For many years she easily maintained first rank among the Elmbrook sentinels, and might have done so to the end of her life had not one family taken an unfair advantage by calling in the aid of machinery. Silas Long, the postmaster, was a great student of astronomy, and could talk like a book on comets and northern lights, and all other incomprehensible things that sailed the heavens. So no one objected when he bought a telescope—in fact, the minister had advised it; but before long every one knew that while Si studied the celestial bodies at night the female portion of his family kept the instrument turned on objects terrestrial during the day. Old Granny Long, Silas' mother, was the one who put Mrs. Winters in the background. She was a poor, bedridden body, but lay there, day after day, happy as a queen, with her bed pulled up to the window, and the telescope trained on the surrounding country; and there was little went on between Lake Simcoe and the northern boundary of the township that she did not see. She knew the precise hour of a Monday morning at which the family washings were hung out, and which was the cleanest. It was she who made truancy an impossible risk, for no matter in what out-of-the-way place one might go nutting or swimming, Granny Long was sure to see, and report to the schoolmistress. It was from her, also, that her grandson received the heart-breaking intelligence that young Malcolm Cameron had kissed Marjorie Scott, the minister's oldest girl, at the jog in the road, on the way to prayer-meeting one evening, and if it had not been for her vigilance probably no one would have discovered that Sawed-off Wilmott, who managed the cheese factory down on the Lake Simcoe road, allowed his pigs to run in and out of the factory at will. Indeed, as the deposed and indignant Mrs. Winters often declared, a body didn't dast blow their nose inside the township without Granny Long hearing it through that everlasting spyglass.
But on this particular early May morning a hostile army might have marched up and seized Elmbrook unobserved. For there were great doings inside the village that demanded concentrated attention. All the bustle and activity of the place seemed to be gathered at one small house. In the lane, by the side door, stood a team of farm horses hitched to a large double buggy. A big, lumbering lad of about fifteen, half asleep, on the front seat, was holding the reins in his limp hands. But he was the only creature on the premises, except the horses, that was not acutely awake and supremely busy. Even the hens and geese, scratching and squawking about the garden, seemed to know that something unusual was in progress, and gathered about the door in excited groups. Inside the house there was a tremendous clatter; dishes rattled, feet ran hither and thither, voices called frantically. Every few moments a woman would dart out of the doorway, sending a startled whirl of chickens before her, deposit something in the back of the vehicle, and dash back again.
There seemed to be but one man on the premises, a big, benevolent-looking fellow, whose placid face wore an unaccustomed expression of nervous tension. He came stumbling out of the house, and walked abstractedly around the horses. He was making strange motions with his head, strongly indicative of a tendency to strangulation, and ever and anon he clutched his white collar and looked toward the house with an air of desperation. He made three aimless pilgrimages around the equipage and then paused, and addressed the goose and gander that had been following him: "We'll miss that train as sure as blazes," he remarked, stonily.
A slim little woman, in a faded lilac gown that matched her fading beauty, came staggering down the steps with a heavy basket. The big man put out one brawny arm and lifted it, without an effort, into the back of the vehicle. "We'll miss that train, Arabella, just as sure as blazes," he repeated.
The sound partially awoke the young man on the front seat. He turned and contemplated the basket with an injured air. "What in thunder are they taking a set of dishes for, Arabella?" he asked, wearily.
"It's jist a basket o' things Hannah put up. She's afraid the orphan might get hungry on the road home; and besides, she wanted to take some cookies an' cheese to Jake's folks in town."
The man was making another circuit of the buggy, followed closely by Isaac and Rebekah, the pet goose and gander. They came to a standstill in front of the steps, and he raised his face to the morning skies and shouted, as though invoking some higher power, "Hannah! Hannah! Are ye 'most ready?"
A woman's face shot out between the starched lace curtains of an upstairs window. It was a perfectly circular face, framed in thin, fair hair, which was parted in the middle, and brushed down so smooth and shiny that it looked like a coat of dull yellow paint. The face had the same good-humored, benevolent expression as the man's, mingled with the same strained air of desperate resolve. "'Most ready, Jake!" she mumbled through a mouthful of pins, "'most ready! Arabella! Arabella! Did you put in the bottle of raspberry vinegar?"
"Yes, yes, Hannah! Don't you worry?" cried the little faded lilac woman, reassuringly.
"An' the cookies, an' the pound cake, an' the home-made cheese?"