Chapter IV: The Little Red House

“In famine he shall redeem thee from death, and in war from the
power of the sword.”

Such a funny little clatter! The birds waked up from their afternoon nap, and half a dozen brown nut-crackers stopped to listen, with one tooth just inside the tempting white kernel.

“I’m so glad we came home this way,” Maybee chattered on, quite unconscious of the scores of bright eyes watching her. “Only look, mamma! I guess here’s where the birdies and butterflies had their Sabbath School. So many yellow buttercups, just like little question-books, and daisies and violets for picture-cards; and don’t that funny little brook sound mos’ like a m’lodeon? Oh, see that birdie washing his face! How do you s’pose they merember which tree they live in? I guess their mammas are telling ’em Sunday stories now, they’re so still. Oh, my pity! Here’s all their dear little water-proofs,” and down dropped Maybee in a patch of dainty, nodding, pink lady’s slippers. So many, and such splendid long stems!

“What do you s’pose God made ’em all for?” said Maybee, thoughtfully, trotting after mamma with both hands full.

“I wonder if old Aunty McFane wouldn’t like a bunch to stand beside her bed?” smiled mamma.

“May I give her some my own self? ’cause there’s nobody to pick her any. Mose has to go straight to that rackety old mill soon’s he’s got breakfast, an’ Peter’s too little. ’Sides, Mose won’t let him go in the woods, ’cause he’ll get lost. I b’lieve I must run, mamma; I’m in such a hurry.”

She was back in a trice, however, pale and trembling. Hadn’t mamma heard something very dreadful? Mamma listened to little faint twitterings up in the tree-tops,—that was all,—and pinching the color back into the dimpled cheeks, they walked on, up the path leading to the low, red house where the McFanes lived.

Little brown sparrow sitting close under the eaves could have told them what Maybee heard; she had been watching the tumbled, dusty figure dragging itself slowly and painfully along across the fields from the woods. Poor Dick! It was such a long way to the little red cottage, and then when he tried to call somebody, everything grew strange and dark again; the queer little groan he gave was what Maybee heard. By and by he opened his eyes, but somehow he didn’t care to move or speak. He heard little brown sparrow twittering to herself up under the eaves; he heard the brook gurgling noisily along down in the hollow, and then he heard voices through the open window,—a thin, piping voice saying, “But God didn’t send any wavens to bwing it, gwan’ma, as he did to ’lijah.”

“No, deary; grandma didn’t say he would. You see, ma’am, I’ve told him stories to make him forget like he was hungry, and there’s none like those in the good Book. O ma’am! there’s nothing like that, and the harder things are, the tighter you can take hold of the promises. You mind, ma’am, when that baby was left on my hands an’ me only jest able to hobble round, and how at last it came to lying here from morning till night, with only Mose to help, out of mill hours; but that wasn’t nothing at all to having his work stop entirely, and the little we’d scraped together go and go, and he a-worrying an’ tryin’ to find something to do. Five weeks to-morrow! and last Monday we hadn’t a cent left. He’s tried everywhere for a job; that last tramp over to Luskill Mills is what ails his feet. Friday morning he couldn’t step a step, and not a thing in the house but some dry bread. We’ve never trusted Peter alone, so he dars’n’t go as far as the main road, an’ we’re quite a ways off of the path, even. But I knew the Lord could send somebody. He does hear when folks pray. Don’t you see, Peter, instead of the ravens he sent the kind lady?”

“We come home this way ’cause it was so hot,” put in Maybee; “but I do b’lieve He let Sue come tagging after, so’s mamma could send her home quick to bring you some supper, and p’raps He just made those flowers a-purpose; you know he sees to the sparrows.”

“Does He really?” thought Dick, looking up at the nest over his head. “I wish—but I suppose He knows how wicked I’ve been, and won’t care. I wonder if that’s Sue?”

A light, quick step went up the walk, followed by a scream of delight.

“You must excuse the little fellow, ma’am; he’s so ravenous,” said a man’s voice, and it trembled too. Dick wondered if he was crying. Then he heard the rattle of dishes and the hum of the tea-kettle, and by and by a pleasant voice bidding Sue run back and ask Dr. Helps to come and look at Moses’ feet.

“You won’t disbelieve again, will ye, Moses?” said the grandmother. “You see, ma’am, he couldn’t just believe God cared anything about us, and it’s dreadful to be in the dark and not feel sure there’s an Eye seeing the end from the beginning all along, and a Hand ready to help as soon as ever the right time comes.”

“I wonder if He saw me down in the woods,” thought Dick, dreamily, the voices sounding farther and farther away. “What was it grandpa used to tell me,—‘Remember the Sabbath day’; but I didn’t _forget_ it; I never cared. I wish He wouldn’t look way down in my heart; it’s such a great Eye, and it sees all the bad. Oh, how bright it is, and it hurts so! If He only would go away!”

But the sun, which Dick fancied was the great all-seeing Eye, shone steadily down on the poor, pinched white face, and the voices inside went on:—

“It doesn’t seem, gran’mother, as if such a great Being could care for poor, wicked creatures like us.”

“He made the littlest flower, Moses, as well as the great mountains; and as for the wickedness, didn’t he let his own dear Son die just for us?”

“O me! I do b’le’ve I’m going to cry,” said Maybee, slipping past the doctor and around the corner of the house, full upon Dick, lying still and white, with a wild, staring look in his eyes.

Her screams summoned mamma and the doctor, who together carried him into the one front room of the cottage, and laid him on the “spare bed,” clean and white, if Mose had been sole housekeeper for many months.

“He mustn’t be moved again,” the doctor said; but “they could bring whatever they pleased to the cottage,” he added,—a hint Dick’s father wasn’t slow to take, for besides idolizing his boy, he was a kind-hearted man, and fairly shuddered when Maybee’s mamma told him how nearly starvation had come to the little red house.

Dick knew nobody that night nor for many days; but the sun, as it peeped in morning after morning, and crept reluctantly away at night, found out two things,—that Dick’s mother loved her boy better than her dairy, and that little Peter was growing fat and rosy on something besides “dry bread.”