CHAPTER X
THE HIRED MAN
"Claire, darling--
"It's after ten o'clock at night and here on North Hero that's likefour in the morning in New York, but I can't wait another minute towrite to you. The _funniest_ thing has happened--only I'll save it forthe end of my letter.
"I haven't written to you since that letter with the crazy postscript,like a nightcap, on it. Well, instead of being deported from HappyHouse, bag and baggage, I seem to become more of a fixture, each day.And each day, Claire Wallace, I grow more and _more_ to think I belonghere. Just so often I have to shake myself and say 'don'tforget--you're pretending.' And, I scarcely dare write this--I believethey are all growing a _little_, wee bit fond of me--the real me. Ofcourse Webb loved me at first sight and so did old Jonathan--_he's_ adear! And precious little Aunt Milly, who is getting the prettiestpink in her cheeks and can laugh now, truly laugh, and is as proud ascan be over her first washcloth, she wants me with her all the time. Ican tell by the way she looks at me. And I am really growingembarrassed, to say nothing of fat, with the good things B'lindy cooksand if you knew B'lindy, you'd understand that that is _her_ way ofshowing sentiment. But as to Aunt Sabrina--I am not so sure!
"Things have changed since I wrote to you--there was an awful clashingof wills in Happy House and Aunt Sabrina came out on the bottom andsince then she has an air of 'having washed her hands of me.' Andshe's stopped the lessons on Leavitts, too, just when we'd gotten toEzekiel. But I've learned more than she wanted me to--I've found outabout the mystery, as I wrote before, only I can't explain until ourown Anne says I may--because it's about her grandfather!
"I believe in my last letter I said, too, that I hated Happy House.Well, I don't believe I do. It's a funny place--just when you thinkits dismal and prisony you see something you just love--like one ofJonathan's rose ramblers, all pinky, climbing up an old gray treetrunk. I can't explain it, there's a sort of an appeal about the wholeplace that's spooky, as though it was something human and--wanted me!Isn't that a silly notion, especially when I'm just here acting Anne'spart so that she can go off to Russia?
"And this whole village is just like Happy House--it is proudlyclinging to what it has been in the past and defying the advance of thenew things of the present. When I walk along the main street (and onlystreet) of the village I stare at the shutup houses, for, bless me, noone would dream of opening any blinds, and I wonder if there's amarble-topped table in every one of those best-parlors and a familyBible on every table filled with pages of ancestors. I suppose I'mwickedly disrespectful--when I see my dear Dad, and oh, how I want,want, want to see him--I shall tell him that now I know he didn't bringme up right.
"I am a 'honery' member of a club--and now I'm approaching the excitingpart of my letter. It is called Cove's Club and has rules that forbidmy swearing, talking back, smoking, lying, stealing bird's eggs,hurting dumb animals, and that make me fight (and lick) every enemy tothe club (which, alas, seem to be mostly mothers) kill pirates anddefend my country. Isn't that heavenly? It meets whenever LizHopworth has to clean the 'meetin' house' which is always on Mondaysand after there's a social. And to attend the meetings you have toslide down thirty feet of bank to what is known around here as FallingWater Cove, though I don't believe water ever fell there. Anyway, itis a historic spot for reasons besides the club--one is that it wasfrom there Robert Leavitt and the women of the household, with littleJustine, escaped when Freedom was attacked by the Indians and it wasthere, one dark night, Ethan Allen himself landed in a boat for asecret conference with Jacob Leavitt before an attack upon the Yorkers.(90 plus in American History.)
"And the members of the Club are (please read slowly) Me, DavyHopworth, Dick Snead, Jim Davis, Kirk Brown and Peter Hyde--the hiredman.
"Peter Hyde and I are the 'honery' members."
"I can hear you, Claire. 'That is just like you, Nancy Leavitt--swearyou're going to do one thing and doing another.' Yes, darling, it islike me, I'll admit! But this time it's different. I really didintend to be very haughty and distant each time I saw the man but--Icouldn't. Could you, if you had just been running a race whichincluded vaulting a stone wall? I had to run the race to win Davy'srespect and I had to jump the wall--well, to show I could! And ofcourse I never dreamed the creature was anywhere around. But he sprangup from the earth, I believe, and was there at the finish. And could_you_ look haughty with every hair pin dropping out of your head?
"And, anyway, afterwards, he explained something that has madeeverything different, but that comes later in my story.
"Today it rained for the first time since I've been in North Hero. Asort of steady pitter-patter, not the kind of a downpour that makes youhug shelter, but a splashy sort you long to run out in with your faceturned up. All morning long I sat with the aunts (Aunt Milly was sodisappointed when she saw the rain that I brought her down to thehollyhock porch and made her all comfy there) and I simply couldn'tstand it all afternoon so, after lunch, I stole away. Now Happy Houseis divided (thank goodness) into two parts, so if the aunts are on oneside it is easy to slip out of the other. I put on my slicker and capand slipped away. I frisked around in the rain drops for awhile, then,I started toward the orchard to see if my water-proof box waswater-proof. And as I walked down the path I heard the sound ofhammering from the direction of my Nest. 'A-ha,' says I, 'I willsurprise nice Mr. Webb at his work!' So I crept up on tiptoe. And,oh, Claire, it wasn't Mr. Webb _at all--it was Peter Hyde_! There hewas with a hammer and a saw and some nails in a funny apron he had tiedaround him working away with the rain spattering through the leavesright into his face.
"I was so surprised I thought I'd run back, but just at that moment hesaw me. And of course, the way I always do when I shouldn't, I beganto laugh. And he laughed, too, though he _was_ embarrassed.
"I am sure he didn't want me to find out that he had made the seat.But for a hired man he met the situation with ease. He simply asked meto stand there while he drove one more nail; then, he said, his workwould be complete. When he'd finished he held out his hand and invitedme to climb into the nest. All this with the rain spattering on us!Of course I had to tell him that it was perfectly lovely and had beensuch a jolly surprise and that I had thought Webb had made it. And nowcomes the funny part. He explained in a sort of sheepish way that hethought _I was a little girl_! Jonathan had told him that MissSabrina's little niece was coming to Happy House. When he caught aglimpse of me in the stage (he dared to say this) he thought I lookedlike a 'jolly sort of a kid.' Then that very afternoon he saw me turna handspring in the orchard--and climb the tree! He said he got tothinking what a sort of dull place Happy House would be for anyyoungster, and that it would be fun for him to do some little thing tomake it jollier for her. He admitted, to use his own words, that hewas flabbergasted to find that I wasn't a kid after all! I'm glad, ina 'close-up' I _do_ look my years!
"But can't you see that that explains _everything_ and that he _wasn't_impertinent, after all?
"Of course, living in cities all my life, I've always had an impressionthat hired men were just big, clumsy, dirty looking creatures who atewith knives and always smelled horsey. This Peter Hyde isn't that wayat all. He's tanned copper-color but his face and hands look clean andexcept for his clothes, he doesn't look much different from any oneelse. And now that he knows I am quite grown-up (at least in years) hetreats me very nicely.
"We're going to do all sorts of nice things for Davy Hopworth, who is avery nice, bright youngster, but, just because he's a Hopworth, theother boys get punished for playing with him and that makes both PeterHyde and me indignant.
"Isn't the world funny, Claire, how the sins of the fathers and thegrandfathers are visited upon the children--at least in places likethis? Of course my beloved Finnegans are too busy just keeping thepresent generation going, to think much about the past, and the worldthey live in rushes too fast to stop to think that Timmy Finnegan,maybe's, going to rob a bank becaus
e his great-great-grandfather, overin County Cork, ran off with a pig.
"It is too late in the evening to philosophize, and I mustn't let mywick burn too low or Aunt Sabrina will know I'm using the midnight oil.Don't be cross, dear Claire, if you don't hear from me every day;although you might suppose that up here I'd have a great deal ofleisure time, somehow each day seems to bring something unexpected.And as I said on page 2 of this voluminous letter, I am growing fond ofHappy House and there is a sort of fascination about everything here.Dear Anne, with her noble dreams, never longed to bring about thereforms that I do! One is to throw out the dreadful waxed flowers andpeacock feathers and old grasses from Happy House and fill the vaseswith fresh flowers. Another is to sweep through the whole blessedvillage and open every blind and let in today!
"And then when I'm bursting with my longing to make the whole worldbetter, I'm suddenly reminded that I'm just a little next-to-nothingthat can't even remember to act grown-up, masquerading in our Anne'sshoes and daring to find flaws in Miss Sabrina Leavitt with all thenoble heritage of Leavitt tradition flowing in her veins.
"Good night, littlest pal, I wish I could be with you long enough for agood, long gossip. But, by and by--"