Читать книгу Poppea of the Post-Office - Mabel Osgood Wright - Страница 9

Gilbert started from his revery and came toward the voice. "Oh, it's you, is it, Hughey, and who told you about her, pray?"

"Nobody told me 'xactly, but I heard Mr. Morse telling father and mother, and I asked her if I might come right down, and she said yes. You see, there wasn't any school this morning because it was too slippery, but now it's all wet. Broken for spring, father says. See my new rubber-boots, Mr. Gilbert; all red inside," and he held up one sturdy leg.

"As it's so close on to noon I guess I'll shut up, and we'll go in together and see little missy. Isn't this about the time of day for a barley stick, sonny?" said the postmaster, taking one from the glass case as he passed.

The kitchen was in its usual order; a boiled dinner was under way on the stove, beneath which the puppy slept, while Mrs. Pegrim sat mending some socks with the rocker drawn up close to the lounge upon which the lady baby was enthroned and playing gayly with a string of spools. When she saw Gilbert, she dropped them and tried to roll off the sofa to her feet.

"No, no!" said Mrs. Pegrim, pleasantly but decidedly, "it's too cold down there for little girls." Her face flushed, puckered up to cry; then, for some reason, she changed her mind and held out her arms.

"So she knows daddy already, does she?" crooned Gilbert, "and here's a little boy come to see her, the very first caller. Satira, this is Hugh Oldys from the Mills—Richard Oldys's boy, you know."

Richard Oldys was one of the representative men of this section of New England. He had rebuilt the original Harley's Mills near the mouth of the Moosatuck, for which the town had been named, and made them a great distributing centre of flour and all grains. The land had come down to his wife, whose mother had been a Harley and was, therefore, kin of the Misses Felton, who also had Harley blood in the female line. While a man of less wealth than John Angus, Oldys was so much more liberal with it, so much broader in his sympathies and culture, that nothing of importance was undertaken in the community without his advice and sanction. As for his wife,—in that clannish and conservative little town, almost old-world-like in its simplicity and loyalty to tradition,—it was a belief that a real Harley could do no wrong. Coupled with this, Pamela Oldys was a rare woman, almost too highly keyed to the needs and wishes of others for her own peace, and wrapped up in this boy Hugh, the only child that her frail health had allowed her.

Hugh surveyed the lady baby in silence for a moment, and then gravely shook her hand, saying, "How do you do?" A crow came from the prettily curved lips by way of answer, and she began a sort of game of peek-a-boo, covering her face with her hands and then peeping out. Evidently she had lived among responsive people.

"I suppose God sent her the same as usual," remarked Hugh, in the most matter-of-fact way. "She's nice and big though, being so new; they're mostly blinky and queer at first, like kittens. We've never had a baby at our house; they often have them next door, but not as nice as this one."

At this moment the puppy spied Hugh's rubber-boots that had been left at the door, and made a dash for them, for if there is anything a young dog loves, it is either shoe leather or shoe rubber.

"Hi! there's a puppy. Is it yours, Mr. Gilbert? I had a puppy once and it died, and father's going to buy me one of a better kind next Christmas. I'll be seven then. There's so many cats around the mill that I hope they won't scratch its eyes out."

"That pup belongs to the lady baby," answered Gilbert, who was now brushing his tousled hair in front of the mirror over the sink.

"Did it come with her?" asked Hugh, eagerly.

"It surely did; she had it right in her little arms," answered Gilbert, busy with a collar button and not thinking ahead.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Hugh, clapping his hands, "for now I know that if dogs come from heaven, they must go back there too, and I was afraid that my puppy would be dreadful lonely if he couldn't go where there were little boys and girls, for he just loved them."

Satira Pegrim looked at her brother with a horrified expression. Her lips opened to speak, but something that she saw in his face made her close them again. Whatever her feelings as a hard-shell Baptist upon the future state of dogs might be, she did not propose to shorten her visit to her brother by expressing them.

"Have they got names yet?" asked Hugh, his attention now embarrassingly divided between the lady baby and the pup.

"No, sonny; that is, I'm not plumb sure, so I'm going to take time, say until along about the first of the month, to think out a name for the lady baby. As for the pup, suppose you help me out with that. Think up all the names that's short and slick, and then we'll have a choosing bee."

"Dinner is ready," called Mrs. Pegrim from the pantry, where she was slicing bread. "Won't you set up to the table, Hugh, and eat with us?"

"I think I'd better go home now, mother didn't say anything about dinner. Next time I come, I'm going to bring you something, lady baby," Hugh said, gently kissing the dimpled hand she thrust into his face, "and byme by, when you can walk, I'll bring you up to my house to see my mother and lend you part of her, 'cause you've only got a daddy."

"That's just it, at best there'll only be a daddy," murmured Gilbert, drawing his chair to the table and eating as in a dream, in which the wording of the notice for the papers was the chief theme, until he was roused by a spoon pounding his hand vigorously, and found that the child was seated close beside him in Marygold's high-chair, her eyes fastened on his face.

"Look a-here now, Oliver," said Satira Pegrim, resting her arms on her elbows, with knife and fork raised in midair; "I've been thinking, suppose'n the Oldys took a fancy to adopt her. Wouldn't that square up everything for everybody just right? For it's plain to see that Hugh's just achin' for a sister."

Again the forbidding expression settled on Gilbert's face, but Satira did not see it until too late.

"Mrs. Pegrim, I don't know just how long you may be called to visit here, but longer or shorter, recollect one thing, you'll have no call to think about my business nor to talk about it to me, but just to keep quiet."

"Don't you want me to visit or have speech with the neighbors?" pleaded Satira, her cheery voice dropping to a ludicrous whimper, as the vision of social cups of tea flavored by neighborhood gossip began to fade.

"I don't ask anybody to do what they manifestly according to nature can't; I said me!" retorted Gilbert, about whose long forefinger the lady baby had gripped her hand as a bird clings to its perch.