I
The Bar Harbor train slowly came to a stop beside a little wooden station. From over the marshes crept a breath of salty freshness that tried vainly to steal in through the open windows of the Pullman, only intensifying the stifling heat inside.
McAllister arose and made his way to the platform in search of air. A spare, wrinkled octogenarian was in the difficult act of lifting a small girl in a calico dress to the platform of the day coach, the child clinging obstinately to the old gentleman's neck and refusing to disentangle herself.
"Mercy, Abby! Do leggo!" he remonstrated. "Thar, ef ye don't, I'll ask that man thar to hoist ye!"
The little girl reluctantly let go her hold and allowed herself to be placed on the lowest step.
"That's a good girl," continued her guardian; then addressing McAllister, he inquired conversationally:
"Be ye goin' to Bangor?"
"How's that? Ye-es, I believe I am. At least the train passes through," responded McAllister doubtfully, apprehensive of undesirable complications.
The old fellow produced from his waistcoat-pocket a ticket which he placed in the child's hand. Then he turned her around and gave her a little push up the steps.
"Wall, jest keep an eye on Abby, will ye?"
"Good-by, Uncle!" cried the little girl, climbing laboriously up to where the clubman stood and making a little bow, which he gravely returned.
"I don't know . . ." he began.
"That's all right," explained the farmer. "Her aunt'll meet her. Jest see she don't bother no one. Lemme pass ye her duds."
The octogenarian forthwith handed up to McAllister a cloth valise, a pasteboard box, and a large paper bag.
"Her lunch is in the bag," said he. "Don't let her drink none o' that ice-water. My wife says it hez germs into it."
"But I don't . . ." gasped our friend.
"Be keerful o' that box," interrupted her uncle. "There's two dozen hen's eggs in it. If she's good, you might buy her a cent's worth o' peppermints to Portland." He fumbled uncertainly in his breeches' pocket.
"Do you expect me . . ." ejaculated McAllister.
"Give my love to yer aunt," added the other as the train started. "Good-by!" And pulling a large red pocket-handkerchief from his coat-tails he fanned the air vaguely as they moved slowly away from him.
"Oh, isn't it nice!" cried the little girl, who appeared quite at ease with her new acquaintance.
"Ye-es—certainly—of course," he replied, wondering what he should do with his charge. "I suppose we had better go in and sit down, don't you think?"
He stood aside waiting for her to precede him into the parlor car.
"What a lovely place!" she exclaimed as her eyes rested upon the rosewood and the velvet chairs. "Am I really to ride in this?"
"Why, where should you ride, to be sure?" he inquired, beginning to regain his self-possession.
"The car had iron seats before," she informed him.
"How extraordinary!"
"This is an ever so much prettier train," she added. "I'm afraid I'll hurt the plush." She took out a diminutive handkerchief and spread it out to sit upon. The clubman with an amused expression swung round another chair and sat down opposite.
"My name's Abigail Martha Higgins," she said, taking off her little straw hat. "I live in Bangor with my aunt. That old man was Uncle Moses Higgins. Aunt doesn't love his wife."
"Dear me!" sympathized McAllister.
"My father and mother are in heaven," she continued in matter-of-fact tones. "Up there. Wouldn't you hate to live up in the sky and do nothin'?"
"I certainly should," he answered with gravity.
"We all came down from there, you know. Do you think we were born all in one piece, or put together afterward?"
McAllister pondered.
"What's your name?"
"McAllister," he replied.
"That's a funny name!" she commented. "It sounds like McCafferty—that's Deacon Brewer's hired man's name."
"Do you think so?" asked the clubman apologetically, feeling that his parents had done him an irreparable injury.
"I'll call you Mister Mac," added the child, "and you may call me Abby, 'cause I'm only eight. Do you live to Boston?"
"No; New York. An awful way off."
"Have they got a Free-Will Meetin'-house there?" she inquired knowingly.
"I'm sure I don't know," he answered, feeling wofully ignorant of all matters of real importance.
"Then it must be a very small place," she decided. "All big places have a Free-Will Meetin'-house, Uncle Moses says."
At this moment Wilkins approached to inquire if his master wanted anything.
"Is there a Free-Will Meetin'-house in New York?" inquired the clubman.
"Yes, sir; I believe so, sir. That is to say, a Baptist place of worship, sir," he answered solemnly.
"Is that your brother?" inquired Abby.
"No—" hesitated McAllister, doubtful as to what the valet's equivalent would be in his little friend's world.
"What's your name?" inquired Abby.
"Wilkins, miss," answered the valet.
"What a lovely name!" cried Abby. "It's much nicer than his'n."
Wilkins stepped back a few paces aghast.
"That box is chuck full of eggs," announced Abby. "I wonder where the hens get them."
"I give it up," said the clubman.
"We have a black horse on our farm," she continued. "It used to be a girl, but now it's a boy."
"Indeed!" exclaimed McAllister.
"Yes, aunt had her tail cut off. Boys have short hair, you know—that's how you tell."
At this Wilkins disappeared rapidly into the background.
"Uncle Moses' wife don't love children," the child continued. "She has the rheumatiz in her thigh."
"But she must like you, Abby," urged her new friend.
"No, she don't. She don't love me 'cause I love Aunt Abby, an' Aunt Abby don't love her."
"I see," said McAllister.
The clubman soon became acquainted with Abby's entire family history, and rapidly realized that the mind of a child was a thing undreamed of in his philosophy. As she pattered on he conversed gravely with her, trying to answer her multitudinous questions. All her world was good save Uncle Moses' wife, and her confidence in the clubman was entire. She admired his clothes, his watch-chain, and his scarf-pin, and ended by directing him to read to her, which McAllister obediently did. None of the magazines seemed to contain suitable articles, so with some misgivings he purchased various colored weeklies, remembering vaguely his own delight in the misadventures of certain chubby ladies and stout gentlemen upon rear pages, perused furtively when waiting at the barber's to get his hair cut as a child. For half an hour her interest remained tense, but then she wearied of using her eyes, and, patting McAllister's fat chin, ordered him to tell her a story. Here was a new difficulty. He had never told a story in his life, but there was no help for it, no escape, as she climbed into his lap.
"Begin with once onup-a-time," she ordered.
"Well," he obeyed "Once 'onup' a time there was a man who lived in a club——"
"A what?" sharply interrupted Abby.
"A big white house with heaps of rooms," he corrected. "And as he had nobody dependent on him, all he had to do was to eat and sleep and look at the sky."
"Didn't he have any children?"
"Nobody in the world," answered McAllister.
"Poor man!" sighed Abby. "Didn't he keep any hens?"
"Not even a hen!"
"I know a big house just like that," said Abby. "Old Captain Barnard used to live in it. Wasn't he lonely?"
"Sometimes."
"Did anyone live with him?"
"His hired man," answered the clubman with a smile, looking down the car to where Wilkins sat in solitary grandeur. "And by and by he got so old and so fat that nobody would marry him, while the wives of other men he knew forgot to ask him to dinner."
"Poor dear man!" murmured Abby, "I should think he'd have wished he hadn't been born."
"Sometimes he did," answered the story-teller. "And he longed for some people to really care for him, and for some little children to keep him company."
"Did he have a cow?"
"No, not even a cow."
Abby laughed sleepily.
"But didn't he ever have any fun?"
"He thought he did, but he didn't, really."
"I'm awful sorry for him!" said Abby. "If I met him I would give him my white hen."
"He used to pay for dinners for people, and send them flowers and candy and go to see them——"
"Sunday afternoons?"
"Yes; Sunday afternoons."
"He was really very nice," said Abby.
"Do you think so?" asked McAllister eagerly.
"Why, of course. Don't you think so?"
"So-so," said the clubman.
"But he never hurt anyone?"
"And gave the hired man plenty of victuals?"
"Much more than was good for him," said McAllister with conviction.
"I like that man," said Abby. "He was a good man."
"But some people said he was an idle fellow," insisted McAllister.
"But that didn't do anybody any harm," said Abby.
"No, certainly not."
"And he wasn't cross?"
"No, almost never."
"Then," said Abby, "he was a good man, and I will marry him if he asks me."
And with that she dropped her head on his arm and fell fast asleep.
"Can't I hold the young—person, for you, sir?" inquired the valet in a whisper.
"Certainly not," responded McAllister.
Over the flitting pines circled the crows, black dots against the deep blue; lazy cows stood knee-deep in fields frosted with daisies and watched seemingly without interest the passing train; little puffs of white in serried ranks moved slowly out of the north, never approaching nearer, dissolving at the meridian; on the near horizon a line of indigo mountains tumbled southward; white farm-houses swept slowly by; at dusty crossings gray-whiskered farmers sat loosely holding the reins in amiable conformity with the injunction painted upon weather-worn signs to "Look out for the engine"; at times the train passed over rocky bedded streams dammed for milling, and once or twice across rivers half choked with logs upon which men ran like water-bugs; then through red brick towns, and towns with square granite stores and offices, and towns of white and green, marking the three disconnected periods of the architectural development of Maine; and everywhere the pines.
In the midst of a stretch of thick woods the engine began to whistle frantically. A brakeman, followed closely by a conductor, hurried through the car. The wheels ground harshly and the train gradually ceased to move. Ahead could be heard the loud pounding of the engine and the roar of escaping steam. Volumes of smoke, white and black, rolled over the pines and cast rapidly changing shadows upon the ground. Wilkins, who had gone forth to seek information, now returned.
"There's a freight wreck just a'ead, sir. The conductor says as how we shall be delayed 'ere at least nine hours."
McAllister glanced down at the little form in his arms. It had not moved. Gently he carried her along the aisle, out upon the platform, and down the steps to the ground. Still she did not awake. Up the track he could see groups of excited passengers gesticulating around grotesque piles of wreckage upon which a locomotive lay with its wheels in the air. Beside the track stretched a pine grove, its soft carpet of needles flecked with sunlight. At the foot of one giant tree, on a bed of gray moss, the clubman laid his little charge and threw himself at her feet. An irritable family of nervous crows flapped noisily away to the other side of the track, assembled in angry consultation in a hemlock, deputed a spy, who cautiously reconnoitred, and, on the latter's report, returned. At a safe distance Wilkins sat upon a windfall, and with one eye upon his sleeping master smoked rapidly one of McAllister's cigars.