Chapter XVI: In the Barn

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

Polly Prentiss is an orphan who, for the greater part of her life, has lived with a distant relative, Mrs. Manser, the mistress of Manser Farm. Miss Hetty Pomeroy, a maiden lady of middle age, has, ever since the death of her favorite niece, been on the lookout for a little girl whom she might adopt. She is attracted by Polly’s appearance and quaint manners, and finally decides to take her home and keep her for a month’s trial. In the foregoing chapters, Polly has arrived at her new home, and the great difference between the way of living at Pomeroy Oaks and her past life affords her much food for wonderment. In the meantime Miss Pomeroy has inwardly decided that she will keep Polly with her, but as yet she has not spoken to the little girl of her intentions.

While the old people at Manser Farm were reading Polly’s letter, the little girl herself was listening with a sober face to a piece of news which had come to Miss Pomeroy. It was eight o’clock--past Polly’s bed-time--but she was so anxious to finish the wonderful story of the Snow Queen that Miss Hetty had offered to read the last pages aloud. She had reached the end only a moment before Hiram brought the mail.

“Bobby--my little nephew--is coming here to spend Sunday on his way to see another aunt, his mother’s sister,” said Miss Pomeroy, looking up from her letter to Polly, who stood waiting to say good-night. “I’m very glad, Mary, for I am sure you two children will enjoy each other, you are both so quiet and fond of books. Perhaps we can persuade Bobby to make us a longer visit on the way home.”

That night and the next morning Polly stretched in Ebenezer’s fashion until her little arms and legs ached. She made up her mind that she would lose no opportunity for the next three days of performing this gymnastic exercise or of hurrying on her growing likeness to Eleanor in other ways.

She sat for hours with Miss Pomeroy, sewing patchwork and listening to stories of the old curiosities in the Indian cabinet that stood in the parlor. They were interesting stories, but the room was kept very warm because of Miss Hetty’s rheumatism which was troublesome just then, and Polly’s head grew hot and tired as she sat quietly in the little chair at Miss Pomeroy’s side. She ate as much as she possibly could at every meal, and she did not speak of going out to walk in the afternoons after her hour on the bed.

“I shall be glad when I get over this stiffness, so we may have our walks together again,” said Miss Pomeroy, when Friday night came. “I’m afraid if it were not for me, Mary, you would not have enough outdoor air. But I am glad you are so contented in the house, for it is very pleasant to have a little companion while I am obliged to keep still so much of the time.”

Polly smiled affectionately at her, but the little girl’s heart was heavy. She was listless in her movements except when under some one’s eye, and felt a strange indifference to the things which had always delighted her.

“I guess I’m getting just exactly like Eleanor in some ways,” she said to herself many times a day. “The brook calls and calls me just the way it did at first, but my legs feel so queer and my head is so funny. I don’t seem to care so much about paddling in the water now. Miss Arctura says it is too cold in the woods yet, anyway. She says her brother John’s wife caught her death once, neglecting to use her judgment when a cold spell came in April. Oh, dear. I wish Bobby had been here and gone away! S’posing he doesn’t ’prove of me. Wouldn’t that be dreadful!”

Hiram was Polly’s stay and comfort in this trying time. Arctura--the truth must be told--had suffered more or less from a grumbling toothache ever since her afternoon in the woods. Arctura objected to going to the dentist “on principle,” she said, though Miss Pomeroy had never been able to understand just what she meant by that. Hiram was the only person who ventured to brook the subject to his sister, and his advice was sharply scorned.

“Don’t you think you’d ought to have that tooth pulled, ’Tura?” Hiram had mildly asked as he washed his hands at the noon hour on Thursday, and Miss Green had turned upon him with swift contempt.

“Better have my legs removed next time they get a mite overtired and ache a little, hadn’t I?” she said, severely. “Go and have all your own teeth out whenever you want, but just leave mine alone, if you please!”

Polly had overheard this dialogue as she entered the kitchen on an errand, and she could hardly believe her ears.

“But, ’Tura’ll be all right soon as the weather warms up again,” Hiram had explained to Polly in the barn at milking-time. “She ain’t been quite herself the last day or two; toothache appears to upset her more than anything else in this world. I saw her grinding her jaws together yesterday morning, and I knew ’twas that old left-hand wisdom of hers at it again. She’s got a roasted raisin in it now, I know by the way she mumbled at me when I went in for the milk-pail, but I dursn’t refer to it. We’ll just step kind of easy for the next twenty-four hours and it’ll be all clear weather again. She hasn’t got any real malice in her, ’Tura hasn’t.”

“I think she’s just as kind as she can be,” said Polly, warmly. But it was a sober little face at which Hiram smiled broadly down when he arose from the milking stool.

“You stay here while I take this in,” he said, cheerily, “and I’ll fetch out a lantern so we can run through ‘On Linden’ far as we’ve gone. You said old Marm Hackett was with Miss Hetty, I believe?”

“Yes,” said Polly, “and she told me to run out for a while as she had something to lay before Miss Pomeroy. Do you think she’s a very pleasant old lady, Mr. Hiram?”

“Well, now, let’s see if I’ve ever heard anybody speak of her that way,” said Hiram, cautiously. “I guess I’d better consider it while I’m carrying off the milk.”

Polly knew that his opinion agreed with hers, and she gave a little laugh as he swung out of the barn with the pail of milk. When he returned with the lantern she was standing in the middle of the barn floor and made a sweeping courtesy to him as he entered.

“That’s good,” said Hiram, setting down the lantern and seating himself on the lowest stair of the flight that led up to the loft. “That’s first-rate. How would it be if you should make two of ’em--one to the left and one to the right? In case folks were seated promiscuous--that is here and there,” explained Hiram, “it would be fair to all parties. That’s it--that’s the way to do it!” and he clapped his hands as Polly greeted an imaginary audience. “Nobody’s going to feel left out with that beginning. Now for it.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Polly, with a wide sweep of her arms, “the piece that I am about to speak to you is ‘Hohenlinden,’ by Mr. Thomas Campbell.”

“Little louder, if you please,” said Hiram, in a disguised voice, “there’s a couple of old ladies at the rear that don’t want to miss a word.”

“‘On Linden, when the sun was low.’”

said Polly, in a clear, loud voice--and as she spoke, she stooped and indicated the position of the sun with her right hand--

“‘All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.’”

The rapidity of Iser’s flow was shown by Polly’s two little arms, which swung back and forth from her shoulders as fast as she could possibly move them.

“That’s prime!” said Hiram, approvingly. “Seems as if I could see old Iser right before me. Now, the next verse.”

“‘But Linden saw another sight,’”

said Polly, flushed with pleasure, shielding her eyes with her hand and gazing anxiously about the barn.

“First-rate!” cried her instructor. “I tell you, little Mary, you’ve got the real spirit for reciting! Now that gesture had never come into my mind, and yet there ’tis, fitting in complete. I make no doubt Linden folks were out looking just that way, bound to see, yet scared of what would meet ’em. Now for the drums!”

“‘When the drum beat at dead of night,’”

said Polly, valiantly belaboring her right palm with the clenched fingers of her left hand.

“‘Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.’”

“There’s not a bit of fault to be found with that,” said Hiram, as he received the lantern from the hands of his pupil, who had seized it and swung it wildly about when the “fires of death” were lighting. “Of course, the lantern will be behind you the night of the entertainment, ready for use.”

“Of course,” said Polly. “Now comes the best verse of all, I think, Mr. Hiram:

“‘By torch and trumpet fast arrayed,’

I shall have a candle and the tin horn that night, you know--

“‘Each horseman drew his battle-blade--’”

Uncle Blodgett’s gift was drawn with a fierce flourish--

“‘And, furious, every charger neighed
To join the dreadful revelry.’”

The verse ended with an indescribable sound, and Hiram drew his hand across his mouth before he spoke in answer to Polly’s questioning eyes.

“I call that a pretty fair neigh,” he said, encouragingly. “I don’t know as I’d go so far as to say ’twould deceive anybody into thinking there was a horse right on the spot, but it’s improving in its quality all the time, I notice.”

“I’m so glad,” said Polly, “because, you see, I can’t make the roars and other noises for the ‘dreadful revelry’ the way you can, and I wanted to do something.”

The next two verses finished Polly’s recitation for that evening. Hiram had promised to assist with “the hills with thunder riven” and the “red artillery.” The thunder was to be made with a pair of wooden dumb-bells, and the “red artillery” was a little old lantern with a red glass front which would dart about Polly’s figure in Mr. Green’s hand.

“That was an extra good rehearsal,” said he, as the little girl sat down beside him on the stairs. “Now, we’ll learn the next verse, shall we, and call it we’ve finished for the night?”

When the next lines, with their “furious Frank and fiery Hun,” were pronounced perfect, Polly begged for a story.

“Just a little bit of a short one, Mr. Hiram, before I go to bed,” she said, coaxingly, “and I don’t care whether it is true or not.”

“That being the case,” said Hiram, soberly, as they sat close together with the lantern at their feet, “I’ll relate a little circumstance that a man once told me. It’ll give you something to think about, but I shouldn’t want to say how true ’tis, for it seems a mite improbable. This man said that a friend of his out West somewhere had always had trouble with the chimney in his parlor--I would say with the draught of it up from the fireplace. He had it tinkered off an’ on for years, and finally he decided he’d have the old contraption torn down and a bran’ new chimney put up.

“Someway the mason made a mistake and got the new chimney on wrong side up, and the draught was a powerful one, and, first they know, rain, hail, snow, and what-all were drawed right down into the room, making dreadful work.

“They sent for the mason, of course, and he took the chimney down and put it on again right side up, and then the draught was so powerful that it drawed a braided rug and a pair o’ tongs and a three-legged stool and a number of other articles right up the chimney.

“Then they saw something had got to be done, so they put a poultice--a flour poultice, I understood him to say--on the jamb of the fireplace, and that drawed down so it balanced and counteracted the draught, and after that the chimney gave perfect satisfaction.”

Polly had stared at the narrator when he began the story, but as he progressed she covered her mouth with both hands for fear she should laugh out and interrupt him.

“Mr. Hiram,” she cried, as the storyteller rose, chuckling, and began to close the barn for the night, “next to Mr. Hans Christian Andersen’s I would rather hear your make-believe circumstances than anybody’s that ever I heard!”

“Compliment number two,” said Hiram, as they stepped out of the barn, side by side. “You’d better be looking sharp or you’ll have me all stuffed out with pride before you know it, young lady.”