The boy was almost overwhelmed. He came to me, and took my hand in both his own.
"O papa," he faltered, and his eyes were moist, "did you say a gun?"
"Yes, a breech-loading shot-gun on one condition--that you"ll not smoke till after you are twenty-one. A growing boy can"t smoke in safety."
He gave my hand a quick, strong pressure, and was immediately at the farther end of the store, blowing his nose suspiciously. I chuckled to myself: "I want no better promise. A gun will cure him of cigarettes better than a tract would."
Mousie was quiet, as usual; but there was again a faint color in her cheeks, a soft l.u.s.tre in her eyes. I kept near my invalid child most of the time, for fear that she would go beyond her strength. I made her sit by a table, and brought the books that would interest her most. Her sweet, thin face was a study, and I felt that she was already enjoying the healing caresses of Mother Nature. When we started homeward she carried a book about flowers next to her heart.
Bobsey taxed his mother"s patience and agility, for he seemed all over the store at the same moment, and wanted everything in it, being sure that fifteen dollars would buy all and leave a handsome margin; but at last he was content with a book ill.u.s.trated from beginning to end with pigs.
What pleased me most was to see how my wife enjoyed our little outing.
Wrapped up in the children, she reflected their joy in her face, and looked almost girlish in her happiness. I whispered in her ear, "Your present shall be the home itself, for I shall have the deed made out in your name, and then you can turn me out-of-doors as often as you please."
"Which will be every pleasant day after breakfast," she said, laughing.
"You know you are very safe in giving things to me."
"Yes, Winifred," I replied, pressing her hand on the sly; "I have been finding that out ever since I gave myself to you."
I bought Henderson"s "Gardening for Profit" and some other practical books. I also subscribed for a journal devoted to rural interests and giving simple directions for the work of each month. At last we returned. Never did a jollier little procession march up Broadway.
People were going to the opera and evening companies, and carriages rolled by, filled with elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen; but my wife remarked, "None of those people are so happy as we are, trudging in this roundabout way to our country home."
Her words suggested our course of action during the months which must intervene before it would be safe or wise for us to leave the city. Our thoughts, words, and actions were all a roundabout means to our cherished end, and yet the most direct way that we could take under the circ.u.mstances. Field and garden were covered with snow, the ground was granite-like from frost, and winter"s cold breath chilled our impatience to be gone; but so far as possible we lived in a country atmosphere, and amused ourselves by trying to conform to country ways in a city flat. Even Winnie declared she heard the c.o.c.ks crowing at dawn, while Bobsey had a different kind of grunt or squeal for every pig in his book.
CHAPTER V
A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS IN A CITY FLAT
On Christmas morning we all brought out our purchases and arranged them on a table. Merton was almost wild when he found a bright single-barrelled gun with accoutrements standing in the corner. Even Mousie exclaimed with delight at the bright-colored papers of flower-seeds on her plate. To Winnie were given half a dozen china eggs with which to lure the prospective biddies to lay in nests easily reached, and she tried to cackle over them in absurd imitation. Little Bobsey had to have some toys and candy, but they all presented to his eyes the natural inmates of the barn-yard. In the number of domestic animals he swallowed that day he equalled the little boy in Hawthorne"s story of "The House of the Seven Gables," who devoured a ginger-bread caravan of camels and elephants purchased at Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon"s shop.
Our Christmas dinner consisted almost wholly of such vegetables as we proposed to raise in the coming summer. Never before were such connoisseurs of carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and so on through almost the entire list of such winter stock as was to be obtained at our nearest green-grocery. We celebrated the day by nearly a dozen dishes which the children aided my wife in preparing. Then I had Merton figure the cost of each, and we were surprised at the cheapness of much of country fare, even when retailed in very small quant.i.ties.
This brought up another phase of the problem. In many respects I was like the children, having almost as much to learn as they--with the advantage, however, of being able to correct impressions by experience.
In other words, I had more judgment; and while I should certainly make mistakes, not many of them would be absurd or often repeated. I was aware that most of the homely kitchen vegetables cost comparatively little, even though (having in our flat no good place for storage) we had found it better to buy what we needed from day to day. It was therefore certain that, at wholesale in the country, they would often be exceedingly cheap. This fact would work both ways: little money would purchase much food of certain kinds, and if we produced these articles of food they would bring us little money.
I will pa.s.s briefly over the period that elapsed before it was time for us to depart, a.s.sured that the little people who are following this simple history are as eager to get away from the dusty city flat to the sunlight, breezy fields, brooks, and woods as were the children in my story. It is enough to say that, during all my waking hours not devoted to business, I read, thought, and studied on the problem of supporting my family in the country. I haunted Washington Market in the gray dawn and learned from much inquiry what products found a ready and certain sale at some price, and what appeared to yield to the grower the best profits. There was much conflict of opinion, but I noted down and averaged the statements made to me. Many of the market-men had hobbies, and told me how to make a fortune out of one or two articles; more gave careless, random, or ignorant answers; but here and there was a plain, honest, sensible fellow who showed me from his books what plain, honest, sensible producers in the country were doing. In a few weeks I dismissed finally the tendency to one blunder. A novice hears or reads of an acre of cabbages or strawberries producing so much. Then he figures, "if one acre yields so much, two acres will give twice as much," and so on. The experience of others showed me the utter folly of all this; and I came to the conclusion that I could give my family shelter, plain food, pure air, wholesome work and play in plenty, and that not very soon could I provide much else with certainty. I tried to stick closely to common-sense; and the humble circ.u.mstances of the vast majority living from the soil proved that there was in these pursuits no easy or speedy road to fortune. Therefore we must part reluctantly with every penny, and let a dollar go for only the essentials to the modest success now accepted as all we could naturally expect. We had explored the settled States, and even the Territories, in fancy; we had talked over nearly every industry from cotton and sugarcane planting to a sheep-ranch. I encouraged all this, for it was so much education out of school-hours; yet all, even Merton, eventually agreed with me that we had better not go far away, but seek a place near schools, markets, churches, and well inside of civilization.
"See here, youngsters, you forget the most important crop of all that I must cultivate," I said one evening.
"What is that?" they cried in chorus.
"A crop of boys and girls. You may think that my mind is chiefly on corn and potatoes. Not at all. It is chiefly on you; and for your sakes mamma and I decided to go to the country."
At last, in reply to my inquiries and my answers to advertis.e.m.e.nts, I received the following letter:--
Maizeville, N.Y. March 1st, "83
Robert Durham, Esq.
Dear Sir
I have a place that will suit you I think. It can be bought at about the figure you name. Come to see it. I shan"t crack it up, but want you to judge for yourself.
Resp"y John Jones
I had been to see two or three places that had been "cracked up" so highly that my wife thought it better to close the bargain at once before some one else secured the prize--and I had come back disgusted in each instance.
"The soul of wit" was in John Jones"s letter. There was also a downright directness which hit the mark, and I wrote that I would go to Maizeville in the course of the following week.
CHAPTER VI
A BLUFF FRIEND
The almanac had announced spring; nature appeared quite unaware of the fact, but, so far as we were concerned, the almanac was right. Spring was the era of hope, of change, and hope was growing in our hearts like "Jack"s bean," in spite of lowering wintry skies. We were as eager as robins, sojourning in the south, to take our flight northward.
My duties to my employers had ceased the 1st of March: I had secured tenants who would take possession of our rooms as soon as we should leave them; and now every spare moment was given to studying the problem of country living and to preparations for departure. I obtained ill.u.s.trated catalogues from several dealers in seeds, and we pored over them every evening. At first they bewildered us with their long lists of varieties, while the glowing descriptions of new kinds of vegetables just being introduced awakened in us something of a gambling spirit.
"How fortunate it is," exclaimed my wife, "that we are going to the country just as the vegetable marvels were discovered! Why, Robert, if half of what is said is true, we shall make our fortunes."
With us, hitherto, a beet had been a beet, and a cabbage a cabbage; but here were accounts of beets which, as Merton said, "beat all creation,"
and pictures of prodigious cabbage heads which well-nigh turned our own. With a blending of hope and distrust I carried two of the catalogues to a shrewd old fellow in Washington Market. He was a dealer in country produce who had done business so long at the same stand that among his fellows he was looked upon as a kind of patriarch. During a former interview he had replied to my questions with a blunt honesty that had inspired confidence. The day was somewhat mild, and I found him in his shirt-sleeves, smoking his pipe among his piled-up barrels, boxes, and crates, after his eleven o"clock dinner. His day"s work was practically over; and well it might be, for, like others of his calling, he had begun it long before dawn. Now his old felt hat was pushed well back on his bald head, and his red face, fringed with a grizzled beard, expressed a sort of heavy, placid content. His small gray eyes twinkled as shrewdly as ever. With his pipe he indicated a box on which I might sit while we talked.
"See here, Mr. Bogart," I began, showing him the seed catalogues, "how is a man to choose wisely what vegetables he will raise from a list as long as your arm? Perhaps I shouldn"t take any of those old-fashioned kinds, but go into these wonderful novelties which promise a new era in horticulture."
The old man gave a contemptuous grunt; then, removing his pipe, he blew out a cloud of smoke that half obscured us both as he remarked, gruffly, ""A fool and his money are soon parted.""
This was about as rough as March weather; but I knew my man, and perhaps proved that I wasn"t a fool by not parting with him then and there.
"Come now, neighbor," I said, brusquely, "I know some things that you don"t, and there are affairs in which I could prove you to be as green as I am in this matter. If you came to me I"d give you the best advice that I could, and be civil about it into the bargain. I"ve come to you because I believe you to be honest and to know what I don"t. When I tell you that I have a little family dependent on me, and that I mean if possible to get a living for them out of the soil, I believe you are man enough both to fall in with my plan and to show a little friendly interest. If you are not, I"ll go farther and fare better."
As I fired this broadside he looked at me askance, with the pipe in the corner of his mouth, then reached out his great brown paw, and said,--
"Shake."
I knew it was all right now--that the giving of his hand meant not only a treaty of peace but also a friendly alliance. The old fellow discoursed vegetable wisdom so steadily for half an hour that his pipe went out.
"You jest let that new-fangled truck alone," he said, "till you get more forehanded in cash and experience. Then you may learn how to make something out of them novelties, as they call "em, if they are worth growing at all. Now and then a good penny is turned on a new fruit or vegetable; but how to do it will be one of the last tricks that you"ll learn in your new trade. Hand me one of them misleadin" books, and I"ll mark a few solid kinds such as produce ninety-nine hundredths of all that"s used or sold. Then you go to What-you-call-"em"s store, and take a line from me, and you"ll git the genuine article at market-gardeners"
prices."
"Now, Mr. Bogart, you are treating me like a man and a brother."