Chapter 11

Rosa's color had faltered back, but she still stood visibly in awe of her old neighbor.

"Well," she owned, "Elvin Drew says you can see in the dark, but I don't know's he means anything by it."

Again Dilly broke into laughter, rocking back and forth, in happy abandonment.

"I can!" she cried, gleefully. "You tell him I can! An' when I can't, folks are so neighborly they strike a light for me to see by. You tell him! Well, now, what is it? You've come to ask suthin'. Out with it!"

"Father told me to come over, and see if you can't tell something about our cows. They're all drying up, and he don't see any reason why."

Dilly nodded her head sagely.

"You'd better ha' come sooner," she announced. "You tell him he must drive 'em to pastur' himself, an' go arter 'em, too."

"Why?"

"An' you tell him to give Davie a Saturday, here an' there, to go fishin' in, an' not let him do so many chores. Now, you hear! Your father must drive the cows, an' he must give Davie time to play a little, or there'll be dark days comin', an' he won't be prepared for 'em."

"My!" exclaimed Rosa, blankly. "My! Ain't it queer! It kind o' scares me. But, Dilly,"--she turned about, so that only one flushed cheek remained visible,--"Dilly, 'ain't you got something to say to me? We're going to be married next Tuesday, Elvin and me. It's all right, ain't it?"

Dilly bent forward, and peered masterfully into her face. She took the girl's plump pink handy and drew her forward. Rosa, as if compelled by some unseen force, turned about, and allowed her frightened gaze to lie ensnared by the witch's great black eyes. Dilly began, in a deep intense voice, with the rhythm of the Methodist exhorter, though on a lower key,--

"Two years, that boy's been arter you. Two years, you trampled on him as if he'd been the dust under your feet. He was poor an' strugglin'. He was left with his mother to take care on, an' a mortgage to work off. An' then his house burnt down, an' he got his insurance money; an' that minute, you turned right round an' says, 'I'll have you.' An' now, you say, 'Is it all right?' _Is_ it right, Rosy Tolman? You tell _me_!"

Rosa was sobbing hysterically.

"Oh, I wish you wouldn't scare me so!" she exclaimed, yet not for a moment attempting to withdraw her hand, or turn aside her terrified gaze. "I wish I never'd said one word!"

Dilly broke the spell as lightly as she had woven it. A smile passed over her face, like a charm, dispelling all its prophetic fervor.

"There! there!" she said, dropping the girl's hand. "I thought I'd scare ye! What's the use o' bein' a witch, if ye can't upset folks? Now don't cry, an' git your cheeks all blotched up afore Elvin calls to fetch ye, with that hired horse, an' take ye to the Cattle-Show! But don't ye forgit what I say! You remember we ain't goin' to wait for the Day o' Judgment, none on us. It comes every hour. If Gabriel was tootin', should you turn fust to Elvin Drew, an' go up or down with him, wherever he was 'lected? That's what you've got to think on; not your new hat nor your white _pique_. (Didn't iron it under the overskirt, did ye? How'd I know? Law! how's a witch know anything?) Now, you 'ain't opened your bundle, dear, have ye? Raisin-cake in it, ain't there?"

Rosa bent suddenly forward, and placed the package in Dilly's lap. In spite of the bright daylight all about her, she was frightened; if a cloud had swept over, she must have screamed.

"I don't know how you found it out," she whispered, "but _'tis_ raisin-cake. Mother sent it. She knew I was going to ask you about the cows. She said I was to tell you, too, there's some sickness over to Sudleigh, and she thought you could go over there nussing, if you wanted to."

"I 'ain't got time," said Dilly, placidly. "I give up nussin', two year ago. I 'ain't got any time at all! Well, here they come, don't they? One for me, an' one for you!"

A light wagon, driven rapidly round the corner, drew up at the gate. Elvin Drew jumped down, and helped out his companion, a short, rather thickset girl, with smooth, dark hair, honest eyes, and a sensitive mouth. She came quickly up the path, after an embarrassed word of thanks to the young man.

"He took me in," she began, almost apologetically to Rosa, who surveyed her with some haughtiness. "I was comin' up here to see Dilly, an' he offered me a ride."

Rosa's color and spirits had returned, at the sight of her tangible ally at the gate.

"Well, I guess I must be going," she said, airily. "Elvin won't want to wait. Good-by, Dilly! I'll tell father. Good-by, Molly Drew!"

But Dilly followed her down to the road, where Elvin stood waiting with the reins in his hands. He was a very blond young man, with curly hair, and eyes honest in contour and clear of glance. Perhaps his coloring impressed one with the fact that he should have looked very young; but his face shrunk now behind a subtile veil of keen anxiety, of irritated emotion, which were evidently quite foreign to him. Even a stranger, looking at him, could hardly help suspecting an alien trouble grafted upon a healthy stem. He gave Dilly a pleasant little nod, in the act of turning eagerly to help Rosa into the wagon. But when he would have followed her, Dilly laid a light but imperative hand on his arm.

"Don't you want your fortune told?" she asked, meaningly. "Here's the witch all ready. Ain't it well for me I wa'n't born a hunderd year ago? Shouldn't I ha' sizzled well? An' now, all there is to burn me is God A'mighty's sunshine!"

Elvin laughed lightly.

"I guess I don't need any fortune," he said. "Mine looks pretty fair now. I don't feel as if anybody'd better meddle with it." But he had not withdrawn his arm, and his gaze still dwelt on hers.

"You know suthin' you don't mean to tell," said Dilly, speaking so rapidly that although Rosa bent forward to listen, she caught only a word, here and there. "You think you won't have to tell, but you will. God A'mighty'll make you. You'll be a stranger among your own folks, an' a wanderer on the earth; till you tell. There! go along! Go an' see the punkins an' crazy-quilts!"

She withdrew her hand, and turned away. Elvin, his face suddenly blanched, looked after her, fascinated, while she went quickly up the garden walk. An impatient word from Rosa recalled him to himself, and he got heavily into the wagon and drove on again.

When Dilly reached the steps where her new guest had seated herself, her manner had quite changed. It breathed an open frankness, a sweet and homely warmth which were very engaging. Molly spoke first.

"How pleased he is with her!" she said, dreamily.

"Yes," answered Dilly, "but to-day ain't tomorrer. They're both light-complected. It's jest like patchwork. Put light an' dark together, I say, or you won't git no figger. Here, le's have a mite o' cake! Mis' Tolman's a proper good cook, if her childern _have_ all turned out ducks, an' took to the water. Every one on 'em's took back as much as three generations for their noses an' tempers. Strange they had to go so fur!"

She broke the rich brown loaf in the middle, and divided a piece with Molly. Such were the habits calculated to irritate the conventionalities of Tiverton against her. Who ever heard of breaking cake when one could go into the house for a knife! They ate in silence, and the delights of the summer day grew upon Molly as they never did save when she felt the nearness of this queer little woman. Turn which side of her personality she might toward you, Dilly could always bend you to her own train of thought.

"I come down to talk things over," said Molly, at last, brushing the crumbs of cake from her lap. "I've got a chance in the shoe-shop."

"Do tell! Well, ain't that complete? Don't you say one word, now! I know how 'tis. You think how you'll have to give up the birds' singin', an' your goin' into the woods arter groundpine, an' stay cooped up in a boardin'-house to Sudleigh. I know how 'tis! But don't you fret. You come right here an' stay Sundays, an' we'll eat up the woods an' drink up the sky! There! It's better for ye, dear. Some folks are made to live in a holler tree, like me; some ain't. You'll be better on't among folks."

Molly's eyes filled with tears.

"You've been real good to me," she said, simply.

"I wish I'd begun it afore," responded Dilly, with a quick upward lift of her head, and her brightest smile. "You see I didn't know ye very well, for all you'd lived with old Mis' Drew so many year. I 'ain't had much to do with folks. I knew ye hadn't got nobody except her, but I knew, too, ye were contented there as a cricket. But when she died, an' the house burnt down, I begun to wonder what was goin' to become on ye."

Molly sat looking over at the pine woods, her lips compressed, her cheeks slowly reddening. Finally she burst passionately forth,--

"Dilly, I'd like to know why I couldn't have got some rooms an' kep' house for Elvin? His mother's my own aunt!"

"She wa'n't his mother, ye know. She was His stepmother, for all they set so much by one Another. Folks would ha' talked, an' I guess Rosy wouldn't ha' stood that, even afore they were engaged. Rosy may not like corn-fodder herself, any more 'n t'other dog did, but she ain't goin' to see other noses put into't without snappin' at 'em."

"Well, it's all over," said Molly, drearily. "It 'ain't been hard for me stayin' round as I've done, an' sewin' for my board; but it's seemed pretty tough to think of Elvin livin' in that little shanty of Caleb's an' doin' for himself. I never could see why he didn't board somewheres decent."

"Wants to save his six hunderd dollars, to go out West an' start in the furniture business," said Dilly, succinctly. "Come, Molly, what say to walkin' over to Sudleigh Cattle-Show?"

Molly threw aside her listless mood like a garment.

"Will you?" she cried. "Oh, I'd like to! You know I'm sewin' for Mis' Eli Pike; an' they asked me to go, but I knew she'd fill up the seat so I should crowd 'em out of house an' home. Will you, Dilly?"

"You wait till I git suthin' or other to put over my head," said Dilly, rising with cheerful decision. "Here, you gi' me that cake! I'll tie it up in a nice clean piece o' table-cloth, an' then we'll take along a few eggs, so 't we can trade 'em off for bread an' cheese. You jest pull in my sheets, an' shet the winder, while I do it. Like as not there'll be a shower this arternoon."

When the little gate closed behind them, Molly felt eagerly excited, as, if she were setting forth for a year's happy wandering. Dilly knew the ways of the road as well as the wood. She was, as usual, in light marching order, a handkerchief tied over her smooth braids; another, slung on a stick over her shoulder, contained their luncheon and the eggs for barter. All her movements were buoyant and free, like those of a healthy animal let loose in pleasant pastures. She walked so lightly that the eggs in the handkerchief were scarcely stirred.

"See that little swampy patch!" she said, stopping when they had rounded the curve in the road. "A week or two ago, that was all alive with redbud flowers. I dunno the right name on 'em, an' I don't care. Redbirds, I call 'em. I went over there, one day, an' walked along between the hummocks, spush! spush! You won't find a nicer feelin' than that, wherever ye go. Take off your shoes an' stockin's, an' wade into a swamp! Warm, coarse grass atop! Then warm, black mud, an' arter that, a layer all nice an' cold that goes down to Chiny, fur's I know! That was the day I meant to git some thoroughwort over there, to dry, but I looked at the redbird flowers so long I didn't have time, an' I never've been sence."

Molly laughed out, with a pretty, free ripple in her voice.

"You're always sayin' that, Dilly! You never have time for anything but doin' nothin'!"

A bright little sparkle came into Dilly's eyes, and she laughed, too.

"Why, that's what made me give' up nussin' two year ago," she said, happily. "I wa'n't havin' no time at all. I couldn't live my proper life. I al'ays knew I should come to that, so I'd raked an' scraped, an' put into the bank, till I thought I'd got enough to buy me a mite o' flour while I lived, an' a pine coffin arter I died; an' then I jest set up my Ebenezer I'd be as free's a bird. Freer, I guess I be, for they have to scratch pretty hard, come cold weather, an' I bake me a 'tater, an' then go clippin' out over the crust, lookin' at the bare twigs. Oh, it's complete! If I could live this way, I guess a thousand years'd be a mighty small dose for me. Look at that goldenrod, over there by the stump! That's the kind that's got the most smell."

Molly broke one of the curving plumes.

"I don't see as it smells at all," she said, still sniffing delicately.

"Le'me take it! Why, yes, it does, too! Everything smells _some_. Oftentimes it's so faint it's more like a feelin' than a smell. But there! you ain't a witch, as I be!"

"I wish you wouldn't say that!" put in Molly, courageously. "You make people think you are."

"Law, then, let 'em!" said Dilly, with a kindly indulgence. "It don't do them no hurt, an' it gives me more fun'n the county newspaper. They'd ruther I'd say I was a witch'n tell 'em I've got four eyes an' eight ears where they 'ain't but two. I tell ye, there's a good deal missed when ye stay to home makin' pies, an' a good deal ye can learn if ye live out-door. Why, there's Tolman's cows! He dunno why they dry up; but I do. He, sends that little Davie with 'em, that don't have no proper playtime; an' Davie gallops 'em all the way to pastur', so't he can have a minute to fish in the brook. An' then he gallops 'em home ag'in, because he's stole a piece out o' the arternoon. I ketched him down there by the brook, one day, workin' away with a bent pin, an' the next mornin' I laid a fish-hook on the rock, an' hid in the woods to see what he'd say. My! I 'guess Jonah wa'n't more tickled when he set foot on dry land. Here comes the wagons! There's the Poorhouse team fust, an' Sally Flint settin' up straighter 'n a ramrod. An' there's Heman an' Roxy! She don't look a day older'n twenty-five. Proper nice folks, all on 'em, but they make me kind o' homesick jest because they _be_ folks. They do look so sort o' common in their bunnits an' veils, an' I keep thinkin' o' little four-legged creatur's, all fur!" The Tiverton folk saluted them, always cordially, yet each after his kind. They liked Dilly as a product all their own, but one to be partaken of sparingly, like some wild, intoxicating root.

They loved her better at home, too, than at Sudleigh Fair. It was like a betrayal of their fireside secrets, to see her there in her accustomed garb; so slight a concession to propriety would have lain in her putting on a bonnet and shawl!

As they neared Sudleigh town, the road grew populous with carriages and farm-wagons, "step and step," not all from Tiverton way, but gathered in from the roads converging here. Men were walking up and down the market street, crying their whips, their toy balloons, and a multitude of cheaper gimcracks.

"Forty miles from home! forty miles from home!" called one, more imaginative than the rest. "And no place to lay my head! That's why I'm selling these little whips here to-day, a stranger in a strange land. Buy one! buy one! and the poor pilgrim'll have a supper and a bed! Keep your money in your pocket, and he's a wanderer on the face of the earth!"

Dilly, the fearless in her chosen wilds, took a fold of Molly's dress, and held it tight.

"You s'pose that's so?" she whispered. "Oh, dear! I 'ain't got a mite o' money, on'y these six eggs. Oh, why didn't he stay to home, if he's so possessed to sleep under cover? What does anybody leave their home _for_, if they've got one?"

But Molly put up her head, and walked sturdily on.

"Don't you worry," she counselled, in an undertone. "It don't mean any more 'n it does when folks say they're sellin' at a sacrifice. I guess they expect to make enough, take it all together."

Dilly walked on, quite bewildered. She had lost her fine, joyous carriage; her shoulders were bent, and her feet shuffled, in a discouraged fashion, over the unlovely bricks. Molly kept the lead, with unconscious superiority.

"Le's go into the store now," she said, "an' swap off the eggs. You'll be joggled in this crowd, an' break 'em all to smash. Here, you le' me have your handkerchief! I'll see to it all." She kept the handkerchief in her hand, after their slight "tradin'" had been accomplished; and Dilly, too dispirited to offer a word, walked meekly about after her.

The Fair was held, according to ancient custom, in the town-hall, of which the upper story had long been given over to Sudleigh Academy. Behind the hall lay an enormous field, roped in now, and provided with pens and stalls, where a great assemblage of live-stock lowed, and grunted, and patiently chewed the cud.

"Le's go in there fust," whispered Dilly. "I sha'n't feel so strange there as I do with folks. I guess if the four-footed creatur's can stan' it, I can. Pretty darlin'!" she added, stopping before a heifer who had ceased eating and was looking about her with a mild and dignified gaze. Dilly eagerly sought out a stick, and began to scratch the delicate head. "Pretty creatur'! Smell o' her breath, Molly! See her nose, all wet, like pastur' grass afore day! Now, if I didn't want to live by myself, I'd like to curl me up in a stall, 'side o' her."

"'Mandy, you an' Kelup come here!" called Aunt Melissa Adams. She loomed very prosperous, over the way, in her new poplin and her lace-trimmed cape. "Jest look at these roosters! They've got spurs on their legs as long's my darnin'-needle. What under the sun makes 'em grow so! An' ain't they the nippin'est little creatur's you ever see?"

"They're fightin'-cocks," answered Caleb, tolerantly.

"Fightin'-cocks? You don't mean to tell me they're trained up for that?"

"Yes, I do!"

"Well, I never heard o' such a thing in a Christian land! never! Whose be they? I'll give him a piece o' my mind, if I live another minute!"

"You better let other folks alone," said Caleb, stolidly.

"'Mandy," returned Aunt Melissa, in a portentous undertone, "be you goin' to stan' by an' see your own aunt spoke to as if she was the dirt under your feet?"

Amanda had once in her life asserted herself at a crucial moment, and she had never seen cause to regret it. Now she "spoke out" again. She made her slender neck very straight and stiff, and her lips set themselves firmly over the words,--

"I guess Caleb won't do you no hurt, Aunt Melissa. He don't want you should make yourself a laughin'-stock, nor I don't either. There's Uncle Hiram, over lookin' at the pigs. I guess he don't see you. Caleb, le's we move on!"

Aunt Melissa stood looking after them, a mass of quivering wrath.

"Well, I must say!" she retorted to the empty air. "If I live, I must say!"

Dilly took her placid companion by the arm, and hurried her on. Human jangling wore sadly upon her; under such maddening onslaught she was not incapable of developing "nerves." They stopped before a stall where another heifer stood, chewing her cud, and looking away into remembered pastures.

"Oh, see!" said Molly, "'Price $500'! Do you b'lieve it?"

"Well, well!" came Mrs. Eli Pike's ruminant voice from the crowd. "I'm glad I don't own that creatur'! I shouldn't sleep nights if I had five hunderd dollars in cow."

"Tain't five hunderd dollars," said Hiram Cole, elbowing his way to the front. "'Tain't p'inted right, that's all. P'int off two ciphers--"

"Five dollars!" snickered a Crane boy, diving through the crowd, and proceeding to stand on his head in a cleared space beyond. "That's wuth less'n Miss Lucindy's hoss!"

Hiram Cole considered again, one lean hand stroking his cheek.

"Five--fifty--" he announced. "Well, I guess _'tis_ five hunderd, arter all! Anybody must want to invest, though, to put all their income into perishable cow-flesh!"

"You look real tired," whispered Molly. "Le's come inside, an' perhaps we can set down."

The old hall seemed to have donned strange carnival clothes, for a mystic Saturnalia. It was literally swaddled in bedquilts,--tumbler-quilts, rising-suns, Jacob's-ladders, log-cabins, and the more modern and altogether terrible crazy-quilt. There were square yards of tidies, on wall and table, and furlongs of home-knit lace. Dilly looked at this product of the patient art of woman with a dispirited gaze.

"Seems a kind of a waste of time, don't it?" she said, dreamily, "when things are blowin' outside? I wisht I could see suthin' made once to look as handsome as green buds an' branches. Law, dear, now jest turn your eyes away from them walls, an' see the tables full of apples! an' them piles o' carrots, an' cabbages an' squashes over there! Well, 'tain't so bad if you can look at things the sun's ever shone on, no matter if they be under cover." She wandered up and down the tables, caressing the rounded outlines of the fruit with her loving gaze. The apples, rich and fragrant, were a glory and a joy. There were great pound sweetings, full of the pride of mere bigness; long purple gilly-flowers, craftily hiding their mealy joys under a sad-colored skin; and the Hubbardston, a portly creature quite unspoiled by the prosperity of growth, and holding its lovely scent and flavor like an individual charm. There was the Bald'in, stand-by old and good as bread; and there were all the rest. We know them, we who have courted Pomona in her fair New England orchards.

Near the fancy-work table sat Mrs. Blair, of the Old Ladies' Home, on a stool she had wrenched from an unwilling boy, who declared it belonged up in the Academy, whence he had brought it "to stan' on" while he drove a nail. And though he besought her to rise and let him return it, since he alone must be responsible, the old lady continued sitting in silence. At length she spoke,--

"Here I be, an' here I'm goin' to set till the premiums is tacked on. Them pinballs my neighbor, Mis' Dyer, made with her own hands, an' she's bent double o' rheumatiz. An' I said I'd bring 'em for her, an' I'd set by an' see things done fair an' square."

"There, Mrs. Blair, don't you worry," said Mrs. Mitchell, a director of the Home, putting a hand on the martial and belligerent shoulder, "Don't you mind if she doesn't get a premium. I'll buy the pinballs, and that will do almost as well."

"My! if there ain't goin' to be trouble between Mary Lamson an' Sereno's Hattie, I'll miss my guess!" said a matron, with an appreciative wag of her purple-bonneted head. "They've either on 'em canned up more preserves 'n Tiverton an' Sudleigh put together, an' Mary's got I dunno what all among 'em!--squash, an' dandelion, an' punkin with lemon in't. That's steppin' acrost the bounds, _I_ say! If she gits a premium for puttin' up gardin-sass, I'll warrant there'll be a to-do. An' Hattie'll make it!"

"I guess there won't be no set-to about such small potaters," said Mrs. Pike, with dignity. Her broad back had been unrecognized by the herald, careless in her haste. "Hattie's ready an' willin' to divide the premium, if't comes to her, an' I guess Mary'd be, put her in the same place."

"My soul an' body!" exclaimed another, trudging up and waving a large palmleaf fan. "Well, there, Rosanna Pike! Is that you? Excuse me all, if I don't stop to speak round the circle, I'm so put to't with Passon True's carryin's on. You know he's been as mad as hops over Sudleigh Cattle-Show, reg'lar as the year come round, because there's a raffle for a quilt, or suthin'. An' now he's come an' set up a sort of a stall over t'other side the room, an' folks thinks he's tryin' to git up a revival. I dunno when I've seen John so stirred. He says we hadn't ought to be made a laughin'-stock to Sudleigh, Passon or no Passon. An' old Square Lamb says--"