“September winds should never blow upon hops,” the saying is; therefore the hops for a whole year’s yeast-making were gathered in the wane of summer; and here, too, was a task that brought its own reward. The hops made a carpet for the garret floor, more beautiful even than the blue-green sage; and as the harvest was much larger, so the fair living carpet spread much wider. It was a sight to see, in the low light of the half-moon window, all the fragile pale green balls, powdered to the heart’s core with gold-colored pollen—a field of beauty spread there for no eye to see. Yet it was not wasted. The children did not speak of what they felt, but nothing that was beautiful, or mysterious, or stimulating to the fancy in those garret days, was ever lost. It is often the slight impressions that, like the “scent of the roses,” wear best and most keenly express the past.
No child ever forgot the physiognomy of those rooms at grandfather’s: the mid-afternoon stillness when the sun shone on the lemon-tree, and its flowers shed their perfume on the warm air of the sitting-room; the peculiar odor of the withering garden when October days were growing chill; the soft rustle of the wind searching among the dead leaves of the arbor; the cider-mill’s drone in the hazy distance; the creaking of the loaded wagons; the bang of the great barn doors when the wind swung them to.
No child of all those who have played in grandfather’s garret ever forgot its stories, its solemn, silent make-believes, the dreams they dreamed there when they were girls, or the books they read.
THE SPARE BEDROOM AT GRANDFATHER’S
It was the hour for fireside talks in the cañon: too early, as dusk falls on a short December day, for lamps to be lighted; too late to snatch a page or two more of the last magazine, by the low gleam that peered in the western windows.
Jack had done his part in the evening’s wood-carrying, and now was enjoying the fruits of honest toil, watching the gay red flames that becked and bowed up the lava-rock chimney. The low-ceiled room, with its rows of books, its guns and pipes and idols in Zuñi pottery, darkled in corners and glowed in spots, and the faces round the hearth were lighted as by footlights, in their various attitudes of thoughtfulness.
“Now, what is that?” cried Jack’s mamma, putting down the fan screen she held, and turning her head to listen.
It was only the wind booming over the housetop, but it had found a new plaything; it was strumming with a free hand and mighty on the long, taut wires that guyed the wash-shed stovepipe. The wash-shed was a post-script in boards and shingles hastily added to the main dwelling after the latter’s completion. It had no chimney, only four feet of pipe projecting from the roof, an item which would have added to the insurance had there been any insurance. The risk of fire was taken along with the other risks, but the family was vigilant.
Mrs. Gilmour listened till she sighed again. The wind, she said, reminded her of a sound she had not thought of for years,—the whirring of swallows’ wings in the spare bedroom chimney at home.
“Swallows in the chimney?” cried Jack, suddenly attentive. “How could they build fires then, without roasting the birds?”