AUNT JIMMY’S WILL

“‘Hem!’ The lawyer cleared his throat.” (See p. 52.)

AUNT JIMMY’S WILL

BY
MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT
AUTHOR OF “BIRDCRAFT,” “WABENO THE MAGICIAN,”
ETC., ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
FLORENCE SCOVELL SHINN

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1903
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1903,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up, electrotyped, and published October, 1903.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

To my God-child
MARY ELIZABETH MILLER

“Aim at the highest, and never mind the money.”

—L. M. Alcott.

[CONTENTS]

ILLUSTRATIONS

Aunt Jimmy’s Will

[I]
RED PINEYS

Bird O’More crouched in a little black heap in the corner of the sofa that stood between the closed windows in the farmhouse sitting room. Her eyes, that looked straight before her, yet without seeing anything, were quite dry; but her feverish cheeks, that she pressed against the cool haircloth, and the twisting of her fingers in the folds of her gown, told of grief, as well as her black frock and the closed blinds.

Outside the house, in the road, half a dozen country teams were hitched to the rickety fence, while their owners roamed about the yard, talking in low voices, and occasionally wondering aloud “when the women folks would be ready to go home.”

But the women folks had no idea of going yet, and small wonder, for they had come from a funeral that had made poor Bird an orphan; they had much to discuss, and without them, also, she would be all alone at the farm that lay on a straggling cross-road a mile from neighbours, as if it, like its recent owners, had tried to hide from those who had known it in better days.

The little girl had been christened Bertha, after her grandmother, but as, from the time she could speak a word, she was always singing, her father had called her “Bird.” Yet this day the little bird in her throat was mute and only made a strange fluttering; so that the neighbours, talking in whispers as they drank the tea that a stout, rosy woman, who seemed to be in charge, was serving in the kitchen, said, “Poor child, if she’d only let go and cry it out natural, it would do her good; but that dry sobbing is enough to break a body’s heart.”

Then, as she gradually grew quiet, dulled by fatigue and the heat of the room, her head sliding down on her arm in heavy sleep, they drew sighs of relief and their voices arose in chat about the happenings of the last few days and the natural question as to what was to become of Bird.

“Hasn’t she got any folks either side?” asked a young woman who had but recently moved into Laurelville, and did not yet know the comings and goings and kith and kin of her neighbours.

“Only her father’s half-brother,” spoke up the rosy woman, Mrs. Lane by name, “and he lives way down in New York City. Joshua wrote him ten days back when Mr. More took sick; but he never answered, so two days ago he wrote again. Joshua says he guesses maybe they’ve moved, for folks are awful restless down in York, and shift around as often as every few years—says he reckons you have to if you’re anybody, cause there’s sudden fashions in buildings down there as well as in clothes, and they get made over frequent to keep in style, likewise the streets.

“Yes, I wouldn’t even have known his name if Mis’ More hadn’t told me about him before she died, two years back. You see,” turning to Mrs. Tilby, the newcomer, “she was Sarah Turner, born and raised over at the Milltown, and, being an only child, was give her own head a good deal. I must allow she was pretty, and had those big black eyes that you can’t guess what they’re seeing, same as Bird’s got. Her folks felt dreadful bad when she wouldn’t take up with any of the solid fellers who would have taken pride in the farm and mill business, but married young O’More that nobody knew a speck about, except that he claimed to be an artist, but folks didn’t buy his pictures, and I don’t wonder, for there’s some up attic now, and you have to stand way back to even see a shape to ’em, being not near as clear as those that come extry with the Sunday papers.

“No, Mis’ Slocum, I don’t take Sunday papers, on ’count of Joshua’s aunt’s husband being deacon, and not desirin’ to call trouble on the family; but if he wasn’t I would, for besides them pictures an’ readin’ an’ advertisements, that wonderful they’d raise curiosity in froze dough, there’s your money’s worth o’ paper for carpet linin’ or kindlin’ over and above.

“Where was I? Mis’ Slocum, you shouldn’t ’a’ set me off the track, so’s I’m not giving Mis’ Tilby a clear idee of how it was.

“Ah, yes, I remember,—his wall pictures not sellin’, he got a job to paint posies and neat little views the size of your hand on the inside covers of sewin’-machine boxes and trays and work-tables over in Northboro. It paid first-rate, I guess, for a spell, so after the old folks died, they sold out the farm and mill and moved into town.

“When Bird here was five years old or so, O’More had a knock-down, for they got some kind of a machine in the factory that could do pictures quicker than he, and at the same time the folks that had bought the place on a mortgage caved in, and, between havin’ no sense themselves and lawyers, most everything was ate up and mixed so’s Mis’ O’More lost the mill and all, and they moved out here.

“Mis’ More—folks round here never could swaller the O’, it being the sign, as it were, of a furrin race and religion—just drew in like a turtle in a shell, losin’ hope altogether, and never went any place. And as for Terence,—that was him, Bird always callin’ him ‘Terry’ like he was her brother,—I suppose he was always what bustlin’ folks like us would call slack; but after he came here, he seemed to grow happy in spite of the fact that only one shop, the work-box and the picture-frame one, gave him jobs. He painted out his flowers as careful, no two pictures alike, and when I said, ‘Why don’t you do one and copy it—it would be less trouble,’ he looked up sort of reproachful and said, ‘It makes me happy to do good work, Mrs. Lane; a machine can do the other kind.’

“Mis’ More fretted herself to death, dumblike, same as snow disappears, and it’s two years now that Bird and her father have made out to get along alone. Once in a time old Dinah Lucky would come up and wash or scrub a day, and he and Bird always was together, and he learned her to be what I call a real lady, and never hurt anybody’s feelin’s, to say poetry and write a fine hand, and draw out flowers so you’d know ’em right off. The s’lectmen went after him onct ’cause he’d never sent the girl to school, but when they found she knew more’n the grammar grade, they kept their hands off from her; and as for speakin’,—since she talked plain, she’s spoke nicer, and chose her words better’n anybody but story-books and the parson, which come natural, her mother bein’ well learned and her father havin’ a tone of voice not belonging in these parts. Never a cross word did he speak or a complaint, so I guess it was true he was born a gentleman on one side, as poor Sarah always claimed, and it stuck to him all through, too, for the day he died he worried for troublin’ me to draw him a cool drink, saying, ‘The well-sweep was out of repair,’ which it was, Mis’ Slocum, awful, ‘and too heavy for a woman to handle,’ as if I wasn’t always stronger than two of him. But then I never was, and never will be, his kind of a lady, for there’s folks whose feelin’s I’m just achin’ to hurt if I knew a sure way. And now to think of it, Bird left at only thirteen with no own folks and little better’n nothing.”

“Less than nothin’, I should say,” put in Mrs. Slocum, setting her cup in its saucer with an unnecessary clash, “for what’s here won’t pay Mr. Slocum his back rent on the place and the fence rails of the south lot that they’ve seemingly used for firin’. I should say that the clothes on the girl’s back didn’t fairly belong to her, mournin’ and all.

“If she is only a little turned thirteen from what you say she has schoolin’ enough to pass for fourteen and get work in the factory. I’ll keep her if she’ll help me evenings and she gets enough to pay full board,—growin’ girls eats hearty,” and Mrs. Slocum settled back in her chair, folding her arms as if she expected Mrs. Lane to be speechless at her generosity.

Speechless she was for a few moments, but for a different cause—a struggle between prudence and a quick but just temper—then she said very slowly and distinctly: “Mis’ Slocum, the back rent is not for me to deny you, but the fence rails is and the few clothes the poor lamb’s wearin’ also. There hasn’t been any fence to that south lot since the summer before my Sammy was born and I was there berryin’ and noticed the rails was rotted and fell, and that’s fifteen years! As to clothes, they was give her outside of the family, which was me, ma’am, made out of those that belonged to my Janey and for her sake, and besides which a minor child isn’t liable for her father’s debts, ‘it bein’ the law,’ as Joshua says, and he knows.

“I wouldn’t have mentioned this in public, except some folks needs to have witnesses around before they can take in things, Mis’ Jedge o’ Probate Ricker bein’ here makin’ it quite suitable for me to testify.

“As for who’ll take her, there’s those that’ll ask no board, but Joshua says ‘no one’s got a right until the uncle either turns up or else doesn’t,’ which I’d much prefer. And there’ll be no talk of factory and passin’ her for above her age, Mis’ Slocum, I bein’ the niece-in-law to a deacon, as I’ve said before, should feel called upon to testify and give the truth a full airing.”

Whatever action Mrs. Slocum would have taken, it was sidetracked by the minister’s wife, who, with a sharp warning cough and a hurried “s’h’ush, she’s awake,” turned the attention toward the darkened room again.

Bird rubbed her eyes drowsily, then started up murmuring, “Yes, Terry, I’m coming, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” as if she fancied herself called, stumbled toward the door, saw the kitchen full of people, while the bright light and lilac perfume of the May afternoon came through the open door. Then she remembered.

“Here, let me wash your face and freshen you up a bit,” said Mrs. Lane, whisking out a clean handkerchief and dipping it in the water bucket, while at the same time she put her arm around Bird to cut off her retreat. “Now, that is better. Just a sip of tea, dearie, and a bite, and then go out and get a mouthful of air, while I open up the windows, for it’s sizzling in here if it does lack two days yet of almanac summer.”

“Bird crouched in a black heap.”

The child did as she was told, gave her friend one grateful look, and slipped out the door without speaking, much to the relief of the others, the minister’s wife nodding caution to Mrs. Tilby who said: “Sakes alive! she scart me silly, gropin’ in that way. I do wonder how much she heard.”

Meanwhile as Bird disappeared around the house a tall boy, carrying a big bunch of red peonies, came up the track in the grass that served as a path. It was Sammy, or Lammy Lane, as he was usually called, clad in his best clothes and red with running, having only come to a full stop as he reached the kitchen door, where he stood looking anxiously in, the flowers clutched nervously in both hands.

“Lammy Lane, where’ve you bin, to go and miss the funeral and all, when I started you out close after breakfast?” asked his mother, fiercely, yet with an air of relief.

“Catchin’ fish in the brook with his eyes, I reckon,” said Mrs. Slocum, with a glittering smile, which was very trying to Mrs. Lane, for Lammy, the youngest of her three sons, was not esteemed over clever, in fact a sort of village Johnny-Look-in-the-Air, always going to do something that he never did, and lacking in courage to boot. In fact the twisting of the name of Sammy into Lammy was really a slur upon his lack of sand and the fighting spirit natural to the average boy.

It is perfectly true that Lammy at this time was not a beauty with his tousled reddish hair, freckles, and lean colt’s legs, but no one who was a judge of faces could look in his straightforward gray eyes and at the firm line of his chin without feeling that here was the makings of a man, if people did not meddle with the plan God had for his work.

Lammy’s eyes roved about, and, not seeing the object he wanted, answered his mother slowly, as if it was hard to remember exactly where he had been.

“I’ve been at Aunt Jimmy’s most all day until now,” he answered. “When I took the butter down after breakfast, she wanted me to help her fix up cause she didn’t feel smart, ’n’ then there was the chickens to feed, and Jake he didn’t go yesterday to spread the grass under the strawberries, and she said if it rained, they’d spoil, so I did that; ’n’ then I ate dinner, ’n’ dressed up again and started. Then I remembered I told Bird I’d cut her some o’ Aunt Jimmy’s red pineys for her to take along up there,” nodding his head backward toward the hillside graveyard.

“Aunt Jimmy’s awful particular about those red pineys, and she wouldn’t let me cut ’em. She came out in the yard to do it herself, but it took her a long while, and when she’d got them tied up, she said, ‘Best go to the house now for they’ll be back, and tell your ma to come over to-night, for somehow I feel all strange and worked up as if I was going to have a spell,’ and that’s why I’m late, and where’s Bird?” he ended abruptly.

“Lammy Lane, do you mean that aunt is threatened with a spell, and you’ve took all this time to tell me?” said Mrs. Lane, hardly believing her ears.

“Neighbours, I’ll have to close up here, Joshua bein’ in charge, as it were, as Mis’ Jedge o’ Probate Ricker understands, until a ’ministrator’s fixed on, but we can meet to-morrow forenoon to wash up and discuss the situation. Goodness me, I hope Aunt Jimmy’s no more’n overtired!”

“’Twouldn’t be surprisin’ if you was resigned to the worst, seein’ your expectations through being the favourite nephew’s wife,” said Mrs. Slocum, slyly.

“Expectations, fiddlesticks!” snorted Mrs. Lane, “you know perfectly well, Mis’ Slocum, that the Lord and I are working together as hard as we can to give Aunt Jimmy every breath of life that’s coming to her, and seein’ that she enjoys it too, her ownin’ the best southslope fruit garden between Milltown and Northboro having nothing to do with it.

“Lammy, do you go round, and I guess you’ll find Bird back of the shed, and you can take her a walk to fetch the posies up yonder, and then bring her down to our house for supper; and if I don’t get back first, the butt’ry key is in the kitchen clock, and you and pa can set out a full table.

“Young company’s best for the young in sorrow,” she added to the group as Lammy shot off.

“Yes, Mis’ Slocum, those spoons is real silver, but biting ’em ’ll injure them new teeth o’ yourn, and not profit you anything, for they’re my spoons I fetched up for the funeral, minding how well the Turners always set out things at such times in the old days.”

With this parting shot Mrs. Lane shooed the women out and locked the door, called Joshua from the group of men who were examining a broken-down grindstone for lack of better occupation, climbed into the old buggy, and disappeared in a cloud of dust, the others following until they scattered at the four corners.

******

As Mrs. Lane had said, Bird was behind the shed. She was sitting on an old log, her face between her hands, as she looked across the fresh green grass to where the ragged spiræas and purple and white lilacs waved against the sky. Leaning against her knees was a queer little rough-haired, brown terrier with unkempt, lopping ears, his keen eyes intent on her face as if he knew that she was in trouble, and only waited for some signal that he might understand to go to her aid, while he vainly licked her hands to attract her attention.

As Lammy came around the corner suddenly, at first the dog gave a growl, and then bounding toward the boy fairly leaped into his arms in joy, for Twinkle, named for his keen twitching eyes, had once been Lammy’s best-beloved pup, that he had given to Bird for a companion.

“Hello, Twinkle, where’ve you been these days?” said the boy, holding the flowers at arm’s-length with one hand, while he tucked the little dog between his shoulder and neck with the other. “Seems to me you’ve got pretty thin wherever you’ve tramped to.”

Bird, Lammy, and Twinkle.

“He hasn’t been away,” answered Bird, looking up; “he was hiding all the time in Terry’s—I mean father’s room, and to-day, after they took him away, he knew it wasn’t any use waiting any longer, and he came out, and Lammy, you—know—he’s—all—I’ve—got—now,” and, burying her face in the terrier’s ragged coat, she broke into a perfect storm of crying.

Lammy felt like crying, too, and in fact a tear rolled so far down on his cheek that he had to struggle hard to lick it up, for Bird was his dear friend, the only girl in the village who had never laughed at him or called him “Nose-in-the-Air,” or “Look-up-Lammy,” and seemed to understand the way in which he saw things. At first he looked around helplessly, and then remembering that his mother had gone, and that he must get Bird down to his home before supper-time, he blurted out: “Say, don’t you reckon Twinkle’s pretty hungry by this? I guess we’d better get him some feed down to my house, and you can leave these red pineys over yonder as we go along if you like.”

Lammy could not have done better, for Bird sprang up instantly, all the pity aroused for the dog, and, turning toward the house, said: “How selfish of me; we’ll go in and get him something right away. Do you think the people have gone yet? ‘They mean kindly,’ Terry used to say. I must never forget that, but they talked so much I couldn’t seem to bear it.”

“Yes, they’ve gone; mother wouldn’t leave them behind ’cause of Mis’ Slocum,” and he began to tell her about his Aunt Jimmy’s ill turn and of his delay in getting back with the flowers.

Bird listened quietly, and as they stood before the door of the silent, empty house, a strange look crossed the girl’s face that frightened poor gentle Lammy, as she gazed straight before her and said: “Now I know that I was not asleep this afternoon, only dull and faint, and that what I thought was a dream was partly true. Terry did owe rent to Mrs. Slocum, and that was what he tried to tell me and couldn’t when he said there was only a little bit of money in the Centre bank to pay for things, so that I must be sure and keep his paint-box and the pictures in the big portfolio. The Slocums might try to take them. That’s why your mother made the people go and locked the door. Oh, Lammy, I haven’t any home or anything of my very own but Twinkle, but I could work and learn to paint. Terry said I could and if everything gave out, I can open the keepsake bag. See, I’ve got it now,” and Bird pulled out a small, flat, leather case, strongly sewed together, that hung close around her neck on a thin gold chain.

“Do you know what’s in it?” asked Lammy, fingering it curiously.

“No, but I think it’s a piece of gold money; for it’s round, though one side is thicker than the other. Mother wore it, and then father put it about my neck for me to keep, and he said his mother gave it to him when he came away from home long ago.”

As Bird stood looking at the house, the afternoon shadows began to fall and a change came over her. That morning the thought of leaving the place frightened her, but now the thing she most wanted was to get away. “Lammy,” she cried presently, “we must get those pictures and the paint-box now; to-morrow the people may come back.”

“But mother’s taken the key.”

“That doesn’t matter, the cellar-door flap doesn’t fasten—it never has since I can remember—we can go in that way,” and then Lammy, quaking mightily, though he didn’t know why, followed Bird into the house.

Love lights up many a dark, shabby room, and Bird had never been lonely with her father for a companion, and in spite of his own shiftlessness and poverty he had taught her much that she never would forget; but now love had gone, and as she crept down the rickety stairs hugging the box, Lammy stumbling after with the portfolio, her only desire was to go somewhere, anywhere to get away, lingering only a moment in the kitchen to collect some scraps of food for the dog. When they reached the porch, they stopped to fasten the things together with some twine from Lammy’s pocket. The portfolio was full of flower pictures and some designs such as wall-papers are made from. Bird turned them over lovingly, explaining as she did so that a man in New York had written to Terry that if he could do these well, he could earn money, and that he was only waiting for spring flowers to begin. The letter was still in the portfolio.

“See,” she said, “here is one of red peonies all ready to put the last color in, and father was only waiting for them to bloom, but it is too late now, so we will take them to him,” and she took the bouquet from Lammy, gently kissing each of the glowing flowers; and then they went out of the yard in silence, Twinkle first, then Lammy with the bundle, while Bird hesitated a moment; lifting the sagging gate she dragged it to, fastened it to the post with the old barrel hoop that had replaced the latch, and with one parting look shook the tears from her long lashes and walked straight down the road. At the gate of the little graveyard Lammy put down the bundle, and they went in together.

“See, I’ve made it look nice until dad can turf it over,” said Lammy, “and put a little Christmas tree for a head-mark,” and sure enough the mound that a few hours before was a heap of rough gravel was green with young bayberry twigs and spruce branches, for on the upper side of the hill had once been a great nursery of evergreens, the seed had scattered, and the fragrant little Christmas trees had run all down the hill and clustered in groups around the fence posts.

Kneeling very carefully, Bird arranged the crimson peonies. The country folk thought only white flowers proper for such a place, but Bird loved colour and Lammy’s gift cheered her more than any words.

“Janey’s close by here and grandma,” said Lammy, presently, “so it won’t be a bit lonesome for your father, and I was hoping to-day that he’d remember to tell Janey that you’re going to be my sister now and come down and live at our house, for she’ll be glad that mother and I won’t be so lonesome as we’ve been at our home since she went to heaven. ’Cause you will stop with us, won’t you?” he added earnestly as he saw Bird hesitate. “Mother’s going to fix it just as soon as she gets word from your uncle. She didn’t want to write, only dad said she’d ought to because of the law or something.”

“I’ll always love you, Lammy,” said Bird, slowly, the tears gathering again, “and I never can like any place so much as this, and I’ll never forget to-day and the red peonies and your covering up the ugly stones, but I’ve got to earn my living and I can’t be a drag on anybody. I thought, you know, if there was enough left to get to a city,—New York, perhaps,—I might learn to paint quicker, and perhaps the man that wanted Terry to make pictures for wall-paper might tell me how,” and then the poor child, tired and overcome with the long strain and the new loneliness, could keep up no longer, and, throwing her arms about Lammy’s neck, sobbed, “Oh, take me somewhere out of sight, for I feel as if I was all falling—way down a—deep—well.”

Poor little Bird! All that she knew of the great city was from the pictures in the papers and an occasional magazine, and it seemed to her so big and gay and busy that there must be some place in it for her, and now that night was coming, the country felt so empty and lonely to the little girl, faint from weariness, and with the door of all the home she had known closed upon her. For no one but Lammy had had time to really comfort her, and in her unhappiness God seemed to have taken her parents away and then hidden Himself. If only Aunt Jimmy had not had the spell just then and she could have laid her head on Mrs. Lane’s motherly bosom, how different it might all have been. A carriage passed as they turned into the highway, and the clanking of the harness made Bird lift her head from Lammy’s shoulder where she had hidden it, and looking up she met the eyes of a young girl who was sitting alone on the back seat of the handsome victoria. She was perhaps sixteen, or a little over,—the braids of pale golden hair were fastened up loosely behind,—and she was beautifully dressed; but it was not the clothes but her sweet face and wistful big gray eyes that made Bird look a second time, and then the carriage had passed by.

“How happy she must be,” thought Bird.

“I’d rather walk than ride, and wear stubby shoes, or go barefoot, if I only had a brother so that I need not go alone,” was what the other girl thought.

“That’s Miss Marion Clarke that lives in the big stone house on the hill before you come to Northboro,” quoth Lammy. “There’s only one of her, and she can have everything she wants.” Then he straightway forgot her. Bird did not, however, for there was something in the gray eyes that would not let themselves be forgotten.

By the time they reached the Lane farmhouse Bird was quiet again, though her eyes drooped with sleep, and Lammy was telling eagerly how next autumn they could perhaps go over to Northboro to school, for drawing was taught there, and, he confided to Bird what had never before taken the form of words, that he too longed to learn to draw, not flowers, but machinery and engines, such as pulled the trains over at the Centre.

As they came in sight of the house Lammy noticed that there was a strange team at the gate, a buggy from the livery-stable at the Centre, for quiet Lammy kept his eyes open, and knew almost every horse in the county. On the stoop a short, thick-set man, with a fat, clean-shaven face, and clad in smart black clothes, stood talking to Lammy’s father.

Both men glanced up the road from time to time, and then Lammy noticed that the stranger held his watch in his hand, and he kept fidgeting and looking at it as if in a great hurry.

As the children entered the gate they heard Mr. Lane say, “Here she is now, but you can’t catch that evenin’ train from the Centre; you’ll have to put over here until morning.”

Bird gave a gasp and instinctively clutched Lammy’s hand. Could this be some one from her uncle? Of course it was not he himself, for her father had been youngish, tall and slight, with fair hair, small feet and hands, while this man was all of fifty, and had a rough and common look in spite of his clothes that did not match his heavy boots and clumsy grimy hands.

For a moment Bird forgot the story of her father’s boyhood that he had so often told her, forgot that fifteen years and a different mother separated him from his half-brothers, and when Mr. Lane called her, as she tried to slip in at the side door after Lammy, saying, “Come here, Bird, this is your Uncle John O’More come from New York,” she could only keep from falling by an effort, and stood still, nervously twisting her hands in the skirt of her black frock without being able to speak a word, while Twinkle seated himself at her feet looking anxiously, first at the stranger, then at Mr. Lane, with his head cocked on one side.

[II]
HER UNCLE JOHN

“Got a start? Didn’t expect to see me here, did you? else maybe you never knew you had an Uncle John,” said the stranger, by way of greeting, taking Bird roughly, but not unkindly, by the shoulders and looking her full in the face. Then, noticing how pale she was and that her eyes were red with crying, he let her go with a pat of his heavy hand that shook her through and through, saying, half to her and half to Mr. Lane, “Go along in now and get your supper. You look done up, and I wouldn’t object to a bite myself since I’ve got to hang around over night; been chasing round after you since morning, and those sandwiches I got at that tumble-down ranch at what they call the Centre were made up of last year’s mule-heel. They ain’t gone further’n here yet,” he added, striking his chest that was covered by a showy scarf, emphatically.

Bird began to breathe more freely to know he was going away in the morning. Her father had told her in one of the long sleepless nights of his illness about his two half-brothers, one in Australia, as far as he knew, and the other in New York. Their mother had been a strong, black-eyed, south-country lass, but his mother, the wife of his father’s later years, was a gentle, fair-haired, English girl, the governess in the family to which his father was steward. At her death when he was a lad of about fifteen, family differences arose, and he had gone to his mother’s people until he finally came to America with this brother John.

John was sturdy and coarse-grained; Terence delicate and sensitive. They soon parted, and in the years between the artist had written occasionally to his brother, but kept him in ignorance of his poverty. Yet, in spite of knowing it all, Bird was bitterly disappointed in her uncle. She built hopes about him, for did he not live in New York, and there were schools where painting was taught in that magical city, also the man lived there who wanted the wall-papers. Ah, if her uncle had only been different, he might have asked her to visit him or perhaps even have known the wall-paper man himself.

But this uncle seemed an impossibility and fairly repelled her, so that to get out of his sight was all she desired. Presently she went into the house, and, after carefully dusting her plain, little, black straw hat and laying it on the sofa in the best room, she covered her new dress with Mrs. Lane’s gingham apron that hung on its usual peg and fell to work at helping Lammy with the supper.

Now Bird was a clever little housewife while Lammy was very clumsy at the work, so that in a few minutes they were both absorbed and chatting quite cheerfully, never dreaming of the conversation that was going on in the north porch. Only the white-curtained windows of the best room could hear it, and they were shut tight.

“Now, Mr. Lane, since the youngster’s gone in, I guess we might as well get right down to business. I’ve shown you my papers and proofs, and there’s no special use rubbing it into her that her father was a dead failure clear from the start, and that the sticks of furniture he left and the few dollars banked or coming from his work ’ll only square up his accounts and leave the kid on the world, so to speak. I own I’m clean flabbergasted myself, for I thought he was a man of some property through his wife, for when he wrote, his letters were chuck full of high ideas for the girl here.”

Joshua Lane fidgeted miserably on the edge of his chair, and if ever a man longed for the presence and ready tongue of his wife, it was he.

“I suppose that’s one way o’ lookin’ at it,” he assented after a while, “but mebbe in some way he didn’t flat out so much as it looks. He never gave an ill word to any one, and Bird here’s as smart and talkable and writes a fist as good as the seminary principal over to Northboro, all through his teachin’, so no wonder she set a store by him. As to leavin’ the child on the world, she’ll never feel the hurtin’ edge of it while mother and Joshua Lane’s got roof and bite. I told O’More so, and I reckon it eased him considerable.”

“Smart, is she?” echoed the other; “that’s a mercy. Girls have to get a move on them nowadays in the city, and if they can’t start in at type-writing or something when they’re sixteen or so, they get shoved out of the race as leftovers by a new lot before they’ve earned their ten a week. I’ve got a good job now, but I’ve had to hustle for it and keep a lively step, too. That’s why it goes hard to lose two days’ time on this business. I was mighty afraid when I saw what a forsaken hole this was that the girl might be green as the grass, and n. g. altogether. No, I didn’t mean any offence,” he said, as he noticed Joshua’s face flush at his reference to the pretty hillside village, “but I’ve never had a use for the country. Give me streets with a push of people and a lively noise and trolleys going by at night to remind you yer alive, if you don’t sleep straight through.

“Of course, knowing nothing of the circumstances before I left, I couldn’t quite fix a plan,—might have had to wait around and see to that mill property if it hadn’t vamoosed, but as it is, I don’t see why Bird shouldn’t go right back with me to-morrow morning. I’ve got three lively boys besides a poor little crippled feller,—them and the city sights ’ll cheer her up. It’s different from what I thought to find, and I don’t owe Terry any favours of purse or tongue, but I’ve no girls, and blood’s thicker ’n water even though the English streak is heatin’ to an all-through Irishman,—but let that go. I’ll give her some schooling until she’s fit age to choose her trade, or if she’s tasty looking, get in some good shop, and she can ease her way along meantime in minding little Billy or helping the woman out. For I’d have you know that though I’ve a good job, and there’s always meat in the pot, we’re plain people of no pretence. I’ve money in a land company, though, that’ll soon give us our own home and not so far out either but what a gun would shoot into the Bowery.”

John O’More’s speech poured out so rapidly that it almost stunned Joshua Lane. When he pulled himself together, he gasped: “Did you say that you calkerlate to take Bird away from us and to-morrow at that? I’ll have to go down to Aunt Jimmy’s, I reckon, and call mother to onct,” but as he started from his chair “mother” appeared, coming up the road in the buggy clucking vigorously to the old gray horse, excitement written in every line of her homely, lovable face.

As she pulled up the horse at the gate, an entirely unnecessary labour as for the past ten years he had never willingly gone past it, Joshua, wearing a white, scared look upon his usually placid face, greeted her with: “Sakes alive, Lauretta Ann, I’m wonderful put out; it never rains but it pours; an’ ’s if there wasn’t enough trouble for one day, Bird’s uncle, John O’More, has turned up. He’s a rough, drivin’, quick-tongued sort o’ chap, like the travellin’ man that sold us the horse-rake that had fits of balking and tearin’ up the medder, and when I complained, he said, says he, ‘Why, certainly, I forgot it had the plough combination,—I had oughter asked you an extry five on it.’”

“Nonsense, Joshua Lane, nobody’s going to carry Bird off under our very noses, uncle or no uncle; I’ll soon settle that! But talking of pourin’ rain,—it’s certainly let drive on us this day, for your Aunt Jimmy’s had a stroke; and though she can’t move she can speak her mind still, and isn’t for lettin’ folks in or havin’ things done for her as she ought. I’ve left Dinah Lucky with her, and I’ve stopped at Doctor Jedd’s and told him to hurry down, but the time has come when you’ve just got to assert yourself willy-nilly. It’s you, not me, as is her eldest nephew and kin, and while I’m more’n willing to do the work, you’ve got to show some spunk. Now jist you git into a biled shirt and your good coat and go down and stand off the neighbours that, now she can’t stir, ’ll all be wrigglin’ and slippin’ through that door like eels in the mill sluice when the gate’s up. I’ll soon settle that O’More.”

Joshua, much relieved, obediently went into the house, while Mrs. Lane, after looking into the kitchen to be sure that supper was progressing, smoothed her Sunday dress that she had donned that morning for the funeral, opened the windows of the best room to impress her visitor with its green carpet and cabinet organ, and asked John O’More to come in.

“Thanks, Mrs. Lane I take it, but I guess I’ll stay out here,—had enough of shut-up places in that train to-day, besides some ladies object to smoke in the house.”

Before she could speak a word or even notice the long cigar that was sticking out of his mouth in the direction of his left eye, he had plunged into the subject at the exact point where it had been dropped. “Now as to Bird, Mrs. Lane; your husband and I have tongue-threshed things out, and he can repeat the same to you. I know just how things stand, so nuff said about what’s past. I travel in the west and Canada for a steady house, and I’m away a good deal; now Bird can be company for my wife as my kids are all boys. I’ll give her schoolin’, a trade, and a shove along on the road in a couple of years. I wouldn’t do less for any kin of my own, and I kind o’ take to her.”

“But we don’t want you to take her, and I reckon she don’t either, for—” put in Mrs. Lane, almost bursting with suppressed speech.

“Excuse me, one moment more, madam,” he continued, removing his cigar and speaking rather more slowly, “I judge that you object to her going to-morrow; now I can’t stop around here, and it’s an expensive trip. Seein’ the city ’ll be a change, and she’ll soon settle down all right.”

“But we don’t want her to go at all,” Mrs. Lane almost shrieked; “we want her to live with us!”

“As what, for instance?” queried O’More, growing more Irish in his speech, “a kind of a charity help, or had you intentions of adopting her by the law? If so, and she wishes, I’ll stand in the way of nothing but a change of her name, to which I’d object.”

Mrs. Lane was struck dumb. She had no idea of making a servant of Bird, but on the other hand she knew that legal adoption would mean to give Bird a like share with her own boys, and as what little they had, or might expect, came from her husband’s people, this she could not promise at once.

“I meant—to treat her just like my little girl that died—but”—poor Mrs. Lane got more and more mixed up—“I haven’t asked Joshua about the adoptin’ business—it’s so lately happened, we’d not got that far, you see.”

“Yes, mum, I see,” said the fat man, drawing his lips together shrewdly, “yourself has a warm heart, but others, yer own boys likely, may give it a chill some day, and then where’s Bird? No, mum, the girl ’ll have an easier berth with her own, I fancy, and not have to bend her back drawin’ and fetchin’ water, either,—we’ve it set quite handy.”

This was said with withering sarcasm for, unfortunately, at that moment, Bird could be seen lugging in a heavy water bucket from the well, something she had been warned not to do, and yet did unthinkingly, for to-day she walked as in a dream.

Mrs. Lane saw that in reality she was helpless, unless she appealed to Bird herself, and to rouse the child’s sensitive spirit she knew would be not only foolish but wicked, so for once Lauretta Ann Lane sat silent and with bowed head, only saying with a choking voice, “I will tell her after—supper—and you’ll let—us write—to her, I suppose, and have her—back to visit if she gets piney for Lammy,—they’ve been like twin brother and sister ever since Janey died.”

“I will that, ma’am, and I’ll say more; if within the year she don’t content herself and settle down and grieves for yer, and yer see it clear in that time to adopt her fair and square, and guarantee to do by her as I will,—you’ll get the chance.”

O’More stretched his legs, stiff with sitting, and jerked his half-burned cigar into the bushes, while at the same moment Oliver and Nellis, Lammy’s big brothers who worked in Milltown, rode up on their wheels and the bell rang for supper.

******

No one but Bird ever knew what Mrs. Lane said to her that night, during the sad hours that she held the child in her arms in the great rocking-chair that had soothed to sleep three generations of Lane babies. Perhaps it soothed poor Bird, too, only she did not know it then; yet she fell asleep, after a storm of crying, with her arms around Twinkle, the terrier, as soon as Mrs. Lane had put her to bed, promising to come back from Aunt Jimmy’s early in the morning to awaken her, for her uncle was to take the nine o’clock train from the Centre.

As Mrs. Lane collected, in a valise, the few clothes that made up Bird’s wardrobe, she felt broken-hearted indeed, but she could not but realize that if the little girl must go, the quicker the better, and who knew what might turn up, for Mrs. Lane was always hopeful. But Lammy, poor boy, could not see one bright spot in the darkness. It was with difficulty that his father could keep the child, usually so gentle, from flying at O’More; he stormed and begged and finally, completely exhausted, fled to the stuffy attic where he fell asleep, pillowed by some hard ears of seed corn.

Next morning when Bird awoke, she had forgotten and felt much better for her long sleep, but when she sat up and looked at the strange room, it all came back. One thought mingled with the dread of parting,—she was going to New York; there was where the wall-paper man lived and people learned things. Hope was strong in her also, and never did she doubt for a moment but what she could win her way and come back some day to her friends if she could only find the right path.

Downstairs all was confusion. Joshua Lane had come from Aunt Jimmy’s to take O’More over to the judge’s house to sign some papers. A man had followed him up to say Dr. Jedd felt the old lady was worse. Mrs. Lane was giving Bird a thousand directions and warnings that she couldn’t possibly remember, and in the middle of it all Lammy, looking straight before him and dumb as an owl, his eyes nearly closed from last night’s crying, drove around in the business wagon to take the travellers to the station, four good miles away.

“Here’s my card, so you’ll know where I hang out,” said John O’More, as he stepped into the wagon, holding out a bit of printed pasteboard to Joshua Lane, “and if you need anything in my line, I’ll let you in on the square.” On one corner was the picture of a horse’s head, on the other a wagon, and the letters read, “John O’More with Brush & Burr, Dealers in Horses, Vehicles of all Kinds, Harness & Stable Fixings.” Then they drove away, Bird keeping her eyes fixed on Twinkle who Lammy had settled in the straw at their feet.

“To think she was going and I was so put about I never asked the address,” sighed Mrs. Lane, adjusting her glasses and looking at the card. “For goodness sakes, Joshua, do you suppose he’s a horse-jockey? I sort of hoped he might be in groceries, or coal or lumber,—something solid and respectable. What would poor Terry say?”

“I really don’t know, Lauretta Ann,” sighed Joshua, whose slow nature was showing the wear, tear, and hurry of the last few days; “but he’s Terry’s brother, not ourn. It takes all kinds of fellers to make up a world, and I hev met honest horse-jockeys, and then again I haven’t. I wished I’d thought to ask him the bottom price for a new chaise; ourn is so weak every time you cross the ford I’m afeared you’ll spill through the bottom into the water,” and Joshua turned on his heel and went in to a belated breakfast, while his wife jerked remarks at the chickens she made haste to feed, about the heartlessness of all men, which she didn’t in the least mean.

******

They had ten minutes or so to wait for the train when they reached the Centre, and, after taking her valise to be checked and buying the ticket, O’More returned to the wagon for Bird. For the first time she remembered that she had not asked about Twinkle and perhaps he might need a ticket. Making a brave effort to get out the name that choked her, yet too considerate to use the plain Mr., she said: “Uncle John,—you won’t mind if I take Twinkle with me, will you? He’s very clean and clever; I love him dearly and he was so good to Terry when he was sick.”

O’More was the bustling city man now, and whatever sentiment had swayed him the night before was slept away. He gave a glance at the dog and shook his head in the negative.

“That’s a no account little yaller cur. If your aunt will let you keep a pup, there’s always a litter around the stable you can pick from, though they’re more’n likely to fall off the fire-escape.”

The tears came to Bird’s eyes, but she blinked them back; but not before Lammy saw them. “I’ll keep Twinkle all safe for you—till—you come a-visiting,” he said in a shaky voice, reading her wish.

Then the train came around the curve and stopped at the big tank to drink.

“Come along,” called O’More.

“Oh, I’ve forgotten my paint-box and bundle!” said Bird, running back to get the precious portfolio that had been wrapped in the horse blanket.

“Your what?” said O’More, “paint-box! Just you leave that nonsense to your chum along with the dog. You’ve had enough of paints and painting for your vittles; I’m going to see you stick to bread and meat,” and, waving his hand good-by to Lammy, he flung him a silver dollar, that missing the wagon rolled in the dirt.

For a moment the sickening disappointment tempted Bird to turn and run down the track, anywhere so long as she got away; then her pride came to her aid, and, stretching out her hands to her playmate, she cried, “Keep them safe for me, oh, Lammy, please do!”

“You bet I will, don’t you fret!” he called back.

Then she followed her uncle quietly to the cars, and her last glimpse, as the train entered the cut, was of Lammy, seated in the old wagon with Twinkle at his side, the box and the portfolio clasped in his arms, and a brave smile on his face.

[III]
AUNT JIMMY

For a few minutes Lammy sat looking after the vanishing train. Then he carefully wrapped the paint-box and portfolio in the blanket again, and, patting Twinkle, who was quivering with excitement and looking into his face with a pitiful, pleading glance, he put the dog down in the straw again, saying, “We can’t help it, old fellow; we’ve just got to stand it until we can fix up some way to get her back.”

As he turned the wagon about, with much backing and rasping of cramped wheels, the bright silver dollar that was lying in the dirt caught his eye. It seemed like a slap in the face when O’More threw it, though in his rough way he meant well enough, and Lammy’s first impulse was to drive home and leave it where it had fallen.

Still, after all, it was money, and to earn money vaguely seemed to him the only way by which he could get Bird back again, for though Lammy had a comfortable home, enough clothing, and plenty to eat, whole dollars were as rare in his pockets as white robins in the orchard.

So he picked up the shining bit of silver, wiped it carefully on his sleeve, and, wrapping it in a scrap of paper, opened the precious paint-box, and tucked the coin into one of the small compartments. It never occurred to him to spend the money for any of the little things a boy of fourteen always wants, and he quite forgot that his knife had only half of one blade left. The money was for Bird, and from that moment the paint-box, which was to spend some months in his lower bureau drawer in company with his best jacket and two prizes won at school, became a savings bank.

Lammy stopped at the “Centre” druggist’s for some medicine for Aunt Jimmy, and while he was waiting for the mixture, he had to undergo a running fire of questions concerning his aunt’s “spell” from the people who came in from all sections for their mail, as this store was also the post-office and there was as yet no rural free-delivery system to deprive the community of its daily trade in news.

Now Aunt Jimmy, otherwise Jemima Lane, occupied an unusual position in the neighbourhood and was a personage of more than common importance. In the first place she was a miser, which is always interesting, as a miser is thought to be a sort of magician whose money is supposed to lie hidden in the chimney and yet increase as by double cube root; then she owned ten acres of the best land for small fruits—strawberries, raspberries, currants, and peaches—in the state. The ground was on the southern slope of Laurel Ridge, and though it was shielded in such a way that the March sun did not tempt the peach blossoms out before their time, yet Aunt Jimmy’s strawberries were always in the Northboro market a full week ahead of the other native fruit.

Of course there was nothing particularly strange in this interest, as many people coveted the land. The odd part that concerned the gossips was that Aunt Jimmy had three able-bodied nephews, of which Joshua Lane was eldest, all farmers struggling along on poorish land, while she, though seventy-five years old, insisted upon running her fruit farm and house entirely alone, hiring Poles or Hungarians, who could speak no English, to till and gather the crops, instead of going shares with her own kin. In fact, until a few years back, no one, man, woman, or child, except little Janey Lane, had ever got beyond the kitchen door. Then when she died, Aunt Jimmy had opened her house and heart to Joshua Lane’s wife, and ever since, that dear, motherly soul had done all that she could for the queer, lonely old woman, in spite of the fact that the gossips said she did it from selfish motives.

Joshua Lane was very sensitive about this talk and would have held aloof like his two brothers, who lived beyond the Centre, one of whom had a sick wife and was too lazy to more than scratch half rations from his land, while the other had once given the old lady some unwise advice about pruning peach trees, and had been forbidden inside the gate under pain of being cut off with a “china button,” Aunt Jimmy’s pet simile for nothing.

Mrs. Joshua, however, was gossip proof, and, tossing her head, had publicly declared, “I’m a-going to keep the old lady from freezin’, burnin’, or starvin’ herself to death jest so far ’s I’m able, accordin’ to scripture and the feelings that’s in me, and if that’s ‘undue influence,’ so be it! I shan’t discuss the subject with anybody but the Lord,” and she never did.

Many a meal of hot cooked food she took to the old woman to replace the crackers and cheese of her own providing. It was not that Aunt Jimmy meant to be mean, but she had lived so long alone that she had gotten out of the habits of human beings. She certainly looked like a lunatic when she went about the place superintending her men, clad in a short skirt, a straw sunbonnet, and rubber boots, merely adding in the winter a man’s army overcoat and cape that she had picked up cheap; but the lawyer who had come down from Northboro a year before to make her will said he had never met a clearer mind outside of the profession, for she had Dr. Jedd testify that she was of sound mind, and a second physician from Northboro swear that Dr. Jedd’s wits were also in good order.

Shortly after this she had given it out quietly that, though Joshua Lane was the only one of her kin that was worth a box of matches, yet they would share and share alike, as she didn’t believe in stirring up strife among brothers by showing favour.

Then everybody expected Mrs. Lane would lessen her attentions, but as often happens everybody was mistaken.

Of course the good woman could not help thinking once in a while what a fine thing it would be if some day her elder boys could work the fruit farm (Lammy she never thought of as working at anything) instead of delving in a shop at Milltown, but she put the idea quickly from her. However, it would keep coming back all that night after Terence O’More’s funeral when she watched with the old lady, while poor Bird slept her grief-spent sleep before her journey.

If the fruit farm could ever be hers, she would adopt Bird without hesitation, for the little lady-child had crept into the empty spot that Janey had left in her big mother heart and filled it in a way that greatly astonished her.

******

Lammy finally secured the medicine and jogged homeward, thinking, all the time thinking about Bird. He knew that people said he was stupid, and yet he also felt that he could learn as well as any one if they would only let him pick his own way a little. His father wanted him to be a carpenter, his mother thought that too rough, and that he was still a baby and some day perhaps he might be a clerk.

But Lammy himself, as he looked into the future, saw only the whirling wheels of the machinery at Milltown, or the wonders of the locomotive works that he had once visited at Northboro. That was why he was always day-dreaming and looking in the air. Of course it was very stupid and dumb of him not to tell his parents, but Bird’s was the only ear that had ever heard his thoughts.

All that day he stayed about the place at home, keeping the fire in and doing the chores, for his mother’s time was divided between her aunt’s and straightening things at Bird’s old home, and his father was up in the back lots planting corn. Toward night, as he was sitting on the steps having brought back Twinkle who had run to his old home in search of his little mistress, Mrs. Lane bustled in, mystery and importance written on her face. Spying Lammy, she beckoned him to follow her into the kitchen, then, carefully closing the doors, putting Twinkle in the closet and the cat out of the window, as if they could carry tales, she unfastened her bonnet and collar and settled herself in the rocking-chair.

“Samuel Lane,” she began solemnly, shaking her forefinger and making the boy quake at the unused title, while his eyes opened wide in wonder, “No, ’tain’t that; Aunt Jimmy’s much more comfortable, and I suspect she’s going to pick up again after scaring us well, or I wouldn’t be home, but she said private words to me this afternoon that if I do keep quite to myself, I’ll burst, I know, and maybe get a headache spell that’ll lay me by a day and upset everything. Now, Samuel, I’ve found as far as givin’ messages you’re told to carry, you’re as good as nobody, so I reckon you’ll be tight sealed on something that you’re bid to keep close and forget maybe for some years.”

“Is it about Bird?” asked Lammy, suddenly jumping up and fixing his big, gray eyes on his mother’s face with a gaze that made her nervous, for she well knew that there was something in this pet son of hers that was a little beyond her comprehension.

“No, not about Bird,—that is, not straight, though another way it may have a lot to do with her; it all depends. Listen, Samuel!

“This afternoon Aunt Jimmy waked up, and, seeing me sitting by the window croshayin’,—true I was making a bungle of the tidy, not feelin’ like workin’ (but she hates, same ’s I do, for watchers to set idle looking ready to jump at a body like a cat does at a mouse hole),—she says, says she, her voice comin’ back steady, ‘Set nearer, Lauretta Ann Lane, I’m goin’ to tell you somethin’ no one else need ever know.’

“I drew up all of a flutter, of course. ‘You’re a good woman, Lauretta Ann,’ says she, ‘and you’ve never poked and pried, or shown desires for what’s another’s, an’ you’ve worked hard to keep me livin’, which I’ve done to my satisfaction beyond my expectations.’

“I burst out cryin’, I couldn’t help it; for I never thought she set any store by me, and I felt guilty about wishes I’d had last night and had fed with thoughts inwardly.

“‘Hush up, now, and don’t spoil all by pretendin’,’ she ran on; ‘I know you’d like to have my farm, though not a day before I’m done with it. I’ll credit you that. It’s natural and proper and I’m glad to have interest took in it, likewise I’ve said I’d share and share alike between my nephews, which I intend; but listen, Lauretta Ann, for there’s ways of circumventin’ that suits me, I’ve left you the farm for your own; moreover, I’ve fixed it so there’ll be no talk and no one’ll know it but you. You think I’m crazy, I guess, and that you couldn’t get the farm unbeknown, nohow. Just wait and see!’

“Then she asked me to draw her a cup of tea, and when I went to fetch that battered old pewter tea-pot she’s used I reckon these fifty years, ’twasn’t in its place, but on her mantel-shelf, and when I reached up to take it down she said, ‘Leave that be and take the chiney one; its work’s over for me and we’re both takin’ a rest;’ then she dozed off after the very first sup.”

“Mother,” said Lammy, who was now leaning on her knees with his hands behind her head and drawing it close, while his eyes glowed like coals, “if—if you ever get the farm—will—you—”

“Bring Bird back?” she finished for him, hugging him close. “Yes, I will, and you shall both go to school to Northboro, too; but mind you, Samuel, no crowdin’ Aunt Jimmy, and it may be years yet.

“Now bustle round and help me cook up something, for I must go back to Aunt Jimmy’s before seven, as Mis’ Jedge o’ Probate Ricker is the only one I’ll trust to spell me, for Dinah Lucky’s mush in a bowl when the village folks smooth her down with their palarver.”

So Lammy flew about, sifting flour, skimming milk, or rattling cups and saucers, and it was not quite dark, supper over, and every dish washed, when he went back to the porch steps and whispered the precious hope to Twinkle, who raised one ear and his lip together as much as if he understood and cautioned silence. Then the boy began day-dreaming anew, but this time his mind, instead of following flying wheels, was busy weeding strawberry plants and carefully picking raspberries, so as not to crush them, while Bird stood by and watched. “And,” he startled himself by saying aloud, “the first thing I’ll do ’ll be to divide off a root of those red pineys and plant it up on the hill, so Bird ’ll find it next spring all in blow.”

******

A few days later when Dr. Jedd and all the neighbours were convinced that Aunt Jimmy would be out in the garden again by raspberry time, with good chance of another ten years, and Mrs. Lane had made indoors more comfortable than it had been for years by a thorough cleaning and renovating, the strange old lady again upset all their calculations and died. Then in due time the lawyer from Northboro sent letters to the three nephews and their families, to Dr. Jedd, to the minister of the First Congregational Church, and to the superintendent of the new School of Industrial Art of Northboro, to meet on a certain Friday afternoon at Aunt Jimmy’s house to hear the will read.

Once more was the entire community involved in a guessing match. The summoning of the kin was a matter of course, and usually took place immediately, so that the lawyer was evidently carrying out special directions in delaying the matter for more than a week, but as to what the doctor, the minister, and the teacher from Northboro could possibly have to do in the matter was a mystery that not even the fertile brain of Mrs. Slocum could settle, either for good nor evil.

It couldn’t be that Aunt Jimmy had left these three outside men anything, for it was known that she only employed Dr. Jedd because she couldn’t help it, that she hadn’t been to church for five years because the minister had preached a sermon against avarice and the vanity of hoarding money, and as to the Northboro teacher it was positively certain that she had never even seen him, for he was a stranger in these parts, having recently been sent from New York, to take charge of the school, by a wealthy man who had been influential in founding it and whose country place was on the farther edge of the town.

Mrs. Lane was as much in the dark as any one and did not hesitate to say so, while excitement ran so high that on this particular Friday afternoon the women sat in their fore-room windows overlooking the village street with the expectant air of waiting for a passing procession.

Mrs. Dr. Jedd, Mrs. Judge of Probate Ricker, and the minister’s wife were privileged to attend the reading by courtesy for reason of being their husband’s wives, and cakes had been baked and several plans made to waylay them separately on their divers routes home to drink a cup of tea, that every detail might be gleaned for comparing of notes afterward.

“We shall soon see whether Lauretta Ann Lane’s cake is dough or fruit loaf,” sniffed Mrs. Slocum, angrily, drawing in her head suddenly from the third fruitless inspection of the road that she had made in fifteen minutes and giving it a smart bump against the sash as she did so. “Either the folks is late, or they’re gone around the back road, and if so, why? I’d just like you to tell me,” she snapped at Hope Snippin, the meek little village dressmaker who, drawn over as if she had a perpetual stitch in her side, was remaking a skirt for the lady of the house and felt very much discouraged, as it had been turned once before, at the possibility of making it look startlingly new.

“Maybe they’ve stopped down to the Lane’s and have walked around the meadow path,” ventured Hope Snippin. “The other day when I was fixin’ up Mis’ Lane’s black gown, changing the buttons and such like to turn it from just Sunday best to mourning, I heard her tell Mis’ Jedd that, as there was no convenience for gettin’ up a proper meal down to Aunt Jimmy’s, seein’ as nothing must be touched until the will was read, she’d asked all the folks concerned to dinner—a roast-beef dinner with custards—at her house so’s they could be comfortable and stable their teams, and then walk right around short cut to the other house after. You see the two farms meets the road separate, like the two heels of a horseshoe, and then join by going back of the doctor’s hill woods. My father was sayin’ last night if those two farms and the wood lot went together, they’d be something worth while,” and Miss Snippin smiled pleasantly as if she thought she had propitiated Mrs. Slocum by her news.

“Then you knew all the while they wouldn’t come by here and never told me, though seein’ me slavin’ over that cake,” snapped Mrs. Slocum. “I wish you’d mind your work closer; you’re makin’ that front breadth up stain out.”

“But it runs clean through,” pleaded the dressmaker, miserably.

“Depend upon it,” Mrs. Slocum muttered to herself, not heeding the protest, “she’s made sure of that farm, or she wouldn’t risk the cost of a roast dinner for a dozen folks if she wasn’t.”

******

Meanwhile this dinner had been eaten and the party, headed by the lawyer and the teacher, had gone through the sweet June fields to Aunt Jimmy’s house and seated themselves upon the stiff-backed, fore-room chairs that were ranged in a long row, as if the company expected to play “Go to Jerusalem.”

Outside, the bees were humming in the syringa bushes while the cat-birds and robins, unmolested, were holding a festival in the great strawberry bed, for to-day there was no one to see that the birds “kept moving” after the usual custom, as the hired man on returning from taking eggs to market had gone to sleep in the hay barn, knowing that the stern voice of the old lady in rubber boots and sunbonnet would not disturb his dreams.

******

“Hem,” the lawyer cleared his throat and read the usual preliminaries about “last will and testament, sound mind,” etc., “paying of just debts,” etc., in a clear but rapid voice that grew gradually solemn and important, until, as the pith of the matter was reached, every word was separated from its neighbour, and the buzzing of a fly on the window-pane seemed an unbearable noise.

“I give and bequeath to Amelia, the wife of William Jedd, doctor of medicine in this town, the sum of two thousand dollars, because I think she may need it owing to her husband’s slack way of collecting bills.”

Mrs. Jedd, who had for a moment looked radiant, quickly cast down her eyes after a frightened glance at her husband who was, with apparent difficulty, refraining from laughter as he looked crosswise at the minister.

“I give and bequeath to Sarah Ann, wife of Joel Stevens, minister of the First Congregational Church, a like sum of two thousand dollars because she is sure to need it, this being twice the amount that he once desired me to give to foreign missions. If he still holds to his views of avarice and hoarding, he will doubtless be able to persuade her to share his ideas as to its use.”

It was the minister’s turn now to look red and confused, while his wife’s face expressed her views on the subject beyond a doubt.

“I give and bequeath to the Trust Fund of the School of Industrial Art in Northboro the sum of $10,000, the income therefrom to be applied to the board and teaching of two girls each year who cannot afford to pay, for the reason that I think a girl is usually worth two boys if she has a chance, and I don’t like to see our best girls running to the big cities for schooling.

“I direct that my fruit farm of ten acres, more or less, with the adjoining one hundred acres of meadow and woodlands, and all buildings and fixtures, other than household furniture, appertaining thereto, shall be sold at public auction within six months of my death, and that the cash proceeds be divided between my three nephews, share and share alike, I holding the hope that one of them will be the purchaser. I also direct that the pieces of household furniture mentioned in the enclosed memorandum shall be divided between the wives of my three nephews by the drawing of lots, and I charge that all other furnishings not mentioned in this paper, being of no value except to myself, shall be destroyed either by burning or burying in the swamp bog-hole according to their character, as I don’t wish them scattered about for the curiosity of the idle, of which this town has its full share.

“Making one exception to the above, I give to my dear niece by marriage, Lauretta Ann, wife of Joshua Lane, in token of my respect for her, my old pewter tea-pot that, as she knows, I have treasured as having laid buried in the garden through the War of Independence and had in daily use for years, hoping she will cherish it and by like daily use hold me in constant remembrance by the sight of it.”

At this juncture no one dared look up, for all felt the cruelty of the gift after Mrs. Lane’s years of service, and the poor woman herself merely tightened her grasp upon the chair arms, but she could not prevent the sickening sense of disappointment that crept over her.

“I hereby appoint my nephew, Joshua Lane, as my sole executor, directing that he be paid the sum of $1000 from my estate for his services, desiring him to carry on the fruit business for the current year, the profits to be added to my estate. (Here followed special instructions.) If there be any residue after paying to the before-named legacies, I direct that he divide it equally between himself and his two brothers, and I hope that all concerned may feel the same pleasure in hearing this testament that I have had in making it.”

As the lawyer stopped reading there was a pause, and then a rush of voices, congratulations and condolences mingled. That he had made an error in summoning Dr. Jedd and the minister instead of their wives was plain.

The two brothers, who cared nothing for the fruit farm except its cash price and had been too indolent to bother about the matter or go to see their aunt except in fruit time, assumed importance and talked about wounded pride and the injustice of having but one executor. The school superintendent, an Englishman of fifty or so who had received his art training at South Kensington and brought it to market in America, confused by his surroundings, but of course pleased at the gift by which his school benefited, made haste to leave, feeling that he was intruding in a gathering where a family storm was brewing.

“Mebbe there’s something in the tea-pot,” suggested the minister’s wife, hopefully, “else I can’t think she knew her own mind.”

“There’s surely something in it,” echoed Mrs. Dr. Jedd.

The lawyer, who himself had thought this possible, went upstairs, and took down the battered bit of pewter from the best bedroom shelf, where it had remained since the day Mrs. Lane had placed it there at Aunt Jimmy’s request, opened it, shook it, and held it toward the eager group,—it was absolutely empty!

Mrs. Lane stretched out her hand for the legacy, but her husband grasped her arm and asserting himself for the first time in his married life, said: “Lauretta Ann, don’t you tech it; it’ll go down in the swamp hole with the other trash for all of you. I’ll not have you a-harbourin’ a viper. I’ll do my lawful duty, but, by crickey, I’ll not have you put upon no more.”

This very ambiguous speech so impressed the hearers that it was reported that “Joshua Lane wasn’t tied to Lauretta’s apron-strings and could hold his own equal to anybody,” which had been seriously doubted, while the news was a surprise and disappointment to every one but Mrs. Slocum, who said, “Dough! I told you so,”—and actually cut a big slice of cake for Hope Snippin to take home for tea.

As for Lammy he seemed dazed for a while, and then set to work daily with his father on the fruit farm, so that he might earn the tickets to send to Bird when hot weather and the time for her visit came. His mother noticed that he did not gaze about as much as usual, and, while he was picking berries for market, he said to himself, “I’ll snake a root of those red pineys for Bird anyhow before the auction, ’long in November, and maybe before then something ’ll turn up.”

[IV]
A CAGED BIRD

When the high banks of the cut shut off Lammy from Bird’s sight, she followed her uncle into the car, vainly trying to blink back her tears. He, however, did not notice them; but, putting her valise on a seat, told her she had better sit next to the window so that she could amuse herself by looking out, as it would be two hours before they changed cars at New Haven, and then, taking another seat for himself, pulled his hat over his eyes and promptly fell asleep.

At first the poor child was content to sit quite still and rest, trying to realize who and where she was. The changes of the past two weeks had been so sudden that she did not yet fully realize them. Beginning with the day when her father, all full of hope, had been soaked by the rain in walking back from Northboro, where he had gone to buy materials for beginning his work for the wall-paper man, and caught the deadly cold, until now when she was leaving the only friends she had ever known, seemed either a whole lifetime or a dream from which she must awake.

But as the train flew on and the familiar places one by one were lost in the distance, little by little the bare cold truth came to her. Not only was she going to a strange place to live among strangers, but the hope that had comforted her the previous night had been swept away when her uncle had refused to let her bring her paint-box, and she knew by the contemptuous way he spoke that he was even more set against her father’s work than their farming neighbours had been.

“Never mind,” thought the brave, lonely little heart, “I simply must learn somehow, and perhaps my aunt and cousins may be different and help me to persuade Uncle John to let me go on with drawing at the school he sends me to, for I heard him tell Mrs. Lane that I should go to school.” Then Bird began to imagine what the aunt and cousins would be like, and what sort of a house they would live in. She thought the house would be brick or stone like some in Northboro, and she did not expect that there would be a very big garden, perhaps only at the back with a little strip at the sides and in front, but then that would hold enough flowers for her to draw so that she need not forget the way in which Terry had taught her to do it from life, and even if she had no paints and only bits of paper and a pencil, she could work a little out of the way up in her room so as not to annoy her uncle and yet not quite give up. That she was determined she would never do, for Bird had, in addition to a talent that was in every way greater than her father’s, something that came from her mother’s family and that he had wholly lacked,—perseverance, a thing that people are apt to call obstinacy when they do not sympathize with its object.

So busy was she with castle-building that she was quite surprised when the brakeman called: “New Haven! Last stop. Change cars for New York and Boston. Passengers all out!” and her uncle jumped up, flushed and stupid with sleep and bundled her out of the train into the station restaurant “to snatch a bite of dinner” before they went on.

Now Bird, being a perfectly healthy child, even though overwrought and tired, was hungry and gladly climbed up on one of the high stools that flanked the lunch counter, while her uncle gathered a sandwich, two enormous doughnuts, and a quarter of a mince pie on one plate and pushed it toward her saying: “Tea or coffee? You’d better fill up snug, for we won’t be home until well after dinnertime,” then John O’More proceeded to cool his own coffee by pouring it from cup to saucer and back again with much noise and slopping.

“Please, I’d rather have milk,” answered Bird, rescuing the sandwich from under the pie and making a great effort not to stare at her uncle, who had begun by stuffing half a doughnut into his mouth and pouring the larger part of a cup of coffee after it before he swallowed, so that his cheeks bulged, his eyes seemed about to pop from their sockets, and beads of sweat stood on his forehead, while the next moment he was shovelling up great mouthsful of baked beans and ramming them down with cucumber pickles, very much as she had seen Lammy charging his father’s old muzzle-loading shot-gun when going to hunt woodchucks.

Though sometimes the food at home had not been any too plentiful, Bird’s parents had always been particular about her manners at table. She had had their example before her and was naturally dainty in her own ways, so that her uncle’s gorging gave her another shock, and unconsciously she began to pick at her food like a veritable feathered bird.

“The country ain’t what it’s cracked up to be,” remarked O’More, when he was able to speak. “I thought country girls was always fat and rosy and ate hearty. Just wait until you get to New York and see my kids stoke in the vittles; it’ll learn you what it means to eat right.”

“Express train for New York, stopping at Bridgeport and Stamford only,” called a man through the open door.

“Come along,” shouted O’More, wedging in another doughnut, throwing the pay to the waiter and seizing a handful of toothpicks from a glass on the counter, and before Bird had but half finished the sandwich and milk, she found herself on the train again.

The second part of the journey passed more cheerfully, for all along at the east side of the road were beautiful glimpses of the Sound and silvery creeks and inlets came up to the track itself.

Bird had never before seen the sea, or any river greater than the mill stream, and she exclaimed in delight.

“Like the looks of salt water, do you? Then you’re going to an A 1 place to see it. New York’s an island, and you only have to go to the edge anywhere to see water all round, not forsaken lookin’ empty water like this either, but full of ships and boats and push. Down at the far end of the town is Battery Park, smash on to the water, and there’s sea air and seats in it and music summer nights, along with a building full of live swimmin’ fishes that little Billy’s crazed over goin’ to see. Oh, you’ll find sport in the city for sure.”

“Who is little Billy?” asked Bird, feeling that she was called upon to say something, and now realizing that she knew nothing about the cousins she was to meet.

“Little Billy? Oh, he’s the youngest of the four boys. Tom, he’s the eldest, and a wild hawk; he’s got a rovin’ job, and he seldom turns up lest he’s in trouble, but for all that his mother’s crazed after him. Jack, he’s next, seventeen, and fine and sleek and smart with the tongue, and keeps the clean coat of a gentleman; he’s in a clerking job, but he goes to night school, and he’ll be somebody. Larry’s fifteen, and he’s just quit school and got a place helping a trainer on the race-track; he’s minded to make money quick, and thinks that’s the road, which I don’t. Then little Billy,—he’s turning six, and he’s worth more’n the whole lot together to me, if he is only a four-year size and hops with a crutch. Ah, but he’s got the head for thinkin’, and he’s every way off from the rest of us, pale and yellow-haired, while the others are coloured like sloes and crows’ wings in the eyes and hair.”

As O’More spoke his whole face softened and lightened up, and it was plain to see that little Billy filled the soft spot that is in every heart if people only have the eyes to see it.

“Until little Billy was turned three he was as pretty as an angel,” he continued, “and sturdy as any other child. Then come a terrible hot summer,—oh, I tell you it was fierce; you couldn’t draw a breath in the rooms, and so the missis she fixed a bed for Billy out on the fire-escape and used to take him there to sleep.”

Bird was just about to ask what sort of a place a fire-escape was, for this was the second time her uncle had mentioned it that day having said that if she had a dog, it would likely fall from it, but he talked so quickly that she forgot again.

“As luck had it, one night the wind come up cool, and, the woman bein’ dead tired, never woke up to notice it, and in the morning little Billy set up a terrible cry, for when he tried to get up he couldn’t, for the wind had checked the sweat and stiffened his left leg, as it were. Of course we had a big time and had in full a dozen doctors, and some said one thing and some another, but they all give it the one name ‘the infant paralysis.’

“The doctors they wanted him to go to the ’ospital and have the leg shut into a frame and all that, but I said ’twas a shame to torment him, and I’d have him let be till he could say for himself.

“The woman takes him awful hard, though, as if he was a reproach to her for not wakin’ up, which is no sense, for what be’s to be, be’s—that’s all,” which shiftless argument Bird afterward found was her uncle’s answer to many things that could have been bettered.

“I hope Billy will like me,” said Bird, half to herself after a few minutes’ silence; “somehow I think I like him already.”

“If you do that and act well by him, I buy you a hat with the longest feather on Broadway for your Christmas,” said O’More, grasping her slender fingers and almost crushing them in his burst of enthusiasm. “But whist a minute, girl, for we’re most home now. If the woman,—I mean my missis, your Aunt Rosy,—is offish just at the start, don’t get down-hearted, for you see as she don’t expect I’m bringing you, she may be—well—a trifle startled like. She’ll soon settle down and take what be’s to be straight enough,” and with this rather discouraging remark the train crossed the Harlem River and entered the long tunnel that is apt to cast a gloom over every one’s first entrance to New York, even when they are bent on pleasure and not sad and lonely.

“We’re in now,” said O’More in a few minutes, as the echo of the close walls ceased and the train slid across a maze of tracks into an immense building with a glass roof like a greenhouse.

“Grand Central Station—all out,” called a brakeman, and Bird found herself part of a crowd of men, women, children, and red-capped porters moving toward a paved street, full of carriages, wagons, trucks, electric cars, besides many sort of vehicles that she had never seen before, coming, going, dashing here and there in confusion, while on every side there was a wall of houses, and below the earth was upturned and trenched, not a bit of grass or tree to be seen anywhere, and the sky, oh, so far away and small. Bird almost fell as she stumbled blindly along toward a trolley car after the uncle, for what could seem more unreal to this little wild thrush from the country lane, with song in her throat, and love of beauty and colour born in her heart, than Forty-second Street in the middle of the first warm summer afternoon?

******

The car they boarded went through another short tunnel, and on every side could be heard the noise of hammers or drilling in the rock.

“Is this a stone quarry?” asked Bird, innocently, not understanding, and wondering why the near-by passengers smiled as her uncle replied: “Lord bless yer! no; it’s the subway, a road below ground they’re building to let out folks from where they work to where there’s room to live; there’s such push here below town there’s little room for sitting, let alone sleeping. Oh, but it’s a fine city is New York, all the same.”

Next a broad avenue with a jumble of old, low shops and fine new buildings side by side; still Bird looked anxiously out for some place where it seemed possible that people might live and found none.

“Here’s 2—th Street where we land,” said O’More, presently looking up, and when the car had stopped, Bird found herself walking along a sidewalk between another wall of buildings without gardens, while the heat of the first warm day rising from the pavement made her dizzy, and she asked, “Is it far from here to where you live, Uncle John?”

“No, right close by, only a few steps farther. We’re facing east now and down yonder half a dozen blocks is the river, the same as we crossed coming in saving a turn in it.

“Getting tired, ain’t yer? Well, it’s been a long day for us, and I’m mighty glad to be gettin’ to a homelike place myself.”

“Do you live right by the water, and is there any garden?” Bird continued, a feeling of nameless dread creeping over her as she saw nothing but buildings still closing in on all sides; even a blacksmith’s shop, from which a spirited pair of horses were coming with newly shod polished hoofs, seemed strange and out of place. Then there were more poor looking buildings, and a great stable with many men standing about and horses being constantly driven in and out to show the people who waited on the curbstone.

“By the river, and do I have a garden,” he echoed, laughing heartily. “Do you think I’m one o’ the millionnaires you read about in the papers, my girl? Do I keep an automobile and eat at the Waldorf-Astoria?” and then, seeing that Bird could not understand the comparison, he patted her good-naturedly on the shoulder.

As they passed the stable quite a number of the men spoke to her uncle, but instead of resenting it as she expected, he joked and laughed and seemed very glad to see them.

“It’s called the ‘Horse’s Head,’ and it’s out of there my job is,” he said to Bird, pointing over his shoulder at the stable, “for half the time I’m over the country from Kentucky to Canada picking up horses, and the other half of the time I’m helping to sell them out again, so I live as near by as may be for convenience.”

At this Bird’s heart sunk still farther, for in the prim New England town where she was born and bred a Puritan, a horse-dealer meant either some oversharp farmer who could outwit his neighbours or a roving fellow, half gypsy, half tramp, of very ill repute, who went about from town to town buying and selling animals who mostly had something the matter with them that had to be concealed by lying.

John O’More, striding on ahead, did not notice her expression, nor would he have understood if he had read her thoughts, for he was perfectly satisfied with himself and everything else in his surroundings, except the fact of little Billy’s lameness, and for a man of his class he was roughly honest and good-hearted.

“Here’s where!” he said at last, turning into the doorway of a tall building with one door and many windows. The square vestibule was dusty and had a ragged mat in the centre, while on one side were ten letter-boxes in a double row, with a bell knob and speaking-tube, as O’More explained, over each.

“Is this your house? It seems pretty big,” said Bird, wearily.

“One floor of it is,” he answered, laughing again; “it’s what’s called ‘a flat house,’ because each tenant lives flat on one floor, with conveniences at hand and no water to carry, which beats the country all out,” he added slyly. “See, I’ll but touch the bell and the door ’ll open itself.”

And he suited the action to the word, the door opening to reveal a narrow, dark hall with a flight of steep stairs covered with a shabby red carpet.

As Bird groped her way up, one, two, three flights, fairly gasping for breath in the close, hot place, she stumbled against groups of children who were sitting or playing school on the stairs.

“It’s lighter near the top; that’s why I choose it,” called her uncle, himself puffing and blowing as he climbed. “Here we are,” and he pushed open a door into an inner hall, and then another into a sort of sitting room where a tall, red-haired woman, clad in a collarless calico sack was sewing on a machine, while a pile of showy summer silks and muslins was lying on a chair beside her.

“Hello, Rosie, old woman; here’s Bird O’More, Terry’s orphan, that I brought back to stop a bit until we see where we’re at,” and he gave his wife a knowing wink as much as to say, “I know it’s sudden on you, but let her down as easy as you can.”

The “old woman,” who was perhaps forty, or at most forty-five, glanced up, and then, either not understanding or pretending not to, her face flushed as she jerked out, her eyes flashing, “Well, if you ain’t the aggravatment of men, John O’More, to bring company just when I’ve got Mame Callahan’s trou-sew to finish, and she gettin’ married next week, and Billy bein’ that cantankerous with cryin’ to go over to the park or down to see them fishes that my head’s ready to split,” she whimpered.

With all his will the man cowered before her tongue, and in spite of her own pain Bird’s womanly little heart pitied him. She saw the piled-up garments and knew at once that her aunt was a dressmaker, and her gentle breeding led her to say the one thing that could have averted an explosion.

“Aunt Rose, I could take Billy to see the fish or something if you’ll tell me the way.”

“That’s what I figured on when I brought her,” said O’More, greatly relieved, and quickly following the lead; “I knew you’d often spoke of gettin’ a girl from the Sisters, and that’s why I brought Bird instead of leavin’ her to slave fer strangers,” he stammered.

“Humph,” answered Mrs. O’More, at least somewhat pacified, “Billy’s fastened in his chair on the fire-escape; she’d better go there and sit with him a while until it’s supper-time. It’s too late for them to go traipsing around the streets to-night. Can you do anything useful?” she said, fixing her sharp, greenish eyes on Bird, who tried to gather her wits together as she answered, “I can make coffee, and toast, and little biscuits, and two kinds of cake, and—” then she hesitated and stopped, for she was going to say “do fractions, write, read French a little, and draw and paint,” but she felt as if these last items would count against her.

“Humph,” said her aunt again, this time more emphatically, “I guess you done well to bring her, Johnny. Turned thirteen, you say. Of course she’ll have to make a show of goin’ to school for another year on account of the law, but they can’t ask it before the fall term. I suppose she’ll have to sleep on this parlour lounge, though; there’s no other place.”

John O’More was now beaming as he led Bird through a couple of dark bedrooms toward the kitchen, where the mysterious “fire-escape” seemed to be located.

Going to an open back window he looked out, motioning Bird to follow. What she saw was a small platform, about three feet wide and ten feet long, surrounded by an iron railing; one end was heaped with a litter of boxes and broken flowerpots that partly hid a trap door from which a ladder led to the balcony belonging to the floor below. At the other end, fastened in a baby’s chair by the tray in front, sat a dear little fellow with great blue eyes and a curved, sensitive mouth, while tears were making rivers of mud on his pale cheeks as he sobbed softly to himself, “I want to go; oh, I want to get out and see the fishes.”

“So you shall,” said O’More, undoing the barrier and lifting the child on his strong arm while he tried awkwardly to wipe his face.

“Let me,” said Bird, wetting her handkerchief at the kitchen sink and gently bathing eyes, nose, and mouth carefully, as Mrs. Lane had bathed hers—only a day ago, was it? It seemed a lifetime.