Chapter XXIV

Some days later, Fritz appeared in the kitchen, only to be speedily informed by Rosetta that “I hain’t no time to bother with young ones now! Here, take a cookie if ye want it, an’ clear out!”

“I don’t want a cookie, and I don’t want to clear out. I want somebody to talk to.”

“Talk ter somebody ’tain’t so busy as I be, then! I’ve got about forty hundred things ter do this very day, an’ here it is goin’ on ten o’clock, a’ready.”

“What ‘forty hundered’ things, Rosetta? Paula says that you zaggerate turribly. I don’t know ezactly what zaggerate means, but I’m afraid it is somethin’ like tellin’ a lie. You wouldn’t tell a lie, would you, Rosetta?” responded the little boy, in a tone that revealed his distress over Rosetta’s danger.

“Here, if ye hev sunthin’ ter do ye won’t ast so many foolish questions. Take this bowl of raisins an’ set down an’ stun ’em.”

That was labor wholly congenial to Fritzy’s temper, or he fancied that it would be, and he obediently took the bowl and dropped upon the floor to “help Rosetta,” as he had occasionally been allowed to do before.

The good woman was indeed very busy. She was a famous cook, but in all the time he had been at The Snuggery, Fritz had never smelled so many and such savory odors as permeated her kitchen at that moment. In the great Dutch oven, from “the hole in the wall,” as he called it, there came whiffs of perfume suggesting to the chronically hungry child the delights of roasting fowls, and even the unusual but never-to-be-forgotten fragrance of a “little piggy cookin’ whole.”

The range oven was full of pies, the shelves of the pantry were laden with cakes and jellies, and even the little oil-stove was pressed into service to bake tin after tin of puffy looking biscuits. Fritz didn’t understand it at all. And when he had asked Content why every one was “tearin’ around as if they was possessed so for,” she had answered him with honest sympathy:--

“I haven’t the least idea in the world, dearie. It seems as if grandmother must be expecting a lot of company; for even we couldn’t eat half the stuff Rosetta is preparing. I asked Aunt Ruth if any one was coming, and she told me to ‘watch out sharp and see.’ I knew then that I was to ask no more questions; but I do hope we shall have a taste of all the nice things; don’t you?”

“Don’t I?” responded Fritz; and with that hope in mind he had invaded the kitchen.

Rosetta at last bethought herself that the child was unusually quiet, and paused in her vigorous thumping of the bread dough to look behind her toward his corner. There was a goodly pile of sticky seeds upon her polished floor; the bowl of raisins had become a bowl of emptiness; but in the basin which should have been filled, to make all the terms of the problem satisfactory, there were but a few torn and scraggy bits of fruit.

“Fritzy Pickel! What in the name o’ common-sense! Where hev ye put them raisins?”

“Where? Wh--why, in the basin,” answered the boy, bending forward and looking into it with a perfectly satisfied expression on his dirty face. “Didn’t you say to put ’em there?”

“That’s just what I did say; but, ye bad boy, ye’ve put ten in yer mouth ter ary one went inter the dish! I don’t want no more sech help, an’ ef my hands wasn’t all over dough, I’d fix ye! Clear right out o’ here, quick!”

Fritz waited no second order. Rosetta’s face was not a pleasant one at that instant; but when he stopped to ask, from a prudently safe position outside the doorway, what she was “a-cookin’ sech a lot for?” she replied savagely, if with something like tears in her eyes: “I’m a-cookin’--fer folks! But I’d a’most ruther do it fer a fun’ral!”

More perplexed than ever, and with that sort of feeling in his small stomach which demanded sympathy, he wandered away into “grandmother’s part” of the house. It was always sunshiny and delightful in “grandmother’s part,” and to it as a haven of rest the raisin-surfeited youngster turned, secure of a reception that would be kind.

“I’ll tell grandma about that old Rosetta thing! She’s crosser than cross!” But though grandmother smiled sweetly upon her little grandson as he entered, it was in an absent sort of way which seemed rather the force of habit than of welcome. She was talking with Fritzy Nunky; and, as naturally as possible, Fritz second marched to the uncle’s knee to be lifted up.

“Nunky can’t take you now, little man. Run away and read your books in the corner.”

Fritzy was mad. And his stomach did begin to feel very queer. He kept tasting raisins and tasting them, till he felt as if he should never care to see another. But as there was absolutely nothing else to be done, he went to the corner designated, and sat down to look at pictures.

Grandmother and Uncle Fritz paid no attention to him; indeed, they quite forgot his presence, and went on talking as if he were a nobody. Fritz resented this at first; then he became interested in what they were saying; and at a word of Uncle Fritz about Munich and the schools there, he sat up and listened intently.

“Nay, Fritz!” said grandmother; and her voice had rarely sounded so sharp. “Nay, thee must not ask that. Thee is taking the light of my eyes away from me in my old age, but thee must leave me my children’s children.”

That was queer, wasn’t it? Yet Uncle Fritz appeared to be doing nothing but sitting there in the easy-chair and looking straight upon the carpet. Finally, he replied:--

“Thou must not blame me, Mother Amy. Thou shouldst blame thy own self, who hast made her the lovely woman that she is. I could not help but love her; and thou--thou must have left thy mother’s side also.”

“Does thee think I will fight against nature, Fritz? I blame nobody; but when thee and she think to rob me of my little ones, then I will not let thee have thy will.”

Fritz second began to be very much interested, indeed. He forgot all about the “raisiny-pain,” and pictured pages were as dross. He knew they were talking about “the children,” and that included himself.

“But the care, think of the care. Even for the six months that we shall be away it will be too much for thy feeble strength.”

“Humph!” said grandmother, and she said it exactly like Aunt Ruth. “I am only seventy-seven years of age. I have excellent health, and my parents lived to be over ninety.”

“If thou wouldst only go with us!” pleaded Fritzy Nunky, eloquently.

Grandmother shook her head vigorously. “In this house I have lived ever since my husband left me. In this house I will remain till my own summons comes. Having nobody else to cosset, Ruth has cosseted me, and pretended to her loving heart that I required it. I do not. I am fully capable of caring for all those whom the Lord sends to my keeping. I have thought it all out. There shall come a governess here, and the children shall be regularly taught all that it is necessary they should know. Melville will be with his great professor in a very few weeks, so friend Winslow tells me. The rest of us will abide in our place and be at peace. Go, thee and Ruth, and be as happy as were my companion and I. I could wish thee nothing more; but take this step only in the fear of the Lord.”

Fritzy got up and walked softly to his grandmother’s chair.

By that time Fritzy Nunky was pacing up the long apartment and down again, in a very disturbed sort of fashion. No wonder, Fritz the second thought, if, as grandmother said, he was really taking away from her the light of her eyes! The child felt a sudden revulsion of feeling toward his beloved guardian of which he might not have been thought capable. He cast a scowling glance upon the burly, striding figure, and wished that he could fight it. Then he leaned his sticky hands on Mother Amy’s knees and peered curiously up into her tear-dimmed eyes.

“What is it, little lad?” asked the old lady gently, and bending down to kiss her darlings’ face.

“Is he really doing it? What makes him? And does it hurt you very much?”

“Doing what, Fritz?”

“Taking the light out of your eyes.”

“Nay, nay! not wholly so!” cried Grandmother Amy, bending her face upon the sturdy little shoulder of the child; “he cannot do that, little one, while he leaves me thee.”

Then Fritz climbed up into her lap, and scowled ferociously at Uncle Fritz, who--terrified, it may be--went quickly out and closed the door.

But the hubbub of the kitchen did not extend to the other parts of the great house; though, strangely enough, Aunt Ruth seemed to have found plenty of occupation for everybody’s hands; though she assigned the various tasks with a sort of gentle sadness which surprised the toilers, so different was it from her usual brisk activity. And when Octave had finished her allotted portion she sped to Melville’s room to talk it over.

“My son, there is another ‘Mystery’ afoot. I know it, I feel it! It’s ‘borne in on me.’ There has been food enough cooked to feed a regiment, and every nook and cranny of this mansion has been swept and garnished. Strangest part of all, Aunt Ruth is in it; and I’m inclined to think that Fritzy Nunky is too, for he acts so queer! A few minutes ago he met me in the hall, and he stopped me and kissed me. ‘I wonder if I am doing right by thee, my child,’ he said, in the gravest fashion. I told him I considered that he was doing exactly right; for this very morning he called me into his room and gave me a pretty silver watch, and a pocket-book with ten whole dollars in it. Think of that, Melville Capers! I, Octave Pickel, the impecunious, with ten real dollars all my very own!”

“It is almost incredible. But don’t worry; you’ll not have them long; you have no liking for money,” answered Melville, consolingly.

“Humph! I do so like it--to spend!”

“I, too, think there is another ‘Mystery’; but it can never be half so splendid as ours. I think your Uncle Fritz is in it even more deeply than Aunt Ruth. This morning, it must have been after he had given you the pocket-book, he came in to see me; and he talked to me so seriously about my responsibility as the ‘head of the family in America,’ that I couldn’t believe my own ears. It didn’t seem at all like his jolly self; and, ‘Mystery’ or not, I don’t believe that these other conspirators are getting half as much fun, or good either, out of it as we did out of ours. There is a lot of company coming, though, I know. Grandmother never had so much cooked before, Abry-ham says, even for ‘yearly meeting,’ when she has a houseful of thees and thous.”

In came Paula, visibly excited, and in great haste. “Octave, Aunt Ruth says we are to go up stairs and put on our best dresses, for there is company coming. A lot of old Quaker Friends, and who do you think? Why, the great doctor and the great professor and his wife, and the village folks, and everybody you can think of. I knew you’d have to mend your frock, for you tore it the last time you had it on, so I thought I’d tell you right away.”

“Oh, bother! I hate company! I wanted Octave to help me with some problems. We haven’t had one single minute to study since the folks came home!” exclaimed Melville, peevishly.

“Well, I’ve borne that deprivation in an angelic spirit,” retorted Octave; who found sitting patiently to work out Melville’s incomprehensible problems a terrible tax upon her restless spirit.

“But Aunt Ruth beats me; she ought to be in a perfect fever of nervousness, but she is as calm--as calm!” said Melville, who had received many unusual visits from her during that morning. Visits which appeared to have no special object, but which were apparently intended as sympathetic,--that is, as far as Melville could understand them.

Soon after dinner the expected guests began to arrive; and even then Ruth was everywhere about the house, receiving her friends and showing them to the most comfortable seats in the great, old-fashioned parlor, which had been thrown open to the fresh September air, and from which a door opening into Melville’s sitting-room had been unlocked, for the first time in many years. His cot had been rolled to this doorway, and there he lay conversing with his revered professor, who had promptly appeared on the noon train.

The great surgeon and Uncle Fritz were deep in the discussion of a “beautiful case” which Fritz must be sure to see when he passed through London.

London! Was he going away to it soon? Octave felt her heart sink strangely; and she unconsciously clutched little Fritz’s hand so that he protested.

Then everybody came in from all the rooms where they had been wandering; even Rosetta, in a clean print gown, and Abry-ham in his Sunday clothes, and Luke, smelling of bear’s oil and pomatum. And they ranged themselves all around the place, so “fer all the world like a fun’ral” that Rosetta was seized then and there with a desire to weep. When she did so, with audible moans, it was high time to put an end to the--“Mystery.”

So, evidently, thought Uncle Fritz; for he arose and, crossing to Aunt Ruth’s side, held out his great hand invitingly.

Then she, looking like a sweet blush rose, wrapped in a cloak of soft gray moss, stood up and faced him; and before anybody could do much more than sigh their amazement, those two people had--married themselves!

So that was the “Mystery” then! A Quaker wedding! “Pooh!” said Melville; “it wasn’t half so great as ours. _Anybody_ can get married!”

Then there was such a deal of hand-shaking and good-wishing that Octave couldn’t just bear it. She was sorry and she was glad; and all she knew was that she was thankful when it was over, and the whole family gathered in characteristic groups to watch the misbehaving aunt and uncle drive away.

There was Octave, supporting Melville so that he could see through the window what others witnessed from the doorway; “the girls,” with Christina between them, clinging together on the steps; and Fritzy, close beside Grandmother Amy.

Aunt Ruth leaned far out of the carriage, and her face was all a conflict of joy and pain. “Fare thee well, my mother! Do not thee misjudge me, and do--keep safe!”

“Pooh! Aunt Ruthy, don’t you worry. _I’ll_ take care of her,” said little Fritz; and the last glimpse Ruth caught of her home showed that valiant lad with his arms about his grandmother’s waist, and the protecting pride of manhood in his honest blue eyes.

THE END.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Many page numbers in the Table of Contents are incorrect in the
original. The correct page numbers appear in this eBook.