Chapter IV (1)

An interlude followed. I tried to bring back my mind to the reality of life as I knew it to be. I fingered my trout flies and did my best to image the still, deep pool below the swamp where I had been on the point of casting just as my last leader broke. Half an hour more I could be back there, casting again. But the pool and the trout faded into oblivion beside the sterner reality of Gram Perkins. I was on the hack with young Zeb, my eyes fastened in growing perturbation on a pair of solid black doors.

“Jes’ started on our January thaw when the next dream took me,” broke in Zeb. “We’d reached the cemetery. Grave dug, coffin lowered, folks standin’ ’round fur a final prayer. To all appearances everything was goin’ first rate. But the sexton hadn’t more than picked up his shovel, easy-like, when out comes a whistle, clear as a fog horn. I opened my eyes quick and looked down. Thar was Gram, poppin’ out like a jack-in-the-box, lid swung wide open and both hands reachin’ fur the dirt the sexton was shovellin’ in. Yes, m’am! Ye never saw dirt fly in all your born days the way Gram made it fly. At the rate she was goin’, I knew we’d be standin’ thar twell Doomsday, gittin’ her buried.

“Everybody else was prayin’ hard along with the parson, and he was ’most to the Resurrection. I knew somethin’ had to be done quick, so in I jumped. I slapped the dirt out of her hands hard like you would with a child and says I, ‘Land o’ goodness, Gram, what ails ye? We’ve fetched ye along to what the Bible calls your last restin’ place. All we boys is askin’ of ye now is to keep quiet and rest twell Jedgment Day.’

“The words warn’t more’n out afore I knew I’d said the wrong thing. She didn’t lay any more store ’bout this eternal restin’ than what ye would, settin’ thar fingerin’ them flies. She give me the most pitiful look ye ever saw on a human face. It said, plain as daylight, ‘Zeb, lug me back home and let me git to work ag’in.’

“Wall ... I took to whimperin’ like a two-year-old. ‘Ef ye woan’t do it fur the Bible,’ says I, ‘do it fur us boys. Ye’ve al’ays been terrible proud of us--al’ays wanted we should have jes’ what we wanted, and thar’s nothin’ in the whole o’ creation we want so much this minute as to see ye restin’ peaceful. Git back in. Close your eyes, fold your hands, git that listen fur the last trumpet look on your face. Hurry, woan’t ye? The sexton’s shovellin’ like sixty.’

“She give me another of them pitiful looks--nigh broke me all up--and she sort o’ slid back and slammed the lid down on her fur all the world like one of these cuckoo clocks. I lit out and landed side o’ the parson jes’ as he said ‘Amen.’ ... ‘Amen,’ says I, thankful-like. ‘Amen,’ says the sexton.... ‘Amen,’ says the mourners in a roarin’ chorus like the sea. And then I swear to ye that way under the dirt I heard Gram sing out Amen! Tell ye I woke in a sweat!”

“Cold sweat?” I asked. It was all I could think of.

“Cold as a clam, dripped with it.”

“That makes three.”

“Three!” Zeb tolled it out like a passing bell. “All bad enough--the fourth, worst of all. Ye wait.”

I waited.

“Three years I lived comfortable in my mind. Seemed like that last Amen had settled things. Then May come along. I’d been slippin’ some of them geraniums to take up to the cemetery Memorial Day. I could still walk some--slowly, but git about--and I went to bed mighty real happy at the idea o’ fixin’ up Gram’s grave. Right on top o’ that came the fourth dream!

“I was swingin’ up the road toward the cemetery, and in one hand I carried a pot with the slips in, and t’other held my stick I walked with. Jes’ about reached the lot when up comes a jedge from Boston--nice feller--and I asked him to come along and see the view from our place. ‘Most famous in the State,’ says I. ‘Clear days we can see ’most anything.’

“I fetched him through the iron gates and stood him up close to the monument and begun pointin’ places out. ‘Thar’s Mount Washington,’ says I. ‘Some days ye can see the whole Presidential Range.... Thar’s Katahdin ... thar’s....’ But I stopped thar dead. I’d caught something move in the grass by Gram’s headstone. The next minute out come a whistle, loudest I ever heard. I swung the jedge clear ’round and pointed out to sea. ‘Thar’s Mount Desert,’ says I, and ‘thar’s Isle au Haut. That’s the Rockland boat ye hear whistlin’--consarn it!’

“I looked at Gram. She’d got her head and shoulders clear and she was whistlin’ ag’in fur dear life. Then she took her fingers out of her mouth and nodded her head toward out back. Seemed like she was askin’ me fur the last time to take her home. The jedge seemed lost in the scenery, and I stepped up to Gram and showed her the geranium slips. ‘Look at them,’ says I. ‘Fetched ’em all the way over to decorate your grave, and here ye be, bustin’ loose and cuttin’ up. Hain’t ye ever goin’ to give in and rest in peace?’

“Wall, she never said a word, jes’ kept working herself further and further out. I was terrible scairt the jedge would turn round any second and ketch her. Stood thar on pins and needles watchin’ Gram rise from her grave. ‘Have a heart, Gram,’ I begun coaxin’ ag’in. ‘How’d ye like a city feller like that jedge to ketch a Perkins turnin’ ghost like?’ ... Never finished what I set out to say. She looked so queer and upset--so like she wanted to tell me something and didn’t know how. I stood thar, geraniums in one hand, stick in t’other, tryin’ to make out what it was Gram wanted to tell me. Then it come over me, all of a flash. ’Twasn’t she that wanted to git out; ’twas that smart, spunky body o’ hern. It was drivin’ the sperrit same as a strong wind drives a cloud afore it. She was ready to rest if that doggoned crippled-up, pie-bakin’, doughnut-fryin’ body would have let her be. But it wouldn’t. It was draggin’ her out of her coffin, out of her grave, turnin’ her loose about the county like no decent sperrit could stand.

“‘I’ll fix it,’ says I, droppin’ the geraniums and grabbin’ the stick with both hands, ‘I’ll fix it so it’ll let ye rest quiet twell Doomsday,’ and with that I laid on Gram with that stick. I beat her up twell thar warn’t nothin’ left but a scatterin’ of dust on the spring sod. Yes, m’am! I reduced Gram to dust and ashes like the Bible said had to be.”

A long sigh swept the stillness of the room. The face of Zeb Perkins underwent a sequence of changes. Triumph had been there, but it dwindled out and sorrow took its place; and then a fear, a tremulous commiseration and, finally, bewilderment. He now looked straight at me. His eyes were dull, fearful. “They doan’t understand, them Perkins to the harbour. They doan’t think I ever ought to have done that to Gram.”

I gathered up my flies and was halfway to the door before Zeb spoke again. His voice had now grown querulous: “Wall--what do ye think?”

I gave my answer as I slipped out of doors, into the wide spaces again. “I think the trout are going to bite,” said I.

THE LITTLE GIRL FROM TOWN

BY RUTH SUCKOW

From _Harper’s_

“I wonder who that is coming here,” Mrs. Sieverson said, looking out of the kitchen window.

“Somebody coming?” Mr. Sieverson asked from the sink. “Oh, I guess that’s Dave Lindsay, ain’t it? He said he’d be out.”

“Yes, but he’s got someone with him. Oh! I believe it’s that little girl from back East somewhere that’s visiting them. Leone! Children!”

Mr. Sieverson went outdoors, and then Mrs. Sieverson, and, by the time the car stopped, rounding the drive, all four children were on hand from somewhere. Even Marvin and Clyde, the two boys.

“Anybody home?” Mr. Lindsay called out jovially.

“You bet!”

They were all looking at the little girl in the car beside him. They had heard about this little girl, and how “cute” she was. Her mother was some relative of Mrs. Lindsay. Leone and Vila looked at her eagerly. The boys hung back but they wanted to see her. Mr. Lindsay was proud. He said:

“Well, sir, I’ve got somebody along with me!”

“I see you have!” Mr. Sieverson answered with shy heavy jocularity and Mrs. Sieverson asked, “Is this the little girl been visiting you?”

“This is the little girl! But I don’t know whether she’s visiting or not. I’ve just about made up my mind I’ll keep her!”

They all laughed appreciatively. Leone pulled her mother’s dress. She wanted her mother to ask if the little girl couldn’t get out and play with them. “Now, don’t. We’ll see,” Mrs. Sieverson whispered. The little girl was so pretty sitting there with her soft golden-brown hair and her cream-white dress that Mr. and Mrs. Sieverson were both shy of saying anything directly to her. Mr. Sieverson cried, still trying conscientiously to joke:

“Well, ain’t you going to get out?”

Mr. Lindsay asked, “Well!--shall we, Patricia?”

The little girl looked gravely at the other little girls, and then nodded.

“All right, sir! Patricia’s the boss! I’ve got to do as she says.”

She consented to smile at that, and the two boys giggled. Mr. Lindsay lifted her out of the car. She put her arms around his neck, and her little legs and her feet in their shiny black slippers dangled as he swung her to the ground. The children felt shy when he set her down among them. Mr. and Mrs. Sieverson didn’t quite know what to say.

“_There_ she is! This is the first time this little girl has ever been out to a farm. What do you think of that, Marvin?”

Marvin grinned, and backed off a few steps.

“Yes, sir! But she and Uncle Dave have great times driving round together, don’t they?”

The little girl looked up at him and then smiled and nodded her head with a subtle hint of mischief.

“You bet we do! We have great times.”

The Sieversons all stood back in a group shyly grinning and admiring. Leone’s eyes were as eager as if she were looking at a big doll in a store window. They had never seen any child as pretty as this one, and Mr. Lindsay knew it and was brimming with pride. Her short dress of creamy linen, tied with a red-silk cord at the neck and embroidered with patches of bright Russian colours, melted its fairness into the pure lovely pallor of her skin. The sleeves were so short that almost the whole of her soft, round, tiny arms was bare. Her hair was of fine gold streaked and overlaid with brown--the colour of a straw stack with the darker, richer brown on top--but every hair lay fine and perfect, the thick bangs waved slightly on her forehead, and the long soft bob curved out like a shining flower bell and shook a little when she moved her head. Her skin wasn’t one bit sunburned, and so white and delicately grained that there seemed to Vila, in awe, to be a little frost upon it ... like the silver bloom on wildflower petals, picked in cool places, that smudged when she rubbed it with her fingers.

Mr. Lindsay became businesslike now that he was out of the car. “Well, Henry,” he said, “you got it all figured up and ready to show me? I think we’ve got Appleton where we can make a deal all right.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s ready.”

While the two men talked, the little girl stood beside Mr. Lindsay, her hand still in his, with a grave, trustful, wondering look. Leone, smiling at her, was getting closer. Mr. Lindsay seemed to remember her then and looked down at her.

“Well, Patricia, what about you while I’m looking after my business?” He smiled then at the other children. “Think you can find something to do with all these kids here?”

Leone looked up at him and her blue eyes pleaded brightly in her eagerness. “I guess they’s plenty of them to look after her,” Mr. Sieverson said shyly but still grinning. “They can entertain her,” Mrs. Sieverson put in. She could do the baking without Leone this morning, she thought rapidly, but feeling hurried and anxious.

“You going to play with them for a while, are you?” Mr. Lindsay felt responsible for Patricia. All the same he wanted her off his mind for a while until he had finished his business. “I don’t know whether----”

“Oh, Leone’ll look after her,” Mrs. Sieverson assured him, and Mr. Sieverson repeated, “Sure! She’ll be all right with Leone.”

Leone came up now, smiling eagerly and with a sweetness that transformed her thin freckled face. She shook back the wisps of uneven, tow-coloured hair. She took the little girl’s hand protectingly and confidingly in her hot palm that had a gleam of dusty perspiration along the life line and the heart line. The tiny hand felt like a soft warm bit of silk--or a flower.

“That’s right! Uncle Dave won’t be gone long. Don’t take her out where it’s too hot, kids. You know she isn’t used to things the way you are.”

“No, you be careful,” Mrs. Sieverson warned them.

“Will you go with Leone?” The little girl did not say that she would or wouldn’t, but she was courteous and did not draw back. “You’ll be all right! _You’ll_ have a good time! Oh, I guess Uncle Dave didn’t tell these kids who you were, did he? This is Patricia.”

“Can you say that?” Mrs. Sieverson asked--doubting if _she_ could.

Vila drew shyly back, with one shoulder higher than the other; but Leone laughed in delight. “I can say it!” She nodded. She squeezed Patricia’s hand.

“You can say it, can you? All right, then. Well, now, you kids can show this little girl what good times you can have on the farm. That so? All right then, Henry.”

Mrs. Sieverson went into the house to get back to her baking. She had a lot to do to-day. She wasn’t at all worried about leaving their little visitor so long as Leone was with her. But she turned to call back to the children, who were still silently grouped about Patricia in the driveway:

“You better stay in the yard with her. Mr. Lindsay won’t like it if she gets her dress dirty. Leone! You hear me?”

“I heard. Do you want to come into the yard, Patricia? You do, don’t you?” Leone asked coaxingly.

Patricia went soberly with her. Her eyes, gray with threads of violet in the clear iris, were looking all about silently. Her little hand lay quiet but with confidence in Leone’s. The other children followed, the boys lagging behind, but coming all the same.

“There, now! Here’s just the nicest shady place, and Patricia can sit here, can’t she, and just be so nice?” Leone placed Patricia in the round patterned shade of an apple tree, and spread out her linen dress, making it perfectly even all around, and carefully drew out her little legs straight in front of her with the shiny black slippers close together. “There!” she said proudly. “See?”

She sat down on one side of Patricia, and then Vila shyly and with a sidelong confiding smile sat down on the other. The boys hung back together.

“Leone!” Mrs. Sieverson called from the house. “Ain’t you got something to entertain her with? Why don’t you get your dolls?”

“Do you want to see our dolls, Patricia?”

So far Patricia had been consenting but silent. “You go in and get them, Vila,” Leone ordered, and when Vila whined, “I don’t want to!” she said, “Yes, you have to. I can’t leave her. I have to take care of her. Don’t I, Patricia?” But when Vila came back with the scanty assortment of dolls Patricia looked at them and then reached out her hand for the funny cloth boy doll in the knitted sweater suit. The boys laughed proudly and looked at each other, the way they had done when the swan in the park at Swea City took the piece of sandwich they put on the water for it. “Isn’t that doll cute, Patricia?” Leone begged eagerly.

Patricia touched its black-embroidered eyes, and its red-embroidered lips--done in outline stitch--and then looked up at the eager, watching children and smiled with that gleam of mischief.

The boys laughed again. They all came around closer. “That’s mine,” Vila said softly. She reached over and touched the big stuffed cloth doll, with the hair coloured yellow and the cheeks bright red, that was smooth along the top and bottom sides like a fish but crisp along the edges from the seams. Patricia took it and looked at it. She looked at every one of their dolls--there were five, one of them was a six-inch bisque doll from the ten-cent store--and then smiled again.

“I’ll bet you have nice dolls at home, haven’t you, Patricia?” Leone said in generous worship. “I’ll bet you’ve got lots nicer dolls than we have.”

Patricia spoke for the first time. The children listened, with bright eager eyes wide open, to each soft little word.

“I have fifteen dolls.”

Marvin said, “Gee!”

“Have you got them named?” Vila leaned over the grass toward Patricia, and then quickly hitched herself back, frightened at the sound of her own voice asking the question.

“Oh, yes, I always name my dolls,” Patricia assured them. “My dolls have beautiful names. They’re all the names of the great actresses and singers.” And she began gravely to repeat them. “Geraldine Farrar, and Maria Jeritza, and Eva LeGallienne, and Amelita Galli-Curci....”

While she was saying them, the boys looked at each other over her head, their eyes glinting, their mouths stretched into grins of smothered amusement, until Clyde broke into giggles.

Leone was indignant. “Those are _lovely_ names! I think Patricia was just wonderful to think of them!”

Vila stretched across the grass again. She touched the cloth doll and drew back her fingers as quickly as if it were hot. “Her name’s Dor’thy,” she whispered.

After Patricia’s gracious acceptance of the dolls, the children wanted to show her all the treasures they had--even those they had never told anyone else about. Everything, they felt, would receive a kind of glory from her approval. They liked to repeat her name now. “Patricia.” “She wants to see the little pigs. Don’t you, Patricia?” “Aw, she does not! Do you, Patricia? She wants to see what I’ve got to make a radio.” Patricia looked from one to the other with her violet-gray eyes and let the others answer for her. But after a while she said with a cool, gentle, royal decision:

“No. I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay right here in this round shade.”

The children were highly delighted. They began to bring their treasures to her. Vila had run off to the edge of the garden and dug up two glass precious stones she had buried there, but when she came back to Patricia she was too shy to show them and kept them hidden in her hot little hand that got sticky and black from the earth clinging to them. The boys were getting quite bold. Marvin said:

“I bet you never saw a mouse nest, Patricia.”

“Patricia doesn’t care anything about that,” Leone said impatiently. “I wish you boys would go off somewhere anyway and let _us_ look after Patricia.”

“I can show it to you, Patricia.”

“_She_ doesn’t want to see that!”

“Yes, I do,” Patricia assured them with an innocent courtesy that made Clyde giggle again.

The boys ran off to the woodshed to get it. It was all made of wound-about string and little bits of paper and a soft kind of woolly down. Patricia examined it with her large grave eyes. She reached out one finger toward it delicately, and drew the finger back. She looked up at the boys.

“What is it?” she breathed.

“A mouse nest,” Marvin said nonchalantly.

He held it carefully in his brown sturdy hands, partly to keep it together, but more because he liked to have Patricia’s soft little fingers come near his. They were as smooth as silk, and rosy at the tips as the pointed petals of the dog-tooth violets he had found near the little creek in the woods, when he was out there one day last April all alone. A happy shiver went over him at the thought of their touching him, silvery and cool.

“Do the mouses--_mices_--live in it?”

“Sure! They did before we took it away.”

“Oh, but can’t they live in it any more? What will the mices do?”

“Gee! What can they do?” Marvin swaggered. Clyde giggled.

Her pink mouth opened into a distressed O. She looked from one to the other for help, and the violet in her eyes deepened. “But they won’t have anywhere to live! You must put it back.” She was very serious.

“Shoot! Why, they’ve run off somewheres else by this time!”

What did it matter about mice anyhow? Gee, they were something to get rid of! Why did she suppose Pop kept all those cats and fed ’em, if it wasn’t to get rid of the mice? But she looked so distressed that Leone, with an angry glance at the boys, assured her hastily leaning over and hugging her:

“No, they haven’t, Patricia! Boys just like to say things like that.”

“Aw, gee----!”

“But what will the mices _do_?”

“The boys’ll put the nest back, and then the mice’ll come there,” Leone warmly promised her. She didn’t care if it wasn’t true.

The boys had never heard anything so funny in their lives. Gee whiz! They despised her for such ignorance, and could hardly keep from laughing, and yet they felt uneasily ashamed of themselves for they didn’t quite know what. They had just wanted to bring her the mouse nest to make her interested and then to show her, too, that they weren’t afraid of things most people didn’t want to touch. But they seemed to be out of favour. They hung around while the girls talked a lot of silly talk, and laid all the dolls out in the grass in front of them.

“I’ll bet you’ve got awful pretty clothes for your dolls, haven’t you, Patricia?”

Patricia didn’t like to say, or to talk about her dolls because she didn’t really think that these dolls’ dresses were one bit pretty. Leone went on questioning her, with naïve admiration, and Vila listened with her eyes glistening.

“I’ll bet you’ve been into lots of big stores, Patricia. Did this dress you’ve got on come from a big store?”

They both bent and examined the creamy shining linen with its coarse silky weave and the large roughened threads that Vila scarcely dared to touch with her fingers all dirty from the precious stones. Patricia graciously let them touch and see until, gently but with a final dignity, she drew the cloth out of their fingers.

“Now you mustn’t touch me any more.”

The boys giggled again at this, admiring but feeling abashed.

A striped kitten came suddenly into sight at a little distance--became motionless, saw them--and flattened and slid under the cover of the plants in the garden. Patricia gave a little cry. Her face bloomed into brightness.

“Oh! Do you have a kitty?”

“A cat! Gee!” They all laughed. “_One_ cat! I bet we got seventeen.”

“Really seventeen kitties? Did your father buy them all for you?”

“Buy them!” The boys shouted with laughter. “Gee, you don’t buy cats!”

“Oh, you do,” Patricia told them, shocked. “They cost twenty-five dollars, the kitties that sit in the window in the shop.”

“Twenty-five dollars! Pay twenty-five dollars for a _cat_!” _Cats_, when you had to drown half of ’em and couldn’t hardly give the others away! The boys were hilarious with laughter over such ignorance.

Leone couldn’t help knowing that Patricia was ignorant, too. But she gave the boys a hurt, indignant, silencing look--it was mean of them to laugh at Patricia when she didn’t know! Anyway, she was so little. Leone put her arm around Patricia, in warm protection.

“But they do!” Patricia’s eyes were large and tearful and her soft little lips were quivering. It was dreadful to have these children not believe her, and she couldn’t understand it. “Some of them cost a hundred dollars!”

“Oh, gee!” the boys began.

“Maybe some of them _do_,” Leone said quickly. “You don’t know everything in the world, Marvin Sieverson.” She knew, of course, that cats couldn’t--but then, she wasn’t going to have the boys make fun of Patricia. “Come on now, Patricia,” she pleaded. “We’ll go and see our kitties. Shall we?”

The boys watched anxiously. They didn’t want Patricia to be mad at them. They wanted to take her out to the barn and have her look at everything.

She considered. Her eyes were still large and mournful and a very dark violet. At last she nodded her head, held out her hands trustingly to Leone to be helped from the grass, smoothed down her skirts--and the whole tribe went running off together.

* * * * *

Patricia had to climb up the steep stairs into the haymow one step at a time. She felt along the rough sides carefully with her little hands. The boys would have liked to help her and were too bashful, but all the time Leone was just behind her, telling her, “Don’t you be afraid. Leone’s right here, Patricia. Leone won’t let you fall.” When they got up into the haymow Patricia was almost frightened at first; it was so big, and there were such shadows. A long beam of sunlight fell dimly and dustily golden from the high window in the peak, across the great beams and the piled hay, and widened over the great stretch of wooden floor.

“Haven’t you ever been up in a haymow before?” Clyde demanded.

“Of course she hasn’t,” Leone answered indignantly.

Patricia looked around at them, and her face was pale with awed excitement. “It’s like the church!” she breathed.

“Gee, a _hay_-mow!”

Still, it really was. Even their voices and the way they walked sounded different up here. The boys were tickled and a little embarrassed that Patricia had thought of that.

“Is this where the kitties live?”

“The little ones do. Where are the little bitty ones, Marvin?”

“_I_ know!” both the boys shouted. They leaped up into the sliding mounds of hay, calling back, “Come on if you want to see, Patricia!”

“I’ll help you, Patricia,” Leone encouraged her.

She boosted and got Patricia up on to the hay pile and helped her flounder along with her feet plunging into uncertain holes, and the long spears of hay scratching at her bare legs above the half socks, and the dust making her eyes smart. Then Patricia began to laugh. She liked it!

“Here they are!” the boys shouted.

A bevy of half-grown cats suddenly fled down the hay like shadows. “No, no!” Patricia screamed when the boys tried valiantly to catch a little black cat by its tail. Leone was assuring her, “Never mind, they won’t hurt the kitties, Patricia.”

“Look here! Come here!” the boys were calling.

Patricia was almost afraid to go. The boys had found the nest of little kittens. They had got hold of the soft, mousy, wriggling things and were holding them up for her to see. Fascinated, she went nearer. The little kittens had pink skin fluffed over with the finest fur, big round heads, and little snubby ears, and blue eyes barely open.

“Oh!...” She looked up at Leone with her pink lips pursed. She loved the little kittens but she was afraid of them. “Oh, but they aren’t kitties! They don’t look like kitties.”

The boys were highly amused. “What do they look like?” Marvin demanded. “What do you think they are? Cows? Horses?”

She said tremulously, “No, I _know_ cows are big. But their heads look the way little baby cow heads do in the pictures. They do.”

“I think they do, too,” Leone asserted stoutly. She coaxed, “Touch them, Patricia. They won’t hurt you.”

The boys grinned at the way Patricia put out her fingers and drew them back. How could these little bits of kittens hurt her? Didn’t she know they couldn’t bite yet? Their little teeny teeth couldn’t do anything but nibble. It was fun to feel them. Marvin caught up the white one and held it out to her, and they all kept urging her. He hoped her fingers would touch his. She cringed back, her mouth pursed in wonder.

“Oh, but they have such funny tails!”

“No, they ain’t. They got tails like all cats got.”

“Oh, no, Marvin. In the show the kitties have tails so big, and they waved them--just like the big plumes on men’s hats riding on horses.”

The boys doubled up with laughter. “Who’d put cats in a show?”

“Oh, but they are!” Patricia looked at them in distress.

“Why shouldn’t they be?” Leone demanded.

Of course she knew why, as well as the boys did. Nobody would pay to see a cat! Patricia had meant the tigers. She was so little she didn’t know the difference. The boys were not to tease her though! Clyde was giggling. Gee, if she didn’t have the funniest notions!

At last they got her to touch the kitten. She did it first with just the pink tip of one finger--then it felt so soft, so little and fluffy, with tiny whiskers like fine silk threads, that she reached out her hands. Marvin felt the brush of her fingers, as if a cobweb had blown across his hand, and a shiver of joy and pain went down his backbone. Patricia laughed in delight, and looked from one to the other of the children with her large shining eyes, to share her wonder.

“Take it!” Marvin urged.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t!”

“Why not? Go on and take it!”

She shook her head.

“She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” Leone said warmly.

“Yes, she does!” Marvin thrust the kitten into her hands. She gave a little shriek and squeezed it by its soft belly, while the weak pinkish legs wavered and clawed out of her grasp.

“I’m going to drop it!”

“No, you won’t!”

Its fluffiness filled her with ecstasy. “Oh, see its claws! They look like little bits of shavings from mother’s pearl beads!” The boys grinned in amusement and delight at each other. Vila laughed happily. “Oh, and inside its little ears! Just the way shells look inside--only these are _silk_ shells!” The boys grinned broadly. She caught the kitten to her cheek and held it wildly wriggling. “Oh, kitty, I love you! I want to have you to take home!”

“You can--you can have it,” the children all urged her eagerly. Marvin said, “Gee, we got all kinds of cats, and that old gray one----” Clyde pinched him. “Shut up!” He grinned and blushed. Patricia laid the kitten gravely and reluctantly back in the rounded nest. She shook her head until the fluffy bell of shining hair trembled. She said solemnly, and as if she had forgotten that the others were there:

“No. I won’t. Because all its other little sisters and brothers would be lonesome for it. And its mother would.”

The boys stood grinning but they said nothing.

What were the kittens’ names? Patricia asked. She was horrified that they had none. “Gee, we call ’em kitty,” Marvin said; but Leone hastened to add, “Well, we call that one we have Old Gray.”

Patricia said: “Oh, but they must have names! That’s wicked. Nobody goes up to heaven to our Lord Jesus without a name!”

The boys just barely glanced at each other. They kept their red faces straight with agony. Then Marvin went pawing and rolling through the hay over to the other side of the pile, where he buried his flushed face and snorted.

“I’m going to give every one a name,” Patricia asserted solemnly.

“What are you going to name ’em, Patricia?” Leone and Vila were impressed.

“I’m going to give them jewel names. Because the cats make me think about things like jewels. This is what I’m going to call them. I’m going to name this one Pearl because it’s white, and this bluey one Sapphire, and the other bluey one Turquoise, and this little pinky one Coral, and this one ... Jade!”

“Aren’t you going to name one Di’mond, Patricia?” Leone asked eagerly. Vila thought that, too.

“No.” Patricia was very decided. “Cats don’t look like diamonds. They look like coloured jewels.”

The boys giggled. Besides that one she had named _Pearl_--gee, they had already looked at these kittens and they knew very well that one was a he-cat! If she wasn’t funny!

Vila was looking at Patricia so intently that she trembled. Now she said, “Patricia’s eyes are jewel eyes, too. They’re--they’re----” She didn’t know how to say it, and yet she felt what she meant and wanted to say--felt it so that it hurt! The whites of Patricia’s eyes gleamed, and a little blue spread out into them from the circles of the coloured parts, and in these there were all sorts of threads of colour woven together, the way they were inside the glass of marbles--bluish and violet-coloured and gray, and a sort of golden! All just as clear.... Vila reached out and took Patricia’s wrist quickly and with shy ardour, but then she only smiled and couldn’t think of anything to say ... she would have been afraid to say it, anyway.

“Now she must see all our places!”

They went through the big barn. “Look here, Patricia!” “Patricia can’t. She’s looking at this.” She looked at everything, but when they urged her, “Touch it! Go ahead!” she wouldn’t quite do that. When they went out of the barn they all took hands and ran pounding down the long slope of heavy boards and out into the farmyard. Patricia was afraid at first and then shrieked with laughter and wanted to do it over again.

“Now we mustn’t do it any more,” Leone said after the third time. “Her little face is all red. Let go her hand, Marvin! Now, darling, stand still, and Leone’ll wipe off her little face.”

They thought it was funny the way she ran when the chickens came near her. “Oh, gee, if we had time we’d go down to the pond and show her the geese. Wouldn’t she run if that old goose got after her!” Leone said, “Marvin Sieverson! We shan’t go there.”

But the very best place was the orchard. Even the boys were not so wild and noisy there. Their feet made only soft swishing sounds when they went through the long grass. The boughs were loaded, some broken and sweeping the ground, and the sky was patterned with leaves.

“Patricia!” Marvin hinted, tempting her, holding out a little green apple.

Leone snatched it from his hand. “Why, Marvin Sieverson, shame on you! Do you want to make little Patricia sick?”

“Aw, gee!” He had just wanted to see if she would take it. He and Clyde had both been hunting through the grass for some apples that Patricia could really eat.

Only the yellow transparents were ripe. The large apples had a clear pale colour against the leaves that were only slightly darker--mellow and clear at the same time, a light pure yellow-green through which the August sunshine seemed to pass. Patricia took the big yellow apple that Marvin picked for her and carried it all around with her. “_Eat_ it, Patricia, why don’t you?” But she wanted to hold it. “Oh, thank you!” she said very earnestly for every single thing the children gave her--the red dahlia, and the tiny bunch of sweet peas, the bluebird’s feather. Whenever she saw a bird she stopped. She put her little silky hand on Leone’s wrist. “Look!” “It’s just a bird.” She stood and watched with fascinated eyes until the bird was lost in the sky and she had to turn away dazzled with blue and gold.

“Do you wish you could stay here and belong to us, Patricia?” Leone asked her wistfully. “We’d play you were my little girl, wouldn’t we?”

Patricia wished that she could stay. There were streaks of dust down the shining linen dress and on the soft little arms, a damp parting in the lovely wave of the bangs, and around her mouth there was a faint stain of red from the juicy plums the boys had brought her to suck. Oh, yes, the country, she said, was _nice_! She looked about with shining innocent eyes of wonder. She loved the animals. In the city, she told them, animals weren’t happy. There were the beautiful green birds in the shop--just the colour, almost, of these apple-tree leaves!--but her father wouldn’t buy them for her because he didn’t believe in keeping things in cages, and he wouldn’t get her the big gray dog because it wasn’t right to take dogs out on chains.

“Oh, if I lived in the country,” she cried, “do you know what I’d do? I’d just run around and run around----”

“You’d play with _me_, wouldn’t you, Patricia?” Marvin cut in jealously.

“I’d play----”

“Children!”

The grown people were calling them. Disaster showed on the children’s faces. “Oh, we don’t want Patricia to go home!” There were so many things still that they hadn’t shown her. But Mr. Lindsay came into the orchard calling out jovially:

“Well! Here she is! Ready to go home now with Uncle Dave?” He took it for granted that she was. He took her reluctant little hand, and the other children trailed after them. When they reached the farmyard, he said, “See what’s going with us!”

Patricia looked in awe and wonderment. “What is it?” she breathed.

“Don’t you know what that is?”

Mr. and Mrs. Sieverson, standing back, both laughed. The children too were grinning.

Patricia ventured, “A baby cow!”

Then they all laughed to think that she had known.

“That’s what it is, all right. But don’t you know what baby cows are called? Calf! That’s a calf! Well, sir, do you want this little calf to go with us?”

Patricia didn’t know whether or not Uncle Dave meant that for a joke. But the little calf was so sweet--she loved it so terribly the instant she saw it--that she couldn’t help risking that and begging, “Oh, yes!” Its head really was shaped like the tiny kittens’. But its eyes were very large and coloured a soft deep brown under a surface of rounded brightness, so gentle and so sad too, that it seemed to her as if the colour showed in each eye under a big tear. The calf turned its head toward her. Its frail legs bent inward, to prop it up. Its coat looked like cream spilled over with shining tar. There were curls, like the curly knots showing in freshly planed wood; and the shining ends of the hair looked as if they had curled because the whole coat had just been licked by the mother.

“Oh, yes, Uncle Dave! Is it going _with_ us?”

“It’s going to be our back-seat passenger. If the boss permits?”

It made Mr. Sieverson laugh--feel tickled--to see how the thought of riding to town with that calf pleased the little girl. But he said dutifully to Mr. Lindsay:

“Now, if that calf’s going to be any nuisance to you----”

“No, no. As long as I’ve got the old car, put it in. Tie it up.”

Patricia saw the rope then in Mr. Sieverson’s hand. She cried, “Oh, not _tie_ the little calf!”

“Sure,” Mr. Sieverson said, grinning kindly at her. “You don’t want it to jump out, do you?”

She looked at Uncle Dave for confirmation of that. He said:

“Sure! Calves won’t go riding any other way.”

The two boys laughed.

Patricia stood back close to Leone but not saying anything more. She looked frightened. Mr. Sieverson said, with some feeling of reassuring her still more:

“You don’t want to let this calf get loose or you won’t get any of it!”

She didn’t understand that.

“Get any of it to eat. This calf’s going to make veal.”

“Eat it?” she cried in horror; and she earnestly put him right. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t _eat_ it.” Mr. Sieverson was joking.

“Why, sure!” he said. “Don’t you eat good veal? You’re going to take this calf to the butcher.”

“Oh, no!” He meant that! Patricia was suddenly wild with crying. They all stood back, shocked, never expecting such a storm as this. “Oh, no! The little calf isn’t going to be killed! I won’t! I won’t! No!” She put out her hands blindly and turned from one to the other for help. Mr. Sieverson didn’t know what to do. She turned to him and beat the air with her little fists, shrieking, “Oh, you’re _wicked_!”

He couldn’t stand that. His face got red. Even if she was just a child, he demanded, “Don’t you eat veal?”

“No! No!” Patricia shrieked.

“What, then?” he demanded.

She had to look at him. Her little pink mouth was open and her bright eyes drowned. She quavered, “Other kinds of meat ... I’ll eat chicken,” and turned piteously to Uncle Dave.

Mr. Sieverson didn’t like to be called “wicked” by anyone. The injustice, when he had just been trying to be nice to this little girl, too, hurt him. His wife murmured, “Well, now, Henry----” But he insisted, “Don’t chicken have to be killed before you can eat it?”

But even Mr. Sieverson, although he was in the right of it, felt ashamed when he saw the little thing cry. Mrs. Sieverson gave him a look, stroked Patricia’s hair, and said, “They won’t take the calf.” Mr. Lindsay hastened to promise, “No, no. Of course we won’t take the calf.” They were all trying now to reassure her. Vila was crying, too. The boys were pleading, “Patricia!” although they didn’t know just what they would say to her in comfort if they got her to look at them. “No, no, it isn’t going. It won’t have to be tied up. See, he’s put away the rope.” The two men settled the thing with a look above her head. Patricia looked up at last, with piteous drowned eyes, as dark as wet violets. She broke away from all of them and, running to the calf--fearful of touching things as she was--she threw her arms in protection around its neck and stared fiercely at the shamefaced people.

“Oh, no, we couldn’t take it!” Mr. Lindsay muttered. He cleared his throat.

The children surrounded Patricia again. They were begging her not to cry. Her cheek was laid against the little calf’s silky ear, and she was telling it, in her own mind, “Don’t you care, don’t you mind, precious little calf, I’ve saved you.” She let herself be drawn away but said “No!” when Mrs. Sieverson wanted to wipe the tears from her cheeks, and held up the little wet face trustingly for Leone to do it. That pleased all the Sieversons greatly.

“So now we can go! Hm?” Mr. Lindsay asked her.

She seemed to have forgiven them. She didn’t want to look at Mr. Sieverson, but when she said good-bye to Mrs. Sieverson she touched her little skirts and made a curtsey. Clyde pinched Marvin to tell him to look. The children watched her with as great delight as they had watched the tightrope walker in the “show.” Mr. Lindsay lifted her into the car. She smiled faintly at the children, but there were stains of tears on her pearly cheeks, and her eyes were still as dark as violets.

“You children go get her something--apples or something,” Mrs. Sieverson whispered.

“We have, Mamma! We’ve got a whole lot of things for her.”

They began piling presents into her lap. “Don’t forget your little feather, Patricia!” Marvin ran off to find something else. The wilting flowers, the apple, the six rosy plums, the bluebird’s feather she carefully took again. Marvin came panting back with his new game of “Round the World by Aëroplane.” But Mr. Lindsay wouldn’t let him give her that.

“No, no, my boy! You keep your game. She’s got more things at home now than she can ever play with.”

Now she seemed happy and appeased. The children crowded close to the side of the car and pleaded, “Come out again, won’t you, Patricia?” Vila whispered in her shy voice, “I’ll take care of Pearl and Samphire and those others, Patricia.” Marvin said fiercely, “If any tomcat comes round, I’ll----” and ground and gnashed his teeth and made fiercely appropriate motions. Leone gave him a look for making her think about the tomcat! But Patricia was still smiling and happy and hadn’t understood. Now, in her relief and in the flurry of going, she was more eager and talkative than she had been all afternoon. She promised everything they asked.

“I will. I will, Leone. I will, Marvin. Thank you for all the beautiful things.”

In the midst of it Mr. Lindsay leaned over to say in a low tone to Mr. Sieverson, a little ashamed, “Well, somebody else’ll take that in for you, Henry, if you can’t go.”

“Sure. That’s all right, Mr. Lindsay.”

“Well, now, my little girl, tell them all good-bye.”

“Good-bye.” “Good-bye, Patricia!” They called and waved madly to her, all standing back together. She answered them. At the very last minute, just as the car was going out into the driveway, she leaned out with her shining hair mussed and blowing in the breeze, and cried:

“Good-bye, calf! I forgot to say good-bye to you.”

Marvin laughed in delight, and then Clyde echoed him.

* * * * *

Mr. Sieverson stood looking after the car. That “wicked” still rankled. He said, as if very much put out, “Well, now, I’ll have to find another way of getting this calf in or else take it myself before night.” Then he said, as if ashamed, “Gosh! I don’t know. I almost hate to take it. That little thing put up such a fuss.” He couldn’t help adding, “She was a pretty little kid, wasn’t she?”

Mrs. Sieverson did not answer at once. Then she said in an expressionless tone, “Well ... maybe you better take the other one, then.”

He looked at her and seemed to want to assent. Then he cried, “Oh, no! We can’t do that. This is the one we’d picked on.” He looked angry, and yet in his light-blue eyes under the shock of lightish hair there was a hurt, puzzled look. “Oh, well,” he muttered. “Folks can’t be foolish!” If ever folks were to start thinking of _such_ things....

He went forward resolutely, saying “Hi! Stand still, there!” as he took hold of the calf. His wife stood back watching him and saying nothing. The calf turned, bolted a little way, and then let him take hold of it again. It did not seem to know whether to be afraid of him or not. Its eyes looked up into his. In the large eyes of dark mute brown and the smaller eyes of light blue there was much the same reluctant bewilderment in some far depths. But the man knew what he was after, and the calf did not know what was to come.

“Come on here!” Mr. Sieverson said sharply.

He put the rope around the calf’s neck.

SHADES OF GEORGE SAND!

BY ELLEN DU POIS TAYLOR

From _Harper’s_

It was one of those April mornings when the sun lacquers yesterday’s rain puddles with gold, and the meadow larks melodiously promise a month of blue weather with violets to match it. But all this fruitful fuss did not warm one apathetic drop of Matilda Gessler’s young blood nor soften one scornful angle of her averted face.

Matilda was weighing sugar in her father’s dingy little grocery in Crittenden, South Dakota, when she should have been dozing under ancestral lace in a château somewhere in France. If Mathilde Lantier, her paternal grandmother, hadn’t lived with such unwise intensity that one moonlit hour in a certain French garden, and if old Franz Gessler hadn’t been so conveniently eager to shoulder the consequences, and if ... but then Matilda knew nothing of all this. But she knew enough. She knew what her mother’s Methodist God had done to her. He had created her under a morally tight roof in Crittenden for the good of her soul when every Latin molecule of her belonged in one of those sophisticated centres of the earth where it’s dinner in low-cut brocade at eight and philosophy before kissing.

And so Matilda, weighing sugar, sniffed at the plucky April trying to make a bright island on the muddy floor. What was the use of looking like a bayadere when it meant breaking her lithe back over flour bags, the contents of which were destined to nourish the grace of girls less graceful than she? She was doomed to make beans into bundles that others might be strengthened for flight. Only last week Hazel Amberton, the thick-ankled daughter of the jeweller, packed her gauzy traps and went forth to conquer Minneapolis.

Matilda shrugged her shoulders. It was a gesture inherited from Mathilde Lantier and worthy of Ninon de Lenclos herself, but there was no one to appreciate it except three tobacco-sodden farmers who tramped out, leaving her to resume her futile musing.

If ancestors would only stay where they belonged and live their lives in straight lines and leave the tangents to those who deserved them! Well, no good rebelling against anything as irrevocable as your grandmother’s mistakes, your father’s failures, or your mother’s God. That left one thing to rebel against ... the store.

The store was a place of odorous chiaroscuro. Smells fairly nudged one another and often knocked one another down. There was the fetidness of stale codfish, the acrid pungency of freshly ground coffee, the penetrating foulness of rancid butter, and the sickening tropical odour of decaying bananas. It wasn’t worth looking at either ... rows of tins whose faded labels betrayed the probable age of the victuals within; jars of moribund prunes and molasses-coloured horehound drops, counters piled with coarse denim garments leaking threads, bolts of grotesquely sprigged calico. Even the dusty jumble of decorated china on the top shelf didn’t look destined for anything but cooling pork fat. And, if all this wasn’t enough, they have to live over it. Four of them lived up there in the huddled stuffiness of a half-dozen rooms ... horrible, uneasy rooms tenanted by lumpy pieces of golden-oak furniture whose sharp corners and glittering hostile surfaces constantly threatened one with eviction.

But there was one member of the family before whom the whole domineering conglomeration was powerless. That was Minnie Gessler, Matilda’s fat, unimaginative mother. Every rocker dreaded her relentless dimensions. There was but one place where she looked properly engulfed and that was under the steepled bulk of the red-brick church around the corner. She waddled there regularly. Matilda often puzzled over her mother’s voluptuous devotion to something that couldn’t be poked or eaten or wasn’t her son Fred.

Matilda sighed resentfully when she thought of her brother. The dispatch with which he made his dreams come true was nothing short of indecent. He rarely came near the store except to eat and sleep over it. He made quick, successful love to the dimpled daughters of the Crittenden gentry and bragged about it afterward in Lemke’s Pool Room. He never kissed the mother who adored him, but he wheedled a Ford car out of her and went tearing up and down the long yellow road between Crittenden and a half-dozen towns, seeking other lips to conquer and getting them. Now Matilda dutifully kissed her mother every night but it had got her nothing. Minnie Gessler hadn’t even allowed her daughter to have a French name in peace. It was ’Tilda she grumbled at and not Mathilde.