Treasure Valley Part 2

"What on earth's Hannah scratching 'round upstairs so long for? That orphant'll be growed up before they get it."

"She's jist ready," remarked his mother, hopefully, "an' there's no use talkin' about it, either. It jist wastes time. Jake!" she called, anxiously. "Are you sure you're all ready now?"

The man turned a desperate face toward her.

"I think so, Harriet. But if this collar don't bust soon an' give me a breath, I'll choke."

"Did you find your pipe?"

Mr. Sawyer dived absently into his coat pockets. "We'll miss that train as sure as---- Where in the nation's that pipe o' mine got to?"

He rummaged despairingly. "Oh, I forgot! Susan Winters said I wasn't to take it, for fear the smoke might be bad for the orphant's eyes.

D'ye think it would, Harriet?" he inquired, wistfully.

"Tuts!" she cried, disdainfully, "not a bit. Davy, there, was brought up on smoke. You go and get that pipe and put it in your pocket."

Mr. Sawyer started hopefully for the kitchen door. Davy Munn might not be exactly a bright and s.h.i.+ning example to set for the bringing up of the orphan, but at least he looked healthy, and Jake was even more than usually helpless when bereft of his pipe. He paused on the way indoors to make one more despairing appeal to the power above. "Hannah!

Aren't you 'most ready?"

Hannah's face, round and red, like the full moon, appeared for an instant from its cloudy curtain. "Harriet! Harriet Munn!" she called, "and you, Arabella, could you run up here a minit an' pin on these blue cuffs o' mine? An' I can't find my Sunday gloves, high nor low, nor my----"

The rest was lost in the curtains, but the two friends had already disappeared inside, and were charging up the stairs. Mrs. Winters, who was emerging from the kitchen door with the bottle of milk, turned and darted after them. "She ain't goin' to put them blue cuffs on that black dress!" she screamed.

"Ella Anne," whispered Jake, sidling up to the young lady with the high pompadour, "could you take a look 'round, and see if you can find my pipe? I can't seem to think where I've laid it."

Miss Long strolled around the kitchen, casting an absent eye here and there.

"Davy!" called a sharp voice from the upstairs window. "Davy Munn!

Don't you dast to forget to call when the train hoots for Cameron's Crossing!"

The only calm person on the premises glanced up with half-closed eyes.

"Hoh!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, planting his feet upon the dashboard and expectorating disdainfully in the direction of Rebekah's head, "Gabriel's trump'll hoot 'fore this shootin' match goes off! Gosh blame, if here ain't another one!"

A tall woman was coming up the lane. She was a stately, severe person, with iron-gray hair and a stern gray eye, behind which a kindly twinkle hid itself carefully from view. She had a commanding way, which, combined with the fact that she had taught the Elmbrook school for twenty years, and was the only woman in the village who neither feared Mrs. Winters nor regarded Granny Long's telescope, had earned her the t.i.tle of the Duke of Wellington.

"Are you not away yet, David?" she demanded; and the boy sat up as though he had received an electric shock.

"N-no, but we're jist startin'," he said, apologetically. She pa.s.sed him to where Mr. Sawyer stood in the doorway wrestling with his collar.

"Do you remember this, Jake?" she asked, holding up a baby's rattle.

"I bought it for your little Joey, and put it away in my desk till he would be big enough to use it, and it's been there ever since. Maybe the new baby'll like it."

The man's eyes grew misty as he took the little toy and gazed at it tenderly. The woman's face had lost all its sternness; her gray eyes were very kind.

"Well, well, well," he stammered, with masculine dread of giving expression to anything like sentiment. "It--it looks quite--new." He hesitated, then his face brightened as he found himself once more on familiar ground. "Say, d'ye think you could help them weemin folks in there to find my pipe? It seems to have got laid away somewheres, an'

I'm afraid we're goin' to miss that train as sure as--anything." He ended up lamely, making the polite alteration out of respect for the Duke's dignity.

Miss Weir marched into the kitchen. It was a scene of wild disorder.

"h.e.l.lo!" giggled Miss Long. "We're having an awful time. Hannah ain't ready, of course."

"_Isn't_ ready, Ella Anne."

"Well, isn't or ain't, it's all the same; she's not started yet. An'

mind you, Mrs. Munn's upstairs helping, too, and her expecting the new doctor any minit. Say, Miss Weir, when she comes down, ask her whether he's married or not, aw, do. She's the closest creature. I can't get anything out of her."

Before the schoolmistress could rebuke Miss Long's undue curiosity regarding the young doctor Mrs. Winters came flying down the stairs, having successfully routed the blue cuffs.

"Good-morning, Miss Weir. We're here yet, you see. If these folks ain't a caution, and no mistake! Davy! Davy Munn! Are you listening for that there train?"

"Did ye look on the pantry shelf?" whispered Jake, cautiously, putting his head in at the door, and avoiding Mrs. Winters' eye. "Sometimes I leave it there."

"Just like you," grumbled the tidy schoolmistress, rummaging among the cans of spice and pickle bottles.

"Perhaps it's in the sewing-machine drawer," suggested Mrs. Munn, who had come panting down the stairs. "Hannah's jist ready, Jake," she added, hopefully.

"What'll you do if the new doctor comes on this train?" asked Miss Long, peeping at her pompadour in the little mirror above the sink.

"I dunno," answered the new doctor's housekeeper. "It's no use talkin'

about it, anyhow. There's more harm done by talkin' over things than anything else in the world."

Miss Long shrugged her shoulders impatiently. That was Mrs. Munn's invariable answer. She had been old Dr. Williams' housekeeper for ten years, and had met all questions regarding his private affairs by the vague formula, "I dunno." A close woman was Mrs. Mum, as the village called her; a treasure of a woman, old Dr. Williams had said, when he recommended her to his young successor.

Ella Anne sighed. "That pipe must 'a' fell down the well," she remarked, with an accent of despair that was not all caused by the supposed catastrophe.

"Is he going to have them three downstairs rooms for his offices, or only two?" she ventured again.

Mrs. Munn stared vacantly. "I dunno," she said. "Mebby he is."

"There! If there isn't that troublesome pipe right under your nose, Ella Anne!" cried Miss Weir, pouncing upon it where it lay on the window-sill. "Your head is so full of the new doctor you can't see straight. Here, Jake!"

She started for the door, but before she reached it a great many things happened. First, Mrs. Sawyer, gowned, bonneted and shawled, though the sun promised to be blazing hot before it set, came down the stairs at a reckless pace. She was followed by Miss Arabella Winters, half hidden beneath a bundle of coats and wraps suited for children of all ages.

As the two ran for the door, Mrs. Winters with a bottle of milk, Miss Long with a forgotten pie, and Mrs. Munn, who had s.n.a.t.c.hed up a basket of newly laundered clothes, under the mistaken idea that they, too, were for the orphan, all rushed at the same instant for the same portal, and jammed together between the door-posts. The Duke of Wellington, still grasping the rescued pipe, threw herself upon the human wedge and drove it, helter-skelter, down the steps; and simultaneously there arose, loud and clear, not from Cameron's Crossing, some miles distant, but just from the ravine bridge, scarcely a quarter of a mile away, the shrill whistle of the train.

The six women turned and looked at each other in an instant's paralyzed dismay. Jake Sawyer opened his mouth and gave forth a slight variation of his despairing motto, "We've missed that train, as sure as blazes!"

No one had courage to deny the a.s.sertion. When the Lakeview & Simcoe Railroad Company laid a line across the towns.h.i.+p of Oro they had treated Elmbrook in a shabby fas.h.i.+on by placing the station a mile from the village. The inconvenience of this arrangement was largely obviated, however, by the obliging ways of Conductor Lauchie McKitterick. For if any one in the village was late in starting for the station, all one had to do was to wave a towel at the back door as the train slowed up over the ravine bridge, and Lauchie would wait at the station. Of course, it was understood that the belated traveler was already on the way thither, taking the path across McQuarry's fields. But of what use to wave all the bed-sheets in Elmbrook this morning? For though a delay of half an hour or so was neither here nor there to the Lakeview & Simcoe Limited Express, it was impossible to expect even so neighborly a body as Lauchie to wait until the big, heavy buggy and Cameron's farm team should be driven along the cross-road and down the concession. And as for Hannah Sawyer's 185 pounds being transported across the fields and over the fences in less time--not to speak of all the orphan's clothes and the pies and the pound cake and the crock of b.u.t.ter--well, there was no use thinking about it!

But Mrs. Winters, the indomitable, rose to even this emergency. She sprang to the buggy and began dragging out the baskets. "We'll stop him at the bridge!" she screamed. "We can run down the back lane!

Davy Munn, you jump out of that rig an' run ahead! No--Miss Weir, you go! Lauchie'll have to stop if you tell him!"

It was the first time in her life Mrs. Winters had ever paid a tribute to the Duke of Wellington's power. Though it was wrung from her by the exigencies of the case, the schoolmistress accepted it. She s.n.a.t.c.hed a white garment off the clothes-line, darted through the barnyard, and ran at top speed down the back lane toward the track, waving it on high, all unconscious that it was Jake's white mill overalls. Close upon her flying footsteps came the orphan-adopting expedition: Mrs.

Winters, the bottle of milk leaving a white-sprinkled trail behind her; Jake, dragging the heaps of wraps and the basket of provisions, with which little Miss Arabella was vainly trying to a.s.sist him; Ella Anne Long, the basket of pies on her arm, the forgotten one in her other hand; Mrs. Munn, with the crock of b.u.t.ter; poor Hannah herself far behind; and lastly, Isaac and Rebekah, their necks outthrust, their wings wide, streaming along like a pair of comets, with a long, spreading tail of hens, all noisily hopeful that this unusual commotion meant an unusual meal.

Down the lane zigzagged the swift procession, Hannah floundering farther and farther in the rear. She raised her voice once in a despairing protest: "Oh, Jake! Jake!" she wailed, "I've forgot my false teeth!"

Her husband, desperately intent on his destination, did not hear the appeal, but the little woman who was generaling the flying column did, and realized that this sign of giving way must be peremptorily crushed.

"You'll jist have to gum it, Hannah!" she shrieked relentlessly over her shoulder. "Come on, come on!"