In the Midst of Alarms, Robert Barr [read e book txt] 📗

as I might call it, produced the most delicious loaf ever made in this country. It was the salt-rising kind, and was baked in a round, flat-bottomed iron kettle. Did you ever see the baking kettle of other days?"

"I think Mrs. Bartlett has one, although she never uses it now. It was placed on the hot embers, was it not?"

"Exactly," said Yates, noting with pleasure that the girl was thawing, as he expressed it to himself. "The hot coals were drawn out and the kettle placed upon them. When the lid was in position, hot coals were put on he top of it. The bread was firm and white and sweet inside, with the most delicious golden brown crust all around. Ah, that was bread! but perhaps I appreciated it because I was always hungry in those days. Then came the alleged improvement of the tin Dutch oven. That was the second stage in the evolution of bread in this country. It also belonged to the log-house and open-fireplace era. Bread baked by direct heat from the fire and reflected heat from the polished tin. I think our present cast-iron stove arrangement is preferable to that, although not up to the old-time kettle."

If Margaret had been a reader of the New York _Argus_, she would have noticed that the facts set forth by her visitor had already appeared in that paper, much elaborated, in an article entitled "Our Daily Bread." In the pause that ensued after Yates had finished his dissertation on the staff of life the stillness was broken by a long wailing cry. It began with one continued, sustained note, and ended with a wail half a tone below the first. The girl paid no attention to it, but Yates started to his feet.

"In the name of--What's that?"

Margaret smiled, but before she could answer the stillness was again broken by what appeared to be the more distant notes of a bugle.

"The first," she said, "was Kitty Bartlett's voice calling the men home from the field for dinner. Mrs. Bartlett is a very good housekeeper and is usually a few minutes ahead of the neighbors with the meals. The second was the sound of a horn farther up the road. It is what you would deplore as the age of tin applied to the dinner call, just as your tin oven supplanted the better bread maker. I like Kitty's call much better than the tin horn. It seems to me more musical, although it appeared to startle you."

"Oh, you can talk!" cried Yates with audacious admiration, at which the girl colored slightly and seemed to retire within herself again. "And you can make fun of people's historical lore, too. Which do you use-- the tin horn or the natural voice?"

"Neither. If you will look outside, you will see a flag at the top of a pole. That is our signal."

It flashed across the mind of Yates that this was intended as an intimation that he might see many things outside to interest him. He felt that his visit had not been at all the brilliant success he had anticipated. Of course the quest for bread had been merely an excuse. He had expected to be able to efface the unfavorable impression he knew he had made by his jaunty conversation on the Ridge Road the day before, and he realized that his position was still the same. A good deal of Yates' success in life came from the fact that he never knew when he was beaten. He did not admit defeat now, but he saw he had, for some reason, not gained any advantage in a preliminary skirmish. He concluded it would be well to retire in good order, and renew the contest at some future time. He was so unused to anything like a rebuff that all his fighting qualities were up in arms, and he resolved to show this unimpressionable girl that he was not a man to be lightly valued.

As he rose the door from the main portion of the house opened, and there entered a woman hardly yet past middle age, who had once been undoubtedly handsome, but on whose worn and faded face was the look of patient weariness which so often is the result of a youth spent in helping a husband to overcome the stumpy stubbornness of an American bush farm. When the farm is conquered, the victor is usually vanquished. It needed no second glance to see that she was the mother from whom the daughter had inherited her good looks. Mrs. Howard did not appear surprised to see a stranger standing there; in fact, the faculty of being surprised at anything seemed to have left her. Margaret introduced them quietly, and went about her preparation for the meal. Yates greeted Mrs. Howard with effusion. He had come, he said, on a bread mission. He thought he knew something about bread, but he now learned he came too early in the day. He hoped he might have the privilege of repeating his visit.

"But you are not going now?" said Mrs. Howard with hospitable anxiety.

"I fear I have already stayed too long," answered Yates lingeringly. "My partner, Professor Renmark, is also on a foraging expedition at your neighbors', the Bartletts. He is doubtless back in camp long ago, and will be expecting me."

"No fear of that. Mrs. Bartlett would never let anyone go when there is a meal on the way."

"I am afraid I shall be giving extra trouble by staying. I imagine there is quite enough to do in every farmhouse without entertaining any chance tramp who happens along. Don't you agree with me for once, Miss Howard?"

Yates was reluctant to go, and yet he did not wish to stay unless Margaret added her invitation to her mother's. He felt vaguely that his reluctance did him credit, and that he was improving. He could not remember a time when he had not taken without question whatever the gods sent, and this unaccustomed qualm of modesty caused him to suspect that there were depths in his nature hitherto unexplored. It always flatters a man to realize that he is deeper than he thought.

Mrs. Howard laughed in a subdued manner because Yates likened himself to a tramp, and Margaret said coldly:

"Mother's motto is that one more or less never makes any difference."

"And what is your motto, Miss Howard?"

"I don't think Margaret has any," said Mrs. Howard, answering for her daughter. "She is like her father. She reads a great deal and doesn't talk much. He would read all the time, if he did not have to work. I see Margaret has already invited you, for she has put an extra plate on the table."

"Ah, then," said Yates, "I shall have much pleasure in accepting both the verbal and the crockery invitation. I am sorry for the professor at his lonely meal by the tent; for he is a martyr to duty, and I feel sure Mrs. Bartlett will not be able to keep him."

Before Mrs. Howard could reply there floated in to them, from the outside, where Margaret was, a cheery voice which Yates had no difficulty in recognizing as belonging to Miss Kitty Bartlett.

"Hello, Margaret!" she said. "Is he here?"

The reply was inaudible.

"Oh, you know whom I mean. That conceited city fellow."

There was evidently an admonition and a warning.

"Well, I don't care if he does. I'll tell him so to his face. It might do him good."

Next moment there appeared a pretty vision in the doorway. On the fair curls, which were flying about her shoulders, had been carelessly placed her brother's straw hat, with a broad and torn brim. Her face was flushed with running; and of the fact that she was a very lovely girl there was not the slightest doubt.

"How de do?" she said to Mrs. Howard, and, nodding to Yates, cried: "I knew you were here, but I came over to make sure. There's going to be war in our house. Mother's made a prisoner of the professor already, but he doesn't know it. He thinks he's going back to the tent, and she's packing up the things he wanted, and doing it awfully slow, till I get back. He said you would be sure to be waiting for him out in the woods. We both told him there was no fear of that. You wouldn't leave a place where there was good cooking for all the professors in the world."

"You are a wonderful judge of character, Miss Bartlett," said Yates, somewhat piqued by her frankness.

"Of course I am. The professor knows ever so much more than you, but he doesn't know when he's well off, just the same. You do. He's a quiet, stubborn man."

"And which do you admire the most, Miss Bartlett--a quiet, stubborn man, or one who is conceited?"

Miss Kitty laughed heartily, without the slightest trace of embarrassment. "Detest, you mean. I'm sure I don't know. Margaret, which is the most objectionable?"

Margaret looked reproachfully at her neighbor on being thus suddenly questioned, but said nothing.

Kitty, laughing again, sprang toward her friend, dabbed a little kiss, like the peck of a bird, on each cheek, cried: "Well, I must be off, or mother will have to tie up the professor to keep him," and was off accordingly with the speed and lightness of a young fawn.

"Extraordinary girl," remarked Yates, as the flutter of curls and calico dress disappeared.

"She is a good girl," cried Margaret emphatically.

"Bless me, I said nothing to the contrary. But don't you think she is somewhat free with her opinions about other people?" asked Yates.

"She did not know that you were within hearing when she first spoke, and after that she brazened it out. That's her way. But she's a kind girl and good-hearted, otherwise she would not have taken the trouble to come over here merely because your friend happened to be surly."

"Oh, Renny is anything but surly," said Yates, as quick to defend his friend as she was to stand up for hers. "As I was saying a moment ago, he is a martyr to duty, and if he thought I was at the camp, nothing would keep him. Now he will have a good dinner in peace when he knows I am not waiting for him, and a good dinner is more than he will get when I take to the cooking."

By this time the silent signal on the flagpole had done its work, and Margaret's father and brother arrived from the field. They put their broad straw hats on the roof of the kitchen veranda, and, taking water in a tin basin from the rain barrel, placed it on a bench outside and proceeded to wash vigorously.

Mr. Howard was much more interested in his guest than his daughter had apparently been. Yates talked glibly, as he could always do if he had a sympathetic audience, and he showed an easy familiarity with the great people of this earth that was fascinating to a man who had read much of them, but who was, in a measure, locked out of the bustling world. Yates knew many of the generals in the late war, and all of the politicians. Of the latter there was not an honest man among them, according to the reporter; of the former there were few who had not made the most ghastly mistakes. He looked on the world as a vast hoard of commonplace people, wherein the men of real genius were buried