of her green sunbonnet. She pointed one dainty finger at a cloud of pale
yellow butterflies in the field beside which they were walking. “Want to
chase flutterbies,” she chirped. Little Dan'l had a fascinating way of
misplacing her consonants in long words.
“No; you'll get overhet. You just walk along slow with Uncle Dan'l, and
pretty soon we'll come to the pretty brook,” said Daniel.
“Where the lagon-dries live?” asked little Dan'l, meaning dragon-flies.
“Yes,” said Daniel. He was conscious, as he spoke, of increasing waves
of thready black floating before his eyes. They had floated since dawn,
but now they were increasing. Some of the time he could hardly see the
narrow sidewalk path between the dusty meadowsweet and hardhack bushes,
since those floating black threads wove together into a veritable veil
before him. At such times he walked unsteadily, and little Dan'l eyed
him curiously.
“Why don't you walk the way you always do?” she queried.
“Uncle Dan'l can't see jest straight, somehow,” replied the old man;
“guess it's because it's rather warm.”
It was in truth a day of terror because of the heat. It was one of
those days which break records, which live in men's memories as great
catastrophes, which furnish head-lines for newspapers, and are alluded
to with shudders at past sufferings. It was one of those days which seem
to forecast the Dreadful Day of Revelation wherein no shelter may be
found from the judgment of the fiery firmament. On that day men fell in
their tracks and died, or were rushed to hospitals to be succored as by
a miracle. And on that day the poor old man who had all his life feared
and dreaded the heat as the most loathly happening of earth, walked
afield for love of the little child. As Daniel went on the heat seemed
to become palpable--something which could actually be seen. There was
now a thin, gaseous horror over the blazing sky, which did not temper
the heat, but increased it, giving it the added torment of steam. The
clogging moisture seemed to brood over the accursed earth, like some
foul bird with deadly menace in wings and beak.
Daniel walked more and more unsteadily. Once he might have fallen had
not the child thrown one little arm around a bending knee. “You 'most
tumbled down. Uncle Dan'l,” said she. Her little voice had a surprised
and frightened note in it.
“Don't you be scared,” gasped Daniel; “we have got 'most to the brook;
then we'll be all right. Don't you be scared, and--you walk real slow
and not get overhet.”
The brook was near, and it was time. Daniel staggered under the trees
beside which the little stream trickled over its bed of stones. It was
not much of a brook at best, and the drought had caused it to lose
much of its life. However, it was still there, and there were delicious
little hollows of coolness between the stones over which it flowed, and
large trees stood about with their feet rooted in the blessed damp. Then
Daniel sank down. He tried to reach a hand to the water, but could not.
The black veil had woven a compact mass before his eyes. There was a
terrible throbbing in his head, but his arms were numb.
Little Dan'l stood looking at him, and her lip quivered. With a mighty
effort Daniel cleared away the veil and saw the piteous baby face.
“Take--Uncle Dan'l's hat and--fetch him--some water,” he gasped. “Don't
go too--close and--tumble in.”
The child obeyed. Daniel tried to take the dripping hat, but failed.
Little Dan'l was wise enough to pour the water over the old man's head,
but she commenced to weep, the pitiful, despairing wail of a child who
sees failing that upon which she has leaned for support.
Daniel rallied again. The water on his head gave him momentary relief,
but more than anything else his love for the child nerved him to effort.
“Listen, little Dan'l,” he said, and his voice sounded in his own
ears like a small voice of a soul thousands of miles away. “You take
the--umbrella, and--you take the fan, and you go real slow, so you don't
get overhet, and you tell Mis' Dean, and--”
Then old Daniel's tremendous nerve, that he had summoned for the sake of
love, failed him, and he sank back. He was quite unconscious--his face,
staring blindly up at the terrible sky between the trees, was to little
Dan'l like the face of a stranger. She gave one cry, more like the
yelp of a trodden animal than a child's voice. Then she took the open
umbrella and sped away. The umbrella bobbed wildly--nothing could be
seen of poor little Dan'l but her small, speeding feet. She wailed
loudly all the way.
She was half-way home when, plodding along in a cloud of brown dust, a
horse appeared in the road. The horse wore a straw bonnet and advanced
very slowly. He drew a buggy, and in the buggy were Dr. Trumbull and
Johnny, his son. He had called at Daniel's to see the little girl, and,
on being told that they had gone to walk, had said something under his
breath and turned his horse's head down the road.
“When we meet them, you must get out, Johnny,” he said, “and I will take
in that poor old man and that baby. I wish I could put common sense in
every bottle of medicine. A day like this!”
Dr. Trumbull exclaimed when he saw the great bobbing black umbrella and
heard the wails. The straw-bonneted horse stopped abruptly. Dr. Trumbull
leaned out of the buggy. “Who are you?” he demanded.
“Uncle Dan'l is gone,” shrieked the child.
“Gone where? What do you mean?”
“He--tumbled right down, and then he was-somebody else. He ain't there.”
“Where is 'there'? Speak up quick!”
“The brook--Uncle Dan'l went away at the brook.”
Dr. Trumbull acted swiftly. He gave Johnny a push. “Get out,” he said.
“Take that baby into Jim Mann's house there, and tell Mrs. Mann to keep
her in the shade and look out for her, and you tell Jim, if he hasn't
got his horse in his farm-wagon, to look lively and harness her in and
put all the ice they've got in the house in the wagon. Hurry!”
Johnny was over the wheel before his father had finished speaking, and
Jim Mann just then drew up alongside in his farm-wagon.
“What's to pay?” he inquired, breathless. He was a thin, sinewy man,
scantily clad in cotton trousers and a shirt wide open at the breast.
Green leaves protruded from under the brim of his tilted straw hat.
“Old Daniel Wise is overcome by the heat,” answered Dr. Trumbull. “Put
all the ice you have in the house in your wagon, and come along. I'll
leave my horse and buggy here. Your horse is faster.”
Presently the farm-wagon clattered down the road, dust-hidden behind a
galloping horse. Mrs. Jim Mann, who was a loving mother of children,
was soothing little Dan'l. Johnny Trumbull watched at the gate. When the
wagon returned he ran out and hung on behind, while the strong, ungainly
farm-horse galloped to the house set high on the sun-baked terraces.
When old Daniel revived he found himself in the best parlor, with ice
all about him. Thunder was rolling overhead and hail clattered on the
windows. A sudden storm, the heat-breaker, had come up and the dreadful
day was vanquished. Daniel looked up and smiled a vague smile of
astonishment at Dr. Trumbull and Sarah Dean; then his eyes wandered
anxiously about.
“The child is all right,” said Dr. Trumbull; “don't you worry, Daniel.
Mrs. Jim Mann is taking care of her. Don't you try to talk. You didn't
exactly have a sunstroke, but the heat was too much for you.”
But Daniel spoke, in spite of the doctor's mandate. “The heat,” said
he, in a curiously clear voice, “ain't never goin' to be too much for me
again.”
“Don't you talk, Daniel,” repeated Dr. Trumbull. “You've always been
nervous about the heat. Maybe you won't be again, but keep still. When
I told you to take that child out every day I didn't mean when the world
was like Sodom and Gomorrah. Thank God, it will be cooler now.”
Sarah Dean stood beside the doctor. She looked pale and severe, but
adequate. She did not even state that she had urged old Daniel not to go
out. There was true character in Sarah Dean.
The weather that summer was an unexpected quantity. Instead of the day
after the storm being cool, it was hot. However, old Daniel, after
his recovery, insisted on going out of doors with little Dan'l after
breakfast. The only concession which he would make to Sarah Dean, who
was fairly frantic with anxiety, was that he would merely go down the
road as far as the big elm-tree, that he would sit down there, and let
the child play about within sight.
“You'll be brought home agin, sure as preachin',” said Sarah Dean, “and
if you're brought home ag'in, you won't get up ag'in.”
Old Daniel laughed. “Now don't you worry, Sarah,” said he. “I'll set
down under that big ellum and keep cool.”
Old Daniel, at Sarah's earnest entreaties, took a palm-leaf fan. But he
did not use it. He sat peacefully under the cool trail of the great elm
all the forenoon, while little Dan'l played with her doll. The child was
rather languid after her shock of the day before, and not disposed to
run about. Also, she had a great sense of responsibility about the old
man. Sarah Dean had privately charged her not to let Uncle Daniel get
“overhet.” She continually glanced up at him with loving, anxious, baby
eyes.
“Be you overhet. Uncle Dan'l?” she would ask.
“No, little Dan'l, uncle ain't a mite overhet,” the old man would assure
her. Now and then little Dan'l left her doll, climbed into the old man's
lap, and waved the palm-leaf fan before his face.
Old Daniel Wise loved her so that he seemed, to himself, fairly alight
with happiness. He made up his mind that he would find some little girl
in the village to come now and then and play with little Dan'l. In the
cool of that evening he stole out of the back door, covertly, lest
Sarah Dean discover him, and walked slowly to the rector's house in the
village. The rector's wife was sitting on her cool, vine-shaded veranda.
She was alone, and Daniel was glad. He asked her if the little girl
who had come to live with her, Content Adams, could not come the next
afternoon and see little Dan'l. “Little Dan'l had ought to see other
children once in a while, and Sarah Dean makes real nice cookies,” he
stated, pleadingly.
Sally Patterson laughed good-naturedly. “Of course she can, Mr. Wise,”
she said.
The next afternoon Sally herself drove the rector's horse, and brought
Content to pay a call on little Dan'l. Sally and Sarah Dean visited in
the sitting-room, and left the little girls alone in the parlor with
a plate of cookies, to get acquainted. They sat in solemn silence and
stared at each other. Neither spoke. Neither ate a cooky. When Sally
took her leave, she asked little Dan'l if she had had a nice time with
Content, and little Dan'l said, “Yes, ma'am.”
Sarah insisted upon Content's carrying the cookies home in the dish with
a napkin over it.
“When can I go again to see that other little girl?” asked Content as
she and Sally were jogging home.
“Oh, almost any time. I will drive you over-because it is rather a
lonesome walk for you. Did you like the little girl? She is younger than
you.”
“Yes'm.”
Also little Dan'l inquired of old Daniel when the other little girl was
coming again, and nodded emphatically when asked if she had had a nice
time. Evidently both had enjoyed, after the inscrutable fashion of
childhood, their silent session with each other. Content came generally
once a week, and old Daniel was invited to take little Dan'l to the
rector's. On that occasion Lucy Rose was present, and Lily Jennings. The
four little girls had tea together at a little table set on the porch,
and only Lily Jennings talked. The rector drove old Daniel and the child
home, and after they had arrived the child's tongue was loosened and she
chattered. She had seen everything there was to be seen at the rector's.
She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice. She had to be
checked and put to bed, lest she be tired out.
“I never knew that child could talk so much,” Sarah said to Daniel,
after the little girl had gone up-stairs.
“She talks quite some when she's alone with me.”
“And she seems to see everything.”
“Ain't much that child don't see,” said Daniel, proudly.
The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel never again succumbed.
When autumn came, for the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was
sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and the winter upon his
precious little Dan'l, whom he put before himself as fondly as any
father could have done, and as the season progressed his dread seemed
justified. Poor little Dan'l had cold after cold. Content Adams and Lucy
Rose came to see her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties.
But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel began to look forward
to spring and summer--the seasons which had been his bugaboos through
life--as if they were angels. When the February thaw came, he told
little Dan'l, “Jest look at the snow meltin' and the drops hangin' on
the trees; that is a sign of summer.”
Old Daniel watched for the first green light along the fences and the
meadow hollows. When the trees began to cast slightly blurred shadows,
because of budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the terraces,
and now and then the air was cleft with blue wings, he became jubilant.
“Spring is jest about here, and then uncle's little Dan'l will stop
coughin', and run out of doors and pick flowers,” he told the child
beside the window.
Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blossoms, leaves, birds,
and flowers--all arrived pellmell, fairly smothering the world with
sweetness and music. In May, about the first of the month, there was an
intensely hot day. It was as hot as midsummer. Old Daniel with
little Dan'l went afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the
carnival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon treebranches, of
birds and butterflies. “Spring is right here!” said old Daniel. “Summer
is right here! Pick them vilets in that holler, little Dan'l.” The
old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and watched the child in the
blue-gleaming hollow gather up violets in her little hands as if
they were jewels. The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with
fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was
heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new
lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon
of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy.
When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become
as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the
tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child picking violets and
gathering strength with every breath of the young air of the year, and
he realized that the fear of his whole life was overcome for ever.
He realized that never again, though they might bring suffering, even
death, would he dread the summers with their torrid winds and their
burning lights, since, through love, he had become under-lord of all the
conditions of his life upon earth.
BIG SISTER SOLLY
IT did seem strange that Sally Patterson, who, according to her own
self-estimation, was the least adapted of any woman in the village,
should have been the one chosen by a theoretically selective providence
to deal with a psychological problem.
It was conceded that little Content Adams was a psychological problem.
She was the orphan child of very distant relatives of the rector.
When her parents died she had been cared for by a widowed aunt on her
mother's side, and this aunt had also borne the reputation of being a
creature apart. When the aunt died, in a small village in the indefinite
“Out West,” the presiding clergyman had notified Edward Patterson of
little Content's lonely and helpless estate. The aunt had subsisted
upon an annuity which had died with her. The child had inherited nothing
except personal property. The aunt's house had been bequeathed to the
church over which the clergyman presided, and after her aunt's death he
took her to his own home until she could be sent to her relatives, and
he and his wife were exceedingly punctilious about every jot and tittle
of the aunt's personal belongings. They even purchased two extra trunks
for them, which they charged to the rector.
Little Content, traveling in the care of a lady who had known her aunt
and happened to be coming East, had six large trunks, besides a hat-box
and two suit-cases and a nailed-up wooden box containing odds and ends.
Content made quite a sensation when she arrived and her baggage was
piled on the station platform.
Poor Sally Patterson unpacked little Content's trunks. She had sent the
little girl to school within a few days after her arrival. Lily Jennings
and Amelia Wheeler called for her, and aided her down the street between
them, arms interlocked. Content, although Sally had done her best with a
pretty ready-made dress and a new hat, was undeniably a peculiar-looking
child. In the first place, she had an expression so old that it was
fairly uncanny.
“That child has downward curves beside her mouth already, and lines
between her eyes, and what she will look like a few years hence is
beyond me,” Sally told her husband after she had seen the little girl go
out of sight between Lily's curls and ruffles and ribbons and Amelia's
smooth skirts.
“She doesn't look like a happy child,” agreed the rector. “Poor little
thing! Her aunt Eudora must have been a queer woman to train a child.”
“She is certainly trained,” said Sally, ruefully; “too much so. Content
acts as if she were afraid to move or speak or even breathe unless
somebody signals permission. I pity her.”
She was in the storeroom, in the midst of Content's baggage. The rector
sat on an old chair, smoking. He had a conviction that it behooved him
as a man to stand by his wife during what might prove an ordeal. He
had known Content's deceased aunt years before. He had also known the
clergyman who had taken charge of her personal property and sent it on
with Content.
“Be prepared for finding almost anything. Sally,” he observed. “Mr.
Zenock Shanksbury, as I remember him, was so conscientious that it
amounted to mania. I am sure he has sent simply unspeakable things
rather than incur the reproach of that conscience of his with regard to
defrauding Content of one jot or tittle of that personal property.”
Sally shook out a long, black silk dress, with jet dangling here and
there. “Now here is this dress,” said she. “I suppose I really must keep
this, but when that child is grown up the silk will probably be cracked
and entirely worthless.”
“You had better take the two trunks and pack them with such things, and
take your chances.”
“Oh, I suppose so. I suppose I must take chances with everything except
furs and wools, which will collect moths. Oh, goodness!” Sally held up
an old-fashioned fitch fur tippet. Little vague winged things came from
it like dust. “Moths!” said she, tragically. “Moths now. It is full
of them. Edward, you need not tell me that clergyman's wife was
conscientious. No conscientious woman would have sent an old fur tippet
all eaten with moths into another woman's house. She could not.”
Sally took flying leaps across the storeroom. She flung open the window
and tossed out the mangy tippet. “This is simply awful!” she declared,
as she returned. “Edward, don't you think we are justified in having
Thomas take all these things out in the back yard and making a bonfire
of the whole lot?”
“No, my dear.”
“But, Edward, nobody can tell what will come next. If Content's aunt had
died of a contagious disease, nothing could induce me to touch another
thing.”
“Well, dear, you know that she died from the shock of a carriage
accident, because she had a weak heart.”
“I know it, and of course there is nothing contagious about that.” Sally
took up an ancient bandbox and opened it. She displayed its contents: a
very frivolous bonnet dating back in style a halfcentury, gay with
roses and lace and green strings, and another with a heavy crape veil
dependent.
“You certainly do not advise me to keep these?” asked Sally,
despondently.
Edward Patterson looked puzzled. “Use your own judgment,” he said,
finally.
Sally summarily marched across the room and flung the gay bonnet and the
mournful one out of the window. Then she took out a bundle of very old
underwear which had turned a saffron yellow with age. “People are always
coming to me for old linen in case of burns,” she said, succinctly.
“After these are washed I can supply an auto da fe.”
Poor Sally worked all that day and several days afterward. The rector
deserted her, and she relied upon her own good sense in the disposition
of little Content's legacy. When all was over she told her husband.
“Well, Edward,” said she, “there is exactly one trunk half full of
things which the child may live to use, but it is highly improbable. We
have had six bonfires, and I have given away three suits of old clothes
to Thomas's father. The clothes were very large.”
“Must have belonged to Eudora's first husband. He was a stout man,” said
Edward.
“And I have given two small suits of men's clothes to the Aid Society
for the next out-West barrel.”
“Eudora's second husband's.”
“And I gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her
lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a
few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas's wife ten old wool
dresses and a shawl and three old cloaks. All the other things which did
not go into the bonfires went to the Aid Society. They will go back
out West.” Sally laughed, a girlish peal, and her husband joined. But
suddenly her smooth forehead contracted. “Edward,” said she.
“Well, dear?”
“I am terribly puzzled about one thing.” The two were sitting in the
study. Content had gone to bed. Nobody could hear easily, but Sally
Patterson lowered her voice, and her honest, clear blue eyes had a
frightened expression.
“What is it, dear?”
“You will think me very silly and cowardly, and I think I have never
been cowardly, but this is really very strange. Come with me. I am such
a goose, I don't dare go alone to that storeroom.”
The rector rose. Sally switched on the lights as they went up-stairs to
the storeroom.
“Tread very softly,” she whispered. “Content is probably asleep.”
The two tiptoed up the stairs and entered the storeroom. Sally
approached one of the two new trunks which had come with Content from
out West. She opened it. She took out a parcel nicely folded in a large
towel.
“See here, Edward Patterson.”
The rector stared as Sally shook out a dress-a gay, up-to-date dress, a
young girl's dress, a very tall young girl's, for the skirts trailed on
the floor as Sally held it as high as she could. It was made of a fine
white muslin. There was white lace on the bodice, and there were knots
of blue ribbon scattered over the whole, knots of blue ribbon confining
tiny bunches of rosebuds and daisies. These knots of blue ribbon and the
little flowers made it undeniably a young girl's costume. Even in the
days of all ages wearing the costumes of all ages, an older woman
would have been abashed before those exceedingly youthful knots of blue
ribbons and flowers.
The rector looked approvingly at it. “That is very pretty, it seems to
me,” he said. “That must be worth keeping, Sally.”
“Worth keeping! Well, Edward Patterson, just wait. You are a man, and
of course you cannot understand how very strange it is about the dress.”
The rector looked inquiringly.
“I want to know,” said Sally, “if Content's aunt Eudora had any young
relative besides Content. I mean had she a grown-up young girl relative
who would wear a dress like this?”
“I don't know of anybody. There might have been some relative of
Eudora's first husband. No, he was an only child. I don't think it
possible that Eudora had any young girl relative.”
“If she had,” said Sally, firmly, “she would have kept this dress. You
are sure there was nobody else living with Content's aunt at the time
she died?”
“Nobody except the servants, and they were an old man and his wife.”
“Then whose dress was this?”
“I don't know, Sally.”
“You don't know, and I don't. It is very strange.”
“I suppose,” said Edward Patterson, helpless before the feminine
problem, “that--Eudora got it in some way.”
“In some way,” repeated Sally. “That is always a man's way out of a
mystery when there is a mystery. There is a mystery. There is a mystery
which worries me. I have not told you all yet, Edward.”
“What more is there, dear?”
“I--asked Content whose dress this was, and she said--Oh, Edward, I do
so despise mysteries.”