CHAPTER VII
THE DOVE'S ALIGHTING
"IT'S all my fault," cried Margery repentantly, assuming the blame andthe duty of repairing the damage to the snowy pine table at one andthe same time. "I promised to look after the bread and put it into theoven, and between Aunt Keren's going and our trip to the attic, I neverthought of it again. Bread is not such a simple thing; I wish we couldbuy our bread, as we did in town."
"No work is simple I find, dear," said her mother. "It takes all kindsof qualities to do anything well--which accounts for the prevalenceof poor labor. Never mind the bread; it is beyond sweetening by anyamount of soda. We will make more to-night, and subsist on biscuits andbuckwheat cakes for dinner and supper."
"Buckwheat cakes are far from simple," Happie remarked, suggestivelysurveying a burn on her forefinger, the result of her recent failurewith the delicacy in question.
"The cakes are simple; it's the griddle where the stick comes," saidMargery.
"Literally, if you mean the sticking," smiled her mother.
Laura, standing with her face pressed against the steaming glass ofthe window pane, sighed heavily. Mrs. Scollard turned and crossingover to her side, looked for a moment out upon the reeking scene. Therain poured down in torrents, swept sidewise across the fields by theroaring wind. The ground looked black at a little distance, the treesbent their bare boughs to the storm's fury; not a sound, not a humanbeing lightened the desolation of the outlook.
The lonely woman felt her heart tighten under the grip of a fresh tideof homesickness. Miss Bradbury had been trying of late to encourage herby hinting that if she were not perfectly restored to health in theautumn, she could spend the winter in the Ark, so at the worst therewas no reason for anxiety. But what a life to lead, to condemn herclever children to! How could she bear it? Then the courage that madeher all that she was, the courage that Happie had inherited, rose toanswer her own question. She could bear it because she must bear it;she would fight for her health, and be able once more to work and tolive for her children.
"When this storm has spent itself," she said brightly, "we shall seethe spring fairly leaping forward in all its loveliness. This is asort of aftermath of all winter's fury. It can't last long with sucha wind as this raging, and when it passes you girls will find arbutusand hepatica, anemones, and very soon violets. It is going to be awonderful country for flowers, for all sorts of beauty. I think weshall hear song birds in Crestville that we never heard before, andfancy what it will be to hunt for wild flowers at the foot of thoseglorious mountains! I think there could hardly be a more splendid viewthan ours."
Happie crept up and peeped slyly over her mother's shoulder. She sawa moisture on the long lashes that belied the blithe tone and theenthusiasm.
"It's just a trifle dim now, motherums," was all that Happie said, butthe tone in which she said it made the words what they were meant tobe--the salute of a good soldier to the courage of his superior officer.
"Oh, by and by will be a sweeter by and by, of course," Margery chimedin. "I suppose we shall all feel better when it clears up."
The dinner that day did not promise to be precisely a success. Pollyand Penny had risen superior to the weather in such a game of rompsthat the baby appeared upon the scene decidedly cross. Bob came in wetthrough and exhausted from a tussle with the barn door which had to berehung upon its broken hinges to protect the books still lying in theirpacking cases, stored in the rickety building. He found it impossibleto talk; his muscles ached, he had pounded his thumb black and blue inhis efforts at carpentering, and creeping chills, the result of hiswetting, chased one another down his spine.
All that Happie had said of the preponderance of eggs in their limitedbill of fare was strictly true. It was hard to consider a dinnersatisfactory when its main dish was scrambled eggs, after one had hadboiled eggs for breakfast, and was looking forward to fried eggs forsupper. Dishes too had to be washed as they went along, for the supplyof kitchen utensils was low until the mistress of the house shouldreturn with reinforcements.
"When we were in New York we turned a faucet, and took it for grantedthat hot water in the sink was a natural institution, like a hotspring. Now that we have to heat every drop we begin to realize it wasa sort of phenomenon," sighed Margery, lifting the teakettle to theforward hole of the stove, and signaling Bob to put in another stick ofwood before she set it down.
"We will hope that Aunt Keren may find the clean, rosy-cheeked younggirl, or even the brown-faced-elderly-woman variation of the themewhich Margery suggested," said Mrs. Scollard. "It is rather a strugglealone, without conveniences."
"There's a woman coming down the road, mama," said Polly, whose face,with Penny's, was pressed against the steaming window, looking out uponthe universal wetness.
Laura dropped the towel, held ready for wiping dishes, though the waterwas not yet warm, and ran to look.
"She's very wet, mama, and she's fearfully long," Laura announced.
"And she's heading for here!" cried Bob, as if that were the acme ofwonders.
"Can she be a lost Bittenbender?" suggested Happie.
The tall woman came in, when bidden to do so, and set herself,marvelously erect, on the edge of a chair.
"It's a very severe rain," remarked Mrs. Scollard, somewhat at loss howto treat her unexpected visitor.
"I've seen worse rains than this already," retorted the angular one."Do you like it here?"
"We shall grow to be very fond of the place," said Mrs. Scollardcautiously. "We are trying not to be homesick. You see we have alwayslived in New York."
"And you are doing your own work yet!" exclaimed the visitor. "I heardyou wasn't use to doin' nothin'. It's bad enough to be strangerswithout takin' all the hard jobs to once, yet! I wouldn't care if I wasto help you a while; I've got time."
"Do you mean that you would stay here?" cried Mrs. Scollard, eagerly.
"Yes; I don't care if I do," answered the woman. "You just say so once,and I'll stay."
"Are you a losted Bippenbender? Happie said so," Penny cried shrillyand unexpectedly.
"A Bittenbender? What do you know about the Bittenbenders? No, I hain'ta Bittenbender. I'm poor enough in money without bein' poor truckyet. My name's Rosie Gruber," said the stranger with an air of foreversetting at rest any possible doubt as to her desirability.
Margery and Happie exchanged a sly glance of amusement; anything lesslike a rose than their caller would have been hard to find. But theimportant point was that she was willing to stay and do housework.
Mrs. Scollard, feeling that Miss Keren-happuch's quest was more thanuncertain, and that almost any risk was better than their certaintroubles, engaged her on the spot, and was as delighted as she wasamused to see their new-bloomed Rose take off her wet hat, remove herlong overshoes, produce from under the skirt of her own gown a bluechecked gingham apron, and go down on her knees, instanter, to rake theashes out from the stove.
"This fire's pretty near out," she remarked. "If you want to eat attwelve--you do, don't you?--you've got to get your potatoes over prettysoon, and this fire'll need an hour to get up. Your wood's almost all;hadn't you ought to git some?"
"Almost all what?" asked Bob. "Isn't it right; anything wrong with it?"
"It's almost all," repeated Rose firmly. "All--don't you know what thatis? How many sticks do you see there? Isn't it almost all? Nothin'wrong with the wood if they was more of it. Say, there hain't nothin'wrong with the boy, is they? He looks so sorter dumb at a body yet!"
"He didn't quite understand," said Mrs. Scollard gently, as Bob turnedaway to conceal the broad grin spreading over his face as he caughttheir new acquisition's meaning, and Happie bolted from the room.
Peculiarities of dialect did not affect the relish of the dinner whichthis hardy Rose served at thirteen minutes after twelve. Everything didtaste so good to the hungry, weary and lonely Scollards! Margery andHappie renewed their duets of old Patty-Pan days as the
y dried Rosie'sdishes, and their mother sat down to write Miss Bradbury of her coming,and to tell her that she might return at once to the bosom of a greatlycheered family, for the maid they wanted had found them, and search forher on their side was no longer necessary.
The storm cleared away in the night, and the glorious sunrise of themorning ushered in the spring. With it came soft brooding days in whichthe grass and leaves wakened to life, the birds dropped down from thewarm sky in daily increasing kinds and numbers, and the flowers ofearly May lifted up their delicate little faces. Polly and Penny camehome daily with wilting hepatica and anemones and violets in theirwarm little hands, while the older children sought and found on theirrambles the arbutus whose sweetness the winds bore into the chambersof the Ark, past the dainty new curtains.
Rosie proved a comfort in spite of angularity of form and peculiaritiesof speech. She was such a balm to perturbed minds and weary musclesthat the children privately referred to her as "the Dove," for hercoming had been the harbinger of peace to the Ark. She evidentlyregarded the entire family as helpless infants, needing her unceasingcare and vigilance, and she gave them no less than she deemed theyneeded, piloting them through the waters of inexperience.
Miss Bradbury wrote that she was coming back. Margery and Happiespeculated on the effect of Rosie and her employer on each other, butHappie felt sure that they would get on together, for each was inher way a character, and their sterling honesty was of much the samepattern.
Aunt Keren was going to bring them something that they would enjoy, "aspecies of toy," so she wrote, yet something that she hoped to makeuseful. They must get Jake to bring his three-seated wagon to thestation if the young Scollards came to meet her, as she hoped theywould.
They did, or at least Margery, Happie and Bob did, consumed withcuriosity as to what they should find encumbering Miss Bradbury.
When she stepped briskly off the car on the steps which the grade ofthe track at Crestville compelled the porter to place for passengers,the Scollards saw her encumbrance, and hailed it with a shout. There,dismounting behind Miss Keren-happuch, so thoroughly laden that thereseemed no question that lady was already making him useful, hischeerful face one mass of smiles, came Ralph Gordon!
Happie and Bob dashed at him regardless of a man with a fishing-pole,come up for trout, and collided violently with the combination. Thebrief mishap, though it left the traveler furious, did not dampenHappie's ardor. She shook both Ralph's hands so hard, and exclaimed:"Well, I never did!" so emphatically, and so many times, that there wasno doubt of her pleasure at seeing her former neighbor. Bob slapped himon the back with such abandon that Ralph swallowed whole the durableblack licorice drop with which he had been beguiling the last momentsof the journey, and choked over it so violently that he had no breathto reply to the questions his friends hurled at him in rapid succession.
"I thought that you might like a guest, a crumb from your Patty-Pans,so to speak," said Miss Bradbury, surveying the effect of her surprisewith much satisfaction. "Ralph has had a cold, and has been working toohard," she explained. "I need a boy to help Bob, so I took this one. Ishall expect you to keep him hard at work, allowing no time for talk orplay. How's your Charlotte-mother?"
"Better for your return, Aunt Keren," said Margery sweetly, buttruthfully.
"What about Snigs?" asked Happie.
"At home with his mother," returned Aunt Keren. "But he will come up inthe summer, by August, if not before."
"Is Ralph----" Happie began, but stopped herself before she had frameda question that might have been awkward to answer.
Miss Keren-happuch finished it for her. "Going to stay?" she said."Yes, he is, or at least until something happens to call him home. Mrs.Gordon yielded to my arguments, and consented to lending him to us. Itold her we needed him, especially Bob. So I captured him. Curious thatI went to get a girl, and brought home a boy, an altogether unforeseenboy."
Jake Shale drove slowly up the hill. The young people talkedincessantly, and all together. Miss Bradbury listened in a pleasedsilence that betrayed itself in her eyes, for her lips were unbending.She saw that already the effect of her transplanting the Scollardsshowed; they were blossoming out like the season under the warmth offreedom from anxiety.
Miss Bradbury found to her surprise that she herself was glad to gethome, and thought of her coming in those terms. Down in the bottomof her staunch old heart, the good woman had not looked forward to asummer in the Ark with less than dread.
The children took Ralph out at once to display to him all theinteresting points of Miss Bradbury's estate, leaving its owner totheir mother, and to form the acquaintance of Rose Gruber, "theDove," whose olive branch was waxing greener in the eyes of allthe "Archeologists," as Bob called the inmates of the Ark. ThoughHappie said that she thought they "were more like Architects, for thedictionary said they made, built, planned, contrived, and that was afull description of the Scollards."
"The creek is high," Rosie called after Bob and Happie, as theyfollowed Margery and Ralph out the side door.
"We are going over to it on our way back," Happie answered over hershoulder. "It does seem to me a pity to call a beautiful trout brook'a crick,' just as if it were a sort of rheumatism! Brooks sound likelovely things, but cricks!" She ended her supplementary remarks to hercompanions with a tiny shudder.
"Books are in running brooks; is that why you like them?" suggestedRalph. "Or is it because they chatter, chatter as they flow--fellowfeeling, you know?" He glanced slyly at Happie. "Creeks ought tochatter even more than brooks, being an American variety."
There was an old grist mill half a mile away from the Ark, turned,when it did turn, by a beautiful stream, a trout brook made up of manymountain springs, rising far up in the hills, and rushing throughMadison County to the river, which should bear them on to the sea.Clear and brown were the waters of this brook, its bottom paved withstones, its banks, rising steep on the one side, and gently slopingon the other, grown with ferns, luxuriant with rhododendrons, andsurmounted with pines, spruce and giant maples. It was an enchantedregion to the Scollards, city bred, and "Patty-Pan" set hitherto. Theywere delighted to take Ralph to the brook and show him that if the Arkwere shabby, the country was perfect--they discovered a strong sense ofproud proprietorship in their breasts as they introduced Ralph to theirhaunts, and it dawned upon them that they must be beginning to feel athome.
The brook was indeed high that day; the falls over the mill-dam wereyellow from the upstirring of recent rains, boiling and seething overthe logs creditably to their exhibitors, and the foam-flecked watersran swiftly down, under the bridge that crossed the road to their goal.
"Well, do you raise mermaids?" asked Ralph, pointing out into themiddle of the stream. Then before the others could speak, his face andvoice changed, and he cried out: "Good gracious, it's Penny!"
It was Penny, seated on a log which for the moment had lodgedmidstream, held by a rock which could not hold it long. In her arms thechild held something yellow; Jeunesse Doree, Happie saw at once. Shelooked wet, her soft hair hung heavy around her pale little face, butshe held up her head valiantly, and clasped the kitten safe and dry toher breast.
"Happie, oh, Happie!" she cried, as she saw the group on the bank, andheld out a hand appealingly. It nearly cost her balance; she shook onher perilous seat, and Margery hid her face, while Happie caught herbreath.
Then she raised her voice and called: "Hold on, hold on tight, darling.Bob's coming!" As she spoke the log swung loose, and floated a fewfeet farther down the stream. Bob dashed out into the water, and Ralphfollowed him. The brook was so high, the motion of the water so swiftthat there was danger for one alone, should he lose his footing, andBob could not swim.
Steadying each other, the two boys waded out, keeping upright withdifficulty, and watching the rigid little figure towards which theywere struggling, fearing every moment that it would be jarred from itsperch.
The rocks were slippery under their feet, the water rose well ab
ovetheir knees, logs and debris came against them, the log drifted aheadof them, always a little further out of reach. Suddenly it struckagainst the support of the bridge, and Penny's head disappeared underthe water.
It was Ralph, who, letting go of Bob's shoulder, threw himself downwardtowards the spot where the child had disappeared. As he did so, heheard the cry of anguish from the girls on the bank. He remembered,with a prayer in his heart, that the little creature would drift farmore swiftly than the heavy log had done.
But in an instant she rose further down the stream, and Ralph struggledto his feet and threw himself towards her, instinctively realizing thathe could reach her quicker by falling in her direction than by strivingto walk or to swim in that seething water. Little Penny's devotion toher kitten was meeting its reward; clasping it tight to her breast, shecould not throw up her arms, and her light body floated long enough forRalph to seize it.
He pulled her towards him by her pink skirt, and Bob, seeing therescue, darted to his aid, lost his footing, fell headlong into thewater, but reached his friend nevertheless, and the two boys, withPenny and Doree, clambered up under the bridge none the worse for theirexperience.
The terror-stricken girls ran, slipping and stumbling over rocks androots, to join them, and nearly dismembered Penny in the effort to hugher simultaneously.
"We mustn't let mother see her like this; it would shock her too mucheven to think of the danger now it's over," said Margery. "We willtake her to the barn and get Rosie to come there with water for a hotbath, and we'll put dry clothes on the darling, and mother shall notknow of this till we are sure Penny's no worse for the scare. What wereyou doing, Pennypet? How did you get on that dreadful log, out in themiddle of the brook?"
"I sat on it up by the dam," said Penny cheerfully--she was the leastfrightened of the excited group. "The log was up there when I beganto sit on it, and Doree was playing with me. He was playing he was agoldfish and I was a pink water lily--'cause I've got on my pinkiechamray, don't you see?" Penny indicated her best beloved pink chambrayfrock as she spoke, looking ruefully at its wet folds. "Then the logwented off--oh, Doree and I played the goldfish had crawled up into thepink water lily, and we were having the most fun! That's 'cause I washolding him, don't you see? He had crawled up into the pink water lily,truly. But the log wented down the brook, and we didn't know it wasgoing, but I wasn't much scared; I could hold Doree, don't you see? Andyou came--I didn't know Ralphie had come to the Nark!" She reached overto pat Ralph's face. "I guess I could have sat on it ever so long--days'n days!--only it bumped. I don't think Doree's hurt." She peeredanxiously at shivering Doree, who was wrapped in her wet garments,making desperate efforts to get away and lick himself dry.
"I don't think he's at all hurt, you precious baby!" cried Happie."Give me Doree; I can keep him warmer than you can, because you're sowet. There! Now boys, hurry as fast as you can! You're both soaking,and I'm afraid Penny'll be sick, and I'm shaking with cold; I'm sonervous. Run!"
They ran, and by the time they had reached the barn, both the boys werewarmed up. Rosie came out and rubbed Penny into a glow, put her intodry garments, and sent her forth, apparently as good as new.
Margery and Happie told the story of their adventure to Aunt Keren, butnot to their mother, who was not yet strong enough to be startled.
Miss Bradbury listened to it without a comment, but when it wasfinished, she laid a hand caressingly on Ralph's arm. "I said I neededa boy! But I didn't know I needed a coast guard," she remarked. "Youhave begun your career in the Ark appropriately, Ralph; pulling inpeople from the flood!"