“Who have we here?” asked Barbara Anne. Her voice was like her looks ... gay and fresh. Yet Pat felt ... he could not have told why ... that it was not very far from tears.
“This is Pat Brewster,” said Barney, when they went through the side gate ... a gate that looked as if it had been used a good deal.
“You’ve heard of Patrick Brewster, of course?” said Barney carelessly.
For just a moment a queer look came into Barbara Anne’s hazel eyes. Pat had an odd feeling that she knew a good deal about him. That was impossible, of course. But had not the whole day been full of queer feelings? What did one more or less matter? Pat had almost concluded that he was in a dream.
Barbara Anne’s gay eyes ... but were they so gay after all? ... glimmered at Pat and a wide, lovely smile came over her face ... a smile like Mrs. Blythe’s. Why in the world did everything at Sometyme Farm remind him of Ingleside? Really, the two places were not a bit alike, nor were the people.
But Pat felt that he had known Barbara Anne for years. He wouldn’t mind a bit if she called him “my lamb.” He even felt he could stand being kissed by her.
“And this is the Squaw Baby,” said Barney.
Incredible things did happen. Here was The Little Girl in Scarlet ... and she was sticking her tongue out at him! Yes, of course it was a dream. But what a lovely dream! Pat hoped it would be a long, long time before he would wake up.
“You do look like a Squaw Baby,” said Pat, before he thought. Then he was horrified. But she didn’t seem to mind. She just stuck her tongue out at him again and Barbara Anne shook her for it.
Pat was indignant. Surely if he didn’t mind nobody else need care. He thought,
“You’ve got black little eyes ... like the Indian babies up at Lennox Island ... and a flat nose and black pigtails.”
Then he forgot he was thinking and said,
“But I like you.”
The Squaw Baby, seemingly quite unmindful of Barbara Anne’s shaking, stuck out her tongue at him again. It was such a pretty little red tongue ... as red as her lips and her dress.
She pirouetted three times on her bare toes and sat down on a big grey granite stone by the gate. Pat would have liked to sit beside her but he was too shy. So he sat on an upturned milk pail instead and they stared at each other on the sly while Barbara Anne and Barney talked ... looking at each other as if they were saying things with their eyes entirely different from what their tongues said. Pat wondered again how he knew this. But anything was possible in a dream.
They spoke low and seemed to have no idea that Pat could hear them. But Pat had amazing ears.
“I’ve decided on the western trip,” said Barbara Anne lightly.
“What’s the matter with the Hill?” asked Barney, just as lightly.
“Oh, nothing ... nothing at all.” Barbara Anne’s voice conveyed to Pat that something very terrible was the matter with it and Pat felt hotly indignant with her.
“But one gets tired of the same old place, you know.”
As if anyone could ever get tired of Sometyme!
“I don’t like you,” said the Squaw Baby. But just then that didn’t matter. The Squaw Baby was so indignant that she gave up sticking her tongue out at him and devoted her attention to Jiggs.
“Sometyme Farm is very dull,” said Barney.
“And living with ever so nice a brother and his wife ... even with an entirely adorable Squaw Baby thrown in ... gets a bit monotonous,” continued Barbara Anne, lifting the cat and squeezing purrs out of her. “And then when you feel you are not needed! Can the Squaw Baby have one of the kittens?”
“All of them if she wants them,” said Barney, “except of course the one I’ve promised to the Blythes.”
“You don’t mean to say they want more cats there! I thought Susan Baker ...”
“Susan doesn’t rule the roost at Ingleside, though so many people think she does. And so you’re really going west?”
Again Pat felt that some tremendous issue hung upon the answer. He tried to divert the attention of the Squaw Baby from Jiggs but entirely in vain.
“Will you be gone long?” asked Barney indifferently.
“Well, Aunt Ella wants me to stay the winter with her, anyhow.” Barbara Anne set the cat carefully down and made as if to go.
“And probably longer,” said Barney.
“Quite probably,” agreed Barbara Anne.
“In fact you think it probable you will remain there?” said Barney.
“Well, you know there are opportunities in the west,” said Barbara Anne. “Come, Squaw Baby. It’s time we were going. We’ve taken up too much of these people’s valuable time as it is.”
“I don’t want to go,” said the Squaw Baby. “I want to stay and play with Pat.”
“Well,” said Barney ... Pat, in spite of the exultation which had filled him when the Squaw Baby said that ... had another of his queer feelings that it cost Barney ... who was suddenly looking ten years older ... much more than he could afford to say that “well” so lightly. Pat had had so many queer feelings that day that he felt he must be ten years older himself ... “You’ll likely have a wonderful time. I’d miss you ... if I were going to be much longer on the Hill myself. But I’m going, too.”
An immeasurable feeling of desolation swept over Pat. For the first time he wished he might awaken. The dream had ceased to be beautiful.
Barbara Anne only said,
“Oh?”
The Squaw Baby, finding her advances thrown away, returned to Jiggs.
“Yes. The mortgage is coming home to roost at last.”
“Oh!” said Barbara Anne again. Pat wished the cat would stop purring. The sound did not seem in harmony with things at all.
“Yes. It’s a way mortgages have, you know.”
“But perhaps ...”
“No, there is no doubt of it any longer. Pursey delivered his ultimatum yesterday.”
“Oh!”
Barbara Anne’s gay eyes clouded, darkened, misted. Pat felt that if she had been alone she would have cried. But why? There were too many mysteries in dreams. Even the Squaw Baby was full of them. Why, for instance, did she pretend to be so wrapped up in Jiggs when he, Pat, knew perfectly well that she was dying to stick her tongue out at him?
“It’s a shame ... a shame!” Barbara Anne was saying indignantly.
Why should she care? wondered Pat.
“Four generations of you at Sometyme! And after you’ve worked so hard!”
The Squaw Baby turned from Jiggs and tried to get the cat. But Pat wouldn’t let her. Perhaps if he wouldn’t she might stick her tongue out at him again.
“If you hadn’t had to spend so much money on Aunt Holly’s operations!” Barbara Anne seemed to be getting more indignant all the time. The Squaw Baby was trying to get a thistle out of one of her bare toes. Pat wished he dared offer to help her ... to hold one of those dusty sunburned little toes in his hand ... but ...
“And now she is quite well and you might catch up ... he forecloses!”
What did “foreclose” mean? The Squaw Baby had got the thistle out by herself and was gazing at the far-off sea. Pat did not think he liked such self-reliant women.
“I don’t blame Pursey,” Barney was saying. “He has been very patient really ... not a cent of interest for over two years! Even yet ... if I could show him any reasonable prospect of ever catching up ... but I never can now.”
Pat tried to wile Jiggs away from the Squaw Baby but Jiggs refused to be wiled. The fickleness of dogs! And girls! Now that it didn’t matter in the slightest to him whether she stuck her tongue out or not of course she would not do it. All right! He would show her how much he cared.
He began to whistle.
“Oh, I know when I’m beaten,” Barney was saying bitterly.
“What are you going to do?” Barbara Anne’s voice had suddenly grown very gentle.
“Oh, Aunt Holly and I won’t starve. I’ve been offered a job on a fo
x ranch. It’ll be enough for Aunty and I to exist on sparingly.”
“You on a fox ranch!” said Barbara Anne scorchingly.
“One must eat, you know. But I confess I don’t feel very enthusiastic over the thought of looking after caged creatures.”
The bitterness in Barney’s voice was terrible. It made Pat forget even the Squaw Baby and her tongue. Yes, it was certainly time to wake up.
Barbara Anne loosened her blue scarf as if it choked her. She dropped her voice still lower but Pat still heard her. Of course in dreams you heard everything. And what on earth was she saying? Pat really did forget the Squaw Baby this time.
“If ... if you had put in your claim when Stephen Brewster died! You have just as much claim on the boy as those others in town. More ... more! They’re only half-relatives. You’d have been able to pay the mortgage then ... in time. I wanted you to ... you know I wanted you to! But men will never listen to women!”
What on earth was she talking about? Dreams were the queerest things. The Squaw Baby had found another thistle, but just then Pat did not care a hoot if her toes were full of thistles. What did Barbara Anne know about Uncle Stephen? And what had Barney to do with him?
Barney winced. The Squaw Baby did, too ... or pretended to. Perhaps the thistle really hurt. Pat neither knew nor cared.
“I ... couldn’t qualify, Barbara Anne. This old, out-of-the-way farm” ... he couldn’t be talking of Sometyme, thought Pat ... “only a district school to attend” ... wasn’t it only a district school at Ingleside, thought the dazed Pat ... “and only old Aunt Holly to look after him. It wouldn’t have been fair to the kid.”
“A good deal fairer than you have any notion of,” said Barbara Anne indignantly. “Men are the stupidest creatures ...”
The Squaw Baby looked as if she agreed entirely with her.
“And then my pride ...”
“Oh, yes, your pride!” said Barbara Anne, so violently that even the Squaw Baby jumped and Jiggs looked around for a possible stranger dog. “You needn’t tell me anything about your pride. I know all about it. You’d sacrifice anything ... anybody ... to it!”
Pat felt he ought not to let her say such things to Barney. But how could he stop her? And he must know what Uncle Stephen Brewster had to do with it, even if the Squaw Baby never stuck her tongue out at him again. She did not look as if she wanted to ... she was interested only in thistles. Let her be, then.
“Not quite,” said Barney. “But I’m not exactly a worm. All the Brewsters looked down on my sister when Pat’s father married her, as if she were a sort of insect. You know that as well as anybody.”
“What were the Brewsters?” asked Barbara Anne scornfully. “Everyone knows how they made their money. And they had nothing else to boast of. Two generations against the Andrews’ six.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to crawl to them,” said Barney stubbornly. “And anyhow, they wouldn’t have let me have him.”
“Didn’t Lawyer Atkins notify you?”
“Oh, yes ...”
“And they couldn’t have stopped him if he’d wanted to come. Lawyer Atkins is a fair man. And everybody knows about Stephen Brewster’s will.”
“He made it on purpose to mortify me,” said Barney bitterly. “He thought I’d put in my claim and the boy would laugh at me. As he would have.”
“Are you so sure of that? You ought to hear Dr. Blythe on that subject. He knows the Brewsters to the bone.”
“I’ve heard him often enough. You say everybody knows about the will. And so does everybody know that the boy was to make his own choice. Do you suppose a boy brought up at Oaklands would choose this?”
Barney waved his hand at the sagging gate and at the old clapboard house that needed paint so badly and at an outmoded reaper in the yard.
But to Pat he seemed to be waving at the boatload of petunias and Jiggs and the bedroom with the garden door, at the long, level meadows beyond and at an unseen school where he would be “Pat” among the boys and the Squaw Baby would be sitting where she could stick her tongue out at him whenever she wanted to. If she ever did want to again.
Pat stood up shakily and went over to Barney. He didn’t know whether he would be able to speak but he must try. There were things that had to be said and it seemed that he was the only one who could ... or would ... say them. The Squaw Baby left her thistles alone and looked after him with a peculiar expression. Jiggs wagged his tail as if he knew something was coming.
“You are my uncle,” he said, his grey eyes looking up into Barney’s blue ones ... Barney’s blue eyes that were so full of pain. How strange that he had not before seen the pain behind the laughter!
Barney started. Could the kid have overheard them? Barbara Anne started, too. So did the Squaw Baby, but that may have been because of a very large thistle. Jiggs began wagging his tail harder than ever ... the cat seemed to purr twice as loudly ... and all the ducks started quacking at once.
“Yes,” said Barney slowly. “I’m your mother’s youngest brother. I was only a kid when she married your father. This was her old home.”
“I ... I think I must have known it,” said Pat, “though I don’t see how I could.”
“You felt it if you didn’t know it,” said Barbara Anne. “People so often feel things they can’t possibly know. I went to school with your mother. She was older than me, of course, but she was the sweetest thing.”
“I’ve often wanted to see you, Pat,” said Barney. “I saw you just once when you were five. She brought you here one day when Stephen Brewster was away.”
“I remember it,” cried Pat. “I knew I’d been here before.”
“But your father’s people would never let you come again,” said Barney. “And when she died ... I thought it wasn’t any use. I went to Ingleside when I heard you were there on a visit ... but I was just a day too late. You had gone ... home ...”
“Home!” said Pat. And “home” said the Squaw Baby, just for the fun of mimicking and making him take some notice of her.
Then he brushed everything aside. There was only one thing that really mattered.
“Since you are my uncle I want to live with you,” he said. “You wouldn’t be taking me because of the money I brought, would you?”
“I’d be glad to have you if you hadn’t a cent,” said Barney honestly.
“You’d just take me because I am me?” said Pat.
“Yes. But I’m going to be honest with you, Pat. The money would mean an awful lot to me.”
“It would mean ... Sometyme Farm,” said Pat shrewdly.
“Yes.”
“And you’ll scold me when I deserve it?”
“If I’m allowed to,” said Barney, with a peculiar glance at Barbara Anne ... who wouldn’t look at him but seemed completely taken up with Jiggs. The Squaw Baby was still occupied with her thistles. Pat was puzzled. Who would or would not “allow” him to be scolded? Surely Aunt Holly wouldn’t interfere. But the great question was not settled yet.
“I must live with you,” he said determinedly. “I can, you know. I can choose the one I’m to live with.”
Yes, Bernard Andrews knew. And he knew that there would be a heck of a time. But he knew Lawyer Atkins was an honest man and didn’t like any of the Brewsters.
And he knew, looking into Pat’s pleading eyes, that it was not a matter of legal guardianship ... or of two thousand a year ... no, not even a matter of Barbara Anne, who was listening with all her ears while she pretended to play with Jiggs ... but of two souls who belonged to each other and a child who had a right to love and be loved.
“Could you be happy here, Pat?”
“Happy? Here?”
Pat looked at the Sometyme farmhouse ... at Barbara Anne and at the Squaw Baby, who at once stuck her tongue out at him and seemed to forget all about thistles.
“Oh, Uncle Barney! Uncle Barney!”
“What do you say, Barbara Anne?” asked Barney.
“I’m sure it’s no
business of mine,” said Barbara Anne. Of course it wasn’t, thought Pat ... and wondered why Barney suddenly laughed ... real laughter ... young, hopeful laughter. So unlike the laughter Pat had already heard from him.
And Barbara Anne laughed, too. She pretended it was at the antics of the Squaw Baby but somehow Pat knew it wasn’t. Whatever she was laughing at, it was the same thing that made Barney laugh. The Squaw Baby laughed, too, just because everybody else was laughing, and stuck out her tongue. Pat decided that the next time she did it he would do something ... he didn’t know what but something. Girls needn’t think they could do anything they liked with their tongues just because they were girls. No, sir!
What a lovely colour was flooding Barbara Anne’s cheeks. What a pity she was going away! Pat felt that he would like to have her round. But at least she wasn’t going to take the Squaw Baby. And why, oh why, didn’t Barney answer his question? After all, that was the only important thing.
“Miracles do happen it seems,” Barney said at last. “Well, here’s looking at you, Pat. There’ll be a jolly old fight ...”
“Why need there be any fight?” asked Pat. “They’ll all be glad to get rid of me. None of them like me.”
“Perhaps not ... but they like ... however, never mind that. You and I are the same breed, it seems. Sometyme is ready for you.”
Pat sat down on the pail again. He knew his legs wouldn’t have borne him up another minute. He couldn’t understand what Barney meant about a fight but he knew Barney would win. And what was the matter with Barbara Anne? Surely she couldn’t be crying.
He was glad when the Squaw Baby stuck her tongue out at him. It made things more real. After all, it couldn’t be ...
“This isn’t a dream, is it?” he asked anxiously.
“No, though it seems like one to me,” said Barney. “It’s all real enough. You were right, Barbara Anne. I should have claimed him long ago.”
“Miracles do happen!” mimicked Barbara Anne. “A man owning up that he was wrong!”