Carolyn of the Corners Part 8

"Not while that dog's with her, I reckon," put in Tim, the hackman.

"May I come down the road to meet you, Aunty Rose?" asked the little girl. "I know the way to Uncle Joe's store."

"I don't know any reason why you can't come to meet me," replied Mrs.

Kennedy. "Anyway, you can come along the road as far as the first house.

You know that one?"

"Yes, ma'am. Mr. Parlow's," said Carolyn May.

"She knows her way 'round, I warrant," put in Tim.

"Very well, child," said Aunty Rose, and the bony old horse started slowly down the dusty road. Carolyn May stood at the gate and watched it wabble away. The hush of the afternoon wrapped the place about. Such a stir as there had been about The Corners in the forenoon seemed to have been quite quenched. Not even the clank of iron on iron from the blacksmith shop was now audible.

Carolyn May went back into the yard and sat on the front-porch steps, and Prince, yawning unhappily, curled down at her feet. There did not seem to be much to do at this place. The little girl lost interest in the maple-key chain which Aunty Rose had shown her how to make.

She had time now, had Carolyn May, to compare The Corners with the busy Harlem streets with which she had been familiar all her life. At this time of the afternoon the shady sides of the cross streets and the west side of the avenues were a-bustle with baby carriages and children, with nurses and mothers. And there were street pianos, and penny peep shows, and ice-cream-cone peddlers, and wagons, and many automobiles.

"Goodness me!" thought Carolyn May, startled by her own imagination, "suppose all the folks in all these houses around here were _dead_!"

They might have been, for all the human noises she heard. She could count seven dwellings from where she sat on the Stagg porch, and there were others not in sight. No apparent life at the blacksmith shop; none at the store. Not even a vehicle on the road, now that the hack had crawled out of view towards Sunrise Cove.

"Goodness me!" she said again, and this time she jumped up, startling Prince from his nap. "Maybe there is a spell cast over all this place,"

she went on. "Everybody has been put to sleep, just like in a fairy story. I don't know whether a little girl who _isn't_ asleep can wake 'em up, or whether it must be a prince.

"Why, Princey," she added, looking at the dog, "maybe it will be _you_ that wakes 'em up. Anyway, let's go and see if we can find _somebody_ that's alive."

They went out of the yard together and took the dusty road towards the town. They pa.s.sed the broad front of the church, its windows like so many blind eyes, and the little girl peered timidly over the rusty railing into the neglected churchyard, where many of the headstones were moss-grown and toppling.

"This is just the very _deadest_ place," murmured Carolyn May. "And I guess these folks buried here aren't much quieter than the live folks.

Oh, dear me! these folks here at The Corners don't look up to brighter things any more than the folks that are under ground. Why, maybe _I'll_ get that way if I stay here! And I know Papa Cameron wouldn't approve of _that_!"

She sighed, and trudged on in the dust. The perspiration began to trickle down her pink face. The powdery dust rose from beneath her feet and was drifted over the wayside gra.s.s and weeds by the fretful breeze.

Prince paced on by her side, his nose wrinkling at the strange odours the breeze brought to his nostrils. A toad hopped suddenly out of its ambuscade beside the path, and Prince jumped.

"Don't touch the toad, Princey," said the little girl. "You know we learned about toads at school-and how good they are. And there was one in Central Park-don't you 'member?"

A minute later, however, as they went on, something flashed into view on the top rail of the boundary fence. It brought a yelp of delight from Prince and a startled cry to Carolyn May's lips.

"A squirrel!"

Prince leaped for the fence. With a whisk of its tail, the squirrel went up the hole of the nearest tree, and out on one of the branches, right over their heads.

Prince danced about madly in the dust and yelped.

"You silly thing, you," the little girl told him. "You _know_ you can't climb that tree."

The squirrel chattered angrily overhead.

"Now, come away," Carolyn May commanded. "Don't you see you've made that squirrel mad at you? You'll _never_ make friends out here in the country, if you act this way, Princey."

Prince seemed little impressed by this prophecy, but he followed after his little mistress and left the squirrel to its own devices. They soon came in sight of the Parlow house and carpenter shop.

"We can't go beyond that," said Carolyn May. "Aunty Rose told us not to.

And Uncle Joe says the carpenter-man isn't a pleasant man."

She looked wistfully at the premises. The cottage seemed quite as much under the "spell" as had been those dwellings at The Corners. But from the shop came the sound of a plane shrieking over a long board.

"Oh, Princey!" gasped Carolyn May. "I b'lieve he's making long, curly shavings!"

If there was one thing Carolyn May adored, it was curls. Because her own sunny hair was almost perfectly straight, she thought the very loveliest thing a fairy G.o.dmother could do for her was to fit her out with a perfect suit of curls.

There had been a carpenter shop only two blocks from where she lived in Harlem, and she and her friend, Edna Price, had sometimes gone there and begged a few curly shavings with which to bedeck themselves. But they could never get as many shavings as they wanted there, for the man swept them up every day and put them in bags, to be sold for baling.

But here, at this carpenter's shop, she had seen, only the afternoon before, great heaps of the most beautiful, curly, smelly shavings! She drew nearer, her hand upon Prince's collar, and stood looking at the old man with the silver-bowed spectacles pushing away at the jack-plane.

Suddenly, Mr. Jedidiah Parlow looked up and saw the wistful, dust-streaked face under the black hat-brim and above the black frock.

He stared at her for fully a minute, poising the plane over his work.

Then he put it down and came to the door of the shop.

"You're Hannah Stagg's little girl, aren't you?" he asked in a voice Carolyn May thought almost as dry as his shavings.

"Yes, sir," she said, and sighed. Dear me, he knew who she was right away! There would not be any chance of her getting a suit of long curls.

"You've come here to live, have you?" said Mr. Parlow slowly.

"Yes, sir. You see, my papa and mamma were lost at sea-with the _Dunraven_. It was a mistake, I guess," sighed the little girl, "for they weren't fighting anybody. But the _Dunraven_ got in the way of some ships that were fighting, in a place called the Mediterranean Ocean, and the _Dunraven_ was sunk, and only a few folks were saved from it. My papa and mamma weren't saved."

"So?" said the carpenter, pushing his big spectacles up to his forehead.

"I read about it. Too bad-too mighty bad! I remember Hannah Stagg," he added, winking his eyes, Carolyn May thought, a good deal as Prince did.

"You look like her."

"Do I?" Carolyn May returned, drawing nearer. "I'm glad I do. And I'm glad I sleep in what used to be her bed, too. It doesn't seem so lonesome."

"So? I reckoned you'd be lonesome up there at The Corners," said the carpenter. "Is that your dog?"

"He's Prince-yes, sir," Carolyn May said, looking at the panting mongrel proudly. "He's a _splendid_ dog. I know he must be valuable, even if he is a mongorel. He got his paw hurt once, and papa and I took him to a vetrernary.

"A vetrernary," explained Carolyn May, "is a dog doctor. And I heard this one tell my papa that there must be blood of 'most all kinds of dogs there was in Prince's veins. There aren't many dogs like him."

"No, I reckon not. Not many have such a pedigree," admitted the carpenter, taking up his plane. Then he squinted curiously across it at Carolyn May. "I guess your papa was some different from Joe Stagg, wasn't he?"

"Oh, yes; he didn't look much like Uncle Joe. You see, they aren't really related," explained Carolyn May innocently.

Mr. Parlow grunted and stripped another shaving from the edge of the board he was planing. Carolyn May's eager eyes followed that curling ribbon, and her lips parted. There were just _bushels_ of shavings lying all about the shop-and Uncle Joe said Mr. Parlow would not give away a single one!

The carpenter paused before pushing the plane a second time the length of the board. "Don't you want a drink of water, little girl?" he asked.