Patchwork Part 14

"I don't want him to see it this way," she said, "for he'd say it's a sin to have curly, pretty hair, even if G.o.d made it grow that way! He's awful queer! I wouldn't want him for my adopted brother."

"Guess he'd keep you hopping," laughed David.

"Guess I'd keep him hopping, too," retorted Phbe, at which the boy laughed.

"Now what do I do?" he asked when all the hair was untangled.

"Part it in the middle and make two plaits."

"Um-uh."

The boy's clumsy fingers fumbled long with the parting; several times the braids twisted and had to be undone, but after a struggle he was able to announce, "There now, you're fixed! Now you're Phbe Metz, no more prima donna!"

"Thanks, David, for helping me. I feel much better around the head--guess curls would be a nuisance after all."

CHAPTER VII

"WHERE THE BROOK AND RIVER MEET"

WHEN Phbe adopted Mother Bab she did so with the whole-heartedness and finality characteristic of her blood.

Mother Bab--the name never ceased to thrill the erstwhile motherless girl whose yearning for affection and understanding had been unsatisfied by the matter-of-fact Aunt Maria.

At first Maria Metz did not seem too well pleased with the child's persistent naming of Barbara Eby as Mother Bab; but gradually, as she saw Phbe's joy in the adoption, the woman acknowledged to herself that another woman was capable of mothering where she had failed.

Phbe spent many hours in the little house on the hill, learning from Mother Bab many things that made indelible impressions upon her sensitive child-heart, unraveling some of the tangled knots of her soul, stirring anew hopes and aspirations of her being. But there remained one knot to be untangled--she could not understand why the plain dress and white cap existed, she could not reconcile the utter simplicity of dress with the lavish beauty of the birds, flowers--all nature.

"It will come," Mother Bab a.s.sured her one day. "You are a little girl now and cannot see into everything. But when you are older you will see how beautiful it is to live simply and plainly."

"But is it necessary, Mother Bab?" the child cried out. "Must I dress like you and Aunt Maria if I want to be good?"

"No, you don't _have_ to. Many people are good without wearing the plain garb. A great many people in the world never heard of the plain sects we have in this section of the country, and there are good people everywhere, I'm sure of that. But it is just as true that each person must find the best way to lead a good life. If you can wear fine clothes and still be good and lead a Christian life, then there is no harm in the pretty clothes. But for me the easiest way to be living right is to live as simply as I can. This is the way for me."

"I'm afraid it's the way for me, too," confessed Phbe. "I'm vain, awfully vain! I love pretty clothes and I'll never be satisfied till I get 'em--silk dresses, soft, s.h.i.+ny satin ones--ach, I guess I'm vain but I'll have to wait to satisfy my vanity till I'm older, for Aunt Maria is so set against fancy clothes."

It was true, Maria Metz compromised on some matters as Phbe grew older, but on the question of clothes the older woman was adamant. The child should have comfortable dresses but there would positively be no useless ornaments or adornments, such as wide sashes, abundance of laces, elaborately trimmed ruffles. Fancy hats, jewelry and unconfined curls were also strictly forbidden.

Though Phbe, even as she grew older, had much time to spend outdoors, there were many tasks about the house and farm she had to perform. The chest was soon filled with quilts and that bugbear was gone from her life. But there was continual scrubbing, baking, mending, and other household tasks to be done, so that much practice caused the girl to develop into a capable little housekeeper. Aunt Maria frankly admitted that Phbe worked cheerfully and well, a matter she found consoling in the trying hours when Phbe "wasted time" by playing the low walnut organ in the sitting-room.

During Miss Lee's first term of teaching on the hill she taught her how to play simple exercises and songs and the child, musically inclined, made the most of the meagre knowledge and adeptly improved until she was able to play the hymns in the Gospel Hymn Book and the songs and carols in the old Music Book that had belonged to her mother and always rested on the top of the old low organ.

So the organ became a great solace and joy, an outlet for the intense feelings of desire and hope in her heart. When her voice joined with the sweet tones of the old instrument it seemed to Phbe as if she were echoing the harmony of the eternal music of all creation. Child though she was, she sang with the joy and sincerity of the true musician. She merely smiled when Aunt Maria characterized her best efforts as "doodling" and rejoiced when her father, Mother Bab or David praised her singing.

In school she progressed rapidly but her interest lagged when, after two years of teaching, Miss Lee resigned her position as teacher of the school on the hill and a new teacher took command. The entire school missed the teacher from Philadelphia, but Phbe was almost inconsolable.

She, especially, appreciated the gain of contact with the teacher she loved and she continued to profit by the remembrance of many things Miss Lee had taught her. The Memory Gems, alone, bore evidence of the change the teacher from the city had wrought in the rural school. Phbe smiled as she thought how the poems had been sing-songed until Miss Lee taught the children to bring out the meaning of the words.

"Oh, my," she laughed one day as she and David were speaking of school happenings, "do you remember how John Schneider used to say Memory Gems?

The day he got up and said, 'Have-you-heard-the-waters-singing-little-May --where-the-willows-green-are-bending-over-the-way--do-you-know-how-low- and-sweet-are-the-words-the-waves-repeat--to-the-pebbles-at-their-feet-- night-and-day?'"

David laughed at the girl's droll imitation, the way she sing-songed the verse in the exact manner prevalent in many rural schools.

"And do you remember," he asked, "the day Isaac Hunchberger defined bipeds?"

"Oh, yes! I'll never forget that! It was the day the County Superintendent of Schools came to visit our school and Miss Lee was anxious to have us show off. Isaac showed off, all right, with his 'Bipets are sings vis two lex!' I guess Miss Lee decided that day that the Pennsylvania Dutch is ingrained in our English and hard to get out."

To Phbe each Memory Gem of her school days became, in truth, a gem stored away for future years. Long after she had outgrown the little rural school sc.r.a.ps of poetry returned to her to rewaken the enthusiasm of childhood and to teach her again to "hear the lark within the songless egg and find the fountain where they wailed, 'Mirage!'"

Phbe wanted so many things in those school-day years but she wanted most of all to become like Miss Lee. So earnestly did she try to speak as her teacher taught her that after a time the peculiar idioms and expressions became more infrequent and there was only a delightfully quaint inflection, an occasional phrase, to betray her Pennsylvania Dutch parentage. But in times of stress or excitement she invariably slipped back into the old way and prefaced her exclamations with an expressive "Ach!"

Life on the Metz farm went on in even tenor year in and year out. Maria Metz never changed to any appreciable extent her mode of living or her methods of working, and she tried to teach Phbe to conform to the same monotonous existence and live as several generations of Metzes had done.

But Phbe was a veritable Evelyn Hope, made of "spirit, fire and dew."

The distinctiveness of her personality grew more p.r.o.nounced as she slipped from childhood into girlhood and Maria Metz needed often to encourage her own heart for the task of rearing into ideal womanhood the daughter of her brother Jacob.

Phbe had a deep love for nature and this love was fostered by her st.u.r.dy farmer-father. As she followed him about the fields he taught her the names of wild flowers, told her the nesting haunts of birds, initiated her into the circle of tree-lore, taught her to keep ears, eyes and heart open for the treasures of the great outdoors.

Phbe required no urging in that direction. Her heart was filled with an insatiable desire to know more and more of the beautiful world about her. She gathered knowledge from every country walk; she showed so much "uncommon sense," David Eby said, that it was a keen pleasure to show her the nests of the thrush or the rare nests of the humming-bird. David and his mother, enthusiastic seekers after nature knowledge, augmented the father's nature education of Phbe by frequent walks to field and woods. And so, when Phbe was twelve years old she knew the haunts of all the wild flowers within walking distance of her home. With her father or with David and Mother Bab she found the first marsh-marigolds in the meadows, the first violets of the wooded slope of the hill, the earliest hepatica with its woolly buds, the first windflowers and spring beauties. She knew when the time was come for the bloodroot to lift its pure white petals about the golden hearts in the spot where the rich mould at the base of some giant tree nurtured the blooded plants. She could find the canopied Jack-in-the-pulpit and the pink azalea on the hill near her home. She knew the exact spot, a mile from the gray farmhouse, where, in a lovely little wood by a quiet road, a profusion of bird-foot violets and bluets made a carpet of blue loveliness each spring--so on, through the fleet days of summer, till the last asters and goldenrod faded, the child reveled in the beauties and wonders of the world at her feet and loved every part of it, from the tiny blue speedwell in the gra.s.s to the gorgeous orioles in the trees. What if Aunt Maria sometimes scolded her for bringing so many "weeds" into the house! With apparent unconcern she placed her flowers in a gla.s.s or earthen jar and secretly thought, "Well, I'm glad I like these pretty things; they are not weeds to me."

The buoyancy of childhood tarried with her into girlhood. Like the old inscription of the sun-dial, she seemed to "count none but sunny hours."

But those who knew her best saw that the shadows of life also left their marks upon her. At times the gaiety was displaced by seriousness. Mother Bab knew of the struggles in the girl's heart. Granny Hogendobler could have told of the hours Phbe spent with her consoling her for the absence of Nason, mitigating the cruel stabs of the thoughtless people who condemned him, comforting with the a.s.surance that he would return to his home some day. Old Aaron loved the girl and found her always ready to listen to his hackneyed story of the battle of Gettysburg.

Phbe was a student in the Greenwald High School when the war clouds broke over Europe and the world seemed to go mad in a whirl. She hurried to Old Aaron for his opinion on the terrible war.

"Isn't it awful," she said to him, "that so many nations are flying at each other's throats? And in these days of our boasted civilization!"

"Awful," he agreed. "But, mark my words, this is just the beginning.

Before the thing's settled we'll be in it too."

She shrank from the words. "Oh, no, not America! That would be too terrible. David might go then, and a lot of Greenwald boys--oh, that would be awful!"

"Yes! But it would be far more dreadful to have them sit back safe while others died for the freedom of the world. I'd rather have my boy a soldier at a time like this than have him be ruler of a country."

The old man's words ended quaveringly. The pent-up agony of his disappointment in his son surged over him, and he bowed his head in his hands and wept.

Phbe sent Granny to comfort him, and then stole away. The veteran's grief left an impression upon her. Were his words prophetic? Would America be drawn into the struggle? It was preposterous to dream of that. She would forget the words of Old Aaron, for she had important matters of her own to think about. In a few years she would be graduated from High School and then she would have her own life-work to decide upon. Her desire for larger experience, her determination to do something of importance after graduation was her chief interest. The war across the sea was too remote to bring constant fear to her. Dutifully she went about her work on the farm and pursued her studies. She was not without pity for the brave people of Servia and Belgium, not without praise for the heroic French and English. She added her vehement words of horror as she read of the atrocities visited upon the helpless peoples. She shared in the dread of many Americans that the octopus-arm of war might reach this country, and yet she was more concerned about her own future than about the future of battle-racked France or devastated Belgium.

CHAPTER VIII

BEYOND THE ALPS LIES ITALY

PHBE'S graduation from the Greenwald High School was her red-letter day. Several times during the morning she stole to the spare-room where her graduation dress lay spread upon the high bed. Accompanied by Aunt Maria she had made a special trip to Lancaster for the frock, though Aunt Maria had conscientiously bought a few yards of muslin and ap.r.o.n gingham.