BUTTER AND BUTTERCUPS
Such little keepsakes as remained of her father and mother--their
photographs, a thin old bracelet, her mother's wedding ring, her
father's battered silver watch had fortunately been in Ruth's bag.
Those keepsakes had been too precious to risk in the trunk and in the
baggage car. And how glad the girl was now that she had thus treasured
these things.
But the loss of the trunk, with all her clothing --common though that
clothing had been--was a disaster that Ruth could not easily get
over. She cried herself to sleep that night and in the morning came
down with a woebegone face indeed. Uncle Jabez did not notice her, and
even Aunt Alvirah did not comment upon her swollen eyes and
tear-streaked countenance. But the old woman, if anything, was kinder
than ever to her.
It was Saturday, and butter day. Uncle Jabez owned one cow, and since
Ruth had come to the mill it was her work twice a week to churn the
butter. The churn was a stone crock with a wooden dasher and Ruth had
just emptied in the thick cream when Helen Cameron ran in.
"Oh, Ruth!" she cried. "You're always busy--especially if I chance to
want you at all particularly."
"If you will be a drone yourself, Helen, you must expect to be always
hunting company," laughed Ruth. "Just what is troubling Miss Cameron
at present?"
"We're going to dress the Cove Chapel for to-morrow. You know, I told
you our guild attends to the decoration of the chapel and I've just
set my heart on making a great pillow of buttercups. The fields are
full of them. And Tom says he'll help. Now, you'll come; won't you?"
"If I come for buttercups it will have to be after the butter comes!"
returned Ruth, laughing.
She had begun to beat the dasher up and down and little particles of
cream sprayed up through the hole in the cover of the jar, around the
handle of the dasher. Helen looked on with growing interest.
"And is that the way to make butter?" she asked. "And the cream's
almost white. Our butter is yellow--golden. Just as golden as the
buttercups. Do you color it?"
"Not at this time of year. I used to help Miss True make butter. She
had a cow. She said I was a good butter maker. You see, it's all in
the washing after the butter comes. You wait and see."
"But I want to pick buttercups--and Tom is waiting down by the
bridge."
"Can't help it. Butter before buttercups," declared Ruth, keeping the
dasher steadily at work. "And then, Aunt Alvirah may want me for
something else before dinner."
"We've got dinner with us--or, Tom has. At least, Babette put us up a
basket of lunch."
"Oh! A picnic!" cried Ruth, flushing with pleasure. This visit had
driven out of her mind --for the time, at least--her trouble of
overnight.
"I'm going to ask Aunt Alviry for you," went on Helen, and skipped
away to find the little old woman who, despite the drawback of "her
back and her bones" was a very neat and particular housekeeper. She
was back in a few moments.
"She says you can go, just as soon as you get the butter made. Now,
hurry up, and let us get into the buttercup field, which is a whole
lot nicer than the butter churn and--Oh! it smells much nicer, too.
Why, Ruth, that cream actually smells sour!"
"I expect it is sour," laughed her friend. "Didn't you know that sweet
butter comes from sour cream? And that most nice things are the result
of hard work? The sweet from the bitter, you know."
"My! how philosophical we are this morning. Isn't that butter ever
coming?"
"Impatience! Didn't you ever have to wait for anything you wanted in
your life?"
"Why, I've got to wait till next fall before I go to Briarwood Hall.
That's a rhyme, Ruthie; it's been singing itself over and over in my
mind for days. I'm really going to boarding school in the autumn. It's
decided. Tom is going to the military academy on the other side of
Osago Lake. He'll be within ten miles of Briarwood."
Ruth's face had lost its brightness as Helen said this. The word
"school" had brought again to the girl's mind her own unfortunate
position and Uncle Jabez's unkindness.
"I hope you will have a delightful time at Briarwood," Ruth said,
softly. "I expect I shall miss you dreadfully."
"Oh, suppose the Ogre should send you to school there, too!" cried
Helen, with clasped hands. "Wouldn't that be splendid!"
"That would be beyond all imagination," said Ruth, shaking her head.
"I--I don't know that I shall be able to attend the balance of the
term here."
"Why not?" demanded Helen. "Won't he let you?"
"He has said I could." Ruth could say no more just then. She hid her
face from her friend, but made believe that it was the butter that
occupied her attention. The dasher began to slap, slap, slap
suggestively in the churn and little particles of beaten cream began
to gather on the handle of the dasher.
"Oh!" cried Helen. "It's getting hard!"
"The butter is coming. Now a little cold water to help it separate.
And then you shall have a most delicious glass of buttermilk."
"No, thank you!" cried Helen. "They say it's good for one to drink it.
But I never do like anything that's good for me."
"Give it to me, Ruth," interposed another voice, and Tom put a smiling
face around the corner of the well. "I thought you were never coming,
Miss Flyaway," he said, to his sister.
"Butter before buttercups, young man," responded Helen, primly. "We
must wait for Ruth to--er--wash the butter, is it?"
"Yes," said her friend, seriously, opening the churn and beginning to
ladle out the now yellow butter into a wooden bowl.
"May I assist at the butter's toilet?" queried Tom, grinning.
"You may sit down and watch," said his sister, in a tone intended to
quell any undue levity on her brother's part.
Ruth had rolled her sleeves above her elbows, so displaying her pretty
plump arms, and now worked and worked the butter in cold water right
"from the north side of the well" as though she were kneading bread.
First she had poured Tom a pitcher of the fresh buttermilk, and given
him a glass. Even Helen tasted a little of the tart drink.
"Oh, it's ever so nice, I suppose," she said, with a little grimace;
"but I much prefer my milk sweet."
Again and again Ruth poured off the milky water and ran fresh, cold
water upon her butter until no amount of kneading and washing would
subtract another particle of milk from the yellow ball. The water was
perfectly clear.
"Now I'll salt it," she said; "and put it away until this afternoon,
and then I'll work it again and put it down in the butter-jar. When I
grow up and get rich I am going to have a great, big dairy; with a
herd of registered cattle, and I'm going to make all the butter
myself."
"And Tom's going to raise horses. He's going to own a stock farm--so
he says. You'd better combine interests," said Helen, with some scorn.
"I like horses to ride, and butter to eat, but--well, I prefer
buttercups just now. Hurry up, Miss Slow-poke! We'll never get enough
flowers for a pillow."
So Ruth cleaned her face, taking a peep into the glass in the kitchen
to make sure, before going out to her friends. Tom looked at her with
plain approval, and Helen jumped up to squeeze her again.
"No wonder Aunt Alvirah calls you 'pretty creetur'," she whispered in
Ruth's ear. "For that's what you are." Then to Tom: "Now young man,
have you the lunch basket?"
"What there is left of it is in charge of Reno down at the bridge," he
replied, coolly.
They found the huge mastiff lying with the napkin-covered basket
between his forepaws, on the grass by the water side. Reno was
growling warningly and had his eyes fixed upon a figure leaning upon
the bridge railing.
"That there dawg don't seem ter take to me," drawled Jasper Parloe,
who was the person on the bridge. "He needn't be afraid. I wouldn't
touch the basket."
"You won't be likely to touch it while Reno has charge of it," said
Tom, quietly, while the girls passed on swiftly. Neither Ruth nor
Helen liked to have anything to do with Parloe. When Tom released Reno
from his watch and ward, the dog trotted after Ruth and put his nose
into her hand.
"Ye been up ter the mill, hev ye?" queried Parloe, eyeing Tom Cameron
aslant, "ye oughter be gre't friends with Jabe Potter. Or has he
squared hisself with ye?"
"Say, Mister Parloe," said Tom, sharply, "you've been hinting
something about the miller every time you've seen me lately.
"Only since yeou was knocked down that bank inter the gully, an' yer
arm an' head hurt. There warn't nothin' about Jabe ter interest yeou
afore that," returned Parloe, quickly.
Tom flushed suddenly and he looked at the old fellow with new
interest.
"Just what do you mean?" he asked, slowly.
"Ye know well enough. Your dad, Tom Cameron, is mighty riled up over
your bein' hurt. I heered him say that he'd give a ten-dollar note ter
know who it was drove by ye that night and crowded ye inter the ditch.
Would you give more than that not ter have it known who done it?"
"What do you mean?" exclaimed Tom, angrily.
"I guess ye like this here gal that's cone to live on Jabez, purty
well; don't ye--yeou an' yer sister?" croaked old Parloe. "Wal, if
your dad an' the miller gits inter a row--comes ter a clinch, as ye
might say--yeou an' yer sister won't be let ter hev much ter do with
Ruth, eh, now?"
"I don't know that that's so," Tom said doggedly.
"Oh, yes, ye do. Think it over. Old Jabe will put his foot right down
an' he'll stop Ruth havin' anything ter do with ye--ye know it! Wal,
now; think it over. I got a conscience, I have," pursued Parloe,
cringing and rubbing his hands together, his sly little eyes
sparkling. "I r'ally feel as though I'd oughter tell yer dad who it
was almost run ye down that night and made ye fall into the gully."
"You mean, you'd like to handle Dad's ten dollars!" cried Tom,
angrily.
Parloe smirked and still rubbed his hands together. "Don't matter a
mite whose ten dollars I handle," he said, suggestively. "Your ten
dollars would be jest as welcome to me as your Dad's, Master Cameron."
"Ten dollars is a lot of money," said Tom.
"Yes. It's right smart. I could make use of it I'm a poor man, an' I
could use it nicely," admitted the sly and furtive Parloe.
"I haven't got so much money now," growled the boy.
"Yeou kin get it, I warrant."
"I suppose I can." He drew his purse from his pocket. "I've got three
dollars and a half here. I'll have the rest for you on Monday."
"Quite correct," said Jasper Parloe, clutching eagerly at the money.
"I'll trust ye till then--oh, yes! I'll trust ye till then."