Little Grandmother Part 2

"Hallo, there!" shouted Mr. Griggs, the toll-gatherer, appearing at the door of his small house with both arms above his head. "Children, children, stop! Don't you come anigh the bridge for your lives!"

"Oh, it's going off! its going off!" cried the five Lymans in concert.

They forgot to admire any longer the magnificent sight. The ice might be glorious in its beauty; but, alas, it was terrible in its strength!

How could they get home? That was the question. They could see their father's house in the distance; but how and when were they to reach it?

It might as well have been up in the moon.

"They can't come after us," wailed Mary, wringing her hands; "'twill be days and days before they can put a boat into this river."

"What shall we do?" groaned Moses; "we can't sleep on the ground."

"With nothing to eat," added George, who remembered the brick-red Indian pudding they were to have had for dinner.

"Don't be scared, children; go ahead," said Dr. Hilton, from the bank.

"What! Would you have 'em risk their lives?" said the timid toll-gatherer. "Look at them blocks crowding up against the piers! Hear what a thunder they make! And the logs swimming down in booms! You step into our house, children, and my wife and the neighbors, we'll contrive to stow you away somewheres."

Crowds of people were collecting on the bank watching the ice go out.

"Well, you are in a pretty fix, children," said one of the men. "How did your folks happen to let you come?"

The Lymans stood dumb and transfixed.

"Hurry! Why don't you step lively?" said Dr. Hilton, and two or three other men.

"Stay where you are, children," cried Mr. Chase and Dr. Potter from the other bank.

"If we could only see father!" said one of the twins. Brave as they both thought themselves, the roaring torrent appalled them.

Suddenly there was a shout from the other end of the bridge as loud and shrill as a fog-bell:--

"Children, come home! George! Silas! Mary? Be quick?"

It was Squire Lyman's voice.

"What shall we do?" cried Mary, running round and round.

"'Twon't do to risk it, neighbor Lyman," screamed the toll-gatherer.

"Children, run! there is time," answered the father, hoa.r.s.ely.

It was Mary who called back again, "Yes, father, we'll come."

For the twins did not seem to feel clear what to do. "He knows," thought she. "What father tells us to do must be right."

She stepped firmly upon the shaking bridge. For an instant Moses hesitated, then followed with Patty; and after him came the twins, with their teeth firmly set.

"Quick! quick!" screamed Squire Lyman. "Run for your lives!"

"Run! run!" echoed the people on both banks; but Mr. Griggs's tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

The roaring torrent and the high wind together were rocking the bridge like a cradle. If it had not been for Patty! All the rest could run. It seemed as if the mud on the child's shoes had turned to lead. She hung, crying and struggling, a dead weight between Moses and Mary, who pulled her forward, without letting her little toddling feet touch the ground.

The small procession of five, how eagerly everybody watched it! The poor toll-gatherer, if he had had the courage, would have run after the children, and s.n.a.t.c.hed them back from their doom. Every looker-on was anxious; yet all the anxiety of the mult.i.tude could not equal the agonizing suspense in that one father's heart. He thought he knew the strength of the piers; he thought he could tell how long they would stand against the ice; but what if he had made a mistake?

The children did not get on quite as fast as he had expected. Every moment seemed an age, for they were running for their lives!

It was over at last, the bridge was crossed, the children were safe!

The toll-gatherer, and the other people on the bank, set up a shout; but Squire Lyman could not speak. He seized Dr. Potter by the shoulder, and sank back against him, almost fainting.

"Papa! O, papa!" cried Patty, whose little heart scarcely beat any faster than usual, in spite of all the fuss she had made, "I couldn't help but laugh!"

This little speech, so babyish and "Patty-like," brought Squire Lyman to himself, and he hugged the silly creature as if she stood for the whole five children.

"Father, it was a tough one, I tell you," said Silas.

"O, father," said Moses, "if you knew how we trembled! With that baby to pull over, too!"

"I'll tell you what I thought," said Mary, catching her breath. "I though my father knew more than the toll-gatherer, and all the other men. But anyway, if he didn't know, I'd have done what he said."

"Bravo for my Polly," said Squire Lyman, wiping his eyes.

Just half an hour after this, when they were all safe at home, the bridge was snapped in two, and went reeling down stream. Squire Lyman closed his eyes and shuddered. Of course no one could help thinking what might have happened if the children had been a little later; and everybody fell to kissing Patty, for that had long been a family habit when any feeling came up which was too strong or too deep to be expressed.

The next day, in Mrs. Lyman's Sunday evening talk with the children, she told them the trust Mary had shown in her father, when he asked her to cross the bridge, was just the feeling we should have towards our heavenly Father, who is all-wise, and can never make mistakes; and then she gave them this verse to learn:--

"Blessed is the man that maketh the Lord his trust."

Patty forgot the verse very soon; but Mary remembered it as long as she lived.

CHAPTER IV.

THE t.i.tHING-MAN

One summer's day, two years or so after this, Moses was half sick with a "run-round" on his finger, and consented to go up in the spinning-chamber and play with Patty: he never played with girls when he was well. Dorcas was at the little flax-wheel spinning linen, and Patty was in a corner under the eaves, with her rag babies spread out before her,--quite a family of them. The oldest granddaughter was down with brain fever, and she wanted Moses to bleed her. Moses did it with great skill. When he practiced medicine, he pursued the same course Dr. Potter did, their family physician; he bled and "cupped" Patty's dolls, and gave them strong doses of calomel and "jalap."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. MOSES BLEEDS AND CUPS.--Page 45.]

"Dorcas," said Dr. Moses, looking up, with his jackknife in the air, "what's a witch?"

"A witch? Why, we call Patty a little witch sometimes when she tangles the flax and tries to spin."

"O, I never!" exclaimed Patty, "only just once I--"