Just then the cry was raised that she was coming, and the Magna Charta was hastily folded up, without receiving the signatures.
Aunt Kate, who was very observant, suspected at once that the children had been "up to something."
"What have you youngsters been up to now, while we were away?" she demanded.
There was a thick silence. Mrs. Watson asked the children to answer their Auntie.
Mary it was who braved the storm. "We"ve been drawing up a list of things for you," she said steadily.
Aunt Kate had seen signs of rebellion, and had got to the place where she was not surprised at anything they did.
"Give it here," she said.
"Wait till it"s signed," Pearl said. "It"s Charta, Aunt Kate," she went on, "like "King John to sign."
"I didn"t hear about it. Pearl explained.
"Let me see it, anyway."
Pearl gave her the doc.u.ment, and she retired to her room with it to look it over.
"Say, Pearl," said Jimmy, "go in there and get out my catapult, will you? She may sign it and then cutup rough."
There was no more said about it for several days, but Aunt Kate was decidedly better, though she still declared she did not sleep at night, and Pearl was determined to convince her that she did. Aunt Kate was a profound snorer. Pearl, who was the only one who had ever heard her, in trying to explain it to the other children, said that it was just like some one pulling a trunk across the room on a bare floor to see how they would like it in this corner, and then, when they get it over here, they don"t like it a bit, so they pull it back again; "and besides that," Pearl said, "she whistles comin" back and grinds her teeth, and after all that she gets up in the mornin" and tells Ma she heard every hour strike. She couldn"t hear the clock strike anyway, and her kickin" up such a fuss as she is, but I"m going to stop her if I can; she"s our aunt, and we"ve got to do our best for her, and, besides, there"s lots of nice things about her."
The next morning Pearl was very solicitous about how her aunt had slept.
"Not a bit better," Aunt Kate said. "I heard every hour but six. I always drop off about six."
"Did you really hear the clock last night, Auntie?" Pearl asked with great politeness.
"Oh, it"s very little you youngsters know about lying awake. When you get to the age of me and your mother, I tell you, it"s different I get thinkin", thinkin", thinkin", and my nerves get all unstrung."
"And you really heard the clock?" Pearl said. "My, but that is queer!"
"Nothin" queer about it, Pearl. What"s queer about it, I"d like to know?"
"Because I stopped the clock," Pearl said, "just to see if you could hear it when it"s stopped," and for once Aunt Kate, usually so ready of speech, could not think of anything to say.
Aunt Kate went to bed early the next night, leaving the children undisturbed to enjoy the pleasant hour as they had done before she came. The next morning she handed Pearl the sheet of brown paper, and below the list of recommendations there it was in bold writing:
"Kate W. Shenstone."
"See that, now," said Pearl triumphantly, as she showed it to the children, "what it does for you to know history!"
"Say," said Jim, "where could we get some of them things, what did you call them, Pearl?"
""Twouldn"t do any good, she wouldn"t eat them," Billy said.
"Lampreys or lampwicks, or somethin" like that."
"Now, boys," said Pearl, "that"s not right. Don"t talk like that. It ain"t cheerful."
CHAPTER IV
SOMETHING MORE THAN GESTURES
Wanting is--what?
Summer redundant, Blueness abundant.
Where is the blot?
_----Robert Browning._
PEARLIE WATSON, the new caretaker of the Milford school, stood broom in hand at the back of the schoolroom and listened. Pearlie"s face was troubled. She had finished the sweeping of the other three rooms, and then, coming into Miss Morrison"s room to sweep it, she found Maudie Ducker rehearsing her "piece" for the Medal Contest. Miss Morrison was instructing Maudie, and Mrs. Ducker would have told you that Maudie was doing "beautifully."
Every year the W. C. T. U. gave a silver medal for the best reciter, and for three consecutive years Miss Morrison had trained the winner; so Mrs. Ducker was naturally anxious to have Maudie trained by so successful an instructor. Miss Morrison had studied elocution and "gesturing." It was in gesturing that Maudie was being instructed when Pearlie came in with her broom.
It was a pathetic monologue that Miss Morrison had chosen for Maudie, supposed to be given by an old woman in a poorhouse. Her husband had died a drunkard and then her only son, "as likely a lad as you ever saw," had also taken to "crooked ways and left her all alone." One day a man came to visit the poorhouse, and poor "old Nan," glad of any one to talk to, tells all her story to the sympathetic stranger, asking him at last wouldn"t he try to find and save her poor Jim, whom she had never ceased to pray for, and whom she still believed in and loved. Then she discovered the man to be in tears, and of course he turns out to be the long-lost Jim, and a happy scene follows.
It is a common theme among temperance reciters, but to Pearlie it was all new and terrible. She could not go on with her sweeping--she was bound to the spot by the story of poor old Nan and her woes.
Miss Morrison was giving Maudie instruction on the two lines:
"It is the old, sad, pitiful story, sir, Of the devil"s winding stair."
Neither of them had time to think of the meaning--they were so anxious about the gestures. Maudie did a long, waving sweep with three notches in it, more like a gordon braid pattern than a stair, but it was very pretty and graceful, and Miss Morrison was pleased.
"And men go down and down and down To darkness and despair."
Maudie scalloped the air three times evenly to indicate the down grade.
"Tossing about like ships at sea With helm and anchor lost."
Maudie certainly gave the ships a rough time of it with her willowy left arm. Miss Morrison said that to use her left arm to toss the ships would add variety.
"On and on thro" the surging waves, Not caring to count the cost."
Maudie rose on the ball of her left foot and indicated "distance"
with the proper Delsarte stretch.