Part 8

“I went with Mother to Floral Hall, which was just a little, whitewashed building, and looked at quilts and fancy work and cakes and pies and pianos and stoves and pumpkins and potatoes until I got tired and wandered on ahead of Mother—who was busily talking to some people she knew—to the door, and there was Charlie waiting for us.

“He had been out to see the cattle and poultry. He said our white-faced steer and Mother’s bronze turkeys had taken blue ribbons and he wanted me to come and see them.

“As we passed our horses, Prince whinnied, and I suggested that we say good-by to Prince again. So we went over to where he was hitched to the fence. We petted him and fed him an apple that Charlie had in his pocket, and then Charlie said we would take a last ride. So he got on first and I climbed up behind him and put my arms around his waist and we were off. For a while Prince trotted about on the grass, and then we came to an opening that led into the race track. Before we realized what he was doing, Prince had turned through this opening into the circular track.

“Two men were standing at the entrance talking. One of them was an old man. The other, a big man with a wide-rimmed felt hat and high-topped boots, waved a riding whip at us and called out something that we did not hear as we passed, but Prince kept right on. Charlie could have turned him around, but he wouldn’t, though I begged him to. The trainers were exercising their horses on the track, but Prince paid no attention to anything, looking neither to right nor to left. We must have been a queer sight—two children riding bareback on a big farm horse around the race track. By the time we got to the grandstand quite a crowd had gathered and they cheered us loudly as we passed. Charlie, not to be outdone, waved his hat in return.

“When we got back to the gate we had come through, Charlie pulled Prince’s mane and he turned out into the grass again.

“The men were still talking, and the one who had called to us patted Prince’s head and asked us if we had enjoyed our ride. Then, because it looked so silly, we told him how we happened to be on Prince at a place like that and how Father was going to sell him because he balked and wouldn’t work and how sorry we were and afraid some one would buy Prince from the horse dealer because he was so handsome and then beat him when he found he balked.

“The old gentleman seemed greatly interested and asked us Father’s name and a great many questions about Prince. We told him how he would do anything for us and was as safe as safe could be. Then we hitched Prince to the fence and said good-by to him and went to dinner. My dress was all wrinkled and my hair was mussed and my face burned from being in the sun, and Mother was not at all pleased that Charlie and I had made ourselves so conspicuous.

“But we had lots of fun that afternoon watching the races and eating peanuts and drinking pink lemonade. There was the balloon ascension, and Father took us into some of the shows and bought us ice cream, molded into cakes and wrapped in paper, which was called ‘hokie-pokie.’

“We had balloons and peanuts and canes to take home with us, and when we got in the surrey to go home Prince was gone and no one mentioned him. But when we were well out of town Father said, ‘Well, children, you may rest easy about Prince. He has a good home where he will be well treated, and it is largely due to Charlie and Sarah.’ And then he told us all about it.

“The man at the gate with the wide felt hat and high-topped boots was the horse dealer, and the old man with him was hunting a horse that would be safe for his little granddaughter, who had been sick and was not strong, to ride and drive. When he saw Charlie and me on Prince and heard what we said, he knew that Prince was the very horse he wanted.

“So he had bought him from Father and paid a hundred dollars, when Father had only expected to get fifty dollars at the most. He didn’t care a bit because Prince balked, for no one would use him but the little girl and he would be quite as much a pet as when we owned him.

“‘And that extra fifty dollars shall go to Charlie and Sarah,’ said Father, ‘for their very own.’

“The next time Father went to Clayville, sure enough, he put twenty-five dollars in the bank for Charlie and twenty-five dollars for me, and he gave us each a brand new bank book with our names on the backs. We never saw Prince again, but the man who bought him took care of him and was good to him until Prince died a few years later.

“Now what shall I tell you tomorrow night? Oh, I know—a Hallowe’en story!”

HALLOWE’EN

“Grandma, tomorrow night is Hallowe’en,” said Pink one evening when she and Alice and Bobby had drawn their stools close to Grandma’s knee for their usual good-night story.

“Mother makes candy on Hallowe’en,” Alice added, “and we have nuts and apples and false faces and witches on broomsticks and black cats and everything.”

“And last year we had a party,” said Pink.

“And this year,” put in Bobby eagerly, “we’re going to have a great, big pumpkin to make a jack-o’-lantern of. I know how to do it. Daddy told me, and he’s going to help. You hollow out the insides of the pumpkin and cut round holes for the eyes and make a nose and a mouth with teeth and put a candle inside, and I’ll say he’ll look scary.”

“Won’t he though!” exclaimed Grandma. “To meet a jack-o’-lantern like that on a dark night would make a body shiver. I just know it would. Brother Charlie and I used to save the biggest pumpkins for Hallowe’en. In the summer we would pick out certain pumpkin vines in the cornfield and take special care of them so that the pumpkins would grow extra large for jack-o’-lanterns. We would keep the dirt loosened around the roots, and when the weather was dry we would carry water from the creek to water them. We would watch to keep the worms and bugs off the vines, and then when the pumpkins began to get big we’d measure around them every few days to see which was growing the fastest. Father said we did everything but sleep with the pumpkins.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Pink in surprise, “did you have Hallowe’en, too, Grandma?”

“Yes, indeed,” answered Grandma, “but we generally called it Hallow Eve in those days.”

And she went on to tell them how the evening of October thirty-first has for years and years in many different countries been celebrated as the eve of All-hallows or All Saints’ Day and is called Halloweven or, as we most often say, Hallowe’en, and how on this particular evening fairies, witches, and imps are supposed to be especially active.

“The young people in our neighborhood used to have parties,” said Grandma, “and they would make taffy and play games and perform tricks intended to reveal to them their future husbands and wives.

“Sometimes these parties would be broken up by a crowd of rough boys who had not been invited, for if there was a lot of fun on Hallowe’en there was also a lot of mischief done. Nothing that could be moved was safe if left outside. Gates were carried away, wheels removed from wagons, farm machinery hidden, well buckets stolen, and roads barricaded with great logs. Some people took this time to vent their spite on anyone they did not like.

“But these rough, mischievous boys had never bothered us, for between the settlement where they lived and our farm was a strip of woods in which an old woman known as Mother Girty had been buried years and years before—in pioneer times, in fact. It was said she had been a witch, and even when I was a little girl ignorant or superstitious folks did not like to pass these woods by night. On Hallowe’en they were more afraid than ever, since on this night witches are supposed to roam at will over the country.

“One year Mother said we could have a Hallowe’en party at our house. Charlie and I gave our biggest pumpkins, and Truman made jack-o’-lanterns out of them. Belle and Aggie decorated the sitting room with autumn leaves and bunches of yellow chrysanthemums and draped orange-colored cloth, which they had dyed by boiling old sheets in sassafras bark and water, around the walls. For lights they had the jack-o’-lanterns and just common lanterns with the orange cloth wrapped about the globes, and they put out baskets of apples and nuts. In the cellar were rows of pumpkin pies and pans of gingerbread for refreshment, when the guests should get tired of playing games and pulling taffy.

“When every one had come, Aggie made the taffy. But she didn’t cook the first batch long enough and it wouldn’t harden. They tried to pull it, but the way it stuck to their hands was awful, and such squealing and laughing you never heard. It kept Charlie and me busy bringing water for them to wash off the taffy.

“The girls put another kettle of molasses on right away, and while the taffy was being made Charlie and I slipped around the house to put a tick-tack on Mother’s window. When we had got the tick-tack to working and Mother and Father had both come to the window to see what it was, though I reckon they both knew very well, we started back to the kitchen.

“But we didn’t go in, for there, spread out on the porch to cool, were pans and pans of taffy. Charlie said we had better take a pan for ourselves for fear there mightn’t be enough to go around and we’d have to do without. So he grabbed a pan quickly and we ran around to the front of the house with it. We meant to go on the front portico, but just as we turned the corner we heard a noise as if some one were opening the door. So we crouched down close to the house for a little bit and then ran out to the lilac bush by the front gate.

“We sat down on the ground and began to work the cooler part of the taffy around the edge of the pan toward the center, but we had no butter to put on our hands to keep the taffy from sticking and I offered to go to the kitchen to get some. We would then start pulling our taffy and quietly slip into the house where everyone else would be pulling taffy and no one would notice that we had not been there all the time.

“I stood up. It was a pitch dark night, but as I started toward the house I thought I could see something moving in the side yard under the apple tree. I told Charlie. He saw it, too, as plainly as could be. It was white and it moved about in the most terrible way. Oh, to be safe back in the house! I clutched Charlie’s arm and trembled all over, I was so afraid. It seemed to be coming toward us, and suddenly I couldn’t stand it any longer and I screamed—the most awful, blood-curdling yells—and, pulling Charlie with all my might, I ran for the house.

“The kitchen was filled with frightened young people, for no one knew what had happened. Just as we tumbled into one door three or four white clad figures burst into the other door, and it was hard to tell which was the worst scared.

“‘Ghosts!’ sputtered Charlie, gasping for breath. ‘Ghosts under the apple tree!’ Then everybody saw the joke and laughed. The ghosts turned out to be some of the big boys who had wrapped themselves in sheets to frighten the folks. The opening of the front door that Charlie and I had heard had been Truman bringing out the sheets, but my yells had scared them and they looked right sheepish and didn’t say anything when Isabel Strang asked them whether they thought Mother Girty was after them.

“In the excitement and confusion, sister Belle, who was going down the cellar stairs backward with a mirror in her hand, in which she was supposed to see the face of the man she would marry, fell halfway down the stairs, and John Strang picked her up and sure enough he was the man she married later.

“After that Charlie and I didn’t say much, for the pan of taffy was still under the lilac bush by the front gate and we didn’t want to go into any explanations about why we happened to be out there too.

“Here, here, don’t forget your ‘apple a day.’ There now, good night, dears.”

MEASLES

Bobby and Alice and Pink had the measles. First Bobby had taken it with a headache and a sick stomach. Then Alice had got sick with what seemed to be a cold, and at last Pink took it. She just wakened up one morning all covered with tiny red spots, and of course she knew right away that she had the measles, too.

They had all been awfully sick, but now they were better, though they still had to stay in a darkened room, which they didn’t like a bit.

“It’s the worst part of the measles,” complained Bobby bitterly. “Just like night all the time.”

“Well, then,” said Grandma, who was making them a call, “let us pretend that it is night and I will tell you a story about when I had the measles a long, long time ago.

“In those days measles was considered a necessary evil for children. That is, people thought that all children must have it one time or another, and the younger you were when you had it the less it would hurt you. All our family had had the measles except Charlie and me. We had never had the measles, and Mother was quite worried about it. She said she wouldn’t expose us on purpose, but she did wish we’d get it before we got much older and have it over with. There had been no measles epidemic in our neighborhood for several years, and this is how one came about.

“One Saturday, late in June, Father took Charlie and me to Clayville with him. We were to visit with Aunt Louisa while he attended to his business. He let us out at Aunt Louisa’s street and said when he got ready to go home he would come after us.

“Charlie and I started up the street, but neither of us had ever been there alone and all the houses looked alike to us. We couldn’t decide which was Aunt Louisa’s.

“Finally we selected one that we were sure was hers and went around to the side door and knocked. Instead of Aunt Louisa or Mettie, a little girl opened the door and told us to come in. This was queer, because Aunt Louisa had no children. But I supposed she had company and stepped into a sitting room that was so dark I could hardly see a thing at first. We sat very still for a while, and I wished that Aunt Louisa would come. In the dim light I made out a bed in one corner, but I didn’t know there was anyone in it until a boy, who had evidently been asleep, raised up his head and looked at us in surprise. And we looked at him, too, for he certainly was funny looking with his face all covered with little red spots.

“‘By, golly!’ he said. ‘What you doin’ in here?’

“I replied with dignity that we were waiting for Aunt Louisa.

“‘She doesn’t live here,’ he said crossly, and lay down again. ‘She lives in the next house. Must have been my little sister let you in. This is our house and I got the measles.’

“Charlie and I got out as quickly as we could and hurried to Aunt Louisa’s, but we decided that we would not tell her or anyone else we had had such a glorious, accidental chance for the measles.

“‘We mightn’t take the measles after all,’ Charlie pointed out, ‘and then Mother would be disappointed.’

“‘I hope we don’t take them on the way home,’ I said anxiously. I didn’t know then that it takes the measles germ nine days to mature and that we were in little danger of taking it before that time.

“The next day, being tired from my trip to town, I imagined I was sick and I was sure I was taking the measles. Charlie examined my face carefully, though, and said he couldn’t see any red spots. In a day or two Charlie thought he was taking the disease, but there were no red spots on his face, either.

“‘And if they’re in you Mother says they’ve got to come out,’ I told him wisely. ‘So as long as it doesn’t show on the outside we haven’t got it.’

“A week passed, and after several more false alarms we came to the conclusion that we were not going to take the measles after all.

“Sunday the Presiding Elder was to be at our church and there were to be two sermons, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a basket dinner in between. Mother and the girls were very busy cooking and baking, or maybe some of them would have seen that Charlie and I were not well on Saturday. I ached all over, my head most of all, and Charlie said he felt sick from his head to his toes. We slipped out to the barn and crawled up in the hay loft and lay down on the hay. Nanny Dodds almost found us there when she came out to hunt some eggs for an extra cake—Mother had already baked three cakes, but she said she had better bake four to make sure there’d be plenty.

“Charlie and I had been eating green apples. Mother always allowed us to eat green apples if we put salt on them. But we had been in the orchard and the salt was at the house, so we hadn’t bothered to wait, but had eaten the apples without salt. We thought it was the green apples that were making us sick. As we didn’t want to be dosed with castor oil and maybe have to stay home from preaching next day, we didn’t tell a soul we felt sick.

“Anyway, we were both better by Sunday morning, for who wouldn’t have been better with a new white dress to wear and a leghorn hat with a wreath of daisies around the crown?

“But in church even my new clothes couldn’t help me. The sermon seemed very, very long, the air was hot and close, and I felt terribly sick. I wanted more than anything else in the world to take off my hat and lay my head in Mother’s gray silk lap, but of course I was much too big to do that. I looked across to the men’s side where Charlie sat beside Father, and there he was all slumped down in his seat, holding his head in his hands.

“Neither of us ate much dinner, but there were so many people eating with us that Mother didn’t notice. And right after dinner we went down to the surrey and climbed in, Charlie on the front seat, I on the back.

“We covered ourselves, heads and all, with the lap robes, and there we lay and slept the live-long afternoon, until Father came to hitch the horses up to go home.

“‘These youngsters must be all tired out,’ Father said when Mother and Aggie and Belle came out to get in the surrey. I raised my head up, but I was so dizzy I lay right down again, but not before Mother had seen me.

“‘Let me see in your throat, Sarah,’ she demanded, and then to Father she said solemnly, ‘I knew it! The second I saw her I knew it. Sarah has the measles.’ Father thought surely she must be mistaken, but she examined Charlie, and would you believe it? He had the measles, too.

“On the way home, with my head in Mother’s lap and Charlie leaning on Belle, we told them all about going to the wrong house when we went to see Aunt Louisa, and the boy who had the measles, and everything.

“‘Just exactly nine days ago today,’ Mother fairly groaned.

“‘Aren’t you glad, Mother, that we surprised you with the measles?’ I asked, puzzled, for she didn’t seem a bit glad that we had them, though she had always talked as if she would be.

“At this Father and Belle and Aggie and even Mother laughed.

“‘If I don’t miss my guess,’ said Father, ‘you’ve surprised a good many other people with the measles, too, and I bet a lot of them won’t be very glad.’

“Of course a lot of folks did take the measles from Charlie and me, but the weather was warm and they all got along nicely, so there was no great harm done.

“Some of the folks wondered where in the world Charlie and I could have caught the measles. But old Mrs. Orbison, who came to see us right away, settled that by announcing, ‘I always say that things like that are in the air. No one knows where they get them or how.’”

SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR

It was the evening before Thanksgiving. Grandma had told Bobby and Alice and Pink about the first Thanksgiving, celebrated so long ago by the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony to show their gratitude because their lives had been spared in spite of many hardships and because their crops had been plentiful enough to support them through the coming winter.

And she had told them how that now, on recommendation of the President, the last Thursday of November is set apart by proclamation of the governors of the different states as an annual Thanksgiving Day.

“Thanksgiving at our house was a wonderful time,” Grandma said thoughtfully. “Next to Christmas, it was the best day of all the year, I think. And it always began weeks before the real Thanksgiving Day—when Mother made the mincemeat and the plum pudding and the fruit cakes.

“All day Mother and the girls would work, crumbing bread for the puddings, washing currants, slicing citron, beating eggs, measuring sugar and spices, chopping suet and meat in the big wooden chopping bowl, and seeding raisins. I helped seed the raisins. I liked to seed raisins until I got all I wanted to eat. Then after that I didn’t like the sticky things a bit.

“When everything was all mixed and ready, the pudding would be packed in muslin bags and the cake put in pans lined with writing paper and they would be steamed for hours and hours. When they were done and cool they would be put away, beside the big stone jar of mincemeat, to ripen for Thanksgiving.

“Father said that Thanksgiving came at just the right time of the year. All the fall work was done by then, the corn husked, lots of wood cut, and the butchering was over. The meathouse was filled with hams and sausage and side meat, and there was always a jar of pickled pigs’ feet. The apples had been picked and the potatoes dug and both buried out in the garden alongside the cabbage and beets. The nuts had been gathered in, and the popcorn was ready to pop. The finest pumpkin had been set aside for the pies, and the biggest, proudest, young turkey gobbler was fattened for the Thanksgiving dinner.

“And then, on Thanksgiving morning, what delicious smells came out of our kitchen! You know what they were! You’ve all smelled the very same kind of smells coming out of your kitchen, I know you have. Mm! mm! and the dinner! And every one of the family at home to enjoy it and lots of company, too.

“But we didn’t think of just things to eat, either. Father said folks were likely to do that. We seldom had services at our church on Thanksgiving because the minister was usually off in another part of the circuit holding a meeting. But at the breakfast table, after Father had asked the blessing, to preserve and foster, as he said, the real spirit of the day, each one of us would tell something we had to be thankful for.

“And one Thanksgiving morning Charlie said he couldn’t think of anything to be thankful for except, of course, Father and Mother and good health and Sport, but nothing special, he said. I knew what was the matter with Charlie. He had asked Truman to lend him his gun to take along when he went to look at his traps. Truman had refused because he had just cleaned it, and Father had said Charlie could carry a gun when he was twelve years old and not before.

“Afterward when I went with him to his traps he told me he was tired being thankful for ordinary things like those everybody else had. He wanted something different, such as a silver watch, or a Wild West pony, or a magic lantern.

“He said he could be the thankfulest boy on Sugar Creek if he had any of those things, and he thought Thanksgiving ought to come after Christmas anyhow—then a fellow would have more to be thankful for.