With the changing years Achsa Green had become as quaint as her surroundings. Bent, and small, her face seared to the brown of a withered leaf from the hot suns and biting winds, her hands knotted with labor, her sparse hair twisted into a knob at the exact center of the back of her head, she was not lovely to look upon, yet from her eyes gleamed a spirit that knew no wear of age, that took its knocks upstanding, that suffered when others suffered but that spread a healing philosophy of God’s wisdom. For Achsa’s acceptance of God’s wisdom faltered only when she thought of Lavender.
Lavender was her brother Asabel’s only child. His mother had died a week after his birth, his father five months before. Achsa had taken the babe into her arms and had promised to “do” for him. And she had, with a fierce yearning, a compassion that hurt to her very soul. For Lavender was not like other children; his poor little body was sadly crippled. Achsa had at first refused to believe but that he might “grow straight,” then as the years convinced her that this could never be she consecrated herself to the single task of keeping him fed and clothed and happy and “out o’ mischief.” She clung staunchly to the hope that, if she prayed hard enough by night and believed by day that her boy was “straight,” sometime Lavender would be straight and all their little world—the Cape—would know.
There was nothing unusual in Dugald Allan of Rahway, N. J., finding Sunset Lane, for he was a fledgling artist and came there like other artists, but certainly a destiny that was kind toward old Achsa had something to do in the skirmish that ensued between Poker, Allan’s brindle bull-pup, and Nip and Tuck, Achsa Green’s two black cats. Tuck, caught sunning herself in the middle of the lane, had recognized a foe in Poker and had defended her stronghold; Poker, resenting her exclusiveness, had offered battle. Nip, never far from his sister, had promptly thrown himself into the fray. There had resulted a whirl of sand like a miniature cyclone from which young Allan rescued Poker just in time to save his brindle hide. Nip, unvanquished, had retreated to the very doorway that Allan had come to paint; Tuck fled to the shelter of a bed of tall sweet william.
“Dear! Dear!” cried Achsa Green in the open doorway. “Oh, my cats—”
“Nobody hurt. I’m sorry,” laughed young Allan. “I mean—Poker’s sorry. I don’t understand his rudeness. He never fights anyone smaller than himself. I’ve brought him up to a high sporting code. He must have misunderstood your cat’s attitude. He apologizes, humbly.”
Assured that her pets were unharmed the little old woman in the doorway had laughed gleefully. “Tuck’s sort o’ suspicious o’ strange folks, but I cal’late she didn’t take a good look at you! She must a looked at your dog first!”
“I thank you for the compliment. You see, we came quite peaceably to paint your doorway. You’re Miss Green, aren’t you? I’m sure that’s the door they told me about. And if your defiant animal will stand like that long enough for me to sketch it—I’d consider myself in luck—”
“I cal’late he will—if your dog’s ’round. Nip ain’t ’fraid of nothin’ ’slong as his own door’s at his back. Don’t know as anyone’s wanted to draw his picture before. He’ll be all set up for sure!”
Whipping out his pad Dugald Allan, with rapid strokes, had sketched the door and the cat—and Achsa Green. Later the picture he painted from the sketch hung in a Paris exhibition. When he showed the drawing to Achsa Green she had beamed with pleasure. “Why, that’s as like Nip as though it war a twin.” Nip, scenting the friendly atmosphere, had relaxed, stretched, yawned, waved a plumy tail toward poor Poker, watching fearfully from behind his master, and had stalked, disdainful, over to the sweet william to reassure the more timid Tuck.
Of course Achsa Green had wanted to show the “picture” to Lavender and Dugald Allan, eager to see the inside of the old house, had followed her into the low-ceilinged kitchen. And that had been ten years ago and each succeeding spring since had brought Dugald Allan back to Sunset Lane.