Читать книгу Carolyn of the Corners - Ruth Belmore Endicott - Страница 3

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Just as the rays of the afternoon sun hesitated to enter the open door of Joseph Stagg’s hardware store in Sunrise Cove, and lingered on the sill, so the little girl in the black frock and hat, with twin braids of sunshiny hair on her shoulders, hovered at the entrance of the dim and dusty place.

She carried a satchel in one hand, while the fingers of the other were hooked into the rivet-studded collar of a mottled, homely mongrel dog, who likewise looked curiously into the dusky interior of Mr. Stagg’s shop, and whose abbreviated tail quivered expectantly.

“Oh, dear me, Prince!” sighed the little girl, “this must be the place. We’ll just have to go in. Of course, I know he must be a nice man; but he’s such a stranger!”

She sighed again; but Prince whined eagerly. He seemed much more sanguine of a welcome than did his mistress. Her feet faltered over the doorsill and paced slowly down the shop between the long counters, each step slower than its predecessor.

She saw no clerk; only the littered counters, the glass-enclosed showcases, the low bins of nails and bolts on either hand, and the high shelves filled with innumerable boxes, on the end of each of which was a sample piece of hardware.

At the back of the shop was a small office closed in with grimy windows. There was not much light there. The uncertain visitor and her canine companion saw the shadowy figure of a man inside the office, sitting on a high stool and bent above a big ledger.

The dog, however, scented something else. The hair on his neck began to bristle, and he sniffed inquiringly.

In the half darkness of the shop he and his little mistress came unexpectedly upon what Prince considered his arch-enemy. There rose up on the end of the counter nearest the open office door a big, black tom-cat whose arched back, swollen tail, and yellow eyes blazing defiance, proclaimed his readiness to give battle to the quivering dog.

“Ps-s-st—ye-ow!”

The rising yowl broke the silence of the shop like a trumpet-call. The little girl dropped her bag and seized the dog’s collar with both hands.

“Prince!” she cried, “don’t you speak to that cat—don’t you dare speak to it!”

The dog quivered all over in an ague of desire. The instincts of the chase possessed his doggish soul, but his little mistress’ word was law to him.

“Bless me!” croaked a voice from the office.

The tom-cat uttered a second “ps-s-st—ye-ow!” and shot up a ladder to the top shelf, from which vantage he looked down, showering insults on his enemy in a low and threatening tone.

“Bless me!” repeated Joseph Stagg, taking off his eyeglasses and leaving them in the ledger to mark his place. “What have you brought that dog in here for?”

He came to the office door. Without his glasses, and with the girl standing between him and the light, Mr. Stagg squinted a little to see her, stooping, with his hands on his knees.

“I—I didn’t have any place to leave him,” was the hesitating reply to the rather petulant query.

“Hum! Did your mother send you for something?”

“No-o, sir,” sighed the little visitor.

“Your father wants something, then?” questioned the puzzled hardware dealer.

“No-o, sir.”

At that moment a more daring ray of sunlight found its way through the transom over the store door and lit up the dusky place. It fell upon the slight, black-frocked figure and, for the instant, touched the pretty head as with an aureole.

“Bless me, child!” exclaimed Mr. Stagg. “Who are you?”

The flowerlike face of the little girl quivered, the blue eyes spilled big drops over her cheeks. She approached Mr. Stagg, stooping and squinting in the office doorway, and placed a timid hand upon the broad band of black crêpe he wore on his coat sleeve.

“You’re not Hannah’s Car’lyn?” questioned the hardware dealer huskily.

“I’m Car’lyn May Cameron,” she confessed. “You’re my Uncle Joe. I’m very glad to see you, Uncle Joe, and—and I hope—you’re glad to see me—and Prince,” she finished rather falteringly.

“Bless me!” murmured the man again, leaning for support against the door frame.

Nothing so startling as this had entered Sunrise Cove’s chief “hardware emporium,” as Mr. Stagg’s standing advertisement read in the Weekly Bugle, for many and many a year.

Hannah Stagg, the hardware merchant’s only sister, had gone away from home quite fifteen years previously. Mr. Stagg had never seen Hannah again; but this slight, blue-eyed, sunny-haired girl was a replica of his sister, and in some dusty corner of Mr. Stagg’s heart there dwelt a very faithful memory of Hannah.

Nothing had served to estrange the brother and sister save time and distance. Hannah had been a patient correspondent, and Joseph Stagg had always acknowledged the receipt of her letters in a business-like way, if with brevity.

“Dear Hannah:

“Yours of the 12th inst. to hand and contents noted. Glad to learn of your continued good health and that of your family, this leaving me in the same condition.

“Yours to command,

“J. Stagg.”

The hardware merchant was fully as sentimental as the above letter indicated. If there were drops now in his eyes as he stooped and squinted at his little niece, it was because the sunlight was shining in his face and interfered for the moment with his vision.

“Hannah’s Car’lyn,” muttered Mr. Stagg again. “Bless me, child! how did you get here from New York?”

“On the cars, uncle.” Carolyn May was glad he asked that question instead of saying anything just then about her mother and father.

“You see, Mr. Price thought I’d better come. He says you are my guardian—it’s in papa’s will, and would have been so in mamma’s will, if she’d made one. Mr. Price put me on the train and the conductor took care of me. Only, I rode ’most all the way with Prince in the baggage car. You see, he howled so.”

Mr. Stagg looked askance at the dog, that yawned, smiled at him, and cocked his cropped ears.

“Who is Mr. Price?” the storekeeper asked.

“He’s a lawyer. He and his family live in the flat right across the hall from us. He’s written you a long letter about it. It’s in my bag. Didn’t you get the telegram he sent you last evening, Uncle Joe? A ‘night letter,’ he called it.”

“Never got it,” replied Mr. Stagg shortly.

“Well, you see, when papa and mamma had to go away so suddenly, they left me with the Prices. I go to school with Edna Price, and she slept with me at night in our flat—after the Dunraven sailed.”

“But—but what did this lawyer send you up here for?” asked Mr. Stagg, still with an eye on the dog.

The question was a poser, and Carolyn May stammered: “I—I—Don’t guardians always take their little girls home and look out for them?”

“Hum, I don’t know.” The hardware merchant mused grimly. “But if your father left a will—However, I suppose I shall learn all about it in that lawyer’s letter.”

“Oh, yes, sir!” the child said, hastily turning to open the bag. But he interposed:

“We’ll wait about that, Car’lyn May. I—I guess we’d better go up to The Corners and see what Aunty Rose has to say about it. You understand, I couldn’t really keep you if she says ‘No!’”

“Oh, Uncle Joe! couldn’t you?”

“No,” he declared, wagging his head decidedly. “And what she’ll say to that dog——”

“Oh” Carolyn May cried again, and put both arms suddenly about the neck of her canine friend.

“Prince is just the best dog, Uncle Joe. He never quarrels, and he’s almost always got a pleasant smile. He’s a universal fav’rite.”

Prince yawned again, showing two perfect rows of wolflike teeth. Mr. Stagg cast a glance upward at the perturbed tom-cat.

“I can see he’s a favourite with old Jimmy,” he said with added grimness.

It must be confessed that Carolyn May was nervous about Prince. She was eager to explain.

“You see, we’ve had him a dreadfully long time. Papa and I were taking a walk on a Sunday morning. We ’most always did, for that’s all the time papa had away from his work. And we walked down towards the Harlem River—and what do you s’pose, Uncle Joe? A man was carrying Prince—he was just a little puppy, not long got over being blind. And the man was going to drown him!”

“Well,” said Mr. Stagg reflectively, still eyeing the dog, “it could not have been his beauty that saved him from a watery grave.”

“Oh, uncle! I think he’s real beautiful, even if he is a mongorel,” sighed Carolyn May. “Anyway, papa bought him from the man for a quarter, and Prince has been mine ever since.”

Mr. Stagg shook his head doubtfully. Then he went into the office and shut the big ledger into the safe. After locking the safe door, he slipped the key into his trousers pocket, and glanced around the store.

“I’d like to know where that useless Gormley boy is now. If I ever happen to want him,” muttered Mr. Stagg, “he ain’t in sight nor sound. And if I don’t want him, he’s right under foot.”

“Chet! Hey! you Chet!”

To Carolyn May’s amazement and to the utter mystification of Prince, a section of the floor under their feet began to rise.

“Oh, mercy me!” squealed the little girl, and she hopped off the trapdoor; but the dog uttered a quick, threatening growl, and put his muzzle to the widening aperture.

“Hey! call off that dog!” begged a muffled voice from under the trapdoor. “He’ll eat me up, Mr. Stagg.”

“Lie down, Prince!” commanded Carolyn May hastily. “It’s only a boy. You know you like boys, Prince,” she urged.

“I sh’d think he did like ’em. Likes to eat ’em, don’t he?” drawled the lanky, flaxen-haired youth who gradually came into view through the opening trap. “Hey, Mr. Stagg, don’t they call dogs ‘man’s cayenne friend’? And there sure is some pep to this one. You got a tight hold on his collar, sissy?”

“Come on up out o’ that cellar, Chet. I’m going up to The Corners with my little niece—Hannah’s Car’lyn. This is Chetwood Gormley. If he ever stops growin’ longitudinally, mebbe he’ll be a man some day, and not a giant. You stay right here and tend store while I’m gone, Chet.”

Carolyn May could not help feeling some surprise at the finally revealed proportions of Chetwood Gormley. He was lathlike and gawky, with very prominent upper front teeth, which gave a sort of bow-window appearance to his wide mouth. But there was a good-humoured twinkle in the overgrown boy’s shallow eyes; and, if uncouth, he was kind.

“I’m proud to know ye, Car’lyn,” he said. He stepped quickly out of the way of Prince when the latter started for the front of the store. “Just whisper to your cayenne friend that I’m one of the family, will you?”

“Oh, Prince wouldn’t bite,” laughed the little girl gaily.

“Then he’s got a lot of perfectly useless teeth, hasn’t he?” suggested Chetwood.

“Oh, no——” commenced the little girl.

“Come on, now,” said Mr. Stagg with some impatience, and led the way to the door.

Prince paced sedately along by Carolyn May’s side. Once out of the shop in the sunlit street, the little girl breathed a sigh of relief. Mr. Stagg, peering down at her sharply, asked:

“What’s the matter?”

“I—I—Your shop is awful dark, Uncle Joe,” she confessed. “I can’t seem to look up in there.”

“‘Look up’?” repeated the hardware dealer, puzzled.

“Yes, sir. My papa says never to get in any place where you can’t look up and see something brighter and better ahead,” said Carolyn May softly. “He says that’s what makes life worth living.”

“Oh! he does, does he?” grunted Mr. Stagg.

He noticed the heavy bag in her hand and took it from her. Instantly her released fingers stole into his free hand. Mr. Stagg looked down at the little hand on his palm, somewhat startled and not a little dismayed. To Carolyn May it was the most natural thing in the world to clasp hands with Uncle Joe as they walked, but it actually made the hardware dealer blush!

The main street of Sunrise Cove on this warm afternoon was not thronged with shoppers. Not many people noticed the tall, shambling, round-shouldered man in rusty black, with the petite figure of the child and the mongrel dog passing that way, though a few idle shopkeepers looked after the trio in surprise. But when Mr. Stagg and his companions turned into the pleasantly shaded street that led out of town towards The Corners—where was the Stagg homestead—Carolyn May noticed her uncle become suddenly flustered. She saw the blood flood into his face and neck, and she felt his hand loosen as though to release her own. The little girl looked ahead curiously at the woman who was approaching.

She was not a young woman—that is, not what the child would call young. Carolyn May thought she was very nice looking—tall and robust. She had beautiful brown hair, and a brown complexion, with a golden-red colour in her cheeks like that of a russet apple. Her brown eyes flashed an inquiring glance upon Carolyn May, but she did not look at Mr. Stagg, nor did Mr. Stagg look at her.

“Oh! who is that lady, Uncle Joe?” asked the little girl when they were out of earshot.

“Hum!” Her uncle’s throat seemed to need clearing. “That—that is Mandy Parlow—Miss Amanda Parlow,” he corrected himself with dignity.

The flush did not soon fade out of his face as they went on in silence.