“Ain’t you washed yet, son? Shame on you!”
There was a wild splashing of water on the back porch where the wash basin stood, a gasping and panting, and then, with one last “Yessum,” James Stuart McBirney stood in the door. His turned-up nose, his freckles and his blue eyes all shone as if he had polished them, and his curling, clay-colored hair had drawn itself up in tight ringlets about his head.
He had been hoping that no one would pay any attention to him, and he had his wish. Ma was setting breakfast on the table, steaming hot from the hearth. Pa was standing outside the door shading his eyes with one hand.
“What all are you peering at that a-way, Pa McBirney?” asked his wife. “Is it some one coming over the gap? I heard tell that Sam Bixby and his brothers was about to bring over a string of horses from their place for trading day at Lee. As like as not it’s them you’re seeing.”
“No it ain’t, Mary—and it ain’t nobody we ever set eyes on before.”
“Why, Thomas, how can you tell that, with them just coming over the top of the gap?”
“Well!” said Pa McBirney, “I’ll be dumfoundered!”
At that Jim and his mother went to the door. They thought it was about time to see what was ailing pa. The three had a way of sharing everything; and it was no wonder that they did so, for they had only themselves for company. Their cabin, with its two large rooms, its open chamber between, and the lean-to, where Jim slept, sat on a pleasant bench of Mount Tennyson, two thousand feet above the level of the sea. Through their yard ran the road that carried people from over Burlingame way, on the other side of the mountain, down to Lee, the town that lay below them in the purple valley. Sometimes, when the wind was right, they could hear the mill whistles blow at Lee, or the church bells ring; and sometimes they could see the houses there as plain as anything. But usually the little town looked to them as if it were wrapped around in purple veils; and when the rain came, it was swallowed up in white blankness.
The McBirneys thought they lived in a very pleasant and exciting place. Sometimes as many as five or six teams passed their door in one day, and it was seldom indeed that anyone drove by without stopping to pass the time of day. If by chance the McBirneys were sitting down to a meal, the travelers were asked to share it with them, and to water their horses and take a little rest before going on down the mountain. Ma said it was a fine thing for them, being taken unawares like that. It made them keep the house tidy and themselves ready to see folks. But there were weeks of rain or snow there on the mountain side when almost nobody passed, and when the McBirneys couldn’t get to town; and the only sounds to be heard were their own voices and the baying of the four hounds, or the crying of the trees and the crackling of the fire on the hearth.
Not long ago, there had been four of them instead of three. There had been Molly, Jim’s little sister, a little girl with hair the color of corn silk, and eyes as dark as “spider lilies.” And now she was lying under that tiny heap of earth beneath the Pride of India tree, and Jim’s mother was different—quite different—from what she had been before. Her face was sweeter, perhaps, but it looked so that Jim couldn’t keep from crying, to himself, of course. And in spite of all they could do, all three of them kept counting Molly in; and now as he ran to the door to see what was going on up there at the gap, he couldn’t help thinking how much more fun it would have been if he and Molly had been pushing and scrambling and pretending to see which could get out first, in the old way. In those old days his mother would have been calling out in the laughing voice she used to have: