"And didn"t you know?" he asked. "Why, I thought my music would tell you. I was so happy, so glad! The birds in the trees woke me up singing, "You"re wanted--you"re wanted;" and the sun came over the hill there and said, "You"re wanted--you"re wanted;" and the little tree-branch tapped on my window pane and said "You"re wanted--you"re wanted!" And I just had to take up my violin and tell you about it!"
"But it"s Sunday--the Lord"s Day," remonstrated the man sternly.
David stood motionless, his eyes questioning.
"Are you quite a heathen, then?" catechised the man sharply. "Have they never told you anything about G.o.d, boy?"
"Oh, "G.o.d"?--of course," smiled David, in open relief. "G.o.d wraps up the buds in their little brown blankets, and covers the roots with--"
"I am not talking about brown blankets nor roots," interrupted the man severely. "This is G.o.d"s day, and as such should be kept holy."
""Holy"?"
"Yes. You should not fiddle nor laugh nor sing."
"But those are good things, and beautiful things," defended David, his eyes wide and puzzled.
"In their place, perhaps," conceded the man, stiffly, "but not on G.o.d"s day."
"You mean--He wouldn"t like them?"
"Yes."
"Oh!"--and David"s face cleared. "That"s all right, then. Your G.o.d isn"t the same one, sir, for mine loves all beautiful things every day in the year."
There was a moment"s silence. For the first time in his life Simeon Holly found himself without words.
"We won"t talk of this any more, David," he said at last; "but we"ll put it another way--I don"t wish you to play your fiddle on Sunday.
Now, put it up till to-morrow." And he turned and went down the hall.
Breakfast was a very quiet meal that morning. Meals were never things of hilarious joy at the Holly farmhouse, as David had already found out; but he had not seen one before quite so somber as this. It was followed immediately by a half-hour of Scripture-reading and prayer, with Mrs. Holly and Perry Larson sitting very stiff and solemn in their chairs, while Mr. Holly read. David tried to sit very stiff and solemn in his chair, also; but the roses at the window were nodding their heads and beckoning; and the birds in the bushes beyond were sending to him coaxing little chirps of "Come out, come out!" And how could one expect to sit stiff and solemn in the face of all that, particularly when one"s fingers were tingling to take up the interrupted song of the morning and tell the whole world how beautiful it was to be wanted!
Yet David sat very still,--or as still as he could sit,--and only the tapping of his foot, and the roving of his wistful eyes told that his mind was not with Farmer Holly and the Children of Israel in their wanderings in the wilderness.
After the devotions came an hour of subdued haste and confusion while the family prepared for church. David had never been to church. He asked Perry Larson what it was like; but Perry only shrugged his shoulders and said, to n.o.body, apparently:--
"Sugar! Won"t ye hear that, now?"--which to David was certainly no answer at all.
That one must be spick and span to go to church, David soon found out--never before had he been so scrubbed and brushed and combed. There was, too, brought out for him to wear a little clean white blouse and a red tie, over which Mrs. Holly cried a little as she had over the nightshirt that first evening.
The church was in the village only a quarter of a mile away; and in due time David, open-eyed and interested, was following Mr. and Mrs. Holly down its long center aisle. The Hollys were early as usual, and service had not begun. Even the organist had not taken his seat beneath the great pipes of blue and gold that towered to the ceiling.
It was the pride of the town--that organ. It had been given by a great man (out in the world) whose birthplace the town was. More than that, a yearly donation from this same great man paid for the skilled organist who came every Sunday from the city to play it. To-day, as the organist took his seat, he noticed a new face in the Holly pew, and he almost gave a friendly smile as he met the wondering gaze of the small boy there; then he lost himself, as usual, in the music before him.
Down in the Holly pew the small boy held his breath. A score of violins were singing in his ears; and a score of other instruments that he could not name, crashed over his head, and brought him to his feet in ecstasy. Before a detaining hand could stop him, he was out in the aisle, his eyes on the blue-and-gold pipes from which seemed to come those wondrous sounds. Then his gaze fell on the man and on the banks of keys; and with soft steps he crept along the aisle and up the stairs to the organ-loft.
For long minutes he stood motionless, listening; then the music died into silence and the minister rose for the invocation. It was a boy"s voice, and not a man"s, however, that broke the pause.
"Oh, sir, please," it said, "would you--could you teach ME to do that?"
The organist choked over a cough, and the soprano reached out and drew David to her side, whispering something in his ear. The minister, after a dazed silence, bowed his head; while down in the Holly pew an angry man and a sorely mortified woman vowed that, before David came to church again, he should have learned some things.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PUZZLING "DOS" AND "DON"TS"
With the coming of Monday arrived a new life for David--a curious life full of "don"ts" and "dos." David wondered sometimes why all the pleasant things were "don"ts" and all the unpleasant ones "dos." Corn to be hoed, weeds to be pulled, woodboxes to be filled; with all these it was "do this, do this, do this." But when it came to lying under the apple trees, exploring the brook that ran by the field, or even watching the bugs and worms that one found in the earth--all these were "don"ts."
As to Farmer Holly--Farmer Holly himself awoke to some new experiences that Monday morning. One of them was the difficulty in successfully combating the cheerfully expressed opinion that weeds were so pretty growing that it was a pity to pull them up and let them all wither and die. Another was the equally great difficulty of keeping a small boy at useful labor of any sort in the face of the attractions displayed by a pa.s.sing cloud, a blossoming shrub, or a bird singing on a tree-branch.
In spite of all this, however, David so evidently did his best to carry out the "dos" and avoid the "don"ts," that at four o"clock that first Monday he won from the stern but would-be-just Farmer Holly his freedom for the rest of the day; and very gayly he set off for a walk. He went without his violin, as there was the smell of rain in the air; but his face and his step and the very swing of his arms were singing (to David) the joyous song of the morning before. Even yet, in spite of the vicissitudes of the day"s work, the whole world, to David"s homesick, lonely little heart, was still caroling that blessed "You"re wanted, you"re wanted, you"re wanted!"
And then he saw the crow.
David knew crows. In his home on the mountain he had had several of them for friends. He had learned to know and answer their calls. He had learned to admire their wisdom and to respect their moods and tempers.
He loved to watch them. Especially he loved to see the great birds cut through the air with a wide sweep of wings, so alive, so gloriously free!
But this crow--
This crow was not cutting through the air with a wide sweep of wing. It was in the middle of a cornfield, and it was rising and falling and flopping about in a most extraordinary fashion. Very soon David, running toward it, saw why. By a long leather strip it was fastened securely to a stake in the ground.
"Oh, oh, oh!" exclaimed David, in sympathetic consternation. "Here, you just wait a minute. I"ll fix it."
With confident celerity David whipped out his jackknife to cut the thong; but he found then that to "fix it" and to say he would "fix it"
were two different matters.
The crow did not seem to recognize in David a friend. He saw in him, apparently, but another of the stone-throwing, gun-shooting, torturing humans who were responsible for his present hateful captivity. With beak and claw and wing, therefore, he fought this new evil that had come presumedly to torment; and not until David had hit upon the expedient of taking off his blouse, and throwing it over the angry bird, could the boy get near enough to accomplish his purpose. Even then David had to leave upon the slender leg a twist of leather.
A moment later, with a whir of wings and a frightened squawk that quickly turned into a surprised caw of triumphant rejoicing, the crow soared into the air and made straight for a distant tree-top. David, after a minute"s glad surveying of his work, donned his blouse again and resumed his walk.
It was almost six o"clock when David got back to the Holly farmhouse.
In the barn doorway sat Perry Larson.
"Well, sonny," the man greeted him cheerily, "did ye get yer weedin"
done?"
"Y--yes," hesitated David. "I got it done; but I didn"t like it."
""T is kinder hot work."
"Oh, I didn"t mind that part," returned David. "What I didn"t like was pulling up all those pretty little plants and letting them die."
"Weeds--"pretty little plants"!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the man. "Well, I"ll be jiggered!"
"But they WERE pretty," defended David, reading aright the scorn in Perry Larson"s voice. "The very prettiest and biggest there were, always. Mr. Holly showed me, you know,--and I had to pull them up."
"Well, I"ll be jiggered!" muttered Perry Larson again.