Part 9 (1/2)

Terrence, who seemed to know the town thoroughly, conducted them to an inn where they were to remain until arrangements could be made for entering the school. Terrence took the two young men under his care in a fatherly way, a.s.suring them it would be bad luck to any who spoke ill of them; but Terrence could not be with them for several days. He had urgent business in Philadelphia, which would require his absence.

For a week after their arrival at Baltimore, their lives were of the most dreary monotony. The rain, which had begun to fall soon after their arrival, continued to descend in torrents, and they found themselves close prisoners in the sanded parlors of the miserable inn. They could but compare this wretched place with the grand old forests and broad prairies of the West, and Sukey began to sigh for home.

”Are you homesick already, Sukey?” asked Fernando.

”I am not homesick--blast such a place as this--give me a country where it don't rain 365 days out o' the year, and I'm content, home or abroad,” growled Sukey.

Their situation was by no means pleasant. Their front window looked out upon a long, straggling, ill-paved street, with its due proportion of mud heaps and duck pools. The houses on either side were, for the most part, dingy-looking edifices, with half-doors, and such pretensions to being shops as the display of a quart of meal, salt, or string of red peppers confers. A more wretched, gloomy-looking picture of woe-begone poverty one seldom beheld.

It was no better if they turned for consolation to the rear of the house. There their eyes fell upon the dirty yard of a dirty inn, and the half-covered cowshed, where two famis.h.i.+ng animals mourned their hard fate as they chewed the cud of ”sweet and bitter fancy.” In addition, they saw an old chaise, once the yellow postchaise, the pride and glory of the establishment, now reduced from its wheels and ignominiously degraded to a hen house. On the gra.s.s-grown roof, a c.o.c.k had taken his stand, with an air of protective patronage to the feathered inhabitants beneath.

Sukey stood at the narrow window gazing out on the dreary and melancholy scene, while he heaved an occasional sigh.

”If this is what you call gitten an education I don't want it,” he drawled at last. ”I would rather go back to Ohio and hunt for deer or black bear, than enjoy such amus.e.m.e.nt as this is.”

”Oh, it will get better,” said Fernando.

”It has great room for growing better.”

”But it might be worse.”

”Yes, we might be at sea.”

Their landlady, a portly woman with two marriageable daughters, did all in her power to make their stay pleasant. She praised Baltimore for its beauty and health, its picturesqueness and poetry. It was surely destined to be the greatest city in the United States.

When they were alone, Sukey pointed to the mud heaps and duck pools and gravely asked:

”Do they show the poetry and picturesk of which she speaks? Is that old chaise a sign of health or prosperity?”

”Be patient, Sukey; we have seen little or none of Baltimore.”

”Plague take me if I haven't seen more than I want to see of it now,”

growled Sukey.

At last the weather cleared a little, and the sun shone brilliantly on the pools of water and muddy street. The young gentlemen strolled forth to look about the town.

When about to start from the inn, Sukey asked:

”Say, Fernando, how are we goin' to find our way back?”

This was a serious question for even Fernando. He reflected over it a moment and then said:

”It's the house at the foot of the second hill with the road or street that winds around the cliff.”

”Wouldn't it be better to take hatchets and blaze the corners of the houses as we go along?” suggested Sukey. Fernando smiled and thought the owners might raise some serious objections to having their houses blazed. They were still somewhat undecided in regard to the matter, when their landlady, with a movement about as graceful as the waddle of a duck, came down the rickety stairs, and they in despair appealed to her.

She relieved them of their trouble in short order. On a piece of tin over her door was the number 611. She told them the name of the street, and a.s.sured them if they would remember that and the number, any one would point it out to them. Besides they had only to remember the widow Mahone, everybody in the town knew the widow Mahone.

With this a.s.surance of safe return, the two youngsters ventured forth into the city. They were not as verdant as the reader may imagine. Both had been reared in the western wilderness and retained much of the pioneer traits about them; but books had been society for them, and their four months spent in New York and Boston had given them an urbane polish. Sukey, however, had many inherent traits, which all the schools could not wholly eradicate.

”I don't like towns,” he declared, as they ascended a hill, which gave them an excellent view of the harbor and s.h.i.+pping. ”They are too close.