Chapter 2

Suddenly a sound disturbed the peace of the woods--a scratching, rattling, scurrying sound. Something was moving through the dead leaves that had gathered among the roots and trunks. She started back nervously, but jumped forward again with a cry of delight, and caught William Thayer in her arms.

Even as he was licking her cheek, the path widened, the trees turned into bushes, the underbrush melted away, and the brook, a little river now, bent in upon them in a broad curve, spanned only by stepping-stones. It ran full between its grassy banks, gurgling and chuckling as it lapped the stones, a mirror for the fat white clouds where it lay in still pools.

In the shelter of a boulder, a lad crouched over a fire, coaxing it with bits of paper and handfuls of dry leaves. Just as the flames shot up, the dog barked cheerily, and the lad turned to welcome him. His eye fell on Caroline; amazement and real pleasure grew into a delighted laugh.

"Well, if you don't beat the Dutch!" he cried. "How'd you get here?"

"I came in the wagon with the egg-and-chicken man," said she happily, "and then I walked 'cross lots. William Thayer knew me just as well!"

"'Course he did. He always knows his friends. Now, see here. You can stay and watch this fire, an' I'll go over there a ways where those men are buildin' a fence; I'll bet they'll give us something. You look after the fire an' put on these old pieces of rail; it was hard work gettin' dry stuff to-day. We won't be long."

They disappeared between the trees, and Caroline sat in proud responsibility before the delightful little fire. The minutes slipped by; from time to time she fed the blaze with bits of bent twigs, and at the proper moment, with a thrill of anxiety, she laid two pieces of the old fence-rail crosswise on the top. There was a second of doubt, and then they broke into little sharp tongues of flame. With a sigh of pleasure, she turned from this success, and, opening the lunch-basket, laid the napkin on the ground and methodically arranged four sandwiches, two cookies, and an orange on it. Then, with her fat legs crossed before her, she waited in silence. Between the sun at her back and the fire on her face, she grew pleasantly drowsy; the sounds about her melted imperceptibly to a soft, rhythmic drone; her head drooped forward....

"Hello, hello!"

She jumped and stared at the boy and the dog. For a moment she forgot. Then she welcomed them heartily and listened proudly to his admiring reception of her preparations.

"Well, William Thayer, will you look at that! How's this for a surprise? And see what we've got." He balanced a tin pail carefully between the two crossed sticks in the heart of the fire, and unfolded from a newspaper two wedges of pumpkin-pie. In William Thayer's little basket was a large piece of cheese.

"It's coffee 'n milk mixed together; they had bottles of it," he explained. "William Thayer 'll take back the pail. Are you hungry?"

Caroline nodded.

"Awful," she stated briefly.

"Well, then," he said with satisfaction, "let's begin."

Caroline attacked a sandwich, with shining eyes, and when in another minute the boy took from his pocket a tin ring that slipped miraculously out of itself into a jointed cup, and dipped her a mug of hot coffee from the bubbling pail, she realized with a pang of joy that this was, beyond any question, the master moment of her life.

"I take this along," he explained, "so's when I go by, and they're milking, I can have some warm. Anybody'd give me all I want if William Thayer dances and drops dead for 'em. It tastes good early in the morning, I tell you."

She sighed with pleasure. To drink warm milk in the cool, early dawn, with the cows about you, and the long, sweet day free before!

They sipped turn about; the boy divided the orange mathematically; the pie was filled with fruit of the Hesperides.

"That was mighty good, that dinner," he announced luxuriously, "an' now I'll have a pipe."

The pungent, fresh odor of the burning tobacco was sweet in the air; a dreamy content held them quiet.

He did not ask her whence or whither; she had no apologies or regrets. Two vagabonds from every law of home and duty, they were as peaceful and unthoughtful of yesterday's bed and to-morrow's meal as William Thayer, who slept in the sun at their feet.

For long they did not talk. An unspoken comprehension, an essential comradeship, filled the deep spaces of silence that frighten and irritate those whom only custom has associated; and Caroline, flat on her filled stomach, her nose in the grass, was close in thought and vague well-being to the boy who puffed blue rings toward the little river, his head on his arms.

"I put the plate into that door in the barn," he said, finally. "Did you put those silver things back?"

Caroline grunted assent.

"But they wouldn't think that you--what you said," she assured him earnestly. "It's only tramps they're afraid of."

He glanced quickly over at her, but she was utterly innocent.

"One came to the kitchen once, and asked Mary for some hot tea or coffee, and she hadn't any, but she said if he was very hungry she'd give him a piece of bread and butter, and he said to go to hell with her bread and butter. So she doesn't like them."

The boy gasped.

"You oughtn't to--had you--that isn't just right for you to say, is it?" he asked awkwardly.

"What--hell?" Caroline inquired placidly. "No, I s'pose not. Nor damn nor devil, either. But, of course, I know 'em. Those are the only three I know. I guess they're about the worst, though," she added with pardonable pride. "My cousin, the Captain, knows some more. He's twelve 'n a half. But he won't tell 'em to me. He says boys always know more than girls. I suppose," respectfully, "you know more than those three, yourself?"

Her companion coughed.

"A boy--" he began, then paused, confronted with her round, trustful eyes.

"A boy--" he started again, and again he paused.

"Oh, well, a boy's different," he blurted, finally.

Caroline nodded humbly.

"Yes, I know," she murmured.

There was silence for a while. The river slipped liquidly over the stones, the white clouds raced along the blue above them, the boy smoked. At length he burst out with:

"You're all right, now! You're just a regular little chum, aren't you?"

She blushed with pleasure.

"I never had anybody along with me," he went on dreamily. "I always go alone. I--I didn't know how nice it was. I _had_ a chum once, but he--he--"

The boy's voice trembled. Caroline's face clouded with sympathy.

"Did he die?" she ventured.

"No," he said, shortly; "no, he didn't die. He's alive. He couldn't stand my ways. I tried to stay in school and--and all that, but soon as spring came I had to be off. So the last time, he told me we had to part, him and me."

"What was his name?" she asked gently.

The boy jerked his head toward the dog.

"_That's_ his name," he said, "William Thayer." A little frown gathered on Caroline's smooth forehead; she felt instinctively the cloud on all this happy wandering. The spring had beckoned, and he had followed, helpless at the call, but something--what and how much?--tugged at his heart; its shadow dimmed the blue of the April sky.

He shrugged his shoulders with a sigh; the smile came again into his gray eyes and wrinkled his freckled face.

"Oh, well, let's be jolly," he cried, with a humorous wink. "The winter's comin' soon enough!" and he burst into a song:

"There was a frog lived in a well, Kitty alone, Kitty alone; There was a frog lived in a well; Kitty alone and I!"

His voice was a sweet, reedy tenor; the quaint old melody delighted Caroline.

"This frog he would a-wooing ride, Kitty alone, Kitty alone."

She began to catch the air, and nodded to the time with her chin.

"Cock me cary, Kitty alone, Kitty alone and I!"

The boy lifted his polo-cap in a courtly manner, and began with grimaces and bows to act out the song. His audience swayed responsive to his every gesture, nodding and beaming.

"Quoth he, 'Miss Mouse, I'm come to thee'-- Kitty alone, Kitty alone; Quoth he, 'Miss Mouse, I'm come to thee, To see if thou canst fancy me.' Cock me cary, Kitty alone, Kitty alone and I!"

Caroline swung her hat by its ribbons and shrilled the refrain, intoxicated with freedom and melody:

"Cock me cary, Kitty alone, Kitty alone and I!"

She drummed with her heels on the ground, the boy waved his cap, and William Thayer rolled over and over, barking loudly for the chorus. Suddenly the boy jumped up, pulled her to her feet, and with grotesque, skipping steps pirouetted around the dying fire. The dog waltzed wildly on his hind legs; Caroline's short petticoats stood straight out around her as she whirled and jumped, a Bacchante in a frilled pinafore. The little glade rang to their shouting:

"Kitty alone and I!"

He darted suddenly through an opening in the bushes, William Thayer close behind, Caroline panting and singing as she gave chase. Through a field, across a little bridge they dashed. He flung the empty coffee-pail at an astonished group of men, who stopped their work, their fence-posts in hand, to stare at the mad trio.

Breathless at last, they flung themselves on a bank by the road and smiled at each other. Caroline laughed aloud, even, in sheer, irresponsible light-headedness, but over the boy's face a little shadow grew.

"It won't seem so nice alone after this, will it, William Thayer?" he said, slowly.

Caroline stared.

"But--but I'm coming! I'll be there," she cried. "I'm coming with you!"

He went on as if he had not heard.

"Who'll there be to eat our dinner with us to-morrow, William Thayer?" he questioned whimsically.

Caroline moved nearer and put her hand on his knee.

"There'll be--won't there be me?" she begged.

He shook his head.

"I guess not," he said bluntly.

Her eyes filled with tears.

"But--but you said I was a--a regular little chum," she whispered. "Don't you like me?"

He was silent:

"Don't you? Oh, don't you?" she pleaded. "I don't _need_ much to eat, really!"

The lad looked at her with a strange longing. The fatherhood that lives in every boy thrilled at the touch of her fat little hand on his knee; the comradely glow in her round brown eyes warmed his restless, lonely heart. He shook her off almost roughly.

"I guess they'd miss you more'n that salt-shaker," he said grimly. "I wish I could take you with me--honest, I do. But you better stay home and go to school. You don't want to grow up ignorant, and have your folks ashamed of you."

"But you--you aren't ignorant!" she urged warmly, her admiration shining in her eyes.

He blushed and kicked nervously at the grass.

"I am," he said angrily. "I am, too. Oh, dear, I wish--I wish--"

They looked at each other, troubled and uncertain.

"You're a girl," he began again, "and girls can't; they just can't. They have to stay with their folks and keep nice. It's too bad, but that's the way it is. You'd want to see 'em, too. You'd miss 'em nights."

Caroline winced, but could not deny. "Oh," she cried passionately, "why do girls have to do _all_ the missing? It's just what that Simms boy says: 'If I couldn't be a boy, I'd rather be a dog!'"

"There, there," he said soothingly, "just think about it. You'll see. And you're not exactly like a girl, anyhow. You're too nice."

He patted her shoulder softly, and they lay quietly against the bank. Her breathing grew slow and regular; raising himself cautiously on one elbow, he saw that she had fallen asleep, her arm about William Thayer, her dusty boots pathetically crossed. He watched her tenderly, with frequent glances up and down the road.

Presently an irregular beat of hoofs sounded around a bend, and a clattering wagon drew steadily nearer.

The egg-and-chicken man jumped out and strode angrily toward the little group.

"I've caught you, have I, you young----"

"'Sh!"

The boy put up a warning hand.

"She's fast asleep," he whispered. "Are you goin' to take her home?"

The man stared.

"Oh, I'm no child-stealer," said the boy lightly. "Here, just lift her soft with me, and I'll bet we can put her in without waking her up at all."

Without a word, the man slipped his hands under Caroline's shoulders, the boy lifted her dusty boots, and gently unloosing her arm from the dog, they carried her lax little body carefully to the wagon and laid her on the clean straw in the bottom, her head on a folded coat. She stirred and half opened her eyes, murmured broken words, and sank yet deeper into her dream.

The man pointed to a book on the seat.

"That's her lesson-book," he whispered hoarsely. It was the despised geography.

"Her folks think a heap of her, I tell you," he added, still eying the boy uncertainly. "She's about as bright as they make 'em, I guess."

"I guess she is," said the lad simply. "She'd ought to have been a boy. She'd have made a fine one."

The man's face cleared.

"Do--do you want a job?" he said abruptly. "We're short up at my place, and I wouldn't mind the dog. I remember you, now. You caught a chicken for me once; my wife gave you a hot supper."

The boy smiled faintly and shook his head. "I remember," he said. "No, I don't believe I want any job, thank you. I--I'm sort of--I have to keep along."

"Keep along? Where?"

He waved his hand vaguely.

"Oh, just along," he repeated. "This year, anyhow. Maybe--well, good-by. Her folks might be gettin' anxious."

He stepped up to the cart and looked once more at the flushed cheeks and brown hands, then strode off up the road.

The egg-and-chicken man gathered up the reins and the wagon started. Caroline scowled a little at the motion, but slept on. The boy whistled to the dog.

"Come on, William Thayer," he said. "I guess it's just you and me now."

II

A LITTLE VICTORY FOR THE GENERAL

Caroline, Miss Honey, and the General were taking the morning air. Caroline walked ahead, her chin well up, her nose sniffing pleasurably the unaccustomed asphalt, the fresh damp of the river and the watered bridle path. The starched ties at the back of her white pinafore fairly took the breeze, as she swung along to the thrilling clangor of the monster hurdy-gurdy. Miss Honey, urban and _blasé_, balanced herself with dignity upon her roller-skates and watched with patronizing interest the mysterious jumping of young persons with whom she was unacquainted through complicated diagrams chalked on the pavement.

The General sucked a clothespin meditatively: his eyes were fixed on something beyond his immediate surroundings. Occasionally a ravishing smile swept up from the dimples at his mouth to the yellow rings beneath his cap frill; he flapped his hands, emitting soft, vague sounds. At such times a wake of admiration bubbled behind him. Delia, who propelled his carriage, which resembled a victoria except for the rearward position of its motor power, pursed her lips consciously and affected not to hear the enraptured comments of the women who passed them.

To the left the trees, set in a smooth green carpet, threw out tiny, polished, early May leaves; graceful, white-coated children dotted the long park. Beyond them the broad blue river twinkled in the sun, the tugs and barges glided down, the yachts strained their white sails against the purple bluffs of the Palisades. To the right towered the long, unbroken rows of brick and stone: story on story of shining windows, draped and muffled in silk and lace; flight after flight of clean granite steps; polite, impersonal, hostile as the monuments in a graveyard.

Immobile ladies glided by on the great pleasure drive like large tinted statues; dressed altogether as the colored pictures in fashion books, holding white curly dogs in their curved arms; the coachmen in front of them seemed carved in plum-colored broadcloth; only by watching the groom's eyelids could one ascertain that they were flesh and blood. Young girls, two, three, and four, cantered by; their linen habits rose and fell decorously, their hair was smooth. Mounted policemen, glorious in buttons, breathing out authority, curvetted past, and everywhere and always the chug-chug-chug of the gleaming, fierce-eyed motor cars filled one's ears. They darted past, flaming scarlet, sombre olive and livid white; a crouching, masked figure, intent at the wheel, veiled, shapeless women behind a whir of dust to show where they had been a breath before.

And everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, a thin stream of white and pink and blue, a tumbling river of curls and caps and bare legs, were the children. A babble of shrill cries, of chattering laughter, of fretful screams, an undercurrent of remonstrance, of soothing patience, of angry threatening, marked their slow progress up and down the walk; in the clear spaces of the little park they trotted freely after hoops and balls, rolled and ran over the green, and hid, shouting, behind the bushes. It was a giant nursery, and the mere man who trespassed on its borders smiled deprecatingly, and steered a careful course among the parasols and tricycles, stooping now and then to rescue some startled adventurer, sprawling from the disgusted shock of encounter with this large and rapidly moving object.

To Caroline, fresh from untrammeled sporting, through neighborly suburban yards, this disciplined procession, under the escort of Delia and the General, was fascinating to a degree. Far from resenting the authority she would have scorned at home, she derived an intense satisfaction from it, and pranced ostentatiously beside the perambulator, mimicking Miss Honey's unconscious deference to a higher power in the matter of suitable crossings and preferred playfellows with the absorbed gravity of the artist.

"See! General, see the wobblybubble," Delia murmured affectionately. "(Will you see that child turn his head just like a grown person? Did you ever see anything as smart as that?) Did he like the red one best? So does Delia. We'll come over here, and then you won't get the sun in your precious eyes. Do you want me to push you frontwards, so you can see me? (Watch him look at me--he knows what I mean just as well, the rascal!) Just wait till we get across, and I will. Look out, Miss Honey! Take hold of your cousin's hand and run across together, now, like good girls."

Miss Honey made an obedient snatch at Caroline's apron strings, and darted forward with a long roll of her skates. The road was clear for a block. Delia, with a quick glance to left and right, lowered the perambulator to the road-level and forged ahead. Caroline, nose in air, studied the nearest policeman curiously.

"Look out, there! _Look out!_"

A man's voice like a pistol shot crashed behind them. Caroline heard quick steps and a woman's scream, looked up at the huge, blood-red bulk of an automobile that swooped around the corner and dashed forward. But Miss Honey's hand was clutching her apron string, and Miss Honey's weight as she fell, tangled in the skates, dragged her down. Caroline, toppling, caught in one dizzy backward glance a vision of a face in the automobile staring down on her, white as chalk, under a black moustache and staring goggles, and another face, Delia's, white too, with eyes more strained and terrible than the goggles themselves. One second that look swept her and Miss Honey, and then, shifting, fell upon the General strapped securely into his carriage. Even as Caroline caught her breath, he flew by her like an arrow, his blue eyes round with surprise under a whirl of white parasol, the wicker body of the perambulator swaying and lurching. With that breath still in her nostrils, she was pushed violently against Miss Honey, who was dragged over her from the other side by a large hairy hand. A sharp blow from her boot heel struck Caroline's cheek, and she screamed with the pain; but her cry was lost in the louder one that echoed around her as the dust from the red monster blew in her eyes and shut out Delia's figure, flat on the ground, one arm over her face as the car rushed by.

"My God! She's down!" That was the man.

"Take his number!" a shrill voice pierced the growing confusion.

Caroline, crying with pain, was forced to her feet and stumbled along, one apron string twisted fast in Miss Honey's hand. Instantly they were surrounded by a crowd of nurses, and Miss Honey, dazed and obedient, was shoved and pulled from one to another.

"Here, get out o' this--don't let the children see anything! Let's get home."

"No, wait a minute. Let's see if she's alive. Have they got the ambulance?"

"Look out, there, Miss Dorothy, you just stop by me, or you'll be run over, too!"

"See! She's moving her head! Maybe she's not--"

Sobbing with excitement, Caroline wrenched herself free from the tangle of nurses and carriages, and pushed her way through the crowd. Against the curb, puffing and grinding, stood the great red engine; on the front seat a tall policeman sat, one woman in the back leaned over another, limp against the high cushions, and fanned her with the stiff vizor of her leather cap.

"It's all right, dear, it's all right," she repeated monotonously, with set lips, "the doctor's coming. It wasn't Pullton's fault. It's all right."

Caroline wriggled between two policemen, and made for a striped blue and white skirt that lay motionless on the ground. Across the white apron ran a broad dirty smudge.

Caroline ran forward.

"Delia! Delia!" she gulped. "Is she--is she dead?"

A little man with eyeglasses looked up from where he knelt beside the blue and white skirt.

"I don't believe so, my dear," he said briskly; "is this your nurse? See, she's opening her eyes, now--speak to her gently."

As he shifted a leather-covered flask from one hand to the other, Caroline saw a strange face with drawn purplish lids when she had always known two merry gray eyes, and tight thin lips she could not believe Delia's. The head moved a little from side to side, the lips parted slightly. A nervous fear seized her and she turned to run away; but she remembered suddenly how kind Delia had been to her; how that very morning--it seemed so long now--Delia had helped her with her stubby braids of hair, and chided Miss Honey for laughing at her ignorance of the customs of the park. She gathered her courage together and crouched down by the silent, terrifying figure.

"Hel--hello, Delia!" she began jerkily, wincing as the eyes opened and stared stupidly at the ring of anxious faces. "How do you f-feel, Delia?"

"Lean down," said the little man softly, "she wants to say something."

Caroline leaned lower.

"General," Delia muttered. "Where's General?"

The little man frowned.

"Do you know what she means?" he asked.

Caroline patted her bruised cheek.

"Of course I do," she said shortly. "That's the baby. Oh," as she remembered, "where _is_ the General?"

"Here--here's the baby," called some one. "Push over that carriage," and a woman breathing heavily, crowded through the ring with the general, pink and placid, under his parasol.

"Lift him out," said the little man, and as the woman fumbled at the strap, he picked the baby out neatly, and held him down by the girl on the ground.

"Here's your baby, Delia," he said, with a kind roughness in his voice. "Safe and sound--not a scratch! Can you sit up and take him?"

And then, while the standing crowd craned their necks and even the steady procession moving in the way the police kept clear for them, paused a moment to stare, while the little doctor held his breath and the ambulance came clanging up the street, Delia sat up as straight as the mounted policeman beside her and held out her arms.

"General, oh, General!" she cried, and buried her face in his fat warm neck.

The men coughed, the women's faces twisted, but the little doctor watched her intently.

"Move your leg," he said sharply. "Now the other. Hurt you? Not at all?"