Wheat and Huckleberries Part 12

Stella did not deny the charge. "What irrelevant remarks you do contrive to make, Tom!" she said. "Come, go ahead, if you mean to show us where those berries are."

They found them, and were all busily picking in a few minutes more.

However Stella's interest in huckleberries might flag later on there was no criticism to be made on her attention at first, and her fingers flew over the bushes at a rate which augured well for the filling of her pail. As for the Northmore girls, they were in ecstasies. Kate settled down to the business at once, though for a while she ate most of the berries she picked, while Esther paused between the handfuls to take long whiffs of the sweet fern which grew everywhere among the bushes, and to fill her eyes with the landscape which looked fairer than ever from the side of this green old hill.

Everything was interesting-the sights, the smells, the blossoms which were all around them; even the sprig of lobelia which Tom presented for his cousins' tasting, having first cunningly prepared the way with spearmint and pennyroyal-how Kate wished she could return the favor with a green persimmon!-and the slender yellow worm, industriously measuring the bushes, had its own claim to attention. Its name and manner of travel reminded Kate of one of Aunt Milly's songs with an admonis.h.i.+ng refrain of, "Keep an inching along, Keep an inching along," and she trolled it out with a rollicking plantation accent that charmed her audience.

Perhaps it was the singing which drew a traveller who was climbing up the hill in their direction. In a pause of the verses Tom suddenly exclaimed: "Upon my word, there's Solomon Ridgeway. He's got his pack on his back, too. Let's have some fun."

It was indeed the queer protege of Aunt Katharine who appeared at that moment, bowing and smiling as he emerged from behind a rock. Evidently Tom did not share his grandfather's extreme dislike for the man's society, for he advanced to meet him in the most friendly manner.

"Well, Solomon," he exclaimed, "so you thought you'd come huckleberrying, too! Do you expect to fill that box of yours this afternoon?"

The face of the little old man, which was fairly twinkling with pleasure, expressed an eager dissent. "Oh, no, I-I didn't come huckleberryin'," he said, "and I couldn't think of puttin' 'em in this box. Why this box-" he lowered his voice with a delighted chuckle-"has got some of my jewels in it You see, I'm goin' over to see little Mary Berger. They say she's got the mumps, and I kind o' thought 'twould brighten her up to see 'em. It don't hurt the children-bless their hearts-to see fine things; it does 'em good. And I always tell 'em," he added earnestly, "that there _air_ things better 'n pearls and rubies.

Tain't everybody that the Lord gives riches to, and if they're good they'll be happy without 'em."

"Why, that's quite a moral, Solomon," said Tom. "You ought to have been a preacher." He sent a roguish glance at the girls, then, throwing an accent of solicitude into his voice, added: "But aren't you afraid you might get robbed going through those woods? There's quite a strip of them before you get to Berger's."

The owner of the jewels sent an apprehensive glance into the woods which skirted the brow of the hill and answered bravely: "Yes, I be, Thomas. I be a little afeared of it. I-I won't go so far as to say I ain't. But I don't b'lieve a body or' to stan' back on that account when there's somethin' they feel as if they or' to be doin', and I've always been took care of before-I've always been took care of."

The manliness of this ought to have shamed Tom out of his waggishness, but he was not done with it yet. "Solomon," he said, with the utmost gravity,-"I should think you'd want to get your property into something besides jewellery. Then you wouldn't run such risks. Besides, if you had it in the bank, you know, it would be growing bigger all the time."

The little man's face wore a look of distress, and he put his hand on his box protectingly. "They tell me that sometimes," he said in a plaintive tone, "but I-I couldn't think of it. It wouldn't be half as much comfort to me as 'tis this way. Besides, I'm rich enough now, and when a body's got enough, it's enough, ain't it? And why can't you settle down and take the good of it?"

"I think you're quite right, Mr. Ridgeway," said Stella. "It's perfectly vulgar for people to go straining and scrambling after more money when they have as much as they can enjoy already. The world would be a good deal pleasanter place than it is if more people felt as you do about that."

She punctuated this with reproving glances at Tom, to which, however, he paid not the smallest attention.

"But you know, Solomon," he said artfully, "if you only had your money where you could draw on it, you wouldn't have to work as you do now.

They keep you trotting pretty lively at the farm, don't they? And I'll warrant Aunt Katharine finds you ch.o.r.es enough when you're at her house."

The little man's face was clear again. Here, at least, was a point on which he had no misgiving. "Law, Thomas," he said, "I-I like to keep busy. Why, there ain't a bit o' sense in a body bein' all puffed up and thinkin' he's too good to work like other folks jest 'cause he's rich.

'Tain't your own doings, being rich, leastways not all of it. It's partly the way things happen, and then it's the disposition you've got.

That's the way I look at it. And it always 'peared to me," he added, with the most touching simplicity, "that, when a body's rich as I be, he or' to do a leetle more 'n common folks to sort o' try 'n' pay up for it."

"Mr. Ridgeway," exclaimed Stella-it was impossible after this to let that graceless brother say another word-"would you mind showing us some of your pretty things right now? My cousins never saw them, and I'm sure they'd enjoy it ever so much."

The countenance of Solomon Ridgeway was aflame with pleasure. He lowered his box from his shoulders and unstrapped it with a childish eagerness.

"Why, I-I'd be proud to, Miss Stella," he said, with a hurrying rapture.

Then, looking about for a suitable place of exhibition, he added, "Jest come under that big chestnut tree over there, and I'll spread 'em all out so you can see 'em."

It was not huckleberrying, but something much more unique, which engaged them for the next half hour. The collection which Solomon Ridgeway drew from his box and spread before their dazzled eyes was a marvel of tinsel and glitter. There were brooches and rings and chains enough to have made the fortune of half a dozen pedlers; trumpery stuff, most of it, but what of that?

The owner was not one to let a carping world settle for him the value of his treasure. There was paste that gleamed like diamonds in settings burnished like the finest gold, and there were the colors of topaz and emerald and sapphire and ruby. Who cared whether they flashed in bits of gla.s.s or in stones drawn from the mines? They were things of beauty for a' that, and they filled their owner's soul with joy. He had gathered them slowly through the savings of earlier years, and the gifts of friends; he loved them every one, and believed them to be of fabulous value.

"They ain't all I've got, you know. There's a lot more," he said repeatedly; and then he rubbed his hands together and smiled upon his audience with the air of a Crsus demanding, "Do you know any one richer than I?"

It was impossible not to wish to give him pleasure, and more than once the girls exclaimed over the beauty of some trinket. Esther was especially warm in her admiration, and there was no insincerity in her words when she said: "I think you have some perfectly lovely things, Mr.

Ridgeway. I don't wonder you prize them, and I'm sure that little girl who is sick will thank you all her life for letting her see them."

He had almost forgotten his friend on the other side of the hill. He gathered up his treasures now with a sudden remembrance, lifted his box to his shoulders again and was off, turning back again and again to make his little bow, half of pomposity and half of humility, as he hurried away.

"Is he crazy, or isn't he?" exclaimed Kate, when he was fairly out of hearing.

"He's queer. That's all you can say," said Stella; "but for my part, I don't mind him. People are so much of a pattern here in America that I think it's rather nice to have one of a different sort mixed in now and then."

"I don't see how he can keep up his notion of being rich and live in a poorhouse," said Kate.

"Don Quixote thought all the inns were castles," said Stella. "I don't know why a person with an imagination like his shouldn't take a poorhouse for a first-cla.s.s hotel."

Her interest in huckleberrying was gone now, and the mood Tom had foretold was upon her. Esther divined it as she saw her looking at the chestnut tree, with her head tipped to one side.

"Oh, do sketch it, dear," she whispered. "Did you really bring drawing materials with you?"

Stella laughed, and drew a pencil and small pad from the bag that hung at her belt.

"Fill my pail for me, and you shall have it for a souvenir," she said.

The sketch was a pretty thing, and the pails, though not all full, contained a goodly quant.i.ty of berries, when they descended the hill in the late afternoon. As they reached the bottom a sudden thought came to Esther. "Do you suppose your mother would care if I should take my berries round to Aunt Katharine?" she asked.

"My mother would be ready to give you a special reward for thinking of it," said Stella. "But do you really feel like going round by Aunt Katharine's? It's ever so far out of our way!"

"Oh, I don't care for that," said Esther, and she added quickly: "but please don't feel that you must go too. I know the way."

Perhaps she was not really anxious that Stella should accompany her, nor sorry that Kate was already far ahead with Tom, when she turned down the old road a few minutes later with her face toward Aunt Katharine's. "I shall only stay a little while," she called back. "You won't be home very long before me."

But she was wrong as to this. Supper was over and the sunset fading when she appeared at her grandfather's.

"She insisted on my staying, though I had no thought of her asking me,"

she explained to Aunt Elsie. "She was delighted with the huckleberries."

Sitting in the south doorway afterward with Stella, she said very earnestly: "You never saw anybody pleasanter than Aunt Katharine was all the time I was there. I'm sure she's a great deal kinder than you think she is. Do you know we got talking of Solomon Ridgeway, and she told me some real interesting things about him. She says he was married when he was young, but his wife only lived a few months. Evidently Aunt Katharine didn't think much of her, for she said she was a silly little thing, who cared more about finery than anything else. But he was all bound up in her, and when she died it almost killed him. He had a terrible sickness, and when he got over it his mind had this queer kink in it, and never came right afterward." She paused a moment, then added, "Somehow I couldn't help thinking that there might be a clew in that story to the reason why she is so good to him."

"She's just as queer in her way as he is in his. I guess it's an affinity of queerness," said Stella, carelessly. And then she called her cousin's attention to the color of the clouds, which were fading in airy fringes over Gray's Hill.

CHAPTER VIII

A PAIR OF CALLS

Among the honors which came to Ruel Saxon with advancing years there was probably none which he valued more than his position, well recognized in the community, as keeper of the best fund of stories of the olden time, and referee-in-chief on all debated points of local history. There were plenty of old people in Esterly, some even who had reached the patriarchal age in which he himself so gloried, but there was no other with a memory like his, none with so unique a gift for setting out the past event in warmth and color. The gift was his own, but the memory was in part at least that of some who had gone before.

It had been the old man's fortune in his youth to be the constant companion of a grandfather who, like himself, was a local authority; a deaf man, who relied much on the boy's clear voice and quick attention for intercourse with his fellows. Perhaps the service had been irksome sometimes to the boy, but it had its reward for him now; for his grandfather's experiences and his own blended in his thought as one continuous whole, and covered a s.p.a.ce of time no other memory in the town could match.

The time was not yet when every rural village of New England had its historical society, but the recovery of the past was becoming a fad in the cities, and families who valued themselves on their standing were waking up to the importance of making sure of their ancestors. A letter from some gatherer of ancient facts, making requisition on Ruel Saxon's knowledge, was not uncommon now, and more than once a caller had stopped at the farmhouse hoping to gain help from him in tracing some obscure branch of a family tree.

The person bent on such an errand was so commonly of serious and elderly aspect that the extremely stylish young man who rode into the yard one afternoon was not suspected by the girls, who saw him from the parlor, of belonging to this cla.s.s. Kate, who was nearest the window, was quite excited by the appearance of a gentleman on horseback. She had not seen one before since she left home, and the horse itself was as interesting as the rider.