A BIT OF FOOLISHNESS.
BY SARAH O. JEWETT.
Part II.
The wind suddenly grew very cold, and blew the trees angrily, and turned their leaves the wrong way, until it seemed like a furious storm. It had been still, and the sun had been hot and glaring, but suddenly the air felt like autumn, and our friends looked around every now and then to see the shower chasing them, and covering the hills and woods with heavy white mist. The fragrance of the wet pine woods was very sweet, and the coolness was delightful, but the clouds looked strangely yellow, and as if a great deal of rain would pour out of them presently, while there were flashes of lightning every now and then, and distant thunder began to growl among the mountains.
"It will be here in a few minutes," said Jack, looking at his sister anxiously. "I'm awfully sorry, Alice." And they both hurried; as if by walking fast they could get away from the rain. "And our clothes have all gone to North Conway! how shall we ever get dry?" he added, ruefully; but Alice laughed.
"You know we were all drenched coming home from Gorham that day. It wasn't very bad, and it won't be chilly like this for very long, at any rate."
The first great drops of the rain began to spatter among the leaves, and our friends found the shower at first very refreshing, but when their clothes became so soaked that the weight of them was something surprising, and streams of water began to run along the road, they did not like it so well; but they made the best of it, and laughed heartily, though they were both beginning to feel very tired, and wondered if there would never be an end to the woods. It was growing darker too, and if some one did not drive by before long, it would be most discouraging. Early in the afternoon they had passed several loaded carts, besides pleasure parties that were driving to or from the Glen House, but for some time there had not been a traveller on that part of the road except themselves.
The rain ceased falling; it had been a heavy shower, but luckily it did not last long. They had taken shelter under a great beech-tree when it had become altogether too hard work to walk, and Alice wrung the water out of her skirts as well as she could, and they started on again.
The clouds looked very heavy, and the sunset was a very pale one, and it seemed to be growing dark early. In that deep valley the twilight begins much sooner than out in the open country, and Jack and Alice had lost so much time already that they were a good way from the house they meant to reach by seven o'clock, and just after that time Alice said, despairingly:
"I don't believe I can walk much further, Jack. I'm ashamed to give in, but I don't think I ever was so tired in all my life."
"I'm tired myself," said Jack; "it's the hardest walking I ever did; but I suppose there is nothing to do but to go on. I think it's very odd that it is so long since we have passed anybody."
Alice went on without saying any more for a little while, but at last she sat down by the road-side, while Jack stood at her side and waited uneasily.
"I think we are getting out of the track of the shower," said he. "Suppose we go on a little further, and find a good dry place, and build a camp fire, and get dry and rested at any rate. I begin to feel like an old jelly-fish trying to roll along on his edge."
Alice laughed, and started out again. It was really getting to be drier footing, and the air felt warmer, and it was not long before Jack touched the earth with his hand, and said that he was sure there could be nothing but dew on the ground, and they might as well stop. They listened and listened for the sound of wheels, but even the thrushes had stopped singing, and all they could hear was a brook tumbling over the ledges, and the cry of a hawk or an owl far in the woods.
Jack chose a safe place at the side of a great rock, where there seemed to be no danger of setting the woods on fire. It was so dark they could scarcely see, but they heaped up a pile of pine-needles and dry twigs and birch bark, and it seemed very cheerful when they had lighted it. Jack was delighted because Alice had some little wax matches in the bag he carried on his shoulder, and I think the first flicker of the fire gave a great pleasure to both our friends.
"I'm going to find some larger wood," said Jack, "and then I am going to cook the fish. I shall starve to death. We are like the Babes in the Wood, aren't we? Get as near to the fire as you can, Alice, and you'll soon be dry."
TRYING TO GET DRY.
They had a magnificent blaze before very long, and Alice hung her jacket and wet, heavy skirt on stakes beside it. They were in a little open place not far from the road, and Jack began to tell stories of his experiences the summer before when he had been off on a fishing and camping-out excursion with some friends in the Maine woods.
Alice had heard them all before, but they were none the less interesting. She had always wished to camp out herself, and this experience was, after all, a great satisfaction, now that she was a little rested, and was getting dry and comfortable. It was not so bad to be damp even, but she hated the thought of going any further that night.
In the lunch-box there were still some hard crackers and a paper of salt, and after Jack had baked his three trout—and he did not do it badly either, for a guide had taught him once how to wrap them in some leaves and dig a little place in the hot ashes for an oven—they ate their supper, and were as jolly as possible. The fire was a great success; they had gathered all the old dry wood they could find, and at last they were willing to let it go down, for it was growing too hot: the night was warm at any rate. They sat together on the slope and leaned against the rock. The trout had been very good—they only wished there had been more; but they were very comfortable, and they watched the strange shadows the flickering light of the fire made among the trees. They were neither of them a bit afraid, and presently Jack was silent for a few moments, and his sister found that he had gone to sleep.
She would not wake him, she thought; he might sleep a little while just as well as not, and they could go on if they liked an hour later. By that time the moon would be up, too. Alice looked up through the branches at the stars; there was an old hemlock almost overhead that was like a roof, but there seemed to be very little dew falling.
The mosquitoes were beginning to be troublesome, now that the fire was down, and she said to herself that she would get some more wood presently if Jack did not wake—and in three minutes more she was as sound asleep as Jack himself.
He waked first; it was late in the night, and the moon was high in the sky. The fire was out, and at first he could not think where he was; but Alice was there, sure enough, and the hemlock-tree, and the rest of the woods. He felt a little stiff and chilly, and he started to his feet to look around, and suddenly he heard two or three roosters crowing, and at that sound he began to laugh.
"Alice! Alice!" said he; and his sister waked quickly, but was even more bewildered at first than he had been.
"I never slept better in my life," she said, sleepily. "There's nothing the matter, is there, Jack? Ought we to go on, do you think? I am as stiff as Rip Van Winkle, and my arm is sound asleep." And she sat up and rubbed her eyes.
"Will you listen to those old roosters?" asked Jack, going into fits of laughter, and Alice laughed too. "There must be a house close by," he told her, "and we thought we were cast away. I suppose if we had walked ten minutes longer, we must have seen it." And they gathered up their possessions and took the road again. I do not think they cared to take another nap on the ground. Jack said that the mosquitoes had had their Christmas dinner in summer that year, and though he did not confess it, his neck was very stiff, and they both began to sneeze with great energy.
There was really a small house about an eighth of a mile away, and our friends walked about it and surveyed it in the moonlight. A sleepy little yellow dog appeared and barked at them, and after Jack had pounded at the door for some minutes, some one opened a window and asked what he wanted.
"Can you take two people in for the night?"
"'Deed I can't," said the woman, snappishly. "We don't keep tavern. Young fellows like you better be to home this time o' night. Trampin', I s'pose, ain't ye? The men-folks is all to home here, so ye needn't try to scare me."
"I'm not a tramp," mentioned Jack, with great dignity and politeness. "We started to walk through from the Glen, but the shower stopped us a while, and it got dark, and we didn't know we were near any houses until we heard your roosters crowing. We've been asleep in the woods."
"Oh!" said the woman, in a different tone. And after a minute's meditation, she added: "Well, you kin go into the barn, I s'pose, and sleep on the hay—on your right hand 's you go in; it's new hay. We ain't got a spare bed in the house. I do' know's I kin do any better for ye."
Alice was in the shadow, and at some little distance from the house, and she and Jack laughed as they went to the barn. "She said there was some new hay, didn't she?" Alice asked. And as they laid themselves down in it, it seemed a most luxurious bed. There was an old horse in the barn, who looked at them with astonishment as they opened the door, and the dim light shone in upon him. The dust made Alice sneeze worse than ever, and she watched the moon shining through the cracks of the barn, and after a good while she went to sleep again.
Early in the morning somebody came to the door, and our friends waked unwillingly.
"My good land sakes alive!" said the woman who had talked to them from the window. "Why didn't ye say there was a lady with ye? I looked round for your mate, and I couldn't see nothing o' nobody. I took it for granted ye were two young fellows, and I was all sole alone. My man's gone down to North Conway, and I thought I wouldn't bother to get up and let ye in. Well, I am mortified and ashamed. You should ha' had the best I got. I hope ye ain't got your death o' cold. 'Twas a warm night, though. Wan't ye eat up with 'skeeters? Why hadn't ye spoke, young man?"
"I don't know," said Jack. "I supposed you knew. I didn't think. My sister was right out in the yard there." And they all laughed.
"I'll get ye some breakfast anyway," said the woman, who seemed very good-natured that morning, though she had been so cross the night before. "I've got a nice young fowl picked all ready, and I'll have her fried with a bit o' pork in no time at all. Come into the house now, won't ye?"
Such a breakfast as our friends ate that morning! and such a pleasant ride as they had to North Conway afterward! for Mrs. Dummer, their hostess, was going there to meet her husband, who had gone down some days before. It was too hot, they thought, to walk the rest of the way, and yet there was a fine breeze blowing. I think they were a little tired after their experience the night before, but they were young and strong, and the wetting did not do them a bit of harm after all.
Mrs. Dummer brushed and cleaned Alice's dress for her—at least they did it together. It was blue flannel, and made short in the skirt, and so, after it had its crumples taken out by a little ironing, it looked as well as ever.
Mrs. Dummer seemed much excited by their adventures, and she was sorry to part with her guests. She had not been married very long, she said; she had lived at North Conway in a boarding-house for several years, and it was a great deal livelier there in the summer-time. She did not know how she was going to like living 'way up in the woods on that lonely farm after cold weather came. But she said, shyly, that "he" was real good company, and that her sister was going to spend part of the winter with her.
"If you would come and stop a while some time, he'd take you off fishing," she told Jack; "he's a great hand to go off for trout." And Jack promised to remember the invitation the next summer.
It seemed an uncommon adventure at the time, and our friends enjoyed it on the whole, only they were sorry afterward they had not walked all the way to North Conway, and poor Jack never has ceased to mourn because nobody can ever know how much his big trout weighed.