Aunt Jimmy's Will

by Mabel Osgood Wright

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In spite of Joshua Lane’s rebuke to Mrs. Slocum, she continued spying and insinuating, and not many days later, chancing to drive by the fruit farm half an hour after school was out, and seeing Lammy going up the road, carrying a basket, spade, and water can, followed by faithful Twinkle, she hurried home and bade ’Ram “step lively and follow that Lane boy up, an’ see where he’s goin’, and what he’s got, and what he’s agoin’ to do with it.”

Mrs. Slocum was more than usually determined upon annoying the Lanes, since Joshua, as administrator for Terence O’More, had refused payment of the rent owed for the little cottage, until the insurance company had satisfied themselves as to the cause of the fire and paid Abiram’s claim. The furniture destroyed, at the lowest estimate, would have been more than enough to cancel the debt.

’Ram, only too glad to do his mother’s errand, after the manner of all bullies, waited until Lammy was out of reach of protection and well up on the sheltered “hill road” before he overtook him, asking in a “you’ve-got-to-tell” tone what he had in the basket and where he was going. Upon Lammy’s declining to tell, he announced his intention of following until he found out for himself.

Now it must be remembered that Lammy had the name of being girlish, if not exactly cowardly, that he was only fourteen, and though tall, was of a slender build; while ’Ram was not only broad-shouldered and sixteen, but the village braggart to boot, so that it really took some pluck for Lammy to continue up that houseless road with ’Ram muttering threats and marching close behind. Still Lammy walked straight on past all the farms, to where the runaway Christmas trees stood sentinels around the hillside graveyard. There is no denying that his hand shook as he unlatched the gate, but he did not falter or look back, but went to the corner where were the mounds that marked the graves of Bird O’More’s father and mother.

Why the turf was so much greener and smoother than anywhere else in the enclosure no one but Lammy knew, and for a moment ’Ram paused outside the fence in sheer surprise; but as Lammy, kneeling down, took a couple of roots of the red peony from his basket, and prepared to plant one at the top of each flowery mound, his surprise vanished in derision.

“Ain’t you a fool for sure!” he shouted, not coming in the enclosure, for, stupid and superstitious like all real cowards, he thought it bad luck to cross a graveyard,—“a fool for sure, planting posies yer stole; top of paupers, too, when even that stuck-up girl that was yer sweetheart’s gone off to live with rich folks and has clean forgotten them and you!”

Lammy’s trembling fingers fumbled with the earth and his head swam. The first part of ’Ram’s jeer made his blood boil, but after all it was a lie, and lies do not sting for long; for poor though O’More was, his debts would be paid to a penny, and Lammy had bought the peony roots from his father as executor by doing extra weeding on the fruit farm.

The last sentence, however, hurt cruelly; for though Lammy did not believe it, he had no way of disproving it even to himself, and so could not say a word to ’Ram in reply; for during the five months since Bird went away only two brief notes had come from her, and these told about city streets and sights, and little or nothing of herself. While, to make it the more strange, when, in the hot August weather, Mrs. Lane had sent her an invitation to come up for the promised visit, enclosing the tickets, which represented some weeks of egg money, and offered herself to go down to New Haven to meet the child, a stiff little note returning the tickets had come by way of reply, and though it was grateful in wording and said something vague about going with Billy for sea air, etc., he could not guess the disappointment that it covered, and that the sea air was merely a chance ferry ride, or the breeze that blew over Battery Park, where they herded daily with hundreds of other children of poorer New York. Lammy had been cut to the heart, and ’Ram’s taunt rankled indeed.

Mrs. Lane, however, had read between the lines, her keen insight, confidence in Bird, and motherly love serving as spectacles. She still felt, as she always had done, that Bird was unhappy, and yet too proud to confess it, and that she did not dare write often or come among them, for fear that they should discover what they could not as yet better. For Mrs. Lane remembered O’More’s conditional promise only too well, and the possibility of fulfilling her part of adopting the little girl within the year seemed to grow more and more remote.