"Do they fill the box?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "Shall I nail the cover on?"
"Oh, don"t _nail_ it," she protested, shuddering. "We won"t put any cover on, I think; at least--not yet."
Long before Dr. Primrose died he had planned with Let.i.tia what she should do without him. His home then would be hers, and she was to sell it and become a school-mistress, the one vocation for which his cla.s.sical companionship had seemed to fit her and to which her own book-loving mind inclined. Left alone then she tried vainly to dispose of her little property, living meanwhile with us next door to it, and gradually, chiefly with my own a.s.sistance and the mater"s, packing and storing the few possessions from which she could not bring herself to part. To Editor b.u.t.ters she presented an old edition of _King Lear_; to me, not one, but many of her father"s best-loved books, which she fancied might be of charm and use to me.
Of relatives across the sea Let.i.tia knew little beyond a few strange names she had heard her father speak, and in her native and his adopted land she had no kinsfolk she had ever seen save a distant cousin as far removed from her in miles as blood, and remembered chiefly as a marvellously brocaded waistcoat with pearl b.u.t.tons, to which she had raised her timorous eyes on his only visit to her father years ago.
Apparently, this little girl had gone no farther up. She could never remember a face above that saffron vest, and, what was still more remarkable, considering her shyness, was never certain even of the knees and boots that must have been somewhere below.
Now the yellow waistcoat, whose name was George--Cousin George McLean--had a daughter Dove, or Cousin Dove, as Let.i.tia called her, concerning whom we always used to smile and wonder, so that in course of time myths had grown up about the girl whom none of us had ever seen and of whom we had no notions save the idle fancies suggested by her odd, sweet, unforgettable little name.
The mater had always said that she must be a quaint and demure little thing--in short, dovelike.
That, my father argued, was quite unlikely, since he had never known a child to mature in keeping with a foolish, flowery, or pious Christian name. He had never known a human Lily to grow up tall and pale and slender, or a Violet to be shy and modest and pet.i.te, or a Faith or Hope or Patience to be singularly spiritual and mild. For example, there was Charity B----, of Gra.s.sy Ford, who hinted that heaven was Presbyterian, and that she knew folks, not a thousand miles off, either, who would never be--Presbyterians, my father said; and so, he added, it was dollars to dough-nuts that Cousin Dove was not at all dovelike, but a freckled and red-haired, roistering, tomboy little thing.
Let.i.tia had a notion, she scarce knew how or why, that Cousin Dove was not birdlike, but like a flower, she said--a white-and-pink-cheeked British type with fluffy yellow hair and a fondness for candy, trinkets, and even boys.
As for myself, I had two notions as a boy--one for the forum, the other for my cell. The first was simply that Cousin Dove was pale and tall and frigid beyond endurance. I could see her, I declared, going to church somewhere with two little black-and-gilt books held limply in her hand--and she had green eyes, I said. On the other hand, privately, I kept a far different portrait in mind--a gilded one, rather a golden vision by way of a.n.a.logy, I suppose, for was not Dove the veritable daughter of a gorgeous, saffron-hued brocade? From yellow waistcoat to cloth of gold is but a step for a bookish boy. She was tall and stately, I told myself; and as I saw her then, her mediaeval robe clung lovingly about her, plain but edged with pearls (seed-pearls I think they called them in the old romances), and she had a necklace of larger pearls, loops of them hanging a golden cross upon her bosom. Her face was radiant, her eyes blue, her hair golden, and she wore a coronal of meadow flowers. I do not mean that I really fancied Cousin Dove was so in flesh and blood, but such to me was the spirit of her gentle name, the spell of which had conjured up for me in some rare moment of youthful fancy this Lady of the Marigolds, this Christmas-card St. Dove.
In the midst of Let.i.tia"s sad uprooting of her old garden, as she called the only home she had ever known, a letter came from the yellow waistcoat conveying surprising news. Dove herself was leaving for Gra.s.sy Ford to persuade her cousin to return with her and dwell henceforth with the McLeans. A thrill ran through our little household at the thought of that approaching maid of dreams. Now we should know, the mater said, that the girl was dovelike. "Humpf!" was my father"s comment. Let.i.tia trembled, she said, with a return of her childish awe of the yellow waistcoat. I myself was stirred--I was still in teens, and dreaded girls I had never met.
On the July morning that was to bring her, I rose early, I remember, and took down my fishing-rod.
"Not a bad idea, either," remarked my father, as he stood watching me.
"Still," he added, "there"s no hurry, Bertram. She"ll want to change her dress first, you know."
I made no answer.
"It"s a bit selfish though," he continued, "to be carrying her off this way the very first morning."
"Mother," I said, coolly, "will you put up some sandwiches? I may not be back till dark."
"Why, Bertram! Going fishing on the day--"
"I don"t really see what that"s got to do with it," I interrupted. "Must I give up all my fun because a mere girl"s coming?"
"No, Bertram," said my father, in his kindest tones. "Go, by all means, and here [he was rummaging in the bookcase drawer]--here, my son, take these along, these old field-gla.s.ses. They may come handy. You can see our yard, you know, from the top of Sun Dial--and the front porch.
Splendid fishing up on Sun Dial--"
But I was off.
"Bertram! Bertram!" called my mother, but I did not heed her. I stopped at a grocery for cheese and crackers, and strode off to the farthest brook--farthest, I mean, from Sun Dial. Troublesome Brook, it was called, not so much for the spring freshets that spread it over the lower meadows as for the law-suits it had flowed through in its fickle course between two town-ships and good farm-lands. Under its willows I cooled my wrath and disentangled my knotted tackle. The stream flowed silently. There was no wind, no sound, indeed, but the drone of insects; all about me was a world in reverie, mid-summer-green save for the white and blue above and the yellow wings of vagrant b.u.t.terflies and the sun golden on the meadows. Many a time I have fished in that very spot.
It is a likely one for idleness and for larger fish than any I ever caught there, and waiting for them as a boy I used to read in the little pocket-fitting books I dote on to this day--they fit the hand so warmly, unlike their bigger brethren, who at the most give you three-fingers"
courtesy. There on that same moist bank I have sounded deeper pools than Troublesome"s, and have come home laden with unlooked-for spoil that glistens still in a certain time-worn upper creel of mine.
But I had no book that day, having forgotten one in my hurried parting, and I had not yet mastered that other tranquil art of packing little bowls with minced brown meditation--so I was restless. The world seemed but half awake. I chafed at the stillness. Before, I had found it pleasant; now it nettled me. I frowned impatiently at my cork dozing on the waters. I roused it savagely, and gazed up at the sun.
"Queer," I said to myself. "Queer it should be so late this morning"--but I did not mean the sun.
Trains from the West glide into Gra.s.sy Ford on a long curve following the trend of Troublesome and the pastoral valley through which it runs.
It is a descending grade down which the cars plunge roaring as though they had gathered speed rather than slackened it, and as though they would run the gantlet of the ugly buildings and red freight-cars that, from the windows of the train, are all one sees of our lovely town. Now the Black Arrow was the pride of the X., Y. & Z., and all that summer had arrived in the nick of its schedule time.
"Funny," said I to myself, looking at the sun. "Funny it should be late this morning."
I pulled up my hook and cast it in again. My cork shook itself--yawned, I was about to say, and settled down again as complacently as before.
Leisurely the ripples widened and were effaced among the shadows.
What right had any one to a.s.sume that I had not long planned to go a-fishing that very morning?
I pulled up my line again.
Even a father should not presume on the kinship of his son.
I dropped my bait into a likelier hole.
Besides, I was not a child any longer, to be bullyragged by older people. Had I not gone fishing a hundred times?--yet no one had ever deemed it odd before.
My float drifted against a snag. I jerked it back.
It was the only unpleasant trait my father had.
Again I squinted at the sun. "Queer," said I, "it should be so late this morning." I pulled up my--
Hark! _That_ was a whistle! There would be just time to reach the open if I ran!
I ran.
Breathless, I made the meadow fence and clambered up--and saw her train go by. Yes, I--I waved to it. Suppose she had seen me! I was only some truant farm-boy on a rail.
Her train ran by me in a cloud of dust and clattered on among the freight-cars. I heard the rumble die away, but the bell kept ringing.
The brakeman, doubtless, would help her off--Let.i.tia would be waiting with out-stretched arms--girls are such fools for kissing--and then father would take her bag, and the surrey would whisk her off to the mater, bareheaded at the gate. Rails are sharp sitting; let us look at the cork again.
It was calm as ever and nestling against a snag. I pulled up my line till the bait emerged, limp, unnibbled. Savagely I swished it back--it caught in the willows. I pulled. It would not budge. In a sudden rage I whipped out my pocket-knife, severed the cord as high above me as I could reach, and wrapping the remnant about my rod, turned townward.
A dozen yards from the faithless stream, I remembered my cheese and crackers, and went back for them, and started off again, purposeless.
Never before had vagabondage on a golden morning seemed irksome to me.
It was not that I wished to see Cousin Dove, but merely that I had no desire to do anything else--a different matter. Only one way was really barred to me, since in point of pride I could not go homeward till the sun sank, yet all other ways seemed shorn somehow of their old delights, I knew so well every stick and stone of them.
While I was dallying thus, irresolute, I thought of "The Pide Bull" and my old friend b.u.t.ters. It was inspiration. In twenty minutes (mindful of my father"s eyes meanwhile) I had reached the shop.
"h.e.l.lo," he growled, as I appeared. "You here again?"
"Yep."
"What do you want?"
"Nothing."