Читать книгу As a Watered Garden - Mary Esther Miller MacGregor - Страница 5

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It was morning. The sun was streaming in through the low window. It was shining on the stairs where the ghostly shapes so lately stood. It was shining on Ginger, standing with his two paws on the log-cabin quilt over Islay’s feet. How could anyone lie a-bed a morning like this! A coughing and a wheezing from Grammy’s Ben. The old clock was going to strike. It whirred, rattled, then banged out the hour with clear, rapid strokes. Five o’clock! Islay’s watch confirmed this. Whenever had she been awake at five before! Outside, high in the great elm behind the house a shower of song shivered in the cool air. She ran to the window. There he was, making for the orchard now. So much melody contained in one small, feathered body. It was too much! No wonder his notes burst out in reckless abandon. The Canadian mocking bird! She and Pete had used to follow him, far over the fields, a trail of song! An oriole now took his place in the elm, singing while she dressed.

She had never dressed so quickly! Smock, sandals and a wash in the old tin basin beside the kitchen door. She and the blue pitcher went for a walk to the well. The morning was flawless, jewel-like, despite Wise Watty’s prophecy. The earth was polished, the sky a dazzle of blank blue. You smelled a soft earth smell and things growing. Behind the Blue Ridge sunrise still showed in a rose mist. Beyond the jagged line of cedars she looked for the stretch of blue water. There was no bay, its blue had merged with the blue sky, the soft mist of morning. The orchard was alive with bird song—robin, bluebird, song sparrow, oriole, singing good morning to each other, an outpouring of intense joy. The mocking bird returned to his elm, sang louder, sweeter, improvisations of all spring songs, an essence of all joy for all time. The air was charmed, intoxicated with the scent of dew and lilacs, the sweet spice of clover.

A clear, silver stream gurgled out of the old pump. Islay thought of her city apartment on Prospect Avenue. There you looked out on somebody else’s brick wall, listened to the rattle of garbage cans and milk bottles below, the blare of radios filled your ears, commercials made your soul cheap. A piano thumped out Junior’s morning scales.

Far down the valley a bell was clanging for an early farm breakfast. Islay came back up the path to the house with the blue pitcher, washed cloudy now with filmy dew. She found herself pleasantly hungry. She really wanted breakfast. There was Minnie’s basket. She would boil one of those brown eggs and make herself a cup of coffee. That was easy. She brought out the basket, not without a faint feeling of self-reproach. She had come to the Old Home determined to keep to herself and to do her self-appointed writing. That had seemed important. But she would have to call and say a thank-you to Steve’s wife. When you planned your routine from the city, you didn’t anticipate kindnesses like this.

She looked around the big summer kitchen with the tall narrow cupboards, rows of heavy pots and pans above the table. She knew little about housekeeping. She was no cook. Each morning she had made toast and coffee for herself on an electric plate. She had lunched in town, dined either at a nearby guest house or at one of the many dinner parties their friends gave. Kate and Jeanette moved in a giddy swirl of social functions, Islay was at least firmly established on the inner outskirts—the limit her leisure time afforded her. She hadn’t prepared a real meal since her mother had died—high school, university, career—these things had filled her life. No time to take up homemaking. Just as well, she reflected bitterly, seeing that the home to which she had been looking all through her youth had been snatched from her, swept away by a man’s perfidy.

She surveyed the great black cook stove dubiously. She looked at her well-kept, white hands, her carefully coloured nails. Kate had warned her that her hands would be ruined if she so much as touched that monster. But Islay was thinking of the first Islay who had cooked bear’s meat for her hungry children over the open fire in the shanty right near where she stood. She lifted the stove cautiously, gloomed down into the ashy depths. And suddenly memory stirred.... She knew exactly what to do!

Her grandmother was calling her. ‘Run and pick up some chips, wee lassie, it’s time to make the fire for supper.’ Her mother was standing, young and smiling, at the kitchen door, little curly-headed Pete, stocky in his short frock, clutching her skirts. They were watching the little girl filling her pinafore with sweet, white chips.

Out in the shed Islay found chips, some kindling wood, some old paper. In a moment she’d made a fire blaze. There was something dream-like and unreal about it. Where had she been reading about just such an experience. She put the tea-kettle on the stove, and went back to Grammy’s Ben where Pete had left her books, piled on the old drop-leaf table. Of course! Edna St. Vincent Millay’s verse-story of the woman who came back to her deserted home and kindled a new fire on its hearth. Would she ever write like that, she wondered wistfully. Not likely, she decided, when you’d lived to thirty-five without writing anything.

The coffee was made at last, and the egg boiled. The home-made bread and butter was perfect. She set an old tin tray with Grammy’s blue dishes, carried it out to the steps of the veranda and sat down to the best breakfast she had tasted in years.

But living here alone, she thought, was not going to be as idyllic as it had looked from her office desk. There were the nights. And that staircase. But in the light of morning she dismissed these. More explicitly, there was the house to be kept clean, and no efficient char to clean it like Mrs. McKinnet of the Prospect Apartments. She would need three meals daily. Who would prepare these? The drive to Carlisle for provisions was ten miles. How did you cook a roast? Or how did one person consume it when it was cooked? What about refrigeration? Did you poke into the depths of that cavernous cellar beneath the winter kitchen? There was a great trap door in the floor with a heavy ring in it. What if it shut you in? She remembered seeing Grammy and Aunt Christena raise this ring and disappear in the gloom. What about laundry? You wanted your own home, somebody gave it to you, and then you couldn’t run it for lack of training!

She washed her dishes and set the great kitchen to right. Steve’s wife and daughters had made everything clean and shining for her reception, but everywhere were signs of yesterday’s festivities. Jeanette’s children had never been taught to take care of anything. The kitchen floor showed muddy tracks and the old stove was peppered grey with ashes.

She turned her back on it all and determined that even if she did not eat much she was going to get launched this very first morning on her big task. She went in for a table, finding one in the parlour. She swept away the ornaments that poor Great-Aunt Christena had cherished; a cluster of wax flowers under a glass globe, a couple of huge sea shells, and a dozen other treasures. A plush photograph album filled with family pictures was almost her undoing, until she put it sternly from her. The removal of the hand-painted velvet table cover displayed a marble top like a tombstone, but it was solid and smooth and she dragged the table down the long hall and out through Grammy’s Ben to the narrow veranda, set it in the green shade of her Virginia creeper, opened up her typewriter, arranged her paper, brought out one of Grammy’s cane-bottomed chairs. She was ready for work.

A squirrel flashed down from the edge of the veranda roof and scolded and chattered at the spiders, spinning silver threads along the creeper. The wasps buzzed that they had a home in the corner, high up, and better not bother them. Why was the veranda so narrow. That question had to be settled in her mind. When the family sat here they must have seated themselves in a row, side by side, like family groups in an old tin-type. But not likely they ever sat. She could not remember ever seeing Grammy or any of the aunts or uncles resting anywhere.

Ginger had gone off down the orchard, lost in the long grass, hunting a chipmunk. Now he came bounding back to tell her that somebody was coming—a nice somebody. He barked down by the back fields. Islay got up and went around the house. A thin, freckled little girl of about thirteen appeared in the pasture field. One of Steve’s daughters, the pert, chatty one, Islay remembered. She was starched in gingham, and her hair, which was the same reddish brown as Islay’s was frizzed and curled into an amazingly intricate tangle. Her poise and assurance would have done credit to Kate, herself.

“Momma sent me over, Cousin Islay,” she said in a composed, starched little voice. “She thought if you wanted any work done I could help you. And she told Watty to ask you to come over and have supper with us tomorrow, but Watty often forgets so she said I was to tell you too, and here’s something for your dinner.”

She uncovered a basket of feathery biscuits, hot from the oven.

“Oh, wonderful!” Islay exclaimed. “Fancy having biscuits baked at this time of the morning! Thank you very much, er,—Celia? No, you’re not Celia, are you?”

“No, I’m Lily Anne. I wish you please wouldn’t call me both names, though. Momma wanted to call me Lily after Aunt Lily, her sister, and poppa was bound I’d be called Anne after his sister, so they made a bargain and called me both names. But I don’t like two names. I wouldn’t mind being called Lilian though. I think Islay is a lovely name. I hope it’s all right for us to call you Cousin Islay, when we’re really not first cousins. Momma said, when we heard you were coming to stay here this summer, that us children had better call you Miss Drummond. But poppa said what in thunder would we do that for cause we were second cousins anyhow. And so momma said it would sound better if we said Cousin Islay. So I said I was going to ask you first thing right off if you’d rather we called you Miss Drummond. Cause if you do, it’s all right with us.”

Islay tried to look at her severely. The excessive dignity had not the smallest effect upon her visitor.

“You thought I was Celie, didn’t you?” she rattled on affably, “and we don’t look a bit alike. Celie’s eighteen, and she’s fair, and I’ve got kinda red hair, like yours, haven’t I? And I’m only thirteen, and Celie has been to normal school in Stratford. She got home yesterday, the very day all you folks came. Celie came on the bus and we didn’t expect her till the afternoon train. My, we were that glad! Momma was sayin’ it was wonderful to think we’ve really got a school teacher in the family at last. Celie’s not quite sure, of course, but she says maybe she’ll take honours. Of course she don’t even know if she’s passed yet, but one of the professors said to her that he was sure she’d take honours. He said, ‘Miss Laird, if you don’t take honours in your teaching, then I’m a Dutchman!’ Wasn’t that awful funny, Cousin Islay? If you don’t take honours I’m a Dutchman!”

Islay had had no opportunity to ask her caller to be seated, even if she had wanted to, but she had been moving slowly on the flood of talk towards the bench that stood outside against the kitchen wall. She sat down and motioned the girl to her side. Lily Anne seated herself without in the least disturbing the easy flow of her talk.

Poppa had taken pneumony last fall, and so Stevie, that was her oldest brother, hadn’t been able to get started to high school, and he’d passed Grade Eight the June before. Momma was worrying for fear he wouldn’t get to go. She, herself, was ready for high school too, for she had passed this month, and Jackie would be in Grade Eight after the holidays and he’d be wanting to go. Jackie could play the mouth-organ jist wonderful, and yodel too. And there were still Billy and Audrey. And Miss Hammond, the teacher that had been in Lairdale this last year, said all Steve Laird’s family was smart, but little Audrey was the smartest of them all. But it cost so much to go to school. Poppa said it seemed as if there would always be a kid in this family sittin’ on the steps of the high school hollerin’ to get in. There were two with her and Stevie now. She had been out of school for a week now, because she had passed without writing. Only the best could do that.

“We all wanted to come over and see your grand visitors. But momma wouldn’t let us. So we were awful glad when so many came over. Aren’t the little Mitchell boys cute? Celie liked Harriet best. She’s Cousin Kate’s daughter, isn’t she? She’s got lovely clothes, but she’s not very pretty, is she? I think you’re a lot prettier. Momma says the Lawrences are awful rich, but I guess money ain’t everything.”

Nice if Kate could hear how lightly the dignity of the House of Lawrence was held by this young person, Islay thought. “My, but they were all dressed lovely, though!” she sighed enviously. “Harriet and Celie were laughing and whispering. Something goofy! Big girls are always like that.”

Islay was surprised that Harriet Lawrence had troubled to go across the field with the children to see the country cousins. Rob’s girls had remained bored and aloof all afternoon. She would have liked to question Lily Anne on the subject but there was no opportunity. The flood of talk swept on.

Islay was about to rise and say she must be excused as she had work to do when Lily Anne managed to come back to the real purpose of the early morning call. Momma said she was to stay if Cousin Islay wanted her, and do any work that was needed. Momma felt sure the place would need to be fixed up after all the visitors that were here, and likely the back kitchen would have to be scrubbed again and the stove polished. Islay snatched eagerly at the offer. She took the girl into the kitchen and found that Lily Anne saw its needs much more clearly than she did. She knew where everything was too—brooms, dusters, stove polish. Islay left her with relief and went back to her new desk on the veranda.

But unfortunately, Lily Anne not only did her work well, but swiftly, and, in the course of dusting and tidying she arrived at Grammy’s Ben before the authoress had typed a half-dozen pages. Islay set her to dusting her books and arranging them on the hanging shelf above grandpa’s old pine desk. Soon a flood of talk began to pour out through the door and to inundate the veranda. Islay tried not to listen, but she could not but gather some information about poppa’s pneumonia, Celia’s chances for honours, Jackie’s musical ability, and, above all, the ever-present craving for high school.

“Momma’s always been awful set on us all goin’ to high school. You see she was a school teacher herself. Momma is very well educated and she says we must all go to high school. So I jist gotta get goin’, only I gotta wait till Stevie gets a start. He’s near fifteen and I’m only thirteen. But he’ll go this fall if Celie gets a school. But I can’t, cause poppa says he won’t stand for two of us startin’ in at high school at once. So I guess I’ll have to wait for a while. Stevie’s been waitin’ a year. Momma gets awful worried for fear Stevie won’t get to go. It all depends on Celie now. Say, it must be grand to be able to go to high school. Celie says it’s wonderful!”

Islay could not but be interested. The view point was entirely the opposite to that of her nieces and nephews. Kate’s and Rob’s children had all been sent to expensive boarding-schools, and all regarded schools and teachers as convicts look upon their keepers.

“Jackie’s next to me and he says I gotta hurry and get outa his road. He’s crazy to go to high school too, and he thinks he’ll pass next summer. I kinda hope he don’t. He’s awful smart at playin’ but he don’t learn as fast as I do in school. He’s all for singin’ an’ playin’ the mouth-organ. And yodel! Say, Cousin Islay, you wouldn’t believe how that kid can yodel. He taught himself. But I can beat him in school lessons. Miss Hammond who teached at Lairdale last year she said I was very clever in mathematics.”

“When you’ve finished with those books, Lily Anne,” Islay finally said in desperation, “that will do for today, and you may go.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Lily Anne cried genially, “I’m in no hurry now that Celie’s home. She’s the greatest worker you ever saw. Momma said I was to stay all morning if you wanted me. I could come over any time to help you, cause I guess you have an awful lot o’ type-writin’ to do, haven’t you?” She came to the door and stood swinging her duster.

“My, you write awful fast. I’d like to learn typing when I go to high school, if I ever get to go. When poppa had the pneumony he said he had a typewriter goin’ in his head. He made us kids laugh. Only momma didn’t. She said it was because he was so awful sick. My, the doctor’s bills were awful though! Our doctor’s awful good too. He don’t charge high. But he had to come out here so often and it was winter too and the roads were blocked. We usta have Doctor Porter but he’s dead now, and we go to Doctor Wallace. He’s awful good. He’ll come to see you if you’re sick no matter what. Momma said that if it hadn’t been for Doctor Wallace—”

The talk stopped suddenly. Islay had something of the sensation you have when the car brakes are applied too jerkily. She looked up to see Lily Anne staring at her, eyes full of dismay. She held her apron over her mouth, an instinctive, if belated, guard against conversational exposures.

“Oh, I’m awful sorry! Oh, Cousin Islay I’m so sorry I said that! Momma warned me not to, but I forgot.”

“Said what?” Islay asked in bewilderment.

“Sayin’—that name! Saying something about,—about him. Momma said none of us was to say a word about—the doctor, on account of you—on account of—and I clean forgot.”

“What utter nonsense!” Islay cried, annoyed to feel her face growing hot. “Why in the world should you not talk about Doctor Wallace or any other doctor if you want to?” Her voice had grown sharp and she checked herself quickly. “It’s quite too ridiculous,” she added with a forced laugh, “and now if you will please excuse me I must get on with my work. I am very busy as you see.”

“Oh, sure! I’ll be as quiet—!” Lily Anne skipped through the house into the kitchen, and Islay could hear her bustling about whistling and singing in no whit disturbed over her rebuff.

Islay redoubled her speed though she had no idea what she was writing. ‘Now is the time for all good men,’ were the only words that would come. She rattled them off again and again. How did these people know all her private affairs? But of course they knew. All the world, it seemed, knew that Dr. Malcolm Wallace and she had been engaged, that she had waited seven years for him, until he was through his medical course and when all was ready he went off and married another girl. This was just one of the things a man did to you when he threw you aside; he exposed you to the pity and contempt of every idle gossip in the countryside. She wished the Old Laird Home had been placed in the middle of Saskatchewan.

When Lily Anne was paid, thanked for her work and finally dismissed, Islay could not write. She was dismayed to find she was so easily disturbed.

She had come out here to the country to find peace and rest and she was more upset today than she had been since that unhappy day she had sent off her unkind letter.

She brewed herself a cup of tea in the tidy, shining kitchen and made her lunch of two of Minnie’s biscuits. She tried to resume her work but the afternoon had grown sultry, and the problems of housekeeping were still unsolved. Lily Anne was efficient but impossible. Better to be smothered in dust than drowned in talk. As she sat, disturbed and unhappy, she was surprised to find it getting dark and yet it was only mid-afternoon. She stepped out from underneath the vines and looked about. The shining cloud mountain that had piled in glory above the bay at noon was now dark and mounting rapidly. A distant growl of thunder rolled behind the black pall. She remembered Wise Watty’s promise. A storm was surely coming. A sudden, cool, refreshing breath blew from the bay, the orchard trees waved a welcome, Bessie’s green willows over by the spring turned silver side out. The robin that had been sounding his loud rain song from the crab apple tree beside the shed, flashed away into the orchard.

Rapidly it darkened. Islay could see Steve hurrying from the field with the team. Another rumble of thunder, this time more pronounced. A flash of lightning. She must go indoors. She gathered up her typewriter and her precious papers just as a gust of wind lashed the vine leaves against the table. She ran inside, Ginger at her heels. Not a moment too soon! Great splashes of rain drove across the veranda floor. The door slammed behind her. A terrifying finality about that. A sound that cut off safety. At the same instant a splintering crash of thunder, and Islay, city-bred, and unused to electrical storms, cowered in terror! No time to be frightened! Windows and doors must be closed. Rain drove in great splotches through the west windows. The old sashes stuck, she tugged and wrenched, while lightning flashed and thunder rent through rain. She was certain the old house would tumble about her ears, and was rather surprised when, finally, all doors and windows had been made secure and she found herself in Grammy’s Ben, damp but unharmed, with Ginger pressing close to her. She recalled childhood warnings against sitting too near a chimney or stove pipe during a lightning storm. She drew grandpa’s arm chair into the centre of the room and sat with Ginger at her feet and watched the storm rage over the valley. She was amazed at its fury. The orchard trees and the syringa and the lilac bushes writhed in torture. The whole valley that so lately slumbered under the sun, was turned to grey whirling mist. From the back windows she could see nothing of the bay except when a flare of lightning lit up its black, raging waters. Everything familiar was blotted out in the maelstrom of rain and wind. Swift streaks of lightning showed Bessie’s willows, pale with terror, bent beseeching to the earth, while thunder roared an inexorable sentence. Rain teemed down, a flood gate of some infinite reservoir, swept away. In the orchard path fountains of muddy water leaped, spouted to meet the descending streams. Suddenly Islay thought of the roof. She ran out to the shed-kitchen. Here the rain thundered down, a steady stream soaking through the wood pile. She dragged a wash tub from the corner and placed it under the flood. She went through the house. The roof of the new part seemed intact, but there was a steady drip through the sloped ceiling of a bedroom above Grammy’s Ben. She ran with pitchers and bowls, anything she could find. A subdued Ginger followed.

Gradually the first fury of the storm spent itself. The rumble of thunder grew faint and distant, the lightning was feeble. It rained now; rained quite heavily and steadily, but with a calm normality. Islay wandered out to the winter kitchen, and looked through the windows into the back garden. A worried hen had brought her brood of chickens from the barnyard to a safe haven under the edge of a wood-pile beside the shed. Her strategy would have functioned perfectly but for the fact that in her hatching days, somehow, a duck egg had got into her nest. The little alien had lived in harmony with his foster family, until today. But here was his first rain storm, and while his brothers and sisters nestled warm and dry under their mother’s wings, he had abandoned this home and gone out to greet the storm. Islay caught sight of him darting about in the rain, in duck delight, while his distracted mother clucked ‘Come back’. He ran, unheeding, sliding his little yellow bill into every pool, a downy ball of yellow glee. No sooner soused in one puddle than he darted to another, fearing he might miss one. He quacked with infantile enthusiasm, twitched his little yellow tail in spasms of aquatic joy. This was his first taste of real life—water life. He, who had been brought up under the arid feathers of a mere hen, had suddenly discovered his birthright. Some wild mallard heritage, winging far over reedy lakes, called to him. He heard the voice through the storm and reeled with the joy of it. He staggered from pool to pool, drunk with rain.

Islay was standing at the window watching the mad little performance with amusement, when, with a leap, and a flirt of his tail, splash he went, yellow web-feet over yellow bill, into a low trough of rain water and away he sailed on his first swim, a miniature ship on a miniature sea.

Islay was startled by a squeal of child laughter. There was no one in sight, but by peering sideways through the window, she could see a small figure squeezed up against the back kitchen door. It seemed to be a boy, small and ragged and incredibly thin. Water spilled from his sodden garments and his long hair; a dilapidated bicycle leaned against the door post.

Ginger had been fussing and grumbling at the door for some time, but Islay had supposed he was still disturbed by the storm. This would be Steve’s youngest boy, Billy, come over on some kindly errand. She went out to the summer kitchen, opened the door, and the visitor, still absorbed in the antics of the duck, fell backwards into the room.

Islay stared at him. Had she been living so much in the past that she was a child again? For this youngster looked, on first sight, remarkably like Pete, at this age—the same reddish-brown hair, the same ingratiating blue eyes; but this child wore a ragged shirt exposing bony freckled arms, his tattered overalls secured by one brace over his thin shoulder, and a pair of rubber-soled canvas shoes much too large for him. Yet Islay could see Pete, at ten, coming home from a berry-picking bout.

“Well, hello!” she cried. “Are you Jackie, or Billy?”

He stared. “No, I’m Artie,” he croaked in a hoarse treble.

“Oh, isn’t your father Mr. Steven Laird?”

He shook his head. “Nope, my dad’s name’s Wilf.”

“And where do you live?”

“I don’t live nowhere,” he said. “Leastwise not now. We jist have a car and we keep a-goin’.”

“Well! And what do you want here?”

“Could ye lend me a darning needle?” was the surprising request, “and some strong string and a pair o’ pliers and a bicycle pump?” He was not bold in these astonishing requests, his was a childlike assurance that the place would provide all his needs. And the ingratiating grin on his thin little face was disarming.

“Well, well,” she said with a laugh. “You don’t want much. Perhaps you’d like the cook stove or the lawn-mower ...”

But the sarcasm sailed over his small head. He looked curiously at the big stove and shook his head.

“No,” he said patiently, “that wouldn’t be any use. It’s my bike. I gotta puncture, and somethin’s wrong with the sprocket. But I could fix it all up dandy if I had a pair o’ pliers and a pump.”

“I’m sorry,” she said firmly, “but I haven’t anything like that. I don’t own a bicycle. But there are boys over on the next farm.” She nodded in the direction of Steve’s house. “I think they have a bicycle. Perhaps you might get some of their tools.”

He turned away with a gallant attempt at nonchalance.

“Yeah, guess I better get goin’,” he said. He lifted the derelict bicycle carefully, paused and looked back.

“Say, that duck o’ yours,” his thin face twisted into something resembling a smile. “Ain’t he cute, though?”

Islay suddenly noticed that while they had been talking the storm had been gathering for a new onslaught. Darkness was descending again. A darting spear of lightning and a low mutter of thunder came from the blackness above the bay. The boy looked around apprehensively.

“Say, is she goin’ to bust up like that again?” he asked with a shiver.

“You’d better come inside till the storm is over,” Islay said with some reluctance, for it was like inviting the storm into Lily Anne’s shining kitchen.

“Wait, take your bicycle over there to the shed door, and I’ll open it.”

His face lighted up with relief, and when she opened the big shed door he was standing waiting, shivering in his wet clothes. He placed his treasure very carefully against the wood pile and followed her into the summer kitchen. Water dribbled from his limp overalls and ran in little streams along the floor. Ginger hopped around him quivering with hospitality and the boy patted him. The clean floor was a moist pattern of boy and dog feet.

Islay had a vivid recollection of the story she and Pete used to love: the visit of the West Wind whose dripping garments left rivulets all over the floor.

The child shivered where he stood in a pool of water. Islay looked apprehensively at the stove. She would have to light a fire. She took off the lid and looked in to see if there were any remains from her noon fire. She picked up a stick from the wood box.

“That ain’t the right wood,” the small guest said, “that ain’t kindlin’. You want a bit o’ pine or cedar.”

“Well, you light the fire,” Islay said, “and we’ll have something for supper.”

She found he really did know all about making a fire. He padded to and from the woodshed, leaving a wet trail, but bringing kindling and wood and soon he had a fire burning merrily. He stood before the stove and the steam rose from his wet garments.

Islay went up into a bedroom above Grammy’s Ben and rummaged through the drawers of an old dresser. She found a pair of warm flannel bloomers, and a man’s sweater. Both garments were much too large for the boy but they were warm and clean.

He was not at all grateful. He was determined to keep on his wet clothes. They would dry on him in no time, he argued. She finally persuaded him and he took the garments and went into the shed to change. He crept back to the fire looking not unlike Mr. Disney’s dwarf, Dopey. She could hardly restrain a smile as she hung his wet garments on nails behind the stove, and set about preparations for their supper.

He stood at the window looking out to where the duck was still celebrating good ducking weather. He chuckled softly. “Lookit! Ain’t he awful cute?” he said. “Didya hear his momma squawkin’ at him? And he never listens. Say, ain’t he havin’ a time?”

“You didn’t have such a good time as he had.” Islay said.

“No, but I like rain too. Gee, it’s grand! Only I don’t like the thunder.” He looked out in awe at the gathering clouds. “Say, God must have been awful mad about something. Did ye hear him slammin’ his fist?”

Islay knew she ought to correct this unorthodox view but was not quite sure how to go about it. The little Mitchells had never given her much practise in theology.

“I think God is very kind to send us this rain,” she ventured, improvingly, “it was badly needed.”

“He wasn’t kind to us folks in the West,” remembered the freethinker resentfully. “He never sent us any rain, and mommy used to pray every night, and sometimes dad too. Mebby He just looks after Ontario.”

“Why, where did you live?”

“Saskatchewan.”

“And how did you get here?”

“In our car, me and daddy and mommy. We drove. We was dried-out.”

“How long did it take you?”

“Oh, I don’t mind. An awful long time I guess. We been on the road for ever so long. Ever since Charlie died.”

“Who is Charlie?”

“He’s my brother. He was the last one that died. First it was Mamie died, and then Jimmie died, and then mommy said when Charlie died we’ll go back East, and so we came. Charlie was the baby.”

“And how long were you dried out?”

“I don’t mind. I guess ever since I was born. I don’t mind about rain. It never rained like this. It never rained at all out West. It jist blowed. And nearly everybody moved away. And then our horses died. And then we moved away too.”

Islay placed what food she had on the table and they sat together near the fire. The night was cool and the warmth from the stove was pleasant. She was surprised to find her guest did not eat much. Even some fancy cookies left from yesterday’s lunch did not tempt him.

“I ain’t hungry,” he said, “I guess I’m full.”

“Where did you have your dinner?” Like old Omar he was very vague about whither and whence. ‘Away down there where the car broke down.’ He could not remember where it was.

“But where is the car now?”

“It’s down the road aways. I came out to look for a job,” he said importantly. “Ain’t this an awful big house?” he said peering through the door that led into the winter kitchen. “Do you live all over it? In every room?”

“No. I’m new to it. I just came yesterday.”

“Oh! Do you stay here all by yourself?”

“I have so far.”

“Haven’t you got a man?”

“No.”

“My! Who does your chores?”

“My cousin, over on the next farm works this place too.”

“Oh, he must be awful busy. Maybe I could get a job with him?”

Suddenly he began to chuckle again. The duck had come into view again, swimming rapturously across a puddle near the doorway.

“Aw, ain’t you cute!” He rose from the table.

“Say, I’m full. I don’t want any more to eat. Can I go out and get him? Wouldn’t you like me to bring him in here?”

“Oh, I think you better not,” she said hastily. “He won’t want to come, and you will get those dry clothes all as wet as your own. See, the rain isn’t over yet. The duck likes rain.”

He sat down with a look of deep disappointment. “I kinda hate to go back on him,” he said, “cause he brought me here.”

“Who? The little duck?”

“Yeah. It was good luck for me all right when I followed him. Him and his mommy and the chickens was all down near the road there chasin’ flies when I came along. I was goin’ straight on, cause there’s a gas station down the road and I was goin’ there and my bike bust up. And then ducky and all the rest started comin’ up your lane. And he looked so cute, I jist followed them to see what they were gonta do. He was always gettin’ behind, cause them chickens they can get over the grass faster than him, his web-feet, and his legs is so short. And he was havin’ a bad time and his mommy always hollerin’ after him. So I followed and kinda helped him along. And by the time they got up here, say it started to rain and the old hen didn’t she get goin’. She ran into that place under them boards and he wouldn’t go in. Cause he wanted to get into the rain. I knew how he was feelin’, and I ran out with him, only I got scared o’ the lightnin’. And I squoze up into your doorway and watched him. And then you came to the door.” He looked across at her and suddenly smiled, a smile that lit up his little face and stretched the skin over its sharp bones. “That was good luck for me all right,” he said.

Islay felt something warm stirring in her heart. He was so much like what Pete would have been—if he had been starved in the dried-out area of Saskatchewan.

“Well, I’m glad you came too,” she said. “But what about your father and mother. Won’t they be anxious about you?”

“Mebby they will,” he said. “Leastways mommy will. Daddy knows I can take care o’ myself. They said they would be goin’ down the road there a piece lookin’ for a job. I was goin’ to meet them at the gas station.”

“I don’t know how to get in touch with them,” she said, “my telephone isn’t connected.”

“Oh, I’ll just walk down the road,” he said easily, “they’ll be lookin’ for me and I’ll see them.”

“But the gas station is two miles farther on and it’s still raining,” she said with a feeling of dismay.

There was evidence that the storm was not yet over. The distant rumblings had been growing louder and the darkness was gathering. The little duck had at last responded to his mother’s cries and had gone to the warm bed under her feathers beneath the pile of boards.

Then Ginger announced that someone was coming; and there was Old Watty at the door, dripping wet and looking disgusted.

“Minnie was wonderin’ if you was all right,” he said, standing out in the rain, and refusing all invitations to come in.

“That was so kind,” Islay said gratefully. “There’s a couple of leaks in the roof.”

“Yeah, Steve said he bet there would be. He’ll come over in the mornin’ and fix them.”

He had been looking at the bundle of clothes on the chair beside the table and suddenly exclaimed, “Hey! Is that a kid? You got company?”

“He came down in the rain,” Islay said. Watty stared, and the boy looked at her puzzled. “I’m worried about him. He’s lost.”

Islay had yet to learn that Wise Watty was the Laird Valley detective agency.

“Ain’t you the kid that came from Saskatchewan?” he asked. The little fellow nodded.

“Well, say! Your dad’s down at Shaw’s gas station right now waitin’ till the storm’s over, and lookin’ everywheres for you. Your ma’s in a state about you.”

“Say, I better get goin’,” he cried, rising. Islay looked out to where the rain was once more driving through the doorway and against the windows.

“He’ll have to stay here all night,” she said much against her inclination. “Could you telephone his father and they can come for him in the morning?”

Old Watty gave her a glance of approval, nodded, and went splashing away down the orchard path.

Islay lighted a lamp with some difficulty and went in to Grammy’s Ben and brought out a warm blanket. She spread a bed for the little traveller from Saskatchewan on the old bunk behind the stove. He was loath to go to bed, and she let him sit and talk as she put away the food and washed up their supper dishes. He told again about the life in Saskatchewan. His name was Arthur Pierson, but they called him Art. Dad’s name was Wilfred and mommy’s name was Annie. Grandma used to live with them but she died, too. Most everybody died. It used to be nice before Jimmie died. They used to play in the coulee, and they, used to ride the horses to water. It was dandy in the coulee. They caught a badger once and had it for a pet.

His voice had been growing fainter. Suddenly he flopped over on the couch. He was fast asleep.

Islay reflected that probably she would not be able to find any night-clothes for him anyway, so she straightened him out and covered him gently with the blanket. In his sleep he looked more than ever like Pete. Ginger curled up under the couch and when Islay took the lamp to go to her room, he sunk lower, head flat on the floor, lest she order him to follow. But she did not feel the need of his presence tonight. The thunder still rumbled far over the bay, the lightning occasionally lit up the blackness, but within the walls of the Old Home was warmth and a feeling of security. The ghostly loneliness of the night before was gone. It was good to have a human being near, especially one you were guarding. The Listeners took on a protecting attitude. Even the Old House seemed to have grown friendly, pleased that it was sheltering someone.