“The jell and jam market is a good one, only it’s pretty well taken up, hereabouts, by Miss Ryerson at the Mill Farm, t’other side of Stonebridge. She puts up for nearly all the city people clear through to Gordon, and last year she added cherry bounce and blackberry brandy. Strange enough, too, made by your Great-grandmother West’s rule,—I suppose you know she accommodated wayfarers with meat and drink down at the farm, and being strictly temperance had a great name for her ginger-mint pop; the rule is in my book now. The old sign used to be in the far side of your attic, behind the four-poster—it was a fox chasin’ a goose, and I always heard it came from the old country; that reminds me, Enoch says that old bed is set up, and your father’s sleepin’ on it again—well, old times lets go hard sometimes.
“Why, last year Miss Ryerson cleared two thousand above the wages of her woman she keeps now to help her out. Of course there’s more in making such things than meets the eye of those that hasn’t been inside the preservin’ kettle, so to speak. It’s the keepin’ sound and eatin’ well that counts, and that’s why, like everything else, for every ten that tries the business, nine drop out because they pinch and neglect, and slop somewhere, and don’t give the best there is. In eatin’ there’s always a market for the best. But jam and jell won’t do for you, for let alone not havin’ experience, you’d have to put out everything for a season to catch your market, same as they cast away samples of new soap and bakin’ powder.
“Oh, yes, I almost forgot that you were askin’ about that man for the ploughing! Enoch saw a big strong Dane, or Swede, or some of those north-country people, down at the smithy last night. He’s come here lately, and hired the little Bisbee cottage on the river road—plans to fix it up, and plant a bit of garden, ’n make it ready for his sweetheart that’s coming over in the fall. They say he’s got a bit of money saved and table boards at Bisbee’s sister’s. He wants to work on shares or by the day this season, so’s to have time for his own work between. He brought a letter to Mr. Denny, the printer down at the Bee office, and he says he’ll recommend him willing. Somebody like that, steady, and who would go ahead, would be better for a girl like you than a wild Polack that you’d have to manage, or one of our town boys that would likely feel called to boss you. Father says the fellow doesn’t own a horse mower yet, but we’ll lend ours, and you’ve got a plough and scythes, as I suppose Keith showed you. Father’ll bargain with him for you, and plan out the work—he thinks it’ll be better to let the man see you’ve a farming friend that knows, to come between you and what you’ve never seen done, and in consequence hev no notion of.”
Thanking the dear old lady both with words and the spontaneous kiss of sudden gratitude, which she prized far more, Brooke walked home in a sort of dream. She passed, quite unheeded, the blooming hepaticas clustering amid the dry leaves in a sunny spot on the road bank, though she had been looking among their thick ruddy leaves for the flowers ever since Stead had shown her where they were bedded a week before. A song-sparrow, perched on a twig of silvery pussy-willow, threw back his head as she passed, and poured forth the most melodious verse of his changeful song. She scarcely heard it, or if she did, paid no heed, any more than she did to the fact that Tatters had flushed a partridge down in one of the wood roads that start from the highway and end in silence, leaving her for its ecstatic but fruitless quest.
Going to the kitchen, she stood before the mantel-shelf looking at the fox, as if at an oracle that must one day speak to her. Then something cool seemed to touch her brain, clearing it and crystallizing her thoughts, as it had that night when the plan of coming to the homestead drove away the oppression of despair itself.
“Yes,” she said aloud, “to win money it must be the best of its kind. What can I do that is the best?—paint animals? by and by perhaps—but for daily bread this spring? Ah, it has come! I can make sandwiches, all kinds, of the very best (how the Hendersons and Bleeckers gobbled them up), to go with mother’s tea, also the bread for them! I will make the summer drink of ginger ale, ice, a lemon slice, and three sprigs of mint, that father once said tasted so much better than the ginger-root affair they bottle for sale. I will play I am Great-granny West, swing out my sign, and ‘accommodate wayfarers’—that is, the pleasure drivers between Stonebridge and Gordon—with food and drink, as Mrs. Fenton put it! She says a day never passes from May to November but what people in driving stop, and beg to buy even bread and milk. Grandma West’s sign was a fox and a goose, but to-day geese are out of the running. My sign shall be only the Sign of the Fox. You shall hang out over the gate on the old pine in an iron frame, and talk wisely to the passers-by,” she said, looking up at the picture.
Then, taking the bread-board down from the shelf, she kissed the fox on the nose in the fervour of hope that was dawning.
“Instead of cakes and ale, or anything like that, you shall have just one word—tea—painted over you, and we will leave them to guess the rest,” and Brooke, who was in a mood to declare that the wise beast winked, and licked his lips, needs must laugh at the curious yet satisfactory blending of her dreams of the future, love, painting, and fame, with the eternal everyday theme, bread and butter!
After a moment the revulsion came. What would her mother say? That passed away in the thought that she could not object, for to act untrammelled was unquestionably the first link in the chain by which Brooke was to endeavour to keep the family bound together. Yet it was a relief when, an hour later, the plan had been thoroughly discussed and formulated, to find that her mother not only fully approved, but was already on the alert, and full of suggestions to make the simple service as dainty as might be.