Part 13 (1/2)
”I am sure not.” Aunt Jessica's busy hands went back to her yellow mixing-bowl. ”You know where the Gordons live, don't you?--in the big brick house at the cross-roads.”
”Yes,” said Elliott, and her feet carried her out of the yard, stopping only long enough to let her get her pink parasol from the hall, and down the hill toward the cross-roads. It was odd about Elliott's feet, when she hadn't quite made up her mind whether or not she would go. Her feet seemed to have no doubt of it.
The pink parasol threw a becoming light on her face, as she knew it would, and the odor of heliotrope rose pleasantly in her nostrils as she walked along. But the basket grew heavy, astonis.h.i.+ngly heavy. She wouldn't have believed a culling-basket with a few flowers in it could weigh so much. The farther Elliott walked, the heavier it grew. And she hadn't gone a quarter of the way, either.
A horse's feet coming up rapidly behind her turned the girl's steps to the side of the road. The horse drew abreast and stopped, prancing.
”Want a lift?” asked the man in the wagon. He was a big grizzled farmer, a friend of her uncle's.
Elliott nodded, smiling. ”Oh, thank you!”
”Purty flowers you've got there.”
”Aren't they lovely! Aunt Jessica is sending them to Mrs. Gordon.”
”That's right! That's right! Say, just look at them pansies, now!
Flowers, they don't do nothin' but grow for that aunt of yours. She don't have to much more 'n look at 'em.”
Elliott laughed. ”She weeds them, I happen to know. I helped her this afternoon.”
”Did you, now! But there's a difference in folks. Take my wife: she plants 'em and plants 'em, but she can't keep none. They up and die on her, sure thing.”
Elliott selected a purple pansy. ”This looks to me as though it would like to get into your b.u.t.tonhole, Mr. Blair.”
”Sho, now!” He flushed with pleasure, driving slowly as the girl fitted the pansy in place, a bit of heliotrope nestling beside it.
”Smells good, don't it? Mother always had heliotrope in her garden.
Takes me back to when I was a little shaver.”
Elliott's deft fingers were busy with the English daisies.
”Now don't you go and spoil your basket.”
”No, indeed! see what a lot there are left. Here is a little nosegay for your wife. And thank you so much for the lift.”
He cranked the wheel and she jumped out, waving her hand as he drove on. Queer a man like that should love flowers!
It was only when she was walking up the graveled path to the door of the brick house that she remembered to compose her face into a proper gravity. She felt nervous and ill at ease. But she needn't go in, she reminded herself, just leave the flowers at the door. If only there were a maid, which there probably wasn't! One couldn't count for certain on getting right away from these places where the people themselves met one at the door.
”How do you do?” said a voice, advancing from the right. ”What a lovely basket!”
Elliott jumped. She was ready to jump at anything and she had been looking straight ahead without a single glance aside from a non-committal brick front. Now she saw a hammock swung between two trees, a hammock still swaying from the impact of the girl who had just left it.
She was the biggest girl Elliott had ever seen, tall and fat and shapeless and very plain. She was all in white, which made her look bigger, and her skirt was at least three years old. There was a faint trickle of brown spots down the front of it, too, of which the girl seemed utterly unaware.
”You don't have to tell me where those flowers come from,” she said.
”You are Laura Cameron's cousin, aren't you? Glad to know you.”
”Yes,” said Elliott, ”I am Elliott Cameron. Aunt Jessica sent these to your mother.”
The girl's fingers felt cool and firm as they touched Elliott's, the only pleasant impression she had yet gathered.