To the Highest Bidder. Florence Morse Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ kept it by him all the while they were eating their supper off the pink and white china Grandfather Embury brought from foreign parts, while the seven candles cast bright lights and wavering shadows across the table on the boy’s rosy little face and the girl’s darker beauty.

      “Peg’s comin’ in’s soon’s he puts on his swallow-tail,” said Jimmy placidly. “I like Peg better’n anybody, ’ceptin’ you, Barb’ra. He’s so durned square.”

      “You shouldn’t say such words, Jimmy,” Barbara said, with a vexed pucker between her brows. “You must remember that you are a gentleman.”

      “So is Peg a gentleman,” said Jimmy, valiantly ready to do battle for his friend. “An’ he says durned.”

      Barbara shook her head impatiently at the child.

      “If you say that word again, Jimmy,” she threatened, “I shall be obliged to forbid you going out to the barn at all.”

      “I guess you don’t mean that, Barb’ra,” the little boy said firmly. “Course I have to go out to the barn; but I promise I won’t say durned ’cept when I plough.”

      A sound of hard knuckles cautiously applied to the back kitchen door announced Mr. Morrison, attired in his best suit of rusty black, his abundant iron-gray hair, ordinarily standing up around his ruddy, good-humored face like a halo, severely plastered down with soap and water.

      “Good-evenin’, Cap’n,” he said ceremoniously, “I hope you fin’ yourself in good health on this ’ere auspicious occasion, sir; an’ you, too, Miss Barb’ry, as a near relation of the Cap’n’s. I hope I see you well an’—an’ happy, ma’am.”

      “See my cake, Peg,” shouted Jimmy, capering wildly about the old man. “See the candles!”

      Peg pretended to shade his eyes from the overpowering illumination. “Wall, now, I mus’ say!” he exclaimed. “If that ain’t wo’th coverin’ ten miles o’ bad goin’ t’ see. That cert’nly is a han’some cake, Miss Barb’ry, an’ the Cap’n here tells me you made it.”

      Barbara smiled, rather sadly.

      “Yes,” she said, “I made it. If you’ll blow out the candles now, Jimmy, I’ll cut it and we’ll each have a piece.”

      The little boy climbed up in his chair.

      “I have to sit down when I blow,” he said seriously, and sent the first current of air across the table from his puckered lips. “One of ’em’s out!” he announced triumphantly.

      “Give it to ’em agin, Cap’n!” cried Peg. “Give ’em a good one. That’s right! Now the nigh one’s gone; but that off candle’s a sticker. I dunno whether you’ll fetch that one or not, Cap’n.”

      The child drew in a mighty breath, his puffed cheeks flushing to a brilliant scarlet, and blew with all his might, the flame of the one lighted candle waned, flared sidewise, and disappeared, leaving a light wreath of smoke behind.

      “There! I blowed ’em out, all by myself,” he exulted. “I’ve got a strong wind in my breaf, haven’t I, Peg?”

      “I declar’, I’d hate to have you try it on the roof o’ the barn, Cap’n. The loose shingles’d fly, I bet,” Peg assured him jocularly.

      Barbara was cutting the cake, her troubled eyes bent upon her task. Mr. Morrison glanced at her anxiously.

      “I seen a rig hitched out t’ the side door this afternoon,” he said slowly. “‘Twant a—a sewin’-machine agent; was it, Miss Barb’ry?”

      “No,” said the girl shortly; her look forbade further questions.

      “I’ll tell you who ’twas, Peg,” said Jimmy sociably, as he began to nibble the edges of his slice of cake. “It was the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis. An’ his horse’s tail is cut off short so’t it can’t switch ’round, an’ it makes him cross. I guess it would make me some cross, too, if I was a horse. Wouldn’t it make you, Peg?”

      “I reckon’t would, Cap’n,” said the old man, fetching a heavy sigh for no apparent reason. He turned to Barbara, whose red lips were set in an expression of haughty reserve.

      “If I’d ’a’ knowed ’twas the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis fer certain,” he went on, with an effort after careless ease of manner, “I b’lieve I’d ’a’ took the opportunity to talk over crops with him fer a spell. We’re goin’ to have a first-rate crop o’ buckwheat this year, an’ winter wheat’s lookin’ fine. The’d ought to be plenty of apples, too. I pruned the trees in the spring an’ manured ’em heavy last fall.”

      Barbara gazed steadily at the table. She did not answer.

      “I was thinkin’ some o’ plantin’ onions in the five acre field this year,” went on Peg, an agitated tremor in his voice. “They’re a heap o’ work, onions is, what with weedin’ ’em an’ cultivatin’ ’em; but the’s big money in ’em; white, red, an’ yellow sorts. What would you say to onions, Miss Barb’ry?”

      “There’s no use,” said the girl, “of our planting—anything.” She turned her back abruptly on pretence of pulling down a window shade. “I’ll speak to you to-morrow—about the work.”

III

       Table of Contents

      After Jimmy had said his prayers and was tucked up in bed, tired but happy, the book of “Vallable Information” under his pillow, Barbara sat for awhile by the open window in the dusk of the April night. The wind had gone down since sunset, and in the stillness she could hear the “peepers,” singing in the distant marshes, and the soft roar of the river, filled to its brim with the melted snows from the hills. Something in the sound of the swollen river and the gleam of a single star, seen dimly between drifting clouds, brought the remembrance of other April nights to Barbara’s mind.

      Her thoughts went back to the day when her father, then a proud, handsome man in his prime, had brought his new wife to the farm. Her own passionately mourned mother seemed strangely forgotten in the joy of the home-coming and the girl had resented it in the dumb, pathetic fashion of childhood. After a little, though, she had come to love the gentle creature who had won her father’s heart. There followed a few happy years, regretfully remembered through a blur of tears, when the little mother, as Barbara learned to call her, filled the old house to overflowing with sunshine. Then on an April night when the river lifted up its plaintive voice in the stillness that fell after a wild, windy day, Jimmy came, and the little mother went—hastily, as if summoned out of the dark by some voice unheard by the others. Barbara remembered well the night of her going, and of how, with a last effort, she had lifted the tiny baby and placed him in her own strong young arms.

      “Love—him—dear,” whispered the failing voice. Then she had smiled once, as if with a great content, and was gone.

      Jimmy’s voice broke sleepily through these bitter-sweet memories.

      “Barb’ra!” he called, “are you there? I forgot somethin’.”

      “What СКАЧАТЬ