Part 7

“‘But see how hard she’s trying,’ argued Betty. ‘The Carsons have nothing but the big family Bible, and Lissy has to stand by the table and learn her verses out of it. If she works so hard and doesn’t get anything, she might think there’s no use in trying.’

“Annie looked stubborn.

“‘My Father said he would give me a dollar if I get the Testament,’ she said, ‘and I mean to try for it. You can do as you like, Betty, but I will say all the verses I know.’

“‘I should hate to have Lissy get ahead of me,’ I explained, ‘when I’ve always gone to meeting and she hasn’t and I am in the fifth reader and she is only in the third. It would look as if she was so much smarter than I am and Mother hates to have us thought a bit backward.’

“At these arguments Betty herself looked uncertain.

“‘Well, maybe you’re right,’ she remarked. ‘I know it would disappoint Grandfather if I only said a few verses, for he says I should be an example to the other children.’ Then she saw Charlie picking up some early apples in the orchard. ‘Let’s see what Charlie says,’ she cried, and was off across the road with Annie and me following.

“When we had explained the matter to Charlie, he looked at us scornfully. ‘I never saw such sillies,’ he said. ‘If you girls pull out, though, it will make it that much easier for the rest of us. I’m for the Testament.’ Then he pretended he was reading from a book he held in his hand, ‘Presented to Charles Purviance by his pastor for excellence—.’ Betty started after him, and then Annie and I chased him, too, and we got to playing ‘tag’ and forgot all about Lissy and the Testament.

“Sunday was a beautiful day, bright and sunshiny. From miles around people came to attend the all-day service. There were many strangers. With the Orbisons came Mr. Orbison’s sister and her granddaughter, a little girl about my age named Mary Lou, who was visiting away from California. Mary Lou wore a silk dress and lace mitts and a hat with long velvet streamers and she carried a pink parasol.

“Tables had been set up in the grove across from the church, and at noon, after the morning sermon, dinner was served. There was fried chicken and boiled ham and pickles and pie and cake and everything good you could think of, and the people had all they could eat.

“After dinner Mrs. Orbison brought Mary Lou over to where Annie and Betty and I were sitting and left her to get acquainted, so she said. But Mary Lou didn’t want to get acquainted with us. She just wanted to talk about herself. She told us that she had three silk dresses and eleven dolls and a string of red beads and a pony not much larger than a dog and ever so many other things.

“‘Don’t you have a silk dress for Sunday?’ she asked, looking at my blue sprigged lawn, which until then I had thought very nice.

“‘No,’ I replied. And I added crossly, ‘My mother says it’s not what you’ve got that counts but what you are,’ though I’m free to confess I didn’t get much consolation from this thought, then.

“Pretty soon we went into the church, and after a prayer and some songs the smaller children began to go up one by one to say their verses. Brother Bard kept count and as they finished each verse he would call out the number of it.

“After a while he came to Lissy Carson, and every one was surprised when she kept on until at last she had recited sixty-one verses, two more than anyone else had given so far.

“I looked at Betty, but she sat with downcast eyes and flushed cheeks. Annie looked scared, and I couldn’t see Charlie. Then Betty was called on and she said fifty-eight verses and quit.

“‘Are you sure that is all, Betty?’ her grandfather said in a puzzled tone.

“‘Yes, sir,’ Betty replied and took her seat.

“I came next and I had made up my mind by then that I wouldn’t keep Lissy from getting the Testament, so I recited fifty-nine verses. I can still see the amazement in Mother’s face when I sat down.

“Annie Brierly gave fifty-nine and Charlie sixty, though of course, like Betty and me, they each knew many more verses than that. Lissy would get the Testament, and I was glad of it when I saw her sitting there so proud and happy. Why didn’t Reverend Bard give it to her at once and be done with it? Whatever was he waiting for? Then I saw. Mary Lou, the strange little girl, was tripping up front in all her finery as self-possessed as you please.

“And what do you think? She said sixty-three verses and got the Testament!

“Well, you can imagine how Annie and Betty and Charlie and I felt, though Charlie wouldn’t talk about it even to me. He never admitted but what he’d said all the verses he knew, though I knew better. Hadn’t I heard him at home reciting chapter after chapter when he thought no one was listening?

“We girls went around behind the church to talk it over, and Annie cried a little, and Betty stamped her foot and said she wasn’t an example any more and she wished Mary Lou would tear her parasol and lose her mitts and get caught in a rain and spoil her hat. And we all got to laughing and forgot our disappointment.

“And now it’s bedtime for three little children I know.”

THE COURTING OF POLLY ANN

One evening when Bobby and Alice and Pink came to Grandma’s room they found her sitting before the fire rocking gently to and fro and looking thoughtfully at something she held in her hand. When they had drawn up their stools and sat down, she handed the object to them and they passed it from one to the other, examining it eagerly.

It was a button—a pearl button of a peculiar shape, fancifully carved. The holes were filled with silk thread, attaching to the button a bit of faded flannel as if it had been forcibly torn from a garment.

“I found that button today,” Grandma began, “when I was looking for something else, in a little box in the bottom of my trunk. I had forgotten I had it. It came off my brother Stanley’s fancy waistcoat, and the way of it was this:

“Stanley had been away at school all year, and when he came home he had some stylish new clothes—among other things a pair of lavender trousers and a waistcoat to match and a ruffled shirt and some gay silk cravats.

“Every Sunday he dressed up as fine as could be, and all the girls were nice to him. But he didn’t pay any attention to any of them except Polly Ann Nesbit, who was the prettiest girl in all the country round about. Some people called Polly Ann’s hair red, but it wasn’t. It was a deep rich auburn, and she had brown eyes and a fair creamy skin. Besides being pretty she was sweet-tempered, though lively and gay.

“Polly Ann had so many beaux that when she was sixteen every one thought she would be married before the year was out, and her father—Polly Ann was his only child—said that he wouldn’t give Polly Ann to any man. He needn’t have worried, for Polly Ann was so hard to please that she was still unwed at twenty when Stanley came home from school. By that time her father was telling every one how much land he meant to give Polly Ann when she married.

“Stanley hadn’t been home very long until he, like all the other boys, was crazy about Polly Ann, and she favored him more than any of the others. Stanley went to see her every week and escorted her home from parties and singings and took her to ride on Sunday afternoons in his new top buggy. Father suspected he would be wanting to get married, and told him he could have the wheat field on what we called the upper place, to put in a winter crop for himself.

“Then one night at a party at Orbison’s Stanley wore his new lavender waistcoat. Polly Ann wagered the other girls that she could have a button off the waistcoat for her button string, and they wagered her she couldn’t.

“That night when Stanley asked Polly Ann if he might see her home she said he could if he would give her a button off his waistcoat. It must have been hard for Stanley, for he knew he could never wear the waistcoat again if he did as she asked and that he couldn’t go with Polly Ann any more if he refused. He had no knife and he wouldn’t borrow one, so he just wrenched a button off and gave it to Polly Ann.

“When the girls went upstairs to put on their wraps, Polly Ann showed the button to them and they had lots of fun about it. The next morning Aggie told Stanley what Polly Ann had done and how every one was laughing at him.

“Stanley was at breakfast. There was no one in the kitchen but Stanley and Aggie and me, and they didn’t pay any attention to me. I remember how red Stanley’s face got when Aggie told him, and his chin, which had a dimple, seemed suddenly to get square like Father’s. I thought to myself that Polly Ann Nesbit had better look out, for, as Father often told us, ‘he who laughs last, laughs best.’ Stanley did get even with Polly Ann, though not in the way we thought he would.

“Before he went to work that morning he wrote her a letter and paid Charlie a quarter for taking it to her. Charlie told me that Polly Ann was in the front yard by herself when he gave her the letter and when she read it she just laughed and laughed, but that she put it in her pocket for safekeeping.

“Stanley was as nice as ever to her when they met, but he didn’t go to see her any more or take her buggy riding on Sunday afternoons. He took Mother or me instead, and I thought it very nice. Stanley went right ahead ploughing up his wheat field just as if nothing had happened, and when he got through with that he began to fix up a little cottage where brother Joe had lived for two years after he was married.

“He built a new kitchen, at the side instead of at the back where most people built their kitchens, so his wife could see the road when she was working, he said. And he added a front porch with railings and a seat at each end and painted the house white and set out rose bushes and honeysuckle vines and began to buy the furniture.

“Of course it caused a great deal of talk, and every one wondered whom Stanley was going to marry. The girls would laugh about Stanley’s house and say they wouldn’t marry a man who wouldn’t let them furnish their own house. And often they would tease Polly Ann, but she would only toss her head and say nothing.

“And all the time Stanley worked away, singing and whistling as happy as could be. When any one questioned him, he would say he meant to keep bachelor’s hall, or that he hadn’t decided what he would do, or that he planned to marry the sweetest girl he knew. Belle and Aggie were wild to know what girl he meant. They tried in every way to find out, but they couldn’t.

“Stanley often talked in his sleep, and they would listen to hear whether he mentioned a girl’s name, but they could never understand what he said. Some one told the girls to tie a string around Stanley’s great toe and when he talked to pull the string gently and he would repeat clearly what he had just said.

“One night Belle and Aggie did this, but instead of a string they used a piece of red yarn. When they were pulling it, it snapped in two, and Stanley woke up and found the yarn on his toe and jumped out of bed and chased the girls squealing and giggling into their room, and Father came out to see what was the matter.

“But finally the house was done, even to the last shining pan, and Mother had given Stanley so many quilts and blankets and things that Charlie grumbled and said there would be nothing left for the rest of us.

“One afternoon I was up at the cottage with Stanley planting some of Mother’s wonderful yellow chrysanthemums by the garden fence. Stanley was building a lattice at the end of the porch for a climbing rose which he had only just set out, when the front gate clicked and there, coming up the path, was Polly Ann Nesbit. Her cheeks were rosy and she was laughing.

“‘I’ve brought it myself, Stanley,’ she cried gaily. ‘You said in your letter to send you the button when I was ready to marry you, but I’ve brought it instead. Do you—do you still want it?’ and she held out this little button, the very one Stanley had pulled off his lavender waistcoat to please her.

“I looked at Stanley, so straight and tall and handsome though he was in his everyday clothes, to see what he would do.

“‘Do I want it?’ he cried starting toward her. ‘Why, Polly Ann, I’ve just been longing for that button. I never wanted anything so much in my life. I was only afraid you wouldn’t give it to me.’ He put his arms around her and they went in to look at the house. When they had gone in, I saw this little button lying on the path almost at my feet, and I picked it up and skipped home to tell Mother and the girls that Stanley was going to marry Polly Ann after all.

“And now, ‘’night, ’night,’ and pleasant dreams.”

EARNING A VIOLIN

“And you don’t like to practice!” Grandma exclaimed in surprise when Bobby told her why he did not like to take violin lessons. “But you’ll have to practice, you know, or you will never learn to play. I knew a boy once, who dearly liked to practice. I think I’ll tell you about him. It was my brother Charlie. Charlie had wanted a violin ever since he was just a little bit of a fellow and had first heard old Mr. Potter play on his violin.

“Mr. Potter was a traveling tailor who went around the country making and mending men’s clothing. He carried his goods from place to place in pack saddles, and he always brought his violin along.

“In the evenings he would play, and we all loved to hear him. He played beautifully. All Charlie and I had ever heard before were things like ‘Pop goes the Weasel,’ or ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ There was such a difference between these tunes and what Mr. Potter played that the first time Charlie heard him play—‘Annie Laurie,’ I think it was—he walked up to him and said very solemnly, ‘I like a violin better than a fiddle,’ and everybody laughed.

“Years before, Mr. Potter had had a thriving trade, but when I knew him he did not get much to do because store suits for men had become common. Mother always found some work for him, though, and in his spare time he gave violin lessons.

“He was in our neighborhood several weeks each spring, and one winter Charlie determined to have a violin and be ready to take lessons when he came next time.

“So right away he began to save money for a violin. But there wasn’t much Charlie could do to earn money, and it looked as though he would never get enough for a violin, let alone enough for an instruction book and lessons. But he did get the violin, and this is how it came about.

“It was one of the coldest winters anyone remembered in years. A deep snow lay on the ground for weeks and weeks, and the roads were frozen hard and as smooth as glass.

“There was a sawmill about eight miles down the road from our house, and every day we could see men passing on their way to the mill with logs. Big iron hooks called ‘dogs’ would be driven into the logs and fastened to a heavy chain which would be hitched to a single-tree, and the log would be dragged over the smooth road by one horse. It was an easy way to get logs to the mill, and every one was hurrying to haul as many as possible before the thaw came.

“Father had cut one big walnut log when he had been called to serve on jury duty and had gone to Clayville to attend court. Before he went, Charlie asked him what he would do with that one log and Father told Charlie he could have it. Charlie could hardly believe his ears and he asked Father whether he really meant that he could have the money for the log if he could get it to the mill. Father said that was what he meant, but afterward he told Mother he never dreamed Charlie would try to do it.

“But from the first Charlie intended to move that walnut log to the mill. He thought of nothing else. He made plan after plan. He found out from the storekeeper that the man who owned the sawmill came to the store Saturday afternoons to buy supplies for the next week. So when Charlie and I went to the store for Mother on the next Saturday we sat by the stove to warm ourselves and wait for the sawmill man. When he came, Charlie asked him whether he would buy the walnut log.

“‘Well, that depends,’ said the man, looking Charlie over good-naturedly. ‘I’m not anxious to lay in any more logs than we’ve bargained for. We’re going to move Wednesday.’ Then when he saw the disappointment on Charlie’s face he asked, ‘Pretty good log, is it?’

“‘Oh, yes, sir,’ said Charlie eagerly. ‘My father said when he cut it that it was first grade—woods-grown, ten or twelve feet long.’

“‘Well, if that’s the case, I reckon I could use it,’ said the man. ‘Be sure to have it in by Tuesday, though.’

“We went home by way of Mr. Brierly’s, and Charlie got permission to borrow his logging chain and ‘dogs,’ as they were called. We stopped to look at the log, and Charlie declared he could get it to the mill without any trouble. He could have, too, if it hadn’t been for the thaw.

“Sunday was the longest day Charlie ever put in. Sometimes he would get discouraged and think he couldn’t do it at all. Then the next minute he would be talking about the kind of violin he would get with the money the log would bring. Father had come home for over Sunday and he would help him get started, the older boys being away from home.

“Sunday, after dinner, the weather turned slightly warmer, and by four o’clock a gentle rain was falling. When Charlie got up long before daylight Monday morning, Mother told him that it had rained hard all night. He fed the horse and ate his breakfast, and Father helped him drive the hooks or dogs into the log. Then Charlie was off.

“He got the log as far as Sugar Creek without any trouble, and there what a sight met his eyes! Sugar Creek was out of bank, and the shallow stream, easily forded the year round, was like an angry, rushing little river filled with cakes of ice. To ford it was clearly impossible till the ice went out, and even then the current would be rapid and dangerous. There was nothing to do but wait, and Charlie unhitched the horse and came back home. It was still raining and thawing and it didn’t get any better all that day. The next morning, though, the creek was clear of ice, which was some advantage.

“I went with Charlie and sat on the log, feeling very helpless while he walked up and down the creek bank trying to think of some way to get the log across. The current was so strong that, though the horse could swim it, he could not swim and drag the heavy log along.

“Charlie examined the foot-log carefully and found that it had not been moved by the high water, being chained at each bank to a big tree. Then he made his plan. He fastened some strong rope he had brought along to the chain which went around the walnut log. Holding the other end of the rope, he got on the horse and made him swim to the opposite bank. Then he fastened the rope at that side to the single-tree and urged the horse up the bank.

“The horse tugged and pulled and finally the log moved slowly down into the water. Now came the test of Charlie’s plan. If the foot-log proved strong enough to withstand the jar it would get when the walnut log hit it, everything would be all right; but if the foot-log gave way, Charlie would have to cut the rope quickly to keep the horse from being drawn back into the water, and the walnut log would float down stream and be lost.

“I almost held my breath when the walnut log, sucked rapidly down the stream by the swift current, struck the foot-log. I shut my eyes tight and did not open them until I heard Charlie shouting for joy. The foot-log hadn’t budged! Because of the high water Charlie thought it would be easy for the horse to pull the log out on the ground, but the log stuck on something under the water. Charlie couldn’t raise the log up, and he had to let it slide back into the water. It slid back several times before it finally came out on the road.

“It was nearly noon and Charlie was wet to the waist, so he went back home to change his clothes and get a fresh horse. After dinner he started out again. He got to the mill all right and sold the log, and when he reached home late that night he had money enough for a violin.

“When Father heard about it, he was so proud of him that he doubled the money. So Charlie had more than enough for his lessons and his instruction book, too.”

“And did he really like to practice?” asked Bobby unbelievingly.

“Yes, indeed, and he came to be a fine violinist and owned a violin that cost a great deal of money, but he always kept that first one, too.

“There! Mother’s calling you to bed.”

AT THE FAIR

“We’re going to the fair tomorrow, Grandma. It’s childrens’ day,” announced Bobby one evening when he and Alice and Pink came to Grandma’s room for their usual evening call and story.

“Are you going, Grandma?” inquired Pink.

“Why, I may go. I don’t know yet. Do you like to go to the fair?”

“Yeh, boy!” interrupted Bobby eagerly. “And this year they’re going to give a pony away. I wish I’d get that pony.”

“That would be nice,” agreed Grandma. “I think I’ll tell you tonight about the time we took our horse, Prince, to the fair at Clayville. I had been to the fair several times before, and I always loved to go. To get up early in the morning, and dress and eat breakfast and start before daylight with a big basket of dinner tucked away in the back of the surrey; to take the long pleasant drive through the cool of the morning and at last go through the gates into the fair grounds and see all the people and hear the noise of the sideshow barkers and the bands and the balloon whistles and the lowing of cattle, uneasy because of their strange quarters, was every bit of it a joy to me—usually.

“But this particular year it wasn’t a pleasure to look forward to the fair at all, even though there was to be a balloon ascension. For when we went to the fair Father was going to take Prince along and sell him to a horse dealer. Father had raised Prince, and we all loved him, especially Charlie and I. He was nine years old, but he still looked like a colt. His coat was brown and glossy, and he was as playful and active as he had ever been. When he had been a colt, the older children had petted him and fed him sugar. Charlie and I had taken it up when they left off, so that he had always been used to children and loved them.

“But Prince had a bad habit, and that was the reason he was to be sold. He balked whenever a grown person rode or drove him. The only thing he was any good for at all was carrying Charlie and me to the store for Mother. He would take us both at once or one at a time wherever we wanted to go and never balk once while we were on his back. Father said that if Charlie and I had been older he would have kept Prince, but by the time we would need a horse Prince would be too old to be of much use. If he could even have been trusted to take Mother to church and back when the roads were too rough to drive, Father would not have sold him. But he was sure to stop some place or other, no matter how cold the day, and refuse to budge until he got ready. So Father said he could not afford to keep him any longer, and as none of our neighbors would want him he would sell him to the horse dealer for what he could get. This wouldn’t be much, for of course Father would tell the man that Prince balked.

“So we went to the fair as usual, except that Prince went along and was hitched with the other horses to the fence until Father should get ready to see the horse dealer some time after dinner.