But Margaret Llewellen declared she would not go with her!
“It's nasty in the Tam'rack swamp; and there's frogs and, and snakes. Ketch me! And as fur goin' ter see Tobe and his old woman, huh! They're both as ugly as sin.”
“Why, Margaret!” exclaimed Nan, in horror. “How you talk!”
“Wal, it's so. I don't like old, wizzled-up folks, I don't, now I tell ye!”
“That sounds awfully cruel,” said Nan, soberly.
“Huh!” snorted Margaret, no other word would just express her manner of showing disgust. “There ain't no reason why I should go 'round makin' believe likin' them as I don't like. Dad useter take the hide off'n me and Bob for lyin'; an' then he'd stand an' palaver folks that he jest couldn't scurce abide, fur I heard him say so. That's lyin', too ain't it?”
“I, I don't believe it is right to criticize our parents,” returned Nan, dodging the sharp girl's question.
“Mebbe yourn don't need criticizin',” responded Margaret, bluntly. “My dad ain't no angel, you kin bet.”
And it was a fact that the Llewellen family was a peculiar one, from “Gran'ther” down to Baby Bill, whom Margaret did not mind taking care of when he was not “all broke out with the rash on his face.” The girl's dislike for any countenance that was not of the smoothest, or skin of the softest texture, seemed strange indeed.
Margaret's mother was dead. She had five brothers and sisters of assorted ages, up to 'Lonzo, who was sixteen and worked in the woods like Nan's cousins.
Aunt Matilda kept house for the motherless brood, and for Gran'ther and Mr. Fen Llewellen. They lived in a most haphazard fashion, for, although they were not really poor, the children never seemed to have any decent clothing to wear; and if, by chance, they got a new garment, something always happened to it as, for instance, the taking of Margaret's new gingham by Bob as a dress for old Beagle.
As the Llewellens were close neighbors of the Sherwoods, Nan saw much of Margaret. The local school closed soon after the visitor had come to Pine Camp, and Nan had little opportunity of getting acquainted with other girls, save at the church service, which was held in the schoolhouse only every other Sunday. There was no Sunday School at Pine Camp, even for the very youngest of the children.
Nan talked to Aunt Kate about that. Aunt Kate was the very kindest-hearted woman that ever lived; but she had little initiative herself about anything outside her own house. “Goodness knows, I'd like to see the kiddies gathered together on Sunday afternoon and taught good things,” she signed; “but lawsy, Nan! I'm not the one to do it. I'm not good enough myself.”
“Didn't you teach Tom and Rafe, and—and—” Nan stopped. She had almost mentioned the two older boys of her aunt's, whom she had heard were destroyed in the Pale Lick fire. Aunt Kate did not notice, for she went on to say:
“Why—yes; I taught Tom and Rafe to say their prayers, and I hope they say 'em now, big as they are. And we often read the Bible. It's a great comfort, the main part of it. I never did take to the 'begats,' though.”
“But couldn't we,” suggested Nan, “interest other people and gather the children together on Sundays? Perhaps the old gentleman who comes here to preach every fortnight might help.”
“Elder Posey's not here but three hours or so, any time. Just long enough to give us the word and grab a bite at somebody's house. Poor old man! He attends three meetings each Sunday, all different, and lives on a farm at Wingate weekdays where he has to work and support his family.
“He doesn't get but fifty dollars a year from each church, it's not making him a millionaire very fast,” pursued Aunt Kate, with a soft little laugh. “Poor old man! I wish we could pay him more; but Pine Camp's not rich.”
“You all seem to have enough and to spare, Auntie,” said Nan, who was an observant girl for her age. “Nobody here is really poor.”
“Not unless he's right down lazy,” said her aunt, vigorously.
“Then I should think they'd build a proper church and give a minister some more money, so that he could afford to have a Sunday School as well.”
“Lawsy me, Nan!” exclaimed her aunt. “The men here in Pine Camp haven't been woke up to such things. They hate to spend that fifty dollars for Elder Posey, they'd get a cheaper man if there were such. There's never been much out of the common happen here at Pine Camp. It takes trouble and destruction to wake folks up to their Christian duty in these woods. Now, at Pale Lick they've got a church——-”
She stopped suddenly, and her face paled, while the ugly scar on her neck seemed to glow; but that may have been only in contrast. Aunt Kate turned away her head, and finally arose and went into her own room and closed the door. Nan dared not continue the subject when the good woman came out again, and the talk of a Sunday School for Pine Camp, for the time being, was ended.
There were hours when the girl from Tillbury was very lonely indeed. Writing to Bess and other girl friends in her old home town and penning long letters on thin paper to Momsey and Papa Sherwood in Scotland, did not fill all of these hours when Nan shut herself into that east room.
Sometimes she pulled down the paper shades and opened the clothes closet door, bringing out the long box she had hidden away there on the first day she had come to Pine Camp. In that box, wrapped in soft tissue paper, and dressed in the loveliest gown made by Momsey's own skillful fingers, was the great doll that had been given to Nan on her tenth birthday.
When girls went to high school, of course they were supposed to put away dolls, together with other childish things. But Nan Sherwood never could neglect her doll-babies and had often spent whole rainy days playing with them in secret in the attic of the little house on Amity Street.
Her other dolls had been left, carefully wrapped and shielded from the mice, at Tillbury; but Nan had been unable to leave Beautiful Beulah behind. She packed her in the bottom of her trunk, unknown even to Momsey in the hurry of departure. She had not told a soul here at Pine Camp that she possessed a doll; she knew the boys would make fun of her for sure.
But she often sat behind the drawn shades nursing the big doll and crooning softly to it as she swung back and forth in the spring rocking-chair. Tom had oiled the springs for her so that it no longer creaked.
She did not confide even in Aunt Kate about the big doll. They were all very kind to her; but Nan had a feeling that she ought to be grown up here among her backwoods relatives. How could she ever face roguish Rafe if he knew she liked to “play dolls?”
Fearing that even Margaret would tell, Nan had never shown the woods girl Beautiful Beulah. Once she was afraid Margaret had come to the window to peep in when Nan had the doll out of her hiding place; but she was not sure, and Nan hoped her secret was still inviolate. At least, Margaret never said a word about it.
Margaret's sisters had dolls made of corncobs, and rag babies with painted faces like the one Margaret had thrown into the river and drowned; but Margaret turned up her nose at them all. She never seemed to want to “play house” as do most girls of her age. She preferred to run wild, like a colt, with Bob in the woods and swamp.
Margaret did not wish to go into the swamp with Nan, however, on her first visit to Toby Vanderwiller's little farm. This was some weeks after the log drives, and lumbering was over for the season. Uncle Henry and the boys, rather than be idle, were working every acre they owned, and Nan was more alone than she had ever been since coming to Pine Camp.
She had learned the way to Toby's place, the main trail through the swamp going right by the hummock on which the old man's farm was situated. She knew there was a corduroy road most of the way—that is, a road built of logs laid side by side directly over the miry ground. Save in very wet weather this road was passable for most vehicles.
The distance was but three miles, however, and Nan liked walking. Besides, nobody who has not seen a tamarack swamp in late spring or early summer, can ever imagine how beautiful it is. Nan never missed human companionship when she was on the long walks she so often took in the woods.
She had learned now that, despite her adventure with the lynx in the snow-drifted hollow, there was scarcely any animal to fear about Pine Camp. Bears had not been seen for years; bobcats were very infrequently met with and usually ran like scared rabbits; foxes were of course shy, and the nearest approach to a wolf in all that section was Toby Vanderwiller's wolfhound that had once frightened Nan so greatly.
Hares, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, and many, many birds, peopled the forest and swamp. In sunken places where the green water stood and steamed in the sun, turtles and frogs were plentiful; and occasionally a snake, as harmless as it was wicked looking, slid off a water-soaked log at Nan's approach and slipped under the oily surface of the pool.
On the day Nan walked to Toby's place the first time, she saw many wonders of plant life along the way, exotics clinging to rotten logs and stumps; fronds of delicate vines that she had never before heard of; ferns of exquisite beauty. And flashing over them, and sucking honey from every cuplike flower, were shimmering humming-birds and marvelously marked butterflies.
The birds screamed or sang or chattered over the girl's head as she tripped along. Squirrels peeped at her, barked, and then whisked their tails in rapid flight. Through the cool, dark depths where the forest monarchs had been untouched by the woodsmen, great moths winged their lazy flight. Nan knew not half of the creatures or the wonderful plants she saw.
There were sounds in the deeps of the swamplands that she did not recognize, either. Some she supposed must be the voices of huge frogs; other notes were bird-calls that she had never heard before. But suddenly, as she approached a turn in the corduroy road, her ear was smitten by a sound that she knew very well indeed.
It was a man's voice, and it was not a pleasant one. It caused Nan to halt and look about for some place to hide until the owner of the voice went by. She feared him because of his harsh tones, though she did not, at the moment, suspect who it was.
Then suddenly she heard plainly a single phrase: “I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood git his!”