Chapter V: Peter Seeks Information

“PETER is in one of his moods. He won’t come.”

So announced Sophy, returning from the barn for the third time one day towards the end of the following week.

“But we want him, Sophy. Did you tell him so?” asked Honor.

“That is just the reason he won’t come. When I said, ‘They want you,’ he said, ‘Let ’em want. I’ve got something else to do than be tied to Honor’s apron strings.’ What did he mean, Honor? You hardly ever wear an apron, and I never saw you tie Peter.”

Katherine, who was also present, laughed, as she invariably did when Sophy made a remark of this kind.

“You are the most literal young one I ever saw,” said she. “Did you really suppose, now, that—”

“Never mind!” interposed Honor, who saw that Sophy, always easily moved to tears by Katherine’s criticisms, looked ready to cry. “He means by that that he doesn’t want to do things for us. Very disobliging of him, I think. What is he doing?”

“Sitting on the fence just outside of the barn.”

“Dear me, I wish he would come! Well, Katherine, we shall have to do it ourselves. A boy can be so useful, and it does seem provoking to have one right in the family and not be able to turn him to account. I will hold the step-ladder while you go up. Isn’t it horrid to have to do all this ourselves? I do miss the servants dreadfully.”

The girls were hanging the parlor curtains for the first time in their lives.

“They are going to look horribly, too,” said Katherine. “I really think it would pay, Honor, to have a man come up from Fordham and do it. It wouldn’t cost much.”

“It would cost more than we have got at present,” replied Honor. “No,” she added a little drearily after a moment’s silence, “we’ve got to learn to do these things ourselves. Other people do, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t. Be careful, Katherine. You’re putting that ever so much higher on the right than you did on the left.”

In the meantime Sophy returned once more to the barn. She found that Peter had not moved from his position upon the fence, and as far as she could judge he was still in “one of his moods.” When he saw Sophy approaching for the fourth time, he fixed his gaze yet more intently upon the river, which gleamed beyond the tall pine trees in the grove.

Sophy was a small and slenderly built child of eight. The fact that she was so much younger than her sisters had perhaps caused her to be considered the baby of the family longer than would otherwise have been the case. She was not a pretty child, for her eyes were too large and staring for the small thin face, and the temporary absence of two of her front teeth gave her a grotesque expression. Her hair, which was straight, had been cut short for the sake of convenience, and her cheeks were pale for those of a country child.

Sophy adored her only brother with all the ardor of her childish heart. She considered him the tallest, the strongest, and the handsomest boy in all the town of Fordham, or Boston either, for that matter, and she was his willing slave at all times—a state of affairs which Peter was not slow to recognize and of which he availed himself on every possible occasion.

When Peter was “in one of his moods” he was to Sophy more fascinating than ever. She hung near him, wondering what was the matter, what troublesome thoughts were thronging his brain, and whether it would be possible to offer him any help. She longed to comfort him on these occasions, but never knew how to do it.

This afternoon she seated herself upon a convenient rock and leaned her chin upon her hand, her great brown eyes fastened upon her brother, who was perched upon the fence rail. Peter at first paid no attention to her presence. Then he stirred uneasily. He turned and looked at her, and then looked quickly away again. The stare of those big brown eyes was so unflinching.

“I wish you would go away,” said he at last.

“Why?” asked Sophy.

“Because I’m thinking, and—and you’re such a stare-cat.”

“I won’t any longer,” returned the obliging Sophy, and fixed her eyes at once upon the ground, only now and then raising them for a furtive glance at the motionless figure upon the fence. The mood was lasting a long time, she thought.

It was a mild day in November, and the purple haze in the atmosphere proved that it was Indian summer. There was a delicious smell of autumn in the air, and the smoke of burning brush was borne to them from the distance. One could hear sounds that seemed to come from far away, and in the pasture which lay to the right of the pine grove, a vast number of crows had alighted. Presently, having finished their conference, they rose with one accord and soared far above the tops of the tallest pine trees, cawing to one another as they went. Peter glanced up at them.

“I wish I were a crow,” said he.

Sophy gave a little sigh of relief. He had spoken; he was coming out of his mood.

“Why?” she asked, with alacrity.

“Oh, because—” And then he stopped. Sophy sighed again, this time with disappointment. He was not going to tell her! Presently, he again broke the silence.

“I wish I were anything,” said he; “anything but what I am.”

“Do you wish you were a girl?” asked his little sister.

“No!” exclaimed Peter; “of course not a _girl_! But anything else. A bird, a beetle, a squirrel. Something alive.”

This was difficult philosophy for Sophy to comprehend. Would the life of a beetle, or even of a bird, be preferable to that of a girl? And was not a girl “alive”? She was about to inquire further, when her brother spoke again.

“I’m tired of it,” said he. “Just tired of it! I’m not going to stand it any longer. I’m going to run away to sea. But if I disappear, Sophy, don’t you tell them where I’ve gone. Don’t tell the girls that I ever said anything about running away to sea; now mind!”

“No,” said Sophy, “I won’t, but I hope you won’t decide to go, Peter. It wouldn’t be a bit nice without you. Why do you want to go?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Peter, leaping to the ground, and seating himself upon a rock. The fence rail had ceased to be comfortable.

“There is nothing for me to do. We are all poor, and the girls have to work, and I can’t do a thing. If I were as old as Honor, I could go into business right away, and make a fortune, and support you all. I’m the only boy in the family, and I ought to be the one to do it. I don’t see why I wasn’t the oldest instead of having three girls older than me to order me around. It just makes me mad. Why, if I had only been the oldest, I’d be finishing college now, and going into a law office, or I’d be a doctor and have lots of patients, or I’d go into business; stocks, or a bank, or something or other. Instead of that I’ve got to knock round here and fuss over little things the girls want me to do, and go to that hateful Hastings School down at Fordham. But what’s the use of talking to you? You don’t understand. You’re nothing but a girl, and a baby one at that.”

Sophy’s great brown eyes filled with tears.

“I know I’m a girl,” she faltered. “I wish I wasn’t, Peter. Indeed I do! I wish you’d please excuse me for being one, for I can’t really help it, but—but—I don’t think I’m such a baby.”

“I’d like to know what you are, then,” said her brother, crossly. “You’re crying now. That proves that you’re a baby. Do you suppose a boy would cry as easily as you do, or any one who wasn’t a baby?”

“What _is_ the matter?” cried a gay voice, as the rustle of dead leaves on the pasture path was heard, and Victoria came into sight. “I heard you ever so far off, and it sounded exactly as if you were scolding, Peter. I got off the train at Waterview and walked up, as I missed the one that connected. I’ve been thinking over something, and I want your advice, Peter.”

She saw at a glance that Sophy had been made unhappy, but she thought it wiser to pass it over unnoticed for the present.

“What is it?” asked her brother, interested in spite of himself. Then he added hastily: “But you’re only making that up to change the subject. You don’t really want my advice. You think I’m scolding Sophy, and so I am. Why, she cries if you say—”

“I do want your advice,” interrupted Victoria; “and if you can’t give it to me, I shall have to ask some other boy or man. It is about mushrooms. Do you know anything at all about them, and do you think it would pay to raise them? I have been reading up about them to-day in the Encyclopædia at school. That was the reason I missed the other train. It seems as if we could make some money out of them if we only tried. It says in the Encyclopædia that the cultivated ones don’t taste as good as the wild ones, but there must be a demand for them, for people use them when the others are out of season. I was wondering whether you would want to undertake it.”

“Do you mean me alone?” asked Peter.

“Yes. You see I have the violets to attend to, and lots of things in the house. We have so much dusting and all that sort of thing to do, now that we have only one maid, and with all I have to study, I really don’t think I can undertake anything more. Couldn’t you read up about them, and find out all you can? You might make a good deal that way.”

A gleam of something like interest had come into Peter’s hitherto depressed-looking face. It quickly faded, however.

“It’s such a little thing,” said he.

“Little? How do you mean?”

“Why, it doesn’t really amount to anything. What is raising mushrooms? Anybody could do that. I want to do something big. If I were only a man, now, I could support you all.”

“Yes, I know you could,” rejoined Victoria, quickly, “and it would be too lovely for anything; but you will be a man some day, Peter, and then you can do it, and in the meantime it seems as if the little things would count. And mushrooms are not so little, either. I mean the raising of them. You _might_ be able to make a good deal that way, and in other gardening.”

“They’d call me a mushroom, I suppose,” said Peter, gloomily, after he had reviewed the situation for a few moments in silence.

“What _do_ you mean?”

“A mushroom, or perhaps a toadstool. More likely a toadstool.”

“Peter! Who would?”

“Those Hastings school-boys.”

“Would they? Why?”

“Because they are hateful,” said Peter, rising and walking about with his hands in his pockets. “The class I am in is nothing but a set of ruffians. I’d like to fight ’em, every one of ’em, and I will some day. They call me the ‘Glen Arden dude’ now. You see I’m the only boy there who has been to a private school. I wish father had never sent me to that school in Boston. I wish—”

“Never mind!” said Victoria, quickly. “Father always did what was quite right. What else do they say?”

“They say I’m tied to my sisters’ apron strings, just because they saw me with Honor and Katherine yesterday when I was carrying the bundles. I’ll never go to Fordham with any of you girls again, and I’m not going to carry your bundles if I do go.”

Quickly a look of scorn gathered in Victoria’s expressive face. Her brown eyes fairly gleamed with it as they regarded her brother.

“What a poor-spirited boy you must be, Peter!” said she.

“Poor-spirited!” exclaimed Peter. “Why, I’m willing to fight any boy or any two boys in that school, and I will yet. I’d like to know what you mean by that, Vic!”

“Oh, I don’t mean that you are not brave enough if there is any fighting to be done,” said she. “I’d trust you quickly enough for that, but I think you are very poor-spirited to be afraid to carry our bundles or be seen with any of us, just because those common boys that go to the Hastings School in Fordham chose to laugh at you for doing it. If you go on in this way, you won’t be the kind of man father was, or that Mr. Abbott is. Mr. Abbott is only too glad to do things for women, and father was just like him in that. And if you are not willing to do these little things for us now, I don’t believe you will take care of us when you grow up, so we may as well get accustomed to taking care of ourselves.”

Peter’s face flushed. He recognized the truth of Victoria’s remarks, although he had no intention of acknowledging it.

“See here,” said he, “I wish you’d stop! There is no one else in the world that I’d let say those things to me. If you were a fellow, I’d knock you down.”

“Oh no, you wouldn’t,” said Victoria, laughing good-humoredly, “for the very good reason that I should be engaged in knocking you down! You think over that mushroom plan, Peter,” she continued, as she rose from the rock upon which she had been sitting. “I must go into the house now and see what there is to be done. Come along, Sophy, and tell me how school went to-day.”

The sisters walked away together, leaving Peter to ruminate over Victoria’s remarks. He looked after them for a moment and then himself departed. He had suddenly determined to go to a certain florist who owned some large greenhouses in Fordham, and consult with him as to the best method of raising mushrooms. Perhaps it could be kept a secret from the boys at school. At any rate, the subject was worth considering.

He walked over to the village and took an electric car, which carried him in a short time almost to his destination, although it was a distance of some miles. Upon leaving the car, he had a walk of several blocks, and his way was through the most crowded street of Fordham,—the main street, in fact, upon which were most of the shops, and which at this hour of the afternoon, when the trains arrived at short intervals from Boston, was well filled with people.

Peter walked along, paying little attention to the passers-by, as his mind reviewed the late conversation with Victoria, when he was attracted by some squirrels in a cage. The cage was standing upon a barrel outside of a provision store. The store was on a corner, and the squirrels were on the side street, which was a small one.

They were skipping about in the revolving cage, engaged in an ever-failing attempt to make progress, and compelled to pursue their ceaseless round of futile activity. Peter, as he watched them, wished that he could set them free. He wondered how much the provision dealer would sell them for. Then he remembered that there was little enough money to spare, and none with which to free squirrels.

For a wonder, no one else was watching the little animals. When they had first been placed there, a small crowd had gathered daily to look at their antics; but the Fordham youth had grown accustomed to them now, and Peter was the only one who stopped. Presently, however, another boy sauntered up, and stood a little beyond Peter. He was very shabbily dressed, and Peter, who was observant, noticed that he looked hungry. Instead of watching the squirrels, he found himself watching the boy, who was quite unconscious of it.

Presently the boy put out his hand and quietly abstracted an apple from a barrel that was standing there, and dropped it into his pocket. In a moment he repeated the operation. Then he moved slightly, and his gaze encountered Peter’s. Instantly his fist doubled up.

“If you’re going to tell on me, I’ll knock you down,” he said.

“I’m not going to tell on you, though I’m not afraid of your knocking me down,” returned Peter. “But what are you doing it for? It seems to me it’s a pretty mean thing to do.”

“I guess you’d do it if you was as hungry as me,” said the boy. “I mean to take another—there ain’t nobody looking.”

“Oh, I say, don’t!” said Peter. “Haven’t you got any money to pay for them?”

“Money! I ain’t seen a nickel for a week, and I ain’t had nothin’ to eat since yesterday morning.”

Peter put his hand in his pocket.

“I haven’t got much myself,” said he, pulling out a dime, a five-cent piece, and some pennies, which he placed in the palm of one hand while he searched the depths of his pockets with the other. “We haven’t got much money ourselves, nowadays, but we’ve got enough to eat. It must be pretty bad to be hungry. I’ve got to keep five cents to get back to Fordham Falls, but I’d be glad if you’d take the rest, and I wish you’d go in and pay for those apples.”

He placed the money upon the top of the barrel which held the squirrels’ cage, and walked quickly away. The boy looked after him in astonishment. Then he took the money and went into the store with the apples which he had appropriated in his hand. He paid for them, and also for a loaf of bread, and then he hurried up the main street in the direction in which Peter had walked. He could not overtake him, however, and when he had reached the less thickly populated part of the town and still saw nothing of his benefactor, he turned aside into a narrow road, and sitting down, he began to devour the bread and apples, from time to time looking, as he ate, at the eight cents which remained of what Peter had given him. He felt like a millionaire.

In the meantime Peter went to the florist’s, and fortunately finding him at home, proceeded to question him closely on the subject for which he had come. After spending a half-hour in interesting conversation he left the place, and as it was yet too early for his car back to Fordham Falls, he took a roundabout way for the sake of using up his superfluous time.

As he walked he thought he heard the cry of an animal in pain. Peter was passionately fond of living creatures, be they insects, birds, or beasts, and the sound that he heard was undoubtedly the yelp of a suffering dog. He ran in the direction from which it proceeded, and very soon, upon turning a corner in the road, came upon two boys who were engaged in torturing a dog which they had tied to the fence rail.

Before they knew what had happened, one boy was rolling in the ditch by the side of the road, and the other was being pommelled and shaken by an infuriated person, who had apparently sprung out of the ground, so unexpectedly had his presence become known to them.

At first the surprise completely paralyzed the boys, one of whom was larger than Peter, the other smaller; but they soon recovered themselves, and it would undoubtedly have gone hard with the aggressor had he not been suddenly reinforced by help from the most unlooked-for quarter.

The boy whom Peter had met in front of the provision store, had been eating his bread and apples not far from the scene of the fight. Hearing the sound of a scuffle, he ran down the road, and saw at once that his late benefactor was evidently getting the worst of it. Gratitude, added to the food which Peter had given him, gave strength to the newcomer, and in a few moments the victory was won.

The two young ruffians were prostrate in the road, and Peter walked away with the injured dog in his arms, accompanied by his new friend.