Four Girls and a Compact Part 4

"Oh," laughed the girl, "I always _did_ want a pump that was painted blue. I saw a picture of one once when I was a little mite, and it impressed me--such a lovely, bright blue! I thought it went beautifully with the green gra.s.s! But I can get along without it, I guess."

"We have to get along without having things painted to suit us," nodded the little, old woman philosophically. But she remembered the blue pump.

There was a can of paint out in the shed room, and there was Jane Cotton's Sam.

Jane Cotton's Sam was a "feature" of Placid Pond--a whole set of features, T.O. said. He was a lumbering, awkward fellow, well up to the end of his teens, the only hope of widowed Jane. The Lord had given him a splendid head, but the Placid Pond people were secretly triumphing in the knowledge that Sam had failed to pa.s.s in his college examinations, "head or no head." Jane had always boasted so of Sam's brains, and predicted such a wonderful future for him! All her soul was set on Sam's success--well, wasn't it time her pride had a fall? Mebbe now she'd see Sam wasn't much different from other people's boys.

Jane's heart was reported to be broken by the boy's failure, and Sam went about sulkily defiant. He made a great pretense of lofty indifference, but maybe he didn't care!--maybe not! Emmeline Camp knew in her gentle old heart that he cared. She worried about Sam.

All this the Talented One learned, little by little, in the way country gossip is learned. She learned many other things, too, about the neighbors--things that she lay and pondered about. It seemed queer to find out that even a placid little place like this, set among the peaceful hills, had its tragedies and comedies--its pitiful little skeletons behind the doors.

"That's Old '61," Mrs. Camp said, pointing to an old figure in the road.

"See him go marching past!--he always marches, as if he heard drums beating and he was keeping time. I tell 'em he _does_ hear 'em.

He lives all alone up on the edge o' the woods, and folks say he spends most all his time trying to pick march tunes out on the organ. A few years ago he got some back pension money, and up and spent it for a cabinet organ! Dear land! it seemed a pity, when he might have got him some nice clothes or something sensible. But there he sets and sets over that organ, trying to pick out tunes! Well,"--the gentle old voice took on charity--"well, if that's his way of being happy, I s'pose he's got as good a right to it as I have to--Amelia," a whimsical little smile lighting up the old face, but underlying it the tenderness that the girl on the bed had come to look for whenever any reference was made to Amelia.

"We've all got our idiosyncreases," added Emmeline Camp, "only some of 'em's creased in a little deeper'n others. I guess mine and Old '61's are pretty considerable deep!"

The early July days were cloudless and full of hot, stinging noises.

T.O. crawled out to lie in the gra.s.s under a great tree, and exult in room and freedom and rest. Her ankle was still very painful, but she regarded it with philosophical toleration: "You needn't have climbed a stone wall, need you? Well, then, what have you to complain of? The best thing you can do is to keep still." Which was, without doubt, the truth.

"Anyhow, it isn't becoming in you to be so puffed up!"

It was decided that Mrs. Camp should start on her trip before the other girls arrived. Hence, on the morning of the day they had set to come, the little old woman and her bags and bundles rode away down the dusty country road. Her lean, brown, crumpled old face had an exalted expression; the joy of antic.i.p.ation and the triumph of patient waiting met in it and blended oddly. It was a great day for Emmeline Camp.

"Good-by, deary. Keep right on rubbing, and don't go to walking 'round.

There's some cookies left in the cooky-crock, and a pie or two on the shelf to kind of set you going. Take good care o' yourselves."

"And Amelia," whispered the girl, drawing the old face down to her.

"We'll take good care of Amelia."

It was a little lonely after the old stage rumbled away. The Talented One turned whimsically to Amelia for company. She tried to imagine her, as the little old woman did, but in vain. She could not conjure up the sweet, elusive face, the hair, the eyes, the grave little mouth of Amelia. The little old woman had taken away with her love, the key. She must have taken Amelia away with her, too, the girl thought, smiling at her own fancy. So, for company, she must wait until Loraine and Billy and Laura Ann came, on the further edge of the day. She lay in the cool gra.s.s, and made beatific plans for all the long, lazy days to come. No hurrying, or worrying--each one for herself, happy in her own way. Only themselves to think of for the s.p.a.ce of a golden summer!

"I am glad she took Amelia," the girl in the gra.s.s laughed softly.

"We'd never be able to keep to the Compact with Amelia 'round--Amelia would never have signed a 'Wicked Compact'!" Which, in the event of gentle, unsinning Amelia ever having been born, might or might not have been true. It would have been harder work, reflected the girl in the gra.s.s, for Amelia to have been unsinning and gentle, if she had been born.

Jane Cotton's Sam came lounging down the road, cap over one eye, face surlily defiant. T.O. watched him with displeasure. So that was the kind of a boy that gave up? Poor kind of a boy! Why didn't he try it again, especially when his poor mother's heart was breaking? Didn't he know that giving up was worse than failing in his examinations? Somebody ought to tell him--why, he was stopping at Mrs. Camp's little front gate! He was coming in!

The girl lying in the long gra.s.s under the tree sat up hurriedly. Quick, quick! what was his name? Oh, yes, Sam!

"Good-morning, Sam," she said pleasantly. But the boy, with a mere nod of his splendidly-modeled head, hurried away toward the tiny barn. The girl had seen the dark flush that mounted upward from his neck over his pink and white cheeks.

"Poor thing! He knows _I_ know that he didn't pa.s.s--that is the only 'out' about living in the country: everybody knows everything.

Well, if it makes him blush, then his mother needn't break her heart _yet_. I like the looks of that boy, if he does go 'round scowling." Whereupon the Talented One promptly dismissed Jane Cotton's Sam from her meditations. It did not occur to her to question his right to be on Mrs. Camp's premises. She lay back in the gra.s.s and took up again the interrupted thread of her musings. By gentle degrees odd fancies took possession of her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BOY, WITH A MERE NOD, HURRIED AWAY.]

The sprinkling of great, white daisies in the gra.s.s beside her--suppose, now, this minute, they changed into white handkerchiefs, spread out on a green counter! Then she would have to sell them to pa.s.sers-by; it was her business to sell handkerchiefs. Someone was coming marching up the road--suppose she tried to sell him one, for the fun of it!--to make a good story for the girls. Laughing, she got up and leaned on the fence.

She "dared" herself to do it. Then, courteously, "Can I sell you anything in handkerchiefs to-day? Initialed, embroidered--"

The marching feet stopped. Shrewd old eyes studied her face and twinkled, responsive to the harmless mischief visible in it.

"You got any with flags on--in the corners or anywhere? Or drums on?"

It was Old '61. "Or red, white an' blue ones? I'd like one o'

_them_--I fit in the war," explanatorily.

"Yes?" The saleswoman was not especially interested in the war; it is not the way with many of her kind to be interested in things.

"I fit clear through--in the Wilderness, and Bull Run, an' plenty more.

They couldn't get rid o' me, the enemy couldn't! No, sir, where there was marchin' an' shootin', I was bound to be there! They hit me time 'n'

again, but I didn't waste no unnecessary time in hospittles--I had to git back to the boys."

She was interested now; she forgot she was to sell him a handkerchief.

"Go on," she said.

"It was great! You ought to heard the drums an' smelt the smoke, an'

felt your feet marchin' under you, an' your knapsack poundin' your back--yes, sir, an' bein' hungry an' thirsty an' wore out! You'd ought to seen how ragged the boys got, an' heard 'em whistlin' 'Through Georgy' while they sewed on patches--oh, you'd ought to _whistled_ 'Through Georgy'!"

The girl, watching the kindled old face, saw a shadow creep over it.

"I useter--I useter--but someway I've lost it. It's pretty hard to've _marched_ through Georgy an' forgot the tune about. Some days I 'most get holt of it again--I thought I could, on the organ, but I can't, not the hull of it. Someway I've lost it--it's pretty hard. It ha'nts me--if you ever be'n ha'nted, you know how bad it is."

No, the girl who was leaning on the fence had never been ha'nted, but her eyes were wide with pity for the old soul who had marched through Georgia and forgotten the tune.

"Some days I 'most ketch it. I don't suppose"--the old voice halted diffidently--"I don't suppose _you'd_ whistle it, would you? Jest through once--"

But she could not whistle even once "Through Georgia." "I'm so sorry!"

she cried. "I can't whistle, or sing, or anything. I wish I could!"

She wished she were Billy; Billy could have done it.

Old '61 marched on, up the dusty road, and the girl went back to her tree. She had not sold any daisy-handkerchiefs, but she had her story to tell the girls. She lay in the gra.s.s thinking of it. Once or twice she pursed her lips and made a ludicrous ineffectual attempt to whistle, but she did not smile. Jane Cotton's Sam clicked the gate, going out, but she did not notice. When she did at last look up, and her gaze wandered over the little yard aimlessly, she suddenly uttered a little note of surprise.

"Why!" she cried.

CHAPTER IV.

For the pump was a blue pump! A miracle had been wrought while she mused in the gra.s.s and listened to Old '61. The little old brown pump had blossomed out gayly, brilliantly.

"Why!" Then a subdued chuckle reached her from some nearby ambush out beyond the fence. She put two and two together--the pump, the laugh, and Jane Cotton's Sam. Six! Jane Cotton's Sam, while she was day-dreaming and Marching through Georgia with Old '61, had painted the brown pump blue! That was his business on Mrs. Camp's premises. Mrs Camp had remembered--the dear, oh, the dear!--that she wanted a blue pump, and had got the boy to come and make one. And now, down behind the fence somewhere, the boy was laughing at her amazement. Well, let him laugh--she laughed, too! Suddenly she began to clap her hands by way of applause to her hidden audience.

The pump itself was distinctly a disappointment. In gay-hued pictures, seen by childish eyes, blue pumps accord with green gra.s.s and trees--in nature, seen by maturer eyes, there is something wrong with the colors.

They look out of place--either the green growing things or the gay blue pump do not belong there. The girl's loyalty to little, kind Emmeline Camp would not let her admit that it was the blue pump that didn't "belong." She was glad--glad--that it was blue, for it stood for a thoughtful kindness to her, and thoughtful kindnesses had been rare in her self-dependent, hustling life.

"Hurrah for the blue pump!" she cried softly. She felt like going up to it and hugging it, but fortunately she did not yield to the impulse.

The other girls arrived at dusk. T.O., her knee in a chair, had hitched laboriously from little kitchen to little dining-room and got supper.

Spent and triumphant, she waited in the doorway. She could hear their voices coming up the road--Billy's excited voice, Laura Ann's gay one, Loraine's calm and sweet. She longed to run out to meet them. Next best, she sent her own voice, in a clear, long call.