Laddie: A True Blue Story

by Gene Stratton-Porter

That scared me. I begged Leon to tell, but he wouldn't say a word more. He went and talked to Miss Amelia as friendly as you please, and asked her to take a walk in the orchard and get some peaches, and she went flying. He got her all she could carry and guided her to Peter and Sally, introduced her to Peter, and then slipped away and left her. Then he and Sally couldn't talk about their wedding, and Peter couldn't squeeze her hand, and she couldn't fix his tie, and it was awful. Shelley and her boys almost laughed themselves sick over it, and then she cried, "To the rescue!" and started, so they followed. They captured Miss Amelia and brought her back, and left her with father and the wonderful book, but I'm sure she liked the orchard better.

I took Grace Greenwood under my arm, Hezekiah on my shoulder, and with Bobby at my heels went away. I didn't want my hair pulled, or to be teased that day. There was such a hardness around my heart, and such a lump in my throat, that I didn't care what happened to me one minute, and the next I knew I'd slap any one who teased me, if I were sent to bed for it. As I went down the lane Peter called to me to come and see him, but I knew exactly how he looked, and didn't propose to make up. There was not any sense in Sally clawing me all over, when I only tried to help mother and Lucy find out what they wanted to know so badly. I went down the hill, crossed the creek on the stepping-stones, and followed the cowpath into the woods pasture. It ran beside the creek bank through the spice thicket and blackberry patches, under pawpaw groves, and beneath giant oaks and elms. Just where the creek turned at the open pasture, below the church and cemetery, right at the deep bend, stood the biggest white oak father owned. It was about a tree exactly like this that an Englishman wrote a beautiful poem in McGuffey's Sixth, that begins:

"A song to the oak, the brave old oak,
Who hath ruled in the greenwood long;
Here's health and renown to his broad green crown,
And his fifty arms so strong."

I knew it was the same, because I counted the arms time and again, and there were exactly fifty. There was a pawpaw and spice hedge around three sides of this one, and water on the other. Wild grapes climbed from the bushes to the lower branches and trailed back to earth again. Here, I had two secrets I didn't propose to tell. One was that in the crotch of some tiptop branches the biggest chicken hawks you ever saw had their nest, and if they took too many chickens father said they'd have to be frightened a little with a gun. I can't begin to tell how I loved those hawks. They did the one thing I wanted to most, and never could. When I saw them serenely soar above the lowest of the soft fleecy September clouds, I was wild with envy. I would have gone without chicken myself rather than have seen one of those splendid big brown birds dropped from the skies. I was so careful to shield them, that I selected this for my especial retreat when I wanted most to be alone, and I carefully gathered up any offal from the nest that might point out their location, and threw it into the water where it ran the swiftest.

I parted the vines and crept where the roots of the big oak stretched like bony fingers over the water, that was slowly eating under it and baring its roots. I sat on them above the water and thought. I had decided the day before about my going to school, and the day before that, and many, many times before that, and here I was having to settle it all over again. Doubled on the sak roots, a troubled little soul, I settled it once more.

No books or teachers were needed to tell me about flowing water and fish, how hawks raised their broods and kept house, about the softly cooing doves of the spice thickets, the cuckoos slipping snakelike in and out of the wild crab-apple bushes, or the brown thrush's weird call from the thorn bush. I knew what they said and did, but their names, where they came from, where they went when the wind blew and the snow fell—how was I going to find out that? Worse yet were the flowers, butterflies, and moths; they were mysteries past learning alone, and while the names I made up for them were pretty and suitable, I knew in all reason they wouldn't be the same in the books. I had to go, but no one will ever know what it cost. When the supper bell rang, I sat still. I'd have to wait until at least two tables had been served, anyway, so I sat there and nursed my misery, looked and listened, and by and by I felt better. I couldn't see or hear a thing that was standing still. Father said even the rocks grew larger year by year. The trees were getting bigger, the birds were busy, and the creek was in a dreadful hurry to reach the river. It was like that poetry piece that says:

"When a playful brook, you gambolled,"

(Mostly that gambolled word is said about lambs)

"And the sunshine o'er you smiled,
On your banks did children loiter,
Looking for the spring flowers wild?"

The creek was more in earnest and working harder at pushing steadily ahead without ever stopping than anything else; and like the poetry piece again, it really did "seem to smile upon us as it quickly passed us by." I had to quit playing, and go to work some time; it made me sorry to think how behind I was, because I had not started two years before, when I should. But that couldn't be helped now. All there was left was to go this time, for sure. I got up heavily and slowly as an old person, and then slipped out and ran down the path to the meadow, because I could hear Leon whistle as he came to bring the cows.