Part 5

“You didn’t know you had any,” she laughed. “Well, folks don’t usually until it is all lived through. I didn’t know I had any girlhood until I married and lost it.”

“I haven’t lost anything,” said Joe, bewildered.

“No; and I think you have got something—stand back, till I call you.”

She went on, and Joe heard the two voices exchange a friendly “Good evening,” and then to escape his “story” climbed up the steep, green bank, and waited under a cherry tree. Cherry blossoms were not as pretty as apple blossoms, he meditated; it was queer how the blossoms would fall off, and the hard, green fruit come—but it always did, somehow.

He wished Mrs. Evans would come back and take his hand again, making him feel ashamed and glad, and say, “Joe, you are going home with me. That man doesn’t want you, and I do.”

And there he stood, not still, but first on one bare foot, and then on the other, and then he whistled; the stars shining down through the cherry blossoms were almost as kind as Beauty’s eyes, but they were so far off.

The low voices talked on and on; at last, to the great relief of the boy who was waiting to know if anybody in the world wanted to own him, the man’s voice was raised in a cheerful: “Well, I’ll see Mr. Chris Tucker to-morrow, and make it right.”

And, then, in her brisk way, Mrs. Evans called, “Come, Joe; it is all right.”

The barefoot, ragged boy emerged out of the shade of the cherry limbs and went, faint-heartedly to answer the call.

“Well, Joe,” welcomed the old man, unlatching the gate and throwing it wide open, “come in and stay with me awhile. I guess I want you and you want me.”

But Joe begun to cry, and rub his eyes with the back of his dirty brown hand: “I am sixteen years old, and I am a stump of a thing, and will eat you out of house and home, and shan’t never amount to much.”

“Tut, nonsense!” exclaimed the old man; “don’t you like to work?”

“I never did nothing else; I don’t like nothing else,” replied Joe, dropping his hand, somewhat reassured.

“Who said you are sixteen? Come in and let me have a look at you.”

Joe stepped inside the gate; kind, strong hands drew him within the light that streamed from the kitchen windows and open door.

“Good night, Joe,” said Mrs. Evans.

“Good night,” said Joe.

He had not learned how to say “thank you.”

“They said so,” he replied to the latest question.

“Those men. The Tucker twins. They are seventy, and hale old fellows. I’ll warrant you know how to work. You are not fourteen. You shall do a boy’s work and _be_ a boy. You _may_ grow to be as tall as old Christopher himself. There’s plenty of man-timber in you. Now come and see what the women-folks will say to you.”

Joe shrank back.

“I thought I was going to live with you.”

“And you thought I lived alone like the other old men? I’m a miserable old bachelor, but I’ve got plenty of women-folks, thank the Lord.”

A little girl rushed to the door, and a barking Scotch terrier made a spring at the new-comer.

“Oh, what a dog,” Joe exclaimed, stooping to catch frisking, curly Doodles into his arms. Homesick for Mrs. Evans, frightened and glad, he followed the old man into the kitchen with the curly dog in his arms.

“Affy, here’s the boy I’ve been looking for, and you’ve been praying for, I’ve no doubt.”

Aunt Affy turned and looked at the boy: short, stout, dirty, ragged, with a shock of uncombed black hair, a lock falling over his forehead, long black eyelashes concealed the eyes he kept shyly fixed upon the curly bundle in his arms.

“What is your name, dear?” she inquired.

Joe had never heard “dear” before, but supposed she must be speaking to him; he raised his eyes and smiled; they were shy, honest eyes; Aunt Affy smiled too.

“I am Joe,” he said, pulling Doodles’ ears.

“Do you remember your father and mother?”

“No; I don’t remember nobody but Chris and Sam.”

“Is your name Joseph?”

“I don’t know; I never thought. I guess it’s Joseph—or Jo—no, now I remember another name: _Josiah_. Is that a boy’s name?”

“A boy’s name, and a king’s name. I am glad your name is Josiah. I will tell you about him some time.”

The little girl stood near the lady, but she did not stare at him, and Joe gave her glances now and then from under his long lashes; he would like to know her name, and what she was here for. A man’s fur cap covered the black head; when he left the house, angry and discouraged, he had put upon his head the first thing he seized.

“Doodles hasn’t given you time to take your hat off, Joe, or did you forget?” suggested Aunt Affy’s unreproachful voice.

“Didn’t forget it,” said Joe, pulling it off and dropping it on the floor. “They used to eat with their hats on, but I always took mine off.”

“I should think you would,” exclaimed indignant Judith.

Joe put his cheek down upon Doodles’ head, smoothing the sleeping head with his brown cheek.

“What is the dog’s name?” he inquired.

“Doodles,” answered Judith, hastening to speak to the rude, strange boy who had traveled from an unknown country.

“O, Doodles, Doodles, Doodles,” whispered Joe, in a fond voice, rubbing his cheek on the soft head.

“Well, Joe, do you love cows as well as dogs?” inquired Mr. Brush.

“Yes,” said Joe, thinking of the cow that was missing him to-night. He hoped she was asleep now. “But I’m glad I found Doodles.”

“Now, Joe, drop Doodles,” said Aunt Affy, “and follow me up these kitchen stairs. I have a room ready for an obedient, truthful, industrious boy.”

“Where is _he_?” asked Joe, lifting his shaggy head.

They all laughed, and laughing, also, Joe followed the plump, sweet-faced lady up the kitchen stairs.

IX. THE FLOWERS THAT CAME TO THE WELL.

“He might have made the earth bring forth Enough for great and small, The oak tree and the cedar tree, And not a flower at all.”

—Mary Howitt.

Nettie Evans sat in her invalid chair leaning forward with her chin on the window-sill looking down into her father’s untidy back yard.

The only pleasant thing in it was a lilac bush that was a marvel of beauty when it was in bloom, but that had faded many weary days ago, leaving ugly brown bunches where the lilacs had been; there were two well-worn paths, one leading to the kitchen door, and the other to the well, and nothing besides, excepting weeds with a background of apple orchard. If Nettie had raised her eyes she would have seen woods, and hills and fields of grain, a bit of road, a wooden bridge, and a deep blue sky full of puffy, white clouds, but she would not raise her eyes; when her back ached as it did to-day she never saw anything but the weeds in the yard, especially those tall rag-weeds growing close around the well. Her father had promised to “clear up” the yard after planting, but planting had come and gone, and he was still too busy.

“Oh, if I were only able to pull weeds,” she sighed.

It was a very gentle sigh, she was not strong enough to sigh heavily. Three years ago she could shout and run, to-day she could not move her feet, and there were many days during the year when she must lie still in bed.

In winter, she had a south room, at the front of house, where she saw the rising and the setting sun, and had a good view of all the people who passed back and forth from the village; in summer, she had this cool north room that looked out on the back yard.

The back yard was full of interest to her—when she could forget the weeds. Twenty times a day her mother came to the kitchen door to look up at her, and tell her how the work was going on; she knew what was cooking by the odors that came up to her and what all the noises meant, from the click of the egg-beater to the thud of the churn-dasher, and she saw old Mrs. Finch when she came to borrow baking powder, and the pedlars, and book-agents, and apple-tree men; but best of all she liked to watch for her father to come in to dinner and supper.

In blue flannel shirt and big straw hat, tired and dusty and warm, he never failed to look up and call: “Why, hello, you there, daughter?” just as if she were well, and had only run up stairs for a moment. And her weak, “I’m here, father,” made the sadness and the happiness of his life.

Nettie moved her head slightly, and gained a view of the pasture where three cows were feeding; she could not see the brook, but she knew that it ran through the pasture, and she knew there were blue lilies all along the brook, some of them growing in the water.

How she longed to see those lilies growing in the water!

She was only ten years old the last time she saw those lilies: she was driving home the cows at night, in her pink calico dress and stout leather shoes, with her father’s old straw hat on the back of her head, “a picture of a happy, healthy, country lassie,” her father thought as he watched her standing by the clump of lilies while she waited for the cows to drink. She was thinking she would gather a big bunch of the lilies as soon as they were opened the next morning—but the pet calf came behind her and butted her down, and her father carried home in his arms a helpless little daughter. And there were tiger lilies in bloom; she could not see the place where they were growing, but it was only a quarter of a mile away in a fence corner, such a patch of them! Oh, how she longed to see those tiger lilies growing! The last time she saw the tiger lilies was the Sunday before she said good-bye to the blue lilies—she was walking home alone from Sunday-school in white dress and blue ribbons, and brown kid shoes, and when she came to the fence corner with the great clump of tiger lilies, she thought of picking a large bunch of them, but just then she heard a noise behind her, and turning, saw a neighbor’s three little black and white pigs; they had followed her all the way from the corner, and it was so funny to think how she had walked along unconsciously, with those pigs in single file behind her, that she just stood and laughed, and then she clapped her hands at them and chased them back, and forgot all about the tiger lilies.

“Oh, blue lilies, oh, tiger lilies, I’ll _never_ see you growing any more,” she sighed.

“Why, hello, daughter, you up there?” called the voice below her.

Nettie did not answer; she felt too discouraged to speak, but she looked down and tried to smile at her father.

Her father looked just as usual, only he had a scythe over his shoulder.

“I came in a little earlier to cut down your weeds,” he called cheerily.

Nettie watched him as he swung the scythe, and listened to the swish, swish, as the tall weeds fell; when the weeds around the well grew less she caught a glimpse of something blue, and then of something red; she pulled herself up to the window, and leaned out, and then she shrieked:—

“Father, don’t cut down the _lilies_!”

There they were, blue lilies and tiger lilies, growing together, close by the well!

“How did they _get_ there, father?” she called.

“They must have been in the sod that I put around the well last fall,” he replied; “I remember now that I got it from two different places. If I had cut down the weeds before the lilies bloomed, I shouldn’t have known they were there, and should have cut them all down together.”

Nettie fell back in her chair with a sigh of delight, watching her father while with his hands he pulled all the weeds away from the lilies.

“Mother,” she called, lifting herself forward, and resting her chin again on the window-sill.

“Well, Deary,” came in a quick voice from the shed, and her mother appeared in the shed doorway with the dish of boiled potatoes she held in her hand when Nettie’s voice reached her.

“Mother, will you ask Judith to stop and see my lilies the next time she goes past?”

“Your lilies, child?”

“Yes, my own lilies, there by the well. They came and grew just for me.”

Mrs. Evans gave a glance toward the well, then hastened to set the potato dish on the dinner table.

“Of all things! And how she has wanted to see lilies grow! The blessed child is watched over and done for as her father and I can’t do. I declare,” in a shame-faced way, all to herself, “when such things happen I wish I was a Christian.”

“Mother, mother,” called the happy voice again; “I want Joe to see my lilies too.”

“Yes, Deary,” promised her mother from within the shed.

X. THE LAST APPLE.

“God loves not only a cheerful giver, but a cheerful worker as well.”

—Fletcher Reade.

That afternoon as Nettie was slowly rousing herself from her afternoon nap in her chair, she heard a low, joyful exclamation under her windows.

“Oh, lovely. Mrs. Evans, it’s like—a poem.”

Then a light flashed over the pale face, and Nettie lifted herself forward to look, and to speak.

“O, Judith, I wanted you to see them. You do love pretty things so.”

Judith came through the shed, and up the narrow rag-carpeted stairs to the open door of Nettie’s chamber.

“I wish you would write a poem for me.”

Nettie Evans was Judith’s “public,” and a most enthusiastic one; the young author looked very grave one day when Nettie told her that she liked her poems better than the ones she read to her from the Longfellow book.

“I have brought a poem for you; no one has seen it yet; I’ve copied it to send to my Cousin Don; you know he’s in Switzerland, climbing mountains, and having splendid times. It happened one Thanksgiving—I was here in the country, you remember, with my mother. I saw one rosy apple left on the top of a tree, and I felt so sorry for it. One day I thought of it again, and I wrote this.”

Judith drew her chair close to Nettie’s and took the folded sheet of note paper from her pocket.

“Oh, I wish I could make poems and sew carpet rags,” moaned Nettie.

Judith dared not say she wished she might, she dared not pity her, or look at her; she unfolded her poem and began to read:—

THE LAST APPLE.

I am a rosy-cheeked apple, Left all alone on the tree, And in the cold wind I am sighing, ‘Oh, what will become of me.’

Nettie nodded approval, and the poet read modestly on:—

They’ve picked my sisters and cousins, But I was too little to see; Now, they will be eaten at Christmas, But nothing will happen to me.

The beets are pulled, and the parsnips Are cosily left in the ground— When the farmer counts up his produce, No record of me will be found.

I was as pretty a blossom As ever gave sweets to a bee; But ’mong the good things for winter, No one will be thankful for me.

There’s place for radish and carrot, Though common as common can be, And I wonder, wonder, wonder, Why _I_ was left on the tree.

Oh, here comes poor little Sadie, With her face all wet with tears; A face so pale and hardened, But not with the lapse of years.

Now, fly to my aid, dear cold wind, And receive my last command,— With a twist, and turn and flutter, _Just drop me into her hand_.

In Nettie’s radiant face and tear-filled eyes Judith found the appreciation for which her soul thirsted.

“That’s _lovely_,” exclaimed Nettie, “may I keep it and learn it?”

“Of course you may. I’ll copy it for you.”

“And I’ll say it in the night if I cannot go to sleep. How much I’ve had in one day. The lilies and the red apple. Don’t you believe that if you can’t go out and get things _they always come_?”

“But part of the fun is going out to get them,” said Judith, and then, in quick penitence, “but it must be so lovely to have them come to you.”

“Agnes Trembly came yesterday to make me a new blue wrapper; I like to have her sew here with me. Her mother is blind and that is harder than my lot. Agnes said she wished she was a queen. But I never thought of that.”

“Now I’ll tell you a story. There is a little girl somewhere who _is_ a queen, and sometimes she has to sit in state and receive people, and do other queenly things. One day when she was playing with her dolls, what do you think she said?”

“What?” asked Nettie, her face beaming.

“_If you are naughty again, I will make you a queen._”

Nettie laughed to the story-teller’s content.

“Now, I’ll tell you a chicken story. This happened to me. Aunt Rody often lets me help her feed the chickens. We had a brood of little chickens, and all died but two of them; I don’t know why, I took good care of them. One morning I found the mother dead. And what do you think?—those two poor motherless little sisters cuddled under their dead mother’s wing. I would like to write a poem about that, only it breaks my heart, and I like to write about happy things. The next day one of them died, and the left one hadn’t any chicken companion. And then, what do you think? A hen mother who had only one chicken, deserted that and went to roost; and this one little black chicken tried to make friends with the sisterless little white chicken. It was too pretty to watch them. The one whose mother deserted went into her little coop and called and called to the other one; but the white chicken didn’t understand at first; when she _did_ understand, the black chicken made it so plain, and she ran to the coop, and the little black chicken and the little white chicken cuddled together as loving and happy as could be.”

“You can put that into a poem,” suggested Nettie, her eyes alight with Judith’s presence and stories.

“Nettie,” said Judith, impulsively, “I love to have you to tell things to.”

XI. HOW JEAN HAD AN OUTING.

“Is it warm in that green valley, Vale of Childhood, where you dwell? Is it calm in that green valley, Round whose bourns such great hills swell? Are there giants in the valley, Giants leaving foot-prints yet? Are there angels in the valley? Tell me—I forget.”

—Jean Ingelow.

Jean had been crying; in fact, she was crying now, but the tears were stopped on their way down her cheeks by the rush of her new thought. She was always having new thoughts; but this was the most splendid new thought she had ever had in her fourteen years of life.

“I’ll do it!” she exclaimed aloud, springing to her feet. “I’ll just do it, and nobody will know but myself. I’ll go away to a new place and stay two weeks.”

In her delight she clapped her hands and whirled about the room. It was such a small room to clap your hands and whirl about in. That was the cause of her tears—that small room; that and the house, the farm, and everything she had to do—and doing the same disagreeable things every day, and never going anywhere.

School closed yesterday; and this morning Sophie Elting, her best friend, had gone away, for an _outing_ she called it, with a little city air she had caught from her cousins. She was going to the sea-shore to be gone two weeks.

“I’ll play go,” cried Jean, “and I’ll stay at home and do all the things here that people do when they go on an outing.”

The first thing was to pack up. Sophie had a new trunk, and had shown her all her pretty things packed snugly in it: cologne, a box of paper, new handkerchiefs, and ever so many things to go on an outing with. How could Jean play she had things which she hadn’t? And she had no trunk. She would “pack” in a shawl-strap.

She put in her Sunday dress, her morning gingham, two white aprons, her Bible and tooth-brush. She had ever so many things to take on an outing. In half an hour her shawl-strap was packed. She looked down at it with a sigh of relief and pleasure. Now she had started.

“Jean,” came up the stairway, “do you want to go to town?”

Of course she did! The coming back would be “getting there.” She was going into the country for two weeks to board. The boarding was a part of it. She had never boarded in her life; she would be a summer boarder at Daisy Farm.

“There’s the butter to take,” the voice at the foot of the stairs went on, “and you may as well get your shoes, and I’ll give you twenty-five cents to spend as you like.”

“Oh, thank you!” cried Jean, delightedly. That would buy a box of paper and envelopes, and she had twenty cents for stamps. She could not think of another thing she wanted.

At six o’clock that afternoon, when Jean drove back into the yard with her father, she had two packages, her shoes and the box of paper. She had not been her usual talkative self on the way home. This gentleman sitting beside her was the farmer to whose house she was going. He had met her at the train. She was looking about the country and admiring things; she found seven things to admire which she had never noticed before. At the tea-table she intended to talk about them—“rave,” as the summer boarders did.

She went up to her little room and gravely unpacked her shawl-strap, putting the things into the drawers and the closet.

Her sister Lottie was setting the tea-table,—not in her play, but in sober reality,—and it was Minnie’s turn to milk to-night. The four sisters shared the housework with their mother; Jean was number three. Pet, eleven years old, was the youngest.

“I must take a great interest in everybody,” Jean said to herself. “Boarders always do. I must try to do good to somebody, as Mrs. Lane helped me last summer.”

At the supper-table she began to talk about the beautiful five-mile drive from town, and the sunset from the top of the hill.

“It _is_ pretty,” said Minnie.

“And the bridge with the willows. It is pretty enough for a picture; and the ducks sailing down the stream.”

“I always said we had pretty things near home,” remarked her father.

Then Lottie found a nook in the woods to talk about, and Pet told of a place like a cave, and the view on the top after you climbed the big rock. The tired mother brightened. After supper Jean followed her father out the back door and stood beside him.

“How is the watermelon patch doing?” she asked, in a voice of great interest, after thinking a minute.

“Finely! Never so well before. Come and look at it.”

It was a pleasant walk. Jean imagined that she had a white shawl thrown about her, and once in a while gave it a twitch as she listened while the farmer talked about his melons. She asked questions she had never thought of asking before, and learned several new things about the farm.

“It’s a good thing to be a good farmer,” she said. “I never thought before how much farmers had to know.” Her father looked pleased.

It was Jean’s work to wash the milk-pails and milk-pans. She did it that night with a sense of enjoyment which she had never had before, for she was simply “helping” of her own accord. She would be very helpful; she would try to make these strangers care very much for her. She would watch every day to see what she could do for them. Mrs. Lane last summer had taught the class in the Sunday-school to which Jean belonged, and had said that “all must try to be a blessing to every one whom their life touched.” It appeared to Jean that her life touched everybody’s in this house.

Sunday was a wonderful day. She listened to the new preacher, and the new Sunday-school was certainly very pleasant. She spoke to a little girl she had never noticed before, and gave a rose to Julia Weed, whom she had always disliked. She was trying to be like Mrs. Lane.

In the evening she stayed at home from church with her mother, because her mother’s head ached; and when, for the first time in her life, she proposed reading her Sunday-school book to her mother, she was both pleased and rebuked to hear her reply, “Oh yes, I should like it! I can’t read evenings, and I often think how interesting your books look.”

“And if I can’t finish it to-night, may I read tomorrow night?” Jean asked eagerly.

“If I am not too tired.”

“But it will rest you.”

“Perhaps so. It will be something new.”

Something new for her to be thoughtful about her own hard-working mother! And she had to imagine herself in somebody else’s home to think of it.