“I—guess I’ll be pretty good, Barb’ra,” he quavered, “if you want t’ go off an’ take a trip. She said you wanted to take a trip; but I told her you wouldn’t go anywhere an’ leave me. You wouldn’t, would you, Barb’ra?”
“Not unless I was forced to,” murmured Barbara, “for your sake, Jimmy; for your sake!”
She winked back the tears, smiling resolutely.
“Anyway, we won’t cross any bridges till we get to them, precious.”
“That’s in my book of Vallable Inf’mation,” Jimmy said proudly. “I copied it out o’ Peg’s. You have to get to bridges b’fore you cross ’em; you can’t get over any other way. I told that to Peg, ’n’ he said it was a Vallable Inf’mation, ’n’ he wrote it down in his book in red ink. We tell each other things to write down. I like Peg, an’ he likes me; but we don’t love Miss Cottle. Peg says, in his opinion, she’s an ornary female, even if she can spell. Peg says spellin’ ain’t everythin’.”
As the days passed, this particular bridge of Barbara’s own building loomed large in the landscape of her every day, always retreating mirage-like into the misty horizon of her to-morrow.
Martha Cottle was of the opinion that it was a mighty queer performance; she discussed the subject with Barbara with ever-recurring interest and poignancy in the intervals of her work. Miss Cottle was a woman bent upon an excruciating cleanliness and order, and the immaculate back steps and the painfully scoured kitchen floor uprose as altars upon which she daily offered oblations and sacrifices of all the gentler amenities of life.
“That young one,” as she began to call Jimmy, together with Peg Morrison, appeared to vie with one another in wanton profanation of these hallowed precincts.
“It’s enough,” the worthy spinster assured Barbara, her nose and eyes reddened with animosity, “to make a saint mad clear through. Once you’re out of the house for good I’ll see to it that they wipe their feet before they eat.”
The veiled threat in the last words was not lost on Mr. Morrison. “Me an’ the Cap’n hes et our victuals together more’n once in the loft t’ the barn,” he observed placidly. “‘N’ we kin do it ag’in on a pinch. I kin cook ’s well ’s some others I c’d name, an’ I will, if necessary.”