Young Lucretia and Other Stories Part 20

"n.o.body but Sammy Wiggins; he ate his whole plateful, saleratus and all, before anybody spoke."

"Oh dear!" said Ruth; "I suppose mother feels dreadfully. Where is she?"

"She's gone over to Lucy Ann's to help her take care of the baby; he was real sick last night. I don't believe she'll come home till after supper. She felt dreadful."

"The Wigginses are dreadful touchy folks, anyhow."

"Course they are. It don't seem as if anybody with any sense would get mad at such a thing. But they're always suspecting folks of meaning something."

Ruth looked sternly reflective. She took off her thick dingy shawl, and got from its peg a bright red and green plaid one that she wore in pleasant weather.

"Where are you going?" asked Serena.

"I'm going over to the Wigginses'."

"What for?"

"I'm going to ask them to come over here to-morrow and spend the day."

"Why, Ruth Whitman, ain't you afraid to?"

"No, I ain't afraid. I'm going to carry over a jar of the honey--mother 'll be willing--and I'm going to tell Mrs. Wiggins just how it was."

"She won't hear a word you say."

"I'll make her hear."

"They won't come a step."

"You see."

The Whitmans kept bees, and their honey was the celebrated luxury of the neighborhood. Ruth got a jar of clear white honey out of the closet, put it under her shawl, and was off. First, though, she instructed Serena to go out in the garden and dig a good supply of parsnips and clean them for the next day's dinner.

It was a mile to the Wigginses', and it took Ruth over an hour to accomplish her errand and return. When she got home she found Serena getting supper, and her father was was.h.i.+ng his hands out in the shed; her mother had not returned. On the kitchen sink lay a tin pan with four or five muddy parsnips. Serena looked up eagerly when her sister entered. "They coming?" said she.

"Yes, they are," replied Ruth, with a triumphant smile.

But Serena walked over to the sink and extended her arm with a tragical gesture towards the parsnips. "Well, you've gone and done it now, Ruth Whitman," said she. "There's every single parsnip that's fit to eat that I could find in the garden."

"H'm! I guess I can find some."

"No, you can't; they've rotted. I heard mother say to-day she was afraid they had. More'n half those father brought in this morning weren't good for anything. When mother finds out that all the Wigginses are coming, and there's just five parsnips for dinner, I don't know what she will do; I don't know but it will kill her. And she's asked Uncle Caleb and Uncle Silas over, too."

Ruth gave a desperate glance at the parsnips. "I said we were going to have parsnip stew," said she, "Mrs. Wiggins had been crying; she looked dreadful tired out; and Sammy had just b.u.mped his head, and there was a great lump over one eye. She took the honey, and said she'd be real happy to come if they could have the horse, and old Mrs. Wiggins acted dreadful tickled."

"The Wigginses have got parsnips," said Serena. "I heard Mrs. Wiggins say they'd got a splendid lot, she expected, but they hadn't dug any yet."

Ruth looked at her sister. "Serena!"

"What?"

"I'm going to send over and _buy some of the Wigginses' parsnips_."

"Ruth!" But it seemed to Serena as if there was a flash of red and green light through the room, and Ruth had gone. Serena gave a little gasp, and stood looking.

"What's the matter?" asked her father, coming in--an old man in checkered s.h.i.+rt sleeves, yet with a certain rustic stateliness about him.

"Oh, nothing," said Serena; and she fell to slicing the bread for supper.

While her father had gone to the well to draw a pail of water Ruth came in, breathless, but rosy with daring and triumph. Ben White, Mrs.

White's grown-up son, was going to drive over to the Wigginses and buy some parsnips; his mother was to have some, and Ruth a n.o.ble portion for the next day's stew.

Serena dropped into a chair and giggled feebly; the humor, of it was so forcible that it seemed to fairly rebound in her face. "Ask the Wigginses to dinner to have a parsnip stew, and then--buy their own parsnips for it!" she gasped.

Ruth did not laugh at all; she saw nothing but the seriousness of the situation. "Mind you don't tell mother till after it's all over," said she. "I don't want her to know where those parsnips came from till after the Wigginses have gone, she'll be so upset. I'm just going to tell her how I carried the honey over there, and how they're coming. I do hope Ben will bring the parsnips before mother gets home."

"Suppose Ben should bring 'em in when mother was here," chuckled Serena.

"I told him to shy into the shed with 'em," replied Ruth, severely.

"Hus.h.!.+ father's coming, and we'd better not say anything to him till afterwards."

Mrs. Whitman did not return until quite late; her married daughter Lucy Ann and her teething baby did not generally release her in very good season. When she came into the kitchen she found a great pan of parsnips all washed and sc.r.a.ped, and heard the news how the Wigginses were over their ill-tempers and were coming the next day. Mrs. Whitman dropped into a chair, her large mild face beamed, and tears stood in her eyes.

"Well, I'm dreadful glad if we can patch it up," said she; "I never had any fuss with any of my folks before in the world, and I hate to begin now. I've always thought a good deal of the Wigginses." And her mouth quivered.

The next morning a parsnip stew of n.o.ble proportions was prepared. At eleven o'clock the great kettle, full to the rim, hung over the fire, and the room was cloudy with savory steam. The Wigginses were expected every minute. Uncles Silas and Caleb Whitman could be seen from the kitchen window out in the field with their brother bending over the plough furrows, and they kept righting themselves and looking at their old silver watches. At half-past eleven Mrs. Whitman and Serena began to think it was strange that the Wigginses did not come. At quarter of twelve there was a little stir out in the yard, and they ran to the windows. There was Mr. Wiggins with a wheelbarrow and an empty grain sack and a half-bushel basket of russet apples in it.

Mrs. Whitman and Serena stood wonderingly in the door. "Where's the folks?" asked Mrs. Whitman.

Then Mr. Wiggins, standing by the wheelbarrow, explained how Hiram Green had had to use the horse for ploughing up in the six-acre lot, how he had promised to hire it to him, and his wife hadn't known it, and how he had had to go to the store for grain with the wheelbarrow, and his wife had got him to stop and tell Mis' Whitman she was dreadfully sorry it happened so, but she didn't see how they could walk, and they would come over the first day they could have the horse; and she didn't know but what Mis' Whitman's apples had give out, so she sent her over a few of their russets; they had 'most two barrels left, and they were spoiling fast, and they wanted to get rid of them.

When Ruth came home from school she found an immense kettle of parsnip stew, her father and her uncles Silas and Caleb again forming a pleasant expectant semicircle before the fire, but no Wigginses. To-day the stew was seasoned daintily, and salt had taken the place of saleratus. There was no stint as to quant.i.ty, but there were not enough partakers. Mrs.

Whitman filled a great bowl for Lucy Ann; she sent a dish over to the Whites; father and Caleb and Silas ate manfully, and pa.s.sed their plates again and again; Serena and Ruth and their mother ate all they could, and the cat had her fill; but the Whitmans, with all their allies, could not eat their own share and that of the Wigginses. But the stew was delicious, and as the family ate, their simple homely little feud was healed, and the parsnip stew smoked in their midst like a pipe of peace.

THE d.i.c.kEY BOY

"I should think it was about time for him to be comin'," said Mrs. Rose.

"So should I," a.s.sented Miss Elvira Grayson. She peered around the corner of the front door. Her face was thin and anxious, and her voice was so like it that it was unmistakably her own note. One would as soon expect a crow to chick-a-dee as Miss Elvira to talk in any other way.

She was tall, and there was a sort of dainty angularity about her narrow shoulders. She wore an old black silk, which was a great deal of dress for afternoon. She had considerable money in the bank, and could afford to dress well. She wore also some white lace around her long neck, and it was fastened with a handsome gold-and-jet brooch. She was knitting some blue worsted, and she sat back in the front entry, out of the draft. She considered herself rather delicate.

Mrs. Rose sat boldly out in the yard in the full range of the breeze, sewing upon a blue-and-white gingham waist for her son w.i.l.l.y. She was a large, pretty-faced woman in a stiffly starched purple muslin, which spread widely around her.

"He's been gone 'most an hour," she went on; "I hope there's nothin'

happened."