Wheat and Huckleberries Part 19

"If I was in your place I wouldn't worry about it. I guess Aunt Katharine's got some sense if she _is_ so cranky. And Esther's old enough to know what she's about. Just leave her alone to get sick of some of those notions herself before she's done with 'em, and you ease up on the fretting. It doesn't do a bit of good, anyhow."

She really meant to "ease up." Tom's opinion on the last point was distinctly sound, but the old disquiet had possession of her again within five minutes from the time that conversation ended. The letter had come from home-she learned it as she entered the house-giving hearty consent that Esther should remain in New England, and the girl was already off to carry the word to Aunt Katharine. She had said she would be back soon, but no one really expected it, and supper was over before they saw her coming across the fields. Kate, who was watching, saw her first, and slipping out of the house hurried to meet her.

She had brought happy thoughts from Aunt Katharine's, happy and serious too, it would seem from the look in her face, and they occupied her so intently that she had almost met her sister before she saw her coming.

Then she put out both her hands with an eager greeting.

"I'm so glad you've come," she said. "I wanted to talk it over a little by ourselves." She slipped her arm through Kate's, and turned back into the darkening fields. "You weren't surprised at what the letter said, were you? I was sorry you weren't there when it came; but I had to take it down to Aunt Katharine, for it was partly to her, and I couldn't wait."

"No, I wasn't surprised. I felt sure they'd let you stay," said Kate, and then she added, "I do hope you'll have a good time, Esther, and enjoy everything as much as you expect to."

She had made an effort to speak heartily, but there was such a sober note in her voice that Esther's face clouded, and she looked quickly at her sister. "If you were only going to be here too, Kate, it would be perfect," she said. "I shall be wis.h.i.+ng all the way along that you were in the good times with me. And if you hadn't said so positively that you wanted to go home, I should have felt like proposing to Aunt Katharine to cut my time in Boston in two and let us be there together for a little while."

"I shouldn't have thanked you for it if you had," said Kate, a sudden impatience leaping into her voice. Then, with a bitterness she ought to have kept down, she added, "I don't like Aunt Katharine, and I don't want her favors."

The look in Esther's face changed. "You don't do Aunt Katharine justice, Kate," she said. "n.o.body does here. She isn't hateful and hard-hearted, as you all seem to think. She's good and kind and true-oh, so true! I believe she'd do more and give more than any other person I ever saw to bring about what she thinks is right. I don't know, I'm sure, how she came to like me, but I know why I like her. I admire her and I love her, and there's n.o.body in the world I'd rather take a favor from than Aunt Katharine."

Kate set her teeth hard. She had prejudiced everything she had meant to say by the heat with which she had spoken. She was silent a moment, then she said almost piteously: "I don't wonder she likes you. But I may as well be honest, Esther; I do hate to see her getting such an influence over you. It's all well enough to admire her for standing up for her own opinions, but I don't see how _you_ can fall in with some of them. I don't see how you can bear it to hear her talk so bitterly against the ways we've always been used to. And especially I don't see how you can stand it to hear her run down the men as she does."

"I don't agree with all her opinions," said Esther, quickly, "but I can see how she comes to hold them, and she doesn't always talk as harshly as you think. But it isn't her opinions any way; it's her own self that I care about."

"And you'll end by wanting to look at everything just as she does, because you like her so much and feel so indebted to her," said Kate.

Then, with an accent that was fairly tragic, she added: "Oh, she knows it, she knows it, and that's what she wants to keep you here for! She'll end by wanting you never to marry, and offering to leave you all her money if you'll promise not to do it."

Esther drew her arm away from her sister, and the flush that swept over her face was plain even in the twilight. "I think you'd better leave all that to Aunt Katharine and me. It doesn't strike me as coming under your charge," she said proudly. And then the coldness in her voice melted with a sudden heat as she added: "But suppose I _should_ come to see things as she does-suppose I _should_ come to take a different view of life from what I did once, what then? I'll go where my honest convictions lead me. It's my right and my duty, and I shall do it."

It sounded very brave and solemn in the twilight. A whippoorwill from the woods behind Aunt Katharine's house had the only word that followed, and he called it across the stillness with a long soft cadence that sounded like a wail.

They turned their faces to the house and walked toward it without speaking. It was a relief to both when Stella came out to meet them.

"I thought you were never coming," she said to Esther. "Dear me, I shall be glad when I get you in Boston, with Aunt Katharine too far away to use her magnet on you."

A half hour later Kate was in conference with Tom again. She had called him into the shadows of the barn, and her voice was almost a whisper as she said:-

"Tom, I want you to wake me up to-morrow morning when you come down to do the milking. I'm going to make a call before breakfast."

Tom gave a low whistle. "At that time in the morning! Where are you going?" he demanded.

"To Aunt Katharine's," she said.

Tom gave another whistle, this time a louder one. "Great Scott!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "So you're going to keep it right up, are you?"

"I'm going to keep it up till I've had one good square talk with her,"

said Kate, with decision. "Very likely it's none of my business,-you've told me that, and so has Esther,-but she's tremendously clear that she's got to follow her conscience where it leads her, and mine leads _me_ right down there to Aunt Katharine's. I can't go home without doing it, and there's only a week longer for me to stay, so I may as well take time by the forelock."

"I should think it was taking time by the forelock with a vengeance to go down there at five o'clock. Why don't you go at a reasonable hour?"

growled Tom.

Kate was losing patience. "Because I don't want Esther to know I'm going," she said. "If I go later she might happen to come in while I'm there, or she might ask me where I'd been. No, I've made up my mind to go before breakfast, and all you have to do is to wake me up."

"I'd like to know how I'm going to do it without waking her, too," he said.

"Oh, I'll fix that part," she replied, beginning to smile a little. "Of course you can't pound on the door; but I've got a trick worth two of that. I'll tie a string round my wrist and let the end hang out of the window. Then, when you come by, you can pull it and that'll wake me up.

I waked a girl that way once, on Fourth of July (only the string was round her ankle), and she slept so like a log that she said I almost pulled her out of the window before she was fairly awake. But you needn't be afraid of pulling me out. Just give a twitch and I shall feel it. I sleep on the front side."

"All right," said Tom, and then he could not help adding, "but I'll tell you now that your going down there won't do a bit of good, and you'd better keep out of it."

"It'll do _me_ good to free my mind," said Kate. "And after that I mean to take your advice, Tom, and quit worrying."

The allusion to his advice was gratifying. Tom agreed to administer the twitch at half-past four the next morning, and they separated, feeling like a pair of conspirators, Kate at least clear in the opinion that she was conspiring for the good of humanity.

She lay awake so long that night, turning in her mind what she would say to Aunt Katharine, and never getting it settled, for the singular reason that she could never foresee what Aunt Katharine would say next, that it seemed to her she had not been asleep at all when there came the appointed signal in the cool of the morning. For a moment she had a pa.s.sing dream that some one was trying to amputate her hand with a wood-saw, then it all came back to her. Her eyes flew open, and she crept stealthily out of bed. A flutter of the curtain showed Tom she was astir, but after that there was as little flutter as possible.

She slipped into her clothes as noiselessly as a ghost, with fearful glances at Esther, who slept on in serene oblivion of the plot against her, carried her shoes in her hand to the foot of the stairs, and went out through the kitchen, where even Aunt Elsie had not yet made her appearance. At the barn she paused a minute for a word with Tom and a cup of new milk, then flew down the lane, anxious still lest some one, looking unseasonably from the house, should see her, till the bend of the first hill hid her from view.

Some one has acutely remarked that people who break their usual habits by rising very early in the morning are apt to be a little conceited in the first part of the day and somewhat stupid in the last. There was certainly no lack of self-a.s.surance in Kate Northmore, as she took that walk across the dewy fields, with the fresh air blowing on her face, and the twitter of birds sounding from the woods. Not till she actually stood at Aunt Katharine's threshold was there any tremor of her nerves or any flutter at her heart.

Miss Saxon herself answered the knock, and a look of something like alarm came into her face as she saw the caller. "Is anybody sick at your house?" she asked quickly.

Kate had not foreseen the question. "No," she said, taken a little aback. "n.o.body's sick, but I wanted to see you, and I thought I'd come early."

"I should think so," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old woman, her face relaxing into a grim sort of a smile. "Well, come in and se' down."

She had no notion of preparing the way for the announcement of a pressing errand, or of hindering it by any observations of her own, and she took the chair opposite Kate's with her hands clasped on the top of her cane, waiting in perfect silence for the girl to begin.

Kate's heart began to thump now, and her mouth felt suddenly dry. "I'm going home in a week," she said, "and I-I wanted to talk about something with you before I went." And then suddenly she stopped. There was a queer sort of clutch at her throat, and for a minute she could not go on.

The old woman's eyebrows bent themselves into a puzzled frown. "Well,"

she said at last, "you hain't favored me with much of your company this summer. If you've got any particular reason for coming now, I s'pose you know what 'tis."

The sharpness of her tone brought Kate back to herself. "Yes'm I do,"

she said, "and it's about Esther. You've asked her to stay here and she's going to do it-no, I don't want to stay myself,"-she threw in quickly. "I'm ready to go home; but _she_ wants to. She thinks it's glorious." And then she stopped again, that unaccountable clutch at the throat coming for a second time.

"And you don't want her to do it? Is that what you're driving at?" said Aunt Katharine. She was in no mood now for delays.

"I should just as lief she'd do it as not-I want her to have a good time," cried Kate, "if-if you only wouldn't try to make her think as you do about some things."

It was out now, and the clutch at her throat relaxed.

"Oh," said Miss Saxon. There was a volume of meaning in the monosyllable as she spoke it, and then her face grew cold and sharp as an icicle.

"What things?"

It was really a pity that Kate was not better informed as to her aunt's peculiar views. But she caught at the one which had offended her most, and thrust it forward roughly. "About hating everything, especially the men," she cried, "and not wanting girls to be married. They say you want to leave your money to somebody who'll promise to stay single all her life."

Miss Saxon started, and a faint pink color rose in her cheeks, old and wrinkled as they were. "Did your sister tell you that?" she demanded.

"No," said Kate, "I don't know as she ever heard of it till I told her.

I told her last night, and how I felt about it, too."

"And she said-?" queried Miss Saxon. The pink was still in her cheeks.