CHAPTER IV

NEW CLOTHES

It was about sundown and Pa McBirney and Jim were sitting on the porch of their cabin, feeling lonesome and deserted, when Dick Bab, a bachelor who had a house about halfway between the McBirney house and the foot of the mountain, came driving up on his yellow mule. He grinned when he saw the two sitting there, silent.

“Listening to the whippoorwills?” he asked teasingly.

“Nope,” said Pa McBirney shortly.

“Had your supper?”

“Such as it was.”

“Suppose you wouldn’t have minded a little set-to with them there show folks, would ye?”

“Well, if they’d come, I reckon we-all wouldn’t have run away.

“Well, the neighbors thought I’d better ride up and let you know that there won’t be nothing doing. They was all hanging around looking for a little amusement too. In fact so many of them came down to see what kind of a lay-out them folks had, that the show raked in a good deal of money—more than they’ve had for a long time, to all appearances. Then Elder Mills, he spoke up and said he reckoned they’d made a pretty good thing out of this community and the best they could do was to be a-moving on. He said so emphatic. And the others spoke up and said they thought so too. So that’s the last any of us will see of that outfit. They’ve packed up bag and baggage, and if they had any idea of coming up here and making trouble for you they concealed it mighty well. So your missus may as well come out of hiding and enjoy the comforts of her own rooftree.”

“They didn’t show much spirit, did they?” asked pa in rather a disappointed voice.

“Not much. But if they’d showed more you might have been punctured full of holes by this time. I reckon it’s better for your health the way it is.”

“Like as not; like as not,” said pa. “You ’light, Dick, and spend the night. Me and Jim’s bunking together, so you can sleep in Jim’s bed.”

“I reckon you-all are wanting ma,” said Dick. And this time pa showed no resentment.

“I reckon we be,” he admitted.

So, the next day, about noon, down the steep trail walked Pa McBirney with a forked stick in his hand. Behind him came ma, who had had enough of “sitting” and was ready to go to work again. After her came Azalea, whose feet seemed fairly to touch the rocks and bound off again, and whose little head turned this way and that with a birdlike way of trying to see and hear all that there was to be seen and heard. Last of all came Jim, his arms full of laurel blossoms.

“Well,” said ma, looking in at the door of the cabin, “If this here place don’t look like a hurricane’d struck it! Azalea, you and me’ll have to straighten things up. We can change our dresses and freshen up afterward.”

“Being a girl’s hard luck,” thought Jim. “Me and pa can sit on the front porch I reckon, while the women folks tidy.” But he was mistaken.

“Here you, Jim,” called his mother in her most businesslike tones, “bring up fresh water from the spring. Pa, I’d like some more wood, please. Azalea, you can be sweeping out. I’ll get over hot water for the dishes. I thought you promised me, pa, that you’d keep the dishes washed!”

“Didn’t I do it then?” said pa despairingly. “I washed and washed and Jim wiped and wiped till we about dropped.”

“You drop pretty easy,” answered ma. But she was not scolding. Ma didn’t waste much time in scolding. There was always a laugh behind her words when she said a thing like that. Jim felt a little cast down. And he wondered if the new girl would think they had to work like that all the time. He looked at her to see how she was taking it, and he found her sweeping with all of her might. True, his mother had to show her how to hold the broom in the right way, and how long to take her strokes, but she seemed to think it was fine to be able to sweep out, and it came over Jim that up to now she probably hadn’t had a house to sweep, and no doubt she liked it.

But all the work seemed worth while when, at last, they sat down at the table together. Ma had chopped up some salt pork in beaten eggs, and had baked some potatoes in the ashes, and made biscuit and a custard pie. And pa had brought in some fresh radishes and mountain honey; so there was a real feast for them.

“This is lots better than a cave,” Azalea said shyly. “It’s lots better than the road too.” She was looking very odd in a dress of ma’s, which was worlds too wide for her, and which they had tied in with an old blue ribbon. Her pretty, birdlike little head came up out of all this cotton stuff like the head of a frightened chicken out of its ruffled feathers.

“We’ve got to get right down to the store, Azalea,” said ma briskly, “and buy some stuff to sew up for you. I can’t endure to have you looking that a-way.”

“Why, ma, couldn’t Molly’s clothes be fixed up to fit Azalea? There might be some changing to do, but you’re so handy you could manage that.”

“I ain’t got a stitch of Molly’s clothes left,” said ma rather sharply. “What do you think I’d be doing? Letting them there good things lie idle when they was needed by others? Molly wouldn’t have liked me to do a thing like that, would she? I gave them all away.”

“Well, they would have come in handy now, ma. Sometimes I think you’re too impulsive. You just go and do whatever comes into your head to do right off quick.”

“So I do, Thomas; so I do. Soon as I laid eyes on you I knew you was the man I wanted to live with for the rest of my natural life, and when you asked me to marry you it didn’t take me a quarter of a second to say yes. Soon as I saw Jimmy there, I knew he was the baby for me. Of course he really was mine, and I’d ’a’ had to put up with him even if I hadn’t liked the kind he was; but it turned out he was the kind to suit me. It was just the same with Azalea there. The minute I laid eyes on her, I yearned over her, and I can tell just as well as if it was proved to me, that she’s going to be a comfort to all of us. Yes, I’m that way, Thomas, mighty impulsive and quick-acting. Now, I’ve just made up my mind that to-morrow we’ll all go down to Lee together and get what we want for Azalea and show the folks what a united family we be.”

“You don’t want to go flaunting Azalea in the faces of folks, do you, ma?” pa protested.

“Well, I don’t know as I’d use the word ‘flaunting,’ pa, if I was in your place. The folks will be just crazy to see what she’s like, and after the stand they took, hustling them show people out of the way and all, and maybe saving your life by doing it, I think the least we can do is to let them see that the girl was worth all the trouble they took.”

“Like as not; like as not!” agreed pa.

That ma had other things on her mind was very certain. She went poking over chests and drawers, searching for something, and at last she came on some undyed homespun cotton of her own weaving. She sat for several minutes with this on her knees, looking at it. At last she called Azalea to her.

“I’ve half a mind to use that there blue dye Mis’ Leiter brought over, to color this here, so’s I can run up a dress for you, Azalea. I can’t have you go down to town looking like a scarecrow, and I ’clare to goodness, I’m prejudiced against having you go down in that outgrown dress you had on when I saw you first. Why, your arms and legs stuck out like the turkey legs on a platter. It ain’t fitten for you to go that way.”

“It does seem like you have to go to an awful lot of trouble for me, ma’am,” murmured the girl. “And anyway, you couldn’t get that done for to-morrow.”

Ma muttered something to herself which Azalea could not catch, and the next minute Mrs. McBirney was away down to the spring, building a fire, putting over a pot, and showing that she was in for what Jim called “one of her spells.”

“When ma has a spell of work,” he told Azalea, “nothing in this world can stop her.”

It couldn’t have been more than an hour later that the good, well-made stuff, dyed a rich, dark blue, was whipping on the line in the wind. An hour after that it was pressed and ready to be cut out; and before Azalea could realize what had happened, ma was fitting the waist of a new dress to her.

“I always had a knack of snipping things out,” she told Azalea, “and since I bought that there sewing machine with my egg money, I can run a thing up in no time. As luck will have it, I’ve got some crocheted edging that will look well on the neck and sleeves.”

A minute later she broke out:

“See here, Azalea, you don’t want hot, tight sleeves coming down to your wrist, like you was an old woman! I keep my eyes peeled when I go down to Lee, and I notice them girls at the hotel wears their sleeves about up to their elbows. I don’t say you want yours hiked up quite that high, but we’ll have them somewheres betwixt and between, shan’t we?”

Azalea nodded. She had little to say. She was letting all the comfort of being there soak into her as rain soaks into the thirsty earth.

“And then as to collars!” broke in ma. “I can’t bear to see a girl with a nice, round little throat, all choked up in a collar. I’ll cut this neck out a little, to give you a chance to crook your neck around like a young owl and look at the world.”

And then the machine raced along over the seams and hems, and the scissors snipped at raw edges, and ma’s needle flew in and out. It was left to Azalea and Jim to get supper, which they did well enough.

“It’ll give you a chance to learn where everything is,” said ma. “Jim, you show her the spring house and the dishes and everything.”

The little girl had cooked over a camp fire more than once, but she had never before set what Ma McBirney called “a nice table.” However, she soon found out the way that the McBirneys wanted things done, and meantime ma sewed on, faster and faster. Her hair got roughed from sitting in the wind, her hands were nervous and her eyes too bright, but she had set her mind on doing that particular thing and nothing that anyone could say to her would stop her. She was at the buttonholes when the rest of the family crept into bed.

“Don’t you do any worrying about me,” she bade them. “I’m better satisfied than I ever thought to be again.”

So they slept—Azalea on a little ‘knockdown’ that would have to serve till a place had been properly provided for her—and when morning came, on the chair lay the blue frock with its handmade edging, as simple and charming a little gown as any girl in the country would care to wear. Moreover, some faded ribbons had been dyed, and looked almost like new. And there was clean underclothing—not quite the right size, to be sure—and the old shoes had been polished and made to look fit.

But if Azalea thought that everything was to be done for her, and that she was to do nothing in return, she soon found out that she was wrong. Probably no such idea occurred to her, for she was born with a loving heart, and she had learned to serve. She was not surprised, therefore, when she found that all of the family got up early and worked hard. There were the animals to feed, the house to tidy, the water to bring, the plants to water, the garden to weed. Nobody hurried, exactly, but ma was not fond of “lazy bones,” and she kept everyone going till all was as it should be. She advised pa to drive the calf down to the butcher, and she had a basket of eggs to get ready.

But at last all was done, and pa, with Jim beside him, sat on the front seat of the wagon, and ma and Azalea sat in the back seat, all clean and fine, ready to drive down the mountain. The little calf was tied on behind. The hounds had been shut up, and only the cat saw them off. The chickens and guinea hens and turkeys could be heard away up in the brush, but they concerned themselves very little with the comings and goings of anyone. The martins were flying in and out of the high-swung gourds, but they seemed to care as little as the ground fowl. Neither did the little old house, basking there in the sun, seem to mind. And the graves there, under the Pride of India trees—they minded not at all.

So by steep and pleasant ways, underneath the chestnuts and the hemlocks, the oaks and the mulberries, the tulip trees and the poplars, the McBirneys, four in number, went winding on down, down the road toward Lee.

They had not been an hour on their way before something curious happened. There was a rushing in the bushes beside the road which startled the horses and made Thomas McBirney take the whip out of its socket to be ready for anything that might arise. And the queer part of it was that the creature that was making the noise, was running along, trying to keep pace with the wagon.

“If it was one of the hounds broken loose, it would set up a cry,” said pa. “And it ain’t leaping and jumping like an animal, nohow.”

Azalea’s heart beat hard. She thought that perhaps it was, after all, a wild animal, and that maybe they would be attacked. She was used to being on the road, but this part of the Blue Ridge was wilder than that through which she usually had traveled. However, there was not much time in which to be frightened, for before any one could realize what was happening, Jim had leaped over the wagon wheel and plunged into the bushes.

“Hold on there, boy,” yelled his father. “You don’t know what you’ll be running into.” A shout of laughter reached him.

“Well, I’ll be lammed!” cried Jim. “I’ll be shingled, if it ain’t Hi!”

“High!” cried pa. “How high? What high? What you talking about, son?”

“Oh, it’s Hi! it’s Hi!” Azalea chorused, and in a flash she too was over the wagon wheel and in the brush.

Pa turned an angry face around on his wife. “Be them two children crazy?” he demanded.

At that moment three children instead of two shot their heads up above the dark green of the wild gooseberry bushes. There was Jim’s freckled, grinning phiz, Azalea’s long, lovely face, smiling, too, and the dark, odd little face of the show boy, Hi Kitchell.

“Well, what do you think of that?” groaned pa.

“He sneaked, pa,” Jim explained at the top of his voice. “When them show folks lit out, he just sneaked. Wasn’t he the ’cute one?”

“Goodness, ma, are we going to start an orphan asylum?” pa asked under his breath.

“Might do worse,” answered ma.

But Hi was not an orphan, but a young man out for himself, and after he had got into the wagon with the others and all were rolling once more toward Lee, he made that plain.

“I went straight to Mr. Hitchcock at the mill,” said he, “and told him I wanted to go to work. He said he’d take me on next Monday. Well, that was all right, only I didn’t have a cent in my pocket, but I someway didn’t like to tell him that. So I went down town, looking around, and the funniest thing you ever heard of, happened to me.”

“What?” demanded the other four at once.

“Well, there was a gentleman come riding in on horseback, and he had a little dog with him, a terrier. He was an awful cute little dog, and when the man went in the post office, I got to playing with him. The puppy didn’t know a trick—not a trick. Just plain ignorant, he was. The man was in the office a long time, so I got to teaching that dog some of the things he ought to know, and by and by the man come out and he see me, and he said I was giving that there dog the kind of schooling he ought to have.”

“Sho!” said pa.

“Then he up and asked me where I lived and whose boy I was, and I told him the whole story.”

“That was right,” said ma gently. “That was just what you ought to do, Hi.”

“And that gentleman said if I wanted I could come up to his house and sleep in the barn, and have my meals at the house till I got my first pay from the mill, all for teaching his dog tricks. So I went up and I’ve been staying there.”

“You don’t seem to be there now,” broke in pa. “Not so’s you could notice it.”

“Why,” cried the boy, “I had to come and tell you-all, didn’t I? I thought you-all would be wanting to know.”

“We do; sure we do,” ma said, reaching forward to pat the boy on the shoulder. “Pa’s just as glad as any one, Hi. Don’t you let him fool you, the way he speaks.”

“No’em.”

“I don’t see no especial reason for rejoicing that a poor little boy is going to be shut up in that mill,” growled pa. “Hain’t I heard the whistles blowing at five, dark mornings and all, rousting them young uns out of bed? And ain’t I seen ’em trudging home after dark come? All the day gone by, and no good to them! No, you don’t get no celebration out of me over any child or chick getting in that there mill!”

“Now, please sir,” broke in Hi, in a kind of free way he had, “don’t you worry about me none. I’m going in that mill, but I ain’t going to stay there—not unless I like it mighty well. I’m going to get on, if I can. I want to get back to my ma, or to have my ma and the kids come here. But I’m done with that there show and that Weary Willie way of living. I ain’t going to trouble you none, don’t you think it. I won’t even come up to the house if you don’t want me to. But I’m thankful to you for what you’ve done for Zalie, and for what you done for her poor ma, and it just come natural to tell you how I was getting on.”

“What made you run along in them there bushes the way you did?” asked pa. “Why didn’t you come out fair and square and holler at us and let us know who you was? Why, you like to scared my horses.”

Hi was usually ready with an answer, but now he drooped.

“Can’t you speak?” demanded pa.

“Tell us, Hi,” said ma gently.

“It was just that I wanted to see you-all riding along, with Zalie setting up there like she’d been born in the family,” Hi explained, blushing. “It done me good to think that there she was, with nice people like you, and her everybody’s slave a day or two ago. I hadn’t ought to have done it, I know. But honest, I’ve got in some sort of sneaking way, having always to dodge and hide and yarn to get on and have any peace.”

Pa turned on Hi almost fiercely.

“See here, you,” he said, “don’t you do no more hiding, nor sneaking, nor fibbing. We-all are friends to you, understand? You come up to we-all’s house like it was your own. Stick in the mill a while. It won’t hurt you. Mr. Hitchcock’s a good man—good’s he can be, I reckon. You spend your Sundays with us. You can meet us at church and ride up with us. Ma, what’s happening to that there fool calf? Acts like he knowed he was going to be slaughtered, don’t he? Poor little critter! Say, ma, you do the trading to-day—you and Azalea. Me and Hi and Jim will walk over to the mill and have a little talk. I want them overseers to know the boy’s got his friends.”

It was really pa’s way of getting out of facing his curious neighbors at the stores. But ma felt no such timidity. Her heart swelled with pride as Azalea leaped, light as a kitten, from the wagon and turned to help Mrs. McBirney down. Ma nodded right and left to the people gathered to do their Saturday “trading,” and she introduced Azalea, in her gentle, singing voice, to the women and girls who came up to meet her.

“This is my girl,” she would say. “Azalea McBirney. Come, Azalea, let’s go in and see if they have something that’ll do for the makings of a dress. How’d you like a green gingham—pale green you know? And that there white barred stuff ain’t but fifteen cents a yard. How d’ye do, Mr. Constance? Pretty day, ain’t it? Do you reckon you could take these here eggs and let me do a little trading with you? Yes, this is the girl. You can call her my girl, when you’re speaking of her. I’d like to get her outfitted here at your place if you’d be so kind, Mr. Constance.”

Azalea stood facing her new world, so to speak, and on every face she saw welcome.