Aunt Jimmy's Will

by Mabel Osgood Wright

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Joshua worked steadily on the fruit farm all the season, preparing for future crops as conscientiously as if he himself was to be the owner. Of this, however, he had no hope; it was impossible for him to bid on the place, as he had little or no ready money, and the only way to raise this would be to mortgage his own little farm.

This several of his neighbours had suggested, offering to loan him the money; but Joshua had struggled along some fifteen years under the weight of a mortgage, and now that he was freed he did not wish to pick up the burden again. Then, too, his farm with its old ramshackle outbuildings was not worth more than three thousand dollars, while the fruit farm with its rich land, good barn, poultry house, and newly shingled dwelling was valued by good judges at any figure from five to six thousand dollars. For though Aunt Jimmy had scrimped herself in many ways, she was too good a business woman to let her property get out of repair.

Neither of the Lane brothers were as well off as Joshua, so by the last of October the community had decided that the fruit farm must go out of the family, and attention was divided between who would buy it and what Joshua would do with his third of the proceeds,—better his house, or buy more land.

The Slocums were considered to be the most likely purchasers; for Abiram Slocum was known to have much money stored away in various paying farms as well as in the Northboro bank, though the way in which he came by it was not approved, even by the most close-fisted of his neighbours, for ’Biram was what was called a “land shark.” He sold worthless parcels of land that would grow nothing but docks and mullein to the hard-working Poles and Hungarians who were fast colonizing the outskirts of Northboro, taking part cash payment, the rest on mortgage, and encouraging them to build. Then when the interest became overdue, owing to inevitable poor crops, he foreclosed, put out the family, and sold the place anew.

So sure did Mrs. Slocum appear to be that she would own the fruit farm, that she took it upon herself to watch the place to see, as she explained when caught by Joshua Lane peeking in at the kitchen window, “that nothing properly belonging to it was took off.” He told her in very plain language that whoever bought the farm would buy what there was on it at the time, and no more, as his aunt had trusted him with the management until the final settlement, and that what he did was no man’s business save that of the heirs.

In the interval, before it was time to tie up vines and bed the various berries with their winter covering of manure, he turned his attention to Aunt Jimmy’s flower garden, a strip of ground enclosed by a neat picket fence, where a box-edged path starting under a rose trellis ran down the middle and disappeared in a grape arbour at the farther end, and everything that was fragrant and hardy and worth growing flanked the walk, while behind, the sweet peas and nasturtiums climbed up to the very fence top in their effort to see and be seen.

This garden had been the apple of Aunt Jimmy’s eye, and in spite of all “spells” and oddities, she had tended it wholly herself, her one gentle feminine impulse, as far as the outside world knew, having been giving nosegays to the children that passed the house on their way home from school. If they handled the flowers carelessly, they never received a second bunch, but if they cherished them, slips, seeds, and bulbs were sure to follow, so that Aunt Jimmy’s flowers lived long after her in childish garden plots.

Prompted by Lauretta Ann,—for Joshua was too hard-headed and practical to have learned anything about flowers, except that they must be fed and watered like other stock, whether animal or vegetable,—he regulated the various borders, dividing and resetting the roots of hardy plants under his wife’s direction, as Aunt Jimmy had done each autumn, while Lammy stood by, eagerly waiting for the “weedings,” which he carried home with great care and set out in a corner south of the barn, “to make,” as he said, “a little garden for Bird, in case we don’t get the fruit farm.” His mother encouraged him in this and praised his efforts, giving him some strips of chicken wire to make a trellis, so that his vines might in time cover the end of the old, gray-shingled barn. Even she, however, did not know of another little garden strip on a far-away hillside that he had tended all summer for the sake of his little friend.