The Copy-Cat and Other Stories Part 13

Sarah insisted upon Content's carrying the cookies home in the dish with a napkin over it.

"When can I go again to see that other little girl?" asked Content as she and Sally were jogging home.

"Oh, almost any time. I will drive you over-because it is rather a lonesome walk for you. Did you like the little girl? She is younger than you."

"Yes'm."

Also little Dan'l inquired of old Daniel when the other little girl was coming again, and nodded emphatically when asked if she had had a nice time. Evidently both had enjoyed, after the inscrutable fashion of childhood, their silent session with each other. Content came generally once a week, and old Daniel was invited to take little Dan'l to the rector's. On that occasion Lucy Rose was present, and Lily Jennings. The four little girls had tea together at a little table set on the porch, and only Lily Jennings talked. The rector drove old Daniel and the child home, and after they had arrived the child's tongue was loosened and she chattered. She had seen everything there was to be seen at the rector's.

She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice. She had to be checked and put to bed, lest she be tired out.

"I never knew that child could talk so much," Sarah said to Daniel, after the little girl had gone up-stairs.

"She talks quite some when she's alone with me."

"And she seems to see everything."

"Ain't much that child don't see," said Daniel, proudly.

The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel never again succ.u.mbed.

When autumn came, for the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and the winter upon his precious little Dan'l, whom he put before himself as fondly as any father could have done, and as the season progressed his dread seemed justified. Poor little Dan'l had cold after cold. Content Adams and Lucy Rose came to see her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties.

But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel began to look forward to spring and summer--the seasons which had been his bugaboos through life--as if they were angels. When the February thaw came, he told little Dan'l, "Jest look at the snow meltin' and the drops hangin' on the trees; that is a sign of summer."

Old Daniel watched for the first green light along the fences and the meadow hollows. When the trees began to cast slightly blurred shadows, because of budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the terraces, and now and then the air was cleft with blue wings, he became jubilant.

"Spring is jest about here, and then uncle's little Dan'l will stop coughin', and run out of doors and pick flowers," he told the child beside the window.

Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blossoms, leaves, birds, and flowers--all arrived pellmell, fairly smothering the world with sweetness and music. In May, about the first of the month, there was an intensely hot day. It was as hot as midsummer. Old Daniel with little Dan'l went afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the carnival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon treebranches, of birds and b.u.t.terflies. "Spring is right here!" said old Daniel. "Summer is right here! Pick them vilets in that holler, little Dan'l." The old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and watched the child in the blue-gleaming hollow gather up violets in her little hands as if they were jewels. The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy.

When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child picking violets and gathering strength with every breath of the young air of the year, and he realized that the fear of his whole life was overcome for ever.

He realized that never again, though they might bring suffering, even death, would he dread the summers with their torrid winds and their burning lights, since, through love, he had become under-lord of all the conditions of his life upon earth.

BIG SISTER SOLLY

IT did seem strange that Sally Patterson, who, according to her own self-estimation, was the least adapted of any woman in the village, should have been the one chosen by a theoretically selective providence to deal with a psychological problem.

It was conceded that little Content Adams was a psychological problem.

She was the orphan child of very distant relatives of the rector.

When her parents died she had been cared for by a widowed aunt on her mother's side, and this aunt had also borne the reputation of being a creature apart. When the aunt died, in a small village in the indefinite "Out West," the presiding clergyman had notified Edward Patterson of little Content's lonely and helpless estate. The aunt had subsisted upon an annuity which had died with her. The child had inherited nothing except personal property. The aunt's house had been bequeathed to the church over which the clergyman presided, and after her aunt's death he took her to his own home until she could be sent to her relatives, and he and his wife were exceedingly punctilious about every jot and t.i.ttle of the aunt's personal belongings. They even purchased two extra trunks for them, which they charged to the rector.

Little Content, traveling in the care of a lady who had known her aunt and happened to be coming East, had six large trunks, besides a hat-box and two suit-cases and a nailed-up wooden box containing odds and ends.

Content made quite a sensation when she arrived and her baggage was piled on the station platform.

Poor Sally Patterson unpacked little Content's trunks. She had sent the little girl to school within a few days after her arrival. Lily Jennings and Amelia Wheeler called for her, and aided her down the street between them, arms interlocked. Content, although Sally had done her best with a pretty ready-made dress and a new hat, was undeniably a peculiar-looking child. In the first place, she had an expression so old that it was fairly uncanny.

"That child has downward curves beside her mouth already, and lines between her eyes, and what she will look like a few years hence is beyond me," Sally told her husband after she had seen the little girl go out of sight between Lily's curls and ruffles and ribbons and Amelia's smooth skirts.

"She doesn't look like a happy child," agreed the rector. "Poor little thing! Her aunt Eudora must have been a queer woman to train a child."

"She is certainly trained," said Sally, ruefully; "too much so. Content acts as if she were afraid to move or speak or even breathe unless somebody signals permission. I pity her."

She was in the storeroom, in the midst of Content's baggage. The rector sat on an old chair, smoking. He had a conviction that it behooved him as a man to stand by his wife during what might prove an ordeal. He had known Content's deceased aunt years before. He had also known the clergyman who had taken charge of her personal property and sent it on with Content.

"Be prepared for finding almost anything. Sally," he observed. "Mr.

Zenock Shanksbury, as I remember him, was so conscientious that it amounted to mania. I am sure he has sent simply unspeakable things rather than incur the reproach of that conscience of his with regard to defrauding Content of one jot or t.i.ttle of that personal property."

Sally shook out a long, black silk dress, with jet dangling here and there. "Now here is this dress," said she. "I suppose I really must keep this, but when that child is grown up the silk will probably be cracked and entirely worthless."

"You had better take the two trunks and pack them with such things, and take your chances."

"Oh, I suppose so. I suppose I must take chances with everything except furs and wools, which will collect moths. Oh, goodness!" Sally held up an old-fashioned fitch fur tippet. Little vague winged things came from it like dust. "Moths!" said she, tragically. "Moths now. It is full of them. Edward, you need not tell me that clergyman's wife was conscientious. No conscientious woman would have sent an old fur tippet all eaten with moths into another woman's house. She could not."

Sally took flying leaps across the storeroom. She flung open the window and tossed out the mangy tippet. "This is simply awful!" she declared, as she returned. "Edward, don't you think we are justified in having Thomas take all these things out in the back yard and making a bonfire of the whole lot?"

"No, my dear."

"But, Edward, n.o.body can tell what will come next. If Content's aunt had died of a contagious disease, nothing could induce me to touch another thing."

"Well, dear, you know that she died from the shock of a carriage accident, because she had a weak heart."

"I know it, and of course there is nothing contagious about that." Sally took up an ancient bandbox and opened it. She displayed its contents: a very frivolous bonnet dating back in style a halfcentury, gay with roses and lace and green strings, and another with a heavy c.r.a.pe veil dependent.

"You certainly do not advise me to keep these?" asked Sally, despondently.

Edward Patterson looked puzzled. "Use your own judgment," he said, finally.

Sally summarily marched across the room and flung the gay bonnet and the mournful one out of the window. Then she took out a bundle of very old underwear which had turned a saffron yellow with age. "People are always coming to me for old linen in case of burns," she said, succinctly.

"After these are washed I can supply an auto da fe."

Poor Sally worked all that day and several days afterward. The rector deserted her, and she relied upon her own good sense in the disposition of little Content's legacy. When all was over she told her husband.

"Well, Edward," said she, "there is exactly one trunk half full of things which the child may live to use, but it is highly improbable. We have had six bonfires, and I have given away three suits of old clothes to Thomas's father. The clothes were very large."

"Must have belonged to Eudora's first husband. He was a stout man," said Edward.

"And I have given two small suits of men's clothes to the Aid Society for the next out-West barrel."

"Eudora's second husband's."

"And I gave the washerwoman enough old baking-dishes to last her lifetime, and some cracked dishes. Most of the dishes were broken, but a few were only cracked; and I have given Silas Thomas's wife ten old wool dresses and a shawl and three old cloaks. All the other things which did not go into the bonfires went to the Aid Society. They will go back out West." Sally laughed, a girlish peal, and her husband joined. But suddenly her smooth forehead contracted. "Edward," said she.

"Well, dear?"

"I am terribly puzzled about one thing." The two were sitting in the study. Content had gone to bed. n.o.body could hear easily, but Sally Patterson lowered her voice, and her honest, clear blue eyes had a frightened expression.

"What is it, dear?"

"You will think me very silly and cowardly, and I think I have never been cowardly, but this is really very strange. Come with me. I am such a goose, I don't dare go alone to that storeroom."