Part 19 (1/2)

”You ask your ma,” urged Jed. ”Tell her I say I need you here afternoons.”

Barbara looked troubled. ”But that would be a wrong story, wouldn't it?” she asked. ”You don't really need me, you know.”

”Eh? Yes, I do; yes, I do.”

”What for? What shall I tell her you need me for?”

Jed scratched his chin with the tail of a wooden whale.

”You tell her,” he drawled, after considering for a minute or two, ”that I need you to help carry lumber.”

Even a child could not swallow this ridiculous excuse. Barbara burst out laughing.

”Why, Mr. Winslow!” she cried. ”You don't, either. You know I couldn't carry lumber; I'm too little. I couldn't carry any but the littlest, tiny bit.”

Jed nodded, gravely. ”Yes, sartin,” he agreed; ”that's what I need you to carry. You run along and tell her so, that's a good girl.”

But she shook her head vigorously. ”No,” she declared. ”She would say it was silly, and it would be. Besides, you don't really need me at all. You just want Petunia and me for company, same as we want you. Isn't that it, truly?”

”Um-m. Well, I shouldn't wonder. You can tell her that, if you want to; I'd just as soon.”

The young lady still hesitated. ”No-o,” she said, ”because she'd think perhaps you didn't really want me, but was too polite to say so. If you asked her yourself, though, I think she'd let me come.”

At first Jed's bashfulness was up in arms at the very idea, but at length he considered to ask Mrs. Armstrong for the permission. It was granted, as soon as the lady was convinced that the desire for more of her daughter's society was a genuine one, and thereafter Barbara visited the windmill shop afternoons as well as mornings.

She sat, her doll in her arms, upon a box which she soon came to consider her own particular and private seat, watching her long- legged friend as he sawed or glued or jointed or painted. He had little waiting on customers to do now, for most of the summer people had gone. His small visitor and he had many long and, to them, interesting conversations.

Other visitors to the shop, those who knew him well, were surprised and amused to find him on such confidential and intimate terms with a child. Gabe Bea.r.s.e, after one short call, reported about town that crazy Shavin's Winslow had taken up with a young-one just about as crazy as he was.

”There she set,” declared Gabriel, ”on a box, hugging a broken- nosed doll baby up to her and starin' at me and Shavin's as if we was some kind of curiosities, as you might say. Well, one of us was; eh? Haw, haw! She didn't say a word and Shavin's he never said nothin' and I felt as if I was preaching in a deef and dumb asylum. Finally, I happened to look at her and I see her lips movin'. 'Well,' says I, 'you CAN talk, can't you, sis, even if it's only to yourself. What was you talkin' to yourself about, eh?' She didn't seem to want to answer; just sort of reddened up, you know; but I kept right after her. Finally she owned up she was countin'. 'What was you countin'?' says I. Well, she didn't want to tell that, neither. Finally I dragged it out of her that she was countin' how many words I'd said since I started to tell about Melissy Busteed and what she said about Luther Small's wife's aunt, the one that's so wheezed up with asthma and Doctor Parker don't seem to be able to do nothin' to help. 'So you was countin' my words, was you?' says I. 'Well, that's good business, I must say!

How many have I said?' She looked solemn and shook her head. 'I had to give it up,' says she. 'It makes my head ache to count fast very long. Doesn't it give you a headache to count fast, Mr.

Winslow?' Jed, he mumbled some kind of foolishness about some things givin' him earache. I laughed at the two of 'em. 'Humph!'

says I, 'the only kind of aches I have is them in my bones,'

meanin' my rheumatiz, you understand. Shavin's he looked moony up at the roof for about a week and a half, same as he's liable to do, and then he drawled out: 'You see he DOES have headache, Babbie,'

says he. Now did you ever hear such fool talk outside of an asylum? He and that Armstrong kid are well matched. No wonder she sits in there and gapes at him half the day.”

Captain Sam Hunniwell and his daughter were hugely tickled.

”Jed's got a girl at last,” crowed the captain. ”I'd about given up hope, Jed. I was fearful that the bloom of your youth would pa.s.s away from you and you wouldn't keep company with anybody.

You're so bashful that I know you'd never call on a young woman, but I never figured that one might begin callin' on you. Course she's kind of extra young, but she'll grow out of that, give her time.”

Maud Hunniwell laughed merrily, enjoying Mr. Winslow's confusion.

”Oh, the little girl is only the bait, Father,” she declared. ”It is the pretty widow that Jed is fis.h.i.+ng for. She'll be calling here soon, or he'll be calling there. Isn't that true, Jed? Own up, now. Oh, see him blush, Father! Just see him!”

Jed, of course, denied that he was blus.h.i.+ng. His fair tormentor had no mercy.

”You must be,” she insisted. ”At any rate your face is very, very red. I'll leave it to Father. Isn't his face red, Father?”

”Red as a flannel lung-protector,” declared Captain Sam, who was never known to contradict his only daughter, nor, so report affirmed, deny a request of hers.