To the Highest Bidder. Florence Morse Kingsley

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      But young Mr. Hewett was back at his post behind the little window, where he presently became engaged in brisk repartee with a couple of red-cheeked girls over the non-arrival of a letter which one of them appeared confidently to expect.

      Neither bestowed a glance upon the small figure in the red cap which presently made its way out of the door, carefully carrying a covered tin pail, and out of whose shallow pocket protruded the half of a thin blue envelope addressed to Miss Barbara Preston, in a man’s bold angular hand.

      There was a cold wind abroad, roaring through the branches of the budding trees, and tossing the red maple blossoms in a riotous blur of color against the brilliant blue and white of the sky. To Jimmy Preston trudging along the uneven sidewalk, where tiny pools of water from the morning’s rain reflected the sky and the tossing trees, like fragments of a broken mirror, came a sense of singular elation. It was his birthday; in one hand he carried the beautiful sparkling card, and in the other the tin pail containing the molasses; while in the dazzling reflections under foot were infinite heights—infinite depths of mysterious rapture.

      “If I sh’d step in,” mused Jimmy, carefully skirting the edges of a shallow uneven pool in the worn stones, “‘s like’s not I’d go clear through to heaven.”

      Heaven was a wonderful place, all flowers and music and joyous ease. He knew this, because Barbara had told him so; and nearly all of the family were there—all but Barbara and himself. But there might not be popcorn balls in heaven; Jimmy couldn’t be certain on that point; and, anyway, he concluded it was better to stay where Barbara was and grow up to be a man as soon as possible.

      The little boy broke into a manly whistle as he pictured himself in a gray flannel shirt with his trousers tucked into large boots, ploughing and calling to the horses, the way Peg Morrison did.

      The sidewalk came to an end presently, together with the village street, just opposite the big house of the Honorable Stephen Jarvis. Jimmy stopped, as he always did, to look in through the convolutions of a highly ornamental fence at the cast-iron deer which guarded the walk on either side, and at the mysterious blue glass balls mounted on pedestals, which glistened brightly in a passing gleam of sunshine. There were other things of interest in the yard of the big house: groups of yellow daffodils, nodding gaily in the wind, red, white, and purple hyacinths behind the borders of blue-starred periwinkle, and shrubs with clouds of pink and yellow blossoms. In the summer there would be red geraniums and flaming cannas and pampas grass in tall fleecy pyramids. Jimmy wondered what it would be like to walk up the long smooth gravel path and open the tall front door. What splendors might be hid behind the lace curtains looped away from the shining windows; books, maybe, with pictures; a real piano with ivory keys, and chairs and sofas of red velvet.

      “S’pos’n,” said Jimmy to his sociable little self, “jus’ s’pos’n me an’ Barb’ra lived there; an’ I should walk right in an’ find Barb’ra all dressed in a pink satin dress with a trail an’ maybe a diamon’ crown. She’d look lovely in a diamon’ crown, Barb’ra would.”

      His attention was diverted at the moment by the sight of a smart sidebar buggy, drawn by a spirited bay horse, which a groom was driving around the house from the stable at the rear. The man pulled up sharply at the side entrance, where the bay horse pawed the gravel impatiently. Jimmy observed with interest that the horse’s tail was cropped short and bobbed about excitedly.

      He was imagining himself as coming out of the house and climbing into the shining buggy, and taking the reins in his own hands, and——

      He waited breathlessly, his eyes glued to an opening in the fence, while the tall spare figure of a man wearing a gray overcoat and a gray felt hat emerged from the house.

      Jimmy recognized the man at once. He was the Honorable Stephen Jarvis. Few persons in Barford ever spoke of him in any other way. “The Honorable” seemed as much a part of his name as Jarvis. Jimmy, for one, thought it was.

      “That’s me!” said Jimmy. “Now I’m climbin’ in; now I’ve took the lines! Now I’ve got the whip! And now——”

      The vehicle dashed out of the open gate, whirred past with a spatter of half-frozen mud, and disappeared around a bend of the road where pollarded willows grew.

      “My! I’m goin’ fast!” said Jimmy aloud. “But I ain’t afraid; no, sir! I guess Barb’ra’ll be some s’prised when she sees me drivin’ in! I’ll say, ‘Come on an’ take a ride with me, Barb’ra’; an’ Barb’ra, she’ll say, ‘Why, Jimmy Preston! ain’t you ’fraid that short-tailed horse’ll run away?’ An’ I’ll laugh an’ say, ‘Don’t you see I’m drivin’?’”

      The laugh at least was real, and it rang out in a series of rollicking chuckles, as the child resumed his slow progress with the pail of molasses which had begun to ooze sticky sweetness around the edge. Observing this, Jimmy set it down and applied a cautious finger to the overflow; from thence to his mouth was a short distance, with results of such surprising satisfaction that the entire circumference of the pail was carefully gone over. “I guess,” reflected Jimmy gravely, “that I’d better hurry now. Barb’ra’ll be expectin’ me.”

      A more rapid rate of progress brought about a recrudescence of the oozing sweetness which, manifestly, involved a repetition of salvage. By this time Jimmy had reached and passed the row of willows, cut back every spring to the gnarled stumps which vaguely reminded the child of a row of misshapen dwarfs; enchanted, maybe, and rooted to the ground like gnomes in the fairy-tales. Beyond the distorted willows, with their bunched osiers just budding into a mist of yellowish green, was the bridge with its three loose planks which rattled loud and hollow when a trotting horse passed over, and responded to the light footfalls of the child with a faint, intermittent creaking. On either side of the brook, swollen now to a muddy torrent with the spring rains, grew crisp green clumps of the skunk cabbage, interspersed with yellow adders’ tongues and the elusive pink and white of clustered spring-beauties.

      “If I sh’d take Barb’ra some flowers, I guess she’d be glad,” communed Jimmy with himself. “I’m mos’ sure Barb’ra’d be awful glad to have some of those yellow flowers; she likes yellow flowers, Barb’ra does.”

      He climbed down carefully, because of the molasses which seemed to seethe and bubble ever more joyously within the narrow confines of the tin pail, and having arrived at the creek bottom he set down the pail by a big stone and proceeded to fill his hands with pink and yellow blossoms. It was pleasant down by the brook, with the wind roaring overhead like a friendly giant, and the blue sky and hurrying white clouds reflected in the still places of the stream.

      A thunder of hoofs and wheels sounded on the bridge, and the child looked up to see the round red face of Peg Morrison, and the curl of his whip-lash as he called to his horses.

      “Hello, Peg!” shouted Jimmy, “wait an’ le’ me get in!” He caught up the pail and clambered briskly up the steep bank.

      The man had drawn up his horses, his puckered eyes and puckered lips smiling down at the little boy.

      “Wall, I d’clar!” he called out in a high cracked voice, “if this ’ere ain’t the Cap’n! Where’d you come f’om, Cap’n? Here, I’ll take your pail.”

      “It’s got molasses in it, so you’d better be careful,” warned Jimmy. “I’m goin’ to have six popcorn balls an’ one to grow on, ’cause it’s my birfday an’ I’m large of my age.”

      “Wall, now, I d’clar!” cried Peg admiringly, “so СКАЧАТЬ