The Open Question Part 53

As Ethan was taking his place by Mrs. Gano, he stopped suddenly, catching sight of the preternaturally tall silver coffee-pot, and made obeisance.

"Sir or madam," he said, "I've travelled far since we parted, but I've never seen your equal."

Mrs. Gano laughed with the rest.

"That means the Mioto air has made you readier for your morning cup than you've been since you were here before. Or perhaps you agree with Frederika Bremer's old woman, 'When I see a coffee-pot, it's the same to me as if I saw an angel from heaven.'"

"She must have meant this one."

"Emmie has another name for it," said John Gano, also unbending.

"Father!" remonstrated his little daughter, blushing, "it's a great many years since I called it anything but coffee-pot."

"But before that?" persisted cousin Ethan.

"Possi-tot!"

And everybody but Emmie laughed as if it were the finest jest in the world.

After breakfast they all walked about the grounds in a body, John Gano pointing out the superiority of his trees, and Ethan indicating his best-beloved old haunts, the two girls exchanging looks of amazement that he should know their playground so intimately. Ethan was much struck by the general dilapidation. If Uncle Elijah--peace to his ashes!--had found cause to remark nearly twenty years before that the place was going to ruin, there was good ground for the a.s.sertion to-day.

Ethan remembered the wilderness as being inexorably confined to that vast region (pitifully shrunken to the older eye) below the second flight of stone steps. But "Mr." Hall, who had mowed and clipped and gardened the upper region, having joined the ghosts, for whom he had felt so little fellowship here on earth, the wilderness had risen in his absence and howled, mounting terrace after terrace, and was now laying open siege to the very Fort itself. To be sure, there were garden borders under the front windows, where John Gano lingered with a tender solicitude, lamenting for the Eschscholtzia's sake the lack of sun. But the flourishing and carefully tended pansy border marked only the more definitely the surrounding desolation.

"There's a strange dog!" said Mrs. Gano. "Some one has left the gate open."

"He may have got in down there where there's a picket missing in the fence," said Ethan.

"Oh, that picket hasn't been there for ages," Val answered; "but the old hundred-leaved rose-bushes are so thick in that corner, and so th.o.r.n.y, nothing can get past."

As she ran forward to eject the strange dog, she caught her foot in the dry, tangled gra.s.s, and, but for Ethan's quick hand, would have fallen.

"_Oh!_" she said, flushing and looking confused; then, without any proper acknowledgment, she darted off after the dog.

"If _I_ did that, father, you'd say I was clumsy," said Emmie, smiling up into his face in the prettiest way in the world.

"The gra.s.s is very long," said John Gano--"long and matted."

"It grows with great rapidity," said his mother. "It seems only yesterday we had a man here cutting it."

"It was the 29th of June."

"Oh, you must be mistaken."

John Gano shook his head.

"I remember quite well. It was the anniversary of Clay's death."

Val joined them again, breathless from the chase. Ethan had paused absent-mindedly near the corner of the wooden L, where the weather-boarding was hanging loose. It wasn't in the best taste, Val felt, that he should stare so at that strip of rotten wood, that refused any longer to hold the rusty nails. She longed to touch his arm, to rouse him.

"All this needs renewing," admitted John Gano, as though in answer to a verbal observation.

"A--yes," said Ethan, and they went on.

It was odd how the unsparing sunshine and a new pair of eyes in the party revealed the wide-spread dilapidation of the place to its old inhabitants. Val had hardly noticed it before.

John Gano picked up a blackened, weather-worn shingle off the gra.s.s.

"The equinox brought down a fresh crop of these," he said, tossing the old shingle into the wood-shed.

"Comes off the L, I suppose," said Ethan.

"No, the main roof."

"Doesn't it leak, then?"

"A little," answered his uncle, cheerfully.

"That must be bad for the house."

"We shall be roofed with slate next time," said Mrs. Gano; "it lasts longer."

"Oh, we can't complain of the way a shingle roof has lasted, that's done duty more than a quarter of a century," returned her son.

"Whenever it rains we have such fun," said Emmie. "We carry up an army of buckets and basins and washtubs to catch the rain in the attic. Last week it came through into father's room in the night, and Val--"

"Emmeline," said Mrs. Gano, "walk on; the path is narrow here."

As they pa.s.sed the kitchen-window Ethan glanced in.

"Good-morning, Aunt Jerusha! Morning, Venus!"

"Mawnin'!"

"Mawnin', Ma.r.s.e Efan!"

The old woman hobbled delightedly to the window, avoiding a broken place in the flooring.

"I see you don't neglect my knocker--shines like gold."

"Go long, Ma.r.s.e Efan!" Her rich chuckling bubbled over. "Tooby suah I ain't disremember dat ar knocker o' yourn--not oncet in twenty yeah."

"Why do you have those little squares of zinc nailed all over your kitchen floor, Aunt Jerusha?"

"Law sakes alive!"--she rolled and shook--"dey's a despit lot o' rats down sullar, an' I can't b'ar 'em up yere nohow."

Ethan was the only one of the party outside to join her cheerful laughter. But the ruinous state of the property was too obvious for him to realize that he could possibly be expected to overlook it.

When they went in-doors Ethan followed his grandmother to her own room, where he had sat with her that first evening so long ago and heard that Jerusha was his aunt. They had a long and eminently satisfactory talk until, towards its end, Ethan straightforwardly introduced the subject of the evident need of repairs, and the pleasure it would give him to--