A LESSON BY THE WAYSIDE.
Promptly at nine o’clock Saturday morning the “Comet” might have been seen crawling down the side of the mountain with Billie at the wheel. Dr. Hume sat beside her and Elinor and Ben were in the back seat. It was with something of a holiday feeling that they went forth to meet Alberdina, the new maid, whose presence was becoming a pressing necessity.
“I don’t mind the cooking a bit, Doctor,” Billie was saying. “Especially with Nancy, although I suppose I am really her assistant. She makes things exciting enough. I think she’s a kind of culinary speculator and takes a lot of chances, but she’s awfully lucky. She takes all sorts of rag-tag ends of things, chops them into bits and turns out what she calls ragouts.”
“They’re mighty good,” said the doctor. “Experimenting cooks generally have a sub-conscious instinct that carries them along when they seem to be going blindly. But it’s difficult to work with them. They are always dictatorial and inclined to treat the assistant as a scullery maid.”
Billie groaned.
“I hope Alberdina, strong and fearless, will relieve us of that awful scullery work. I have a feeling it would be a reflection on my character and on the Campbell family if I didn’t leave every pan bright and shining, but oh, dear, it’s work! I think if I had to keep it up I should cook everything together, vegetables and meat, in one big kettle full of boiling water.”
“That wouldn’t be such a bad mess,” laughed the doctor. “The vegetable and meat juices would make a rich broth and you could serve soup, meat and vegetables all in one plate. Think of the saving of that.”
“As Cousin Helen said, it wouldn’t take campers long to revert to savagery,” ejaculated Billie. “We are already as brown as Indians. We keep our sleeves rolled up and our collars turned in and wear creepers instead of shoes, and always khaki skirts, and never dress for supper. Even Cousin Helen has slipped back a peg—”
“It’s the only possible way to enjoy camping,” broke in the doctor. “But you would never get to be an all the way savage. Look at that remarkable young woman, Miss Phoebe, who has never had anything else in all her life,—she is far from being a savage.”
“Indeed she is,” said Billie. “She has never been to school in her life, but she knows a great deal more about some things than I do—astronomy, for instance, and English history.”
“There is more than that,” put in Elinor, leaning over to join in the conversation. “Phoebe has learned something else that keeps her from ever being ill or tired or unhappy. I asked her what it was and she said it was a secret.”
“Speaking of angels,” remarked Ben, “there is Phoebe in front of us now, carrying a basket. I suppose she is going to the Antler’s Inn to sell some of her father’s work.”
Far ahead of them, swinging along the dusty road, was Phoebe. Her tall, slender figure swayed gracefully with the movement of the walk, but her shoulders did not bend under the burden of the large basket. A hot, dry wind blew her skirts about her and flapped the brim of her jimmie hat. Since the night at Sunrise Camp, Phoebe had never gone barefooted again, and she now wore a pair of canvas creepers that gave a spring to her step as she hurried along.
Keeping time to the rhythm of her steps, Phoebe chanted softly in a rich, clear voice:
“‘The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want.
“‘He maketh me to lie down in the green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.’”
The whir of the motor car interrupted the chanting, and, with an absent-minded glance over her shoulder, she stepped to the side of the road to wait for it to pass.
But the “Comet” stopped short and all the occupants called out, “Good morning,” with an especial cordiality.
Phoebe bowed her head gravely. Her eyes had a remote expression as if she had been awakened from a dream. Ben opened the door of the car and jumped out, while Billie exclaimed:
“I am so glad we met you, Phoebe, because now you will let us give you a lift.”
Phoebe looked into Billie’s kind gray eyes for a moment and then smiled as if she had found something there that pleased her.
“I will come,” she said, as Ben took the basket from her arm and helped her into the car.
“Have you walked across the mountain this morning?” he asked, when they had started on their way again.
“I started early,” she said, “when it was cool.”
“And you are not tired?” asked the doctor.
Her eyes had a remote expression as if she had
been awakened from a dream.—Page 136.
“No, no, I am not tired. Why should I be? This was my work for to-day. If I had been tired, I could not have done it.”
The doctor looked at her curiously.
“You believe, then, you are given strength for each day’s task?”
Phoebe did not reply. She was not accustomed to conversation and it was impossible to find words in which to express herself.
She turned her dark beautiful eyes on him with a gaze that was almost disconcerting while searching her mind for an answer.
The doctor put his question in a different way.
“When it’s your day’s work to take a long walk across the mountain in the hot sun, what keeps you from getting tired?”
“I sing,” answered Phoebe, and settled back in the seat between Elinor and Ben, her brown hands folded loosely in her lap.
The ride over to meet the new maid was intended to be something in the nature of a picnic, and they had made an early start in order to eat lunch in the woods after the first stage of the journey. And now, as the sun crept up toward the meridian, their appetites began to clamor for food. About that time, too, they came near to the road which led to the Antlers, where Phoebe hoped to sell some of her baskets. She lifted the big basket into her lap and touched Billie on the shoulder as a dumb signal to stop.
“But we are not going to let you go, Phoebe,” exclaimed Billie. “You must lunch with us in the woods. Then we’ll have time I think to drop you at the Antlers and stop for you again on the way back.”
“I do not see why Miss Phoebe needs to visit the inn at all,” put in Dr. Hume. “I wanted to get presents for my nieces and nephews. I will buy the basketful and that will save me no end of trouble searching for things in the village.”
Phoebe thoughtfully considered these generous and hospitable propositions before she replied with great seriousness of tone and manner:
“Thank you, but it is too much; I cannot accept. It is too much.”
“But it is not, Phoebe,” protested Billie. “We want you. We like to have you with us.”
“And I want the baskets, too,” went on the doctor. “It will save me a hot, stupid journey to the village.”
Phoebe looked from one to the other. Her pride was struggling with her yearning to be with these new and wonderful friends.
“We won’t take ‘No’,” cried Billie. “We are depending on you to show us a good place for our picnic and you can guide us over the last of the road to the station. You see, we have a reason for asking you. We want your help.”
The mountain-girl was therefore persuaded to remain with them for the rest of the trip, and presently they drew up near a pine forest where there was a little stream. Ben lifted out the luncheon hamper and the tea basket, and while the girls unpacked the food, Phoebe stood shyly by and watched the proceedings. With a heightened color she glanced from Billie’s and Elinor’s neat skirts and pongee blouses to her own faded calico dress. She spread out her brown fingers stained with berry juice, and looked at them sadly. Then her face brightened.
“I was almost forgetting,” she said out loud, but to no one. “I am always in too great a hurry. I have waited a long time and now it is beginning to come. It was too soon last summer, but now at last it is time.”
Dr. Hume noticed Phoebe talking to herself and shook his head.
“Too much alone,” he thought.
Meanwhile, Billie, piling sandwiches on the lunch cloth, was busy thinking of something far different. Her glance shifted from Dr. Hume to Phoebe and back again. She closed her eyes and the thought which at first she saw dimly in the dark recesses of her mind advanced to the open, took form and shape and presently boldly showed itself as a full-grown plan. Billie, sitting abstractedly on the ground, piling and re-piling the sandwiches, was startled by Ben’s rather impatient voice.
“I’ll have to fall-to unless you give the word, Billie; I’m famished.”
“Excuse my absent-mindedness, Ben,” laughed Billie. “I had just thought up a wild, though perfectly feasible scheme, and I couldn’t turn my mind to mere food for a moment.”
“And the scheme is?” demanded Elinor, seating herself at the lunch table while she waited for the water to boil.
“I shall have to wait to tell you until it’s ready to serve up,” answered Billie, “nice and brown and done through.”
“Why, Billie, what kind of kitchen talk is that?” exclaimed Elinor, laughing. “You’ll be seeing with the eyes of a cook next. Sunsets will remind you of tomato soup and clouds will make you think of meringues and—”
Elinor broke off, her eyes wide with astonishment, and the others following the direction of her gaze saw that she was looking at a man who had crept into their midst so silently that no one had noticed him. In that haggard and unshaved face they recognized Mr. Lupo.
“Something to eat,” he demanded fiercely. “I’m almost starved.”
Without a word Billie handed him several sandwiches and some fruit.
“Eat it over there,” she ordered, pointing to a distant tree, “and afterwards you can tell us what is the matter.”
The others admired her calm assurance with the half-breed, but Billie was tired of the Lupos. The wife had come near being the death of her beloved cousin, and the husband was a lazy, loafing fellow. Such was her judgment of them.
“Come, Phoebe. Come, Dr. Hume,” she said, and the others gathered around the lunch cloth. Mr. Lupo lifted his sodden, bloodshot eyes at the word “Phoebe,” and saw with astonishment the young girl, whom Billie knew the couple hated, now drinking tea and mingling on equal terms with the people of Sunrise Camp.
His eyes narrowed into little slits. After choking down the sandwiches greedily, he stalked over into their midst.
“What have you done with my wife?” he demanded.
“We know nothing of your wife, Lupo,” answered Dr. Hume, who knew all about the couple by this time. “You had better go on now, if you have had enough food.”
“I don’t want any more of your cursed food,” answered Lupo, looking very much like his namesake, the wolf, at that moment. “But I tell you if you’ve given my wife money to leave me, you will have to pay for it in another coin.”
“Nobody has ever given your wife any money. She has never been back since the day she threatened Miss Campbell with a carving knife. If anybody has driven her away, it’s you, with your drunken, low habits.”
Lupo moved a step nearer and pointed his thumb at Phoebe.
“So you’re trying to make a lady of her, are you?”
Phoebe took not the slightest notice. She was watching the antics of a squirrel leaping in the branches of a giant oak tree, but she turned her eyes gratefully toward Billie, when that young woman burst out with:
“She is a lady and my friend. I think you’d better go now, Mr. Lupo.”
“Whoever meddles with those two shall pay for it,” cried the man fiercely, just as Ben seized him by the collar and flung him into a thicket of bushes, from where he presently crawled away out of sight, occasionally pausing to shake his fist in their direction.
“A nice return for hospitality,” exclaimed Billie.
“He’s a dangerous fellow,” said the doctor. “But I imagine he’s mostly talk. What do you know of him, Miss Phoebe?”
“I only know that years ago they tried to drive us away from our house. But an old man who lived with us, protected us. He owned the cabin and he left it to father and me. There was a will that made it ours. It became a home.” They smiled at her quaint expression. “And the Lupos have been turned against us always, but God has protected us from our enemies.”
They looked at her silently. It was impossible not to feel deeply impressed with the earnestness of her tone. Billie felt ashamed. With all her advantages and the opportunities money and travel had brought her, Phoebe, raised in a cabin on the mountain side, had learned something she had not.
Presently she went over and sat beside the mysterious girl.
“I wish you would teach me a few things, Phoebe. I feel that I am very ignorant.”
“But I have never been to school,” replied Phoebe in astonishment.
“There are some things one doesn’t learn at school,” answered Billie.