"My little Dorothy, will you come to live with me, and become _my_ adopted daughter?"

CHAPTER XV

CONCERNING SEVERAL MATTERS

"O Jim! I feel so--so guilty! Just as if I had done something dreadfully wrong!" cried troubled Dorothy C. to her faithful if jealous friend, as they were driving homeward again. The reins were in his hands this time and he held them with an ease which left everything to the old horse itself, and which would have surprised the girl had room been left in her mind for any smaller surprises after that great one of Mrs. Cecil's question.

"Don't see why," returned practical Jim. His own satisfaction was great, just then, for he had seen Herbert Montaigne driving homeward on his brand-new horse-rake, brilliant in red paint and purchased by that extravagant youth expressly for the Skyrie "Bee." Herbert had forsaken that laborious festivity, soon after the departure of Mrs. Calvert and Dorothy; but not till after he had also finished all the raking there had been for him to do. Much of the ground was so overrun with bushes and brambles that only hand-rakes were available, and to the more difficult task of these the lad did not aspire.

Now, at ease with his own conscience and at peace with all the world, he drove by the gates of Deerhurst whistling his merriest, and bent upon ending his rarely useful day by a row upon the river. He even caught a glimpse of Dorothy sitting in the farm wagon waiting for Jim to "make himself tidy after his gardening," as his mistress had directed; and had called out some bit of nonsense to her which she was too absorbed in thought to notice.

"That's all right. Needn't answer if she doesn't wish! I'll see her to-morrow and get her to go on that picnic at the camp. One picnic paves the way to another--that's easy! I don't feel now any great longing even for planked shad--such a dinner I ate! But that's one good thing about a dinner, little Kit! Take a few hours off and you'll be ready for the next one! Good thing my top-lofty sister 'took a notion' to sweet Dolly!

That's going to make things lots easier for my scheme, 'but I'll 'bide a wee' before I spring it on the Pater. Eh, little Kit? Aren't you a beauty? and--good luck! You're just the thing to take her, to-morrow.

She told me, to-day, they hadn't a single cat. '_Not a single cat!_' In a tone of regular heartbreak, she said it, Kit! That's why I heard you squalling by the roadside and picked you up. Somebody dropped you, didn't he? Somebody a deal richer in cats than Dorothy C. Why, little Kit, I heard a workman telling the other day how he found a bag of kittens, a whole bag of them, 'lost' by somebody as heartless as your own late owner, probably, but far less wise. For the bag was a potato sack and it had the owner's name stamped in full on it. Must have lost it out the back of a wagon, the workman thought. Anyway, next day he gathered up all the stray cats and kittens he could find and in the dead of night--the dead of night, little Kit! when all dire deeds are done!--he carried the replenished sack back and left it on the 'loser's'

doorstep. Good for that workman! but, query. What became of the cats?

Never mind, Kitty, I know what will become of you, and your fate will be the happiest possible. Get up there, Slowpoke!" finished the lad, thrusting the tiny kitten he had found astray on the road into his blouse, and urging the work horse forward. In any case it is probable he would have picked up the lost kitten and given it a home in his father's barn, but it suited well with Dorothy's pathetic regret that he should have found it.

"You 'don't see why,' Jim Barlow, I feel so worried over what Mrs.

Calvert asked? Then you're stupider than I thought. She is so kind, she found and saved me--after you, of course--and she is so old and lonely.

I'd love to live with her if--if there were two of me. Already she looks to me to do little things for her that n.o.body else seems to think she wants, and to do them without her asking. I love her. Seems if she was sort of my folks--_my own folks_ that I must have had sometime. We like the same things. She adores d.i.c.kens, so do I. She loves outdoors, so do I. She--But there, it's no use! I can't go to live with her and leave father John and mother Martha. It would break their hearts and mine, too! Oh! dear! I wish she hadn't asked me; then I wouldn't have had to say 'No,' and see her beautiful old face lose all its lovely brightness.

When I think how old she is, how it's but a little while she'll need me--Why, then my heart breaks in two the other way! O Jim! Isn't life a terrible, terrible perplexity?" demanded this small maid to whom "life"

was, indeed, just showing its realities.

Jim listened silently, but it wouldn't have flattered her to know that it was her ready flow of language and the rather long words she used which mainly impressed him. To his practical mind it was simply impossible for any right-minded girl to forsake those who had cared for her all her life, in order to gratify the whim of an old lady whom she had known but a short time. Nor did it enter the thoughts of either of these young folks that the material advantages offered to Dorothy would be very great. It was only a question of happiness; the happiness of the Chesters or that of Mrs. Cecil.

As they left Deerhurst behind them and still Jim had answered nothing except that provoking "Don't see why," Dorothy lost her patience.

"Jim Barlow, have you lost your tongue? I think--I think you're horribly unsympathetic!" she cried, flashing a glance upon him that was meant for anger, yet ended in surprise at his actually smiling countenance. "I don't see anything funny in this business, if you do! What are you laughing at?"

Now he looked at her, his face radiant with the fun of his own thoughts, and replied:

"Lots o' things. Fust off, Dorothy, will you correct me every time I use bad language?"

"Bad--language! Swearing, you mean? Why, Jim, I never heard you, not once. Huh! If I did I reckon I _would_ correct you, so quick 'twould make you dizzy!"

"Pshaw! I don't mean that, silly thing! I mean--Dorothy, I want to talk like other folks: like Mis' Calvert----"

"Then begin to call her 'Mrs.'"

"Mrs. Calvert," answered Jim, obediently. "To you and her and Mr.

Chester, talkin'----"

"Talking, Jim. Don't clip the g's off your words!"

He half-frowned, then laughed. She was almost too ready with her corrections. But he went on:

"I'm studyin'--studying--every night, as long as I dast----"

"Dare, you mean."

Poor Jim gasped and retorted:

"Well, dare, then, if you say so. D-a-r-e! and be done with it! Mis', I mean Mrs., Calvert has give orders----"

"Given orders, boy."

"Shut up! I mean she's told the old man and woman that keeps----"

"Who keep!"

"That keeps the gate and lives in the lodge an' I live with 'em, if you want to know the hull kit an' boodle of the story, she's give 'em orders I can't have no light lit after half-past ten o'clock, 'cause I'll spile my eyes an' break down my strength--Pshaw! as if a feller could, just a-studyin', when he's so powerful bent on't as I be! But, you know I know I don't talk quite the same as them 'at knows better an' has had more book l'arnin'," explained the young student, hopelessly relapsing into the truck-farm vernacular.

"Yes, Jim, I do know that you know, as you so tellingly put it. I've seen you flush more than once when you've noticed the difference in speech, and I'll help you all I can. I don't know much myself. I'm only a girl, not far along in her own education, but I'll do what I can; only, Jim Barlow, don't you go and get offended when I set you right. If you do you shall go on 'wallowing in your ignorance,' as I've read somewhere. Now, that's enough 'correction' for once. Tell me the other 'lots of things' you were laughing at."

"Sure! The first one, how we're goin' to get ahead of that old Quaker miller. Mis'--Mrs.--Calvert's planned the hull--whole--business. She don't like him none. She stopped me an' told me things, a few. She 'lows he's got some scheme or other, 'at ain't no good to your folks, a-lettin' good money on a wore-out farm like Skyrie. There's more in his doin's than has come to light yet. That's what she says. Even his sellin' your ma that jumpin' cow was a low-down, ornery trick. An' that bull calf--no more use to such as you-all 'an a white elephant, she says. Less; 'cause I s'pose a body'd _could sell_ a elephant, if they was put to it. Say, Dorothy. They's a-goin' to be a circus come to Newburgh bime-by. The pictures of it is all along the fences an' walls; an', say--I'm earnin' wages now, real good ones. I told Mis', Mrs., Calvert 't I didn't think I ought to take any money off her, 'cause she's give--given--me all these new clothes an' treats me so like a prince; but she laughed an' said how 'twas in the Bible that 'a laborer is worthy of his hire' and she'd be a poor sort of Christian that didn't at least try to live up to her Bible. Say, Dorothy, she's even give me one for myself! Fact. She give it an' says she, she says: 'James, if you make that the rule of your heart and life, you can't help being a gentleman, 'at you aspire to be, as well as a good man.' Then she fetched out another book, big--Why, Dorothy! So big it's real heavy to lift! An' she called that one a 'Shakespeare.' The name was printed on it plain; an' she said the man what wrote it more years ago 'an I can half-tell, had 'done the thinkin' for half--the world, or more,' she said. And how 'if I'd use them two books constant an' apply 'em to my own life I'd never need be ashamed an' I could hold up my head in even the wisest company.' Say, Dorothy! Mis' Calvert knows a powerful lot, seems if!"

"Well, she ought. She's lived a powerful long time."

"An' I've been thinkin' things over. I don't believe I _will_ try to be President, like we planned. Lookin' into that Shakespeare feller's book I 'low I'd ruther write one like it, instead."

"O Jim! That's too delightful! I must tell father that. I must! _You_, a new _Shakespeare_! Why, boy, he's the wisest writer ever lived. I'm only just being allowed to read a little bit of him, old as I am. My father picks out the best parts of the best dramas and we often read them together, evenings. But--What are the other things you thought about, and made you laugh? That circus, too; shall you go to it, Jim? Did you ever go to one?"

"Never. _Never._ But I'm just sufferin' to go. Say, Dorothy? If I can get all my work done, an' Mrs. Calvert she don't think it's sinful waste o' good money, an' your folks'll let you, an' it don't come on to rain but turns out a real nice day, an' I can get the loan of Mrs. Calvert's oldest horse an' rig--'cause I wouldn't dast--dare--to ask for a young one--an' I felt as if I could take care of you in such a terrible crowd as Ephraim says they always is to circuses, would you, will you, go with me?"

In spite of herself Dorothy could not help laughing. Yet there was something almost pathetic in the face of this poor youth, possessing a small sum of money for the first time, beset by the caution which had hedged his humble, dependent life, yet daring--actually daring, of his own volition--to be generous! Generous of that which Miranda Stott had taught him was the very best thing in the world--money! Of himself, his strength, his unselfishness and devotion,--all so much higher than that "money,"--he had always been most lavish; and remembering this, with a sympathy wise beyond her years, Dorothy speedily hushed her laughter and answered eagerly:

"Indeed, I will, you dear, care-taking, cautious boy, and thank you heartily. I love a circus. Father John used to take mother Martha and me to one once every summer. Why, what a perfectly wild and giddy creature I shall be! To a circus with you, a camp-picnic with Herbert and Helena, and this splendid farmers' 'Bee'--Hurray!"

Jim's countenance fell. "I didn't know 'bout that other picnic," said he. "When's it comin' off? And what is a picnic, anyway?"

"You'll see when we get home to Skyrie. A picnic is the jolliest thing there is--except a circus. _Except a circus._ When it's to come off I don't know, but when it does I mean you shall be in it, too, Jim Barlow.

Yet you haven't finished about poor, dear Mr. Oliver Sands. You have wandered all over the face of the earth, as my teacher used to complain I did in writing my compositions. I didn't stick to my subject. You haven't stuck to yours, the Quaker man. Finish him up, for we're almost at Skyrie now."

Comforted by her ranking of a circus as something infinitely more delightful than even a rich boy's picnic, and because the fields of Skyrie were, indeed, now in view, Jim resumed concerning the gentleman in question:

"Dorothy, that calf o' yours won't never be no good. The man give him to you, all right, an' 'peared amazin' generous. But--he cal'lated on gettin' back more'n his money's worth. He'd tried to sell old Hannah time an' again, so Mrs. Calvert was told, an' couldn't, 'count of her being so hard to keep track of. He didn't dast to sell without the calf alongside, for if he did the critter's so tearin' lively she'd 'a' got back home to his farm 'fore he did, drive as fast as he might. But what he planned was: your ma take the calf for a gift an' she'd have to send to his mill to get feed an' stuff for to raise it on. To keep both cow an' calf would cost--I don't know how much, but enough to suit him all right. 'Tother side the matter, his side, you did get Hannah cheap.

She's good breed, her milk'll make nice b.u.t.ter----"

"It does! Splendid, perfectly splendid! Mrs. Smith showed mother how to manage and it all came back to her, for she had only, as father says, 'mislaid her knowledge' and she makes all the b.u.t.ter we need. Not all we want--We could eat pounds and pounds! But it takes a good many quarts of milk to make a pound of b.u.t.ter, I've learned; and an awful lot of what father calls 'circular exercise' to make the 'b.u.t.ter come.' Mother bought one of those churns that you turn around and around, I mean a dasher around and around inside the churn--I get my talk mixed up, sometimes--and it takes an hour, maybe, to turn and turn. Worse than freezing ice cream in a 'ten-minute' freezer, like we had in Baltimore, yet had to work all morning to get it frozen ready for Sunday dinner.

Mother thinks a dash-churn, stand and flap the dasher straight up and down till your arms and legs give out, is the best kind. But the around-and-around is the modern sort; so, of course, she got that. If Daisy-Jewel and Piggy-Wig didn't need so much milk themselves there'd be more for us. And somehow, you don't make me feel very nice toward Mr.

Oliver Sands."

"Say, Dorothy. Mis' Calvert's notion is for you to sell Daisy an' buy a horse. Will you, if you get a chance?"

"Simple Simon! A horse is worth lots and lots more than a calf! was that what she meant when she said a calf might turn into a colt? A colt is a horse, after all. A little horse. Well, maybe she was right. I might sell a little calf and get a little colt. But who in the world would buy? Besides, despite all the trouble she makes, mother wouldn't part with that pretty, ecru-colored cow, and Hannah will not be separated from Daisy-Jewel. I mean Daisy-Jewel will not be separated from Hannah.