Carolyn of the Corners Part 10

"When folks love each other they look at each other and talk to each other, don't they?" she asked.

"Well-yes-generally," admitted Mrs. Gormley.

"Then my Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda Parlow aren't in love," announced Carolyn May with confidence, "for they don't even look at each other."

"They used to. Why, Joseph Stagg and Mandy Parlow was sweethearts years and years ago! Long before your mother left these parts, child."

"That was a long time 'fore I was borned," said the little girl wonderingly.

"Oh, yes. Everybody that went to The Corners' church thought they'd be married."

"My Uncle Joe and Miss Mandy?"

"Yes."

"Then, what would have become of Aunty Rose?" queried Carolyn May.

"Oh, Mrs. Kennedy hadn't gone to keep house for Mr. Stagg then," replied Mrs. Gormley. "He tried sev'ral triflin' critters there at the Stagg place before she took hold."

Carolyn May looked at Mrs. Gormley encouragingly. She was very much interested in Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda Parlow's love affair.

"_Why_ didn't they get married-like my papa and mamma?" she asked.

"Oh, goodness knows!" exclaimed Mrs. Gormley. "Some says 'twas his fault and some says 'twas hern. And mebbe 'twas a third party's that I might mention, at _that_," added Mrs. Gormley, pursing up her lips in a very knowing way.

Here was another mysterious "party"! Carolyn May wondered if this "party" could be related to the "certain party" who seemed so familiar to both of the "dressmaking ladies."

"You couldn't get nothin' out of either Mr. Stagg or Mandy about it, I don't believe. They're both as tight-mouthed as clams," pursued Mrs.

Gormley. "But one day," she said, growing confidential, "it was in camp-meeting time-one day somebody seen Joe Stagg drivin' out with another girl-Charlotte Lenny, that was. _She_ was married to a man over in Springdale long ago. Mr. Stagg took Charlotte to Faith Camp Meeting.

"Then, the very next week, Mandy went with Evan Peckham to a barn dance at Crockett's, and n.o.body ain't ever seen your uncle and Mandy Parlow speak since, much less ever walk together.

"Now stand up, child, and let's see if this frock fits. I declare, your uncle is a-fittin' you out right nice."

If the truth were told, Uncle Joe did not agree to the making of all these "frocks and furbelows" for Hannah's Car'lyn without the filing of some objections.

"I tell you, Aunty Rose," he said to his austere housekeeper (and it took courage for him to say this), "I tell you the child will get it into her head that she can _always_ have all these things. Her father didn't leave anything-scarcely any money at all. I don't suppose, if I sell out that flat, I'd get a hundred dollars for it. How are all these frocks and furbelows going to be paid for?"

"You can stop in at the First National, Joseph Stagg, and draw enough out of my account to pay for them," said Aunty Rose placidly.

"Huh? I guess not!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the hardware dealer angrily. "I can pay my just debts yet, I hope-and them of Hannah's Car'lyn, too. If there's money got to be spent on the child, I'm the one to spend it."

"Then don't talk as though you were afraid the sheriff was going to tack a notice on your store door to-morrow morning," returned the old lady tartly. To herself she observed, out of his hearing: "It will do Joseph Stagg good to learn to spend money, as well as to make it."

But Mr. Stagg did not take kindly to this, nor to other innovations that the coming of Carolyn May to The Corners brought about. Especially was he outspoken about Prince. That faithful follower of "Hannah's Car'lyn"

he failed to discover any use for or any good in.

Prince was a friendly creature, and he did not always display good judgment in showing his affection. In his doggish mind he could not see why Mr. Stagg did not like him; he approved of Mr. Stagg very much indeed.

One particularly muddy day he met the returning hardware merchant at the gate with vociferous barkings and a plain desire to implant a welcoming tongue on the man's cheek. He succeeded in muddying Mr. Stagg's suit with his front paws, and almost cast the angry man full length into a mud puddle.

"Drat the beast!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Stagg. "I'd rather have an epileptic fit loose around here than him. Now, look at these clo'es! I declare, Car'lyn, you've jest got to tie that mongrel up-and keep him tied!"

"All the time, Uncle Joe?" whispered the little girl.

"Yes, _ma'am_, all the time! If I find him loose again, I'll tie a bag of rocks to his neck and drop him in the deepest hole in the brook. He'd oughter been drowned by that man when he was a pup."

After this awful threat, Prince lived a precarious existence, and his mistress was much worried for him. Never, when Uncle Joe was at home, could the dog have a run. Aunty Rose said nothing, but she saw that both the little girl and her canine friend were very unhappy.

Mrs. Kennedy, however, had watched Mr. Joseph Stagg for years. Indeed, she had known him as a boy, long before she had closed up her own little cottage around on the other road and come to the Stagg place to save the hardware merchant from the continued reign of those "trifling creatures"

of whom Mrs. Gormley had spoken.

As a bachelor, Joseph Stagg had been preyed upon by certain female harpies so prevalent in a country community. Some had families whom they partly supported out of Mr. Stagg's larder; some were widows who looked upon the well-to-do merchant as a marrying proposition.

Aunty Rose Kennedy did not need the position of Mr. Stagg's housekeeper and could not be accused of a.s.suming it from mercenary motives. Over her back fence she had seen the havoc going on in the Stagg homestead after Hannah Stagg went to the city and Joseph Stagg's final female relative had died and left him alone in the big house.

One day the old Quaker-like woman could stand no more. She put on her sunbonnet, came around by the road to the front door of the Stagg house, which she found open, and walked through to the rear porch on which the woman who then held the situation of housekeeper was wrapping up the best feather bed and pillows in a pair of the best home-spun sheets, preparatory to their removal.

The neighbours enjoyed what followed. Aunty Rose came through the ordeal as dignified and unruffled as ever; the retiring inc.u.mbent went away wrathfully, shaking the dust of the premises from her garments as a testimony against "any sich actions."

When Mr. Stagg came home at supper time he found Aunty Rose at the helm and already a different air about the place.

"Goodness me, Aunty Rose," he said, biting into her biscuit ravenously, "I was a-going down to the mill-hands' hotel to board. I couldn't stand it no longer. If you'd stay here and do for me, I'd feel like a new man."

"You ought to be made over into a new man, Joseph Stagg," the woman said sternly. "A married man."

"No, no! Never _that_!" gasped the hardware dealer.

"If I came here, Joseph Stagg, it would cost you more money than you've been paying these no-account women."

"I don't care," said Mr. Stagg recklessly. "Go ahead. Do what you please. Say what you want. I'm game."

Thereby he had put himself into Aunty Rose's power. She had renovated the old kitchen and some of the other rooms. If Mr. Stagg at first trembled for his bank balance, he was made so comfortable that he had not the heart to murmur. And, besides, he believed in keeping his word.

He had declared himself "game."

But that had all happened years before. This matter of expense for Hannah's Car'lyn was an entirely different matter. Moreover, the mischievousness of Prince, the mongrel, was really more than Mr. Joseph Stagg thought he was called upon to bear.

Of course, Carolyn May let Prince run at large when she was sure Uncle Joe was well out of sight of the house, but she was very careful to chain him up again long before her uncle was expected to return.

Prince had learned not to chase anything that wore feathers; Aunty Rose herself had to admit that he was a very intelligent dog and knew what punishment was for. But how did he know that in trying to dig out a mole he would be doing more harm than good?

The mole in question lived under a piece of rock wall near the garden fence. When let free for his first morning run, Prince had been much interested in the raised roofs of the tunnels he found in the sod down there.

Aunty Rose called the mole "a pesky creature." Uncle Joe had threatened to bring home a trap with which to impale it. How should Prince know-and this was the question Carolyn May asked afterwards-that he would not be considered a general benefactor if he managed to capture the little blind nuisance?

At any rate, when Uncle Joe came home to dinner on one particular Sat.u.r.day he walked down to the corner of the garden fence, and there saw the havoc Prince had wrought. In following the line of the mole's last tunnel he had worked his way under the picket fence and had torn up two currant bushes and done some damage in the strawberry patch.

"And the worst of it is," grumbled the hardware dealer, "he never caught the mole. That mongrel really isn't worth a bag of dornicks to sink him in the brook. But that's what he's going to get this very evening when I come home. I won't stand for him a day longer."