CHAPTER NINETEEN

DIXIE GOES SHOPPING

Dixie was awake on the eventful Saturday morning as soon as the first bird-note was heard underneath the wide-spreading eaves. Quietly she slipped from bed, hoping not to awaken the little curly-headed sleeper at her side, but, just as she was buttoning up her best gingham dress, Carol opened dazed blue eyes and looked about.

“Why, Dixie Martin, what for are you up so early?” was the puzzled query, but almost instantly the little girl remembered, and at once she began to climb out of bed.

“Oh, I know,” she prattled, “this is the day that you go to Genoa with Miss Bayley, and I am to be ‘little mother’ to Baby Jim and Ken.”

In another moment the arms of the older girl were about her, and the flushed cheeks were being kissed as Dixie exclaimed, “Carol, it’s so nice of you not to mind my going and leaving you at home, but some day, I’m just sure, it will be your turn to go and see the shops, and—and everything.”

There was joy in the heart of Dixie as she descended the ladder that led from their loft bedroom. How Carol had changed! Just one short month ago she would have sulked if Dixie were to be given some pleasure that she had not been asked to share, but to-day the small girl was actually getting up hours earlier than usual, that she might be a real help in the little home, and that Dixie need not be all tired out before starting on her wonderful journey. But, early as these two little maids were astir, Ken was ahead of them, and, just as the potatoes and bacon were sizzling for breakfast, in he came with a pail of milk.

“Girls,” he cried jubilantly, twirling his cap so dexterously that it caught on the hook by the door, just as he wished it to do, “something’s happened. Something jolly! Guess what.”

The sisters looked interested but did not venture a guess.

“Blessing is weaned!” was the astonishing announcement. “He wriggled out of his pen in the night I guess. I was awful panicky at first, thinkin’ like as not he was lost, but where d’you think I found him? In the shed, eating apples.”

“Well, I’m glad,” Carol remarked as she continued with her task, “we won’t have to bother any more about feeding him with a bottle.”

Dixie sighed, “I was hoping you’d say my cat had come back. She’s been gone three weeks if it’s a day.”

Ken laughed as he turned the milk through a sieve. “Cats always come back, sis,” he said encouragingly. Then, for a moment, he was silent as he plunged his face into a deep basin of cool water from the pump, but later, when he was rubbing vigorously with a rough towel, he winked one eye at Carol as he added: “Even if Topsy never comes back, it’s small loss. The world is full of cats.” He said it to tease, for well he knew his sister’s devotion to that particular black cat. The expected retort came:

“Why, Ken Martin, how can you say that, when you know there’s only one Topsy cat? You might as well say that if Baby Jim went away, it wouldn’t matter, ’cause the world is full of babies.”

Carol pretended to be indignant. “Dixie, how can you speak of cats and our baby all in one breath?”

A small voice arose in the next room, and the little mother flew thitherward, to return a moment later with a sleepy, flushed little four-year-old, who was covered with a long pink-flannel nightie. His golden curls were towsled, and when the little maid had seated herself and cuddled him on her lap, he beamed around at them all, but looked up into the face that was bending over him with his sweetest smile. Then, lifting his warm little hand, he patted her freckled cheek as he prattled, “Jimmy-Boy loves Dixie.”

Almost convulsively the girl held him close. “Oh, Baby Jim,” she said, “I’m awfully sorry I said that about cats, for even if the world is full of babies, after all, there’s only just one.”

An hour later Carol looked at the clock. “You’d better hurry, Dix,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to miss the stage.”

And hurry the little maid did, and at eight o’clock promptly she set off up the cañon trail with a song singing in her heart, and with feet that could hardly be kept from dancing.

Josephine Bayley was just finishing her breakfast when a tap came upon her door. With the girlish skip which had so shocked prim little Miss Archer, she went to open it, and, as she had supposed, she found Dixie, her freckled face aglow, standing outside.

She was wearing a very pretty leghorn hat wreathed with daisies.

“Why, Dixie, how nice you look!” the young woman exclaimed. “Come in, dear. We can see the stage when it comes up the valley road. What a pretty hat you have.”

The girl flushed. “’Tisn’t mine, teacher,” she confessed. “It belongs to Carol, but she just made me wear it.” Then she added in a burst of confidence: “Carol’s changed a lot since she went away to be ’dopted. Before that she never would let me even put this hat on in front of the mirror, let alone wear it outdoors, but this morning, when I was putting on my old hat that got caught in the rain last spring and sort of limped, she came right up and took it away, and then, before I knew what she was up to, she slipped back of me and put her treasure-hat right on my head, and when I said something might happen to it, she said, ‘All right, let it,’ but that she wasn’t going to have her big sister go to town in a hat that looked as though Biddy-hen had used it for a nest.”

There were sudden tears in the eyes of the little girl. “Oh, teacher,” she confided, “I did think that I always loved Carol as much as ever I could, but I’m loving her more every day, and Ken, too. He said last night, ‘Gee, sis. I’m glad now Carol went away to be ’dopted, for I’m so glad she came back.’”

“She is a dear, sweet girl,” Miss Bayley said, “and it was nice for her to want you to wear the hat which she so treasures, but I’m sure that nothing will happen to it, for there isn’t a cloud in the blue, blue sky, and we’re not expecting whirlwinds to carry it away.”

While they talked, Miss Bayley washed the few dishes and then Dixie helped her spread the bed in the screened-in porch, which was still a joy to the girl who had lived her twenty years in crowded New York.

Just as the last little pat was given to the pillow, a distant rumbling was heard, and Dixie ran to the front window of the cabin and looked down the valley road. “It’s coming, teacher, Miss Bayley. The stage is ’most here!”

Josephine Bayley felt as though she were a girl again, a very young girl. Dixie’s excitement was contagious. Donning her hat and jacket, and taking her shopping-bag, which had room in it for all the things they were going to purchase, she caught the little girl by the hand, and, though her feet longed to skip, they thought it best to walk demurely, for the innkeeper’s wife, Mrs. Enterprise Twiggly, had appeared to greet any newcomers that might have arrived to stay at the inn, and well did Miss Bayley know that she expected schoolteachers to appear morosely dignified.

Mr. Hiram Tressler, the driver of the stage, was a very old man, having driven that route more years than Mr. Enterprise Twiggly could remember. He had been born and brought up in those parts, but his unwavering good nature and optimism had kept him young-looking, and his life out-of-doors had made him, as he himself said, “as hard as a pine-knot.”

“All aboard, them that’s comin’ aboard!” he called from his high seat. Then, noting that the new teacher, whom he had brought up from Reno but a month before, was about to embark with him, he added, “Miss Bayley, wouldn’t you an’ little Dixie Martin like to sit up front?”

The young girl looked up into the face of her companion so eagerly that the teacher gave a laughing response that she was sure they would be glad to accept the invitation. The passengers inside the coach looked like traveling salesmen, with much baggage stowed about them, and they seemed much more desirous of sleeping than they did of admiring the majestic scenery through which they were to pass. One did waken when the stage started with a jolt, but soon dozed again.

Little Dixie, wedged in between Miss Bayley and the stage-driver, looked up beamingly at first one and then the other. “Traveling’s real exciting, isn’t it?” she said at last, when they were well under way.

Josephine Bayley nodded. Was it amusing or was it tragic, she was wondering, that this little midget, small for her twelve years, had never been out of Woodford’s but once before, and that once to help select a coffin. Josephine Bayley resolved that this day should be so brimmed with happy hours that the little girl would have no time to recall the sad memory of that other journey to Genoa.

They were turning down the rough, rugged cañon road that was deep in the shadow of great old pines, when Ken, Carol, and Baby Jim leaped from behind the massive trunks where they had been hiding, and shouted, waving their handkerchiefs, “Good-by, Dixie! Good-by, teacher!” Then Baby Jim’s shrill, excited voice floated down the cañon after them, “Bring me some candy!”

What a happy light there was in the gold-brown eyes that were lifted to the teacher, as the little girl said: “I hoped they’d all come. I’m so glad they wanted to!”

Josephine Bayley held the thin hand of the child in a close clasp, and she was thinking: “Lucky little girl! How I wish I had some one to care whether I come or go! Brother Tim is all I have in this wide world, and we are so far apart.” Then, remembering that this was to be Dixie’s day, the teacher chatted about things that would interest her little comrade, and two hours later Mr. Hiram Tressler sang out, “There’s Genoa’s church-steeple.” Then, with evident pride, “Teacher, did ye ever see any buildin’ go up much higher’n that?”

Miss Josephine Bayley, late of New York, had to confess that she had seen steeples a mite higher. She wondered what the stage-driver would think if his route led by the Woolworth building, but how glad, glad she was that it didn’t!

Ten minutes later the stage-driver drew rein. “Here we are now. That there’s the dry-goods emporium, teacher. I’ll pick you up agin, right on this very spot, prompt at five o’clock. So long!” Then the stage rumbled away, and Dixie, clinging to the teacher’s hand, entered the store, her heart beating like a trip-hammer.

There was silk, silk everywhere about her, and how glad she was that two dollars and thirty cents would buy enough for a birthday dress for Carol.