Carolyn of the Corners Part 18

"And Prince?" asked the little girl.

"And Prince, of course."

Then she kissed Carolyn May and slipped quietly away from the brook, disappearing very quickly in the undergrowth. Uncle Joe stood up, with the basket in his hand.

"You'd better call the dog away from that snake, Car'lyn May," he said in a strangely husky voice. "We'll be going."

The little girl approved.

"You surely don't want to eat it, Prince," she told her canine friend.

"Snakes aren't meat, nor even fish. Are they, Uncle Joe?"

"Humph! what d'you s'pose they are, then?" he demanded.

"Why, they're-they're just insects, aren't they? Not even dogs should eat them," and she urged Prince away from the snake.

The muscles of the "insect" still twitched, and its tail snapped about.

Prince had his doubts as to whether it was really dead or was "playing possum."

"Is it true, Uncle Joe," Carolyn May asked, "that snakes can't really die till the sun goes down? You see, it still wiggles. Do-do you s'pose it's suffering?"

"I guess Prince fixed Mr. Snake, all right, at the first bite," returned Mr. Stagg. "He's dead. That old idea about the critters holding the spark of life till after sunset is just a superst.i.tion. We can safely call that fellow dead and leave him."

Joseph Stagg and the little girl went on across the stepping-stones, while Prince splashed through the water. Carolyn May was thinking about Miss Amanda Parlow, and she believed her Uncle Joe was, too.

"Uncle Joe," she said, "would that bad old snake have stung Miss Amanda?"

"Huh? No; I reckon not," admitted Mr. Stagg absent-mindedly.

"Blacksnakes don't bite. A big one like that can squeeze some."

"But you were scared of it-like me and Prince. And for Miss Amanda,"

said Carolyn May, very much in earnest.

"I guess 'most everybody is scared by the sight of a snake, Car'lyn May."

"But you were scared for Miss Amanda's sake-just the same as I was,"

repeated the little girl decidedly.

"Well?" he growled, looking away, troubled by her insistence.

"Then you don't hate her, do you?" the child pursued. "I'm glad of that, Uncle Joe, for I like her very much. I think she's a beautiful lady."

To this Uncle Joe said nothing. He was not to be drawn, badger-like, to the mouth of his den. What he really thought of Miss Amanda he kept to himself.

"Anyway," sighed Carolyn May at last, "she invited me to come to see her, now she's home from nursing. And, if you haven't got any objection, Uncle Joe, I'm going to see her."

"Go ahead," said Mr. Stagg. "I haven't anything to say against it."

But Carolyn May was far from satisfied by this permission. Child as she was, somehow she had gained an appreciation of the tragedy in the lives of Joseph Stagg and Amanda Parlow.

That cry the man had uttered when he sprang to Miss Parlow's aid had been wrenched from the very depths of his being. Nor had Miss Amanda's emotion been stirred only by the sight of a snake that was already dead when she had first seen it. Carolyn May had felt the woman's hand tremble; there had been tears flooding her eyes when she kissed the little girl.

"I guess," thought Carolyn May wisely, "that when two folks love each other and get angry, the love's there just the same. Getting mad doesn't kill it; it only makes 'em feel worse.

"Poor Uncle Joe! Poor Miss Amanda! Maybe if they'd just try to _look up_ and look for brighter things, they'd get over being mad and be happy again."

She felt that she would really like to advise with somebody on this point. Aunty Rose, of course, was out of the question. She knew that people often advised with their minister when they were in trouble, but to Carolyn May Mr. Driggs did not seem to be just the person with whom to discuss a love-affair. Kindly as the minister was disposed, he lacked the magnetism and sympathy that would urge one to take him into one's confidence in such a delicate matter.

The little girl quite realised that it was delicate. She longed to help her uncle and Miss Amanda and to bring them together, but she felt, too, that whatever she did or said might do more harm than good.

When Uncle Joe and Carolyn May returned from this adventurous walk, Mr.

Stagg went heavily into his own room, closed the door, and even locked it. He went over to the old-fas.h.i.+oned walnut bureau that stood against the wall between the two windows, and stood before it for some moments in an att.i.tude of deep reflection. Finally, he drew his bunch of keys from his pocket and opened one of the two small drawers in the heavy piece of furniture-the only locked drawer there was.

It contained a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends-old school exercises, letters from his sister Hannah, an old-fas.h.i.+oned locket containing locks of his mother's and of his father's hair, broken trinkets, childish keepsakes. Indeed, such sentimental remembrances as Joseph Stagg possessed were secreted in this drawer.

From beneath all this litter he drew forth a tintype picture, faded now, but clear enough to show him the features of the two individuals printed on the sensitised plate.

He remembered as keenly as though it were yesterday when and how the picture had been made-at the county fair so many years ago. His own eyes looked out of the photograph proudly. They were much younger eyes than they were now.

And the girl beside him in the picture! Sweet as a wild rose, Mandy Parlow's lovely, calm countenance promised all the beauty and dignity her matured womanhood had achieved.

"Mandy! Mandy!" he murmured over and over again. "Oh, Mandy! Why? Why?"

He held the tintype for a long, long time in his hand, gazing on it with eyes that saw the vanished years rather than the portraits themselves.

Finally, he hid the picture away again, closed and locked the drawer with a sigh, and with slow steps left the room.

CHAPTER XII-CHET GORMLEY TELLS SOME NEWS

It was when she came in sight of the Parlow place on Monday afternoon, she and Prince, that Carolyn May bethought her of the very best person in the world with whom to advise upon the momentous question which so troubled her.

Who could be more interested in the happiness of Miss Amanda than Mr.

Parlow himself? If his daughter had loved Uncle Joe and still loved him, it seemed to Carolyn May as though the carpenter should be very eager, indeed, to help overcome the difficulty that lay between the two parted lovers.

The little girl had been going to call on Miss Amanda. Aunty Rose had said she might, and Miss Amanda had invited her "specially."

But the thought of taking the old carpenter into her confidence and advising with him delayed that visit. Mr. Parlow was busy on some piece of cabinet work, but he nodded briskly to the little girl when she came to the door of the shop and looked in.

"Are you very busy, Mr. Parlow?" she asked him after a watchful minute or two.

"My hands be, Car'lyn May," said the carpenter in his dry voice.

"Oh!"

"But I kin listen to ye-and I kin talk."