Annie Trumbull Slosson

“ And the shet-up posy felt real bad; not mean and hateful and begrudgin’, you know, and wantin’ to take away the nice part from the other posies, but sorry, and kind o’ ’shamed.
“Oh, deary me!” she says,—I most forgot to say ’twas a girl posy,—“deary me, what a humly, skimpy, awk’ard thing I be! I ain’t more ’n half made; there ain’t no nice, pretty lining inside o’ me, like them other posies; and on’y my wrong side shows, and that’s jest plain and common. I can’t chirk up folks like the goldenrod and daisies does. Nobody won’t want to pick me and carry me home. ”

“ One on ’em was a man that had a real hefty bundle on his back, that he’d put on there hisself,—not all to onct, but a mite to time, for years ‘n’ years. ’Twas a real cur’us bundle, made up out o’ little things in the road that’d got in his way, or hurt him, or put him back. Some on ’em was jest little stones that had hurt his feet, and some was little60 stingin’ weeds that smarted him as he went by ’em, and some was jest mites o’ dirt somebody’d throwed at him, not meanin’ no great o’ harm. ”

“ Makes you think real hard, that does; leastways, makes me. What’s they15 that way for? If they ain’t never goin’ to open out, what’s the use o’ havin’ the shet-up part so slicked up and nice, with nobody never seem’ it? Folks has different names for ’em, dumb foxgloves, blind genshuns, and all that, but I allers call ’em the shet-up posies.
Well, ’t was one o’ that kind o’ posy I was goin’ to tell you about. ’Twas one o’ the shet-uppest and the buddiest of all on ’em, all blacky-blue and straight up and down, and shet up fast and tight. Nobody’d ever dream’t was pretty inside. ”

“ Folks is pleasanter speakin’, and the victuals ’pears better flavored, and things is comfortabler every way, seems ’s if, and I jedge by that we’re ’most there.” But Billy’d say, a-grumblin’ away, “It’s worse’n worse,—young ones a-botherin’ my life out o’ me, and the birds a-jabberin’ and the posies a-smellin’ till my head aches. Oh, deary me! I’m ’most dead.” So ’t went on and kep’ on. Jack had every mite as hard work as Billy, but he didn’t mind it, he was so full o’ what was comin’ and how good ’t would be to get there. ”

“ She’d see the dew a-layin’ soft and cool on the other posies’ faces, and the sun a-shinin’ warm on ’em as they held ’em up, and sometimes she’d see a butterfly come down and light on ’em real soft, and kind o’ put his head down to ’em, ’s if he was kissin’ ’em, and she thought ’twould be powerful nice to hold her face up to all them pleasant things. ”

“ Every speck o’ money he could scrape together he’d put in that bundle, till he couldn’t scursely heft it, ’twas that big and weighed so much. He had plenty o’ chances to make it lighter, for there was folks all along the road that needed it bad,—little child’en that hadn’t no62 clo’es nor no victuals, and sick folks and old folks, every one on ’em needin’ money dreadful bad. But the man never gin ’em a mite. He kep’ it all on his back, a-hurtin’ and weighin’ him down. ”

“ But ’t was one of them posies like what grows down the road, back o’ your pa’s sugar-house, Danny, and don’t come till way towards fall. They’re sort o’ blue, but14 real dark, and they look ’s if they was buds ’stead o’ posies,—only buds opens out, and these doesn’t They’re all shet up close and tight, and they never, never, never opens. Never mind how much sun they get, never mind how much rain or how much drouth, whether it’s cold or hot, them posies stay shet up tight, kind o’ buddy, and not finished and humly. ”

“ There was a man lived round there jest where he could see the head from his winder. He was a man that things had gone wrong with all along; he’d had lots o’ trouble, and he didn’t take it very easy. He fretted and complained, and blamed it on other folks, and more partic’lar on—God. And one day—he’d jest come to live in them parts—he looked out of his winder, and he see, standin’ out plain ag’in the sky, he see that Stony Head. It looked real ha’sh and hard and stony and dark, and all of a suddent the man thought it was—God. ”

“ Once there was a boy that was dreadful scaret o’ dyin’. Some folks is that way, you know; they ain’t never done it to know how it feels, and they’re scaret. And this boy was that way. He wa’n’t very rugged, his health was sort o’ slim, and mebbe that made him73 think about sech things more. ’Tany rate, he was terr’ble scaret o’ dyin’. ’Twas a long time ago this was,—the times when posies and creaturs could talk so’s folks could know what they was sayin’. ”

“ And another plant told her mebbe her berry was saved from growin’ up a trouble to her, gettin’ bad and hard, with mebbe a worm inside on it, to make her ashamed and sorry. “Oh, no, no!” thinks the mother plant. “My berry’d never got bad and hard, and I’d ’a’ kep’ any worm from touchin’ its little white heart.” Not a single thing the plant-folks said to her done a mite o’ good. Their talk only worried her and pestered her, when she jest wanted to be let alone, so’s she could think about her little berry all to herself. ”

“ Mebbe he see the man wouldn’t ’a’ done so well without the bundle,—might ’a’ run off, ’way, ’way off from the Head Man and the work he had to do. Or, ag’in, p‘r’aps he wanted to make a ’zample of the man, and show folks how patient and nice a body could be, even though he had a big, hefty bundle to carry all his born days, one made out o’ flesh and skin and things, and that hurt dreadful. ”

“ But someways that didn’t help Reuben much as you’d think. “I ain’t a posy,” he think to himself, “and mebbe I wouldn’t come up.”
Well, another time he was settin’ on a stone in the lower pastur’, cryin’ again, and he heerd another cur’us little voice. ’t wa’n’t like the posy’s voice, but ’twas a little, wooly, soft, fuzzy voice, and he see ’t was a caterpillar a-talkin’ to him. And the caterpillar says, in his fuzzy little voice, he says, “What you cryin’ for, Reuben?” And the boy, he says, “I’m powerful scaret o’ dyin’, that’s why,” he says. And that fuzzy caterpillar he laughed. “Dyin’!” ”

“ He wa’n’t no good to nobody, not even to hisself, for he was terr’ble unhappy and scaret and angry. So ’t went on, oh! I d’know how long,51 years and years, I guess likely, and there the man was shet up all alone, lookin’ and lookin’, and scaret at lookin’ at that ha’sh, hard, stony face and head. But one day, as he was settin’ there by the winder lookin’, he heerd a little sound. I d’know what made him hear it jest then. There’d been sech sounds as that time and time ag’in, and he never took no notice. ’Twas like a child a-cryin’, and that’s common enough. ”

“ And fust he called up the man that had the bundle all made out o’ things that had pricked him, and tripped him up, and scratched him, and put him back on the road. And then he had up the man with the money weighin’ him down,—the money he’d kep’ away from poor folks and piled up on his own back. And then come the feller that was carryin’ the heavy bundle67 folks had put on him when ’t wa’n’t no fault o’ his’n, and that he might ’a’ got red of a long spell back, if he’d only rec’lected what the Head Man had said ’bout sech cases, and how they could be helped. ”

“ And he’d go on and on, a-stumblin’ over stones and fallin’ over logs and a-steppin’ into holes, but stickin’ to it, and forgettin’ everything only that little cryin’ voice ahead of him. Seems ’s if he jest must find that little lost boy or girl, ’s if he’d be more ’n willin’ to give up his own poor lonesome old life to save that child. And, jest ’s he come to thinkin’ that, he see somethin’ ahead53 of him movin’ and in a minute he knowed he’d found the lost child. ”

“ A stately name, indeed, for the little crippled, stunted, helpless creature, and I myself could never think of her by any name but the one the village people used, Story-tell Lib. I had heard of her for two or three summers in my visits to Greenhills. The village folk had talked to me of the little lame girl who told such pretty stories out of her own head, “kind o’ fables that learnt folks things, and helped ’em without bein’ too preachy.” ”

“ And the plant wa’n’t40 lookin’ out for any danger, when all of a suddent there come a little bit of a snap, and the slimsy little pink stem broke, and the little berry fell and rolled away, and, ’fore you could say “Jack Robinson,” ’t was clean gone out o’ sight. I can’t begin to tell ye how that plant took on. Seem ’s if she’d die, or go ravin’ crazy. It’s only folks that has lost jest what they set most by on airth that can understand about it, I s’pose. ”

“ But my other guess is the one I b’leeve in most,—that the Head Man done it65 to scrooch him down, so’s he’d take notice o’ little teenty things, down below, that most folks never see, things that needed him to watch ’em, and do for ’em, and tell about ’em. ”

“ The sort, you know, where the horses keep steppin’ up a board thing ’s if they was climbin’ up-hill or goin’ up a pair o’ stairs, only they don’t never get along a mite; they keep right in the same place all the time, steppin’ and steppin’, but never gittin’ on. ”

“ And it had made the man nicer, and pleasanter spoken, and kinder to folks, and partic’lar to creaturs. It had made him sort o’ bend down, ’twas so hefty, and so he’d got to takin’ notice o’ teenty little things nobody else scursely’d see,—mites o’ posies, and cunnin’ little bugs, and creepin’, crawlin’ things. ”