THE LITTLE BISHOP.
BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
It was I who called him the Little Bishop. His name was Phillips Brooks Sanderson, but one seldom heard it at full length, since "Phil" was quite enough for an urchin just in his first trousers, and those assumed somewhat prematurely. He was "Phil," therefore, to the village, but always the dear lovable Little Bishop to me. His home was in Bonnie Eagle; it was only because of his mother's illness that he was spending the summer with his uncle and aunt in Pleasant River. I could see the little brown house from my window. The white road, with strips of tufted green between the wheel tracks, curled dustily up to the very door-step, and inside the wire screen-door was a wonderful drawn-in rug, shaped like half a pie, with "Welcome" in saffron letters on its gray surface. I liked the Bishop's aunt; I liked to see her shake the "Welcome" rug before breakfast, flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright greeting to the new day; I liked to see her go to the screen-door a dozen times a day; open it a crack, and chase an imaginary fly from the sacred precincts within; I liked to see her come up the cellar steps into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the hen-house.
I had not yet grown fond of the uncle, and neither had Phil, for that matter; in fact Uncle Abner was rather a difficult person to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his gruff way of speaking—for there were no children in the brown house to smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
I was sitting under the shade of the great maple one morning early when I first saw the Little Bishop. A tiny figure came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a grown man and a big cow, I might not have noticed them; but it was the combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted my attention. I could not guess the child's years; I only knew that he was small for his age, whatever it was. The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in the centre of the eyebrow.
The boy had a thin sensitive face and curly brown hair, short trousers patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head. He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both hands, and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left him no time to think of a smooth path for bare feet. The Sanderson pasture was a good half-mile distant, I knew, and the cow seemed in no hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then, and rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter, to her way of thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she passed the great maple, and gave me time to call out to the little fellow, "Is that your cow?"
He blushed and smiled, tried to speak modestly, but there was a quiver of pride in his voice as he answered, suggestively, "It's—nearly my cow."
"How is that?" I asked.
"Why, when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture 'thout her gettin' her foot over the rope or 'thout my bein' afraid, she's goin' to be my truly cow, Uncle Abner says. Are you 'fraid of cows?"
"Ye-e-es," I confessed, "I am, just a little. You see, I am nothing but a grown-up woman, and boys can't understand how we feel about cows."
"I can! They're awful big things, aren't they?"
"Perfectly enormous! I've always thought a cow coming towards you one of the biggest things in the world."
"Yes; me too. Don't let's think about it. Do they hook people so very often?"
"No, indeed; in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case."
"If they stepped on your bare foot they'd scrunch it, wouldn't they?"
"Yes, but you are the driver, you mustn't let them do that; you are a free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows."
"I know; but p'r'aps there is free-will cows, and if they just would do it you can't help being scrunched, for you mustn't let go of the rope nor run, Uncle Abner says."
"No, of course that would never do."
"Does all the cows where you live go down into the boggy places when you're drivin' 'em to pasture, or does some stay in the road?"
"There aren't any cows or any pastures where I live; that's what makes me so foolish. Why does yours need a rope?"
"She don't like to go to pasture, Uncle Abner says. Sometimes she'd druther stay to home, and so when she gets part way there she turns round and comes backwards."
"Dear me!" I thought, "what becomes of this boy mite if she has a spell of going backwards? Do you like to drive her?" I asked.
"N—no, not erzackly; but, you see, it'll be my cow if I drive her twenty-nine more times 'thout her gettin' her foot over the rope and 'thout my bein' afraid," and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness to his harassed little face. "Will she feed in the ditch much longer?" he asked. "Shall I say 'Hurrap'? That's what Uncle Abner says—'Hurrap!' like that, and it means to hurry up."
It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded, and the cow fed on, peacefully. The little fellow looked up at me confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Uncle Abner were watching the progress of events.
"What shall we do next?" he asked.
I delighted in that warm, cozy little "we"; it took me into the firm so pleasantly. I am a weak prop indeed when it comes to cows, but all the manhood in my soul rose to arms when he said, "What shall we do next?" I became alert, courageous, ingenious, on the instant.
"What is her name?" I asked, sitting up straight in the hammock.
"Buttercup; but she don't seem to know it very well."
"Never mind; you must shout 'Buttercup!' at the top of your voice, and twitch the rope hard; then I'll call, 'Hurrap!' with all my might at the same moment."
We did this; it worked to a charm, and I looked affectionately after my Little Bishop as the cow pulled him down Aunt Betty's hill.
The lovely June days wore on. I saw Phil frequently, but the cow was seldom present at our interviews, as he now drove her to the pasture very early in the morning, the journey thither being one of considerable length and her method of reaching the goal being exceedingly round-about. Uncle Abner had pointed out the necessity of getting her into the pasture at least a few minutes before she had to be taken out again, and though I didn't like Uncle Abner, I saw the common-sense of this remark. I sometimes caught a glimpse of them at sundown as they returned from the pasture to the twilight milking, Buttercup chewing her peaceful cud, her soft white bag of milk hanging full, her surprised eye rolling in its accustomed "fine frenzy." The frenzied roll did not mean anything, the Bishop and I used to assure each other; but if it didn't, it was an awful pity she had to do it, the Bishop thought, and I agreed. To have an expression of eye that means murder, and yet to be a perfectly virtuous and well-meaning animal, this is a calamity which, if fully realized, would injure a cow's milk-producing activities seriously, I should think.
I was looking at the sun one evening as it dropped like a ball of red fire into Wilkins's Woods, when the Little Bishop passed.
"It's the twenty-ninth night," he called, joyously.
"I am so glad," I answered, for I had often feared some accident might prevent his claiming the promised reward. "Then to-morrow Buttercup will be your own cow?"
"I guess so. That's what Uncle Abner said. He's off to Bonnie Eagle now, but he'll be home to-night, and mother's going to send my new hat by him. When Buttercup's my own cow I wish I could change her name and call her Red Rover, but p'r'aps her mother wouldn't like it. When she b'longs to me, mebbe I won't be so 'fraid of gettin' hooked and scrunched, because she'll know she's mine, and she'll go better. I haven't let her get snarled up in the rope one single time, and I don't show I'm afraid, do I?"
"I should never suspect it for an instant," I said, encouragingly. "I've often envied you your bold, brave look!"
He appeared distinctly pleased. "I haven't cried, either, when she's dragged me over the pasture bars and peeled my legs. Bill Jones's little brother Charlie says he ain't afraid of anything, not even bears. He says he would walk right up close and cuff 'em if they dared to yip; but I ain't like that!"
I told Aunt Betty that it was the Bishop's twenty-ninth night, and that the big red cow was to be his on the morrow.
"Well, I hope it'll turn out that way," she said. "But I ain't a mite sure that Abner Sanderson will give up that cow when it comes to the point. It won't be the first time he's tried to crawl out of a bargain with folks a good deal bigger than Phil, for he's close, Abner is! To be sure, Phil's father bought all his stock for him years ago, and set him up on the farm; perhaps that'll make some difference, now he's died, and left nothing to his widder. Abner has hired help in July and August, so he can get the cow to the pasture easy enough without Phil. I wish you'd go up there to-night, and ask Mis' Sanderson if she'll lend me half her yeast-cake, and I'll lend her half of mine a Saturday."
I was used to this errand, for the whole village of Pleasant River would sometimes be rocked to the very centre of its being by simultaneous desire for a yeast-cake. As the nearest repository was a mile and a half distant, as the yeast-cake was valued at two cents and wouldn't keep, as the demand was uncertain, being dependent entirely on a fluctuating desire for "riz bread," the Edgewood store-keeper refused to order more than three yeast-cakes a day at his own risk. Sometimes they remained on his hands a dead loss; sometimes eight or ten persons would "hitch up" and drive from distant farms for the coveted article, only to be met with the flat, "No, I'm all out o' yeast-cake; Mis' Simmons took the last; mebbe you can borry half o' hern, she hain't much of a bread-eater."
So I climbed the hill to Mrs. Sanderson's, knowing my daily bread depended on the successful issue of the call. As I passed by the corner of the barn, I paused behind a great clump of elderberry-bushes, for I heard the timid voice of the Little Bishop and Uncle Abner's gruff tone. I did not wish to interrupt nor overhear a family interview, and I thought they might walk on as they talked; but in a moment I heard Uncle Abner sit down on a stool by the grindstone as he said:
"Well, now, Phillips Brooks, we'll talk about the red cow. You say you've drove her a month, do ye? And the trade between us was that if you could drive her a month without her getting the rope over her foot and without bein' afraid, you was to have her. That's straight, ain't it?" The Bishop's face burned with excitement, his gingham shift rose and fell as if he were breathing hard, but he only nodded assent and said nothing. "Now," continued Uncle Abner, "have you made out to keep the rope from under her feet?"
"She 'ain't got t-t-tangled up one s-single time," said Phil, stuttering in his excitement, but looking up with some courage from his bare toes, with which he was assiduously ploughing the earth.
"So far, so good. Now 'bout bein' afraid. As you seem so certain of gettin' the cow, I suppose you hain't been a mite scared, hev you? Honor bright, now!"
"I—I—not but just a little mite. I—"
"Hold up a minute. Of course you didn't say you was afraid, and didn't show you was afraid, and nobody knew you was afraid, but that ain't the way we fixed it up. You was to call the cow yourn if you could drive her to the pasture for a month without bein' afraid. Own up square now, hev you ben afraid?"
A long pause, then a faint "Yes."
"Where's your manners?"
"I mean yes sir."
"How often? If it hain't ben too many times mebbe I'll let ye off, though you're a reg'lar girl-boy, and'll be runnin' away from the cat bimeby. Has it ben—twice?"
"Yes," and the Little Bishop's voice was very faint now, and had a decided tear in it.
"Yes what?"
"Yes, sir."
"Has it ben four times?"
"Y-es, sir." More heaving of the gingham shirt.
"Well, you air a coward! How many times? Speak up now."
More digging of the bare toes in the earth, and one premonitory tear stealing from under the downcast lids, then:
"A little most every day, and you can keep the cow," wailed the Bishop, as he turned abruptly and fled behind the barn, where he flung himself into the green depths of a tansy bed, and gave himself up to unmanly tears.
I had heard more than I wished, for I had been rooted to the spot, not so much because of my interest in Phil as that I did not like to vex Uncle Abner by making him aware of my unintentional presence. I did not dare seek and comfort my Little Bishop sobbing in the tansy bed, the brand of coward on his forehead, and, what was much worse, the fear in his heart that he deserved it. I hurried home across the fields, quite forgetting my errand, and told Aunt Betty, with tears in my eyes, that I would rather eat buttermilk bread for a week than have one of Uncle Abner's yeast-cakes in the house. I acknowledged that he had been true to his word and had held to his bargain, but I could not forgive his making so hard a bargain with my timid Little Bishop.
Aunt Betty finally heard from Mrs. Sanderson, through whom all information was sure to filter if you gave it time, that Uncle Abner despised a coward, that he considered Phil a regular mother's-apron-string boy, and that he was "learnin'" him to be brave.
Bill Jones, the hired man, now drove Buttercup to pasture, though whenever Uncle Abner went to Moderation of Bonnie Eagle, as he often did, I noticed that Phil took the hired man's place. I often joined him on these anxious expeditions, and a like terror in both our souls, we attempted to train the red cow and give her some idea of obedience.
"If she only wouldn't look at us that way we would get along real nicely with her, wouldn't we?" prattled the dear Bishop, straggling along by my side; "and she is a splendid cow; she gives twenty-one quarts a day, and Uncle Abner says it's more'n half cream."
I assented in all this, thinking that if Buttercup would give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society would not be agreeable to me even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day. Furthermore, when I found that she never did any of these reprehensible things with Bill Jones, I began to believe cows more intelligent creatures than I had supposed them to be, and I was indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on our weakness.
One evening, when she was more than usually exasperating, I said to the Bishop, who was bracing himself to keep from being pulled into a way-side brook where she loved to dabble, "Bishop, do you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?" No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.
"Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope. I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the opposite side of the brook, take that big stick, wade right in—you are barefooted—brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you as a master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may try to hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick—die brandishing, Bishop, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and Aunt Betty can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple-tree!"
The Bishop's soul was fired by my eloquence. The blood mounted to our brains simultaneously, and we were flushed with a splendid courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the Bishop waded in towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She looked up with the familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good service all summer, but she quailed beneath the stern justice of the Bishop's gaze.
In that moment she felt ashamed, I know, of the misery she had caused that helpless mite. At any rate, actuated by fear, surprise, or remorse, she turned and walked back into the road without a sign of passion or indignation, leaving us rather disappointed at our easy victory. To be prepared for a violent death and receive not even a scratch makes one fear that one may possibly have overestimated the danger.
Well, we were better friends after that, all three of us, and understood one another better as the summer grew into autumn and the great maple hung a flaming bough of scarlet over the hammock. Uncle Abner found the Bishop very useful at picking up potatoes and gathering apples, but he was going to leave Pleasant River as soon as the harvesting was over.
One warm evening Aunt Betty and I were borrowing half a yeast-cake, and incidentally sitting on Mrs. Sanderson's steps at sunset. Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed door. As she walked to the barn, after giving up her twelve quarts of yellow milk, she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a pile of turnips lying temptingly near. In her haste she got more of a mouthful than would be considered good manners even among cows, and as she disappeared in the barn door I could see a forest of green tops hanging from her mouth, while she painfully attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material without allowing a single turnip to escape.
It grew dark soon after, and we went into the house, but as we closed the door I heard the cow coughing, and said to Mrs. Sanderson, "Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion."
The Bishop always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Abner had gone to the doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it in some way in the threshing-machine. Bill Jones came in presently and asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and more, and it must be that something was wrong, but he could not get her to open her mouth wide enough for him to see anything.
When Uncle Abner had driven into the yard, he came in for a lantern, and went directly out to the barn. After an hour or more, in which we had forgotten the whole occurrence, he came in again. "I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow," he said. "Come out, will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything with my right hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter in the country."
We all went out to the barn except Aunt Betty, who ran down the path to see if her son Moses had come home from Saco, and could come up to take a hand in the exercises.
Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something, one of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and would move neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her breathing was labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and choking. Once or twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly open, but before they could fairly discover the cause of trouble she had wrested her head away.
"I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the middle," said Uncle Abner, while Bill Jones and Moses held a lantern on each side of Buttercup's head; "but, land! it's so far down, and such a mite of a thing, I couldn't git it even if I could use my right hand. S'pose you try, Bill."
Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try. Buttercup's teeth were of good size and excellent quality, and he had no fancy for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he was no good at that kind of work, but that he would help Uncle Abner hold the cow's head; that was just as necessary, and considerable safer.
Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his best, wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but ineffectual dabs at the slippery green turnip-tops in the reluctantly opened throat. But the cow tossed her head and stamped her feet and switched her tail and wriggled from under Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether impossible to reach the seat of the trouble.
Uncle Abner was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because of his own uselessness. "Hitch up, Bill," he said, "and, Hannah, you drive over to Edgewood for the horse-doctor. I know we can get out that turnip if we can hit on the right tools and somebody to manage 'em right; but we've got to be quick about it or the critter'll choke to death, sure! Your hand's so clumsy, Mose, she thinks her time's come when she feels it in her mouth, and your fingers are so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff 'thout its slippin'!"
"Mine's little; let me try," said a timid voice, and turning round, we saw the Bishop, his trousers pulled on over his night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes big with sleep.
Uncle Abner gave a laugh of good-humored derision. "You—that's afraid to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand enough for this job, I guess!"
Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes rolled in her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
"I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!" cried the Bishop in despair.
"Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!" said Uncle Abner. "Now this time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good job of it."
Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden gag between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they could, while we women held the lanterns.
"Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down 's you can! Wind your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin' up there that ain't hardly big enough to call green stuff, give it a twist, and pull for all you're worth. Land! what a skinny little pipe stem!"
The Bishop had stripped up his sleeve. It was a slender thing, his arm; but he had driven the red cow all summer, borne her tantrums, protected her from the consequences of her own obstinacy, taking (as he thought) a future owner's pride in her splendid flow of milk—grown to love her, in a word—and now she was choking to death. Love can put a deal of strength into a skinny little pipe-stem at such a time, and it was only a slender arm and hand that could have done the work.
Phil trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady determined pull with all the strength in his body. That was not so much in itself, to be sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter, the location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which everybody draws in time of need.
Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Bishop. Such a pull that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor, with a very slippery something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip on the end of it.
"That's the business!" cried Moses.
"I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite smaller," said Bill Jones.
"You're a trump, sonny!" exclaimed Uncle Abner as he helped Moses untie Buttercup's head and took the gag out. "You're a trump, and, by ginger, the cow's yourn!"
The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched, torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing! and bent her head gently over the Little Bishop's shoulder as he threw his arms joyfully about her neck, and whispered, "You're my truly cow now, ain't you, Buttercup?"
"Aunt Betty," I said, as we walked home under the harvest moon, "there are all sorts of cowards, aren't there, and I don't think the Little Bishop is the worst kind, do you?"