That was all.
Little Crow dreaded that walk to the gate more than all the rest of the ordeal. And yet, in a way, it gave him courage. He was at least worth while, and with time and patience he would win back the lost faith of the friends who were kind to him even while they could not trust him.
They were, indeed, kind and generous in many ways, both to him and his unworthy mother.
Fig-time was soon nearly over, and, of course, Crow expected a dismissal; but it was Mr. Cary himself who set these fears at rest by proposing to him to come daily to blacken his boots and to keep the garden-walk in order for regular wages.
"But," he warned him, in closing, "don"t you show your face here with a pocket on you. If your heavy pants have any in "em, rip "em out." And then he added, severely: "You"ve been a very bad boy."
"Ya.s.sir," answered Crow, "I know I is. I been a heap wusser boy"n you knowed I was, too."
"What"s that you say, sir?"
Crow repeated it. And then he added, for full confession:
"I picked green figs heap o" days, and kivered "em up wid ripe ones, an"
sol" "em to a white "oman fur perserves." There was something desperate in the way he blurted it all out.
"The d.i.c.kens you did! And what are you telling me for?"
He eyed the boy keenly as he put the question.
At this Crow fairly wailed aloud: ""Caze I ain"t gwine do it no mo"."
And throwing his arms against the door-frame he buried his face in them, and he sobbed as if his little heart would break.
For a moment old Mr. Cary seemed to have lost his voice, and then he said, in a voice quite new to Crow:
"I don"t believe you will, sir--I don"t believe you will." And in a minute he said, still speaking gently: "Come here, boy."
Still weeping aloud, Crow obeyed.
"Tut, tut! No crying!" he began. "Be a man--be a man. And if you stick to it, before Christmas comes, we"ll see about those pockets, and you can walk into the new year with your head up. But look sharp! Good-bye, now!"
For the first time since the boy"s fall Mr. Cary did not follow him to the gate. Maybe this was the beginning of trust. Slight a thing as it was, the boy took comfort in it.
At last it was Christmas eve. Crow was on the back "gallery" putting a final polish on a pair of boots. He was nearly done, and his heart was beginning to sink, when the old lady came and stood near him. There was a very hopeful twinkle in her eye as she said, presently: "I wonder what our little s...o...b..ack, who has been trying so hard to be good, would like to have for his Christmas gift?"
But Crow only blinked while he polished the faster.
"Tell me, Solomon," she insisted. "If you had one wish to-day, what would it be?"
The boy wriggled nervously. And then he said:
"You knows, lady. Needle--an" thrade--an"--an"--you knows, lady.
Pockets."
"Well, pockets it shall be. Come into my room when you get through."
Old Mrs. Cary sat beside the fire reading as he went in. Seeing him, she nodded, smiling, towards the bed, upon which Crow saw a brand-new suit of clothes--coat, vest, and breeches--all spread out in a row.
"There, my boy," she said; "there are your pockets."
Crow had never in all his life owned a full new suit of clothes. All his "new" things had been second-hand, and for a moment he could not quite believe his eyes; but he went quickly to the bed and began pa.s.sing his hands over the clothes. Then he ventured to take up the vest--and to turn it over. And now he began to find pockets.
"Three pockets in de ves"--two in de pants--an"--an" fo", no five, no six--six pockets in de coat!"
He giggled nervously as he thrust his little black fingers into one and then another. And then, suddenly overcome with a sense of the situation, he turned to Mrs. Cary, and, in a voice that trembled a little, said:
"Is you sho" you ain"t "feerd to trus" me wid all deze pockets, lady?"
It doesn"t take a small boy long to slip into a new suit of clothes. And when a ragged urchin disappeared behind the head of the great old "four-poster" to-day, it seemed scarcely a minute before a trig, "tailor-made boy" strutted out from the opposite side, hands deep in pockets--breathing hard.
As Solomon Crow strode up and down the room, radiant with joy, he seemed for the moment quite unconscious of any one"s presence. But presently he stopped, looked involuntarily upward a minute, as if he felt himself observed from above. Then, turning to the old people, who stood together before the mantel, delightedly watching him, he said:
"Bet you my angel twin ain"t ashamed, ef he"s a-lookin" down on me to-day."
THE TWO TIMS
THE TWO TIMS
As the moon sent a white beam through the little square window of old Uncle Tim"s cabin, it formed a long panel of light upon its smoke-stained wall, bringing into clear view an old banjo hanging upon a rusty nail. Nothing else in the small room was clearly visible. Although it was Christmas eve, there was no fire upon the broad hearth, and from the open door came the odor of honeysuckles and of violets. Winter is often in Louisiana only a name given by courtesy to the months coming between autumn and spring, out of respect to the calendar; and so it was this year.
Sitting in the open doorway, his outline lost in the deep shadows of the vine, was old Uncle Tim, while, upon the floor at his side lay little Tim, his grandson. The boy lay so still that in the dim half-light he seemed a part of the floor furnishings, which were, in fact, an old cot, two crippled stools, a saddle, and odds and ends of broken harness, and bits of rope.
Neither the old man nor the boy had spoken for a long time, and while they gazed intently at the old banjo hanging in the panel of light, the thoughts of both were tinged with sadness. The grandfather was nearly seventy years old, and little Tim was but ten; but they were great chums. The little boy"s father had died while he was too young to remember, leaving little Tim to a step-mother, who brought him to his grandfather"s home, where he had been ever since, and the attachment quickly formed between the two had grown and strengthened with the years.
Old Uncle Tim was very poor, and his little cabin was small and shabby; and yet neither hunger nor cold had ever come in an unfriendly way to visit it. The tall plantation smoke-house threw a friendly shadow over the tiny hut every evening just before the sun went down--a shadow that seemed a promise at close of each day that the poor home should not be forgotten. Nor was it. Some days the old man was able to limp into the field and cut a load of cabbages for the hands, or to prepare seed potatoes for planting, so that, as he expressed it, "each piece "ll have one eye ter grow wid an" another ter look on an" see dat everything goes right."
And then Uncle Tim was brimful of a good many valuable things with which he was very generous--_advice_, for instance.
He could advise with wisdom upon any number of subjects, such as just at what time of the moon to make soap so that it would "set" well, how to find a missing shoat, or the right spot to dig for water.
These were all valuable services; yet cabbages were not always ready to be cut, potato-planting was not always in season. Often for weeks not a hog would stray off. Only once in a decade a new well was wanted; and as to soap-making, it could occur only once during each moon at most.
It is true that between times Uncle Tim gave copious warnings _not_ to make soap, which was quite a saving of effort and good material.
But whether he was cutting seed potatoes, or advising, or only playing on his banjo, as he did incessantly between times, his rations came to the little cabin with clock-like regularity. They came just as regularly as old Tim _had worked_ when he was young, as regularly as little Tim _would_ when he should grow up, as it is a pity daily rations cannot always come to such feeble ones as, whether in their first or second childhood, are able to render only the service of willingness.
And so we see that the two Tims, as they were often called, had no great anxieties as to their living, although they were very poor.
The only thing in the world that the old man held as a personal possession was his old banjo. It was the one thing the little boy counted on as a precious future property. Often, at all hours of the day or evening, old Tim could be seen sitting before the cabin, his arms around the boy, who stood between his knees, while, with eyes closed, he ran his withered fingers over the strings, picking out the tunes that best recalled the stories of olden days that he loved to tell into the little fellow"s ear. And sometimes, holding the banjo steady, he would invite little Tim to try his tiny hands at picking the strings.