Читать книгу Chiquita, an American Novel - Merrill Tileston - Страница 5

A tallow candle shed its sickly and flickering light in the front room of an ancient farm house, as Jack Sheppard announced his arrival on earth at four o'clock on a Friday morning. He arrived in a snowstorm, and it was a very select gathering of some of old Bozrah's prominent citizens who greeted his entry into the world. There was old Doctor Pettingill, with square-rimmed, blue-glass spectacles; Grandma Paisley, who didn't care for avoirdupois, just so it was a boy; Aunt Diantha, with portentous air and red mittens, while in the kitchen, dozing by the big fireplace, was Uncle Zebedee, who had driven over from Pudden Hollow the evening before to learn the news and "set up" all night in order to be of assistance in case of necessity.

The whole Deerfield valley was interested, and it made no difference if the snow did play tag up and down the necks and on the faces of all Bozrah as they brought paregoric, feather pillows, goody-goodies and all the useful uselessnesses that each and every one had kept for years and years awaiting a possible occasion. There was an old brass warming-pan that Deacon Baxter used to warm the bed for Governor Winthrop, and a hot water jug which Great-grandma Lathrop averred warmed the feet of every one of her seventeen "darters and grand-darters." There was also a quilt made of silk patches, each patch taken from a dress that some colonial dame had worn when she danced the stately minuet at a great function in Boston or Albany.

All these good people had a successful way of bringing up children in the paths of self-reliance, respect, thrift, endurance and honesty which made stalwart, orthodox patriots.

The Sheppards were an old English family who settled in New England late in the seventeenth century—three brothers, one of which, according to ye olden tyme records, planted the elm trees in front of the meetyngehouse on Dorchester hill; these trees, at the age of sixty or seventy years, being cut down by the British during the Revolutionary War. The descendants of the three brothers were thrifty men, large of physique and of great executive ability, the women the loveliest of the colonies—families of sterling integrity, wealth and esteem.

"Thad" Sheppard, Jack's father, was in some respects an exception, he being a man of the world, of the wild, dangerous class, handsome and talented, but lacking the balance wheel which magnetic temperaments usually require. He was admired by both men and women to the point of the danger line, for his schemes wrecked many a fortune and family, ultimately losing him the confidence of all. "Thad" loved one of the beautiful daughters of the Deerfield valley, and, despite the protestations of friends and relatives, she married him, claiming she could do what none thus far had been able to accomplish—reform him. "Thad's" habits had not been curbed. Life was too gay for thoughts of the sombre hereafter, and the sedate, sober counsel of the old men was scorned, but their predictions were to be most cruelly fulfilled. Yet there was that confiding love, that desire to accomplish miracles, which swayed the fair young girl of the Deerfield hills to sacrifice herself in the hope of reform. Oh, what a waste of time for any woman! What debauchery of intellect, what a prostitution of a fair and beautiful life; utter folly, deliberate social suicide, with its months and years of anguish and debasement for the mere gratification of an impulse! To be sure, there are some moments, comprising even days or months, when happiness reigns, but do these few hours, which grow farther apart, shorter and shorter, as time wears away, compensate for the millions of silent, expectant moments during which the uncomplaining wife watches for that unerring expression which never deceives her? Is there any excuse a mother can give her daughter, budding into womanhood, for bringing her into the world to face disgrace, possibly crime? Does a son, born of such parents, have that respect and confidence toward father and mother that he should?

Sue Paisley lived on that beautiful farm where Jack was born. She was on a visit while "Thad" attended important business in the great cotton markets of the South. She loved the brook that gurgled and splashed along its course. Nodding bluebells coquetted with the tiny wave crests, while the grass along the bank waved little blades in defiance at the roar of its voice. Each summer Sue sang its praises to the tinkle of the whetstone as the farm hand sharpened his scythe, tink, tink, tinkety tink. When she married, she left the long rows of maple trees, the great red barn, the stuffy parlor, the spare room with its high feather bed and Dutch clock; the big round dining table with tilting top, blue and white chinaware, and the long well sweep, to become hostess in the more pretentious surroundings of a small city on the Connecticut, living long enough to realize how futile were her efforts to stay the temptations which beset "Thad" on every hand. Misfortune overtook all his financial investments, and, as one enterprise followed another in the maelstrom of speculation, Sue's life ebbed away, leaving Jack and his sisters to be cared for by a spinster aunt, who undertook the responsibility at the earnest solicitation of "Thad."

The awakening from sin was that of genuine remorse and sorrow. With the characteristic determination of those rugged ancestors, "Thad" broke off all his former boon companionships, started on entirely new lines of life and succeeded in living down the awful past. In a few years he remarried, giving Jack a mother who learned to love her stepson as her own. Jack was not the ever industrious boy in school, but he was quick to learn both kinds of knowledge, useful and mischievous. That is the reason why the old red school-house, at the top of the hill, held pleasant recollections for him in after life. Of course, "J-A-C-K" was carved into the top of every desk at which he sat and, as the first row of desks was the "baby" or A, B, C row, the next one a little larger, and so on, the four rows of "boxes" represented four classes, and Jack managed to stay in each class long enough to carve his name where future generations would find it.

"He's the most trying pupil in the school," was what the teacher told everybody in the little village.

When the snow was deep, Jack took his dinner in a little basket, just the same as the other scholars, and at the noon recess he was always in the games in which the girls liked to have a few of the nice boys to help out. Two chairs, facing each other, with a little gap between them, then a ring of boys and girls holding hands to circle around between the chairs, while a boy and a girl stood on the chairs, hands clasped across the gap, all joining in singing the little couplet:

"The needle's eye that does supply

The thread that runs so true,

I've caught many a smiling lass,

And now I have caught you."

It was the boy's turn to choose the girl he wanted for a partner, and she had to submit to the penalty of a kiss before she could mount the chair. The desks were arranged in horseshoe form, and of course the favorite seats were in the back row, farthest away from the teacher, but Jack generally managed to be on a line with the first nail hole in the horseshoe by the time the first third of the term was reached. This, so the teacher could better keep her eye on him.

It was near the end of the summer term that a little event occurred which made a lasting impression on Jack. His seat-mate was an ungainly little urchin who had the faculty of being cunning without being smart. His name was "Ted" Smith, but he was better known as "Ted Weaver," for he had a habit of rocking to and fro from one hand to another while he studied. Jack happened to be busy with lessons when some one shot a paper wad at one of the scholars, which missed the scholar but hit the teacher on the cheek.

Miss Freeman was spare and angular, with a pointed rose-colored nose, hard, cold-gray eyes, and long neck circled with a severe white linen collar, which lay flat over the prominent collar bones. The black waist of her dress was severely plain, with, seemingly, a gross of buttons made of wooden molds covered with the dress fabric. The skirt covered an area of floor space that was in keeping with the period before the Civil War, when hoop skirts ruled the fashion, and, as the "tilter" tilted, it could be seen the school ma'am enumerated among her personal belongings a pair of white hose and cloth gaiters. A head of luxurious hair was parted exactly in the middle and divided into three portions, two side and back strands, the side strands twisted to the temples, then the smooth flat surface gracefully looped over the tops of the ears until the curve of the hair reached the eyebrows; the ends of the strands were then formed into a foundation, around which the back hair was wound, after a sufficient quantity had been properly separated for curls—long ones for the side, or short ones to dangle idly behind.

When the paper wad struck Miss Freeman a rap immediately brought the school to order. With a searching gaze she tried to locate the evil doer, and her well-trained eye rested on Jack, who innocently looked up to see the cause of the unusual summons "to order." Jack knew who shot the wad, for he had noticed the culprit shoot others earlier in the day, a performance which had escaped the teacher's notice and cheek.

"Jack, did you throw that paper wad?" she asked, her voice as cold and hard as that of the second mate of a three-masted brig.

"No, ma'am."

"Do you know who did throw it?"

Jack would not tell a lie about the wad, so he answered slowly, "Yes, ma'am."

"Who did it?"

There was no reply.

"Who threw the wad?"

She had flushed to her hair at the commencement of the inquisition, but now the color slowly receded and the lines in her severe face became like those in stone.

"Unless you tell me who threw the wad I shall punish you."

Jack remained silent. His little bosom filled with wrath because the culprit would not speak up; but his honor was so strong that he would not be "telltale." The teacher reached for her switch and told Jack to step forward. Like a little man he marched up to her desk and stood, not defiant, but humble and submissive, awaiting his punishment. Miss Freeman stepped down from the platform with switch in hand, and again demanded the name of the guilty one.

"I'll never tell," said Jack in a whisper.

There was a swish in the air and a sharp cracking noise as the rod smote Jack around the fleshy part of his legs.

"Will you tell now?" asked the teacher again.

Jack made no answer, but shook his head and stifled a sob. He knew if he relaxed his firmly shut teeth he would cry, so he gritted them and prepared to receive the following blows without flinching. Thoroughly maddened, the school ma'am finally threw off all endeavor of restraint and showered blow after blow upon poor Jack's arms, legs and bare feet, for it was summer and Jack followed the custom of other boys. But, it is needless to say, that was the last day he went barefooted. The switch was broken, but not the spirit in the boy. He had given way to tears, which gushed forth because of bodily pain. He sought to protect his feet and grabbed the infuriated school ma'am's skirt, and as the blows descended he swung under the protecting expanse of hoops. This piece of strategy perplexed the teacher, and as she had broken all her switches she had to suspend hostilities until a new supply was gathered. Leaving Jack and the school room, she hastened to the willows, which grew in abundance just back of the building, and brought in a stick as big as a cane, just in time to see Jack disappearing through the window and his sturdy little legs, all striped with red marks, making tracks for home.

Episodes of this character followed Jack all through his school life. He had a stern father, who always punished his children if they were punished at school, no matter what the excuse, and on this occasion there was no exception, only in place of another "birching" the filial duty was limited to sending the boy to bed without anything to eat, so he could reflect upon the awful crime of disobedience to his teacher.

Nature has ever been prodigal in the distribution of her favors and disfavors, limiting her generosity in the picturesque to certain localities, and giving in abundance to the arid regions, as well as to the fertile valleys. But in her selfish allotments no upheavals in the vast chaos of creation furnished man an abiding place so compatible with his Puritanical doctrines as the forbidding rock-walled coast of New England and the everlasting hills extending back to the Hudson River, with their beautiful slopes, sinuous streams and forest-scented dales. And it was among these hills that Jack found, even in his younger days, that pleasure and freedom which afterward was intensified by his associations with the forest-born red man.

Old Bozrah, where he first saw the light of day, was the Mecca to which his longing gaze was ever turned, even as he studied, worked or played, and no greater treat was in store for him than the one looked forward to when his father hitched up "Old Jerry" to drive that long twenty miles, through villages and past cross-road stores, to the old farm house. "Old Jerry" was known even better than "Thad" Sheppard. Every factory hand on Mill River from where it emptied into the Connecticut to the great reservoirs in the Goshen hills, and every farmer, merchant and preacher knew "Thad" and "Old Jerry."

"Thad" was well aware of the danger that lurked in the old reservoirs and knew the day would come when the torrent would burst forth and sweep all the industries away, and Jack wondered why everybody looked so grave and serious when the spring freshets made the brooks roily so he could not fish. In after years when that animated devastating fortress of trees, rocks and factory debris crushed its way down the valley, receiving its propulsive force from the waters which broke forth from bondage, Jack remembered those grave and serious faces.

But it was among the hills of the Deerfield valley that Jack loved best to wander and to fish for trout, or to help Uncle Zebedee and Uncle John in planting or haying or "salting" the cattle, or gathering apples on hills so steep that the fruit rolled a rod sometimes after falling from the trees.

In the old barn at milking time, when the cows were yoked to their feed racks, Jack helped give them hay—nice new clover—and then waited and watched Aunt Sally strain the warm fluid into the bright pans, fearing the while she would forget the little cup, which he kept moving from one place to another, and which she seemed never to see until almost the last drop in the pail was reached. Churning day was always welcome to Jack. The old yellow churn, which stood near the big water trough in the wash room, had to be brought into the kitchen, and then he would turn the paddle wheel round and round, listening to the patter of the blades as they splashed into the cream, until finally he knew by the sound that the butter had "come."

Jack did not like Saturday night very well, for at sundown on the last day of the week those good orthodox folks commenced their Sunday. Saturday afternoon was given to baking cake and other dainties and getting the house in order for the Lord's Day. The men folks were shaved clean and all the chores were done and supper ended before sundown. Then the old black leather Bible was taken from the shelf and all gathered around for family prayers. These devotions were held every night about bedtime, but Saturday evening was the beginning of the Sabbath, and services were held earlier and longer than on other days of the week. The room, with its chintz-covered lounge, rag carpet, Dutch clock, and chairs upholstered in haircloth, seemed more sacred on Saturday. The Bible was read, a lesson given from the shorter catechism, and several of Watts' hymns repeated by all together, or by volunteers, as the spirit moved; a song or two, then all would kneel devoutly, while Uncle John, in deep stentorian voice, prayed long and earnestly for the divine grace, which sustains the righteous through the snares and temptations of the wicked world; after which all retired.

On Sunday no work was done that could be avoided, and at an early hour in solemn procession all filed out to the vehicles which conveyed them to the village two and one-half miles away. The horses knew it was Sunday and devoutly raised one leg at a time in covering the distance. The minister knew it was Sunday and exhorted his hearers, with threats of dire hell and damnation, to mend their ways. Sunday school immediately after the morning service, then lunch at the wagons or on the steps of the church or in the church, and again the minister unrolled his sermons and renewed his valiant fight in redemption of sinners. The choir stood up, the leader struck the key with his tuning fork, and when the "pitch" was duly recognized the last hymn was sung, followed by the doxology and benediction. All hearts seemed to begin life anew when the final "Amen" was pronounced, and although the long hill had to be ascended, it took less time than it had to descend in the morning. It was dinner time when the farm was again reached and all were hungry. After the meal the family gathered in the parlor, with its fragrant odor of musty walls, varnished maps and stuffy ancientness which pervaded everything. Here the conversation dwelt upon the goodness of the Lord, misfortunes of the sick in the neighborhood, news of which had been learned at church, or other topics not too worldly. As sundown approached the men folks commenced to get ready for the week's work and changed their clothes, while the women got out aprons and put away their "Sunday duds." By sunset the wash barrel was brought forth and the laundry work for Monday commenced.

In the wagon-shed Uncle John had his scythe ready to grind, and as Jack turned the stone he said to himself, "Uncle John bears down harder on Sunday night than he does any other night in the week."

These visits to the old farm were at frequent intervals, so Jack had ample opportunity to see real country life under all the different aspects of maple-sugar making, planting, haying, cutting wood for the year, and building stone walls. Berrying was about the greatest enjoyment, next to catching brook trout, and such an abundance of blackberries in the pastures and woods where portions of the timber had been cut out! But the visits came to an end, inasmuch as Jack's father "moved west" to one of the great flour-milling cities, which flourished at the close of the Civil War.

In the west Jack received his final education, at sixteen taking leave of Latin, algebra and rhetoric, with one term in the high school. During the grammar school incubation Jack learned the difference between a village teacher and a city ward instructor; also that the western city ward boy had to fight occasionally, while the good New England lad was in mortal disgrace if he ever presumed to raise his hands against a fellow schoolmate. Jack had been warned time and again by his father not to fight, as it was wicked, and severe punishment awaited all demonstrations of anything in the nature of a "scrap."

It was but natural that a boy who would not fight should become the target for every pugnacious lad in the school, and Jack went home regularly with a bloody nose or scratched face, as a result of some misunderstanding. Not only would he get larruped by the bigger boys, but little fellows half his size walloped him good and plenty. Then the teacher had to make an example of him with the ruler, and finally his father finished up the job in the barn or across his knee with the hair brush. The hair brush was the handiest thing Jack ever encountered in his "spare (not) the rod" career. One day he went home with a frightful cut in his lip where some "bully" of the school had kicked him. His father lost all patience and Jack pleaded for a hearing.

"Why do you tell me it is wicked to fight and punish me for getting licked? I can lick any boy in the school, but have never raised my hand yet, because you told me not to, and they pick on me all the time."

It was a revelation to the parent and he wondered at his own obtuseness. One instruction, one little lesson to be a man, he gave Jack: "Do not fight for the sake of showing off, or to be a 'bully,' but defend yourself always."

Jack was all excitement, and forgot his swollen lip. His father continued: "And when you find you have to defend yourself, strike straight from the shoulder and hit between the eyes, downward, like that," and the stern old man took a crack at the side of the barn and ripped a board off, besides nearly breaking his knuckle. Jack went to school that afternoon, and at recess, when a big, red-headed bully, nicknamed "Cross-eyed Whittaker," commenced to tease and banter him, Jack edged away as usual, but with eyes ablaze and fist clinched. He saw that the "bully" was bent on showing off, and knew the time had come to make the first stand for Jack. Whittaker was about the same height, but much heavier in build than Jack. Finally, as the big one got nearer and nearer and became more and more offensive, Jack stood his ground, looking the "bully" over from head to foot, and suddenly said:

"You miserable coward, you have picked on me long enough. Now let me alone or take the licking that you deserve."

The other boys, of course, jumped up and gathered in a ring. "Fight! Fight!" was yelled by a hundred throats, as all rushed to where the now angry combatants faced each other. Jack stood poised on one foot ready for any emergency. All at once he spied the crony of the "bully" sneaking through the crowd of boys to get behind his chum. When the latter saw his "pal" his courage increased wonderfully, but ere he had time to put into execution the thoughts uppermost in his mind, Jack made a feint, a step back and then a lunge ahead with a right-hand smash just as he had seen his father hit the board, and the "bully" lay at his feet writhing and kicking in defeat.

Whittaker took the licking very much to heart, and he carried a scar on his lip, caused by Jack's blow, to his grave. Jack heard occasionally that the "bully" had sworn to "get even," but as time passed and their pursuits carried them into opposing channels, Whittaker soon became a school-day reminiscence and later was not even remembered by name.

Jack's school days came to an end and he went into his father's mill to work, learning the various methods of flour manufacture and manner of marketing the product. The business did not seem to take his fancy. "Something wrong in the industry," he would often say to the boss miller. "Here you work this mill day and night, turn out three hundred barrels of flour every twenty-four hours, yet lose money on the product half the time. Six months of the year is a loss, but none of the mill owners can give the reason why."

"You're right, kid; but that ain't nothin' to me to figger out. I've been dressin' mill stones an' cuttin' them burrs ever since I was your age, an' it's allus been the same. Sometimes it's the wheat, sometimes the weather, but in the end it's as you say. P'raps it's the farmer, who asks too big a price."

"No, it's not any one of those causes," said Jack, meditatively. "It's that big engine down there eating up coal and the carrying charge to get the flour to market. That's what ails the business. Look, now; see that farmer with a load of wheat on the scales. There's father out there taking a handful out of one sack and a cupful out of another. (Look out, dad, you may strike a nest of screenings shot into the middle of one of those sacks with a stove pipe.) He's bought the load and now it's going into the hopper, where it will in all probability be mixed with inferior grades. Then people complain the flour is no good, and you grind up a lot of corn meal and feed it back into the flour, or regrind with some middlings, until one can't tell whether it is flour or hog feed, and where are the profits? Now, let me tell you. I was listening the other day to that little alderman over in the second ward. He was talking politics and business, and when he was not roasting 'Bob' Ingersoll or General Grant he was making fun of Illinois River millers. He said—and you know what a big voice the little fellow has—he said this: 'There's a town up by St. Anthony's Falls that will turn out more flour in a day than we turn out in a week, and you know we are some pumpkins with our flour barrels, ain't we?'"

"Say, kid, you're sure of what you just said?" asked the miller, interestedly.

"Sure as I live," replied Jack; "why?"

"Well, I'm goin' up to see that bit of water near St. Paul."

"The nearest town is Minneapolis, a little suburb of St. Paul," answered Jack, remembering his geography lessons.

Between oiling machinery, sacking bran, sewing flour sacks, heading barrels, sweeping, and occasionally "learning his trade," as he called it, over in the cooper shop, Jack got to be pretty well posted on the manufacture of flour, but he did not like the business and finally gave it up, deciding to take up the mercantile sphere and quit the field wherein the foundations of the most gigantic fortunes were just ready for the superstructure—flour, oil, harvest machinery and provisions, to say nothing of the contributory railway and telegraph business. He went to Boston, secured a position in a large wholesale establishment, lived in one of the beautiful suburban cities which surround the "Hub" on three sides, and there learned the lessons of prudence, sharp buying and economical, labor-saving methods, which were in contrast with the wastefulness and unsystematic methods prevalent in the great west. Not long after Jack was well established his father packed up the family belongings and moved where he could be with his son.

In a little country village fifty miles from Boston, on the Newburyport branch of the B. & M. R. R., lived Hazel Hemmingway. When Jack Sheppard was a pupil of Miss Freeman's in the old red school house back in the hills of western Massachusetts, he divided his apple with Hazel, dragged her white sled up hill in winter, and in summer made for her peachstone baskets, which he whittled out with his "Barlow" knife. There was no girl in all the world to Jack that compared with the brown-eyed, brown-faced Hazel, and no boy in the school got so many cookies, bon-bons and dainty notes slipped into arithmetic or grammar as did Jack.

The parting when Jack's father moved to the west was full of tender good-byes and promises to "write real often" on the part of both—promises which each faithfully kept. As the years passed Mr. Hemmingway became interested in a shoe factory in the eastern part of the state and moved his family to the thriving little manufacturing town. The correspondence continued between the twain, and when Jack returned to Boston a girl to womanhood grown knew that a supplementary reason caused the young man to select Boston, and that she was the supplement. Of course no one else ever dreamed the truth.

It was not long after Jack was established in the "Hub" that he made the first visit to Hazel in her new home, spending the Sabbath in the quaint old place which was within the pale of influence spread by the historic witchcraft of the ancients. The renewal of that childhood acquaintance needed no flint and steel to ignite the tiny spark of smouldering fire into a flame of enduring love. Jack sat dignified and martyr-like while the minister preached upon the evils which beset the young and dangers to the worldly-minded. "The vain glories of dress and fashion are an abomination of the Lord," said the man of God. Jack moved uncomfortably in his new suit of clothes, while Hazel from her choir seat telegraphed her convictions that the dominie was right, just to plague Jack. And when the admonition came, "He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man," Jack said to himself, "A whip for a horse, a bridle for an ass and a rod for a fool's back."

At last the "fourthly" came to an end and so did the church service for the morning. Jack and Hazel wended their way to her home, where dinner awaited them, after which followed a walk under the far spreading elms that arched the roadway, and as they walked they talked of childhood pastimes, joking each other of forgotten jealousies, or dwelling upon indelibly impressed, attaching episodes, the remembrance of which were souvenirs, non-negotiable and indestructible. They had left the little village behind and reached a large pine grove where the Sunday-school picnic was annually held. Seating themselves upon a rustic bench, Jack told of his life in the far distant west, as the states bordering upon the Mississippi River were then called, finishing with his return to the east and plans for the future. Hazel was an attentive listener, interrupting occasionally to inquire what Gertie Whitcomb looked like, or if Eva Duncan was freckled, or Nellie Courtney a good skater, as Jack included them in his biography of events.

"Not that it makes any difference, Jack, but I—er—er—just wanted to know," said Hazel, with the least bit of suspicion in her manner.

As he told of fastening Nellie's skates for her and of the lovely ice, the big crowds on the lake, and what a pretty girl Nellie was, Hazel kept time with her dainty foot kicking her broad-brimmed leghorn, which dangled by the string from her hand, finishing by poising the hat on her toe while she disinterestedly remarked, "Those western girls have such large feet; I suppose they have no trouble standing up on the ice," a remark which pleased the young man immensely, although he essayed no response.

When Jack reached his plans for the future Hazel became even more inclined to worry the historian by a rapid fire of insinuations.

"I suppose you will have to go on the road and take long trips out west to—sell goods? Shall you have the choice of territory when you get to be a salesman?" "Do those western stores carry as fine a line of goods as our folks do in the east?" "The styles out there are about two years behind ours; don't the girls look old fashioned?" To all of which Jack had one answer, "Yes."

"You can stop saying 'yes' all the time."

"I will, Hazel dear, on one condition—that you say 'yes.'"

"Yes," demurely answered Hazel.

Just then from a near-by hillside came the tattoo welcome of a cock partridge "drumming" for his mate, the measured, gradually increasing roar making the woods resound as Mr. Grouse beat the hollow log upon which he strutted up and down until his coquettish spouse approached within sight of her liege lord. She came, pecking negligently at snails and bugs, missing them oftener than hitting them, but she didn't care. She scratched at imaginary seeds, inattentively awaiting his pleasure. As soon as the cock perceived his bride he spread his tail like a fan, clucked a welcome and flew to her side.

"There, my dear," said Jack; "that is the way you must obey me when I am lord and master. Be very meek and let me do the splurging."

"And don't I get a chance to say a teeny, weensy word? Have I just got to listen, and watch the man of the house dry the dishes, get the breakfast (if we can't have a domestic) and"—Hazel rolled her eyes mockingly meek and with her hands "Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep" fashion, continued, "match samples for me at the store?" Jack capitulated; his grandeur collapsed "all at once and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst." Two merry peals of laughter echoed through the pine-scented woods.

"Sh! Jack, it is Sunday. I forgot all about it, and we must go home. Papa will wonder where I am," and a little red spot burned on each cheek as she surmized what "papa" would say when he found out that the young man from Boston "proposed to splurge."

But Jack's splurging was all make-believe. In the shadowy recesses of the great elms, as they retraced their steps toward the Hemmingway mansion, a manly arm stole about the waist of the lithesome girl, whose demure "yes" had to be sealed in order to make it real. Mr. Hemmingway was in the library as they entered the house. Jack nudged Hazel at the portentously contracted brows of papa and the stern look of inquiry which followed. Hazel quickly stepped into the hall, leaving Jack alone.

"Papa, Jack—Mr. Sheppard—wants to speak to you a moment," then she flew past the meekest man that ever tried to splurge.

"Mr. Hemmingway"— Jack got that far and it seemed as though every whisker in that stern face became a bristling bayonet. "I think you must be able to guess my mission."

"What? No—no. Jack, you—why, you are but a boy, and Hazel"— A softer, kindlier expression crept slowly into the face of the man whose only daughter he suddenly realized had become a woman. "Jack, I moved here to keep my child—to get her away from the—from the—it is no use, though. I guess you will be good to her. Let me see, you are the boy who got such an awful whipping once because you would not be a tell-tale, and a boy that has that kind of grit, I guess, is the right stuff to be my son-in-law. Hazel"—

The stern old man went out upon the lawn as Hazel re-entered the library. A noise as of some one vigorously using a handkerchief broke the stillness, but even then the old man chuckled as he saw two figures silhouetted upon the curtain. "Celebrating my consent, I guess," he soliloquized.

"Hazel, you had better pull down the green shade." Then to himself, "These children have no conception of the propriety of things."