Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

The Wonderful Christmas
in
Pumpkin Delight Lane

BY

SARAH J. PRICHARD

The Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor Company

1908

Copyright, 1908

by

Sarah J. Prichard

Contents.

The Wonderful Christmas in

Pumpkin Delight Lane.

Chapter I.

“Well, Frank, how do you get on with your hoeing?”

“Two acres! I don’t believe the land’s measured right, anyhow,” said the boy, “and—father, the circus is coming to-day.” Frank stood leaning on his hoe and looking up into his father’s face with that entreaty in his eyes which every loving parent knows so well.

“I am sorry, Frank, but you remember our agreement,” said his father very seriously.

“I didn’t know the lot was so awful long and wide. I’m tired of it, anyhow.”

“Very well, my boy. I will take the field back and call the men to finish hoeing the corn, if you say so; if you are willing to give it up now, when it has come to the hoeing, and that half done, count the cost, Frank; count it well.”

“I want to go to the circus,” said the boy, looking ruefully over the long rows of corn that yet remained to be hilled.

“Very well. I am off to the city now. If you conclude to give it up, you can tell John, and call him to finish the hoeing, while you go to the circus; but, Frank, take my advice, and think well before you decide.”

Mr. Hallock went across the field to the place where Neptune, Kate’s pony, waited to take him to the railway station.

The house at Hallock Point overlooked the sea and a large portion of the farm. From an upper window in the house Kate Hallock, Frank’s twin sister, watched her father as he left Neptune under the hedge and crossed the field to speak to her brother. Frank and Kate were thirteen years old, and the youngest children of the family. Kate was devoted to Frank. The minute Mr. Hallock turned to leave the cornfield, she started to learn the result of the interview. By the time she reached Frank she was quite out of breath, for she had made haste as fast as she could, and the dust of the furrows had covered her shoes, and the careless child had left her hat in the house.

“Frank!” she cried, “did he say you might go?”

“Look here, Kate Hallock, what is the use of frightening a year’s growth out of a fellow in that way? I’ve a great mind not to tell you a word he said,” exclaimed the lad, turning suddenly to meet the anxious, expectant face that he was obliged to look down upon to see: for Frank was much taller than Kate.

“O, Frank, I didn’t mean to start you so; but you know I can’t make a noise walking in this soft ground. I’ll borrow the dinner-horn next time I come out to see you, and toot it all the way. Please tell me what he said.”

“See here, Kate, couldn’t you do a kind turn for me? Why didn’t you fetch your hat?”

“Never mind my hat. I’ll do anything to help you, if you can only go to the circus.”

“Well, you count the rows I’ve got to do between here and the fence.”

Kate disappeared behind Frank’s back, and he hoed away as fast as ever he could, until she returned and said:

“Frank, there’s twenty-seven rows.”

“Never can do it in the world! There’s ninety-three hills in every single row.”

“Won’t it be nice to help you pick the corn! Papa won’t call that having help about it, I know. O I wish it was time for harvest! Won’t it be just nice to have piles and piles of great ears, all your own! You’ll be most rich, won’t you, Frank?” cried Kate, joyously clapping her hands before the imaginary heaps of corn.

“See here, Kate, if I keep the corn I’ve got to stay here and keep on hoeing it all day and half of to-morrow, at least.”

“Did papa say so?”

“He said I must keep my engagement with him, or give up the field and call John in to finish it. You know, Kate, it ought to have got hoed more’n a week ago, only I went fishing and everything.”

“Yes, I know, Frank, there’s always something happening to take us off, and to-morrow’s the picnic.”

“So ’tis, and there’ll be a jolly good time; but there’s picnics every little while, and it’s awful dull work hoeing corn. Just see these weeds—stubborn, horrid things!” and the boy struck at them with a force that cut the corn off.

“O, Frank, there’ll be a hole here now all Summer?” and Kate stooped and gathered up the broad leaves that had fallen.

“I didn’t mean to do it, Kate. See here, if you really mean to help me—there’s Hugo, the new hand; he don’t know anything about it, and you just tell him to fetch his hoe up this way.”

“O, Frank, you don’t mean that!” with a throb in her throat that Frank tried to forget that he had heard. “Just think how mean that would be, when you promised to do every bit of the work your own self. Don’t cheat, Frank, don’t! I did once, and I feel awfully shrivelled up every time I think of it; and I always do think of it when it thunders or the wind blows hard.”

“You, Kate? Tell me what you cheated about.”

“No, Frank,” quite solemnly; “it wasn’t you that I deceived.”

“Of course not—your own brother. If you had, I should have been sure to find you out. So you won’t tell Hugo to come here?”

“Yes, I’ll call Hugo, if you ask me to, when I get my bonnet on. The sun burns—my head aches now; but, Frank, you won’t let Hugo hoe the corn,” she said beseechingly.

“No, I guess you needn’t send him. Hark! what’s that music? O, it’s the circus coming up the road! Let’s run and see the big chariot and the cages go by. Here, take my hat!” he shouted, tossing his straw hat back, and rushing through the corn in the direction of the highway.

Kate put the hat on and followed after. A high stone wall enclosed that portion of Hallock Point. Beyond the wall there was a row of old, wind-twisted, gnarled, wild-cherry trees. When Kate came to the wall, the music was quite near. She could see the nodding plumes on “something or other—she didn’t know what”; but over the wall she could not climb. She shouted to Frank to come and help her—for the wall was higher than her head; and Frank called back to her that he was up in the cherry tree, and ’twas just splendid. “There are three elephants and camels, and, O, Kate, there are some real live Indians!”

For one brief second Kate was glad that the wall was between her and the real live Indians; but the music came near and nearer, and the huge chariot—“such as no kings of the East ever dreamed of riding in,” Frank afterward told her—rolled along, bearing aloft gaily-dressed men and women. Kate could see them, and she saw the heads and backs of the elephants and the camels, and the tops of many cages, and at the very last, a forlorn looking boy’s face—just a glimpse of it, as she gave a jump high up to catch sight of anything more that might be coming. The boy was seated on a pony, but that Kate could not see.

“Are they all gone, Frank?” she called.

“Yes, I see the red of the big elephant’s blanket between the trees, and that’s all.”

“Come then!”

“Just give me my hat—you sit down and wait; I’ll be back in no time at all; I’m going to run across lots, up to the mound, to see it come down on the other side.”

“Frank, please let me see it with you. Help me over the wall. I can run as fast as you can when I once get over.”

“It’ll be gone before I can get there, and you can see it all this afternoon. Toss over my hat.”

It was well shaded where Frank stood, under the cherry trees, but on the other side the sun poured down its heat on poor Kate’s head, as she took off the straw hat and threw it over to Frank.

It was too warm to wait there, and Frank’s cornfield lay between the wall and any place that was shaded. In crossing the lot Kate came upon the small-sized hoe that her brother had thrown down in his flight. She picked it up, and putting the handle into the soft earth, left it standing there, that her brother might easily find his place again. Then she did her very best to twist her apron around her head, and went home. She did not know how long she had been gone. There was Neptune waiting at the carriage gate to carry her to school, and in the doorway stood her mother, saying as the girl drew near,

“Why, Kate, where have you been?—without a hat, too, in this sun.”

“O, mamma!” cried the child, “if you only knew how much poor Frank wants to go to the circus this afternoon; I’ve been up by the wall looking at the procession go by.”

“Hush, Kate; your father is only just. Frank wanted to earn money for himself like other boys, and do you think if he were working for any farmer that that farmer would let his corn spoil, as Frank is letting his, running off day after day? No. If he goes away again until the last hill is hoed, your father will take it away from him.”

Poor Kate glanced back toward the field. She knew just where the hoe stood, gleaming in the sunshine, a witness that her brother was at that very moment neglecting his work. She hastened to her own room, washed her burning face, and then went to school in the village.

Frank was on the mound in time to see the “great show” go past. On the pony in the rear, looking neither at the swaying figures in the chariot, nor at the long line of cages that followed after, was the boy with the sadness in his eyes. A bobolink, thoughtless fellow, struck up a song of gladness as he wavered through the air from tree to tree. Frank, listening to the band of music, did not hear the delight of the bird, but the boy on the pony did. He wiped his eyes with his jacket sleeve two or three times, and wiped them yet again. Frank had drawn close to the roadside. He was near enough to the lad to speak to him.

“Do you belong to the circus?” he ventured to ask.

“Yes,” was the reply.

“What do you do?”

“Wash the dishes, when I don’t ride this pony.”

“Circus dishes!” exclaimed Frank, “that’s funny.” And the desire to learn something more led him to walk along. He could easily keep step with the progress of the chariot and elephants.

Presently he asked, “Do you like it?”

“I’ve nothing else to do,” was the reply.

“What’s your name? Mine is Frank Hallock, and I live in the house up yonder,” pointing, with a feeling very like pride, to the distant gables and chimneys that represented his home.

“My name’s Harry Cornwall,” replied the boy, glancing toward the place Frank had pointed out.

“Where’s the circus going to be?”

“We’ve got most there,” said the boy, “and I’m glad of it, for I want my breakfast.”

“No breakfast yet? Why it must be nine o’clock. Come home with me and I’ll give you some right off.”

“O, I can’t. I told you I had the dishes to wash, and there’ll be an awful hurry to-day, for it rained in the night, and we’re late.”

“I wish I could see you do it.”

“Nothing’s easier, if you come on and follow me. The first tent that goes up will be for the breakfast.”

“It will be most as good as the circus, its own self,” thought Frank, and forgetting Kate, his hoe, and his corn, he followed on, until the long procession came to the ground where the great display of animals and human dexterity was to be made.

“Isn’t it jolly?” he cried, as he watched the hurried movements of the men pitching the great tent and the side tents, rolling the cages to their appointed places, picketing the elephants and the camels, and leading off the tired horses to be fed.

“Maybe it looks so, youngster, but it’s the hardest work I ever tried. I’d rather hoe corn all day,” responded a busy man.

“Dear me! I wonder if he knows,” thought Frank, and in just one moment more he meant to hurry back to his duty, but there was the immense coffee-pot boiling away on the stove, and it looked so funny, the breakfast that was being prepared under the tent, and he had never seen the wild beasts fed before; he was very curious to learn what the camels and the kangaroos had to eat, and “O, ’twas just splendid,” Frank thought—“a great deal better than going to a real circus, this getting ready for one.” Before the camels had taken in all the water they wanted, there was the call to breakfast, and there were the wild Indians, snatching off their long jute hair, throwing aside their painted faces, and coming out of beaded blankets and tinselled bands, nothing but tawny white men after all, and sitting down to breakfast in the tent. How hungry they were! “They eat like savages, anyway,” whispered Frank to Harry Cornwall, “use their knives for forks, and, dear me, they are not a bit polite.”

“They don’t know any better,” responded Harry. “I don’t believe they—some of them—ever saw a nice table like you have at home.”

“Did you?” questioned Frank.

“My mother was a lady,” said the boy, again wiping his eyes with his jacket sleeve.

“Dear me! Take my handkerchief,” said Frank, drawing one from his pocket, but instantly concealing it, for he had forgotten that he had wiped his hands with it when running from the cornfield.

Harry laughed, and thanked him, and then ran to refill the coffee-bowls about the table. By the time he had filled the last one and returned to the stove just outside the tent, the men began to leave the table.

“Now, if you want to see the circus dishes, come on,” called Harry, “and if you’ll help wipe, then we’ll have a chance to see Bengalee.”

“What’s Bengalee?” asked Frank—“another sham Indian?”

“No, indeed. It’s real blood this time; true Indian, too. The tiger is getting rampacious, and they’re going to fix him.”

While Harry gave the information, he was gathering together knives, forks, spoons, bowls, and plates, as handy as any woman—and, in his eagerness to see the tiger, Frank was gathering up dishes before he knew what he was about.

“That’s clever in you,” said Harry. “If I had somebody to like around here, ’twouldn’t seem so bad.”

“I should like it first-rate—a great deal better than staying at home and hoeing corn,” thought Frank, and presently, while Harry plunged the dishes into hot water, Frank found himself telling the story of the cornfield that his father had given him. Before the last dish was wiped, Harry had told Frank how he came to belong to the circus. In listening to Harry’s account of his escape from the great fire that swept over Michigan a few years ago, both children forgot all about the tiger in his cage, and when Harry came, in his story, to the place where he lost all his family, he wiped his eyes with the dishcloth many times before he could go on to the place where he had found the circus encamped, and somebody to give him food and clothing.

“Heigh ho!” exclaimed Frank, “what a hero you are! I wish my Kate could see you. Nothing ever happens to me. It’s go to bed every night in the same bed, and get up every morning in the same room, and see just the same things and folks over and over again. Stupid, ain’t it?”

“I’d go and go, and walk and climb and run, years and years, to see the same old faces and have the same old home again!” said Harry, choking and sobbing to a degree that quite upset Frank Hallock.

“You just come home with me, then, and see my father and mother,” said Frank, not knowing how to suggest comfort in any other form.

“They wouldn’t let me,” sobbed Harry, quite broken down by a touch of sympathy. “Nice folks don’t like circus folks at all; you know they don’t.”

“I don’t see why, when ministers’ children and deacons’ children, and everybody’s boys and girls, go to the circus,” replied Frank; and then feeling that he had not touched the heart of the trouble, he plunged into it by saying, “Look here, you Harry Cornwall, you are not circus folks at all; you are only a boy out of the Michigan fires. Why, my mother sent off lots of clothes to Grand Haven and Port Huron, and other places out there; and my sister Kate tucked into one of the boxes her new gold necklace that Grandma Thornton had just sent her for her birthday, without anybody’s finding it out until the box had been gone pretty nigh a month. Come home with me, I say; everybody will be glad to see you.”

“O, I can’t,” ejaculated Harry, having conquered his sobs during the time of Frank’s long speech; “I’ve got to ride Flurry this afternoon and evening. Flurry is the pony I was on this morning, and in the night, some time, we break up and travel on, maybe for half the night. Hark! they are taming the tiger now. Hear the poor fellow mew!”

When Frank heard the roar of poor “Bengalee” in his cage, he was so terrified that he began to run as fast as he could, and he did not stop to look around until he reached the top of the hill, well nigh a quarter of a mile from the white tents.

His heart was beating so fast that he could scarcely count the strokes of the bell in the church tower. It was striking for twelve of the clock. A feeling of dismay came upon the lad as he counted out the number of twelve. He had been away from his duty three hours. In one hour dinner would be ready. Kate would be home from school. Poor Kate! Frank’s face grew warm and warmer with a wholesome shame under the vivid recollection of the manner in which, and the place where, he had left her to wait in the burning sun for his return.

As he went onward in the direction of his home, he looked frequently at the windows, half expecting to see his mother looking out. But no; she was occupied within doors, and not one of the household knew that Frank had neglected his duty.

“I don’t care, anyway,” he thought, and he went on thinking after this fashion. “It isn’t at all the kind of weather to be cooped up hoeing corn. I’d rather earn money some easier way. It’s jolly to be a circusboy, I know. I wonder why Harry Cornwall doesn’t like it.”

Nevertheless, Frank took his hoe from the place where Kate had left it for him, and fell to work, resolved to hoe “like anything” until it should be time for dinner.

Chapter II.

Harry Cornwall ran out from the tent to watch the flight of Frank Hallock, who ran, frightened by the tiger, and as the boy disappeared from sight over the hilltop, Harry determined to try and find time enough that very evening to run up to the big house and tell all he knew about the necklace that somebody had tucked into the pocket of the waistcoat that fell to Jack Flibbit after the great fire. Harry could not persuade himself that two little girls in the land had put two necklaces, with the same mark, into pockets to go “Out West.” Harry’s name was called in a loud tone, and he ran to obey the call at about the same moment that Frank Hallock reached the cornfield and picked up his hoe.

Frank counted the hills and the rows, and scarcely looked up until the sound of the one o’clock train, on the New Haven Railroad, passing through the town, told to him how short the hour had been.

Then Neptune came home. Frank knew that Kate was on the carriage-road that ran past the field, but he would not look up, not even when he heard her cheery call to him; so Neptune and Kate went on their way, and presently the welcome sound of the dinner-horn was heard.

Frank did not throw down his hoe, but fell to work harder than ever. In five minutes’ time the horn was sounded again, and on looking up, Frank beheld Kate standing on the veranda—she was waving her hat to attract his attention. He was inclined to make a martyr of himself just then, so he waved his straw hat in return, and immediately resolved to “hoe away like a major.”

In fifteen minutes more Kate was making her way for the second time that day through Frank’s cornfield. As she drew near, she called out, “Frank! Frank! why in the world don’t you come to dinner? There is a gentleman at table who came to see papa on business, and I ran away after the soup—I couldn’t eat my dinner one bit, without you.”

“You’ll have to, I reckon,” returned Frank; “a poor fellow, like me, who has to hoe corn all day, can’t stop to eat.”

“O, Frank Hallock! for shame!” cried Kate, putting down her indignant foot without being able to make noise enough about it to disturb an earthworm.

“It’s true,” responded Frank, pitching into the next hill with all his might.

“It is not true,” cried Kate; “and if just running off to look at the circus pass by makes you say such things, I am glad you can’t go to see it.”

“Of course you are. I knew you was, the whole time! It’s just like a girl. Girls always have the best times, and its pretty easy work for them. Nobody ever sends you off on errands in the sun and the cold and storms, and no one ever tells you not to sit on the nice chairs and things.”

“Now, Frank!” began Kate, who was not at all inclined to argue with him, “if you will not come in and get your dinner, you may go without it. I must go.”

Frank did not look up from his work, and Kate turned away and left him, feeling that he deserved to go without his dinner. Before she reached the house she began to feel very sorry for him, and by the time dinner was over she was ready to cry, with mingled pity and vexation.

“Poor fellow! he must be so hungry,” she thought, “and he has been hard at work in the hot sun so long. I’ll just go and carry him some dinner.”

Taking her dinner-basket she packed it quite full, and for the third time that day Kate trudged away to that absent brother of hers in the cornfield.

“Can’t stop to eat!” called Frank the instant he perceived what Kate carried. “I’ve got to work right on, night and day, till this is done.”

“O, Frank! do put that hoe down and eat this dinner! See how nice it is! Salmon, strawberries, and things! You never saw such nice strawberries in your life, I know. I saved half of mine for you, I knew you liked them so much.”

Holding forth the luscious berries, Kate pleaded with Frank thus:

“Now, Frank, please, won’t you eat them? Just the berries, if nothing more.”

“I can’t, Kate; ’twould take time.”

“You provoking fellow! I’ve a great mind to eat them myself.”

“Do! I know you want them.”

Kate’s eyes filled with tears. She stood silently during the time that Frank hoed four hills of corn. Then putting the basket down, and taking the dish of berries with its spoon, she followed down the furrow until she came to Frank.

“See!” she said, hiding her dim eyes behind an eager little laugh, “you hoe away, and I will feed you—a spoonful of berries at every hill. Take one now,” holding up her short white arm so that the spoon just touched his dusty lips. Frank caught back his face from contact with the berries. He was determined to be a martyr, and that Kate should have her pleasure marred by pity for him; and yet Frank was very hungry. He wanted his dinner as only a healthy, hungry boy can want it.

“Frank, won’t you eat these just to please me?” she said, finally.

“I can’t, Kate. You don’t appreciate a fellow’s situation, or you wouldn’t ask me.”

“I s’pose,” ejaculated Kate, “you appreciate mine in bringing you your dinner.”

“I do, Kate.”

“Then eat it.”

“No,” rather faintly, as he caught sight of the tempting salmon, for Kate had taken up the basket.

“Good-bye, then. I’m going.”

“Good-bye. I hope you’ll have a good time at the circus.”

“I sha’n’t, I know; thinking of you here will make me very happy, won’t it?”

“It ought to.”

Kate stood irresolute for a moment, then she went away, leaving Frank’s dinner on the ground. He saw her put the basket down and poise the dish of berries on its top. He kept along the row he was hoeing until he reached the stone wall; then, instead of following it back, his hungry desire for the contents of the basket overcame his desire for martyrdom, and he went back, hoe in hand, to the place where Kate had left it, but no basket could he find.

It was gone.

Kate, growing more and more indignant at her brother’s ingratitude, as she went on her way toward the house, had yielded to the sudden temptation to return and pick it up. Frank had not looked around once, and thus had not seen Kate, nor heard her exclaim as she gathered it in her hands, “The bad, naughty boy shall not have it at all.” And the “bad, naughty boy” did not get it at all.

As Kate, warm and panting from the haste she had made, reached the end of the field and was going by a bit of hedge, she saw a man sitting on the ground.

He looked to Kate very hungry. At all events she knew he must be very tired, for he was leaning his head against a tree trunk and was fanning himself with a straw hat. His eyes were closed, and as Kate moved along without making much noise, he did not hear a sound until she spoke to him.

“What is the matter with you? Are you sick?” she questioned. She might quite as well have asked him if he was the man in the moon, for he did not comprehend one word of English. He reached forth his hands for the food she carried, doubtless thinking that Kate was the good angel who had been sent in answer to his great need.

The man had been very ill in a hospital at New Haven. As soon as he could walk a little, he had made his escape, without having strength enough to reach the place where he wished to be. Having seen Mr. Hallock’s house, he hoped to gain it before sitting down to rest, but had not been able to get there.

He devoured Frank’s dinner with such eagerness that Kate began to wonder whether or not he would leave the fork and spoon. She felt quite happy when at last he returned them to the basket, and asked, by signs, if he should carry it to the house for her. She shook her head, and took it from him. After going on a few steps, she turned to look at the man, and her kind heart-of-pity was touched by his sorrow, although she knew nothing of his sad story. Remembering that she had the money in her pocket that her father had given to her that she might go to the circus, she suddenly resolved that she would give it to him, and stay home. “I should not enjoy anything, thinking of poor Frank, anyway,” she thought.

The man had apparently fallen asleep when Kate returned. Her feet made no sound on the turf as she stole back to the spot. His head was against the tree at whose foot he sat; his hat lay upon the ground. Kate dropped the bit of paper currency into it, and went noiselessly away.

Dear Kate Hallock never knew what she did that day. The fifty cents that she gave enabled the poor fellow to be in time to find his sister, who, alone in a land that was new and strange to her, had lost her brother. No wonder that he had made his escape from the hospital, and was trying to get back to the place where he had left her. He was just in time: for she was about to start with a band of strangers for the “Great West,” not knowing what else to do; and she had with her all the money that the brother possessed.

It is so sweet to drop little acts of kindness as we pass along our daily round. They may fall seemingly into the ground, but God knows that not one of them ever fails to do its own bright work somewhere for some one.

Kate Hallock went home with the empty basket, wondering what she should do with herself all the June afternoon. She thought that she would go past the field where Frank was at work and on down the lane leading to the sea. It would be nice and cool down there, and maybe she could dig some clams with her own hands, just enough for Frank’s supper. Kate was quite certain that he would be hungry, so hungry that he would have to eat, by tea time.

When she went to find her mother, that lady was engaged in conversation with the strange gentleman. Kate overheard him say, “You must be extremely sorry to part with this place,” and she did not hear her mother’s reply.

“Part with this place?” thought Kate. “How funny that sounded! What did he mean, I wonder?”

But Kate soon forgot all about it, for the Glenns came for her to go to the circus with them. There were Mr. Glenn, Florence, Will, and Stacey. In vain Kate pleaded that she had used her money for something else. She was carried off in spite of herself, and so lost her pleasant time down by the sea. She went with tears close to her eyes and many a dim look back at the figure of her brother, toiling away in the field.

Mrs. Hallock also watched her boy with many misgivings. She knew the history of Kate’s endeavor, and quite approved of the disposition she had made of the contents of the basket.

Four of the clock came. The strange gentleman had taken his departure for that day. Frank had borne his martyrdom long enough. He could endure the terrible gnawing in his stomach no longer; so he dropped his hoe, and made his way to the house and the kitchen, and asked the cook for “something to eat.” “I’ll have it right here on your table,” he said; “some bread and milk, if you’ve nothing more.”

Frank’s manner and whole appearance was so wonderfully subdued, that the cook was impressed by it to bring forth her best stores for the tired boy.

“What’s the matter, Master Frank? What ails you, that you can’t eat a single morsel?” she cried: for Frank sat before the little dinner, and did not touch it.

“I don’t know,” said Frank; “I—I—can’t half see it!” and rising up, poor Frank tried to get from the kitchen to his mother.

The cook followed him, calling out “Mrs. Hallock! Mrs. Hallock! please make haste! It’s Frank!”

Mrs. Hallock met the boy in the hall. He staggered up to her, crying out “I’m so sick! so sick! My head! my head!”

Mrs. Hallock sat beside Frank, bathing his head, and trying her utmost to help him bear the pain and deadly feeling “a sick-headache” brings with it.

During the performance at the circus, the lad, Harry Cornwall, in attempting a difficult feat in riding, fell from his pony.

The sad-faced boy had been recognized by Kate Hallock. The instant he appeared, Kate was interested. She watched each movement he made, and when she saw him fall, she covered her face and uttered a cry of horror. The lad was gathered up by two men. They disappeared with him from the scene, and the performance went on.

After that, Kate could not bear to stay one moment longer. She was wondering where they had carried the hurt boy, and what they were doing for him, and whether or not he had a father, or a brother, there to take thought for him.

This new trouble, added to the vision of Frank at work in the field without any dinner, quite overcame Kate. She asked to go home so earnestly, that Mr. Glenn accompanied her outside of the tent, and then Kate went home alone.

“Hush-sh-sh-sh!” was the first whispered sound that she heard at the entrance door of her home.

“Master Frank’s took awful sick!” said Bridget, “and your mother’s with him, upstairs.”

Kate flew up the stairway, so sorry that she had run back and picked up the basket. She stole into the room, and for a moment could not see any one within it, it had been so carefully darkened.

“Quiet, Kate!” said Mrs. Hallock. “Frank has been working in the sun so long without eating anything, that he has an attack of sick-headache, but he is getting better now.”

“Kate, won’t you fetch a fellow a crust of bread?” asked Frank, throwing the napkin from his forehead.

“Of course I will, Frank. Don’t you want a piece of toast?”

“No! Bring me what I want—a crust—the brownest one you can find.”

Away ran Kate to fulfil his wish, and presently, having returned with it and watched its disappearance from sight, she said: “Something awful happened at the circus this afternoon.”

“What? Did the tiger mew?”

Kate laughed.

“You ridiculous fellow,” she cried. “A boy fell from the pony he was riding, and I guess he was awfully hurt, too, for some men sprang in and carried him off, and—”

“What boy, pray?” asked Frank, taking his head from the pillow and leaning it on his hand.

“How do I know?” cried Kate; “but don’t you remember the little fellow who was clear behind everything this morning?”

“It wasn’t him, I hope, Kate,” with a catch in his breath that made Mrs. Hallock tell him to “lie down and keep still.”

“Yes it was, that very boy.”

“Mother,” spoke up Frank, “that poor fellow hasn’t a friend left in the world. Everybody belonging to him was burned up in the big fire in Michigan, you know. The circus, this circus, was going about through the state, and this boy was trying to get somewhere where he could live, when he found it, and has been going about with it ever since.”

“How do you know, Frank?”

Frank had counted the cost before he had spoken. He knew just what it involved to tell the whole truth, but he came out with it bravely, telling the story of the morning spent on the circus grounds, and what he had there learned from Harry Cornwall about himself. “Mother,” he said at the end of his statement, “they take up their tents and go away in the night. Won’t you please send Richard to find out if he is much hurt?”

“It’s just good and sweet and beautiful and everything in you, dear Frank,” said Kate, the instant her mother had gone to send Richard according to the boy’s request, adding, “I’ll forgive you everything naughty you may do all summer, for this, and I’ll love you always, dearly, Frank!”

“Of course you will, Kate. You couldn’t help it, if you tried!”

“Frank, you’ll have to give up the corn now,” said Kate.

“I know it. What of it?”

“Aren’t you awful sorry?”

“Maybe I am.”

“But you will, you know. Father said it,” added Kate.

“You needn’t keep saying it over to a fellow, to make it worse.”

“I won’t; but I thought you thought papa would let you have it yet.”

“No such thing. I know better! I wouldn’t if I were in his place. I’d just stick to what I said and I wouldn’t budge an inch,” said Frank.

Then Mrs. Hallock entered the room.

“Did you send him, mother?” questioned Kate, eagerly.

“Yes, and I sent the carriage, too.”

Both children asked what for. Kate with eager, glistening eyes, and Frank, because he didn’t know what else to say.

“I gave Richard orders to fetch him home.”

Kate clapped her hands softly, kissed her mother half a dozen times, and then ran upstairs to the room adjoining Frank’s own, to see with her own eyes that Bridget made it properly ready for the coming boy.

Frank and Kate were greatly disappointed when Richard came back with the carriage. The doctor would not permit Harry Cornwall to be moved.

The next morning Frank was up “bright and early,” and for two hours before it was time for breakfast he worked away with right good will in the field, hoeing corn.

“Poor fellow!” said Mrs. Hallock, looking out from her dressing-room upon the boy, “I’m afraid Frank thinks that if he works very hard, and finishes the work this week, that you will relent and let him have the corn.”

“No,” said Mr. Hallock; “he can’t think that. He knows better. But it is hard to take away all that he has done; for Frank has worked well.”

“The best thing that he has done is the telling the truth,” said Frank’s mother, with glistening eyes. “It would have been very easy for Frank to have kept still, and then we need not have known where he spent the morning. I think he ought to know how thankful we feel for his manliness. We must prove it to him in some way.”

Soon after the above conversation, the family met in the breakfast-room. Frank entered bright and glowing, and with a face as happy as though he owned a hundred acres of growing corn.

“Good morning, Frank. How is my corn this morning? You know it is mine now,” said Mr. Hallock.

“Yes sir,” said Frank.

“O, papa, papa!” entreated Kate, “when Frank has been so good and everything!”

“O, you beseeching puss!” said her father, “you wish me to give it to you, I dare say.”

“Yes, sir—do; and I’ll give it to Frank right off.”

“Thank you; but Frank would not take it,” said the lad. “Papa’s bargain was square and fair, and I’m bound to stand by it.”

“What made you go and hoe, then, before breakfast?” cried Kate, looking blissfully proud of her bright-faced brother.

“Because I thought I would,” responded Frank.

“Frank,” spoke up Mr. Hallock, “what would you do, were you in my place, with that cornfield?”

“Me? I? O, I would give it to the hurt circusboy, Harry Cornwall.”

“It is Harry Cornwall’s,” said Mr. Hallock.

After breakfast something happened.

Chapter III.

The house to which Harry Cornwall was carried after he had been thrown from his pony was in Pumpkin Delight Lane. You will perhaps think that this name is not a “real true” name of a “real true” lane, but it is, and it will lead you through many a wild, solitary place, past farm lots and salt meadows, down at last to Peconick Point; but Grandma Dobson lived at the upper end of it, nearly to the village. Her house was one of the oldest in the town. It was the loveliest brown in color, because no man’s paint had touched it. The modern improvements had not marched down Pumpkin Delight Lane, and I am sorely afraid that, had they, dear Grandma Dobson would have shut her door against them.

Grandma Dobson was grandma to the children thereabout, although she had no grandchildren of her own. Long years ago, thirty—nearly forty—she was a bright young maiden, and Charlie Dobson was a brave sailor lad. He was going on a long voyage, and he was going as ship’s master for the first time. His ship was ready to sail. So, one day they were married, and the young captain went to sea without his bride, because he did not wish to risk her life in the Snow. Snow was the name of his ship. The next voyage he was to have a new ship, and then her home should be on it. She went down to the harbor to bid him farewell. The Snow lifted her sails and sailed away—no man knew whither, and no man knoweth to-day, for the ship never was heard from any more.

The little wife lived in the old farm home, waiting, waiting—many, many years. There was one window, high up in the garret, close to the roof, where she used to sit and sew from morning until night, and wear her poor eyes dim with looking out, past a little island that lay just outside, for the Snow to come sailing into the bay. She was a dressmaker. If the dresses she made, sitting up there, could tell the story of the hopes and fears that went out and in with the stitches and the tides, how sweet, and sad, and hopeless, the history.

When the men, looking out for the nearest house to take Harry Cornwall into, after his fall from the pony, espied Grandma Dobson’s habitation, that dear old soul was at that window looking out over the bar, past the island, away across the miles of sea, thinking it just possible—at least she would look once more, it could do no harm, for the Snow.

She saw the men bearing a burden. Some one was drowned, perhaps. She went down to see, and met them at the door.

“Dear me! what’s happened?” she asked.

“A boy is hurt. May we bring him in?”

“The poor lad! Yes, indeed. Lay him right here! He isn’t dead, is he?”

She opened the window to let in the breeze coming up from the sea; and they laid Harry down, sawdust and all, on Grandma Dobson’s white coverlet.

Then the doctor came hurrying down the lane, and left his horse standing in front of the house. Spry was the name of the animal, in whom the doctor had full confidence. Now Spry had, when the May clover was at its sweetest, carried the doctor along the shore and out across the bar to the little island, where the clover is sweeter than any that grows on the old main land. Spry fully appreciated the clover at the time, and remembering it still, off he started for the island.

The tide was rising fast. The bar was almost covered, but Spry got upon it safely and trotted along the stony way, not minding in the least the spray that met about his feet. He gained Cloverland Paradise at last, and when his master, having dressed Harry’s wounds and properly disposed of his broken arm, went out to find him, Spry was wandering in fields of sweetness, and the poor puzzled doctor walked home.

Great was the consternation on the island to find the doctor’s horse feeding there and without his master, and great was the fear lest the doctor had been drowned. Spry had to pay for his clover by crossing the bar at the first moment the tide permitted. The water poured into the doctor’s carriage, and the man who drove kept his eyes roving about on every side, to find some trace of the missing man. It was nearly dark when he, urging Spry on to his highest speed, went rushing villageward. As he came to the principal street, the overhanging elms, whose branches met, made it seem quite dark.

At first the man thought he would stop and inquire if the doctor had reached home, but finally deciding to go at once to the doctor’s house, he gave Spry a touch with the whip, which sent the beast on faster than ever.

Just as he gave the stroke he was passing a cornerstore, before which a group of loungers was standing.

In the darkness every one of them recognized the doctor’s horse, although not one of them recognized the man who drove.

“There goes the doctor’s horse, this minute,” cried one.

“The rascal thinks he’ll get off safe,” cried another, while all together they set up such a shout and cry, that instantly the street seemed to resound with cries of “Stop him! Stop him! He’s running off with the doctor’s horse. Stop, thief!”

While the crowd ran on, pursuing as fast as it could, two men jumped into a wagon and started on another road. They intended to head the escaping thief and turn him back, to effect which, they spared not the horse they drove, but at the end of a mile and a half, turned triumphantly into the New Haven turnpike, saying “Now we have him! Spry hasn’t speed enough to have passed this point. We’ll meet him presently. He’s one of them good-for-nothing circus fellows, without any doubt.”

To their intense disgust and astonishment Spry’s white face did not appear on the road, nor did they see it until they reached the doctor’s house, whither they went to inform him that the horse-thief had escaped. They were met as they drove up with shouts of laughter from the group assembled in the doctor’s yard. Looking about in the darkness for the cause, Spry was discerned quietly standing at his accustomed post, while his master, who had had an unusual amount of walking to do that afternoon, was waiting to get his tea, and for the moon to rise before taking the man back to the island.

The next morning Mrs. Hallock’s carriage and the doctor’s gig met at the brown house in Pumpkin Delight Lane.

“I am so glad to meet you,” said Mrs. Hallock to the doctor, who was in the act of tying Spry to a fence-post, not venturing to trust him within smelling distance of the clover across the sea.

“Yes,” said the doctor, in his straightforward, brusque way, “you are just the right person in the right place, but I think these little folks had better stay in the carriage and take a turn down on the sands, while you come in.”

Frank and Kate were already on the ground, in their eagerness to see Harry Cornwall.

“O doctor, please won’t you let him come to our house?” pleaded Kate.

“You’ll have chance enough, my child, to see the poor fellow. All in good time. Run away now, both of you.”

Mrs. Hallock bade Hugo drive on, and return in half an hour.

“Dear me!” sighed Kate. “It’s too bad we happened to meet that provoking old doctor, isn’t it? I’m just crazy to see that boy.”

“I’ll take a run over by myself, by-and-by,” said Frank, quite loftily. “I dare say there will be something to fetch over after mamma sees him.”

“You’ll let me come, too, Frank?” asked Kate beseechingly, with her eyes following the darkness and light of a bobolink’s twinkling across the green lane.

“No, Kate; it isn’t just the thing”—with an air of superiority quite exasperating to his sister.

“Wasn’t it the thing, as you say, when you wanted a crust last night? You thought so when you asked me to fetch it, didn’t you?”

“O—well. My! Wasn’t that a good dash?” as a red-winged blackbird shook its dazzle on the blue air; and then Frank did not seem to think it worth while to return to the subject, but began to talk quite fast. “My! Kate,” he ran on, “how I wish you were a boy—twin-brother to me! I’ll tell you what we’d do.”

“What?” came eagerly from Kate, who was so anxious to do whatever her brother wished, that she had already secretly resolved to join him in his enterprise, even though only a girl.

“We’d run away and go to sea.”

“O!” exclaimed Kate, quite overcome by surprise.

“Well, what do you think about it?”—after a minute.

“It would be just splendid!” said Kate. “Only boys and girls don’t do such things now; they used to, you know, when they didn’t know any better.” Kate was thinking just then of the “Children’s Crusade” and its sad disasters.

“Of course, not girls,” said Frank; “but I dare say it’s just as jolly for boys as ever—jollier, maybe, ’cause if one don’t like it, why there’s any number of ships coming back about every day.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t let you sail in them though, Frank; and that would be bad—awful bad! If I was with you now, ’twould be different. They’d let me sail with them, ’cause I am a girl, and they’d take you along to take care of me. Don’t you see?”

“Come, now, Kate, don’t be foolish. You didn’t suppose I’d let you run away with me, did you?”

“I might go if you didn’t let me, Mr. Frank. Girls do lots of things now that they didn’t use to do. Mamma says so; and she’s glad I’m going to have more chances at something or other—I forget what—than she had when she was little.”

“At grammar, perhaps, Kate. Grammar is good for little girls—keeps them out of mischief.”

“There, now!” cried Kate, making a mischievous dash at Frank’s ear, and missing it. She hit his straw hat with a force that sent it careering, helped on by the strong sea-breeze, over the wet sands, along which they were driving. “See how your hat likes going to sea all alone, sir, before you start,” laughed Kate; while Frank sprang down, and went in hot pursuit of his hat.

Kate clapped her hands, and shouted encouraging words to Frank as he made frantic endeavors to catch it. The hat seemed like a hunted thing, driven on from point to point, until reaching a creek running down from the salt meadows, it rolled airily into it, and went sailing off slowly toward the sea.

“Stop it! stop it!” shouted Frank to Hugo, who drove ahead of it, and stopped the carriage midway in the stream; while Kate, getting down on the carriage steps, fished it out with the handle of her parasol, thereby saving Frank from getting his feet wet.

“Saved by a girl!” laughed Kate, when they had driven to land and Frank was again by her side.

“Set adrift by a girl!” exclaimed Frank, who was really in a bad humor at having his hat wet and dripping, so that he could not put it upon his head.

“Hang it up to dry,” suggested Kate, offering the point of her parasol to hoist it on in the sun.

Frank tied it on, and telling Hugo not to hurry, so that it might have a chance to be wearable by the time they reached the brown house, they turned toward it.

The doctor was already at the gate untying Spry when they reached it.

“Now, my little folks,” said he, “is your chance to see the poor fellow. He’s a plucky lad, and will make a glorious pull through life, I know.”

“Thank you,” said Frank, although he could not have told what he was thanking the doctor for, while Kate, who had made up her mind that Harry was a kind of hero—what kind she did not know—could have kissed the old doctor, for just thinking well of the lad.

“There! there! It’s all over now, and you’ll have a nice long rest,” Grandma Dobson was saying, while she softly patted and petted Harry; and there, right in the room, having entered like two healthy spirits, stood Kate and Frank.

Harry did not see them, for his eyes were covered by a bandage.

Frank went close to him, saying “I’m the boy who helped you wash dishes, and, I say, it’s too bad you fell and got hurt. Here’s my sister Kate come to see you, too.”

“I’m very sorry I can’t see her,” said Harry. “My head will be all right in a little while. I’m not much hurt. I felt ashamed to make a noise when the doctor touched my arm. If you could have seen the poor folks in the fire, and how brave they were—one woman carrying her baby two miles with her hands burned awfully in trying to get it out of the house, you wouldn’t feel so sorry for me.”

“I should, Harry,” spoke up Kate, “and I’m Kate Hallock. I saw you over the stone wall when you were riding into town on that pony.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t better worth seeing,” said Harry, “and I’m much obliged to you for coming here to-day.”

“I wanted to come,” said Kate.

“O!” exclaimed Harry, wondering why, but not venturing to ask the question.

Mrs. Dobson, mistaking Harry’s exclamation for one of pain or weariness, adroitly asked Kate and Frank if they would go out into the field beyond the garden and help their mother to find some skullcap for Harry.

Away they ran, eager and anxious to do something, anything to help.

“Mamma! we’ve seen him. Doctor Hill said we might,” cried Kate, springing over the low stone wall that separated Mrs. Dobson’s bit of vegetable garden from the meadow in which Mrs. Hallock was searching for skullcap.

“Poor boy! I am very sorry for him,” said Mrs. Hallock. “No mother, and no home, and it might have been our Frank, Kate.”

“But, mother, it isn’t, you know; and now he’s going to have a mother and a home, and a brother and a sister, too. O, I’m so glad the circus came, and Frank ran away, and everything happened. I’m glad Harry got hurt, too,” she said, almost under her breath, “if he’ll only make haste and get well now. There! is this skullcap?” holding up a cluster of something green, that she had gathered close to the wall.

“No, child! that is young golden-rod, just out of the ground. Frank! Frank! come here, and jump over the wall and get this for me,” called Mrs. Hallock, but Frank was in great excitement over a young snake that he had found warming its wriggling, uncanny self on the stone wall.

“He’s whipping something!” returned Kate.

“O, Frank, don’t, don’t do it!” and Kate ran as fast as she could through the tall June grass toward the spot where Frank was vigorously switching.

“Go back! Go back, Kate!” shouted Frank. “It’s a snake!”

Kate did go back as fast as she could, springing over the wall right into the midst of Grandma Dobson’s currant bushes.

“Run! run, mamma!” she shouted, out of breath, and trembling as only a girl can tremble, at the thought of a snake.

“Don’t be frightened! it’s only a young black snake. There’s lots of ’em in the grass down the lane,” said Frank, after he had killed the reptile and approached his mother, who, to tell the exact truth, was standing quite still, and was afraid to take another step into the long grass about her feet.

“Give me your hand, Frank?” she said, trying to smile, but looking very white.

“Why, mamma, what is the matter? You haven’t been bitten, have you?” and with the words, Frank reached her side and took hold of her outstretched hand.

“No, Frank.” She tried to smile, but the trial was such a miserable failure, that she nearly cried instead of smiling.

“Why, mother,” in a voice of mingled pity and regret, “I thought you had more courage!”

“I have about some things—bearing a headache, for instance,” she replied, trying two or three times before she could get over the low wall into the garden. By the time she reached the house, she was very glad to sit down on the broad stone steps at the back door.

“Fetch me some water,” she said, but instead of going for the water, Kate ran for Mrs. Dobson, who presently appeared on the scene with a glass of foaming root beer. “Don’t be afraid of it, Mrs. Hallock. I made it with my own hands, and I know just what is in it. I don’t know what to do about the snakes, I’m sure. Everybody else is afraid of them, but they never hurt me.”

“You don’t go near them, do you?” gasped Kate, with her soft brown eyes expressive of extreme horror at the thought.