Beth Bradford Gilchrist

“ Every one seemed to know exactly what to do. The pails of water were swung to one side; the fireless cooker took 56 up its position on a flat gray rock. The hamper yielded loaves of bread—light and dark, that one cut for oneself on a smooth white board—and a basket stocked with plates and cups and knives and forks and spoons. Potted meat and potatoes and two kinds of vegetables, as they were wanted, came from the fireless cooker, all deliciously tender and piping hot. It was like a cafeteria in the open, thought Elliott, except that one had no tray. ”

“ It was all smiling and gay, but it was a crawl, and Elliott knew it and knew that Laura knew it, and she felt ashamed. Wasn’t Stannard’s frank shirking better than her camouflaged variety? But hadn’t she picked berries all the morning in a stuffy sunbonnet under a broiling sun, until she felt as red as a berry and much less fresh and sweet?
“It’s a shame,” said Laura, “that this is just our busy season; but you know you have to make hay while the sun shines. ”

“ Oh, my dear little girl, put that notion out of your head quickly! American-beauty roses may be a luxury, and white lilacs in the dead of winter, but garden flowers, never! Wait till you see the daffodils dancing under those apple trees next spring!” And she nodded up the grassy slope at the apple trees as though she and they shared a delightful secret that Elliott did not yet know.
Privately the girl held a different opinion about next spring, but she wondered why Aunt Jessica should talk of daffodils. ”

“ At last Elliott knew how the others felt about Pete. She had thought she understood that and felt it, too, but now she found that she hadn’t. It makes all the difference in the world, she discovered, whether one stands inside or outside a trouble. The heart that had ached so sympathetically for Bruce knew its first stab of loss and recoiled. ”

“ But when they had reached Bruce’s secret spot and were cutting the wiry brown stems, and packing together carefully the spreading, many-fingered fronds so as not to break the delicate ferns, that undercurrent of numb consternation reasserted itself. Like Priscilla, Elliott felt a little shocked at the brightness of the sunshine, the blueness of the sky, and the beauty of the fern-filled glade. ”

“ Priscilla’s tip-tilted little nose was already liberally besprinkled. If Laura hadn’t such 96 a wonderful skin, she would have been a sight long ago, despite the wide brim of her big straw hat. A mere farm hat, and Laura looked like a mere husky farm girl, as she guided her horses skilfully around the field. How strong her arms must be! But how could a girl with Laura’s intelligence and high spirit and charm enjoy putting all this time into haying? With Priscilla, of course, matters stood differently. Children never discriminate.
“No, I sha’n’t do that kind of thing,” said Elliott, firmly. ”

“ Laura was dressed now, from the crown of her smooth black head to the tip of her white canvas shoes, and a very satisfactory operation she had made of it. Elliott dismissed Laura’s last remark, which had not sounded very sensible to her—of course it mattered who did things; why, that sometimes was all that did matter!—and reflected that, country bred though she was, her cousin Laura had an air that many a town girl might have envied. An ability to find hard manual work interesting did not seem to preclude the knowledge of how to put on one’s clothes. ”

“ She smiled prettily as her glance swept the welcoming faces, and kissed the girls and handed the boy two bits of pasteboard, and said—Oh, Elliott!—how delighted she was to see them at last. You would never have dreamed from Elliott’s lips that she was not overjoyed at the chance to come to Highboro and become acquainted with cousins that she had never known.
But Laura, who was wiser than she looked, noticed that the new-comer’s eyes were not half so happy as her tongue. Poor dear, thought Laura, how pretty she was and how daintily patrician and charming! ”

“ At an immaculately scoured table Laura was pouring peas into glass jars. On the walls was a blue-and-white paper; even the woodwork was white.
“I didn’t know a kitchen,” Elliott spoke impulsively, “could be so pretty.”
“This is our work-room,” said her aunt. “We think the place where we work ought to be the prettiest room in the house. White paint requires more frequent scrubbing than colored paint; but the girls say they don’t mind, since it keeps our spirits smiling. ”

“ That was one of the delightful things about Aunt Jessica, Elliott thought: she never probed beneath the surface of one’s words, she never even looked curiosity, and she gave one immediately a reason for doing what one wished to do. Lemonade and cookies made an appearance in the hay-field the most natural thing in the world. ”

“ It was an enlightened but somewhat surfeited cousin whom Priscilla blissfully escorted into the summer kitchen, a big latticed space filled with the pleasant odors of currant jelly. On the broad table stood trays of ruby-filled glasses.
“We’ve seen all the creatures,” Priscilla announced jubilantly “and she loves ’em. Oh, the jelly’s done, isn’t it? Mumsie, may we scrape the kettle?”
Aunt Jessica laughed. “Elliott may not care to scrape kettles.”
Priscilla opened her eyes wide at the absurdity of the suggestion. “You do, don’t you? You must! Everybody does. ”

“ Life still had its moments and she was in the midst of one of the worst of them now. If you have ever stood in a kitchen where little gray kittens of dust rollicked under the chairs and all the dinner kettles and pans were piled on the table, unscraped and unwashed, and you saw ahead of you more things that you had planned to do than you could possibly get through before supper, and one girl was crying in the attic and another was crying in the china-closet, and your own heart was in your 228 boots, you know how Elliott Cameron felt at this minute. ”

“ Alma Gordon and the little Bliss girls were the last to squeeze in and they rode away waving their hands violently 167 to a short, fat woman and a tall, fat girl, who waved briskly from the brick house’s front door.
Then Mr. Cameron turned the horses into a mountain road and they began to climb. Up and up the wagon went with its merry load, through towering woods and open pastures and along hillsides where the woods had been cut and a tangle of underbrush was beginning to spring up among the stumps. And the higher the horses climbed the higher rose the jollity of the hay-wagon’s company. ”

“ Somehow Elliott did not quite like the words.
Laura was quick to notice her discomfiture. “I imagine they needed the frills and the jollying, poor lonesome boys! They’re so young, many of them, and not used to being away from home; and the life is strange, however well they may like it.” ”

“ Elliott hadn’t meant to look so fixedly at Laura’s hands as to make her thought visible, and the color rose in her cheeks when Laura said, exactly as though she were a mind-reader, “If you prefer lily-white fingers to stirring around doing things, why, you have to sit in a corner and keep them lily-white. I like to stick mine into too many pies ever to have them look well.” ”

“ Going to bed isn’t a very exciting thing to do when you are so happy you feel as though you might burst with joy, but by that time the Camerons had managed to work out of the most dangerous stage, and inasmuch as Stannard’s was an early train, going to bed was the only sensible thing to do. ”

“ Suppose she should write, “Dear Bess, I like it up here and I am going to stay my year out.” Bess would think her crazy; so would all the girls, and Aunt Margaret, too.
And then suddenly an arresting idea came into her head. What difference would it make if they did think her crazy? Elliott Cameron had never had such an idea before; all her life she had in a perfectly nice way thought a great deal about what people thought of her. ”

“ The woman and the girl shelled peas, their fat fingers fairly flying through the pods, while Elliott devoured both eggs and a bowl of oatmeal and a pitcher of cream and a dish of blueberries and wondered how they could make their fingers move so fast.
“Practice,” said Mrs. Gordon in answer to the girl’s query. “You do a thing over and over enough times and you get so you can’t help doing it fast, if you’ve got any gumption at all. The quarts of peas I’ve shelled in my life time would feed an army, I guess.” ”

“ Just as soon as the quarantine was lifted from Uncle James’s house she meant to go back to Cedarville. But she did notice that the little car was not new, that on their way 26 through the town every one they met bowed and smiled, that Henry had amazingly good manners for a country boy, that Laura looked very strong, that Gertrude was all hands and elbows and feet and eyes, and that the car was continually either climbing up or sliding down hills. ”

“ No one ran around futilely, doing nothing; no one had hysterics; no one even cried.
Mother Jess’s face went very white when Father Bob came back from the telephone 218 and said, “Sidney isn’t so well.”
“Have they sent for us?”
He nodded. “You’d better take the sleeper. The eighty-thirty from Upton will make it.”
“Can you—?”
“Not with things the way they are here.”
Then they all scattered, to do the things that had to be done. Elliott was helping Laura pack the suit-case when she had her idea. It really was a wonderful idea for a girl who had never in her life put herself out for any one else. ”

“ Harriet pulled him up to her. “I’ll sew it on in a jiffy. Don’t worry about the bees, Mother. I can manage them, if they decide to swarm before you get back, and while you’re at the Blisses’ just telephone central our phone’s out of order—and oh, please tell Mrs. Cameron we’re keeping Elliott till afternoon.”
Mrs. Gordon departed and Harriet sewed on the button. “There, Johnny, now you’re all right. You can run out and play.” ”

“ In helping the corn crop, she too might feel herself feeding the Belgians.
Gertrude linked her arm in her slender cousin’s as they left the table. “I’ll show you where the tools are,” she said. “Harry runs the cultivator in the field, but we use hand-hoes in the garden.”
“You will have to show me more than that,” said Elliott. “What does hoeing do to corn, anyhow?”
“Keeps down the weeds that eat up the nourishment in the soil,” recited Gertrude glibly, “and by stirring up the ground keeps in the moisture. You like to know the reason for things, too, don’t you? ”

“ His voice mounted in a long, piercing wail.
“Don’t cry,” the girl said nervously. “Don’t cry. Let’s go into the house and find something.”
Up-stairs and down she trailed the shrieking child. At the Cameron farm there were two hamamelis bottles, one in the bath-room, the other on a shelf in the kitchen. But nothing rewarded her search here. If only some one were at home! If only the telephone weren’t out of order! Desperately she took down the receiver, to be greeted by a faint, continuous buzzing. There was nothing for it; she must leave Johnny and run to a neighbor’s. ”

“ The last load had dashed into the big red barn two minutes before a thunder-shower, and Laura, freshly tubbed and laundered, was winding her long black 98 braids around her shapely little head. Elliott sat on the bed and watched her.
“Aren’t you glad it’s done?” she asked.
“The haying? Oh, yes, I’m always glad when we have it safely in. But I love it.”
“Really? It isn’t work for girls.”
“No? Then once a year I’ll take a vacation from being a girl. But that doesn’t hold now, you know. Everything is work for girls that girls can do, to help win this war.” ”

“ Do you think you will go, too, Harriet?”
“I’d rather not this time, Mother.”
“The Bliss girls will probably go, and Alma knows them pretty well. She won’t be lonesome.”
“Oh, no,” said Elliott, “we will see that she isn’t lonely.”
“Must you go? Tell Mrs. Cameron we will send our limousine whenever she says the word.” On the way back through the house Harriet Gordon paused before the picture of a young man in aviator’s uniform. “My brother,” she said simply, and there was infinite pride in her voice.
Elliott stumbled down the path to the road. She quite forgot to put up the pink parasol. ”

“ The girl didn’t know and she was keen enough to know that she didn’t; keen enough, too, to perceive that the change in her estimation of grandfathers applied to a single case only and might be merely temporary.
However that might be, she was not 79 ready yet to do anything so inherently distasteful as make the best of what she didn’t like, especially when nobody but herself and two boys would know it. When one makes the best of things, one likes to do it to crowded galleries, that perceive what is going on and applaud. The Robert Camerons, Elliott was quite sure, wouldn’t applaud. ”

“ Father thinks we can finish the lower 82 meadows to-day. Then to-morrow we begin cutting on the hill. It’s really fun to ride the hay-rake. I mostly drive the rake, though now and then I pitch for variety.”
She looked so strong and brown and merry, as she talked, that Elliott, comfortably established with “Lorna Doone,” felt almost like flinging her book into the next chair, slipping her arm through Laura’s, and crying, “Lead on!” But she remembered just in time that, as she hadn’t wished to come to the Cameron Farm, it would ill become her to have a good time there. ”

“ Father Bob suggested, and they all fell to discussing whom to ask.
So far as Elliott could see they asked everybody except townspeople. The telephone was kept busy that night and the next morning in the intervals of Mother Jess’s and the girls’ baking. Elliott helped pack up dozens of turnovers and cookies and sandwiches and bottled quarts of lemonade.
“The lemonade is for the children,” said Laura. “The rest of us have coffee. Don’t you love the taste of coffee that you make over a fire that you build yourself in the woods?” ”

“ Every one who was any one at all had a family. Bruce did not look common: his gray eyes and his broad forehead and his keen, thin face were almost distinguished, and his manners were above criticism. But one never could tell. And hadn’t he been brought up by Camerons? The very 72 openness with which he had told his story had something fine about it. He, like Laura, seemed to see nothing in it to conceal.
Well, was there? Elliott could quite clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret, Stannard’s mother, would say to that question. She had never especially cared for Aunt Margaret. ”