W. A. G.'s Tale Part 6

AT TURNERS'

Up at Turners' it was nice. They had a big stone house with lots of room in it, and the girls, Charlotte and Grace, were nice to play with, and Mrs. Turner always seemed to know what a boy wanted. She did pat me on the head and call me "pigeon" sometimes, but then, she did that to Mr.

Turner, too, so I didn't mind.

At first I thought it was going to be so nice, that I'd forget about everything till Aunty May came back, but by and by, though they were nice as nice can be, I began to miss Aunty May till it hurt like a toothache.

I missed Aunty Edith, too, but Aunty May and I had played most together, and next to Uncle Burt, I loved her best.

The Turners had an old ruined mill on their grounds, and we children used to hang our bathing-suits in there and use it to dress in when we went swimming in the creek.

It was very old, and all the machinery, the wheels and things, were made of wood. Up in the top there was a nice big loft, with a wide window, where n.o.body ever went. When I found this out, I took a broom up there and swept it by the window, and got an old chair, and one of the old barrels for a table, and when I didn't want to play with Charlotte and Grace, or when it rained, I used to get a piece of bread or cake, or an apple, and go off there, all by myself. Sometimes I read, sometimes I wrote books and drew, and sometimes I just sat and thought about Uncle Burt and Aunty May, and Aunty Edith. And it got nearer and nearer the time for Aunty May to come back.

The very day that she was to come home, I was doing this, thinking about her, I mean--a little harder than usual, because Mr. Turner had told me at breakfast that after all Aunty May wouldn't be back till to-morrow, when I heard somebody else breathing in the room. I turned around, and there was Henry, the Indian boy from the Carlisle School, sitting crouched on the floor.

He was a great big boy, fifteen or sixteen, and he helped with the work in the house in the summertime. Henry was always nice to us children, and we liked him a great deal.

I said "Hullo, Henry, what are you doing in my library?" And he showed all his teeth at me and said he was doing the same that I was doing there; he had come up to be sad and alone. Then I told him all about Aunty May, and he was sorry for me, and he told me about the school, and the teachers, and football, and his people, and I was sorry for him.

Then he told me that when he got very sorry about everything, sometimes, he just dressed himself and got out of his bed at night and walked and walked until he got tired, and then came back and slept.

He told me how lovely everything looked in the country, early in the morning, and I told him I'd like to do that, too, some morning, but how did he get up without waking people? Then he showed me how he could move in his stocking feet and no one could hear him. And it was true. If I sat with my back to Henry I would still think he was sitting back of me, when he was over by the door, really. So I practiced that, too. "Playing Indian," he called it; and he promised next time he had that feeling, he'd throw some gravel at my window, and I could come down.

[Ill.u.s.tration: I told him all about Aunty May]

I asked him how soon he thought it'd be, and he looked at me very long, and then, just as somebody called, "Henry, where are you? Come and take the canoe out," he leaned down and whispered in my ear, "To-night, be ready."

Well, I could hardly eat my supper for thinking of it, and I went to bed so quickly and quietly that Mrs. Turner called me "pigeon" and patted my head, because the little girls didn't want to go and were a little noisy.

After I got into bed and was just falling asleep, I did just for a minute think I should have asked Mrs. Turner if I could go, but honestly I never thought of that till then, because Aunty May wasn't there. I would have thought of telling her. Anyway Henry had told me not to tell, and I didn't know whether he meant just the children or not.

Well, I stayed awake a long time, and got up softly and dressed again, and then I stayed asleep it seemed to me just a teeny while, when a bit of gra.s.s and gravel hit me on the nose.

I woke up and more came flying through my open window, so I got up softly and kneeled on my bed, and there was Henry down on the ground, looking up at me.

When he saw me he put his finger to his lips, and sent a big piece of clothes-rope flying through the window on to the bed, all without a word.

Then he shaped with his mouth to use that and not the stairs, for the stairs were creaky.

So I put the noose at the end over my bed-post and held on tight, and slid down, without a bit of noise, to the ground, where Henry caught me.

I came down so fast it hurt my hands, but Henry washed them with water, at the well, and tied them up, all without speaking, and we went softly out of the yard, not toward the towpath, but up the long road over the hills.

It was very early morning, about three o'clock, and everything looked lovely.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Slid down without a bit of noise]

When we got far away from the house, I asked Henry if he wasn't hungry, and he shook his head, no, but gave me a Uneeda biscuit out of a box, and I ate three or four, and all the time he was walking on in the nice soft light, without saying anything.

Presently we got to the top of a hill, and Henry stood still, and so did I. There was the sun coming up and making all sorts of lovely colors on the sky.

When we looked at it a little while, Henry said, "How does the little, lonely boy like walking in the morning?" and I said, "Fine."

We walked on, and sometimes Henry didn't say anything, and sometimes he whistled, and sometimes he talked to me about Carlisle and football, and out-of-doors and things like that, and I had a lovely time and didn't notice how far away we were getting.

At last the sun came up all the way, and I said, "Oh, Henry, we'd better get back now, for Mrs. Turner will miss us and not know where we are."

But Henry threw himself flat on the gra.s.s,--we had sat down to rest a minute because I was tired, and didn't say anything at all for a long time.

Then he lifted his head and his white teeth showed, and his eyes smiled at me, and he said quite softly, "I am not going back."

Oh, how queer I felt when he said those words. Maybe it was as Aunty May said, because I hadn't enough breakfast in my insides, but everything went round like a clock for a minute, the sky, the trees, and the strange road, and the strange houses, and then I said in a funny voice, "Oh, Henry, you don't mean that."

He said, "Yes, I am tired of everything there"; and he pointed down the road we had come along. "I am going back to my own people; back to the school."

Then he offered to take me with him, and to carry me part of the way, as I was little and got tired too easily to keep up with him. But though he was kind, and I wanted very much to go with him, and not be left alone, I couldn't, because I remembered this was the day Aunty May was coming home; and now, what would she and the Turners think of me!

I was so sorry that I was pretty near crying, except that the Indian boy was looking at me with his bright eyes, and I remembered that Indians do not cry, and would think me a poor kind of a boy if I did.

So I just shook my head, and told him I must go back and meet Aunty May.

He didn't like this, until I had promised him that I would only say he'd left me and had gone on to Carlisle, and I would not say where he'd left me, so that he'd get a fair start. But I didn't like to say even that for fear I'd have to tell what wasn't so, until he told me it was all right, because I didn't know where we were, and he wouldn't tell me.

He told me he liked me very much and was sorry I wouldn't go with him, and he divided the crackers and told me to sit still and not look until I had counted 100. I did, and when I'd finished there wasn't any Henry to be seen.

I ate a cracker, and started back down the road again, and now everybody was up and I met men on the roads and dogs barked at me, and oh, how long the road seemed!

I went on and on till I thought I should fall down, and I was so thirsty I didn't know what to do.

By and by, I came to a place where there was a toll-gate, and then I knew I was lost, for we hadn't pa.s.sed any on the road coming up, and besides I hadn't any money.

So I stood still and tried to think, but I felt hot and tired and my head went round a little. Then I thought I'd go to the back door of the tollhouse, and then maybe some one would tell me how to go and they wouldn't have to feel so badly about telling me I couldn't get through without any money. So I went round to the back yard and there was n.o.body in it.

Then I went up to the kitchen door and knocked and n.o.body came, but I heard a little voice at the kitchen window say, "Hey, boy, what do you want?"

I looked and there was a little boy, just about seven or eight, sitting in a chair by the window, and I came up to it, and called to him--"I want to know the road to East Penniwell, and I want a drink of water."

At first he just shook his head, and then he opened the window, and said, "Hurry up. We got diphtheria here and n.o.body's allowed to speak to me. That's why the tollhouse is shut up. Ain't you 'fraid?"

I said, "I don't know what it is, and I'm awfully hungry and thirsty and I want to know the road to East Penniwell."

"Well," he said, "poor boy"; and handed me out a gla.s.s of milk and a piece of bread, and I was drinking the milk, when I heard some one yell at me. It was a man running up to the house, and the boy grabbed the cup away and said, "Here comes Pop. You'd better leg it." I ran as fast as I could out the gate and down the road he told me to take. The man didn't chase me far, and I didn't hear what he said, his dog barked so. But I didn't feel quite so tired, though I ached a lot still, and my feet were awful wet, through running right through a brook when the man called at me.

I went right on. Sometimes I lay down under a tree, sometimes I sat down by the road.

I don't see why a road that seems all right when you're going up it, seems so terrible when you are going down. But maybe it's because I made wrong turnings, and always when the men asked me if I'd ride with them a little ways, I said, "No," because I would have to tell them I belonged at Turners', and they might ask me about Henry, the Indian boy.

Last I took a turning that led me farther and farther down a road I never remember seeing before and there were no cross-road places; no farmhouses, and no man came along on a wagon. I just had to keep on, feeling sicker and sicker, till, just as I made a short turn, I came out on a road that led to Crosscup's farm and Rabbit Run Bridge!

My, wasn't I glad. But I wasn't going to Crosscup's house, not much! I knew what I'd do now. I'd get Mr. Taylor, and tell him, just as fast as I could.