
strands of wire, and with a hammer and staples a good deal might have
been done for it in a few brisk hours.
"Aw, what's the use?" demanded Marty. "It'd only be down again in a
little while."
"But the poor cow----"
"Shucks! She's gone dry long ago. An' I'm glad of it, for Dad made me
milk her."
The climb through the pasture and the woodlot above it, however, was
pleasant, and when Janice heard the falling water she was delighted.
This was so different from the prairie country to which she was used
that she must needs express her appreciation of its loveliness again and
again.
"Oh, yes," grunted Marty. "But these rocky old farms are mighty hard to
work. I bet I picked up a million dornicks out o' that upper cornfield
las' month. An' ye plow jest as many out o' the ground ev'ry year. Mebbe
the scenery's pretty upon these here hills; but ye can't _eat_ scenery,
and the crops are mighty poor."
Over the lip of a smoothly-worn ledge the water sprayed into a granite
basin. The dimpling pool might have been knee-deep, and was as cold as
ice.
"It's like that the hottest day in August," said Marty. "But it's lots
more fun to go swimmin' in the lake."
It was late afternoon when they came down the hillside to the old Day
house once more. Mr. Day was puttering around the stables.
"Ye didn't finish them 'taters, Marty," he complained.
"Oh, I'll do 'em to-morrer," said the boy. "It most broke my back
a'ready. And did ye see all the carrots we got weeded?"
"Uh-huh," observed his father. "Lots _you_ had to do with weedin' the
carrots, Marty," he added, sarcastically.
When Janice went into the house the dinner dishes were still piled in
the sink; yet Aunt 'Mira was already getting supper. She was still
shuffling around the kitchen in her list slippers and the old calico
dress.
"I declare for't!" she complained. "Seems ter me I never find time to
clean myself up for an afternoon like other women folks does. There's
allus so much ter do in this house. Does seem the beatenes'! An' there
ain't nobody nowheres likes nice clo'es better than I do, Niece Janice.
I use ter dress pretty nifty, if I do say it. But that was a long time
ago, a long time ago.
"No. Never mind 'em now. I'll wash the hull kit an' bilin' of 'em up
after supper. No use in takin' two bites to a cherry," she added,
referring to the dishes in the sink.
Janice climbed the stairs to her room, carefully stepping over the
broken tread. There was water in her pitcher, and she made her simple
toilet, putting on a fresh frock. Then she sat down in the rocker by the
window. Every time she swung to and fro the loose rocker clicked and
rattled.
The red light that heralded the departure of the sun behind the wooded
hills across the lake seemed to make the room and its mismated
furnishings uglier than before. The girl turned her back upon it with
almost a sob, and gazed out upon the terraced hillside and the lake, the
latter already darkening. The shadows on the farther shore were heavy,
but here and there a point of sudden light showed a farmhouse.
A belated bird, winging its way homeward, called shrilly. The breeze
sobbed in the nearby treetops, and then died suddenly.
Such a lonely, homesick feeling possessed Janice Day as she had never
imagined before! She was away off here in the East, while Daddy's train
was still flying westward with him, down towards that war-ruffled
Mexico. And she was obliged to stay here--in this ugly old house--with
these shiftless people----
"Oh, dear Daddy! I wish you could be here right now," the girl half
sobbed. "I wish you could see this place--and the folks here! I know
what _you'd_ say, Daddy; I know just what you'd say about it all!"