People of the Whirlpool, Mabel Osgood Wright [sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt] 📗

isn't a drop of sneaky cur blood in him, which is the only trait that need make a mother tremble.

What should I do, punish, or act as I longed to, coddle the boys and comfort the poor knees? True, I had not forbidden them to crawl through the sewer pipes, because the idea of their doing it had never occurred to me, so they could not be said to have exactly disobeyed; but, on the other hand, there was an unwritten law that they must not go off the place without my permission, and the torn stockings furnished a hint.

"Mother is going away for all day with grandfather," I said slowly, as I examined their knees. "Even though I never told you not to do it, if you had stopped to think, you would have known it was wrong to crawl through the pipes."

"But, Barbara," argued Ian, as we reached the porch, "it wasn't us that crawled, it was moles, and they just digs right ahead and turns up the ground and flowers and everything, and never thinks things, do they, grandpop?"

"Martha will take you in," I said, steadying my voice with difficulty, "and bathe your knees and let you rest a while before she dresses you again. Martha, please put away those stockings for me to mend when I return; I cannot ask Effie to darn such holes for two little moles; she is only engaged to sew for boys."

"But, mother, you don't like to sew stockings; it makes you tight in your chest. I heard you tell father so," objected Richard, while Ian's face quivered and reddened, and he pounded his fists together, saying to himself, "Barbara shall _not_ sit in the house and mend moles' stockings. I won't let her," showing that they were both touched in a tender spot.

Father only laughed when they went in, and said: "I'm glad you didn't do anything more than that to the little chaps, daughter; it's only a bit of boy life and impulse working in them, after all; their natural way of cooling the 'sweating of the corn.'" Then we drove away through the lanes draped with birch tassels and willow wands, while bloodroot and marshmarigold kept pace in the runnels, and I heard the twitter of the first barn-swallow of the year.

As we drove along we talked or were silent without apology and according to mood; and as father outlined his route to me, I resolved that I would call upon Horace Bradford's mother, for our way lay in that direction.

Many things filled father's mind aside from the beauty of the perfect April day, that held even the proper suggestion of hidden showers behind the curtain of hazy sunshine. The sweating of the human corn that came under father's eye was not always to be cured by air and sun, or rather, those who turned uneasily would not accept the cure.

The germ of unrest is busy in the village this spring. Not that it is wholly new, for unrest is wherever people congregate. But this year the key is altered somewhat. The sight of careless ease, life without labour, and a constant change of pleasures, that obtain in the Bluff Colony, is working harm. True, the people can always read of this life in book and paper, but to come in direct contact is another thing. Father said the other day that he wished that conservative country places that had lived respected and respectable lives for years could have the power to socially quarantine all newcomers before they were allowed to purchase land and set a pace that lured the young cityward at any cost. I, too, realize that the striving in certain quarters is no longer for home and love and happy times, but for something new, even if it is merely for the sake of change, and that this infection of social unrest is quickly spreading downward from the Bluffs, touching the surface of our little community, if not yet troubling its depths.

The leading merchant's daughter, Cora Blackburn, fresh from a college course that was a strain upon the family means, finds that she has built a wall four years wide between herself and her family; henceforth life here is a vacuum,--she is misunderstood, and is advertising for an opportunity to go to New York and the independence of a dreary back third or fourth story hall bedroom. But, as she said the other day, putting on what Evan calls her "capability-for-better-things" air, "One's scope is so limited here, and one never can tell whom one may meet in New York," which is, of course, perfectly true.

It was only last night that father returned from the hospital, distressed and perplexed, and called me into the office. A young woman of twenty-two, that I know very well, of a plain middle-class family over in town, had, it seems, sent her name for admission to the training-school for nurses. Father, in his friendly way, stopped at the house on his way home to talk with her about the matter, and found from a little sister, who was washing dishes, that the mother of the family was ill and being cared for by a neighbour. Presently, down tripped the candidate for nursing, well dressed, well shod, and with pink, polished finger nails.

Father, wondering why she did not care for her mother, asked his usual questions: "What leads you to wish to take up nursing? Are you interested in medicine, and fond of caring for the sick? For you should be, to enter such an exacting life." She seemed to misunderstand him altogether and take his inquiry for prying. She coloured, bit her lip, then lost her head and blurted out: "Interested in the sick! Of course not. Who could be, for they are always so aggravating. I don't mean to stay so very long at it, but it's a good chance to go into some swell family, and maybe marry and get into society."

Poor father was fairly in a rage at the girl's idea of what he deems a sacred calling, and it was not until Richard had kissed him from the end of his nose up over his short thick gray hair, and down again to the tickle place in his neck, that he calmed down. Unless my instinct fails me, he will have his social experience considerably widened during the coming season, even if his trustful nature is not strengthened.

Father had made three calls, and we had eaten our luncheon by the wayside, unhooking the horses, and baiting them by a low bridge rail that sloped into the bushes, where they could eat and drink at leisure, before we reached Pine Ridge. Once there, he dropped me at the Bradford farm, while he drove westward, along the Ridge, to a consultation with the local doctor over a complicated broken leg that would not knit.

As I closed the neat white picket gate behind me, and walked slowly toward the porch, a blaze of yellow on the south side of the red brick house drew my attention. It was the Forsythia, the great bush of "yellow bells," of which Horace Bradford had spoken as blooming in advance of any in the neighbourhood, and for a moment I felt as if I were walking into the pages of a story-book.

I wielded the heavy brass knocker on the half-door, with diamond-paned glass top, and paused to look off to where the flower and fruit garden sloped south and west. Presently, as no one answered the knock, I peered through the glass, into an open square, that was evidently both hall and sitting room. In one corner was a chimney place, in which a log burned lazily, opposite a broad, low window, its shelves filled with flower pots, near which, in a harp-backed chair, an old lady sat sewing. She wore a simple black gown, with a small shawl thrown across her shoulders, and her hair, clear steel colour and white, was held in a loose knot by an old-fashioned shell comb. In spite of the droop and lines of age (for Horace Bradford's mother must have been quite seventy), the nose had a fine, strong Roman curve, and the brow a thoughtful width.

What was she thinking of as she sat there alone, this bright April afternoon, shaping a garment, with a smile hovering about her lips? Her son's promotion and bright prospects, perhaps.

I looked across at the old mahogany chest of drawers behind her, to see if I could recognize any of the framed photographs that stood there. One, evidently copied from a daguerrotype, was of a curly-haired girl, about fourteen, probably the daughter who died years ago, and another, close at her elbow, was of a lanky boy of eight or ten, wearing a broad straw hat, and grasping a fishing pole, probably Horace, as a child, but there was nowhere to be seen the photograph of him in cap, gown, and hood that stood on Miss Lavinia's chimney shelf.

Then as Mrs. Bradford folded her hands over her work, and gazed through the plants and window, at some far-away thought, I felt like a detective, spying upon her, and hastily knocked again.

This time she heard at once, and coming quickly to the door, admitted me, with a cordial smile and a hearty grasp of the hand that reminded me of her son, and was totally unlike the clammy and noncommittal touch of so many of the country folk, bred evidently of their general habit of caution.

"You are Mrs. Evan, the Doctor's daughter. I know your father well, though I have never met you face to face since you were a little girl."

Then the conversation drifted easily along to Miss Lavinia, and my meeting with Horace, his professorship, the prospect of his being at home all summer, and to the different changes in the community, especially that wrought by the colony at the Bluffs, which were really the halfway mark between Oaklands and Pine Ridge.

Mrs. Bradford saw the purely commercial and cheerful side of the matter; as yet, few of the new places were well equipped with gardens,--it had opened a good market for the farmers on the Ridge, and they were no longer obliged to take their eggs, fruit, poultry, and butter into town.

In spite of a certain reticence, she was eager to know the names of all the newcomers; but when I mentioned Mrs. Latham, saying that she was the mother of Sylvia, one of her son's pupils, and described the beauty of their place, I thought that she gave a little start, and that I heard her speak the initials S. L. under her breath; but when I looked up, I could detect nothing but a slight quiver of the eyelids.

Then we went out into the garden, arm in arm, for Mrs. Bradford's footing seemed insecure upon the cobbled walk, and she turned to me at once as naturally as if I were a neighbour's daughter. Together we grew enthusiastic over the tufts of white violets, early hyacinths, and narcissi, or equally so over the mere buds of things. For it is the rotary promise that is the inspiration of a garden; it is this that lures us on from year to year, and softens the sharp punctuation of birthdays.

Was there anything in her garden that I had not? She would be so pleased to exchange plants with me, and had I any of the new cactus Dahlias, and so on, until we reached the walk's end, and turned about under a veteran cherry tree that showered us with its almond-scented petals.

Then Mrs. Bradford relaxed completely, and pulling down a branch, buried her face