Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 12

Nan liked tom Sherwood. He was about nineteen and almost as big as his father. He was gentle with her, and showed himself to be an expert driver of the roan colts. Otherwise Nan might have been much afraid during the first mile of the journey to Pine Camp, for certainly she had never seen horses behave so before.

"Haven't been out of the stable for a week," explained Tom cooly as the roans plunged and danced, and "cut up didos" generally, as Uncle Henry remarked.

"We had a big fall of snow," Tom went on to say. "Bunged us all up in the woods; so Rafe and I came in. Marm's all right. So's everybody else around the Camp, except Old Man Llewellen. He's down with rheumatism, or tic-douloureux, or something. He's always complaining."

"I know," said Uncle Henry, and then went on to relate for his son's benefit the wonderful thing that had happened to his brother and his brother's wife, and why Nan had come up into Michigan without her parents.

"We'll be mighty proud to have her," said Tom simply. He was only a great boy, after all, and he blushed every time he caught Nan looking at him. The girl began to feel very much grown up.

They were glad of the hot coffee, and Tom was shown how and why the mysterious bottle kept the drink hot. They only made that single halt (and only for a few minutes for the horses to drink) before reaching Pine Camp. They traveled through the snow-covered woods most of the way.

There were few farms and no settlements at all until they reached Pine Camp.

The road was not well beaten and they could not have got through some of the drifts with less spirited ponies than the roans. When they crossed the long bridge over the river and swept into the village street, Nan was amazed.

Likewise, her heart sank a little. There was not a building in the place more than a story and a half in height. Most of them were slab cottages.

Few yards were fenced. There were two stores, facing each other on the single street of the town, with false-fronts running up as tall as the second story would have been had there been a second story.

The roans dashed through the better beaten path of the street, with everybody along the way hailing Henry Sherwood vociferously. The giant waved his hand and shouted in reply. Nan cowered between him and Tom, on the seat, shielding her face from the flying snow from the ponies'

hoofs, though the tears in her eyes were not brought there only by the sting of the pelting she received.

Chapter XII. "HOME WAS NEVER LIKE THIS"

The roan ponies dashed through the slab settlement, past the blacksmith and wheelwright shop and the ugly red building Tom told Nan was the school, and reached a large, sprawling, unpainted dwelling on the outskirts of the village.

There were barns back of the Sherwood house; there was no fence between the yard and the road, the windows of the house stared out upon the pa.s.serby, blindless, and many of them without shades. There was such a painful newness about the building that it seemed to Nan the carpenters must have just packed their tools and gone, while the painters had not yet arrived.

"Well! Here we are," announced Mr. Henry Sherwood, as Tom held in the still eager ponies. He stepped out and offered Nan his hand. "Home again, little girl. I reckon Kate will be mighty glad to see you, that she will."

Nan leaped out and began to stamp her feet on the hard snow, while Uncle Henry lifted out the trunk and bags. Just as the ponies sprang away again, a door in the ugly house opened and a tall, angular woman looked forth.

"Bring her in, Hen!" she cried, in a high-pitched voice. "I want to see her."

Nan went rather timidly up the path. Her aunt was almost as tall as her husband. She was very bony and was flat-chested and unlovely in every way. That is, so it seemed, when the homesick girl raised her eyes to Aunt Kate's face.

That face was as brown as sole-leather, and the texture of the skin seemed leathery as well. There was a hawklike nose dominating the unfeminine face. The shallows below the cheekbones were deep, as though she had suffered the loss of her back molars. The eyebrows were straggly; the eyes themselves of a pale, watery blue; the mouth a thin line when her colorless lips were closed; and her chin was as square and determined as Uncle Henry's own.

As Nan approached she saw something else about this unlovely woman. On her neck was a great, livid scar, of a hand's breadth, and which looked like a scald, or burn. No attempt was made to conceal this unsightly blemish.

Indeed, there was nothing about Aunt Kate Sherwood suggesting a softening of her hard lines. Her plain, ugly print dress was cut low at the throat, and had no collar or ruff to hide the scar. Nan's gaze was fastened on that blemish before she was half way to the door, and she could see nothing else at first.

The girl fought down a physical shudder when Aunt Kate's clawlike hands seized her by both shoulders, and she stooped to kiss the visitor.

"Welcome, dear Nannie," her sharp voice said, and Nan thought that, with ease, one might have heard her in the middle of the village.

But when Aunt Kate's lips touched the girl's forehead they were Warm, and soft as velvet. Her breath was sweet. There was a wholesome cleanliness about her person that pleased Nan. The ugly dress was spotless and beautifully laundered. She had a glimpse of the unplastered kitchen and saw a row of copper pots on the shelf over the dresser that were scoured to dazzling brightness. The boards of the floor were white as milk. The big, patent range glistened with polish, and its nickel-work was rubbed till it reflected like a mirror.

"Welcome, my dear!" said Aunt Kate again. "I hope you will be happy while you stay with us."

Happy! With Momsey and Papa Sherwood on the ocean, and the "little dwelling in amity" closed and deserted? Nan feared she would break down and cry.

Her Aunt Kate left her to herself a minute just then that she might overcome this weakness. Uncle Henry came up the path with the bags, smiling broadly.

"Well, old woman!" he said heartily.

"Well, old man!" she returned.

And then suddenly, Nan Sherwood had a new vision. She was used to seeing her pretty mother and her handsome father display their mutual affection; it had not seemed possible that rough, burly Uncle Henry and ugly Aunt Kate could feel the same degree of affection for each other.

Uncle Henry dropped the bags. Aunt Kate seemed to be drawn toward him when he put out his hands. Nan saw their lips meet, and then the giant gently, almost reverently, kissed the horrid scar on Aunt Kate's neck.

"Here's Nan!" cried the big lumberman jovially. "The pluckiest and smartest little girl in seven states! Take her in out of the cold, Kate.

She's not used to our kind of weather, and I have been watching for the frost flowers to bloom on her pretty face all the way from the forks."

The woman drew Nan into the warm kitchen. Uncle Henry followed in a minute with the trunk.

"Where'll I put this box, Kate?" he asked. "I reckon you've fixed up some cozy place for her?"

"The east room, Hen," Aunt Kate replied. "The sun lies in there mornings. I took the new spring rocker out of the parlor, and with the white enameled bedstead you bought in Chicago, and the maple bureau we got of that furniture pedlar, and the best drugget to lay over the carpet I reckon Nannie has a pretty bedroom."

Meanwhile Nan stared openly around the strange kitchen. The joists and rafters were uncovered by laths or plaster. Muslin, that had once been white, was tacked to the beams overhead for a ceiling. The smoke from the cookstove had stained it to a deep brown color above the stove and to a lighter, meerschaum shade in the corners.

The furniture was of the rudest plainest kind much of it evidently home-made. Uncle Henry was not unhandy with tools. She learned, later, that he and the boys had practically built the house by themselves. They were finishing it inside, as they had time. In some of the rooms the inside window and door frames were not yet in place.

There was an appetizing smell from the pots upon the stove, and the long table was set for dinner. They would not let Nan change from her traveling dress before sitting down to the table. Tom and Rafe came in and all three men washed at the long, wooden sink.

Rafe was of slighter build than his brother, and a year or more younger.

He was not so shy as Tom, either; and his eyes sparkled with mischief.

Nan found that she could not act "grown up" with her Cousin Rafe.

The princ.i.p.al dish for dinner was venison stew, served with vegetables and salt-rising bread. There was cake, too, very heavy and indigestible, and speckled with huckleberries that had been dried the fall previous.

Aunt Kate was no fancy cook; but appet.i.te is the best sauce, after all, and Nan had her share of that condiment.

During the meal there was not much conversation save about the wonderful fortune that had fallen to Nan's mother and the voyage she and her husband were taking to Scotland to secure it. Nan learned, too, that Uncle Henry had telegraphed from Tillbury of Nan's coming to Pine Camp, and consequently Aunt Kate was able to prepare for her.

And that the good woman had done her best to make a nest for her little niece in the ugly house, Nan was a.s.sured. After dinner she insisted upon the girl's going to the east room to change her dress and lie down. The comparison between this great chamber and Nan's pretty room at home was appalling.

The room had been plastered, but the plaster was of a gray color and unfinished. The woodwork was painted a dusty, brick red with mineral paint. The odd and ugly pieces of furniture horrified Nan. The drugget on the floor only served to hide a part of the still more atrociously patterned carpet. The rocking chair complained if one touched it. The top of the huge maple dresser was as bald as one's palm.

Nan sat down on the unopened trunk when her aunt had left her. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. Home certainly was never like this! She did not see how she was ever going to be able to stand it.

Chapter XIII. MARGARET LLEWELLEN

"If Momsey or Papa Sherwood knew about this they'd be awfully sorry for me," thought Nan, still sitting on the trunk. "Such a looking place!

Nothing to see but snow and trees," for the village of Pine Camp was quite surrounded by the forest and all the visitor could see from the windows of her first-floor bedroom were stumps and trees, with deep snow everywhere.