Monday and Tuesday she got through quite contentedly by going from room to room and burning up or otherwise discarding a few more ancient landmarks in the house. It had to be done one item at a time, for as yet her conscience was tender with regard to Aunt Abigail’s treasured household furnishings. But after Wide Awake and Fast Asleep had been used for kindling fire in the old-fashioned coal stove, and several doilies and antimacassars had followed suit, she felt better, and a spirit of revolution entered into her. If the house was hers, why shouldn’t she have it to please her?
Wednesday morning she swept the parlor mantel free from several cheap imitation Dresden shepherdesses and a purple vase decorated with hideous green roses and carried them to the back kitchen, where she mashed them in the trash can. But she left Ernestine asleep in Aunt Abigail’s rocker while she did it. She could not quite have done it in the presence of Ernestine.
She felt better after smashing the ancient bric-a-brac, and washed the mantel with vigor and Old Dutch Cleanser, but when it was done it looked bare and empty and she had nothing to put on it. So she went over the house from room to room and finally found an old pair of brass candlesticks rolled in flannel in the upper drawer of a bureau. These she brought down and polished till they shone and then placed them on the mantel, where they made one spot of light in the dullness of the room. The dingy old wallpaper of faded maroon with tarnished gilt flowers seemed shabbier than ever, though she tried not to notice it. But presently she put on her hat and went down the street to a little art store on Eighth Street and bought a shopworn copy of the Roman Colosseum, framed simply, and came home triumphant. It was her first attempt in all the years to satisfy the love of the beautiful that had been bottled up in her soul, and she felt almost wicked at the happiness it gave her when the picture was finally hung over the mantel. It really did go wonderfully well with the candlesticks, and covered a great deal of the ugly wallpaper.
Ernestine seemed to take kindly to the changes and sat beneath the mantel contentedly, with a furtive suggestion in her attitude of how nice it would be to have a fireplace there with an open fire on a cold day.
It was Thursday morning that the dining room shutter stuck and refused to open even with a blow from a hammer. It had rained all night, and doubtless the wood was swollen. What a bother it was to be a woman and not know what to do in a case like that! If this had happened in the store she would have sent for the store carpenter, but she had no carpenter.
She went to the kitchen door and threw it wide open to let in more light and air, for the room seemed stuffy. As the door swung wide she heard the sound of voices in the next yard and the ring of an ax.
“If you want money for any such nonsense, get to work and earn it. You’ll get none from me!” said a man’s voice angrily, and a door slammed loudly.
“I ain’t got any way to earn money,” said the sullen voice of Ronald. “Oh blame it! I ain’t got any way to earn money! I can’t ever do anything the other fellows do!” And the ax was slung viciously across the tiny yard.
Something in the boy’s tone appealed to the woman. It set a heartstring vibrating that had been touched on Sunday with invisible fingers, and the thrill of it had not been forgotten.
Martha paused in her kitchen doorway, her brows drawn thoughtfully. She stepped down hesitantly to the brick pavement and over to the fence, then realized she was not tall enough to see over the fence and went back to the house again. In a moment she reappeared with Ernestine’s soapbox and a look of determination on her face, planted the box firmly by the fence, and mounted it.
The boy had resumed his ax and was bringing it down fiercely on a stubborn stick of wood. His face was dark and dejected. She did not need a prophet to tell that the boy was bitterly disappointed. Martha’s heart gave a keen jerk of sympathy.
“Boy!” she said sharply. It was the way they addressed the cash boys in the store. She knew no other.
The boy looked up, frowning. He did not wish intrusion in his bitterness.
Martha tried to smile with her strangely palpitating heart in her throat. The effect was curious. The boy forgot his bitterness in studying her. What was “Spice Box” going to charge him with now?
“Ma’am?” said the boy, his voice still sullen.
She was surprised to find how disappointed she was that he had no smiling response for her, but she tried another smile. She wasn’t so used to smiling.
“Why, I thought perhaps you would help me just a minute,” she began apologetically. “I can’t get my dining room shutter open. I don’t know what’s the matter.”
“Sure!” said the boy disinterestedly, flinging his ax down with relief and vaulting over the fence before she knew what he was going to do. His suddenness quite took her breath away. She turned cautiously on her box and started to get down, but the boy stepped up and put out his arm. He didn’t say, “Let me help,” but it amounted to that, and she fairly trembled over the pleasure it gave her. Somehow chivalry had come her way at last!
She led him to the dining room, and Ernestine arose in haste and arched her back when she saw him. Ronald stooped and smoothed her fur, rubbed her under her chin, and spoke in gentle tones.
“Hullo, Old Top! Had a hard time the other day, didn’t you? Binny Twinning’s got a ripper all down one cheek. You just missed his eye. And Chuck Frisbie’s lost the hide off his nose. Some class to you!”
And wonder of wonders, Ernestine the conservative rubbed her sides against the boy’s trousers and arched her head coyly up to his knees, rumbling her affection in no uncertain terms.
Then the boy stalked to the window, gave it one look, grasped hold of the iron ring, and gave it a mighty jolt, and behold it opened meekly, as if nothing had been the matter. Martha sighed in relief and wonder. The boy had accomplished the impossible so easily.
She handed forth a bright quarter from the little dish of change she kept on the sideboard for incidentals, but the boy straightened up from giving Ernestine a parting touch of affection and she suddenly realized she had made a mistake, for he flushed and frowned and drew back.
“Naw, I don’t want nothin’,” he said. “What do you think I am? Take money for just a little thing like that? I guess not! I ain’t a gyp. That’s all right. Glad to do it for you.”
She drew the money back, embarrassed before his generous spirit. He was in need of money for some desire of his heart, for she had just heard him say so, yet he would not take it. He had shattered at a blow one of her fixed ideas about boys. She had thought they were all selfish mercenary little animals, and here he wouldn’t accept her money! Indeed, she had rather enjoyed the prospect of giving him something to help in the big desire of his heart, and now he wouldn’t let her help him! She shrank from his clear eyes and his high-handed way of distributing his favors. She felt ashamed that she had offered him money, and as if she ought to apologize.
“But if you hadn’t come in, I should have had to send for a carpenter,” she faltered, “and you know that would have cost me a great deal more.”
“You wouldn’t need a carpenter for a little thing like that,” he said patronizingly. “It wasn’t anything.”
He started to go back to the fence to return the way he had come. Martha stood uncertainly in her kitchen door and watched him place his hard young hands on the fence preparatory to vaulting over.
“I’ll tell you,” she said with sudden inspiration. “Do you like gingerbread?”
“I sure do!” said the boy, with shining eyes.
“Well, I’m going to bake gingerbread today. What time do you get home from school? You go to school, don’t you?”
“Sure I go. I get home about four o’clock when I don’t get kept in.”
“Well, don’t get kept in today, and I’ll have some hot gingerbread for you at four o’clock.”
There was a smile in her eyes that looked unaccustomed. But the boy understood, and his eyes answered.
“Some class!” he answered. “I’ll be here!” A
nd he vaulted the fence and was soon heard chopping and whistling cheerily. Martha wondered why she felt all at once so interested in life.
Ernestine came to the door and purred lovingly around her feet, and somehow Martha knew why the cat had not seemed shy of the boy, and was at once convinced that there must be something unusual about him. He didn’t seem a bit like what she thought other boys were. She was sure she never thought before that a boy could be so likable.
She took pleasure in hunting up her mother’s old recipe for gingerbread and getting everything prepared for baking so that it might be ready by four o’clock. She took a pint more milk and some cream to whip, so that there would be plenty to offer along with the gingerbread.
At four o’clock the boy arrived promptly, walking in the side gate and tapping at the kitchen door with an air of delightful secrecy.
He looked half ashamed as he dragged off his cap and entered. He had been thinking about the gingerbread all day, but he wouldn’t have her know it for the world.
“I just thought I’d stop in and see if that shutter’s working all right yet,” he mumbled, his cheeks growing red. He wasn’t embarrassed, of course, not a bit, but he had to make some kind of bluff to carry off the situation.
She led him into the front room where the reconstructed mantel gave an air of newness to the place and seated him in a comfortable chair near the round center table. The cat rose with a welcoming yawn and rubbed her back lazily against the boy’s foot as if to say, “Well, this is cozy of you!”
Martha came in bearing a tray on which was a great plate of steaming squares of hot gingerbread, a glass of foamy milk, and a dish of velvety whipped cream. She set it down on the table beside him and bade him eat as much as he wanted to, offering a dish if he wanted to put whipped cream on the cake. She took a piece of gingerbread herself just to keep him company and sat in the rocker to eat it sociably. The boy was not slow in accepting her invitation.
“Gee! This is great!” he said with his mouth full. “Some class to this.”
“I guess you had pretty good lessons today,” said Martha, smiling and trying to be good company. “You didn’t have to stay after school.”
The boy grinned.
“No chance,” he said. “I never had a lesson in my life. I guess the teacher’d croak if I had a lesson. He sure did have it in for me today, but I shinned out when he wasn’t looking.”
The lady looked distressed.
“But won’t you get into trouble tomorrow?” she asked anxiously and wondered why she cared.
“I should worry!” shrugged the boy. “Might as well be one thing as another. He always has it in for me.”
“Oh, that’s too bad!” said the lady in dismay.
“Aw, I don’t mind. I’m used to it,” he said with his mouth full. “Say—” He lifted his eyes toward the picture of the Colosseum. “That’s new, isn’t it? That wasn’t here before.”
Her eyes lighted. A boy had noticed a picture!
“Yes, it’s new. I bought it yesterday. Do you like it?”
“What is it?” he asked, knitting his brows and holding his judgment in reserve. “Did they have a fire or earthquake? Or was it someplace where they’d been bombing the town? I don’t get the idea. Strange thing to make a picture of.”
“Why, it’s the old Roman Colosseum. That is, it’s what is left of the Colosseum. The ruins, you know. It’s one of the great sights of the world that tourists go abroad to see, or did before the war broke everything up. I’ve always wanted to go to Rome and see it, and I’ve always liked the picture.”
“Gee, that’s where they had those bullfights, isn’t it? I remember they had a picture of that in our history book.”
Then his attention turned to the candlesticks.
“Those are new, too, aren’t they? Some class!”
“You like them? Yes, they’re new, or rather very old. I found them wrapped up in a bureau drawer. I like their shape. They are fine old brass.”
“They look a lot better than the junk that used to be here,” remarked the boy thoughtfully, turning back to the gingerbread and helping himself to another generous hunk.
“You must have been over here a good deal,” said Martha, surprised that Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Abigail would allow a boy within their sacred precincts.
“Sure, used to tend the furnace, and I used to come in this room when she paid me. She used to give me twenty-five cents a week.” He stopped and gave Ernestine a fragment of his cake.
Martha’s face lighted.
“Oh,” she said, “then perhaps I can get you to attend to my furnace next fall. But I think twenty-five cents is too little for all that work. How often did you come?”
“Morning and evening.” The boy’s eyes were shining.
“Well, will you have time to look after mine? And suppose we say fifty cents a week?”
“Oh gee!” he said, stooping to tickle Ernestine under the chin to hide his pleasure. “But good night! It ain’t worth that much!”
“Well, it’s settled then. I’m sure it will be worth at least that much to me.” Martha had very little idea about the prevailing standards of salaries for taking care of furnaces, but she was sure at first thought that twenty-five cents wasn’t enough, even if he did live only next door.
“Now,” she said, seeing that the gingerbread had pretty well vanished and the boy had stopped eating, “suppose we go down to the cellar and see if the furnace is all right for next fall. I know that’s some time away, but it is well to know what to count on, and I always like to have things in good order in plenty of time.”
She was surprising herself by making all these excuses for prolonging the boy’s call, but somehow the house seemed so much less cheerless with the boy’s cheery freckled face in it.
“Did you have the smoke pipe taken down?” asked the young fireman. “I told her it ought to be done, but she said she might want a fire again. And then when she took sick, of course, I didn’t come anymore. She had a nurse here, you know. The pipe was pretty old last winter.”
“Well, now I don’t know anything about that, whether it was taken down or not. I never had anything to do with furnaces before. Suppose we go down and look at it?”
So they went down. She walked anxiously through the unknown precincts of her cellar and looked around curiously.
“It’s plumb gone,” said Ronald wisely, putting a stubby finger through the rust. “See there! You’ll have to get a new pipe.”
“Well, that ought to be attended to at once, and have it ready to set up when it gets near fall. It’s always good to be prepared for changing seasons. I wonder where I’ll get someone to fix it. Do you know a good man near here? Could you get me one and see that he does what ought to be done? Of course I’ll pay you for your trouble. Suppose we say your salary begins now, and then I’ll feel free to call on you for little things when I need them. We’ll settle a fair rate, and you can keep a record of the time it takes. I suppose there will be a lot of things like this before I really get settled here and down to living.”
“Aw gee, I’ll do that, of course. I’ll get Bennett, he’s a good man. He doesn’t charge as much as Simpson either. He’s a good friend of mine. But I don’t want pay for a little thing like that. That’s not work.”
“Oh yes it is, and I must insist that you have a salary or a regular price by the hour, or something, or I will not feel free to call you when I need you.”
The boy looked at her as if she were a new specimen.
“Okay,” he grinned, “have it your own way, only you don’t haveta pay me for things that aren’t work.”
“Yes,” said the lady. “I’m paying for taking the responsibility of little things that I don’t understand and might forget, don’t you see?”
“Okay, if you’re sure it’s all right,” he said doubtfully. And so it was arranged. But she marveled at this attitude. A sense of financial fairness was not what she had always been led to expect of a boy. Was it possib
le that there were other boys like him? As she thought about it, she vaguely recalled a sentence in that article on boys that had said something about their fineness of soul. Well, if it meant that, she had to revise all her former ideas of boys.
“You’ve got a good house here,” said the boy suddenly, putting his hand on the stone foundation wall. There was a kind of proprietorship in the gesture, as though he had entered into a partnership with her and was pleased with the outfit.
“Yes, it’s well enough, I guess,” she answered and sighed. “It’s a little lonely, though, for me. I’ve been used to being where there are plenty of people, and the rooms here seem so small and dark.”
She was almost ashamed of her confidential outburst as soon as it was uttered, but the boy looked around with comprehension.
“Houses are that way,” he admitted. “I don’t like ’em myself. I like outdoors best. We fellows go down to the creek about three miles up in the country and camp on a big rock, put up a tent, and cook and lie out at night. Gee! It’s great! You can’t tell which is sky and which is creek sometimes. The fireflies are so big they look like stars, and the stars twinkle around like they were fireflies. Gee, I’d like to live there. The only room I ever saw that was big enough for me was our gym. It isn’t all cut up. It’s big and high and wide. You can breathe and run in it. Gee! I’d like to live in a house like that up there in the picture!” He pointed to the Colosseum. “Wouldn’t that be grand? When it rained you could crawl under a wall till it was over, and other times you’d just have the sky.”
She looked down at his eager face and her own heart entered into his feelings. For a wild moment she felt the call of the open, the irresistible longing for something big and free that she had never before even known she wanted.
“Say, do you wantta know what I’d do if I owned a house like this?” the boy went on. “I’d cut out all those partitions and make a big room out of it, if it were me. And I’d make one side, or a front, or something, all glass. You could do it, easy. You’ve got an alley next to you. Come on out, I’ll show you.”