PART SIXTH
I
THE Old Town of Oldbridge is rich of one pleasant winding highway along whose route are scattered its prettiest demesnes. Time was, once, when this sun-spattered, tree-bordered thoroughfare enjoyed its dream of peace in drowsy quietude, under spreading lindens and over-arching elms. To-day, however, it stirs in its dream.
Yet its ancient houses stand placidly enough. Comfortable and serene among park-like meadows, life in them goes on with a simple dignity and ease; and if they are the sometime innocent cause of the sin of pride to the families who inherit them, they are sources of arcadian joys to the stranger within their gates. For they are all spotless and restful—and fragrant of the breaths of several hundred years of new-mown hay, rose-arbours, and aromatic pinks, blown through the windows. These old Colonial homes speak eloquently of good life past, of still better life present—to come.
The trolley-track and the pretty road keep company a bit, together; they both turn to the left and passing in all say twenty houses, reach the Common and the Post Office, where a dozen or so more hipped roofs, set among quiet flower gardens and apple orchards lend tradition and a quaint distinction to the really lovely old Green.
The boys of Oldbridge have pre-empted this Green, the most popular of Sports Clubs, and here, after school, as their forbears did, as their fathers and grandfathers did, here they play and tumble and wrestle and fight. From here they cross the road to enter the Public School House, a red brick building which, thirty years ago, supplanted the Dames School, and which balances the old brick Meeting House at the further end.
The haunt, trysting-place, council chamber—where every mischievous plot is hatched, such is the Common. Whence the eternal Boy, lured by near-flowing waters of the Mantic joins his pals upstream for a swim, plays uproarious pranks there, ties a chap's clothes into a hard knot on the bank and when he comes dripping out in search of them chants, in raucous chorus: “Chaw raw beef—the beef is tough!”
In Winter, the frozen River Mantic makes an unrivalled skating ground; and the Oldbridge Boy still builds his ice-fortress on the Common, stocks it (ammunition of snow-balls)—and leads his regiment to victory. Here he coasts or hitches his sledge to a huge one fleetly passing, gets a glorious ride—comes home, nose and fingers frost-bitten, exceeding argumentative; talking in loud imperious voice; in truth a very dog of wintry joys.