THE place Billy called the Fo’castle was a tiny room in the sloping windmill tower. It was level with the second floor of the house, and a narrow, railed bridge connected it with a door in his mother’s room. Under it was the above-ground cellar, overhead the big tank. Still higher whirled the great white wings that pumped the beauty-giving water to lawn and gardens.
The little room was rude and bare, but Billy loved it. He thought the massive beams like the ribs of a ship, and planned to hang between them all his ship pictures. Anything relating to the sea fired his imagination. It gave him a sense of manliness to sleep there alone; and when the heavier gusts of night wind rocked the tower, and each revolution of the big wheel splashed the water against the tank, as waves lap a ship’s side, he dreamed himself on the ocean, called himself “Captain.”
He woke early the next morning. This was rare for him; he usually slept like a bear in midwinter. Perhaps the creaking of the windmill all through the night made his slumber light. Another noise had disturbed him, the sewing machine. Its whirr had come up to him from the open window of the living-room. He knew mother and sister were sewing hard, that on the morrow the poor little stranger might be suitably clad. He had brought upon them this extra work! And this was only the beginning. If the child’s mother was not found they must buy clothes as well as food; and this would take a lot of his sister’s money.
“Jiminy! If they don’t let me work this vacation, I’ll have to run away,” he thought as, through the uncurtained window, he watched the evening star sink below the western hills. While he was wondering if people lived in the star he fell asleep; yet waked later to hear the busy machine.
“Golly! They’re working all night. I—ought to—help—to-morrow. I—” He slept again with his good resolution half made.
Yet the impression of the night had been deep enough to wake him before the sun rose. He dressed quickly, astonished the chickens with an early breakfast; put fresh sand in the coop; climbed the windmill tower to oil the bearings of the big wheel; and put the lawn mower in order, but remembered in time that to use it would wake the sleepers.
What more might he do to hasten the Saturday work? He could not chop the kindling or fill the wood boxes. The weeding! It was behind. Both mother and sister had reminded him repeatedly, but he had forgotten. Only yesterday his sister had made tidy the flower beds that flanked the house; but the melons, the vegetables,—they were not done, and that would make no noise.
The Bennetts’ was one of the oldest places in town, and the most beautiful. It was near the heart of the growing village ambitiously calling itself a city. Level lawns protected by high hedges and shaded by many trees, spread amply around the house and back to the first terrace, where a tangle of berry vines covered trellises that shut off a lower level devoted to vegetables. Beyond this was the chickens’ domain, rock-dotted acres that sloped sharply to where Runa Creek boiled over its stony bed. Here mother hens fluttered and scolded while web-footed broods paddled in the edges of the stream.
Once Billy’s attention was fixed he was as earnest at work as at play. He slaughtered the weeds rapidly, and had several clean beds behind him when his mother called him to breakfast.
“What happened to you, Billy?” she asked when he entered the kitchen. “For a second I was frightened when I went to wake you and found you gone.”