A FRIEND IN NEED

A weatherworn, disreputable hammock swung lazily between two big fruit laden apple trees beside Aunt Kate's home. Time was when it had been a gaudy, beta.s.seled thing taken into the house each night. But familiarity breeds contempt for choice possessions as well as friends. Now the hammock hung unwatched from June until October. No longer a cherished chattel, it was left to face the ravages of time and weather and man.

Yet, in its ripe old age, it had achieved the goal of all good hammocks.

It had found its place, not, of course, in the sun--that not being the custom of hammocks--but in Aunt Kate's household. It had become a place of conference, of discussion, aye, even of mutual confession for Helen and her cousin Virginia.

It swung lazily in the light breeze of the morning. Not slothfully, but in the relaxation of resting strength prepared instantly to meet its burdens and responsibilities. It was well that this was so. Upon the self-same breeze which swung it, came sounds of laughter and the patter of small feet. With sudden strain and elastic resistance, carried even to the uppermost twigs of the trees, the hammock received the two girls as they precipitated themselves into its lap.

"I beat," cried Helen with the pride of victory, changed suddenly into a wail of anguish as a dislodged Bell-flower apple dropped upon her head. "Oh-o-o-o," she groaned; "those apples make me mad. This is the second time that one of them has struck me on the head and I am getting tired of it."

In her own end of the hammock Virginia was coiled in a most precarious position. She was so interested in her letter that she failed to give her cousin the full measure of tender sympathy to which that maiden felt herself ent.i.tled.

Helen rubbed her head with vigor. "Say something 'V.' Is anything the matter with your heart?" she exclaimed, fixing reproachful eyes upon her absorbed companion.

"Did it hurt?" Virginia, deep in her letter, politely inquired. Her words, however, lacked that warm condolence for which the head and heart of her cousin yearned.

"Did it hurt?" mimicked Helen in disgust. "What a question! It is exactly as bad as if a brick had fallen off the chimney on my head. Yet you sit there and ask if it hurt. What do you think my head is made of?"

"Fudge," cried Virginia as the wind twisted her letter so that she could not read it.

"Wh-a-at?" Helen was highly indignant until she discovered that her cousin's remark was not a personal allusion. "Never mind," she threatened; "see how I treat you the next time that you get hurt."

Virginia finished her letter. She wiggled over towards Helen, an operation which placed both girls in imminent danger of being pitched upon their faces. "I am sorry for your poor head, dear," she giggled, "or should I be sorry for the apple? Let me look."

Helen thrust aside the inquisitive fingers. "Let me alone, you unsympathetic wretch. Wait until my turn comes. Even if you writhe before me in great agony, I shall laugh. Laugh coldly--ha--ha."

Virginia disregarded future calamities. "I have a letter from Joe Curtis. It happens to be one which I might read to you, if you are real nice."

Instantly, feminine curiosity caused Helen to forget injuries and pledged vengeance. "Please, 'V.,' I should love to hear it," she begged, and then listened with rapt attention as her cousin read,

"_My dear little girl_:

"This morning Miss Knight brought your letter to me on the grounds where I had been taken in the roller chair. She was grumbling about it being the business of the Post Office Department to establish a rural free delivery route and not expect her to chase around with my mail.

"I spend most of my time in the chair, now. Soon I'll be on crutches, and after that it won't be long before I am discharged.

"But this letter is written to give you the big news. The room for motorcyclists is open for business. Miss Knight took me to see it and it is dandy. I asked her what she thought about it now, seeing that she had so much to say when we were planning it. Her answer was, 'It's the best cure for blues I know. If I am downhearted, all I have to do is to come up here and think about you two innocents and I laugh myself sick.'

"I told her that her ideas of humor led towards the psychopathic ward and warned her to beware of alienists or squirrels because they might develop a personal interest in her.

"What do you think? The very day they opened the room it had a patient. You never would guess who it was. It was that fellow Jones who works in your father's office. He must be a regular dare devil of a rider. When the accident happened, he had cut in front of a moving street car. The machine hung in the fender and Jones went on and landed in a city trash wagon at the curb. His head and face were cut but the trash was soft. He bled so that the by-standers decided that he was dying and sent him to the hospital. Of course, the doctors kept him.

"Miss Knight said that, from the odor about Jones when he came in, she guessed people were careless about separating trash from garbage. She told Jones that he must have thought he was among old home folks when he landed.

"To be neighborly, I called upon him. Everything was beautiful in the room but him. I told him that he looked as out of place as a dead rat in a flour barrel. That peeved him, so I asked him if he hadn't felt more at home in the trash wagon.

He got sore and grabbed up a gla.s.s. 'I'll bounce this off your ventilator if you don't get out of here,' he yelled.

"That made me mad. 'You can't put me out,' I told him.

'I've got more right in here than you. If you don't stop yapping around my heels I will pull you out of that bed and get in it myself.'

"He got crazy then and started to climb out of the bed but Miss Knight came in and shoved him down on his pillow. 'Take that big cheese out of here before I break his other leg,' he bawled.

"She began to laugh fit to kill herself and said, 'Joe, what kind of gentle sympathy do you give the weak and injured which makes them wish to rise up and fight?'--when she rolled me away from that wild man.

"Your letter made me homesick for the north country. I have fished all over that pond. You wouldn't catch hornpouts if you fished in the right place and used the proper kind of bait. I used to go to the north end of the pond by the lily pads.

Bait your hook with a live minnow and drop it in there about sundown. The fun will come suddenly. Mr. Pickerel strikes with the speed of an express train. Try it. When I come up we will go fishing.

"A tray is coming my way so I must stop. I think of you every day and, believe me, just as soon as this hospital turns me loose I am going to go where I can see and talk to the nicest girl in all the world.

"Good bye, Miss Hornpout catcher.

"Affectionately, "Joe."

Virginia's face was aglow with happiness as she finished reading and turned to Helen. "He is the nicest man. Doesn't he write interesting letters to me?" she murmured softly.

The sentimental Helen gazed into the distance, lost in dreams conjured by this epistle. "Yes, he does," she agreed. "You must adore him, dear."

Virginia's face crimsoned at this bold remark. "We are only friends,"

she protested.

"Sincere friendship and complete understanding between two is wonderful," sighed Helen from her eighteen years' experience of the vicissitudes of life, and she displayed further keen insight into the problems of existence, when she continued, "Sympathetic appreciation strengthens one to meet sorrow."

Virginia gazed raptly at her cousin.

"Such sincere friendship should be cherished as some tender flower,"

Helen went on. "Is it not written that from the mouths of babes shall come wisdom?"

"You do express yourself so well, Helen. You have so much feeling in your nature--such breadth to your character, dear," responded Virginia.

The two girls pensively viewed the pond, possibly recuperating from the strain of their conversation.

"It almost seems that I know him," Helen whispered.

Virginia turned suspiciously upon her cousin. "Did you know Joe Curtis?

Did you go to school with him?" she demanded.

"I can't remember the name, 'V.' What does he look like?"

Very valiantly Virginia attempted a word picture of Joe. "He is a big fellow. His eyes are black--and large--and dreamy." She mused for a moment and resumed with animation. "His eyes are bright--and snapping--and brave--" again she paused and then she concluded very softly--"and sweet. He has a smile which tears your heart."

"How wonderful he must be!" sighed Helen. She shook her head emphatically. "If I had met him, I should have remembered him until the last hour of my life."

There followed a dreamy silence devoted to maidenly meditation concerning the manifold charms of Joe Curtis until an idea caused Helen to cry, "Virginia, you should go fishing in the place Joe wrote about. I know where it is. Think of it, you would fish in the same place, in the same water and by the same lily pads where he has been. We couldn't catch the same fish but we might catch relatives."

"Let's go now," agreed Virginia, moved greatly by Helen's sentimental suggestion.

It was a long pull in the row boat to the head of the pond; but they took turns at the oars and at last arrived at their destination. The day was warm and the exercise at the oars did not cool the girls.