After perhaps three or four minutes of scrubbing and squeezing the wool, the now bedraggled and hopelessly patient creature was pa.s.sed on to the Rinser, who in turn immersed and rinsed it in the cleaner water of the upper tub. Meantime another sheep had been required from the Catcher, who again entered the yard, followed by his a.s.sistant. This time I was quite content to attempt the capture of a smaller one, and to approach the animal in a less precipitate manner; for much as I had spurned my cousin's advice at the moment of receiving it, I now recognized its value.

The Catcher and his a.s.sistant were kept very busy during the remainder of the forenoon, for the Chief Washer was an experienced and rapid operator. Some of the young sheep proved wild and refractory; and I remember that both Ellen and I grew very tired by the time the last of the seventy had been caught, subdued, dragged to the tub, and then dragged back to the yard from the Rinser's tub. I for one had had quite enough of it, and was content to sit down and look on, while Halstead, Addison and Theodora caught several of the lambs, and ducked them in the tub, by way, as they said, of giving them an early lesson and a foretaste of what they would have to encounter the next spring, in the regular order of things.

The fire was now allowed to subside under the water-pipe; and the Chief Fireman declared that she and the girls must set off for the house at once, in order to prepare dinner, for by this time the sun was nearing the meridian and every one getting hungry.

It was an easy matter to drive the now docile and water-soaked flock back to pasture; and we left pipe and tubs at the brook for our neighbors. When we returned from the pasture, Gram and the girls had a hastily prepared meal in readiness, consisting of fried eggs, bacon, and a "five minute pudding" with cream. What a flavor it all had! My only fear for some minutes was, lest there would not be half enough of it!

While at table, Rinser, a.s.sistant Washer, Catcher and even Chief Washer and Chief Fireman laughed a great deal as the various incidents and mishaps of the morning were recounted. It is certain that work always pa.s.ses off much more pleasantly when it is enlivened by some such play-plan as that which Addison had devised.

CHAPTER VI

THE VERMIFUGE BOTTLE

"Shall we dip the lambs as we did last spring, after shearing the sheep?" Addison asked the Old Squire, as we drew back from table.

"I suppose we shall have to do it," the old gentleman replied. "It is a disagreeable job, but it needs to be done."

"That means another poke stew!" cried Ellen, with a look of disgust.

I was quite in the dark as to what a "poke stew" might be.

"O it's beautiful smellin' stuff!" exclaimed Halstead. "Going to put any tobacco into it?" he asked.

"A little," replied Gramp. "That is about the only use I ever would like to see tobacco put to," he added with a glance at Halse, at which the latter gave me a sly nudge under the table.

"Then I suppose we may as well take two large baskets with tools for digging, and go down to t.i.tcomb's meadow for the poke," suggested Addison. "If you can get the arch-kettle hot while we are gone, we can have the poke put to stew and simmer, so as to be good and strong by day after to-morrow. I suppose you will shear the sheep that day; and by the next morning the lambs will need attending to, will they not, sir?"

"Most likely," replied the Old Squire, smiling to see how Addison was taking the burden of work on his young shoulders. "I can certainly get the kettle hot," he added, laughing. "That looks like the easiest part of the job."

"But you worked hard this forenoon, sir," Addison said. "I noticed how you handled those sheep. To wash seventy sheep is no light job."

"Ad doesn't count me in at all," remarked Halse. "I reckon the 'a.s.sistant Washer' had something to do."

"Yes, my a.s.sistant worked well," said the Old Squire. "I could not have washed more than fifty, but for his aid."

"Well, there is one thing to be said, right here and now," interposed Gram with decision. "I cannot and will not have that awful mess of poke, tobacco and what-not brewed in the kitchen arch-kettle. Now you hear me, Joseph. Last year you stewed it there and you nearly drove us out of the house. Such a stench I never smelled. It made me sick all night and filled the whole house. I said then it should never come into the kitchen again. You must take the other kettle and set it up out of doors."

"Aren't you growing a little fussy, Ruth?" replied the Old Squire, evidently to rally her, for he laughed roguishly.

"Maybe I am," replied Gram, shortly. "If you were a little more 'fussy'

about some things, it would be no failing."

This bit of fencing amused Addison and Theodora very much; and I began to surmise that good-humored as grandmother habitually was, she yet had a will of her own and was determined to regulate her domain indoors in the way she deemed suitable.

"Well, we will boil the stuff out of doors this year," replied the Old Squire. "It is not the kind of perfumery women-folks like to smell," he added, teasingly.

"Now don't try to be funny about it," rejoined Gram severely. "I never ran you much in debt for perfumery, as you know. But I don't think it is quite fair for a man to bring such a nauseous mess as that into the kitchen to stew, then run off and leave it for the women-folks to stand over and stir, and finally leave the dirty kettle for them to scrub out the next day!"

"Hold on, Ruth! Hold on. You've let out a great deal more than I wanted you to, now!" cried the Old Squire. "I remember now, I did forget that kettle last year. 'Twas too bad. I don't blame you, Ruth Ann, I don't blame you in the least for grumbling about it."

With that Gram looked up and laughed, but still gave her head a slight toss.

I watched for a day or two a little anxiously, to see if she really cherished any resentment, but soon discovered that there was no real ill-feeling; it was only Gram's way of holding her ground and standing for her house rights.

As we went out to get shovels and the two baskets, I ventured to ask Addison, confidentially, whether Gram were really severe. "No!" said he.

"She's all right. She touches the Old Squire up a little once in awhile, when he needs it; she always gets him foul, too. I suppose he doesn't try very hard to hold up his end, but she always floors him when they get to sparring. Then he will laugh and say something to patch things up again. O they never really quarrel. Gramp once said to me, as we were going out into the field together, after Gram had been touching him up, 'Addison,' said he, 'your grandmother was a Pepperill. They were nice folks; but they had spicy tempers, some of them. Old Sir William Pepperill, that led our people down to Louisburg, was her great-great-uncle. They were good old New England stock, but none of them would ever bear a bit of crowding; and I always take that into account.'"

Halstead came out and then went to search for a tool which they termed a "n.i.g.g.e.r hoe," a hoe with a narrow blade, such as, in the old plantation days of the South, the negroes are said to have used for turning over the turf of new fields.

Theodora came to the door of the wagon-house. "Going with us after poke?" Addison called out to her.

"I wish we could," she replied; "but we have lots to do in the house.

Gram says that, as we were out all the forenoon, we must stay indoors the rest of the day."

Ellen, too, was espied gazing regretfully after us, as we set off with the baskets and tools. Halse had a pocketful of doughnuts (which he always called duffnuts). He had made a raid on the pantry, he said, and enlivened the way by topping off his dinner with them.

We went out through the fields to the southwest of the farm buildings, then crossed a lot called the calf pasture, and then a swale, descending through woods and bushes into the valley of the west brook.

"This is the meadow-brook," said Addison. "But t.i.tcomb's meadow is a mile below here. We will follow down the brook till we come to it.

"That's poke," he continued, pointing to a thick, rank, green plant, with great curved leaves, now about a foot in height and growing near the bank of the brook. Halstead gave one of the plants a crushing stroke with his hoe, and I noticed that it gave off a very unpleasant odor.

"It is poison," Addison remarked. "It is the plant that botanists call _veratrum viride_, I believe. But the common name is Indian poke."

"O Ad knows everything; his head is stuffed with long words!" exclaimed Halse, derisively. "It'll bust one of these days. I don't dare to get very near him on that account."

"No danger that yours will ever 'bust' on account of what's inside it,"

retorted Addison, laughing.

But Halstead, although he had begun the joking, did not appear to take this shot back in good part. He turned aside and began to cut a witch-hazel rod.

"Now quit that, Halse," exclaimed Addison. "Wait till we get the poke dug, then we will all three cut some rods and fish for half an hour."

But Halstead proceeded to string a hook, bait it with a bit of pork which he had brought, and then dropped it into a hole beside an alder bush at a bend of the stream.

"He is the most provoking fellow I ever saw," muttered Addison. "He will fish all the time, and we will have the poke to dig. I meant to show you a good hole to fish in, but now he will scare all the trout away!

"Come on, Halse!" he shouted back. "What's the use to skulk and shirk like that?"

"O you dig viratum-viridy!" cried Halstead. "You understand all about that, you know. I don't comprehend it well enough; but I guess I can manage to fish a little." A moment after we saw him haul out a trout, which glistened as it went wriggling through the air and fell in the gra.s.s. Halse got it, and holding it up so that we could see it, shouted, "No viratum-viridy about that!"

"No use fooling with him," Addison said to me. "His nose is out of joint about that word. He will not lift a finger to help us, but will catch a good string of fish to take home; and if I say a word about it to the folks, he will declare that I was so overbearing that he couldn't work with me. That's the song he always sings.

"Sometimes," continued Addison, with another backward glance of suppressed indignation, "I get so 'mad' all through at that boy that I could thrash him half to death. If it wasn't for Doad and the old folks, I believe I should do it.

"But of course that isn't the best thing to do," Addison continued. "The best way to get along is to have as little to do with him as you can, and not pay any attention to his quirks. For he is the trick pony in this family. You cannot go out with him anywheres, without having some sort of a circus; I defy you to. You see now, if we ever go out together, without a sc.r.a.pe."