"Dance me out on the porch through the window and tell me, Sam," I demanded.
"Not when this music and Julia and Pink hold out like that, Bettykin.
It"ll be bad enough when you do hear it," answered Sam, laughing down at me with the same wide-mouthed smile he had always used on me when holding something over my head and making me reach up for it. "Besides, it has been two whole weeks since I"ve--had you," he added, and again his strong arms cradled as well as guided. Getting back into some people"s atmosphere is like recovering the use of a lung a person had temporarily lost; breathing improves. I"ve always breathed easily in Sam"s friendship. That was why I could dance with him as I did even up to the last bar of the music. Then he swung me out through one of the long windows on to the porch under the dusky spring starlight.
"I hate to tell you, Betty, though I have walked a five-mile blister on my left heel in these dancing-shoes just to break the news to you," Sam answered my repeated demand to be told his "worse."
"Oh, Sam, a real blister?" I exclaimed, losing sight of the threatened catastrophe at the thought of his blistered heel. I knew how tender Sam"s feet were, for I had doctored them since infancy. I used to pay tribute in the form of apples and tea-cakes for the privilege of binding up his ten and twelve year old wounded toes, and I suppose I hadn"t really got over my liking for thus operating.
"Oh, not all from the walk," answered Sam, as he smiled down on me consolingly. "I"ve got a brand-new mule and I nearly plowed him and myself to death to-day. I don"t seem to be well heeled enough to plow and dance both."
"What did you plow, Sam?" I came close up to his shoulder so that the bit of woods in his b.u.t.tonhole grazed my cheek as my head drooped with an embarra.s.sed hope.
"I plowed for the early potatoes on the south slope and--and--"
"And what?"
"I"m thinking of growing a crop of--hollyhocks, if I get time to plant "em."
"Where did you plow, Sam?"
"In spots all over the place."
"Where?"
"Well, then, about a hundred feet south by southwest from my door-step, if you must have it. Great sakes! do you think this heel is going to swell, Betty, from your deep experience?"
"I--I"m so happy, Sam," I faltered, with more emotion than I knew Sam liked, but I think all apologies ought to be met enthusiastically at the front gate, whether they intended to come in or not.
"Well, I"m not--I"m blistered." He again plaintively referred to his sufferings which I had forgotten in my joy at having him back in the bonds of friendship, even if slightly damaged.
"Come over home with me and I"ll plaster it so it won"t break or swell.
You know I know how," I answered, eagerly.
"Cold cream and an old handkerchief like you used to keep. Um--um! the thought is good, Betty," he answered, as he stood on his left foot for a second and then lifted it as if he were a huge crane.
"Come, now, so I can get the cream before mother goes to bed," I said, with energy; and I led him, faintly remonstrating, through the Bankhead back gate that opens opposite ours.
Mother was glad to see Sam, heel and all, and sympathetically supplied the cream and handkerchief and a needle and thread without laying down the mat she was putting in a difficult hundred-and-fifty round on.
Mother is so used to Sam that she forgets that he is not her fifth or sixth son, and she treats him accordingly. After she had given us all the surgical necessities she retired into the living-room by the lamp to put her mind entirely on the mat, in perfect confidence that I could do the right thing by my wounded neighbor. And I did.
First, as I had always done, I bathed Sam"s great big pink-and-white foot in hot water and then in cold, sitting on the floor with a bath-towel in my lap to get at it while Sam wriggled and squirmed at both hot and cold just as he had always done.
"Go on, boil me," he said, as I poured the last flash of heat from the tea-kettle on the floor beside me.
"Now a frost," he groaned, as I dashed ice-water out of a pitcher on the blister and lifted the foot into my lap on the bath-towel.
"If you touch the bottom of my foot I"ll yell "murder,"" he said as I began to pat all around the blister in the gentlest and most considerate manner possible. I knew he meant what he said, so I was careful as I wound and clipped and sewed.
"I never fixed as nice a one as that for you before," I said, with pride, as he drew on his silk sock with its huge hole over as neat a bandage as it was possible for human hands to accomplish. "I love to tie you up, Sam."
"Thank you, and I return the compliment," answered Sam, both smouldering and smiling down at me as if he were saying something to tease me. "And now as a reward for your kindness I am going to knock you down with some news." And as he spoke we went on out to the porch, Sam walking like a new man.
"Oh, the "worse" thing! I had forgotten about that. Tell me, Sam," I answered, as I leaned against one of the pillars of the porch and he seated himself on the railing beside me.
"Well," said Sam, slowly, "this is not worse for you, just for me; that is, at the present speaking, with nothing but the hay-loft handy. I don"t know just how I"ll manage."
"What?"
"Pete," answered Sam.
"What about Peter? Oh, Sam, Peter isn"t ill, is he?" And I reached out and clutched Sam"s arm frantically. It takes alarm to test the depths of one"s affection for a friend. I found mine for Peter deeper than I knew.
If anything had happened, Sam would know it first. "Don"t be cruel to me, Sam." And I shook his arm.
"Forgive me, Betty," said Sam, quickly. "Pete"s all right and he"ll be here to demonstrate it to you just as soon as I can get a stall built for him out at The Briers."
"At The Briers? Peter?" I gasped.
"Even at that humble abode, Betty, whose latch-string is always out to friends," answered Sam. And I felt his arm stiffen under my fingers in a way for which I could see no reason.
"Just as I was going to begin my garden," I wailed. And Sam"s stiff arm limbered again and made a motion toward my hair that I dodged. "What does he want?"
"Direct life. I can give it to him," answered Sam. "At least that is what he asked for in his letter to me. I don"t know what he will request in the one I wager you get by the morning mail."
"Why, I had been writing him all that he needed of that, and we are going to be so busy gardening, how can we help him live it also? Peter does require so much affectionate attention." I positively wailed this to Sam, in the most ungenerous spirit.
"Betty dear," said Sam, gently, as he puffed at a little brier which he had subst.i.tuted for the adorable cob on account of the formality of Sue"s dance, which we could hear going on comfortably without us, beyond the privet hedge whose buds were just beginning to give forth a delicious tang, "Peter is a great, queer kind of sensitive plant that it may be we will have to help cultivate. You know that for several years his poems have really got across in great style with the writing world, and I"m proud of him and--I--I--well, I love him. Suppose, just suppose, dear, that Keats had had a great hulking farmer like me to stand by.
Don"t you think that maybe the world would have had some grown-man stuff from him that would have counted? I always have thought of that when I looked at old Pete and promised myself to back him up with my brawn and nerve when he needed it. Why, in the "13 game it was Pete"s flaming face up on the corner of the stadium that put the ginger in me to carry across as I did. Yes, I am going to put Pete"s hand to my plow and his legs under old b.u.t.tercup at milking-time if it kills us both, if that is what he needs or you have made him think he needs."
"Oh, Sam, I"m ashamed! I"m ashamed of not wanting precious Peter in my garden. He can have half of all of it. You know I love him dearly. I"ll work all day with him and attend to all his blisters and get everybody to give him work and help him."
"Well, I don"t believe I"d do all that to him, Betty," answered Sam, with a laugh. Then his eyes glinted past mine for a second. "And say, Betty, you know my blisters are kind of--kind of old friends to you; Pete"s might not have so many--many landmarks for you to work by," he added, as he knocked the ashes carefully out of the brier and picked up his hat. "Let"s go for one fox, and then I"ll trot on out to my patch."
"I"ll get Tolly to run you out in Redwheels while I do my promised dances, and then I"ll be out early in the morning to help plan about Peter. And--and, Sam, do you want to--to give me that garden?"
"Everything that is is yours, Bettykin," he answered as we went down the steps out on to the springy greening gra.s.s and across to the back gate.
Some friends taste like bread and b.u.t.ter and peach preserves. Sam does and he"s a peach.
When I got back to the Bankheads" everybody was wondering where we had been, and as Sam and Tolly got right off in the car without answering any questions, I was left to explain about Sam"s foot and Peter. I paid no attention at all to Billy Robertson when he said his foot was blistered, too; but I told them how beautiful Peter was, and how distinguished, and all about the poor young Keats that most of them hadn"t grieved over since their Junior years at school, telling it all in such an eloquent way that Julia"s great blue eyes filled with tears, and I saw I could depend on her to be nice to our friend.
"I knew most poets were kind of calves, but I didn"t know they had to milk their poetry out of a genuine cow," said Pink, with a vulgar attempt to be funny, at which n.o.body laughed, not even Julia, and she is almost too tall and big to dance with anybody but Pink. She and Edith and Sue and I forgot to save him the dances we had promised him; and he had to dance with other girls he didn"t like so much, until we all went home in time to meet the sun coming down over Paradise Ridge with his dinner-pail.
Then for five days it rained--heavy, determined, soggy drops; but the next morning introduced one of those wily, flirtatious days that come along about the last week in April in Tennessee. I awoke to the sound of sobbing wind and weeping clouds in which I had no confidence, and succeeded in convincing mother that it would be a beautiful day for me to go out to see Sam and Byrd and Mammy. She sent Byrd half a jelly-cake and a bag of bananas, and I got a jar of jam for him when I went down in the cellar to exhume Grandmother Nelson"s garden-book. A bottle went to Mammy, which I suspect of being a kind of liniment that mother had to learn to make on account of the number of the boys and their bruises.
Eph was a tragedy over my taking out Redwheels, and I am glad that neither he nor I could prevision the plight the shiny new runabout would be in before it was many hours older. With a stoical reserve he loaded in the two young lilacs that were in the exact state of sappiness Grandmother Nelson had recommended for transplanting, but his calmness nearly gave way when I had him put in a dandy old rake and spade and hoe that I had found in my raid on the cellar.
"Please ma"am, Miss Betty, don"t go and leave ole mistis"s gyarden tools out in no rain," he entreated, plaintively.