At the Sign of the Fox: A Romance

by Mabel Osgood Wright

Waiting for others to act had never before fallen to Miss Keith’s lot in life. For twenty years her comings and goings, her waking and sleeping, and even the setting of the first spring brood of embryo broilers had depended upon herself alone, for she had long since substituted an incubator for that coy and freakish feathered female known as a setting hen. Consequently this delay at the very outset of a new order of things found her restless and in no very amiable mood. Also Judith Dow had written that, as Miss Keith had promised to come the first of the year, she had reserved her room and must charge her accordingly, which, as the whole affair was upon a nominal basis, irritated her not a little.

In writing to Adam Lawton of the determination to leave the farm, the 1st of January had been the date she had set for starting for Boston en route to Matrimony, and when, a short time after Christmas, Brooke had combined her reply to the unanswered letter with the announcement that she herself expected to go to take charge of the place as near the 1st of January as possible, Miss Keith had hastened to complete her arrangements.

Brooke had written concisely, yet with entire frankness; but even then Miss Keith did not compass the exact condition of her cousin’s affairs, or understand that as far as his relation with the world stood he was as helpless and irresponsible as the day of his birth. She knew that money and health had been lost, but fancied that, after a few months’ retirement, more voluntary than enforced, as had been the case with one or two families of the wealthy summer colony at Stonebridge, every one concerned would swing back to the old pace again.

Nevertheless she took great pride in making the evidence of her thrifty stewardship apparent on every side. The hired man had been well-nigh frantic at the number of times that he had been obliged to whitewash spots that had dried thin in the cow and poultry houses. A fringe of unthreshed rye straw made a lambrequin over the entrance to the stall of Billy, the general utility horse with the long, common-sense face. The front gate, always removed from its hinges at the coming of frost, had been scrubbed before being stowed away in the attic, and the plant boxes that edged the front porch and held nasturtiums in summer were filled with small cedar bushes and branches of coral winterberry in remembrance of Brooke’s youthful love of such things.

The outside condition of things gave Miss Keith much more satisfaction than did the inside arrangement of the house. Her only concern about them was lest the mischievous boy should upset everything and doubtless stone the cows, torment Laura, the sedate barn cat, and turn the laying hens out in the cold; for to her spinster mentality if there was a dubious quantity, it was the growing boy, the last straw under which the many-humped back of female patience must break.

She had considered the house the pink of perfection until she peopled it with New Yorkers accustomed to every luxury, and then the gay flowers of the chintz slip covers that hid the haircloth gloom of the parlour furniture began to pale and fail to hold their own, and the texture of the freshly laundered dimity curtains, those upstairs having wide hems, while those below were edged with tatting of the wheel pattern, seemed to grow coarser as the days went by.

And all the while that she bustled to and fro, now in the cellar to see that the stones had not slipped in the pork barrel and allowed the meat to rise above the brine, then to the attic to be sure that her personal possessions of bedding, linen, and tableware, neatly put up in barrel, bale, and bundle until her marriage and final move, did not take up more room than was necessary,—Tatters followed her, either so close to heel that he literally seemed to dog her footsteps, or else sitting a little way apart with his eyes fastened upon her with a blended look of dread and reproach. Then she would often drop whatever she held and raising his face (yes, Tatters had a face, not a “muzzle”) between her hands, plead with him to tell her what he made of it all and if he believed she could be happy away from Gilead, and if he thought that he could follow any one else to market, allow her to shake out his mat, and choose juicy bones that were not too hard for his middle-aged teeth. All of which showed that she did not rejoice in thought at the First Cause as completely as would, under the circumstances, have been desirable; while Tatters understood that this was not the accustomed affectionate babble or the confidential discourse of everyday doings in which he was frequently consulted, and he would raise his head and give, not his usual howl belonging to moonlight nights, but a strange bay like an echo, deep down in his throat.

Three times in those ten bleak January days had she given what she declared aloud to be a “final dusting” to each room. Three times had she baked bread, cake, pies, and custard for the invalid (no, the third time she made boiled soft custard to break the monotony), and then hovered between the dread of waste and surfeit in consuming the food.

However, on the tenth day of waiting her spirits rose, for soon after breakfast Robert Stead stopped on his way back from Gilead, whither he rode daily, rain or shine, to the post-office, as the rural carrier went to Windy Hill but once a day and that in early afternoon, to say that he had just heard from Dr. Russell and expected him up from Oaklands that afternoon, as he was coming to meet Adam Lawton at the request of his New York physician, in order to see the invalid safely established after his precarious journey.