Stories of the Foot-hills Part 23

"Yes, yes," said Jerry lightly; "I dropped right in on the family circle. The widow seems to be a nice, tidy little person, and the kid--did you ever see anything to beat that kid, uncle?"

Enoch had been appealed to on this subject before.

"He's a very nice baby," he said gravely.

"They seem to be settled rather comfortably, and I guess I'll get a tent and pitch it on some of these vacant lots, and not disturb them. The little woman isn't really well enough to move, and besides, the kid might kick if he had to give up the cradle; perfect fit, isn't it?"

"Enoch," said Rachel Embody to her husband, as they drove their flea-bitten gray mare to the Friends' meeting on First Day, "what does thee think of Jerry Sullivan and the widow Hart marrying as they did?

Doesn't thee think it was a little sudden for both of them?"

Enoch slapped the lines on the gray's callous back.

"I don't know, Rachel," he said; "there are some subjects which I do not find profitable for reflection."

EM.

I.

Mrs. Wickersham helped her son from his bed to a chair on the porch, and spread a patchwork quilt over his knees when he was seated.

"Don't you want something to put your feet on, Benny?" she asked anxiously, with that hunger for servitude with which women persecute their male sick.

The invalid looked down at his feet helplessly, and then turned his eyes toward the stretch of barley-stubble below the vineyard. A stack of baled hay in the middle of the field cast a dense black shadow in the afternoon sun.

"No, I guess not," he said absently. "Has Lawson sent any word about the hay?"

"He said he'd come and look at it in a day or two."

Mrs. Wickersham stood behind her son, smoothing the loose wrinkles from his coat with her hard hand. He was scarcely more than a boy, and his illness had given him that pathetic gauntness which comes from the wasting away of youth and untried strength.

"I wanted a little money before the twenty-fourth," he said, feeling one feverish hand with the other awkwardly. "I can't seem to get used to being sick. I thought sure I'd be ready for the hay-baling."

"The doctor says you're doing real well, Benny," a.s.serted the woman bravely. "I guess if it ain't very much you want, we can manage it."

"It's only five dollars."

Mrs. Wickersham went back to the kitchen and resumed her dish-was.h.i.+ng.

Her daughter came out of the pantry where she had been putting away the cups. She was taller than her mother, and looked down at her with patronizing deference.

"Do you think that new medicine's helping Ben any?" she asked in an undertone.

"Oh, I don't know, Emmy," the poor woman broke out desperately; "sometimes I think his cough's a little looser, but he's getting to have that same look about the eyes that your pa had that last winter"--Mrs.

Wickersham left her work abruptly, and went and stood in the doorway with her back toward her daughter.

The girl took up her mother's deserted task, and went on with it soberly.

"Shall I put on some potatoes for yeast?" she asked, after a little heart-breaking silence.

"Yes, I guess you'd better," answered the older woman; "there's only the best part of a loaf left, and Benny hadn't ought to eat fresh bread."

She came back to her work, catching eagerly at the homely suggestion of duty.

"I'll finish them," she said, taking a dish out of her daughter's hand; "you brighten up the fire and get the potatoes."

The girl walked away without looking up. When she came into the room a little later with an armful of wood, Mrs. Wickersham was standing by the stove.

"Emmy," she said in a whisper, taking hold of her daughter's dress and drawing her toward her, "don't tell your brother I had to pay cash to the balers. It took all the ready money I had in the house: I'd rather he didn't know it."

"What's the matter, mother?" asked the girl, looking steadily into the older woman's worried face.

"He wants five dollars next week," whispered Mrs. Wickersham, nodding toward the door; "I hain't got it."

The girl threw the wood into the woodbox and stood gazing intently at it. She had a quaint, oval face, and the smooth folds of her dark hair made a triangle of her high forehead. Two upright lines formed themselves in the triangle as she gazed. She turned away without speaking, and took a pan from the shelf and went into the shed-room for potatoes. When she came back, she walked to her mother's side, and said in a low voice,--

"You needn't worry about the money any more, mother. I'll get it for Ben."

"_You_, Em!"

"Yes; I'm going over to Ba.s.sett's raisin-camp to pick grapes."

"Oh, I don't think I'd do _that_, Emmy!"

"Why, what's wrong about it?"

"There's nothing wrong about it, of course; I didn't mean that. Only it seems so--so kind of strange. None of the women folks in our family's ever done anything of that kind."

"Then the women folks in our family will have to begin. I can get a dollar a day. The Burnham girls went, and they're as good as we are. I'm going, anyway,"--the girl's red lips shut themselves in a narrow line.

"Oh, they're all _good_ enough, Emmy," protested Mrs. Wickersham; "it's nothing against them, only it's going out to work. You know the way men folks feel--I don't know what your brother will say."

"You can tell him I've set my heart on it. They have great fun over there. He wanted me to go camping to the beach with the same crowd of young folks this summer. I'll not stay at night, mother; I'll walk home every evening. It's no use saying anything, I'm going."

"Is Steve Elliott at the camp?" asked Benny, when his mother told him.

"She didn't say anything about him, Benny, but I suppose he is. Why?"

"I guess that explains it," said the invalid, smiling wistfully.

II.

Nearly every available grape-picker in the little valley was at Ba.s.sett's vineyard. There was a faint murmur of surprise when Em walked into the camp on Monday morning.