Nobody's Rose

by Adele E. Thompson

So it will be seen that even under Mrs. Hagood’s rule Posey’s life was not all shadow, the less so that Mr. Hagood touched by her pleasure managed with gentle guile and under one pretext and another to secure her for a companion now and then. Outings which it would be hard to tell which enjoyed the more, Posey for herself or Mr. Hagood for her. Occasionally, too, some matter of business would call Mrs. Hagood away for the afternoon, when she would take her towels to hem or carpet rags to sew, as the case might be, out to the little shop with its mingled odors of fresh lumber, paint, and varnish, where Mr. Hagood hummed old tunes and whistled softly to himself as he worked. And where seated on a rheumatic buggy seat in one corner, with the shaggy head of Rover resting on her knee, in watching Mr. Hagood at his work, and listening to his favorite old-time stories she would find real if unexciting enjoyment.

Then again during the season of raspberries and blackberries many were the delightful hours Posey spent berrying in the “back pasture.” A field this, only a little remote from the village, but hidden from it by a bit of intervening woods, and so shut away from all outward, disturbing sight or sound that with its peaceful stillness and sunny, wind-swept solitude, it seemed as genuine a bit of nature as though the subduing hand of man had never been laid upon it, and one which the city-bred child fairly revelled in.

A big, stony, thin-soiled field was the “back pasture,” affording hardly grass enough for the two or three cows which fed there, hence held in slight esteem by its owner and suffered to lapse into an almost unchecked growth of briars and undergrowth, with here and there a thicket of young and fast-growing trees, a spot where wild growths ran riot, where bittersweet hung its clusters, and the wild grape tangled its strong and leafy meshes; a spot, too, that the birds knew, where they nested and sang, for the most part unmolested and unafraid.

But the crowning charm of the place to Posey was the chattering brook that with many a curve and bend, as if seeking excuse to linger, ran in a little hollow through the centre of the pasture. A clear, sparkling little stream, gurgling and hurrying through the sunlit spaces, loitering in the shadows of the willows whose green fingers bent down to meet its current, with shallow places where one could wade or cross on stepping-stones, and deep pools where minnows loved to gather and hide them under the trailing grasses of the banks.

This was Posey’s first acquaintance with a brook and for her it had not only charm but almost personality; she talked to it as she would to a companion, beside it she felt a certain sense of companionship, and no matter how often she might come, always she greeted the sight of the stream with the same delight.

For her these were truly halcyon days, and most fervently did she wish that berries ripened the year round. As it was, being both quick of eyes and nimble of fingers, Mrs. Hagood permitted her to come nearly as often as she chose while they were in season. So many a summer morning was thus spent, for the best picking was to the earliest comer, and where it often happened, an addition to her own content if not to the contents of her basket, she met other children of the village bent on a similar errand.

And always whatever of the hard or unpleasant the days might hold, every week brought its Sunday, when the interminable hemming and patch-work and carpet rags, with the other more distasteful of the week-day duties were laid aside for one day. Mrs. Hagood was not herself greatly given to church-going, but she considered it an eminently respectable habit and saw to it that the family credit was duly upheld by Mr. Hagood and Posey. In her own mind Posey held the Sundays when Mrs. Hagood stayed at home as by far the most enjoyable. For then Mr. Hagood could pass her surreptitious stems of caraway seed, with an occasional peppermint drop; moreover, he could drop into a gentle doze, and she could venture to move now and then without fear of a sharp nudge from Mrs. Hagood’s vigorous elbow.

There, too, was the Sunday School, where she could sit with a row of other girls, exchange furtive remarks between the teacher’s questions, compare library books, or loiter for little chats on the homeward way.

Then in the long summer Sunday afternoons she could lie on the grass under the shading maples and read the same library books; or perhaps, what was still better, while Mrs. Hagood dozed in her favorite rocker, she, Mr. Hagood and Rover, who made the third in this trio of friends, would stroll away together, beyond the village, across the open, sunny, breeze-swept fields, past ripening grain and meadow, along fence-rows where alders spread their umbels of lace-like blossoms, and later the golden rod tossed the plumes of its yellow-crested army. These fence-rows that were in very truth the “squirrels’ highway,” on which the sight every now and then of one skurrying along with bright eyes and bushy tail saucily waving defiance, would set Rover nearly wild with excitement, to the great amusement of his companions.

“Poor old Rover!” was the way Posey commonly spoke of her dumb friend. But there was certainly no occasion for the first adjective, for Mrs. Hagood could truly boast that nothing around her suffered for the lack of enough to eat; and as a reward for his canine faithfulness she even went so far as to give him a discarded mat on which he might lie in the woodhouse. But whine he ever so pitifully, he was not allowed to cross beyond that threshold and join the family circle, a privilege his social dog nature did so crave. And all his tail-wagging and mute appeals were equally without avail to draw from his mistress the caressing touch or word his dog soul so evidently and ardently longed for.