Young Lucretia and Other Stories Part 18

"No, sir," said Mirandy.

"Well," said Cap'n Moseby. He paused a minute, his mouth twitched again. "You have got to come into the house and settle with me if you want your bucket," he continued, and his voice was still very grim.

Mirandy stepped up on the threshold, and the black dog growled faintly.

"Be still, Lafayette!" said Cap'n Moseby. "I'm going to settle with her.

You lay down."

She followed Cap'n Moseby into his kitchen, and he pushed a little stool towards her. "Sit down," said he.

And Mirandy sat down. Directly opposite her, on a corner of the settle, was her berry bucket, and near it stood the gun, propped against the wall. She eyed it. There was a vague fear in her mind that settlement was in some way connected with that gun; but she never flinched. She was resolved to have that bucket.

Cap'n Moseby went to the dresser and got out a large china bowl with green sprigs on it, and a pewter spoon. He filled the bowl with berries from Mirandy's bucket, and then poured on some milk out of a blue pitcher. Mirandy watched him.

He carried the bowl over to her, and set it in her lap. "Eat 'em all up, now, every one," he commanded.

Mirandy looked up at him pitifully. Her courage almost failed. She thought of the boys and the stolen fruit in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and she almost felt premonitory cramps.

"Eat 'em," ordered Cap'n Moseby.

And Mirandy ate them, thrusting the pewter spoon, laden with those stolen berries, desperately into her mouth. Never berries tasted like those to her. There was no sweetness in them. But she kept thinking how her mother could give her boneset tea if they made her sick, and she was determined to have the bucket back.

Cap'n Moseby watched her as she ate. He emptied the remaining berries out of the bucket into a large bowl. Then he sat opposite, on the settle. Lafayette lay at his feet.

Mirandy finished the berries, and sat with the empty bowl in her lap.

"Finished 'em?" asked Cap'n Moseby.

"Yes, sir."

"Now, Mirandy Thayer, I'm going to ask you a question." Cap'n Moseby's eyes looked into hers, and she looked back into his. "If you hadn't been a little gal, Mirandy Thayer, what would you have been?"

Mirandy hesitated.

"Hey?" said Cap'n Moseby.

"One of my brothers," said Mirandy, doubtfully.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'EAT 'EM!' ORDERED CAP'N MOSEBY"]

"No, you wouldn't. I'll tell you what you would have been. You would have been a soldier, and you would have gone right up to the redcoats'

guns. Well, you must tend to your knittin'-work and your spinnin'. Now what did you steal my berries for, hey?"

"To earn my shoes," faltered Mirandy; she felt a little bewildered.

"Earn your shoes?"

"Yes, sir; I 'ain't got any to wear to meetin'."

"Have to go barefoot?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, they went barefoot at Valley Forge; that's nothing. You wait a minute, Mirandy Thayer."

And Mirandy waited until Cap'n Moseby had limped into another room and back again. He had a pair of little rough shoes dangling in his hand.

"Here," said he, "these belonged to my Ezra that died. He had some grit in him; he'd have done some marchin' in 'em if he'd lived. They'll jest about fit you. It's a pity you're a little gal. Well, you must tend to your knittin'-work and your spinnin'. Now you'd better run home, an'

don't you ever come stealin' my berries again, or you'll run faster than they did at Lexington."

And so it happened that Mirandy went home, about three o'clock of that summer afternoon, carrying her new shoes in her berry bucket, and Cap'n Moseby limped along at her side. Mirandy did not know that he went to explain matters to her mother, so that she should not be dealt with too severely, but she was surprised that she received so small a chiding.

"Don't you ever let me hear of your doing such a thing again," said her mother; and that was all she said.

The next Sunday Mirandy went up the aisle clattering bravely in little Ezra Moseby's shoes, and she could not help looking often at them during the sermon.

A PARSNIP STEW

Ruth stood by with a dish and spoon, while her mother stirred the stew carefully to be sure that it was not burning on the bottom of the kettle. Her sister Serena was paring apples and playing with the cat, and her father and her uncles Caleb and Silas sat before the fire smoking, sniffing the stew, and watching solemnly. The uncles had just come in, and proposed staying to dinner.

Mrs. Whitman squinted anxiously at the stew as she stirred it. She feared that there was not enough for dinner, now there were two more to eat.

"I'm dreadful afraid there ain't enough of that stew to go round," she whispered to Ruth in the pantry.

"Oh, I guess it'll do," said Ruth.

"Well, I dun know about it. Your father an' Caleb an' Silas are dreadful fond of parsnip stew, an' I do hate to have 'em stinted."

"Well, I won't take any," said Ruth. "I don't care much about it."

"Well, I don't want a mouthful," rejoined her mother. "Mebbe we can make it do. Caleb an' Silas don't have a good hot dinner very often, an' I do want them to have enough, anyway."

Caleb and Silas Whitman were old bachelors, living by themselves in the old Whitman homestead about a mile away, and their fare was understood to be forlorn and desultory. To-day they watched with grave complacency while their sister-in-law cooked the stew.

Over on the other side of the kitchen the table was set out with the pewter plates and the blue dishes. The stew was almost done, Mrs.

Whitman was just about to dip out the slices of pork into the dish that Ruth held, when there was a roll of wheels out in the yard, and a great shadow pa.s.sed over the kitchen floor.

"Mother, it's the Wigginses!" said Ruth, in a terrified whisper.

"Good gracious!" sighed her mother; "they've come to dinner."

Everybody stared for a second; then Mrs. Whitman recovered herself.

"Father, you go out an' help them put the horse up. Don't sit there any longer."

Then she threw open the door, and thrust her large handsome face out into the rain. "Why, how do you do, Mis' Wiggins?" said she, and she smiled beamingly.