XIII
THE PLAYMATES
Early that autumn it became expedient that Mrs. Orde and Bobby should visit Grandfather and Grandmother Orde at Redding, while Mr. Orde pushed through certain heavy cutting in the woods. Bobby took with him his two fonts of "real" type--one a parting present from Mr. Daggett--and his Flobert Rifle.
The old Orde homestead covered about three acres of ground. The city had grown up around it. The house was a three-storied stone structure, built fifty years before, steep of roof, gabled, low-ceilinged, old-fashioned and delightful. Bobby loved it and its explorations, from the cellar with its bins of vegetables and fruit and its barrels of mola.s.ses, cider and vinegar, to its attic with its black, mysterious, "behind the tank."
And the three acres were a joy. Outside the picket fence were the shade trees, their trunks nearly two feet in diameter. Then stretched the wide deep lawn, now turning dull with the approach of winter and strewn with dead leaves. It supported the fir which Bobby always called the "Christmas Tree," and under whose wide low branches he could crawl as into a dusty, cobwebby house; and the little birch tree with its silver bark; and the big round lilac bush, now bare, but in summer the fragrant haunt of birds and b.u.t.terflies innumerable; and the round flower bed; and the horse-chestnut tree whose inedible brown-and-yellow nuts were just right to throw or to string into necklaces; and close by the front gate the Big Tree. Bobby firmly believed this the largest tree in the world. It was a silver maple so great about the trunk that Bobby could trot about it as around a race-track. At twelve feet it branched in two, each division bigger than any shade tree in town. The branches were held together by a logging chain. Above them were more divisions and more and yet more, ever rising higher and finer, until at last, far over the tops of the maples, of the elms, even of the hickory at the side of the house, above the highest point of the highest gable of the house itself, it feathered out in a delicate, wide lacework that seemed fairly to brush the sky. Bobby"s realization of height ceased short of the reality. Beyond that he was breathless, as one is breathless at too great speed. The big tree was full of orioles" and vireos" nests, old and recent, representing the building of many summers. Out behind was the orchard, a dozen st.u.r.dy old apple trees, now pa.s.sing the meridian of their powers.
Here Bobby laboured hard with hammers and a few old boards until he had constructed a shield on which to tack his target. He leaned the affair against the thickest and tallest woodpile, placed a saw-horse for a rest at fifteen yards from his mark and brought out his Flobert Rifle.
At the third snap of the little weapon, he looked up to discover a row of interested heads lined up along the top of the high board fence that const.i.tuted the Ordes" eastern boundary. He pretended not to see but shot again, very deliberately.
"Say," shouted a voice, "I"m coming over!"
Bobby looked up once more. One of the heads had given place to a very st.u.r.dy back and legs suspended on the Orde side of the fence. The legs wriggled frantically, the toes scratched at the boards.
"Aw, drop!" said another voice, and the second head produced a hand and arm which proceeded calmly to rap the knuckles of the one who dangled.
The latter let go. Finding himself uninjured by the three-foot fall, he looked up wrathfully at his late a.s.sailant. That youth was in the act of swinging his own legs over. The first-comer, with a gurgle of joy, seized the other by both feet and tugged with all his strength. His victim kicked frantically, tried to hang on, had to let go and came down all in a heap on top of his tormentor. Immediately they clinched and began to roll over and over. Bobby stared, vastly astonished.
Before he could collect his thoughts a third figure was dangling down the boards. This one was feminine. It displayed a good deal of long black leg, of short dull plaid skirt, a reefer jacket, two pigtails and a knit blue tam-o"-shanter. Further observation was impossible, for it dropped without hesitation and the moment it struck ground pounced on the two combatants. Bobby saw those gentlemen seized, shaken and slapped with hurricane vigour. The next he knew, three flushed visitors were descending on him with ingratiating grins.
The first, he of the pounded knuckles, was a short, st.u.r.dy, very fair-haired youth with a wide red-lipped mouth, wide and winning blue eyes and a bit of a swagger in his walk. He was about Bobby"s age. The second, he of the pulled feet, was brown-haired, slightly stooped, rather nervous-faced, but with the drollest twinkle to his brown eyes and the quaintest quirk to his sensitive lips. He was about twelve years old. The third, the girl, was tawny-haired, gray-eyed. Her face was almost the exact shape of the hearts on valentines; her nose turned up just enough to be impudent; her freckles, for she was indubitably freckled, were just wide enough apart to emphasize the inquiring, unabashed self-reliance of her eyes. Her figure was long and lank but moved with a freedom and a confidence that indicated her full control of it. She was probably just short of her "teens.
"Gorry!" said the first boy, "is that gun yours?"
"Let"s see it," said the second.
"It"s a beauty, isn"t it? Look at the gold mounting," said the girl.
"Look out how you handle it!" warned Bobby.
"Why, is it loaded?" asked Number One.
"It doesn"t matter whether it"s loaded or not!" insisted Bobby stoutly.
"It ought never to be pointed toward anybody."
"Oh, shucks!" said Number One, reaching for the rifle.
But Bobby interposed.
"You mustn"t touch it unless you handle it right," said he.
"Shucks," repeated the light-haired boy, still reaching.
Bobby, his heart beating a little more rapidly than usual, thrust himself in front of the other.
"Ho!" cried the other, the joy of battle lighting up his dancing blue eyes. "Want to fight? I can lick you with one hand tied behind me."
"This is my yard," said Bobby, "and that is my gun! And besides I didn"t ask you to come in here, anyway."
"Well, I can lick you, anyway," replied the other with unanswerable logic.
The girl had been watching them narrowly, her hands on her hips, her head on one side. Now she interfered.
"Johnnie, come off!" said she sharply. "No fighting! You"re bigger than he is, and it _is_ his yard and his gun, and, anyway, he isn"t afraid of you."
Johnnie looked at her doubtfully, then turned to Bobby as to a companion under tyranny.
"That"s just like her," he complained. "She always spoils things! You ain"t smaller than I am, anyhow. Never mind, we"ll try it sometime when she ain"t around. Let"s see your old gun. I won"t point it at anybody.
Show me how she works."
Bobby, a little stiffly at first, for he could not understand fighting without animosity, showed them how it worked.
"Let me try her," urged Johnnie.
But Bobby would not until he had asked his mother, for permission to shoot had been obtained only at expense of a very solemn promise.
"Fraidy!" jeered Johnnie, "tied to his mammy"s ap.r.o.n-strings!"
Bobby flushed deeply, but stood his ground.
"It"s my gun," he pointed out again. "If you don"t like my yard, you needn"t come into it."
"Oh, all right, we don"t want to stay in your old yard," replied Johnnie. "Come on, kids."
"Johnnie, come back here," commanded the girl sharply. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! He"s perfectly right! Suppose one of us should get shot!"
"I"ll get papa to shoot with us, if he will," promised Bobby.
"Johnny, you come back here!" ordered the girl in more peremptory tones.
"You come back or--or--_I"ll sit on your head again!_"
Johnny came back, entirely good-natured, his attractive blue eyes glancing here and there in restless activity.
"Oh, all right," said he. "Let"s play robbers and policemen."
"We"ve left Carrie over the fence," insisted the girl.
"Bother Carrie! Why don"t she climb?"
"You come over with us," the girl suggested to Bobby. "You"re Bobby Orde, of course, we know. I"m May Fowler. I live in the big square house over that way. The boy with the yellow hair is Johnny English. The other one is Morton Drake. Come on."
"Where is it?" asked Bobby.
"Just over the fence. That"s where the Englishes live. Haven"t you been there yet?"
"No," said Bobby.