Chapter XIV: In the Woods

Polly’s worry about being satisfactory to Miss Pomeroy had departed with the minister’s words, down by the brook, but as she lay in bed the next morning, listening to the birds out in a big elm tree, the branches of which came near one of her windows, she had some sober thoughts.

“The reason Miss Pomeroy is going to adopt me,” said Polly, to herself, “is because she thinks I’m like Eleanor. I’m not like her, inside, of course, but I’m trying to be. Now, don’t you be a selfish girl, Polly Prentiss. You’ve got a beautiful home with a lovely, kind lady, that does things for you all the time, and Miss Arctura and Mr. Hiram besides, just as good as they can be, and the kittens to play with, and Daisy out in her stall, and you can go off into the woods this afternoon, and take the book that the minister’s sisters love, and perhaps they’ll let you go again some other day.

“And all you’ve got to do,” said Polly, severely, to herself, “is to stop wanting to run outdoors morning, noon, and night, and wanting to play with a doll, and wishing somebody’d call you Polly, and not mind having to eat so much, or lying down on this bed that gets so hot in the afternoon, and stop being lonesome for the folks at Manser Farm, and learn how to mend your clothes. I guess that’s about all, and it isn’t much for a girl that’s going on eleven.”

Polly had a delightful time that afternoon. Arctura had taken in the snow-white clothes from the line, and informed the little girl that she had no intention of ironing that day, and would make an excursion into the woods with her.

“I’ve got a crick in my back,” Miss Green announced, when Polly descended from her hour on the bed, “and what I need is to get right down close to nature. I’ll take my old gray shawl and pick me out a good place to sit in the sun, and I’ll knit on Hiram’s socks while you run around and see what you can see. Perhaps you can get up a bouquet to fetch home to Miss Hetty, who knows? And when you feel so minded you can sit on the shawl alongside of me, and read me out a story, maybe. It’s a pity Miss Hetty can’t be with us, but she’s no hand to walk; she hasn’t been overly strong for ten years back, though she can do all that’s required.”

Polly felt disloyal to Miss Pomeroy, because it was a relief to know Arctura would be her only companion. Her little heart was full of affectionate gratitude, but the tall mistress of the house inspired a good deal of awe as well, while with Arctura Polly had a sense of comradeship, in spite of the difference in years, and was not afraid to chatter like a magpie.

By three o’clock the pair were deep in the woods, and Arctura was enthroned on her gray shawl, spread on a rock that stood like a table in an open space between giant pines. She had four knitting-needles and a ball of flaming red yarn in her hands, and looked the picture of contentment.

“Now,” she said, drawing out a big silver watch from the front of her gown, and placing it beside her on the shawl, “it’s only a few minutes past three. You lay your book down here and don’t let me see you again for an hour, or as near that as you can judge by your feelings. Don’t stray so far you can’t get back. I’ll holler once in awhile so’s to keep track of you, but you caper round and see what you find.”

Polly trotted off obediently, and found all sorts of treasures. If she had not been obliged to respond to Arctura’s loud “Ma-a-a-ry!” three or four times, it would have seemed to the little girl that she was all alone in a new world, for the pine grove was unlike the woods through which Polly had wandered in that far-away time when she lived at Manser Farm. Those were birches and scrubby oaks, with an occasional hemlock, and you had to look out for slippery tree-roots, and scratching underbrush, and boggy places. But this wood had a soft brown carpet of needles, and a border of beautiful ferns, and here and there were little cones, and clumps of stems that had belonged to “Dutchman’s pipes.”

In a little while there would be “wake-robins” and “Solomon’s seal,” and many other wild wood flowers. Polly saw the first signs of a venturesome “lady’s slipper.” She gathered long trails of Princess pine and looped them around her waist, and she picked some of the prettiest ferns to take home to Miss Pomeroy. There were several cleared places, like the one which held Arctura’s throne. Polly named one the library and another the parlor, and in still another there were some stones which made her think of pillows.

“So I shall name that the bedroom,” she said to Arctura when the call “Ti-i-i-mes up!” had brought her running back, “and this I think we’d better call the dining room, don’t you?”

“Seems a sensible name to me,” said Miss Green, approvingly. “Now suppose you read me out a story. I just looked into your book while you were off, and here’s one that my eye lit on; suppose we have that.”

The story was “The Ugly Duckling,” and the words were so easy that Polly read on and on, scarcely ever having to stop for Arctura’s help. When she had finished it, she drew a long breath and shut the book.

“Isn’t it a beautiful, interesting story, Miss Arctura?” she asked, eagerly, and her friend nodded with great vigor before she spoke.

“It’s what I call fair,” said Arctura, with decision, “and that’s what I like in real life or in a story. And that’s why I expect that the poor folks that get hurt and slammed around and put upon in this world are going to have crowns of gold and harps of silver and songs of everlasting praise and joy in the next one; or whatever those things stand for, to ’em. We’ll have another of those stories next time we come out a pleasuring together, won’t we?”

Polly assented with joy, and all through the talk that followed, while she told of her morning’s trip to the village, those delightful words “next time” rang out their lovely promise in Polly’s happy ears.

She and Arctura walked home arm in arm, although that meant that Polly had to stretch up, and Miss Green to reach down, but the path was broad enough for two, and they sang “Marching Through Georgia,” and stepped gayly along to the brisk measures.

“Slow walking, except for those that have infirmities and are obliged,” said Arctura, “is a trial of the flesh and spirit, or it might be, if it ain’t,” and little Polly, with more color in her cheeks than had been there for days, looked joyfully up at her.

“Oh, Miss Arctura,” she said, fervently, “you do have such splendid ideas!”

“Don’t try to flatter an old lady of fifty-four, child,” said Miss Green, shaking her ball of yarn at Polly with pretended severity. “You turn your mind on those clouds; see how the wind’s backing round through the north? I can smell the east,” and she sniffed with her nose well in the air. “We’re in for rain to-morrow, I do believe. It’ll be just the day for you to write that letter you’re going to send with the candy, and there’s a number of matters you can help me about, and if you’ve got any mending to do maybe we’ll find time to sit down together, and I’ll relate that story about the Square and me.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Polly, as they marched up the driveway, “and I’ve got to practice with Mr. Hiram, you know. I expect it will be a grand day!”

[TO BE CONTINUED]

* * * * *

Think not of far-off duties,
But of duties which are near;
And, having once begun to work,
Resolve to persevere.

--Anonymous.

The Fence Man
By Mrs. F. M. Howard

“Mamma, what is the great, high fence for?” asked a childish voice. “Is the man afraid we’s will go into his yard?”

“I do not know, dear. It was there before we came.”

“Maybe he thinks we’ll steal his cherries.” Horace straightened himself, scornfully.

“Huh, I guess we can buy our cherries if we want any,” said Rodney, with flashing eyes.

“Perhaps other boys have not thought so,” interposed the mother’s gentle voice; “and since the fence was there before we came, and so cannot have any possible reference to us, we will not harbor ill will against our neighbor because of it.”

“Young-ones,” muttered a surly voice on the other side of the high board fence. “Just my luck to have a pack of young-ones unloaded on me. Just one degree worse than the widder’s long tongue, I’ll venture. I’m glad the fence is good and high, and I’ll put a row of pickets on top of it if they go to climbing.”

Old Mr. Harding dropped down on a garden seat, wiping the moisture from his heated brow with a warlike bandana. He had been putting out late tomato plants, and his back ached; possibly his heart ached, too, for he was old and lonely. He could have told to a mathematical nicety, had he had the mind to do so, just why the ugly board fence divided him from his neighbor, of the quarrel between himself and the fiery widow, who owned the cottage where the children had come to live, over a boundary line, the matter of a foot or less of ground between the two places.

A quarrel is like a tumble weed in its capacity for growing in size, and, tossed back and forth by the windy tongues of the Widow Barlow, who gloried in “speaking her mind,” and old Mr. Harding, who cherished his right to the last word as religiously as a woman, the original difference had grown to be a very serious thing, indeed.

“I’ll fix her!” he had exclaimed, after the last tilt of words which occurred between them. “I’ll put up a fence so high she can’t scream over it, and if she comes inside my yard I’ll buy a dog.”

He thoroughly enjoyed that bit of spite work, and amused himself immensely in overseeing the ungainly structure as it went up, completely obstructing the objectionable widow’s view on the east side.

She had no redress, for he had given her the benefit of the disputed line, and a man could put up bill boards on his property if he wished to, and he hugged himself to think of her rage and disgust.

He did not in the least overestimate it, and he heard with glee from the neighbors and the housekeeper the savage onslaughts on his character which she was making, and it was not long before a moving van backed up before her door, a “To rent” sign appeared, and Mr. Harding was alone with victory. He was soured in the operation, it must be confessed. No man can habitually nurse hatred and spite in his bosom without becoming contaminated.

When gentle, soft-voiced Mrs. Harding was living, with her generous heart and hand, her noiseless, unostentatious way of settling a difficulty, it would have been quite impossible for him to have indulged in such an exhibition; she would have loved him out of it insensibly, and have so limbered the widow’s acrimonious tongue with the oil of kindness that the quarrel would have died at birth; but it was a sorry day for him when the better part of himself was laid away under the green in the cemetery, and he was quite free to be his untrammeled self.

Some way the mother’s voice, as it floated over the top of the ugly fence, reminded him of her. It was such a gentle, loving voice, with a flute-like clearness in it which made every word audible.

They had never had any children, he and the wife who would have made such a tender mother, but he imagined she would have spoken to them just as this mother was speaking if she had been surrounded by active, questioning lads and lasses, and his surly mood softened as he heard them chattering over the treasures of broken china they were finding in the widow’s refuse heap.

“We’ll build the playhouse right here. The big, high boards will make such a nice back,” said little Barbara.

“Maybe the man won’t like us to drive nails in his fence,” Rodney suggested.

“But this side of it is ours,” laughed the mother, softly. “He can only claim one side of even a nuisance; but you must be careful not to annoy him with too much noise.”

One side of a nuisance. How truly it was a nuisance, for Mr. Harding did not admire stockades himself. He had seen the inside of one in war times, and he had very nearly lost his life in trying to escape from it. He had an old wound in his leg yet that made him crosser on damp days than in dry weather, and here he was erecting stockades in his old age, to keep people out instead of in. It took all his self-control to keep from being ashamed.

Day after day he heard the childish prattle, and the pounding of nails as the building of the playhouse went on, sometimes with wrath, at other times with an almost eager curiosity to see and hear the little flock at their pretty play.

One day it rained, and silence reigned in the garden. His wound twinged and prickled all day, and he was in a furious mood toward evening as he went to straighten up some weak-backed plants that the rain had lopped over. A kitten was frisking about in a bed of choice strawberry plants--a saucy, disrespectful kitten which had evidently braved the terrors of the stockade, as he had done himself in the years gone by. He hated cats almost as he hated loud-voiced widows--perhaps he was thinking of the Widow Barlow, and of the joy it would be to take her as he was taking the kitten (loving little creature, it had never felt the touch of hatred, and didn’t know enough to run away), and, with one twist of his avenging arm, sling her over the fence. The kitten went over, legs and tail wildly outstretched, and little Barbara was at the window.

“Oh, mamma, he threw my darlin’ kitty right over the fence,” he heard her shriek, sobbingly, as she ran out and picked up her pet. “Kitty, kitty, is you killed?” she cried, breathlessly, as the little creature, stunned for a moment by its fall, closed its eyes and lay limply in her arms as she ran into the house.

“Mean old thing. If I was a man, I’d thrash him,” said Horace, doubling his little fists savagely.

“No, no, little ones; we must love him into kindness,” Mrs. Manning observed, gently. “He is a poor, lonely old man with no one to coax him into nice ways. See, Kitty isn’t hurt. Give her some milk and she will soon be quite happy again,” and in ministering to the kitten the children forgot their revengeful thoughts: but over the fence an old, cross-grained man went into his finer house with a mean feeling in his heart which even the thought of the Widow Barlow could not change to a comfortable complacency.

The rain cleared away and the family were very busy in the garden. The small plat on the south corner, away from the baleful shadow of the fence, was full of the roses and shrubs which the Widow Barlow had planted and tended so carefully, and they were already full of buds. Mrs. Manning was exceedingly fond of flowers, too, and her bay window on the west side was full of choice plants.

There was a Papa Manning, but he went early and came late from his work, too early and late to enter the story as an active factor; one of those busy men who do business in the city and live in suburban towns for the sake of health and purer air for the children; but Mr. Harding did not know this, and supposed his new neighbor to be a widow, and cherished suspicions accordingly which not even her sweet voice could quite allay.

“Oh, mamma, come quick. The man has fallen,” screamed Barbara one day, as she ran in to her mother, her golden curls flying, her blue eyes full of fright.

“What man, Barbie dear?” Mrs. Manning was in the kitchen making bread, and a man was an indefinite ingredient to enter into the delicate operation without proper credentials.

“The old man, mamma. The fence man--he fell right down and groaned.” A neighbor in distress--that was quite another matter, and Mrs. Manning ran out hastily, drying her hands on her apron.

“I’ve sprained my ankle, I guess,” growled Mr. Harding, nursing his wounded leg with a white face full of angry impatience. “Just a bit of a stone, but enough to turn that confounded weak bone of mine. I feel like a baby, ma’am, to be upset by such a trifle.”

“Lean on me, sir, and I will help you to rise,” said Mrs. Manning; but at the first attempt the poor old gentleman nearly fainted.

Fortunately, there were men near at hand, and soon Mr. Harding was carried into his home by strong hands, and a physician summoned.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Mr. Harding submitted to suffering with sweet resignation. In his best days gentle Mrs. Harding needed all her stock of patience to endure him when he was ill, and his natural proclivities had been reinforced by years of loneliness and self-indulgence. The housekeeper was at her wits’ end, and strongly inclined to resign her situation before the end of the first week.

“Sure, ma’am, he’s that cranky there’s no living with him at all,” she confided to Mrs. Manning, who had brought in a bit of her own delicate cookery to tempt his capricious appetite. “I make his toast and his coffee of a mornin’, and he’s ready to eat me when it’s on his table because the coffee ain’t a-bilin’ and a-sissin’ hot, an’ the egg maybe has been cooked ten seconds longer than his wife used to cook it for him.”

“Let me go in and prepare his table while you get the food ready,” Mrs. Manning suggested. She had waited on just such an invalid once in her lifetime, and had ideas.

“All right, ma’am. I’ll be right glad of a little help, for he do try my patience all to frags.”

Mrs. Manning ran home quickly, and returned bringing a dainty tea cloth and a bouquet of her window flowers in a delicate glass vase, and, going into the dining room, she soon had the little invalid table a very poem of neatness and elegance.

“Mrs. Harrihan never set that table, I’ll be bound,” he said, gruffly, as Mrs. Manning carried it to his bedside.

“Mrs. Harrihan is busy and I am helping her a little,” replied Mrs. Manning, gently. “Let me raise the shade and make you more comfortable for your dinner.”

The window looked out upon the staring high fence, over which the roof and chimney of her own little cottage was visible, and Mr. Harding’s wrinkled face had the grace to gather a flush.

“Are you a widow, ma’am?” he demanded after a few moments, during which she had moved about the untidy room, picking up the morning papers, which he had slung away after reading them, and turning with deft hands the furniture into more home-like positions. Mrs. Harrihan was a good housekeeper but a poor home maker.

“A widow? Dear me, I hope not. Haven’t you seen Mr. Manning frolicing with the children evenings? He comes in the back way, as it saves a block in coming from the station.”

No, Mr. Harding had not observed a man about the place, and for an excellent reason--the fence shut off his view of the charming domestic life of his neighbors completely, and for the first time since its erection he wished it was back in the lumber yard. He had the grace to thank her, and to ask her to come again, after Mrs. Harrihan’s entrance with his dinner, saying that it would taste better with the flowers to look at, and Mrs. Manning poured his tea and buttered his toast, with a great pity for him in his loneliness in her warm heart.

It was the flowers at last which accomplished the downfall of the spitework fence. Acting on the hint of his pleasure in the bouquet on his dinner table, Mrs. Manning kept him supplied with them in liberal measure.

Mrs. Barlow’s roses were now in riotous bloom, and every day a fresh bouquet brightened the sick room. On account of the old wound, the injured ankle did not readily yield to treatment, and for weeks Mr. Harding was an unwilling prisoner, forced to look out at that unyielding expanse of pine until his very soul was sick of it.

He told his grievance in full detail to Mrs. Manning one day with an apologetic air, not willing that his cheery little neighbor, whom he was beginning to respect so much, should think that he indulged in high board fences as a matter of taste.

She heard the story of the Widow Barlow’s delinquencies smilingly, and contrived to throw such a wide mantle of charity, trimmed with humor, over the matter that Mr. Harding actually laughed--and at his own folly.

Even little Barbara lost her fear of “the fence man,” and, after bringing him several bouquets by way of visits of sympathy, she one day made him a social call with the kitten in her arms, also a ball and string with which to show off its accomplishments, and old Mr. Harding actually smiled, and forgot that he hated cats in watching the frolicsome little creature chasing its tail, the ball, or Barbara as she ran with the string.

One day there was the sound of pounding and rending on the Harding premises, and all the children ran excitedly to see.

Carpenters were tearing the spite fence down, and Barbara was in despair for her playhouse, but her childish heart was comforted, for Mr. Harding had given orders, and, when the workmen reached the spot, the boards were sawed down and shaped to match the rest of the structure, and with the dearest little window cut in, to the child’s great delight.

With the fence went every vestige of Mr. Harding’s crustiness toward his new neighbors. Not since his wife’s death had he been so genial and friendly, and the children were a constant source of interest and delight. It even came to pass, through Mrs. Manning’s mediation, that the matter of the boundary line was at last compromised without serious friction, and Mr. Harding really came to confess, to himself, that even the Widow Barlow was not so utterly, so irrevocably bad as she might be after all.

WITH WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE
By W. Bert Foster