Читать книгу Carolyn of the Corners - Ruth Belmore Endicott - Страница 4

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The street was slightly rising. The pleasant-looking houses on either hand had pretty lawns and gardens about them. Carolyn May Cameron thought Sunrise Cove a very lovely place—as was quite natural to a child brought up in the city.

Prince approved of the freedom of the street, too. A cat crossed slowly and with dignity from curb to curb ahead of them, and the dog almost forgot his manners.

“Here!” exclaimed Mr. Stagg sharply. “Haven’t you a leash for that mongrel? If we’ve got to take him along——”

“Oh, yes, Uncle Joe,” Carolyn May hastened to assure him. “There’s a strap in my bag—right on top of the other things. Do let me get it. You see, Prince has had trouble with cats; they worry him.”

“Looks to me,” grunted Mr. Stagg, “as though he’d like to worry them. What Aunty Rose will say to that mongrel——”

“Oh, dear me!” sighed the little girl. This “Aunty Rose” he spoke of must be a regular ogress! Carolyn May had opened the bag and found the strong strap, and now she snapped it into the ring of Prince’s collar. “You’ll just have to be good, now, you darling old dear!” she whispered to him.

It was half a mile from Main Street to The Corners. There was tall timber all about Sunrise Cove, which was built along the shore of a deep inlet cutting in from the great lake, whose blue waters sparkled as far as one might see towards the south and west.

Uncle Joe assured Carolyn May, when she asked him, that from the highest hill in sight one could see only the lake and the forest-clothed hills and valleys. Why, there was not a brick house anywhere!

“We don’t have any apartment houses, or janitors, or gas and electricity up here,” said Mr. Stagg grimly. “But there’s lumber camps all about. Mebbe they’ll interest you. Lots of building going on all the time, too. Sunrise Cove is growing, but it isn’t very citified yet.”

He told her, as they went along, of the long trains of cars and of the strings of barges going out of the Cove, all laden with timber and sawed boards, millstuff, ties, and telegraph poles.

They came to the last house in the row of dwellings on this street, on the very edge of the town. Carolyn May saw that attached to the house was a smaller building, facing the roadway, with a wide-open door, through which she glimpsed benches and sawed lumber, while to her nostrils was wafted a most delicious smell of shavings.

“Oh, there’s a carpenter shop!” exclaimed Carolyn May. “And is that the carpenter, Uncle Joe?”

A tall old man, lean-faced and closely shaven, with a hawk’s-beak nose straddled by a huge pair of silver-bowed spectacles, came out of the shop at that moment, a jack-plane in his hand. He saw Mr. Stagg and, turning sharply on his heel, went indoors again.

“Who is he, Uncle Joe?” repeated the little girl. “And, if I asked him, do you s’pose he’d give me some of those nice, long, curly shavings?”

“That’s Jed Parlow—and he wouldn’t give you any shavings; especially after having seen you with me,” said the hardware merchant brusquely.

The pretty lady whose name was Parlow and the queer-looking old carpenter, whose name was likewise Parlow, would neither look at Uncle Joe! Even such a little girl as Carolyn May could see that her uncle and the Parlows were not friendly. It puzzled her, but she did not feel that she could ask Uncle Joe about it. So she trudged by his side, holding to his hand and to the dog’s leash.

The street soon became a country road, and there were now no passers-by. A half-cleared forest lay on either hand—rough pasture land. By-and-by they came in sight of The Corners—a place where another road crossed this one at right angles. Both were wide roads, and a little green park had been left in the middle of the way at their intersection, around which was a rusty iron railing.

In one corner was a white church with a square tower and green blinds. This was railed around by rusty iron pipe, as was the graveyard behind it. At one side was a row of open horse sheds. In another of the four corners was set a big store, with a covered porch all across the front, on which were sheltered certain agricultural tools, as well as a row of more or less decrepit chairs—at this hour of the day unoccupied.

A couple of country wagons stood before the store, but there was no sound of life at The Corners save a rhythmic “clank, clank, clank” from the blacksmith shop on the third corner. Carolyn May had a glimpse of a black-faced man in a red shirt and a leather apron, and with hairy arms, striking the sparks from a rosy iron on the anvil next the forge, the dull glow of the forge fire making a background for this portrait of “The Village Blacksmith.”

On the fourth corner of the crossroads stood the Stagg homestead—a wide, low-roofed house of ancient appearance, yet in good repair. The grass was lush under the wide-spreading maples in the front yard, and the keys which had fallen from these trees were carefully brushed into heaps on the brick walk for removal. Neatness was the keynote of all about the place.

“Is this where you live, Uncle Joe?” asked Carolyn May breathlessly. “Oh, what a beautiful big place! Aren’t there any other families with flats here, too?”

“Bless me! No, child,” returned the hardware dealer. “I never noticed the house was any too big for one family.”

“Of course,” said the little girl, “it isn’t so tall; but it’s ’most as long as a whole block of houses in the city. One of the short blocks, I mean. My papa said seven of the crosstown blocks made a mile, and twenty of the short blocks. So this house must be ’most a twentieth of a mile long, Uncle Joe. It seems awful big for me to live in!”

Mr. Stagg had halted at the gate, and now looked down upon Carolyn May with perplexed brow. “Well, we’ve got to see about that first,” he muttered. “There’s Aunty Rose——”

A voice calling, “Chuck! Chuck! Chuck-a-chuck!” came from behind the old house. A few white-feathered fowls that had been in sight scurried wildly away in answer to the summons.

Mr. Stagg, still looking at the little girl, set down the bag and reached for the dog’s leash. The loop of the latter he passed around the gatepost.

“I tell you what it is, Car’lyn May. You’d better meet Aunty Rose first alone. I’ve my fears about this mongrel.”

“Oh, Uncle Joe!” quavered his niece.

“You go ahead and get acquainted with her,” urged Mr. Stagg. “She don’t like dogs. They chase her chickens and run over her flower-beds. Aunty Rose is peculiar, I might say.”

“Oh, Uncle Joe!” repeated the little girl faintly.

“You’ve got to make her like you, if you want to live here,” the hardware dealer concluded firmly; “and that’s all there is to it.”

He gave Carolyn May a little shove up the path, and then stood back and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. Prince strained at the leash and whined, wishing to follow his little mistress.

Mr. Stagg said: “You’d better keep mighty quiet, dog. If you want your home address to be The Corners, sing small!”

Carolyn May did not hear this, but disappeared after the fowls around the corner of the wide, vine-draped porch. The pleasant back yard was full of sunshine. On the gravel path beyond the old well, with its long sweep and bucket, half a hundred chickens, some guineas, and a flock of turkeys scuffled for grain which was being thrown to them from an open pan.

That pan was held in the plump hand of a very dignified-looking woman, dressed in drab, and with a sunbonnet on her head. Her voluminous skirt blew about her tall figure; she was plump, but very upright; her cheeks were rosy; her spectacles sparkled; and her full lips were puckered into a matrix for the mellow call:

“Chuck! Chuck! Chuck-a-chuck!”

Aunty Rose’s appearance smote the little girl with a feeling of awe. Her bonnet was so stiffly starched, the line of her old-fashioned stays across her plump shoulders was as unequivocal as a confession of faith. And when she turned her face to the child, the latter, young as she was, knew that the woman’s attitude to all the world was despotic.

There was no frown on her face; it was only calm, unruffled, unemotional. It simply seemed as though nothing, either material or spiritual, could ruffle the placidity of Aunty Rose Kennedy.

She came of Quaker stock, and the serenity of body and spirit taught by the sect built a wall between her and everybody else. At least, so it seemed to Carolyn May. And when Aunty Rose first looked at her, she seemed to the child to be merely peering over that wall. The little girl could not get close enough to the woman to “snuggle up.”

“Child, who are you?” asked Aunty Rose with some curiosity.

The little girl told her name; but perhaps it was her black frock and hat that identified her in Aunty Rose’s mind, after all.

“You are Hannah Stagg’s little girl,” she said.

“Yes’m—if you please,” Carolyn May confessed faintly.

“And how came you here alone?”

“If you please, Uncle Joe said I’d better prob’ly come ahead and get acquainted with you first.”

“‘First’? What do you mean, ‘first’?” asked Aunty Rose sternly.

“First—before you saw Prince,” responded the perfectly frank little girl. “Uncle Joe thought maybe you wouldn’t care for dogs.”

“Dogs!”

“No, ma’am. And, of course, where I live, Prince has to live, too. So——”

“So you brought the dog?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Of course,” said Aunty Rose composedly, “I expected you to come here. I do not know what Joseph Stagg expected. But I did not suppose you would have a dog. Where is Joseph Stagg?”

“He—he’s coming.”

“With the dog?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Aunty Rose seemed to take some time to digest this; but she made no further comment in regard to the matter, only saying:

“Let us go into the house, Car’lyn May. You must take off your hat and bathe your face and hands.”

Carolyn May Cameron followed the stately figure of Aunty Rose Kennedy into the blue-and-white kitchen of the old house, with something of the feelings of a culprit on the way to the block.

Such a big kitchen as it was! The little girl thought it must be almost as big as their whole apartment in Harlem “put together”—and they had a tiny private hall, too. There was a great, deep, enameled sink, with hot and cold water faucets over it, and a big, shiny, corrugated drainboard beside it. Evidently Aunty Rose was not dependent upon the old well in the yard for her water supply.

There was a shining copper boiler, and a great range, and set tubs of stone, and a big dresser, and a kitchen cabinet. The walls were covered with tile paper and the floor with linoleum, and there were plenty of braided mats about to make the room seem livable. At the cooler end of the kitchen the supper table was already set—for three.

“Why,” mused the little girl, “she must have suspected me,” and a warmer glow filtered into the heart of the “suspected” guest.

It was not till afterwards that she realised that the extra plate on the table was a part of the old-time Quaker creed—the service for the Unknown Guest.

“Used to make me feel right spooky when she first came here,” Mr. Stagg sometimes said, “but I got used to it. And it does seem hospitable.”

The little girl took off her plain black hat, shook back her hair, and patted it smooth with her hands, then plunged her hands and face into the basin of cool water Aunty Rose had drawn for her at the sink. The dust was all washed away and a fresh glow came into her flowerlike face. Aunty Rose watched her silently.

Such a dignified, upright, unresponsive woman as she seemed standing there! And so particular, neat, and immaculate was this kitchen!

Carolyn May, as she dried her face and hands, heard a familiar whine at the door. It was Prince. She wondered if she had at all broken the ice for him with Aunty Rose.

“Oh,” the little girl mused, “I wonder what she will say to a mongorel.”