"What's that, deary?" The little, old woman was sewing patchwork near by.
"Oh," laughed the girl, "I always did want a pump that was painted blue. I saw a picture of one once when I was a little mite, and it impressed me—such a lovely, bright blue! I thought it went beautifully with the green grass! But I can get along without it, I guess."
"We have to get along without having things painted to suit us," nodded the little, old woman philosophically. But she remembered the blue pump. There was a can of paint out in the shed room, and there was Jane Cotton's Sam.
Jane Cotton's Sam was a "feature" of Placid Pond—a whole set of features, T.O. said. He was a lumbering, awkward fellow, well up to the end of his teens, the only hope of widowed Jane. The Lord had given him a splendid head, but the Placid Pond people were secretly triumphing in the knowledge that Sam had failed to pass in his college examinations, "head or no head." Jane had always boasted so of Sam's brains, and predicted such a wonderful future for him! All her soul was set on Sam's success—well, wasn't it time her pride had a fall? Mebbe now she'd see Sam wasn't much different from other people's boys.
Jane's heart was reported to be broken by the boy's failure, and Sam went about sulkily defiant. He made a great pretense of lofty indifference, but maybe he didn't care!—maybe not! Emmeline Camp knew in her gentle old heart that he cared. She worried about Sam.
All this the Talented One learned, little by little, in the way country gossip is learned. She learned many other things, too, about the neighbors—things that she lay and pondered about. It seemed queer to find out that even a placid little place like this, set among the peaceful hills, had its tragedies and comedies—its pitiful little skeletons behind the doors.
"That's Old '61," Mrs. Camp said, pointing to an old figure in the road. "See him go marching past!—he always marches, as if he heard drums beating and he was keeping time. I tell 'em he does hear 'em. He lives all alone up on the edge o' the woods, and folks say he spends most all his time trying to pick march tunes out on the organ. A few years ago he got some back pension money, and up and spent it for a cabinet organ! Dear land! it seemed a pity, when he might have got him some nice clothes or something sensible. But there he sets and sets over that organ, trying to pick out tunes! Well,"—the gentle old voice took on charity—"well, if that's his way of being happy, I s'pose he's got as good a right to it as I have to—Amelia," a whimsical little smile lighting up the old face, but underlying it the tenderness that the girl on the bed had come to look for whenever any reference was made to Amelia.
"We've all got our idiosyncreases," added Emmeline Camp, "only some of 'em's creased in a little deeper'n others. I guess mine and Old '61's are pretty considerable deep!"
The early July days were cloudless and full of hot, stinging noises. T.O. crawled out to lie in the grass under a great tree, and exult in room and freedom and rest. Her ankle was still very painful, but she regarded it with philosophical toleration: "You needn't have climbed a stone wall, need you? Well, then, what have you to complain of? The best thing you can do is to keep still." Which was, without doubt, the truth. "Anyhow, it isn't becoming in you to be so puffed up!"
It was decided that Mrs. Camp should start on her trip before the other girls arrived. Hence, on the morning of the day they had set to come, the little old woman and her bags and bundles rode away down the dusty country road. Her lean, brown, crumpled old face had an exalted expression; the joy of anticipation and the triumph of patient waiting met in it and blended oddly. It was a great day for Emmeline Camp.