Part 11 (1/2)

”What, squat on your feet, and the cow not even tied up!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Tom. The accomplishments of his cousin Kate were certainly out of the ordinary. He looked at her with a growing curiosity, then added loftily: ”In this part of the country women don't milk. We don't think it's their business.”

”Well, I'm glad you don't,” said Kate; ”but 'tisn't such a queer thing for women to do as you seem to think. In most countries women generally do it.”

”I never heard of a woman milking before,” said Tom, doggedly.

Kate's eyes grew big again. ”Why, in stories they always do it,” she cried.

Tom looked impervious to any memory of the sort, and she added, with insistence: ”You must have heard of the woman who counted her chickens before they were hatched. She had a pail of milk on her head at the very time, you know; and in the 'House that Jack Built' it was the 'maiden all forlorn who milked the cow with the crumpled horn.' The man hadn't a thing to do with it except bothering her.”

Certainly Tom could not deny acquaintance with those cla.s.sics. ”I never took much stock in Mother Goose,” he said, starting on with his pail again.

”But you've _heard_ of them,” Kate cried triumphantly. He did not look back this time, but he was evidently meditating. As for Kate, she felt that the acquaintance had begun in an auspicious manner, and perched on the side of the cutting machine to wait for his return.

They were together preparing some cut-feed for Dobbin's evening meal when the girls looked in at the door, and the talk was evidently flowing with the greatest ease.

”This is just like a cutting machine we used to have at home, and I have special reason to remember it,” Kate was saying as she turned the wheel, ”for I nearly lost the end of my thumb in it when I was a little tot.

Father was at home, as good luck would have it, and he fixed it up so quick that no great harm came of it.” She held up a pink thumb for Tom's inspection, and added, ”You wouldn't know it now by anything except the nail being a little thicker than common at one corner, and that's really been an advantage to me, for I can open a jack-knife without asking a boy to do it for me.”

Tom gave a grunt of approval. ”And sharpen the pencil too?” he asked.

Then, suddenly: ”Are there many boys out your way? There are more girls here.”

”Oh, there are lots of boys,” said Kate, and then she added: ”but the nicest one of all has gone to college, and we don't see much of him nowadays. Are you going to college?”

He stirred the cut-feed for a minute without speaking, then shook his head. ”Stella wants me to go,” he said, ”and grandfather used to talk about it, too, but he's sort of given it up lately. I guess he thinks I'm not scholar enough; and I'm not,” he added frankly. ”I don't take to studying. I'd rather work with things that are outside of my own head.”

Kate dropped the handle of the cutting machine. ”Tom,” she exclaimed, in a tone of heartfelt sympathy, ”that's just the way I feel, too. I never did like school as Esther and Mort and some of the others do. I don't want to be a stupid, of course-you have to know things or you're no account; but for my part, I'd never get them out of books if I could get them any other way. I like people and affairs better.”

There is nothing like downright honesty to prepare the way for friends.h.i.+p. They had made a frank disclosure of feeling on an important subject, and Kate and Tom were comrades from that moment; comrades, in spite of the fact that certain other points of view were by no means held in common, and that each contended strenuously for his own. They talked for a long time of cousinly affairs. With his mother's quiet way of looking at things, Tom had a considerable spice of his grandfather's shrewdness, and Kate found his opinions on various matters interesting.

”Aunt Katharine must be a strange woman,” she said, when they had touched on a variety of other subjects. ”Do they always fight, she and grandfather, as they did to-day?”

”Always,” said Tom, promptly. ”It's nip and tuck every time they come together. You'd think sometimes they fairly hated each other. But if one of them gets sick you ought to see how the other frets. Grandfather gets into a regular stew sometimes over her living off there by herself; but it's a good thing she does. We couldn't stand it if she lived here.”

”What supports her?” asked Kate, with her quick instinct for practical details.

”Supports her?” repeated Tom; ”why, Aunt Katharine's rich. Didn't you know that? She had some property left to her years ago,-it was city land, I believe,-and it rose in value so it made a fortune. I heard grandfather say once that she must have as much as forty thousand dollars of her own.” The sum seemed unlimited wealth to the country boy.

”n.o.body knows what she'll do with it,” he added; ”she'll want to fix it so the men can't get it. She says she'd leave it to one of her female relatives if she could find one who'd promise never to marry.”

”She'd better propose that to Stella,” said Kate; ”she's so fond of her art.”

Tom whistled. ”She isn't so fond of it but she'd leave it quick enough if the right one asked her,” he said astutely.

And then they rose and walked together toward the house. Aunt Elsie, in the kitchen door, was calling, with an anxious note in her voice: ”Girls, girls, why don't you come in? You're staying out in the dew too long.”

CHAPTER VII

HUCKLEBERRYING

It seemed as if a summer of ordinary time was compressed into that first fortnight at the old homestead. Esther wondered sometimes whether the surrounding hills, over whose tops the morning broke earlier, and in whose soft green hollows the twilights seemed to linger longer than any she had known before, had not something to do with the lifting of the days into the lengthened s.p.a.ce of life and happiness. The charm of the New England landscape, its restful yet enticing beauty, its reserves, its revelations, had captured her fancy and her heart completely. Her letters were full of the new delight. Mrs. Northmore smiled as she read them, and felt that in Esther she was living over again the joys of her own girlhood.