While Caroline Was Growing. Josephine Daskam Bacon

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      Suddenly a sound disturbed the peace of the woods—a scratching, rattling, scurrying sound. Something was moving through the dead leaves that had gathered among the roots and trunks. She started back nervously, but jumped forward again with a cry of delight, and caught William Thayer in her arms.

      Even as he was licking her cheek, the path widened, the trees turned into bushes, the underbrush melted away, and the brook, a little river now, bent in upon them in a broad curve, spanned only by stepping-stones. It ran full between its grassy banks, gurgling and chuckling as it lapped the stones, a mirror for the fat white clouds where it lay in still pools.

      In the shelter of a boulder, a lad crouched over a fire, coaxing it with bits of paper and handfuls of dry leaves. Just as the flames shot up, the dog barked cheerily, and the lad turned to welcome him. His eye fell on Caroline; amazement and real pleasure grew into a delighted laugh.

      "Well, if you don't beat the Dutch!" he cried. "How'd you get here?"

      "I came in the wagon with the egg-and-chicken man," said she happily, "and then I walked 'cross lots. William Thayer knew me just as well!"

      "'Course he did. He always knows his friends. Now, see here. You can stay and watch this fire, an' I'll go over there a ways where those men are buildin' a fence; I'll bet they'll give us something. You look after the fire an' put on these old pieces of rail; it was hard work gettin' dry stuff to-day. We won't be long."

      They disappeared between the trees, and Caroline sat in proud responsibility before the delightful little fire. The minutes slipped by; from time to time she fed the blaze with bits of bent twigs, and at the proper moment, with a thrill of anxiety, she laid two pieces of the old fence-rail crosswise on the top. There was a second of doubt, and then they broke into little sharp tongues of flame. With a sigh of pleasure, she turned from this success, and, opening the lunch-basket, laid the napkin on the ground and methodically arranged four sandwiches, two cookies, and an orange on it. Then, with her fat legs crossed before her, she waited in silence. Between the sun at her back and the fire on her face, she grew pleasantly drowsy; the sounds about her melted imperceptibly to a soft, rhythmic drone; her head drooped forward. …

      "Hello, hello!"

      She jumped and stared at the boy and the dog. For a moment she forgot. Then she welcomed them heartily and listened proudly to his admiring reception of her preparations.

      "Well, William Thayer, will you look at that! How's this for a surprise? And see what we've got." He balanced a tin pail carefully between the two crossed sticks in the heart of the fire, and unfolded from a newspaper two wedges of pumpkin-pie. In William Thayer's little basket was a large piece of cheese.

      "It's coffee 'n milk mixed together; they had bottles of it," he explained. "William Thayer 'll take back the pail. Are you hungry?"

      Caroline nodded.

      "Awful," she stated briefly.

      "Well, then," he said with satisfaction, "let's begin."

      Caroline attacked a sandwich, with shining eyes, and when in another minute the boy took from his pocket a tin ring that slipped miraculously out of itself into a jointed cup, and dipped her a mug of hot coffee from the bubbling pail, she realized with a pang of joy that this was, beyond any question, the master moment of her life.

      "I take this along," he explained, "so's when I go by, and they're milking, I can have some warm. Anybody'd give me all I want if William Thayer dances and drops dead for 'em. It tastes good early in the morning, I tell you."

      She sighed with pleasure. To drink warm milk in the cool, early dawn, with the cows about you, and the long, sweet day free before!

       They sipped turn about; the boy divided the orange mathematically; the pie was filled with fruit of the Hesperides.

      "That was mighty good, that dinner," he announced luxuriously, "an' now I'll have a pipe."

      The pungent, fresh odor of the burning tobacco was sweet in the air; a dreamy content held them quiet.

      He did not ask her whence or whither; she had no apologies or regrets. Two vagabonds from every law of home and duty, they were as peaceful and unthoughtful of yesterday's bed and to-morrow's meal as William Thayer, who slept in the sun at their feet.

      For long they did not talk. An unspoken comprehension, an essential comradeship, filled the deep spaces of silence that frighten and irritate those whom only custom has associated; and Caroline, flat on her filled stomach, her nose in the grass, was close in thought and vague well-being to the boy who puffed blue rings toward the little river, his head on his arms.

      "I put the plate into that door in the barn," he said, finally. "Did you put those silver things back?"

      Caroline grunted assent.

      "But they wouldn't think that you—what you said," she assured him earnestly. "It's only tramps they're afraid of."

      He glanced quickly over at her, but she was utterly innocent.

      "One came to the kitchen once, and asked Mary for some hot tea or coffee, and she hadn't any, but she said if he was very hungry she'd give him a piece of bread and butter, and he said to go to hell with her bread and butter. So she doesn't like them."

      The boy gasped.

      "You oughtn't to—had you—that isn't just right for you to say, is it?" he asked awkwardly.

      "What—hell?" Caroline inquired placidly. "No, I s'pose not. Nor damn nor devil, either. But, of course, I know 'em. Those are the only three I know. I guess they're about the worst, though," she added with pardonable pride. "My cousin, the Captain, knows some more. He's twelve 'n a half. But he won't tell 'em to me. He says boys always know more than girls. I suppose," respectfully, "you know more than those three, yourself?"

      Her companion coughed.

      "A boy—" he began, then paused, confronted with her round, trustful eyes.

      "A boy—" he started again, and again he paused.

      "Oh, well, a boy's different," he blurted, finally.

      Caroline nodded humbly.

      "Yes, I know," she murmured.

      There was silence for a while. The river slipped liquidly over the stones, the white clouds raced along the blue above them, the boy smoked. At length he burst out with:

      "You're all right, now! You're just a regular little chum, aren't you?"

      She blushed with pleasure.

      "I never had anybody along with me," he went on dreamily. "I always go alone. I—I didn't know how nice it was. I had a chum once, but he—he—"

      The boy's voice trembled. Caroline's face clouded with sympathy.

      "Did he die?" she ventured.

      "No," he said, shortly; "no, he didn't die. He's alive. He couldn't stand my ways. I tried to stay in school and—and all that, but soon as spring came I had to be off. So the last time, СКАЧАТЬ