“You can’t hobble a mile in this plight, neither can I carry you. Will you lie up there on that dry moss in the spot where the snow has melted, and wait until I can send Adam for you?” and Brooke took a few steps uphill to illustrate what she meant while waiting for his answer.
No, Tatters emphatically declined to wait, for as soon as she had moved a step he began to hobble on three legs, while at the same time the leaden sky shed a few big snowflakes, as if to show casually what might be expected at any time before night. So his mistress halted and began to look about as if for a possible suggestion.
Presently the head of a meek, ginger-colored horse began to rise above a steep “thank-you-ma’am.” A stout body and four legs followed, next a covered wagon, such as milk pedlers use, with a glass front, through which a man’s face looked out. The sight was such a relief to Brooke that she made no pretence of concealing the fact, but waited until the team came alongside, when she read the legend “Mrs. Banks’ Homemade Pies,” printed in elaborately shaded letters on the side of the canopy.
The horse stopped of its own accord on the small plateau, the driver dropped his window and looked out, smiling cheerfully. It was anything but a handsome face,—that of a man who was probably sixty but might be less, weathered and somewhat sharp; small gray eyes, but with a merry twinkle, peered from under shaggy, sandy eyebrows, that matched a half-starved mustache. The hair of the head was gray, and from it at right angles two very sizable ears stuck out with somewhat startling effect. Yet, in spite of these details, the whole was a face to inspire trust.
“Miss Keith West’s dog, and in trouble, I take it,” was his opening remark. “I’m goin’ straight past her house, and I’ll fetch him up if you like and relieve your mind, as you seem partial to animals.”
“Could you take me, too?” asked Brooke, returning his smile, “that is, if I shall not make your load too heavy, for though Tatters seems to know you” (Tatters had given the coolest sort of tail wag at the sound of the man’s voice), “I’m afraid he will not go without me.”
“So you are travelling uphill too—climb right in, though I reckon you’ll hev to set on this box here. Do you happen to be one uv Miss Keith’s folks that owns the farm and wuz comin’ to live there when she goes to Boston? Though, as I says to my wife (she’s Mrs. Banks, Homemade Pies, and I’m Mr. Banks that peddles ’em, besides raisin’ and pickin’ the berries and apples and pumpkins fer their innards, along with a considerable lot of garden sass), I says, ‘Keith’ll never make up her mind to go; the city isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when onct you’re used to plenty o’ room to move and free empty air.’ What air there is in big cities is so chuck full o’ noise and smell and one thing and another, you wouldn’t know it. Why, it’s worse than the Methody church down in the holler, when they had a revival meetin’ on a summer night, and felt called to close the winders on account of gnats.
“Yes, I lived in N’ York six months,—it’ll be nigh five years ago. You see, the farm didn’t pay as it uster when I raised six children on it and we was all satisfied. Everything doin’ got to be more wholesale and knocked out us small fry. Next, for a spell, I took to the railroad; got a job through one of the big bugs down ter Stonebridge, and after a time got ter be conductor on the through express freight, sleepin’ home every other night. Well, it gave me a chance to see life, I’m glad to say, for which I’d allus hankered, but it was a nervous job, and kep’ me too far above the ground, which was my born station.
“Then the boys coaxed ma and me to go to N’ York, she to keep a flat for ’em,—I suppose maybe you’ve seen one o’ them contrary sort of outfits, a floor divided up small like a parlour box car for racing stock, well enough looking till you close the doors, then everybody shook up together until you’re sick o’ the sight and smell o’ your very own. All of God’s sunlight you get is what’s dribbled in down a flue, like the chute of a feed bin, and not a scrap o’ grass to bleach clothes on, only to hang ’em out in a little narrer place to sweat on a line like bacon in a smoke-house. Mother withered so that summer I was afeared she’d let go the tree before autumn, like a windfall apple; and as for the ‘genteel work for my old age’ the boys had got me—genteel be damned! I beg your pardon, Miss—?”