"Such as what?" asked my Father.
"There"s a Prince and Princess in town!" said the Old Doctor. "Or a Duch and d.u.c.h.ess!--Or a Fool and Fooless!--I don"t care what you call "em!--They"ve got some sort of a claim on the old Dun Voolees estate.
Brook,--meadow,--blueberry----hillside,--popple grove,--everything!
They"ve come way from Austria to prove it! Going to build a Tannery! Or a Fertilizer Factory! Or some other equally odoriferous industry! Fill the town with foreign laborers!--String a line of lowsy shacks clear from the Blacksmith Shop to the river!--Hope they _choke_!"
"Oh my dear--my dear!" said my Mother.
The Old Doctor looked a little funny.
"Oh I admit it"s worth something," he said, "to have you call me your "dear."--But I"m mad I tell you clear through. And when you"ve got as much "_through_" to you as I have, that"s _some mad_!--W-hew!"
he said. "When I think of our village,--our precious, clean, decent, simple little All-American village--turned into a cheap--racketty--crowd-you-off-the-sidewalk Sat.u.r.day Night h.e.l.l Hole...?"
"Oh--Oh--OH!" cried my Mother.
"Quick! Get him some raspberry shrub," cried my Father.
"Maybe he"d like to play the Children"s new Game!" cried my Mother.
"It isn"t a Game," I explained. "It"s a Book!"
My Mother ran to get the Raspberry Shrub. She brought a whole pitcher.
It tinkled with ice. It sounded nice. When the Old Doctor had drunken it he seemed cooled quite a little. He put the gla.s.s down on the table. He saw the Book. He looked surprised.
"Lanos--Bryant? Accounts?" he read. He looked at the date. He looked at my Father. "What you trying to do, Man?" he said. "Reconstruct a financial picture of our village as it was a generation ago? Or trace your son Carol"s very palpable distaste for a brush, back to his grandfather"s somewhat avid devotion to pork chops?" He picked up the book. He opened the first pages. He read the names written at the tops of the pages. Some of the names were pretty faded.--"Alden, Hoppin, Weymoth, Dun Vorlees," he read. He put on his gla.s.ses. He scrunched his eyes. He grunted his throat. "W-hew!" he said. "A hundred pounds of beans in one month?--Is it any wonder that young Alden ran away to sea--and sunk clear to the bottom in his first shipwreck?--"Roast Beef"?--"Roast Beef"?--"Malt and Hops"?--"Malt and Hops"?--"Roast Beef"?--"Malt and Hops"?--Is _that_ where Old Man Weymoth got his rheumatism?--And Young Weymoth--his blood pressure?--Dun Vorlees?--Dun Vorlees?--_What?_ No meat at all from November to February?--No fruit?--Only three pounds of sugar?--Great Gastronomics! Back of all that arrogance,--that insulting aloofness,--was _real_ Hunger gnawing at the Dun Vorlees vitals?--Was _that_ the reason why--?--Merciful Heavens!" cried the Old Doctor. "This book is worth twenty dollars to me--this very minute in my Practice! The light it sheds on the Village Stomach,--the Village Nerves,--the--"
"Please, Sir," I said. "The Book is Carol"s. Mr. Lanos Bryant gave it to him.--And we"re planning to get a great deal more than twenty dollars for it when we sell it!"
"_Eh?_" said the Old Doctor. "_What?_"
He jerked round in his chair and _glared_ at Carol.
"_This_ I"ll have you understand, my Young Man," he said, "is in the cause of Science!"
Carol looked pretty nervous. He began to smooth his hair as well as he could without bristles. It didn"t smooth much.
"Oh please, Sir," I explained, "people who write books _never_ have smooth hair!"
"Who"s talking about writing books?" roared the Old Doctor.
"Please, Sir, _we"re_ trying to talk about it," I said. My voice sounded pretty little. "It"s the _back_ part of the book that"s the important part," I explained. "It"s the back part of the book that we"re writing!"
"_Eh?_" said the Old Doctor.
He slammed the book together. He stood up and began to look for his hat.
There didn"t seem a moment to lose if we we"re going to get him into our book. I ran and caught him by the hand. Even if his face was busy his hands always had time to be friends with Carol and me.
"Oh please--please--_please_," I besought him. "If you were a Beautiful Smell instead of a Beautiful Doctor,--what Beautiful Smell in the whole wide world would you choose to be?"
"What?" said the old Doctor. "_What? W-h-a-t?_" he kept saying over and over. He looked at my Father. He looked at my Mother. My Mother told him about our Book. He made a loud Guffaw. "Guffaw" I _think_ is the noise he made. Carol is _sure_ that it is! He looked at Carol. He looked at me. He began to Guffaw all over again.
"Well really, Young Auth.o.r.ettes," he said, "I hardly know how to answer you or how to choose. Ether or Chloroform and general Disinfectants being the most familiar savors of my daily life,--the only savors indeed that I ever expect to suggest to anybody--" He looked out the window.
There was an apple-blossom tree. It made the window look very full of June. His collar seemed to hurt him. It made him pretty serious. It made his voice all solemn.
"But I"ll tell you, Kiddies," he said quite suddenly. "I"ll tell you the Sweetest Thing that I ever smelled in my life!--It was the first Summer I was back from College.--I was out on the Common playing ball. Somebody brought me word that my Father was dead.--I didn"t go home.--I slunk off instead to my favorite trout-brook--and sat down under a big white birch tree--and _cursed_!--I was very bitter. I needed my Father very much that year. And my step-mother was a harsh woman.--Late that night when I got home,--ugly with sorrow,--I found that I"d left my Catcher"s glove.
It happened to be one that my Father had given me.--With matches and a tin-can lantern I fumbled my way back to the brook. The old glove lay palm-upward in the moss and leaves. Somebody had filled the palm with wild violets.--I put my face down in it--like a kid--and bawled my heart out.--It was little Annie Dun Vorlees it seemed who had put the violets there. Trailed me clear from the Ball Field. Little kid too. Only fourteen years to my twenty. Why her Mother wouldn"t even let me come to the house. Had made Annie promise even not to speak to me.--But when Trouble hit me, little Annie--?" The Old Doctor frowned his eyebrows.
"Words!" he said. "It"s _words_ after all that have the real fragrance to "em!--Now take that word "Loyalty" for instance. I can"t even see it in a Newspaper without--" He put back his head suddenly. He gave a queer little chuckle. "Sounds funny, doesn"t it, Kiddies," he laughed, "to say that the sweetest thing you ever smelled in your life was an old baseball glove thrown down on the mossy bank of a brook?"
I looked at Carol. Carol looked at me. His eyes were popping. We ran to the Book. We s.n.a.t.c.hed it open. It b.u.mped our heads. We pointed to the writing. I read it out loud.
The most beautiful smell in the world is the smell of an old tattered baseball glove that"s been lying in the damp gra.s.s--by the side of a brook--in June Time.
My Mother looked funny.
"Good Gracious," she said. "Are my children developing "Second Sight"?--First it was the "Field of Tulips" already written down as their Father"s choice before he could even get the words out of his mouth!--And now, hours before the Old Doctor ever even dreamed of the Book"s existence they"ve got his distinctly unique taste in perfumes all--"
"But this isn"t the Old Doctor!" I cried out. "She wrote it herself.
It"s the Lady down at the hotel. It"s the--the Empress that the Old Doctor was talking about!"
"The--Empress?" gasped the Old Doctor.
"Well maybe you said "Princess,"" I admitted. "It was some one from Austria anyway--come to fuss about the old Dun Vorlees place! You said it was! You said that"s who it was!--It"s the only Strange Lady in the village!"
"What?" gasped the Old Doctor. "_What?_" He looked at the book. He read the Lady"s writing. Anybody could have seen that it wasn"t our writing.
It was too dressy. He put on his gla.s.ses. He read it again.
--the smell of an old tattered baseball glove--that"s been lying in the damp gra.s.s--side of a brook--June Time.
"Good Lord!" he cried out. "Good Lord!"--He couldn"t seem to swallow through his collar. "Not anyone else!" he gasped. "In all the world!--There couldn"t possibly be anyone else! It must--It _must_ be little Annie Dun Vorlees herself!"
He rushed to the window. There was a grocery boy driving by.
"Hi! Hi there!" he called out. "Don"t mind anybody"s orders just now!
Take me quick to the Hotel!--It"s an Emergency I tell you! She may be gone before I get there!"
We sat down on the sofa and curled up our legs. Our legs felt queer.
My Mother and Father sat down on the other sofa. They looked queer all over. They began to talk about the Village. It wasn"t exactly the Village that we knew. It was as though they talked about the Village when it was a _child_. They talked about when the Bridge was first built. They talked about the Spring when the Big Freshet swept the meadow. They talked about the funny color of Jason the Blacksmith"s first long trousers. They talked about a tiny mottled Fawn that they had caught once with their own hands at a Sunday School picnic in the Arbutus Woods. They talked about the choir rehearsals in the old white church. They talked about my Father"s Graduation Essay in the High School. It was like History that was sweet instead of just true. It made you feel a little lonely in your throat. Our Tame c.o.o.n came and curled up on our legs. It made our legs feel better. The clock struck nine. Our Father and Mother forgot all about us. Pretty soon we forgot all about ourselves. When we woke up the Old Doctor had come back. He was standing by the table in the lamplight talking to my Father and my Mother.
He looked just the same--only different--like a portrait in a newspaper that somebody had tried to copy. All around the inner edges of his bigness it was as though someone had sketched the outline of a slimmer man.--It looked nice.
"Well it _was_ little Annie Dun Vorlees!" he said.
"Was it indeed?" said my Father.
"Hasn"t changed a mite!" said the Old Doctor. "Not a mite!--Oh of course she"s wearing silks now instead of gingham.--And her hair?--Well perhaps it"s just a little bit gray but----"
"Gray hair"s very pretty," said my Mother.