I do not know to this day what those blue wagons are used for. The ones that I have seen have always been empty, with an insolent driver in a flannel shirt staring at the people he passes like an emperor in a Roman chariot. I would like to ride in one some time; it would be a restoring experience to get that superior attitude toward pedestrians. A chauffeur in a Rolls-Royce in a traffic jam does not achieve such aplomb. There is a superstition on Cape Cod that these carts are built for the sand roads over the dunes, but the only vehicles that I have ever met on those desolate tracks are the buggies of the life-saving crew, amiably plodding back and forth.
I called out to the driver:
“Yoo-hoo! Wait a minute!”
He looked at me, but kept on driving past.
“Yoo-hoo!”
Even if he were one of the Portuguese, he could not have misunderstood the meaning of that call; the children of every continent have hailed each other by that syllable since before speech was invented.
But my stoical friend never hesitated. In fact, as I started to run after him, he picked up his whip and, standing up in the sand-wagon, laid such a blow on the horse’s back that he jumped up and down without making any headway. I could hear the fellow swearing at him, urging him by all the saints to hurry. He must have thought that I was the reincarnation of Mattie, or was warned by his guiding angel to have no traffic with any woman queer enough to live in the House of the Five Pines.
In the village I had no better luck. People were too used to a display of skeletons in their own yards to take any interest in mine or, having disposed of theirs, felt no further civic responsibility. Money could not hire any native of the cape to crawl under the house and drag out that heavy stuff. They only worked “for a friend” or out of curiosity, which I failed to arouse. By noon I began to think of Mrs. Dove’s ominous prediction that I never would get any one to help me at the House of the Five Pines, and saw that this was going to resolve itself into another little job for Jasper on his return. I had promised to have everything in order for him, but if my settling was going to be limited to what I could do with my own hands, the agreement was nil. It is difficult enough anywhere to begin housekeeping after a move. One always finds he has the trunks, but not the keys, and a dozen eggs, without any frying-pan; but an efficiency expert would have quailed at my undertaking. I had to arrange not only my own belongings, when by the grace of the baggagemen’s strike and the cape train they should have arrived, but the offscourings of a family which had tenanted an eight-room house for generations. New Englanders never throw away anything! This I had to do without any means of locomotion except my own legs, carrying everything from a tack-hammer to a can of beans, cooking without any gas, washing without any hot water, and, for candle-power, using wax instead of electricity.
I stopped at the Sailor’s Rest for lunch, remembering to shut the door quietly so as not to disturb the stamps. As I came in, Alf was saying,
“Nicaragua, four, six, and eight—pink—eighty-four.” It sounded like the echo of a football game.