The S. P. Mystery

by Harriet Pyne Grove

This took her near a point that ran out into the lake, a low point, wooded and beautiful with its tall trees and thick bushes. A clatter of some sort drew her attention from her line after a while. Looking along the shore, she saw, in a comparatively open space a team of horses, apparently attached to a wagon, and a large truck backing around. The clatter, she now saw, had been made by a pile of lumber, thrown from the truck. More was being put in a different spot.

Greta’s clear eyes needed no field glass to determine that a number of boys were running about, directing, calling, looking up and down the shore, and while she looked two of them hugged each other and performed an impromptu dance of exultation in an open spot. Greta laughed in spite of her small acquaintance with laughter. Boys, building a shack, of course for a summer camp! Well, she would have to keep out of sight more carefully than ever. Greta sighed as she drew in her line and took from it a fat lake trout. She rowed farther away and cast again, waiting patiently and thinking of many things. At present her ambition was to help, either with housework or with children at some of the summer cottages. But when she had asked her mother if she might, she had met with a sharp refusal, though the money from such work would have helped at home.

If she only could earn a little money with all the hard work she had learned to do! She could have some decent shoes, perhaps and one whole, respectable dress!

One other fish, and there was enough for a good breakfast. It was six o’clock when she reached home, to be scolded for being so late. Jacob Klein was still in a drunken sleep. Mrs. Klein was just getting up and the children were clamoring for attention. Roughly their mother spoke to them, telling Greta to do the milking and the feeding outside first, then to clean the fish and get breakfast.

Greta had friends in the lean cow, whose chief feed was the grass by the roadside, the hens, a straggling lot, a few baby chicks, and a couple of gaunt pigs in an ill-smelling sty at the rear of the yard. Two dogs, shut in the old barn for the night, came leaping out upon Greta as she opened the door. She was the only one who never kicked or abused them.

So Greta Klein’s day began, much better than the winter days when there was a hunt for fuel, chiefly taken from the woods which did not now belong to them and where good trees would be missed. Fishing could be done by cutting the ice in the lake, but flour was often low and they lived on the cheapest of food.

The children had milk for their breakfast. Not until the ill-tempered man who actually ruled this family stirred and demanded something to eat did Greta cook the fish, dodging a slap from the great hand, so ready with a blow, and not daring to take a taste of the fish which she had caught. A glass of warm milk, taken from the pail before she brought it in, since objection might be made later, was a satisfying breakfast to Greta. She welcomed the order to go down the lake to the cottages, get the clothes from the one family who had the courage to give their washing to Mrs. Klein, and see what other cottages were occupied. Greta was to ask for more work.

As the patched clothes Greta wore were neither whole nor clean, Mrs. Klein brought out Greta’s best dress, a hideous plaid gingham with a tight waist and a full skirt, poorly gathered on. The only reason for this was that people would be more likely to send the washing if the girl asking the work looked fairly clean herself. “This ought to be washed, Mother,” said Greta, though in German.

“And wear it out!” replied her mother. “Talk your best English to them and get me two washings if you can. It is a lucky thing that you learned the English before you were sick.”

That was always a funny thing to Greta, that in some way she had learned English before she was sick, that sickness that was brain fever, she was told and made her forget all about when her little brother had been born and made her speak German so poorly, and yet she could speak English! She must have gone to school some time, though her mother would give her no satisfaction about when or where. “You have had enough schooling,” was all that she would say.