Laddie: A True Blue Story. Stratton-Porter Gene

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ eyes. Her dress was like my mother had worn several years before, in style, and of stiff gray stuff. She made me feel that no one wanted her at home, and probably that was the reason she had come so far away.

      Every one stood dumb. Mother always went to meet people and May was old enough to know it. She went, but she looked exactly as she does when the wafer bursts and the quinine gets in her mouth, and she doesn't dare spit it out, because it costs five dollars a bottle, and it's going to do her good. Father introduced May and some of the older children, and May helped him with the others, and then he told us to "dig in and work like troopers," and he would take Miss Pollard on home.

      "Oh do let me remain and help the dear children!" she cried.

      "We can finish!" we answered in full chorus.

      "How lovely of you!" she chirped.

      Chirp makes you think of a bird; and in speech and manner Miss Amelia Pollard was the most birdlike of any human being I ever have seen. She hopped from the step to the walk, turned to us, her head on one side, playfulness in the air around her, and shook her finger at us.

      "Be extremely particular that you leave things immaculate at the consummation of your labour," she said. "'Remember that cleanliness is next to Godliness!'"

      "Two terms of that!" gasped Leon, sinking on the stove hearth. "Behold Job mourning as close the ashes as he can."

      Billy Wilson had the top lid off, so he reached down and got a big handful of ashes and sifted them over Leon. But it's no fun to do anything like that to him; he only sank in a more dejected heap, and moaned: "Send for Bildad and Zophar to comfort me, and more ashes, please."

      "Why does the little feathered dear touch earth at all? Why doesn't she fly?" demanded Silas Shaw.

      "I'm going to get a hundred wads ready for Monday," said Jimmy Hood. "We can shoot them when we please."

      "Bet ten cents you can't hit her," said Billy Wilson. "There ain't enough of her for a decent mark."

      "Let's quit and go home," proposed Leon. "This will look worse than it does now by Monday night."

      Then every one began talking at once. Suddenly May seized the poker and began pounding on the top of the stove for order.

      "We must clean this up," she said. "We might as well finish. Maybe you'll shoot wads and do what you please, and maybe you won't. Her eyes went around like a cat that smells mice. If she can spell the language she uses, she is the best we've ever had."

      That made us blink, and I never forgot it. Many times afterward while listening to people talk, I wondered if they could spell the words they used.

      "Well, come on, then!" said Leon. He seized the broom and handed it to Billy Wilson, quoting as he did so, "Work, work, my boy, be not afraid"; and he told Silas Shaw as he gave him the mop, to "Look labour boldly in the face!" but he never did a thing himself, except to keep every one laughing.

      So we cleaned up as well as we could, and Leon strutted like Bobby, because he locked the door and carried the key. When we reached home I was sorry I hadn't gone with father, so I could have seen mother, Sally, Candace, and Laddie when first they met the new teacher. The shock showed yet! Miss Amelia had taken off her smothery woollen dress and put on a black calico, but it wasn't any more cheerful. She didn't know what to do, and you could see plainly that no one knew what to do with her, so they united in sending me to show her the place. I asked her what she would like most to see, and she said everything was so charming she couldn't decide. I thought if she had no more choice than that, one place would do as well as another, so I started for the orchard. Quick as we got there, I knew what to do. I led her straight to our best cling peach tree, told her to climb on the fence so she could reach easily, and eat all she chose. We didn't dare shake the tree, because the pigs ran on the other side of the fence, and they chanked up every peach that fell there. Those peaches were too good to feed even father's finest Berkshires.

      By the time Miss Amelia had eaten nine or ten, she was so happy to think she was there, she quit tilting her head and using big words. Of course she couldn't know how I loved to hear them, and maybe she thought I wouldn't know what they meant, and that they would be wasted on me. If she had understood how much spelling and defining I'd heard in my life, I guess she might have talked up as big as she could, and still I'd have got most of it. When she reached the place where she ate more slowly, she began to talk. She must have asked me most a hundred questions. What all our names were, how old we were, if our girls had lots of beaus, and if there were many men in the neighbourhood, and dozens of things my mother never asked any one. She always inquired if people were well, if their crops were growing, how much fruit they had, and how near their quilts were finished.

      I told her all about Sally and the wedding, because no one cared who knew it, after I had been pounded to mince-meat for telling. She asked if Shelley had any beaus, and I said there wasn't any one who came like Peter, but every man in the neighbourhood wanted to be her beau. Then she asked about Laddie, and I was taking no risks, so I said: "I only see him at home. I don't know where he goes when he's away. You'll have to ask him."

      "Oh, I never would dare," she said. "But he must. He is so handsome! The girls would just compel him to go to see them."

      "Not if he didn't want to go," I said.

      "You must never, never tell him I said so, but I do think he is the handsomest man I ever saw."

      "So do I," I said, "and it wouldn't make any difference if I told him."

      "Then do you mean you're going to tell him my foolish remark?" she giggled.

      "No use," I said. "He knows it now. Every time he parts his hair he sees how good looking he is. He doesn't care. He says the only thing that counts with a man is to be big, strong, manly, and well educated."

      "Is he well educated?"

      "Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day, and by the time you are old enough to die, you have almost enough sense to know how to live comfortably. Pity, isn't it?"

      "Yes," said Miss Amelia, "it's an awful pity, but it's the truth. Is your mother being educated too?"

      "Whole family," I said. "We learn all the time, mother most of any, because father always looks out for her. You see, it takes so much of her time to manage the house, and sew, and knit, and darn, that she can't study so much as the others; so father reads all the books to her, and tells her about everything he finds out, and so do all of us. Just ask her if you think she doesn't know things."

      "I wouldn't know what to ask," said Miss Amelia.

      "Ask how long it took to make this world, who invented printing, where English was first spoken, why Greeley changed his politics, how to make bluebell perfumery, cut out a dress, or cure a baby of worms. Just ask her!"

      Miss Amelia threw a peach stone through a fence crack and hit a pig. It was a pretty neat shot.

      "I don't need ask any of that," she said scornfully. "I know all of it now."

      "All right! What is best for worms?" I asked.

      "Jayne's vermifuge," said Miss Amelia.

      "Wrong!" I cried. "That's a patent medicine. Tea made from male fern root СКАЧАТЬ