CHAPTER XXV

The Humours of Trading

NELL had been busy since morning, and a great spread of pies, cakes, and bread in small loaves testified to her industry.

She had been equally busy yesterday; but had sold everything out before going to bed, and had awakened this morning with a bareness of cupboards almost equal to Old Mother Hubbard of nursery fame. In fact, she and Patsey had made their breakfast from corn porridge and fried potatoes, because there was nothing else in the house to eat.

It was just one week ago to-day since they had arrived at the new house at Camp’s Gulch. They had found to their amazement when they arrived that Mrs. Peters had already opened shop for them in the bare new house, and was serving pies and pots of stew to the tired miners trailing home from work.

“The next two hours are the busy time; I’ve been nearly run off my feet every evening. Sam comes along to help when the last cars are gone; but by that time the rush is nearly over,” Mrs. Peters said, as she stirred the great dish of stew that was being kept hot on a kerosene heater in the window.

“But what made you begin it?” asked Nell, slipping off her hat and coat and appearing quite at home already, even though “home” as yet had not a stick of furniture in it, saving a rough table with a few borrowed cooking utensils in the kitchen, which was also shop during the hours of buying and selling.

“Two things. The first was that I was afraid a rival shop might start before you could begin; and the second was that I was so sorry for the men with no proper food when their day’s work was done. It is enough to make any ordinary man take to drink when he can’t get decent food to eat; and the whisky sold by that man at the Settlement saloon is just rank poison and nothing else, if you’ll believe me,” said Mrs. Peters. Then she turned to attend to the wants of two men who had just entered the kitchen.

“We want some supper, if you please, ma’am. What have you got?” asked the foremost man, sniffing hungrily, for the odours of the little kitchen were very appetizing to hungry men.

“Not much to-night except pies and stew. We haven’t got straight yet; but just wait until next week and then you’ll see a difference,” replied Mrs. Peters, with a wag of her head towards Nell, as if to emphasize where the difference came in.

“Well, we can’t very well wait until next week for our supper, so we’ll take what you’ve got and be thankful,” said the man. And the two walked off with a couple of tin basins of stew, two pies, and a small loaf of bread, for which they paid half a dollar, and thought themselves well off.

“You must come over to our place to sleep; you just can’t lie on the boards,” Mrs. Peters had said in hospitable invitation, although the little house at the depot was already as full as it could hold with any degree of comfort.

But neither Nell nor Gertrude would consent to this, and they spent the night comfortably enough each rolled in a rug and lying on a big sack of shavings, while Patsey had a similar sack all to himself in the kitchen.

Since then the days had been full of hard and constant work. It was fortunate for Nell that by this time she had regained the use of her hand. Leaving Gertrude to unpack and arrange the furniture she had devoted herself to the business of catering for her numerous customers, and had found more than enough to keep her busy.

As soon as the house had been arranged in comfortable order, Gertrude departed to fetch her mother and the children from Nine Springs, while Patsey remained to help Nell.

The question of school loomed largely in their minds just now—the Settlement school was three miles away. But with the Peters children and the young Lorimers, there were nearly enough children to start a school near the depot. If another family came to live at Camp’s Gulch this might be done; meanwhile it seemed easier for Patsey to go up and down to Bratley on the cars every day than for him to wear out his boots on the long walk to the Settlement.

Just at present he was not attending school, but had been out picking berries with which to make pies the next day. Nell’s customers appeared perfectly indifferent as to what pies were made of; the main thing was to get a pie.

“There ought to be enough to-day, Patsey; just look at them!” she exclaimed, as he came in laden with the berry baskets.

“My! Just don’t they look good!” exclaimed the boy, looking hungrily at them, for he had had nothing since breakfast; and although corn porridge with potatoes had been sufficiently satisfying at the time, he was conscious of very keen hunger at the present moment.

“There is a big one for you on the corner of the stove; sit down and eat it now, then you can get in the wood for to-morrow’s cooking. It is nearly three o’clock already; and the cars come up before six, you know,” Nell said, as she dusted down the baking board and put the things tidily away for the next day.

“I’ve got it all chopped, so it won’t take long to bring it down to the house in the truck,” Patsey said, attacking his pie with great gusto, and thinking that it was if anything even nicer than it looked; but then he was so very hungry that this imparted a special flavour to the homely viands.

Nell looked out through the open door with a sudden longing. The afternoon sunshine lay warm and bright on the cleared space before the house. It was late October, but the winter was holding off; the days were soft and pleasant, although the nights had mostly a touch of frost in them. She wanted to be out-of-doors, to feel the strong wind lifting her hair, to be dazzled with the sunshine, and to watch the darting chipmunks hunting and hoarding their winter store of nuts.

“Patsey, if I go to fetch in the wood, would you dust the sitting-room and your mother’s bedroom? I haven’t had time even to look in there since breakfast. If I go to do it now I shall not have a minute for out-of-doors; then I shall have that horrid buzzing in my head all the evening.”

“It is horrid work for a girl hauling that wood-truck down the slope,” said Patsey, with a rueful face, although, to be strictly honest, he deemed it still more horrid work for a boy to be obliged to dust a sitting-room and a bedroom.

“Oh, I don’t mind the wood-hauling. I simply could not go out walking for the sake of walking when there is so much to do in other ways; but to go backwards and forwards with the wood-truck is such an extremely virtuous way of taking the air that I shall not have any trouble with my conscience over the matter. Mind you dust the legs of the chairs, Patsey, and don’t round off the corners, for that isn’t good style in dusting.”

“What am I to do if customers come?” asked the boy, in a mumbling tone, his mouth fuller of pie than good manners warranted.

“Serve them, of course. But please don’t sell all the loaves before I get back, for I want a nice one for your mother’s supper. It won’t do to treat her badly on her first night at home, you know,” Nell said brightly; and she started up the slope at the back of the house, carrying her hat in one hand and dragging the wood-truck with the other.

Just over the hill at the back of the house was a strip of ground heaped with fallen trees, which some fierce storm in the previous winter had levelled to the ground. This wood might be had for bringing home; and Nell had determined to have her wood-shed filled with it before the bad weather came. With the rapid increase of population threatening Camp’s Gulch just now, the price of firing would be sure to go up, so it behoved them to secure as much as they could possibly get while it could be had for nothing.

Every morning Patsey went over the hill, hacking and hewing, until the sun was high enough for berry-gathering; then, bringing home a truck-load of wood, he left the remainder to be brought in the evening.

Nell loved this sort of work. The squealing of the wheels of the wood-truck as they cried out for grease troubled her not at all, because it seemed perfectly natural for the wheels of wood-trucks to make a noise; then there was the pleasant smell of bark, of falling leaves, and all the mingled perfumes of the forest.

Oh, it was good to be out! Nell loaded her truck with the cut wood Patsey had left ready; then raced down the slope, while the noisy wheels shrieked and groaned behind her. Tipping out her load of wood, she started up the slope again, going more slowly now as if the keen edge of her energy had worn off. Five times she made the journey; then, warned by the sinking of the sun that it was time for her to be going indoors again, she hauled the last load into the shed, then went in to see how Patsey was getting on at housekeeping.

To her surprise she found him talking to some one who was not a customer but a visitor.

“Dr. Russell!” she exclaimed.

“I thought I should surprise you,” he said, with a laugh. “I came up on the noon cars to see a patient at the Settlement, so I thought I would stay and see Mrs. Lorimer comfortably settled after her journey.”

“That is very good of you,” said Nell; adding, a little doubtfully, “but how will you get back to Bratley? Will the cars wait for you?”

“They will have to. I shall threaten Sam Peters that he will have to work me along to the junction on a hand-car if he lets the train go without me; and the thought of pumping me for sixteen miles will make him quite willing to hold the cars back for five or ten minutes if necessary. Why, pumping would be harder work than the stoking he did on the memorable night when we came in such a hurry to help you out of a fix,” replied the doctor, with a laugh.

“But there isn’t a hand-car at this depot; at least, I don’t think so. I know there wasn’t one at Bratley last winter when the inspector wanted to go up the Roseneath track, and we went on snow-shoes instead,” said Nell.

“A much pleasanter way of getting along—when there is snow, that is. But the cars will be here soon and I must be going. Are you coming over to the depot to welcome the arrivals?”

“No; I cannot leave now because my customers will be coming in, but Patsey will go; he is going to put some cushions in the wood-truck and bring his mother across from the cars, for she is much too weak to walk even such a short distance,” explained Nell.

“A wood-truck? That is a box on wheels without any springs, I suppose. It is not to be thought of. Is Mrs. Lorimer a heavy woman?”

“No; she is about my height, but, of course, much thinner; indeed, she has wasted fearfully of late,” replied Nell.

“Well, I have carried heavier people than you, so I ought to manage Mrs. Lorimer. Patsey can be at the depot with the wood-truck, but we will hope that we shall not need him for the invalid,” said the doctor. Then putting on his cap, he strode away in the gathering dusk.

Nell watched him with a smile quivering about her lips.

“Very kind of him to come up to meet the invalid; but I expect right down at the bottom of his heart it was Gertrude that he thought most about, poor man, though he does not seem to have the courage to tell her so.”

She sighed in a quick, impatient fashion, for well she understood the great barrier which Abe Lorimer’s death had raised between Gertrude and Dr. Russell. The doctor had his little son to keep, and only a poor and casual practice to depend upon; while Gertrude, with an invalid mother, a delicate sister, and three young brothers, was more heavily burdened still.

“If only they would understand how willing I am to take Gertrude’s family off her hands they might get along very well. But I can’t go and say so right out in plain speech; and, oh dear, they are so stupid!” she muttered in impatient speech, as she put some more wood on the sitting-room fire, lighted the lamp standing on the well-spread supper-table, then went back to the kitchen to serve a couple of customers who had just come in on their way back from the mines.

“How nice your food smells; why, it is worth a quarter just to stand inside and sniff,” said one of the men, who had evidently come down in the world, for he spoke with the cultured tone of a man of education and bore himself with the upright carriage of one who has been well drilled.

“That would be one way of making money, certainly; but I fancy it would hardly pay in the long run, because when I am very busy cooking I should find it an intolerable nuisance to have a lot of people crowding in to smell the savoury odours from my oven and stew-pans,” Nell answered, with a smile, as she served the two customers as quickly as she could.

There was a great bowl of beans being kept hot on the stove, flanked by another great bowl of potatoes which had been steamed with their skins on; and the stream of customers coming in soon disposed of the contents of both bowls.

But, without doubt, the most popular portion of Nell’s stock-in-trade were the pies. These were of varied sorts; there were meat-pies, apple-pies, huckleberry-pies, blueberry-pies, and pies filled with a savoury mess of vegetables and herbs chopped fine and mixed with suet. The last-named were, perhaps, the most popular of all; one of them, with a couple of good-sized potatoes, made a comfortable meal for a man at a very small cost indeed.

There was no Irish stew to-night, for Nell thought it well to vary the menu as much as she could. A nine-quart boiler of soup was fizzing and bubbling on the stove—very good soup it was, too; the rough cookery which Nell had learned during those lonely years on Blue Bird Ridge was standing her in good stead now, since it had taught her the art of making good soup from next to nothing.

The door from the kitchen to the living-room was kept closely shut this evening, for Nell did not want Mrs. Lorimer to be worried by the commotion of buying and selling, or by the odours of the hot little kitchen.

Nell heard the bustle of arrival; but the kitchen was thronged just then with men buying their suppers, so she could not go to give the travellers a welcome. But she was relieved when, a little later, Patsey slipped out from the sitting-room and helped her by ladling the soup from the boiler. She was so tired that even a little help was welcome.

By this time the potatoes had all gone; there were only a very few beans left; the stock of pies had diminished until there were only six or seven left, and the kitchen looked as if an invading army had swept through it.

Nell left Patsey in charge then, and stole into the next room to welcome her family. Teddy and the baby were sitting in front of the fire eating jam and bread, licking sticky fingers and enjoying themselves generally, watched over by Flossie, who was hovering about them like an anxious, motherly hen guarding her chickens.

“Oh, Nell, what a lovely house this is!” cried the little girl, as she gave Nell a rapturous welcome.

“It is lovely now you have all come to make it look homely; but it was rather lonely before,” said Nell, stooping to kiss the rather jammy faces of the two small boys.

“Poor mother cried, and was so bad when she got here that Gertrude has taken her off to bed,” said Flossie, resting her head against Nell in supreme content.

The last week had been such a hard one for the poor little girl that to-night seemed like the beginning of a new life.

“I am just going to have a look at your mother, Flossie, then I must come back and have a peep at you again; but I shall not be free of the kitchen for another half-hour, I expect. Have you had anything to eat yourself, dearie?”

“I’m not hungry,” said Flossie, with a sigh, as she turned her head sharply at the sound of a moaning wail from the next room.

Nell gave the child a loving hug; then crept softly into the chamber where Gertrude was getting her mother into bed and patiently soothing the feeble complainings of the poor sick woman, who was far too ill to be reasonable.

“I tell Gertrude all this dragging me about will just kill me; but no one seems to care,” said Mrs. Lorimer, looking up at Nell with imploring eyes.

“You shall not be dragged about any more, and to-morrow you can stay in bed all day. This is such a pleasant room when the sun shines, and the view is lovely,” Nell murmured, in a consoling tone. Then she helped to lift the invalid into a more comfortable position in the bed.

Gertrude was patient and tender as the most loving daughter could be. Nell, stealing a look at her, saw the flush on her cheeks and the radiant happiness in her eyes, and guessed that for her the sadness of that home-coming had been lifted and brightened by the kindly consideration of the doctor, who had arranged to be on the spot to help with the invalid when the cars came in.

“Where are we all to sleep, Nell?” asked Flossie, in a weary tone, when Nell went back through the sitting-room.

“Patsey and the little boys have got the room behind the kitchen, and I will either make you up a bed in your mother’s room, or you can come up in the loft and sleep with me,” Nell said.

“I should love to sleep with you; but I didn’t know there was a loft. Is it a ladder or steps?” asked the child, eagerly.

“Steps. But I will show you presently. I am going to send Patsey to put Teddy and the baby to bed, but you are to rest until I come in.”

“I can put the children to bed—I always do,” replied Flossie, with a patient sigh, for her small arms and feet were very weary to-night.

“No, no; you are too tired. Patsey will do it,” said Nell, with a brisk nod. Then she hurried into the kitchen, where Patsey was just draining the last of the soup into the tin pot of a man who was a late-comer, and so had to be satisfied with what he could get.

“There is not nearly a pint, so we will charge you half price,” said Nell, politely.

“That won’t suit me at all, for I don’t want half a supper. Ain’t you got anything you can fill it up with?” said the man, sending a hungry gaze round the bare kitchen in search of something eatable.

“There are the beans—they are filling,” suggested Patsey, with a wag of his head towards the big bowl, which still had a handful or so of beans lurking at the bottom.

“Right you are, boy. Beans is filling. Shove ’em into the soup, if you please, miss, and give it a stir, then I shall have a supper fit for a millionaire,” said the man, and, tossing down the money, he departed in great content.