Meadow Grass: Tales of New England Life Part 21

Shouldn't I ha' sizzled well? An' now, all there is to burn me is G.o.d A'mighty's sunshine!"

Elvin laughed lightly.

"I guess I don't need any fortune," he said. "Mine looks pretty fair now. I don't feel as if anybody'd better meddle with it." But he had not withdrawn his arm, and his gaze still dwelt on hers.

"You know suthin' you don't mean to tell," said Dilly, speaking so rapidly that although Rosa bent forward to listen, she caught only a word, here and there. "You think you won't have to tell, but you will.

G.o.d A'mighty'll make you. You'll be a stranger among your own folks, an' a wanderer on the earth; till you tell. There! go along! Go an' see the punkins an' crazy-quilts!"

She withdrew her hand, and turned away. Elvin, his face suddenly blanched, looked after her, fascinated, while she went quickly up the garden walk. An impatient word from Rosa recalled him to himself, and he got heavily into the wagon and drove on again.

When Dilly reached the steps where her new guest had seated herself, her manner had quite changed. It breathed an open frankness, a sweet and homely warmth which were very engaging. Molly spoke first.

"How pleased he is with her!" she said, dreamily.

"Yes," answered Dilly, "but to-day ain't tomorrer. They're both light-complected. It's jest like patchwork. Put light an' dark together, I say, or you won't git no figger. Here, le's have a mite o'

cake! Mis' Tolman's a proper good cook, if her childern _have_ all turned out ducks, an' took to the water. Every one on 'em's took back as much as three generations for their noses an' tempers. Strange they had to go so fur!"

She broke the rich brown loaf in the middle, and divided a piece with Molly. Such were the habits calculated to irritate the conventionalities of Tiverton against her. Who ever heard of breaking cake when one could go into the house for a knife! They ate in silence, and the delights of the summer day grew upon Molly as they never did save when she felt the nearness of this queer little woman. Turn which side of her personality she might toward you, Dilly could always bend you to her own train of thought.

"I come down to talk things over," said Molly, at last, brushing the crumbs of cake from her lap. "I've got a chance in the shoe-shop."

"Do tell! Well, ain't that complete? Don't you say one word, now! I know how 'tis. You think how you'll have to give up the birds' singin', an' your goin' into the woods arter groundpine, an' stay cooped up in a boardin'-house to Sudleigh. I know how 'tis! But don't you fret. You come right here an' stay Sundays, an' we'll eat up the woods an' drink up the sky! There! It's better for ye, dear. Some folks are made to live in a holler tree, like me; some ain't. You'll be better on't among folks."

Molly's eyes filled with tears.

"You've been real good to me," she said, simply.

"I wish I'd begun it afore," responded Dilly, with a quick upward lift of her head, and her brightest smile. "You see I didn't know ye very well, for all you'd lived with old Mis' Drew so many year. I 'ain't had much to do with folks. I knew ye hadn't got n.o.body except her, but I knew, too, ye were contented there as a cricket. But when she died, an'

the house burnt down, I begun to wonder what was goin' to become on ye."

Molly sat looking over at the pine woods, her lips compressed, her cheeks slowly reddening. Finally she burst pa.s.sionately forth,--

"Dilly, I'd like to know why I couldn't have got some rooms an' kep'

house for Elvin? His mother's my own aunt!"

"She wa'n't his mother, ye know. She was His stepmother, for all they set so much by one Another. Folks would ha' talked, an' I guess Rosy wouldn't ha' stood that, even afore they were engaged. Rosy may not like corn-fodder herself, any more 'n t'other dog did, but she ain't goin' to see other noses put into't without snappin' at 'em."

"Well, it's all over," said Molly, drearily. "It 'ain't been hard for me stayin' round as I've done, an' sewin' for my board; but it's seemed pretty tough to think of Elvin livin' in that little shanty of Caleb's an' doin' for himself. I never could see why he didn't board somewheres decent."

"Wants to save his six hunderd dollars, to go out West an' start in the furniture business," said Dilly, succinctly. "Come, Molly, what say to walkin' over to Sudleigh Cattle-Show?"

Molly threw aside her listless mood like a garment.

"Will you?" she cried. "Oh, I'd like to! You know I'm sewin' for Mis'

Eli Pike; an' they asked me to go, but I knew she'd fill up the seat so I should crowd 'em out of house an' home. Will you, Dilly?"

"You wait till I git suthin' or other to put over my head," said Dilly, rising with cheerful decision. "Here, you gi' me that cake! I'll tie it up in a nice clean piece o' table-cloth, an' then we'll take along a few eggs, so 't we can trade 'em off for bread an' cheese. You jest pull in my sheets, an' shet the winder, while I do it. Like as not there'll be a shower this arternoon."

When the little gate closed behind them, Molly felt eagerly excited, as, if she were setting forth for a year's happy wandering. Dilly knew the ways of the road as well as the wood. She was, as usual, in light marching order, a handkerchief tied over her smooth braids; another, slung on a stick over her shoulder, contained their luncheon and the eggs for barter. All her movements were buoyant and free, like those of a healthy animal let loose in pleasant pastures. She walked so lightly that the eggs in the handkerchief were scarcely stirred.

"See that little swampy patch!" she said, stopping when they had rounded the curve in the road. "A week or two ago, that was all alive with redbud flowers. I dunno the right name on 'em, an' I don't care.

Redbirds, I call 'em. I went over there, one day, an' walked along between the hummocks, spush! spush! You won't find a nicer feelin' than that, wherever ye go. Take off your shoes an' stockin's, an' wade into a swamp! Warm, coa.r.s.e gra.s.s atop! Then warm, black mud, an' arter that, a layer all nice an' cold that goes down to Chiny, fur's I know! That was the day I meant to git some thoroughwort over there, to dry, but I looked at the redbird flowers so long I didn't have time, an' I never've been sence."

Molly laughed out, with a pretty, free ripple in her voice.

"You're always sayin' that, Dilly! You never have time for anything but doin' nothin'!"

A bright little sparkle came into Dilly's eyes, and she laughed, too.

"Why, that's what made me give' up nussin' two year ago," she said, happily. "I wa'n't havin' no time at all. I couldn't live my proper life. I al'ays knew I should come to that, so I'd raked an' sc.r.a.ped, an' put into the bank, till I thought I'd got enough to buy me a mite o' flour while I lived, an' a pine coffin arter I died; an' then I jest set up my Ebenezer I'd be as free's a bird. Freer, I guess I be, for they have to scratch pretty hard, come cold weather, an' I bake me a 'tater, an' then go clippin' out over the crust, lookin' at the bare twigs. Oh, it's complete! If I could live this way, I guess a thousand years'd be a mighty small dose for me. Look at that goldenrod, over there by the stump! That's the kind that's got the most smell."

Molly broke one of the curving plumes.

"I don't see as it smells at all," she said, still sniffing delicately.

"Le'me take it! Why, yes, it does, too! Everything smells _some_.

Oftentimes it's so faint it's more like a feelin' than a smell. But there! you ain't a witch, as I be!"

"I wish you wouldn't say that!" put in Molly, courageously. "You make people think you are."

"Law, then, let 'em!" said Dilly, with a kindly indulgence. "It don't do them no hurt, an' it gives me more fun'n the county newspaper.

They'd ruther I'd say I was a witch'n tell 'em I've got four eyes an'

eight ears where they 'ain't but two. I tell ye, there's a good deal missed when ye stay to home makin' pies, an' a good deal ye can learn if ye live out-door. Why, there's Tolman's cows! He dunno why they dry up; but I do. He, sends that little Davie with 'em, that don't have no proper playtime; an' Davie gallops 'em all the way to pastur', so't he can have a minute to fish in the brook. An' then he gallops 'em home ag'in, because he's stole a piece out o' the arternoon. I ketched him down there by the brook, one day, workin' away with a bent pin, an' the next mornin' I laid a fish-hook on the rock, an' hid in the woods to see what he'd say. My! I 'guess Jonah wa'n't more tickled when he set foot on dry land. Here comes the wagons! There's the Poorhouse team fust, an' Sally Flint settin' up straighter 'n a ramrod. An' there's Heman an' Roxy! She don't look a day older'n twenty-five. Proper nice folks, all on 'em, but they make me kind o' homesick jest because they _be_ folks. They do look so sort o' common in their bunnits an' veils, an' I keep thinkin' o' little four-legged creatur's, all fur!" The Tiverton folk saluted them, always cordially, yet each after his kind.

They liked Dilly as a product all their own, but one to be partaken of sparingly, like some wild, intoxicating root.

They loved her better at home, too, than at Sudleigh Fair. It was like a betrayal of their fireside secrets, to see her there in her accustomed garb; so slight a concession to propriety would have lain in her putting on a bonnet and shawl!

As they neared Sudleigh town, the road grew populous with carriages and farm-wagons, "step and step," not all from Tiverton way, but gathered in from the roads converging here. Men were walking up and down the market street, crying their whips, their toy balloons, and a mult.i.tude of cheaper gimcracks.

"Forty miles from home! forty miles from home!" called one, more imaginative than the rest. "And no place to lay my head! That's why I'm selling these little whips here to-day, a stranger in a strange land.

Buy one! buy one! and the poor pilgrim'll have a supper and a bed! Keep your money in your pocket, and he's a wanderer on the face of the earth!"

Dilly, the fearless in her chosen wilds, took a fold of Molly's dress, and held it tight.

"You s'pose that's so?" she whispered. "Oh, dear! I 'ain't got a mite o' money, on'y these six eggs. Oh, why didn't he stay to home, if he's so possessed to sleep under cover? What does anybody leave their home _for_, if they've got one?"

But Molly put up her head, and walked st.u.r.dily on.

"Don't you worry," she counselled, in an undertone. "It don't mean any more 'n it does when folks say they're sellin' at a sacrifice. I guess they expect to make enough, take it all together."

Dilly walked on, quite bewildered. She had lost her fine, joyous carriage; her shoulders were bent, and her feet shuffled, in a discouraged fashion, over the unlovely bricks. Molly kept the lead, with unconscious superiority.

"Le's go into the store now," she said, "an' swap off the eggs. You'll be joggled in this crowd, an' break 'em all to smash. Here, you le' me have your handkerchief! I'll see to it all." She kept the handkerchief in her hand, after their slight "tradin'" had been accomplished; and Dilly, too dispirited to offer a word, walked meekly about after her.

The Fair was held, according to ancient custom, in the town-hall, of which the upper story had long been given over to Sudleigh Academy.

Behind the hall lay an enormous field, roped in now, and provided with pens and stalls, where a great a.s.semblage of live-stock lowed, and grunted, and patiently chewed the cud.

"Le's go in there fust," whispered Dilly. "I sha'n't feel so strange there as I do with folks. I guess if the four-footed creatur's can stan' it, I can. Pretty darlin'!" she added, stopping before a heifer who had ceased eating and was looking about her with a mild and dignified gaze. Dilly eagerly sought out a stick, and began to scratch the delicate head. "Pretty creatur'! Smell o' her breath, Molly! See her nose, all wet, like pastur' gra.s.s afore day! Now, if I didn't want to live by myself, I'd like to curl me up in a stall, 'side o' her."