CHAPTER VII

FROM THE LITTLE GIRL'S SIDE

I was so lonely after Norman went away. I suppose it had been almost like having a brother. Mrs. Hayne and I went to see him start, and there was quite a crowd of friends. The sun was shining as if it was a May day, with that curious quiver in the air, and it was truly pleasant. Of course, pinning our faith to the Almanac, we could safely have said winter had come to an end, but in Chicago March did not mean spring.

What a handsome face that Mr. Le Moyne had, and his voice was so sweet as he said, "Never fear, he will come back safe. You may see us both before you expect it."

I suppose that was meant for Norman's mother, but he gave me the smile as well.

"You had better come home with me," she said, still holding my hand.

"Oh, no, I can't," I replied. "I am mending some bags for father. I couldn't finish them yesterday."

"These hands are too little to sew rough bags."

"M'liss is going to help me."

"Oh, then, I suppose I must let you go. Come over to supper, won't you?"

"I will see," but I felt my cheeks burn, for I really did not mean to, much as I loved her. I did not want to hear them talk about Norman and rejoice at his good fortune. It was good, I know, but I was not quite ready to be glad over it. I wanted a little time to get my mind steady.

M'liss had the bags strewn around and the baby in the midst of them. He really was growing better looking, his chin was filling out and his forehead began to be a little bump that broke the smooth descent from the top of his head. But it seemed as if his mouth grew wider.

"D'yr know what I've jest gone an' done? Yer pop'll scold like fire 'n' tow, but that ther' bag jest wasn't any bag at all but holes. 'N' I've jest took it to mend t'others. Two patches an' that ther' little smitch was all I could git out of it. Holes ginerally speaking haven't much savin' grace to 'em. You jest can't convert 'em to anything."

I looked rather askance. Bags were bags in those days.

"What yer pop wants is to git a piece o' baggin'. Marty Pettingil's weavin' of it. For a good strong heft o' corn er grain'll punch new holes in 'em quicker'n wink. En ther's somethin' 'bout puttin' new wine in old bottles, though I don't see jest why if you leave stoppers out. Any fool oughter know enough fer that. En patchin' old bags is like darnin' old stockin's, tears out jest above en below an' all round. I put a patch on 'em now. That's an idee of my own en saves a lot o' stitches. Them bags is mended."

I shook out two and laid them by. Then I brought out a wolf rug and put the baby on that. He crowed a little and then returned to his former employment of gnawing his fist. "The baby is real good," I said. "Does he ever cry?"

"Oh, Lord yes! But he's findin' out that it don't amount to much an' times whenst he's cross en don't have stomach ache I hit him a good slap, en I give him a piece o' pork rind to chaw on. It's good as a dose o' ile."

There was not much science or sanitary knowledge in those days. Yet children throve and grew.

I hunted up my work-box. Homer had made it, though it was Norman's gift. We had pasted some bits of pretty paper in most of the compartments.

"Now you jest g'long," said M'liss, brandishing her formidable needle. "'Tain't enny kind o' work for you, an Norme he stopped t'other night an' said—'You jest do the hard things and chores, M'liss, to save her. She ain't strong ernough to tackle 'em, an' I'll make it all straight with you when I kem back.'"

"It was so good in him to think of that!"

"'N' if you want to work go out en hunt aiggs. Caton's folks sent over. Two dozen ef you've got 'em to spare."

I was very glad to do that. It was a mystery to our neighbors how father could make hens lay in cold weather. They had a good tight house for the night, and he seldom let them out until noon. We threw the corn in on the ear, and it was quite fun to see them tumble over each other to pick it off.

I only found fourteen, but I knew there would be more by noon. How pretty and white they were, almost like living things.

I took up my knitting. Men's stockings came up over the knees then, and it was a good long stretch to knit the legs. M'liss had pared a great panful of potatoes, so I filled up the big kettle with water and swung it over the blaze.

"Now ef you kin find a crust o' bread—I guess that youngun's hungry, en I don't want no growlin'."

"Why, he can't eat bread with no teeth!"

"Well, he kin gnaw it, en if he thinks he's gittin' some it'll be all the same."

"It wouldn't be for a hungry man," and I smiled.

"Land no! En if he takes after his father the Lord help us! Jed Hatch kin eat mor'n any two men I know."

The bags were mended and piled up in the out kitchen. M'liss cooked the potatoes and fried the pork while I laid the table. The baby rolled over asleep with his crust still in his hand and his mouth. Father came in and gave my cheek a soft pinch.

"I was afraid you had been crying your eyes out," he said. "Brave little girl, we'll miss him bad enough, but it's such a fine chance and there's such a lot of Hayne boys. Guess he's the smartest of the lot though, where books are concerned, but it isn't everybody that's wantin' book learning. Why, it's said that fine old fellow Mr. Le Moyne's worth thousands and thousands!"

"I've been kinder respectin' yer feelin's," said M'liss in a low tone "en thought I wouldn't say anythin' about Norme goin' away, seein' as ye was sich friends. Yer'll miss him jest orful, he was here so much."

I winked hard to keep the tears back.

"Harris says they won't find another boy like him in a hurry. I don't know what's got into boys nowadays, they ain't worth their salt. Seem to think they were put into the world jest to loaf round. That horse-racing will be the ruin of them. I'd have it stopped if I was boss."

I didn't so much mind the talk of boys in general. Father ate a good hearty dinner and went off to work, pleased to find the bags mended. M'liss ate her dinner, fed her baby, washed the dishes and took some potatoes home with her, though she "'lowed she'd stay and company me if she hadn't promised to rub out Mis' Crane's wash, seein' she had rheumatiz' and wasn't strong."

It was a lonely afternoon, for I was thinking of the evenings in all the two years to come. If I had a sister! There were no girls near by. Over the other side of the river there were so many of them and they were always having such good times.

It was a long, long afternoon. I fed the chickens and shut them up and then cooked the supper. We were hardly through when there was a cheery whistle in the outer kitchen and Ben Hayne came in.

"Mother sent me over to say she was coming this afternoon only Mis' Carpenter an' Mis' Wooley come a-visiting. They are there yet. I was kep' in school."

"Then you haven't had any supper. Come and have a bite, though I expect you have lots of good things at home."

People in those days made a great spread for company.

"Yes, and stay a bit with Ruth while I go out and smoke a pipe," said father.

Ben nodded and sat down at the table.

"Ruth," he began, when he had demolished a big slice of bread, "I feel somehow as if there had been a funeral. I s'pose it is 'cause we know Norme isn't coming back in ever so long. But say, won't he have just the beatinest time! We were looking up the places on the map. Norme was such a good fellow. I'm going to try to get in a store next year. Father says I may."

"That will be a nice thing."

"And over here, too. Then I can drop in just as Norme used to. Mother doesn't see what you're going to do alone. She'll be over to-morrow. Wouldn't it be a great scheme for you to move?"

"Oh, father couldn't move the ground and everything," I returned.

"No, I s'pose not." Then he laughed. "They're going to move some ground though come summer to fill up the slough. Dear me, I wish we had some mountains!"

I could recall some mountains in the old State we had come from, yet, somehow, I had begun to love the long stretch of prairie.

"Tell me what you are learning at school," I said, as I was putting away the supper things.

He was in full swing when there was a rap at the door. To my great surprise it was Mr. Abner Harris. He greeted Ben very cordially, and they began to talk about Norman at once, and what a splendid prospect he had before him.

"He is worthy of it, too," said Mr. Harris, "or I could not have recommended him. I am about as sorry to part with him as any one. I don't know when we will find such another painstaking fellow. You will miss him about reading, won't you?" turning to me, "and I came over to say that if you'd like to borrow any of the books I have, you'd be welcome to them. My sister is going to call on you. Why, you must get lonesome here with no one but your father."

"I've never had any one else," I replied, "and everybody has been very good to me."

"And you are your father's housekeeper?"

"Partly a woman comes in to help."

"I thought you were larger, older, though I have never noticed you especially. Well, some evening I'll bring my sister over. She has no children, to her great sorrow, so you must make friends."

"I shall be very glad to," I said.

Father came in before he went and they had a little talk, mostly about the good fortune that had befallen Norman.

Then we shut up the house and went to bed. Yes, it must be something like a funeral. The body went out of the house. I wondered how any one could bear to have it put in the ground. Norman had read about some country—I think it was Egypt—where they built real houses for their dead and put in them the things their relatives had used while alive, painted and carved pictures on the walls and went in to see them now and then. That seemed ever so much nicer than lowering them into the earth.

"But Norman isn't dead," I said to myself, "and he surely will come back." I ran it over in my mind. Seven hundred and thirty days. Each day would count.

I recalled the time I had first seen him and the warm welcome Mrs. Hayne had given us after that long journey. That was more than four years ago, and then I laughed softly to myself—why he would be away only half that time, and the four years had not seemed long. So I dropped asleep quite happy.

For some time I think I lived mostly in the past. I began to go to school again. Spring came in early and everybody was astir. Indians came down with pelts they had gathered through the winter and there were some wigwams put up out on the prairies where they held powwows and dances and laid out in the sun and smoked pipes. They were a lazy lot and they hung around until all their money was spent. They were paid largely in clothing, blankets and useful articles, but they kept trading them off, and though there were some stringent rules about selling them any quantity of whiskey, they managed to get it all the same. Then, by degrees they started off north again to join their brethren who objected to civilized life.

But there was quite a stationary residue. The squaws seemed to improve much faster than the braves, though they had all the hard work to do. They dug up the ground and planted corn and other vegetables, they dressed skins and made clothing and moccasins and ornamental bead work, which they sold. Occasionally some of the traders bought a store of it to take to the eastward.

Father kept adding to his stretch of prairie land all the time. He had the true Yankee thrift as I came to know afterwards. Yet at this early date Yankees were not held in very high esteem and peddlers were rather tabooed. Indeed, at one time there had been a license of fifty dollars exacted for selling wooden clocks in the whole State. The law was against "bringing in and selling." But the shrewd Yankee evaded this by some parties bringing them in, and quite another party selling them. So it was proved that neither man was amenable to the law, which presently fell into desuetude.

There had been another funny point in the license of Mr. Mark Baubein when his ferry was first established. He kept two racing horses and was very fond of getting up a trial of speed with some of the young Indians who were crazy over this amusement. So he was ordered to ferry the citizens of Cook County from daylight in the morning until dark without stopping, and the query was whether the citizens were compelled to go without stopping.

The Tremont Hotel was being builded anew, and some of the seventeen houses erected again. Much more care was taken. There seemed to be a general awakening throughout the town. Streets were lengthened and Wolf's Point at the junction of the two branches of the river did not seem near so far away.

There were public and private schools, the latter being used mostly for girls. I began to make friends with them, living over the river and going only in pleasant weather had kept me out of their latitude and influence. I had been rather a shy little girl and Norman had been company enough. But I came to have a wistful sort of longing for some of my own kind.

Mrs. Hayne was very sweet and motherly. She tried to persuade father to move over her side of the river. It had the most advantages, she would argue.

"You wait and see," father would reply. "We're going to spread out, I can tell you. There's room enough for two cities, and I have so much outlying land. I'm in for raising hogs now and I want plenty of room."

Then he would look doubtfully at me and with a half laugh say: "I wish I had two girls instead of one," and I wished it as well.

Mr. Harris brought his sister to see us. She was a Mrs. Chadwick, a very sweet, quiet-looking woman, with none of the breeziness of Mrs. Hayne. Her husband was very much interested in the government and improvement of the town, and as there were no public halls the men generally gathered at some of the better class taverns and discussed the public weal. Father often went, though he did not take any active part. Neither did Mr. Harris, for he attended closely to business and spent his evenings at home.

"But what does your little girl do?" asked Mrs. Chadwick. "Surely you do not leave her alone?"

"I'm not afraid," I said. "I put up the bar and sew or read until he comes home, or M'liss comes up and sometimes the boys."

"Abner, we must have her up with us. I have no little girls, but I think we could entertain you. We have plenty of books to read."

"I'd be mighty glad to have you take her in hand," said father. "Mrs. Hayne's been like a mother, but you see that's a good streak off, and when she doesn't go to school it's rather lonesome."

"Of course you miss Norman very much," Mr. Harris commented, "he was a nice steady fellow. Dan's smart too, but rather wild. I don't know as this town is the best place to bring up boys, but still we've turned out some pretty nice men. I suppose there's a time when most of them kick over the traces, but they get broken in when they marry."

There had one letter come to Mrs. Hayne from Norman. They were at Detroit and were going up to the Straits. He had been very busy and a good deal homesick, he admitted, but he liked Mr. Le Moyne, and would never be sorry that he had started out in life. There were so many wonderful things in the world. At the Straits he would write more at length. "Give my love to little Ruth," he said, "and tell her she shall have a good long letter."

A week or so after their visit Mr. Harris came for me. It was not very far. They had quite a pretty cottage and a really beautiful garden. It was light enough to walk through it, and I was delighted. I had a vague idea that I had seen such gardens in our old State. Great bunches of camomile with their snowy disks and pungent odor, sweet Williams of almost every color, a tall row of hollyhocks just coming into bloom ranged along the fence, a bed of sweet herbs, lavender, thyme, sage, and there had been roses. I thought the most beautiful of all were the tall spikes of pure white lilies that I had never seen before, but I came to know afterward were annunciation lilies, and I never see the Virgin with her branch of bloom but it carries me back to that evening in the old garden.

The house downstairs had a sitting-room, a kitchen with a sort of shed-room off, and a sleeping-room. The first named had a fine rag carpet on the floor of Marty Pettengill's weaving and several boughten chairs that had come from Buffalo. Tall brass candlesticks and a pair of curious bronze-like pitchers with a gay-colored band about their necks and an oval of a girl's face set in their sides, that always interested me very much; a table between the windows with a Bible and hymn book, and a somewhat tarnished gilt frame mirror that broadened out at the top with a sort of cornice that enclosed a picture that I used to study of a young man in a boat and a girl just stepping into it. She held up a blue gown that was meant for silk by the shine of it, and had the daintiest slippered foot laced up over the instep with black cord. I admired her very much at first, then I grew tired of her, for I wanted to have her step into the boat and see him row away.

Upstairs, where we went presently, Mr. Harris had a sleeping chamber and what we might now call a library, or a den. There was a pair of huge antlers over the narrow mantle that divided off the fireplace. There were several guns and powder horns and some Indian trophies, and curious things I knew afterward were lichens from forest trees. The chairs were mostly homemade, and there was a box lounge with an Indian blanket over it. In both corners of the chimney from there to the wall were shelves with books and various curiosities from many parts of the continent.

"Here's where Norman and I sat and read after I found he had a liking for books," Mr. Harris said. "Books are my choicest friends. You run to verses, though, don't you?" looking at me. "I suppose that is natural for girls."

"Well, I don't know," interposed Mrs. Chadwick. "When I was a little girl I just hated verses, perhaps because I was compelled to learn them by heart, and occasionally speak a piece for the entertainment of my mother's friends. Stories were considered very demoralizing and giving children and young people false views of life. We were allowed 'Rosamond and the Purple Jar,' on account of the fine moral."

She laughed softly.

"Rosamond—" I repeated doubtfully.

"Oh, haven't you ever seen that?"

"No, ma'am," I admitted frankly.

"Oh, Abner, do read it to the child," she exclaimed smilingly.

Mr. Harris had lighted two candles and stood them on a stand that I remember was painted green, and a gay-colored mat on it.

So I heard Rosamond and her unwise choice. I had seen some glass jars with colored liquid in them at Mr. Carpenter's drug store, but I couldn't understand even then how any one could make such a sacrifice to possess one.

"Why, I should have found some poke berries and mashed them up and put some water on them," I said, "and there are dye stuffs—"

"Perhaps poke didn't grow in Rosamond's country," said Mrs. Chadwick with a laugh.

"I'd rather had a jar of flowers, though that would not have lasted," I added as an afterthought.

"And you do not like the story?"

"I think Rosamond was a foolish girl."

"So her mother thought, and she made her suffer for it—learn by experience, as we say."

Mr. Harris laughed heartily.

"What else did you do when you were a little girl?" I asked with some curiosity. It seems strange to one in childhood that a grown-up woman could ever have been a little girl.

She had lived in Philadelphia and been one of quite a large family of plain Methodist people, almost as strict as Quakers. She had gone to Western New York with a married sister and had met Mr. Chadwick there and married him, and after they had moved to Chicago her brother Abner had come out. Most of the older members of the family were dead. Her sister lived at Ithaca now and had quite a large family, with some grandchildren.

I was wonderfully interested in these reminiscences; indeed, I was quite captivated by Mrs. Chadwick. She was very different from Mrs. Hayne, and I wondered if it was not disloyal to like her so well. I understood afterward that it was the difference made by education and leisure.

It was a very pleasant evening and gave me some new ideas. Mr. Harris brought me home. Father had come back and was sitting on the doorstep smoking his pipe.

"I was wondering if I had lost my little girl!" he exclaimed with a short half laugh. "But I guess I should have known where to look for her."

"We shall be very glad to have her any time," was the response, "and you must not leave her here alone. Not that there's anything to fear, but it's lonesome."

"I look out for that," and father nodded, drawing me closer to his knee and tightening his arm about me. We did love each other dearly, but people in that day were not effusive. There was so much work to do in the new countries that affection ran more to deeds than words or caresses.

A few days after I had my grand, glad surprise—a letter from Norman. From Detroit they had gone up to Marquette on Lake Superior, where there was a great deal of business to straighten out and claims to adjust. The world was wonderful and splendid. One hardly had any idea of it in Chicago, and Mr. Le Moyne was proving one of the most generous and charming of friends. Norman was learning French. It was almost universally used up there, and Mr. Le Moyne was a great reader of French literature and knew pages of it by heart. "I wish you could study it, too," he wrote, and then he gave me places to trace out on the map where they had been; and there was the great Lake Superior and the Indian countries, the most elegant furs one could imagine, and a variety of strange and beautiful animals. The trading stations and the small towns were so picturesque, the people curious indeed. Altogether it sometimes seemed like a dream to him, and he could not put half the wonderful things in a letter. They were to return to Detroit and I was to send a letter there and tell him all about myself, and if I missed him very much, if I took the old walks and read the old poems over, and what I was learning.

At that period mails were slow and uncertain, and letters were often sent by friends. An appeal had been made to the general government, and Mr. Hogan was postmaster, combining it with some other businesses. The little old place was quite a rendezvous on mail day, though no one was ever certain of that even. A row of old boots nailed up for mail boxes created much amusement. But mere friendship letters were a rarity. Indeed, writing a letter was considered a great feat. If one heard from friends once a year it brought content. Postage was very high, and in new countries money was scarce.

I labored over my letter, writing it first on various scraps of paper, as I could think of things I wanted to say. Books are written nowadays with more ease.