Hildegarde's Holiday Part 17

"Of course! Giotto!" cried Hildegarde. "He was only ten years old when Cimabue found him drawing a sheep on a smooth stone."

"It was in one of my school-readers," said Rose. "Only the teacher called him Guy Otto, and I supposed it was a contraction of the two names, for convenience in printing. Then," she added, after a moment, "there was David, when he was 'ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance.'"

"And Apollo," cried Hildegarde, "when he kept the flocks of Admetus, you know."

"I don't know!" said Rose. "I thought Apollo was the G.o.d of the sun."

"So he was!" replied Hildegarde. "But Jupiter was once angry with him, and banished him from Olympus. His sun-chariot was sent round the sky as usual, but empty; and he, poor dear, without his golden rays, came down to earth, and hired himself as a shepherd to King Admetus of Thessaly.

All the other shepherds were very wild and savage, but Apollo played to them on his lyre, and sang of all the beautiful things in the world,--of spring, and the young gra.s.s, and the birds, and--oh! everything lovely.

So at last he made them gentle, like himself, and taught them to sing, and play on the flute, and to love their life and the beautiful world they lived in. And so shepherds became the happiest people in the world, and the most skilful in playing and singing, and in shooting with bow and arrows, which the G.o.d also taught them; till at last the G.o.ds were jealous, and called Apollo back to Olympus. Isn't it a pretty story? I read it in 'Telemaque,' at school last winter."

"Lovely!" said Rose. "Yes, I think I should like to be a shepherd." And straightway she fell into a reverie, this foolish Rose, and fancied herself wrapped in a plaid, lying in a broad meadow, spread with heather as with a mantle, and here and there gray rocks, and sheep moving slowly about nibbling the heather.

And as Hildegarde watched her pure sweet face, and saw it soften into dreamy languor and then kindle again with some bright thought, another poem of the Ettrick Shepherd came to her mind, and she repeated the opening lines, half to herself:--

"Bonny Kilmeny gaed up the glen; But it wasna to meet Duneira's men, Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see, For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be."

"Oh, go on, please!" murmured Rose, all unconscious that she was the Kilmeny of her friend's thoughts:--

"It was only to hear the yorlin sing, And pu' the cress-flower round the spring; The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye, And the nut that hung frae the hazel-tree: For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.

But lang may her minny look o'er the wa', And lang may she seek i' the greenwood shaw; Lang the Laird of Duneira blame, And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame.

"When many a day had come and fled, When grief grew calm, and hope was dead; When ma.s.s for Kilmeny's soul had been sung, When the bedesman had prayed and the dead-bell rung; Late, late in a gloamin', when all was still, When the fringe was red on the westlin hill, The wood was sear, the moon i' the wane, The reek o' the cot hung over the plain, Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane; When the ingle lowed with an eiry leme, Late, late in the gloamin' Kilmeny cam hame."

Here Hildegarde stopped suddenly; for some one had come along the road, and was standing still, leaning against the fence, and apparently listening. It was a boy about eleven years old. He was neatly dressed, but his clothes were covered with dust, and his broad-brimmed straw hat was slouched over his eyes so that it nearly hid his face, which was also turned away from the girls. But though he was apparently gazing earnestly in the opposite direction, still there was an air of consciousness about his whole figure, and Hildegarde was quite sure that he had been listening to her. She waited a few minutes; and then, as the boy showed no sign of moving on, she called out, "What is it, please? Do you want something?"

The boy made an awkward movement with his shoulders, and without turning round replied in an odd voice, half whine, half growl, "Got any cold victuals, lady?"

"Come in!" said Hildegarde, rising, though she was not attracted either by the voice, nor by the lad's shambling, uncivil manner,--"come in, and I will get you something to eat."

The boy still kept his back turned to her, but began sidling slowly toward the gate, with a clumsy, crab-like motion. "I'm a poor feller, lady!" he whined, in the same disagreeable tone. "I ain't had nothin' to eat for a week, and I've got the rheumatiz in my j'ints."

"_Nothing to eat for a week!_" exclaimed Hildegarde, severely. "My boy, you are not telling the truth. And who ever heard of rheumatism at your age? Do you think we ought to let him in, Rose?" she added, in a lower tone.

But the boy continued still sidling toward the gate. "I've got a wife and seven little children, lady! They're all down with the small-pox and the yeller--" But at this point his eloquence was interrupted, for Rose sprang from her seat, upsetting the basket of pods, and running forward, seized him by the shoulders.

"You scamp!" she cried, shaking him with tender violence. "You naughty monkey, how could you frighten us so? Oh, my dear, dear little lad, how do you do?" and whirling the boy round and tossing off his hat, she revealed to Hildegarde's astonished gaze the freckled, laughing face and merry blue eyes of Zerubbabel Chirk.

Bubble was highly delighted at the success of his ruse. He rubbed his hands and chuckled, then went down on all-fours and began picking up the pea-pods. "Sorry I made you upset the basket, Pink!" he said. "I say! how well you're looking! Isn't she, Miss Hilda? Oh! I didn't suppose you were as well as this."

He gazed with delighted eyes at his sister's face, on which the fresh pink and white told a pleasant tale of health and strength. She returned his look with one of such beaming love and joy that Hildegarde, in the midst of her own heartfelt pleasure, could not help feeling a momentary pang. "If my baby brother had only lived!" she thought. But the next moment she was shaking Bubble by both hands, and telling him how glad she was to see him.

"And now tell us!" cried both girls, pulling him down on the ground between them. "Tell us all about it! How did you get here? Where do you come from? When did you leave New York? What have you been doing? How is Dr. Flower?"

"Guess I've got under Niag'ry Falls, by mistake!" said Bubble, dryly.

"Let me see, now!" He rumpled up his short tow-colored hair with his favorite gesture, and meditated. "I guess I'll begin at the beginning!"

he said. "Well!" (it was observable that Bubble no longer said "Wa-al!"

and that his speech had improved greatly during the year spent in New York, though he occasionally dropped back into his former broad drawl.) "Well! it's been hot in the city. I tell you, it's been hot. Why, Miss Hilda, I never knew what heat was before."

"I know it must be dreadful, Bubble!" said Hildegarde. "I have never been in town in August, but I can imagine what it must be."

"I really don't know, Miss Hilda, whether you can," returned Bubble, respectfully. "It isn't like any heat I ever felt at home. Can you imagine your brains sizzling in your head, like a kettle boiling?"

"Oh, don't, Bubble!" cried Rose. "Don't say such things!"

"Well, it's true!" said the boy. "That's exactly the way it felt. It was like being in a furnace,--a white furnace in the day-time, and a black one at night; that was all the difference. I had my head shaved,--it's growed now, but I'm going to have it done again, soon as I get back,--and wore a flannel s.h.i.+rt and those linen pants you made, Pinkie.

I tell you I was glad of 'em, if I did laugh at 'em at first--and so I got on. I wrote you that Dr. Flower had taken me to do errands for him during vacation?" The girls nodded. "Well, I stayed at his house,--it's a jolly house!--and 't was as cool there as anywhere. I went to the hospital with him every day, and I'm going to be a surgeon, and he says I can."

Hildegarde smiled approval, and Rose patted the flaxen head, and said, "Yes, I am sure you can, dear boy. Do you remember how you set the chicken's leg last year?"

"I told the doctor about that," said Bubble, "and he said I did it right. Wasn't I proud! I held accidents for him two or three times this summer," he added proudly. "It never made me faint at all, though it does most people at first."

"Held accidents?" asked Hildegarde, innocently. "What do you mean, laddie?"

"People hurt in accidents!" replied the boy. "While he set the bones, you know. There were some very fine ones!" and he kindled with professional enthusiasm. "There was one man who had fallen from a staging sixty feet high, and was all--"

"Don't! don't!" cried both girls, in horror, putting their fingers in their ears.

"We don't want to hear about it, you dreadful boy!" said Hildegarde.

"_We_ are not going to be surgeons, be good enough to remember."

"Oh, it's all right!" said Bubble, laughing. "He got well, and is about on crutches now. Then there was a case of trepanning. Oh, that _was_ so beautiful! You _must_ let me tell you about that. You see, this man was a sailor, and he fell from the top-gallantmast, and struck--" But here Rose's hand was laid resolutely over his mouth, and he was told that if he could not refrain from surgical anecdotes, he would be sent back to New York forthwith.

"All right!" said the embryo surgeon, with a sigh; "only they're about all I have to tell that is really interesting. Well, it grew hotter and hotter. Dr. Flower didn't seem to mind the heat much; but Jock and I--well, we did."

"Oh, my dear little Jock!" cried Hildegarde, remorsefully. "To think of my never having asked for him. How is the dear doggie?"

"He's all right now," replied Bubble, "But there was one hot spell last month, that we thought would finish the pup. Hot? Well, I should--I mean, I should think it was! You had to put your boots down cellar every night, or else they'd be warped so you couldn't put 'em on in the morning."

"Bubble!" said Hildegarde, holding up a warning finger. But Bubble would not be repressed again.

"Oh, Miss Hilda, you don't know anything about it!" he said; "excuse me, but really you don't. The sidewalks were so hot, the bakers just put their dough out on them, and it was baked in a few minutes. All the Fifth Avenue folks had fountain attachments put on to their carriages, and sprinkled themselves with iced lavender water and odycolone as they drove along; and the bronze statue in Union Square melted and ran all over the lot."

"Rose, what shall we do to this boy?" cried Hildegarde, as the youthful Munchausen paused for breath. "And you aren't telling me a word about my precious Jock, you little wretch!"

"One night," Bubble resumed,--"I'm in earnest now, Miss Hilda,--one night it seemed as if there was no air to breathe; as if we was just taking red-hot dust into our lungs. Poor little Jock seemed very sick; he lay and moaned and moaned, like a baby, and kept looking from the doctor to me, as if he was asking us to help him. I was pretty nigh beat out, too, and even the doctor seemed f.a.gged; but we could stand it better than the poor little beast could. I sat and fanned him, but that didn't help him much, the air was so hot. Then the doctor sent me for some cracked ice, and we put it on his head and neck, and _that_ took hold! 'The dog's in a fever!' says the doctor. 'We must watch him to-night, and if he pulls through, I'll see to him in the morning,' says he. Well, we spent that night taking turns, putting ice on that dog's head, and fanning him, and giving him water."

"My dear Bubble!" said Hildegarde, her eyes full of tears. "Dear good boy! and kindest doctor in the world! How shall I thank you both?"

"We weren't going to let him die," said Bubble, "after the way you saved his life last summer, Miss Hilda. Well, he did pull through, and so did we; but I was pretty shaky, and the morning came red-hot. The sun was like copper when it rose, and there seemed to be a sort of haze of heat, just pure heat, hanging over the city. And Dr. Flower says, 'You're going to git out o' this!' says he."

"I don't believe he said anything of the kind!" interrupted Rose, who regarded Dr. Flower as a combination of Bayard, Sidney, and the Admirable Crichton.

"Well, it came to the same thing!" retorted Bubble, unabashed. "Anyhow, we took the first train after breakfast for Glenfield."

"Oh, oh, Bubble!" cried both girls, eagerly. "Not really?"

"Yes, really!" said Bubble. "I got to the Farm about ten o'clock, and went up and knocked at the front door, thinking I'd give Mrs. Hartley a surprise, same as I did you just now; but n.o.body came, so I went in, and found not a soul in the house. But I knowed--I _knew_ she couldn't be far off; for her knitting lay on the table, and the beans--it was Sat.u.r.day--were in the pot, simmering away. So I sat down in the farmer's big chair, and looked about me. Oh, I tell you, Miss Hilda, it seemed good! There was the back door open, and the hens picking round the big doorstep, just the way they used, and the great willow tapping against the window, and a pile of Summer Sweetings on the shelf, all warm in the suns.h.i.+ne, you know,--only you weren't there, and I kept kind o' hoping you would come in. Do you remember, one day I wanted one of them Sweetings, and you wouldn't give me one till I'd told you about all the famous apples I'd ever heard of?"