CHAPTER X

WE REACH THE COUNTRY

I found myself in the arms of a slight young man, who had blue eyes and yellow hair. He had slipped forward when the train stopped, and had taken me as I was handed out.

Cuddling me up to him quite nicely, he said slyly—“A kitty that looks as if she had been struck by lightning.”

I suppose I was dreadfully rumpled, still I didn't like to hear it, so I said “Meow!” in a loud voice, hoping that some of our own party would hear me. They did not, though I saw them in a great confusion of heads, and arms, and hurrying feet.

The train did make the people jump at this little station. For two or three minutes it was dreadful to see the crowding and pushing, and to hear the thumping of boxes. I thought that the Denvilles' trunks would be knocked all to pieces.

Finally, when the trouble seemed at the very worst, the train gave a dreadful yelling and breathing and slowly dragged away.

“Where is my pussy?” I heard in Mary's dear voice. “Where is my Black-Face? Here are the others, but where is she?”

My captor slipped up to her and held me out.

“Oh! thank you,” said Mary, and she took me in her arms.

This was the first really happy moment that I had known since leaving Boston. I snuggled down to her. I even began to purr.

Mr. and Mrs. Denville were standing talking to a tall, burly man in big top boots, homespun clothes, and a soft felt hat.

Mr. Denville called him Mr. Gleason, and I found that he was the farmer who had bought the old Denville homestead. I liked his face—it was so humorous. Sometimes his mouth stopped smiling, but his eyes never stopped. They were twinkling all the time, whether he was talking or keeping still.

He was a very big man, and he stood looking about at us all without a word, but with his eyes just dancing.

“Now,” said Mr. Denville at last, in his business-like way, “we are ready to start, Mr. Gleason.”

The farmer pulled himself together, laughed “Ho! ho!” in a jolly voice, just as if Mr. Denville had made some good joke, then led the way to the back of the station house. There was a good-sized, double-seated carriage there, with a canopy top, and near it stood a large express wagon.

“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed the farmer again, as he gazed round on us all—Mr. and Mrs. Denville, Mary as she held me in her arms, Anthony, Mona, Slyboots and Serena in their boxes, nurse Hannah, and the big cage of canaries, and the heap of trunks—“Ho! ho! I guess I'll have to lay in some more cornmeal, and put another house on the top of the one I've got.”

While the farmer stood laughing to himself, Mr. Denville calmly put his wife, Mary and me in the back seat of the carriage, and got in the front seat himself.

Seeing this, the farmer stopped chuckling, and going up to the horses' heads, unfastened the rope that tied them.

“Denno,” he said to the slight young man who had taken me from the train, “pack all you can in the express wagon, and make after me. Come back for what you have to leave.”

Mary held me tightly in her lap, and I gazed curiously about me as the farmer got into the carriage, picked up the reins, and started away from the station. A number of little boys were on the ground staring up at me, but I did not pay much attention to them. I had seen boys before, and at present I was more interested in lovely Maine.

The canopy over our heads made a grateful shade, and I looked all about me. Back of the station on the railway track, were some big buildings that I heard the farmer tell Mr. Denville were a creamery, a canning factory, and a warehouse for apple barrels. As we turned up from the station to drive along a wide road, we passed a number of stores and houses. They made the station village of Black River. It was not very pretty just there. We had not yet come to the pretty part.

Mrs. Denville was looking about her very quietly, but very attentively as we passed beyond the stores and the houses, then entered on a long, country road.

“See there,” she said to Mary, “look at those birds building nests in that bank of earth!”

As she spoke, Mr. Denville leaned over the back of the front seat. “I am very glad to have you here, Maud,” he said in a deeply gratified voice. “I have often longed to revisit the haunts of my childhood with you.”

“Why did you not tell me?” she said in a low voice. “I would have come long before!”

“Over there,” he said with a sweep of his hand toward a grove of pines that we were passing, “rye grew when I was a boy. Just think of that.”

Mrs. Denville looked at the sturdy trees, then at her husband. “And you are not so very old,” she said.

“And yonder,” he said with another gesture toward the fields and woods on the other side of the road, “I have hunted foxes and wildcats many a day.”

“Oh, papa, are there any foxes here now?” asked Mary.

“Not about here,” replied her father. “The land has been cleared so rapidly that they have retreated to other fastnesses.”

I had noticed that the farmer had been occasionally throwing curious and sympathetic glances over his shoulder at little Mary, ever since we left the station. I knew by his eyes that he was a man that liked children, and soon he said kindly, “Would you like to see a fox, little sissy?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied joyfully, “very much.”

“Then you and I will take a gun some day and go up on the hills.”

Mary shuddered, “Oh, not a gun, Mr. Farmer.”

“Mr. Gleason,” her mother corrected her.

“Mr. Gleason,” the little girl repeated. “Oh, I would not like to shoot a fox. Little foxes like to live, Mr. Gleason.”

“Ho! ho!” he chuckled, “but foxes eat hens and chickens, little sissy.”

“Then fasten up the hens, and put out some food for the foxes,” said Mary gently.

The farmer nearly choked himself laughing. The idea of feeding foxes seemed to deprive him of every remnant of self-control. I thought myself it would be a nice plan to feed them, if they were hungry, but then I didn't know anything about the matter.

Mr. and Mrs. Denville were thoughtfully examining the beautiful country about us, and did not pay much attention to Mary and the farmer.

“Have you any children, Mr. Gleason?” Mary asked softly.

She did not mind his laughing. My little mistress is very clever, and knows quite well whether one is laughing with her, or at her.

“Children,” he said, drawing a big blue and white handkerchief from his pocket, and wiping his eyes with it, “now, little sissy, just guess. Would you say I had, or I hadn't.”

“I should say you had,” she replied firmly.

“Good again—you pulled up the right turnip that time. I've got three children, sissy.”

“Oh! I am so glad,” she replied. “I just wanted some little children to play with, and papa didn't know whether you had any or not.”

“They're not at home now,” he said. “They are up visiting their aunt on the hills yonder,” and he pointed to the big swelling land against the sky in front of us.

We were going now directly toward the long range of the Green Hills, and away from the Purple Hills.

“Look about you, Black-Face,” murmured Mary in my ear. “Stare your little city eyes out. Isn't this country delicious?”

I was amused at the remark about my eyes. They were delighted, but it was my nose just then that was giving me most pleasure. Animals like strong perfumes, but I never had felt anything as strong and sweet as this air. In the city of Boston of course I am very near the ground. Human beings can't realize how different is a cat's point of view, and point of smell, unless they will drop on all fours, and walk along close to the ground as we do.

I was about to speak of the Boston smells. They are very varied—some clean, but mostly dirty. You go a little way, and in addition to all the queer suggestions of the pavement and gutter, you get a puff of sewer gas. You go a little further, and get another. Here in the country there is a different class of smells. When Mary spoke to me it was apple-blossom mixed with wild flower perfume and coming in great waves of warm air. I was almost intoxicated, so much so that I closed my eyes, and gave myself up to the pleasure of smell. Oh, the delicious country! Why do not cats and people forsake the cities?

I had a dream of bringing all the Boston cats to Black River Valley, then curiosity made me open my eyes.

We were passing by scattering houses with small orchards about them. Then turning a corner, we found ourselves in a small village.

Nobody spoke. It was lovely to look down that quiet village street in this June sunlight, to see the pretty white houses half hidden in shade trees, or in the exquisite pink and white blossoms of apple trees. There was just one store in the village. A buggy stood in front of it, and the old horse attached to it was meditatively chewing the top from his hitching post, and did not even glance at us as we went by. I saw one or two faces at the windows, but there was no noise. No one seemed to wish to disturb the beautiful stillness of the village, and we drove through it without a word being spoken.

After we left it and were going down a hill to an iron bridge over a small river, Mr. Denville said quietly, “This is old Black River Village—not a very lively place since the railway came, and persons began to build about the station.”

“Oh, look at Mona!” said Mary suddenly.

The good old dog who had been following the carriage with Dolly close beside her, had plunged down the steep bank of the river, and rustling among the tall grasses and rushes, lapped eagerly at the water.

“She is almost overcome with the warmth of that thick coat of hers,” remarked Mrs. Denville. “We must have her hair cut off before the really warm weather comes.”

“Why, she is going to swim the river!” exclaimed Mary. “Just look at her!”

The river was not a very wide one, and she went boldly through it, with little, bedraggled Dolly paddling behind.

“Now she will be cooler,” said Mary delightedly. “I am so glad she went in.”

After leaving the little river, we went up a hill past more houses, and then to my surprise came another river, this one also with a pretty iron bridge over it.

Mona and Dolly went into this river too, and Mary and the farmer laughed heartily to see their two heads above the running stream.

I am trying to think how many rivers and streams we passed. I like to be a truthful little cat, even to myself. It was the same lovely thing, over and over—farm-houses, orchards, strips of woodland, streams, and beautiful green meadows.

“Do you like those meadows, sissy?” the farmer said to Mary.

“Oh! they are lovely,” she replied in a low voice. “I am thinking of the Bible. Don't you remember where the Jews sat down by the rivers of Babylon, and hung their harps on the willow-trees?”

“And wept because they remembered Zion,” said the farmer in his genial voice. “Yes, sissy, I remember. They wept because they were in a strange land, but we should weep if the Lord should take us away from our meadows. That rich low land is a great thing for our farms. It does not require fertilizing,” and then he went on to explain how the streams and rivers brought down the fertile soil from the high Green Hills and deposited it on the valley.

“And the meadow grass makes hay for the horses, does it?” said Mary with interest. “That is nice to know; and now, Mr. Gleason, will you please tell me what you call these handsome horses of yours?” and she pointed to the fine pair of brown animals that were drawing us so swiftly along.

“I call them Glory and Dungeon,” replied the farmer, and his eyes twinkled.

“Glory and Dungeon,” she repeated in rather a mystified tone. “What queer names. What do they mean?”

“They don't mean anything,” said the farmer with a burst of laughter. “When I get a new animal, a name for him crops right out of my mind. I don't know any reason for it.”

Mary looked him up and down. Up his broad back, and shoulders, and his thick neck, and big hat. Then she peeped round, and tried to obtain a more satisfactory glimpse of his face that had for some time been half turned toward her.

He was shaking with amusement, but no one knew what it was about. I don't think he knew himself. I think he just laughs because he feels happy.

Mary did not speak, and after a few minutes he composed himself and turned to speak to Mrs. Denville.

“Now, ma'am, just as you're getting played out, I expect, here we are at the Black River,” and he pulled up his big horses and made them stop short on the rustic wooden bridge.