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NOT QUITE EIGHTEEN.
The fox stared at her, and she stared back at thefox.--PAGE 16.]
NOT QUITE EIGHTEEN.
BY SUSAN COOLIDGE,
AUTHOR OF "WHAT KATY DID," "THE NEW YEAR'S BARGAIN," "THE BARBERRY BUSH," "A GUERNSEY LILY," "IN THE HIGH VALLEY," ETC.
BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1894.
_Copyright, 1894_, BY ROBERTS BROTHERS.
University Press: JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. HOW BUNNY BROUGHT GOOD LUCK 7
II. A BIT OF WILFULNESS 30
III. THE WOLVES OF ST. GERVAS 42
IV. THREE LITTLE CANDLES 62
V. UNCLE AND AUNT 83
VI. THE CORN-BALL MONEY 111
VII. THE PRIZE GIRL OF THE HARNESSING CLASS 123
VIII. DOLLY PHONE 142
IX. A NURSERY TYRANT 165
X. WHAT THE PINK FLAMINGO DID 179
XI. TWO PAIRS OF EYES 200
XII. THE PONY THAT KEPT THE STORE 211
XIII. PINK AND SCARLET 227
XIV. DOLLY'S LESSON 239
XV. A BLESSING IN DISGUISE 252
XVI. A GRANTED WISH 269
HOW BUNNY BROUGHT GOOD LUCK.
It was Midsummer's Day, that delightful point toward which the wholeyear climbs, and from which it slips off like an ebbing wave in thedirection of the distant winter. No wonder that superstitious people inold times gave this day to the fairies, for it is the most beautiful dayof all. The world seems full of bird-songs, sunshine, and flower-smellsthen; storm and sorrow appear impossible things; the barest and ugliestspot takes on a brief charm and, for the moment, seems lovely anddesirable.
"That's a picturesque old place," said a lady on the back seat of thebig wagon in which Hiram Swift was taking his summer boarders to drive.
They were passing a low, wide farmhouse, gray from want of paint, with ashabby barn and sheds attached, all overarched by tall elms. The narrowhay-field and the vegetable-patch ended in a rocky hillside, with itssteep ledges, overgrown and topped with tall pines and firs, which madea dense green background to the old buildings.
"I don't know about its being like a picter," said Hiram, dryly, as heflicked away a fly from the shoulder of his horse, "but it isn't muchby way of a farm. That bit of hay-field is about all the land there isthat's worth anything; the rest is all rock. I guess the Widow Galedoesn't take much comfort in its bein' picturesque. She'd be gladenough to have the land made flat, if she could."
"Oh, is that the Gale farm, where the silver-mine is said to be?"
"Yes, marm; at least, it's the farm where the man lived that, 'cordin'to what folks say, said he'd found a silver-mine. I don't take a greatdeal of stock in the story myself."
"A silver-mine! That sounds interesting," said a pretty girl on thefront seat, who had been driving the horses half the way, aided andabetted by Hiram, with whom she was a prime favorite. "Tell me about it,Mr. Swift. Is it a story, and when did it all happen?"
"Well, I don't know as it ever did happen," responded the farmer,cautiously. "All I know for certain is, that my father used to tell astory that, before I was born (nigh on to sixty years ago, that musthave been), Squire Asy Allen--that used to live up to that red house onNorth Street, where you bought the crockery mug, you know, MissRose--come up one day in a great hurry to catch the stage, with a lumpof rock tied in his handkerchief. Old Roger Gale had found it, he said,and they thought it was silver ore; and the Squire was a-takin' it downto New Haven to get it analyzed. My father, he saw the rock, but hedidn't think much of it from the looks, till the Squire got back tendays afterward and said the New Haven professor pronounced it silver,sure enough, and a rich specimen; and any man who owned a mine of it hadhis fortune made, he said. Then, of course, the township got excited,and everybody talked silver, and there was a great to-do."
"And why didn't they go to work on the mine at once?" asked the prettygirl.
"Well, you see, unfortunately, no one knew where it was, and old RogerGale had taken that particular day, of all others, to fall off hishay-riggin' and break his neck, and he hadn't happened to mention to anyone before doing so where he found the rock! He was a close-mouthed oldchap, Roger was. For ten years after that, folks that hadn't anythingelse to do went about hunting for the silver-mine, but they gradooallygot tired, and now it's nothin' more than an old story. Does to amuseboarders with in the summer," concluded Mr. Swift, with a twinkle. "Formy part, I don't believe there ever was a mine."
"But there was the piece of ore to prove it."
"Oh, that don't prove anything, because it got lost. No one knows whatbecame of it. An' sixty years is long enough for a story to getexaggerated in."
"I don't see why there shouldn't be silver in Beulah township," remarkedthe lady on the back seat. "You have all kinds of other mineralshere,--soapstone and mica and emery and tourmalines and beryls."
"Well, ma'am, I don't see nuther, unless, mebbe, it's the Lord's willthere shouldn't be."
"It would be so interesting if the mine could be found!" said the prettygirl.
"It would be _so_, especially to the Gale family,--that is, if it wasfound on their land. The widow's a smart, capable woman, but it's asmuch as she can do, turn and twist how she may, to make both ends meet.And there's that boy of hers, a likely boy as ever you see, and justhungry for book-l'arnin', the minister says. The chance of an eddicationwould be just everything to him, and the widow can't give him one."
"It's really a romance," said the pretty girl, carelessly, the wants andcravings of others slipping off her young sympathies easily.
Then the horses reached the top of the long hill they had been climbing,Hiram put on the brake, and they began to grind down a hill equallylong, with a soft panorama of plumy tree-clad summits before them,shimmering in the June sunshine. Drives in Beulah township were apt tobe rather perpendicular, however you took them.
Some one, high up on the hill behind the farmhouse, heard the clankof the brakes, and lifted up her head to listen. It was HesterGale,--a brown little girl, with quick dark eyes, and a mane of curlychestnut hair, only too apt to get into tangles. She was just eightyears old, and to her the old farmstead, which the neighbors scornedas worthless, was a sort of enchanted land, full of delights andsurprises,--hiding-places which no one but herself knew, rocks andthickets where she was sure real fairies dwelt, and cubby-houses sacredto the use of "Bunny," who was her sole playmate and companion, and theconfidant to whom she told all her plans and secrets.
Bunny was a doll,--an old-fashioned doll, carved out of a solid piece ofhickory-wood, with a stern expression of face, and a perfectlyunyielding figure; but a doll whom Hester loved above all things. Hermother and her mother's mother had played with Bunny, but this only madeher the dearer.
The two sat together between the gnarled roots of an old spruce whichgrew near the edge of a steep little cliff. It was one of the loneliestparts of the rocky hillside, and the hardest to get at. Hester liked itbetter than any of her other hiding-places, because no one but h
erselfever came there.
Bunny lay in her lap, and Hester was in the middle of a story, when shestopped to listen to the wagon grinding down-hill.
"So the little chicken said, 'Peep! Peep!' and started off to see whatthe big yellow fox was like," she went on. "That was a silly thing forher to do, wasn't it, Bunny? because foxes aren't a bit nice tochickens. But the little chicken didn't know any better, and shewouldn't listen to the old hens when they told her how foolish she was.That was wrong, because it's naughty to dis--dis--apute your elders,mother says; children that do are almost always sorry afterward.
"Well, she hadn't gone far before she heard a rustle in the bushes onone side. She thought it was the fox, and then she _did_ feelfrightened, you'd better believe, and all the things she meant to say tohim went straight out of her head. But it wasn't the fox that time; itwas a teeny-weeny little striped squirrel, and he just said, 'It's asightly day, isn't it?' and, without waiting for an answer, ran up atree. So the chicken didn't mind _him_ a bit.
"Then, by and by, when she had gone a long way farther off from home,she heard another rustle. It was just like--Oh, what's that, Bunny?"
Hester stopped short, and I am sorry to say that Bunny never heard theend of the chicken story, for the rustle resolved itself into--what doyou think?
It was a fox! A real fox!
There he stood on the hillside, gazing straight at Hester, with hisyellow brush waving behind him, and his eyes looking as sharp as the rowof gleaming teeth beneath them. Foxes were rare animals in the Beulahregion. Hester had never seen one before; but she had seen the pictureof a fox in one of Roger's books, so she knew what it was.
The fox stared at her, and she stared back at the fox. Then her heartmelted with fear, like the heart of the little chicken, and she jumpedto her feet, forgetting Bunny, who fell from her lap, and rolledunobserved over the edge of the cliff. The sudden movement startled thefox, and he disappeared into the bushes with a wave of his yellow brush;just how or where he went, Hester could not have told.
"How sorry Roger will be that he wasn't here to see him!" was her firstthought. Her second was for Bunny. She turned, and stooped to pick upthe doll--and lo! Bunny was not there.
High and low she searched, beneath grass tangles, under "junipersaucers," among the stems of the thickly massed blueberries andhardhacks, but nowhere was Bunny to be seen. She peered over the ledge,but nothing met her eyes below but a thick growth of blackish, stuntedevergreens. This place "down below" had been a sort of terror toHester's imagination always, as an entirely unknown and unexploredregion; but in the cause of the beloved Bunny she was prepared to riskanything, and she bravely made ready to plunge into the depths.
It was not so easy to plunge, however. The cliff was ten or twelve feetin height where she stood, and ran for a considerable distance to rightand left without getting lower. This way and that she quested, and atlast found a crevice where it was possible to scramble down,--a steeplittle crevice, full of blackberry briers, which scratched her face andtore her frock. When at last she gained the lower bank, this furtherdifficulty presented itself: she could not tell where she was. Theevergreen thicket nearly met over her head, the branches got into hereyes, and buffeted and bewildered her. She could not make out the placewhere she had been sitting, and no signs of Bunny could be found. Atlast, breathless with exertion, tired, hot, and hopeless, she made herway out of the thicket, and went, crying, home to her mother.
She was still crying, and refusing to be comforted, when Roger came infrom milking. He was sorry for Hester, but not so sorry as he would havebeen had his mind not been full of troubles of his own. He tried toconsole her with a vague promise of helping her to look for Bunny "someday when there wasn't so much to do." But this was cold comfort, and, inthe end, Hester went to bed heartbroken, to sob herself to sleep.
"Mother," said Roger, after she had gone, "Jim Boies is going to hisuncle's, in New Ipswich, in September, to do chores and help round alittle, and to go all winter to the academy."
The New Ipswich Academy was quite a famous school then, and to go therewas a great chance for a studious boy.
"That's a bit of good luck for Jim."
"Yes; first-rate."
"Not quite so first-rate for you."
"No" (gloomily). "I shall miss Jim. He's always been my best friendamong the boys. But what makes me mad is that he doesn't care a bitabout going. Mother, why doesn't good luck ever come to us Gales?"
"It was good luck for me when you came, Roger. I don't know how I shouldget along without you."
"I'd be worth a great deal more to you if I could get a chance at anysort of schooling. Doesn't it seem hard, Mother? There's Squire Dennisand Farmer Atwater, and half a dozen others in this township, who areall ready to send their boys to college, and the boys don't want to go!Bob Dennis says that he'd far rather do teaming in the summer, and takethe girls up to singing practice at the church, than go to all theHarvards and Yales in the world; and I, who'd give my head, almost, togo to college, can't! It doesn't seem half right, Mother."
"No, Roger, it doesn't; not a quarter. There are a good many things thatdon't seem right in this world, but I don't know who's to mend 'em. Ican't. The only way is to dig along hard and do what's to be done aswell as you can, whatever it is, and make the best of your 'musts.'There's always a 'must.' I suppose rich people have them as well as poorones."
"Rich people's boys can go to college."
"Yes,--and mine can't. I'd sell all we've got to send you, Roger, sinceyour heart is so set on it, but this poor little farm wouldn't be halfenough, even if any one wanted to buy it, which isn't likely. It's nouse talking about it, Roger; it only makes both of us feel bad.--Did youkill the 'broilers' for the hotel?" she asked with a sudden change oftone.
"No, not yet."
"Go and do it, then, right away. You'll have to carry them down earlywith the eggs. Four pairs, Roger. Chickens are the best crop we canraise on this farm."
"If we could find Great-uncle Roger's mine, we'd eat the chickensourselves," said Roger, as he reluctantly turned to go.
"Yes, and if that apple-tree'd take to bearing gold apples, we wouldn'thave to work at all. Hurry and do your chores before dark, Roger."
Mrs. Gale was a Spartan in her methods, but, for all that, she sighed abitter sigh as Roger went out of the door.
"He's such a smart boy," she told herself, "there's nothing he couldn'tdo,--nothing, if he had a chance. I do call it hard. The folks who haveplenty of money to do with have dull boys; and I, who've got a brightone, can't do anything for him! It seems as if things weren't justlyarranged."
Hester spent all her spare time during the next week in searching forthe lost Bunny. It rained hard one day, and all the following night; shecould not sleep for fear that Bunny was getting wet, and looked so palein the morning that her mother forbade her going to the hill.
"Your feet were sopping when you came in yesterday," she said; "andthat's the second apron you've torn. You'll just have to let Bunny go,Hester; no two ways about it."
Then Hester moped and grieved and grew thin, and at last she fell ill.It was low fever, the doctor said. Several days went by, and she was nobetter. One noon, Roger came in from haying to find his mother with hereyes looking very much troubled. "Hester is light-headed," she said; "wemust have the doctor again."
Roger went in to look at the child, who was lying in a little bedroomoff the kitchen. The small, flushed face on the pillow did not light upat his approach. On the contrary, Hester's eyes, which were unnaturallybig and bright, looked past and beyond him.
"Hessie, dear, don't you know Roger?"
"He said he'd find Bunny for me some day," muttered the little voice;"but he never did. Oh, I wish he would!--I wish he would! I do want herso much!" Then she rambled on about foxes, and the old spruce-tree, andthe rocks,--always with the refrain, "I wish I had Bunny; I want her somuch!"
"Mother, I do believe it's that wretched old doll she's fretted herselfsick over," said Ro
ger, going back into the kitchen. "Now, I'll tell youwhat! Mr. Hinsdale's going up to the town this noon, and he'll leaveword for the doctor to come; and the minute I've swallowed my dinner,I'm going up to the hill to find Bunny. I don't believe Hessie'll getany better till she's found."
"Very well," said Mrs. Gale. "I suppose the hay'll be spoiled, but we'vegot to get Hessie cured at any price."
"Oh, I'll find the doll. I know about where Hessie was when she lost it.And the hay'll take no harm. I only got a quarter of the field cut, andit's good drying weather."
Roger made haste with his dinner. His conscience pricked him as heremembered his neglected promise and his indifference to Hester'sgriefs; he felt in haste to make amends. He went straight to the oldspruce, which, he had gathered from Hester's rambling speech, was thescene of Bunny's disappearance. It was easily found, being the oldestand largest on the hillside.
Roger had brought a stout stick with him, and now, leaning over thecliff edge, he tried to poke with it in the branches below, whilesearching for the dolly. But the stick was not long enough, and slippedthrough his fingers, disappearing suddenly and completely through theevergreens.
"Hallo!" cried Roger. "There must be a hole there of some sort. Bunny'sat the bottom of it, no doubt. Here goes to find her!"
His longer legs made easy work of the steep descent which had so puzzledhis little sister. Presently he stood, waist-deep, in tangled hemlockboughs, below the old spruce. He parted the bushes in advance, and movedcautiously forward, step by step. He felt a cavity just before him, butthe thicket was so dense that he could see nothing.
Feeling for his pocket-knife, which luckily was a stout one, he stoodstill, cutting, slashing, and breaking off the tough boughs, andthrowing them on one side. It was hard work, but after ten minutes aspace was cleared which let in a ray of light, and, with a hot, red faceand surprised eyes, Roger Gale stooped over the edge of a rocky cavity,on the sides of which something glittered and shone. He swung himselfover the edge, and dropped into the hole, which was but a few feet deep.His foot struck on something hard as he landed. He stooped to pick itup, and his hand encountered a soft substance. He lifted both objectsout together.
The soft substance was a doll's woollen frock. There, indeed, was thelost Bunny, looking no whit the worse for her adventures, and the hardthing on which her wooden head had lain was a pickaxe,--an old ironpick, red with rust. Three letters were rudely cut on the handle,--R. P.G. They were Roger's own initials. Roger Perkins Gale. It had been hisfather's name also, and that of the great-uncle after whom they bothwere named.
With an excited cry, Roger stooped again, and lifted out of the hole alump of quartz mingled with ore. Suddenly he realized where he was andwhat he had found. This was the long lost silver-mine, whose finding andwhose disappearance had for so many years been a tradition in thetownship. Here it was that old Roger Gale had found his "speciment,"knocked off probably with that very pick, and, covering up all traces ofhis discovery, had gone sturdily off to his farm-work, to meet his deathnext week on the hay-rigging, with the secret locked within his breast.For sixty years the evergreen thicket had grown and toughened andguarded the hidden cavity beneath its roots; and it might easily havedone so for sixty years longer, if Bunny,--little wooden Bunny, with herlack-lustre eyes and expressionless features,--had not led the way intoits tangles.
Hester got well. When Roger placed the doll in her arms, she seemed tocome to herself, fondled and kissed her, and presently dropped into asatisfied sleep, from which she awoke conscious and relieved. The "mine"did not prove exactly a mine,--it was not deep or wide enough for that;but the ore in it was rich in quality, and the news of its finding madea great stir in the neighborhood. Mrs. Gale was offered a price for herhillside which made her what she considered a rich woman, and she waswise enough to close with the offer at once, and neither stand out forhigher terms nor risk the chance of mining on her own account. She andher family left the quiet little farmhouse soon after that, and went tolive in Worcester. Roger had all the schooling he desired, and madeready for Harvard and the law-school, where he worked hard, and laidthe foundations of what has since proved a brilliant career. You may besure that Bunny went to Worcester also, treated and regarded as one ofthe most valued members of the family. Hester took great care of her,and so did Hester's little girl later on; and even Mrs. Gale spokerespectfully of her always, and treated her with honor. For was it notBunny who broke the long spell of evil fate, and brought good luck backto the Gale family?