The Copy-Cat and Other Stories Part 11

"Do? You can cook a beefsteak yourself, can't you? Sarah Dean would fry one as hard as soleleather."

"Yes, I can cook a beefsteak real nice," said Daniel.

"Do it, then; and cook some chops, too, and plenty of eggs."

"I don't exactly hanker after quite so much sweet stuff," said Daniel.

"I wonder if Sarah's feelings will be hurt."

"It is much better for feelings to be hurt than stomachs," declared Dr.

Trumbull, "but Sarah's feelings will not be hurt. I know her. She is a wiry woman. Give her a knock and she springs back into place. Don't worry about her, Daniel."

When Daniel went home that night he carried a juicy steak, and he cooked it, and he and little Dan'l had a square meal. Sarah refused the steak with a slight air of hauteur, but she behaved very well. When she set away her untasted layer-cakes and pies and cookies, she eyed them somewhat anxiously. Her standard of values seemed toppling before her mental vision. "They will starve to death if they live on such victuals as beefsteak, instead of good nouris.h.i.+ng hot biscuits and cake," she thought. After the supper dishes were cleared away she went into the sitting-room where Daniel Wise sat beside a window, waiting in a sort of stern patience for a whiff of air. It was a very close evening. The sun was red in the low west, but a heaving sea of mist was rising over the lowlands.

Sarah sat down opposite Daniel. "Close, ain't it?" said she. She began knitting her lace edging.

"Pretty close," replied Daniel. He spoke with an effect of forced politeness. Although he had such a horror of extreme heat, he was always chary of boldly expressing his mind concerning it, for he had a feeling that he might be guilty of blasphemy, since he regarded the weather as being due to an Almighty mandate. Therefore, although he suffered, he was extremely polite.

"It is awful up-stairs in little Dan'l's room," said Sarah. "I have got all the windows open except the one that's right on the bed, and I told her she needn't keep more than the sheet and one comfortable over her."

Daniel looked anxious. "Children ain't ever overcome when they are in bed, in the house, are they?"

"Land, no! I never heard of such a thing. And, anyway, little Dan'l's so thin it ain't likely she feels the heat as much as some."

"I hope she don't."

Daniel continued to sit hunched up on himself, gazing with a sort of mournful irritation out of the window upon the landscape over which the misty shadows vaguely wavered.

Sarah knitted. She could knit in the dark. After a while she rose and said she guessed she would go to bed, as to-morrow was her sweeping-day.

Sarah went, and Daniel sat alone.

Presently a little pale figure stole to him through the dusk--the child, in her straight white nightgown, padding softly on tiny naked feet.

"Is that you, Dan'l?"

"Yes, Uncle Dan'l."

"Is it too hot to sleep up in your room?"

"I didn't feel so very hot, Uncle Dan'l, but skeeters were biting me, and a great big black thing just flew in my window!"

"A bat, most likely."

"A bat!" Little Dan'l shuddered. She began a little stifled wail. "I'm afeard of bats," she lamented.

Daniel gathered the tiny creature up. "You can jest set here with Uncle Dan'l," said he. "It is jest a little cooler here, I guess. Once in a while there comes a little whiff of wind."

"Won't any bats come?"

"Lord, no! Your Uncle Dan'l won't let any bats come within a gun-shot."

The little creature settled down contentedly in the old man's lap. Her fair, thin locks fell over his s.h.i.+rt-sleeved arm, her upturned profile was sweetly pure and clear even in the dusk. She was so delicately small that he might have been holding a fairy, from the slight roundness of the childish limbs and figure. Poor little girl!--Dan'l was much too small and thin. Old man Daniel gazed down at her anxiously.

"Jest as soon as the nice fall weather comes," said he, "uncle is going to take you down to the village real often, and you can get acquainted with some other nice little girls and play with them, and that will do uncle's little Dan'l good."

"I saw little Lucy Rose," piped the child, "and she looked at me real pleasant, and Lily Jennings wore a pretty dress. Would they play with me, uncle?"

"Of course they would. You don't feel quite so hot, here, do you?"

"I wasn't so hot, anyway; I was afeard of bats."

"There ain't any bats here."

"And skeeters."

"Uncle don't believe there's any skeeters, neither."

"I don't hear any sing," agreed little Dan'l in a weak voice. Very soon she was fast asleep. The old man sat holding her, and loving her with a simple crystalline intensity which was fairly heavenly. He himself almost disregarded the heat, being raised above it by sheer exaltation of spirit. All the love which had lain latent in his heart leaped to life before the helplessness of this little child in his arms. He realized himself as much greater and of more importance upon the face of the earth than he had ever been before. He became paternity incarnate and superblessed. It was a long time before he carried the little child back to her room and laid her, still as inert with sleep as a lily, upon her bed. He bent over her with a curious waving motion of his old shoulders as if they bore wings of love and protection; then he crept back down-stairs.

On nights like that he did not go to bed. All the bedrooms were under the slant of the roof and were hot. He preferred to sit until dawn beside his open window, and doze when he could, and wait with despairing patience for the infrequent puffs of cool air breathing blessedly of wet swamp places, which, even when the burning sun arose, would only show dewy eyes of cool reflection. Daniel Wise, as he sat there through the sultry night, even prayed for courage, as a devout sentinel might have prayed at his post. The imagination of the deserter was not in the man.

He never even dreamed of appropriating to his own needs any portion of his savings, and going for a brief respite to the deep shadows of mountainous places, or to a cool coast, where the great waves broke in foam upon the sand, breathing out the mighty saving breath of the sea.

It never occurred to him that he could do anything but remain at his post and suffer in body and soul and mind, and not complain.

The next morning was terrible. The summer had been one of unusually fervid heat, but that one day was its climax. David went panting up-stairs to his room at dawn. He did not wish Sarah Dean to know that he had sat up all night. He opened his bed, tidily, as was his wont.

Through living alone he had acquired many of the habits of an orderly housewife. He went down-stairs, and Sarah was in the kitchen.

"It is a dreadful hot day," said she as Daniel approached the sink to wash his face and hands.

"It does seem a little warm," admitted Daniel, with his studied air of politeness with respect to the weather as an ordinance of G.o.d.

"Warm!" echoed Sarah Dean. Her thin face blazed a scarlet wedge between the sleek curtains of her dank hair; perspiration stood on her triangle of forehead. "It is the hottest day I ever knew!" she said, defiantly, and there was open rebellion in her tone.

"It IS sort of warmish, I rather guess," said Daniel.

After breakfast, old Daniel announced his intention of taking little Dan'l out for a walk.

At that Sarah Dean fairly exploded. "Be you gone clean daft, Dan'l?"

said she. "Don't you know that it actually ain't safe to take out such a delicate little thing as that on such a day?"

"Dr. Trumbull said to take her outdoors for a walk every day, rain or s.h.i.+ne," returned Daniel, obstinately.

"But Dr. Trumbull didn't say to take her out if it rained fire and brimstone, I suppose," said Sarah Dean, viciously.

Daniel looked at her with mild astonishment.

"It is as much as that child's life is worth to take her out such a day as this," declared Sarah, viciously.

"Dr. Trumbull said to take no account of the weather," said Daniel with stubborn patience, "and we will walk on the shady side of the road, and go to Bradley's Brook. It's always a little cool there."