Part 2 (1/2)
”Jiminy crickets! Say, Gertie, could he make me a norficer? Let's go find him. Does he live near here?”
”Oh my, no! He's 'way off in San Francisco.”
”Come on. Let's go there. You and me. Gee! I like you! You got a'
awful pertty dress.”
”'Tain't polite to compliment me to my face. Mamma says----”
”Come on! Let's go! We're going!”
”Oh no. I'd like to,” she faltered, ”but my mamma wouldn't let me. She don't let me play around with boys, anyway. She's in the house now.
And besides, it's 'way far off across the sea, to San Francisco; it's beyond the salt sea where the Mormons live, and they all got seven wives.”
”Beyond the sea like Christiania? Ah, 'tain't! It's in America, because Mr. Lamb went there last winter. 'Sides, even if it was across the sea, couldn't we go an' be stow'ways, like the Younger Brothers and all them? And Little Lord Fauntleroy. He went and was a lord, and he wasn't nothing but a' orphing. My ma read me about him, only she don't talk English very good, but we'll go stow'ways,” he wound up, triumphantly.
”Gerrrrrrtrrrrrude!” A high-pitched voice from the stoop.
Gertie glowered at a tall, meager woman with a long green-and-white ap.r.o.n over a most respectable black alpaca gown. Her nose was large, her complexion dull, but she carried herself so commandingly as to be almost handsome and very formidable.
”Oh, dear!” Gertie stamped her foot. ”Now I got to go in. I never can have any fun. Good-by, Carl----”
He urgently interrupted her tragic farewell. ”Say! Gee whillikins! I know what we'll do. You sneak out the back door and I'll meet you, and we'll run away and go seek-our-fortunes and we'll find your cousin----”
”Gerrrtrrrude!” from the stoop.
”Yes, mamma, I'm just coming.” To Carl: ”'Sides, I'm older 'n you and I'm 'most grown-up, and I don't believe in Santy Claus, and onc't I taught the infant cla.s.s at St. Chrysostom's Sunday-school when the teacher wasn't there; anyway, I and Miss Bessie did, and I asked them 'most all the questions about the trumpets and pitchers. So I couldn't run away. I'm too old.”
”Gerrrtrrrude, come here this _instant_!”
”Come on. I'll be waiting,” Carl demanded.
She was gone. She was being ushered into the House of Mysterious Shutters by Mrs. Cowles. Carl prowled down the street, a fine, new, long stick at his side, like a saber. He rounded the block, and waited back of the Cowles carriage-shed, doing sentry-go and planning the number of parrots and pieces of eight he would bring back from San Francisco. _Then_ his father and mother would be sorry they'd talked about him in their Norwegian!
”Carl!” Gertie was running around the corner of the carriage-shed.
”Oh, Carl, I had to come out and see you again, but I can't go seek-our-fortunes with you, 'cause they've got the piano moved in now and I got to practise, else I'll grow up just an ignorant common person, and, besides, there's going to be tea-biscuits and honey for supper. I saw the honey.”
He smartly swung his saber to his shoulder, ordering, ”Come on!”
Gertie edged forward, perplexedly sucking a finger-joint, and followed him along Lake Street toward open country. They took to the Minnesota & Dakota railroad track, a natural footpath in a land where the trains were few and not fast, as was the condition of the single-tracked M. & D. of 1893. In a worried manner Carl inquired whether San Francisco was northwest or southeast--the directions in which ran all self-respecting railroads. Gertie blandly declared that it lay to the northwest; and northwest they started--toward the swamps and the first forests of the Big Woods.
He had wonderlands to show her along the track. To him every detail was of scientific importance. He knew intimately the topography of the fields beside the track; in which corner of Tubbs's pasture, between the track and the lake, the scraggly wild clover grew, and down what part of the gravel-bank it was most exciting to roll. As far along the track as the Arch, each railroad tie (or sleeper) had for him a personality: the fat, white tie, which oozed at the end into an awkward k.n.o.b, he had always hated because it resembled a flattened grub; a new tamarack tie with a sliver of fresh bark still on it, recently put in by the section gang, was an entertaining stranger; and he particularly introduced Gertie to his favorite, a wine-colored tie which always smiled.
Gertie, though _n.o.blesse oblige_ compelled her to be gracious to the imprisoned ties writhing under the steel rails, did not really show much enthusiasm till he led her to the justly celebrated Arch. Even then she boasted of Minnehaha Falls and Fort Snelling and Lake Calhoun; but, upon his grieved solicitation, declared that, after all, the Twin Cities had nothing to compare with the Arch--a sandstone tunnel full twenty feet high, miraculously boring through the railroad embankment, and faced with great stones which you could descend by lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the Arch ran the creek, with rare minnows in its pools, while important paths led from the creek to a wilderness of hazelnut-bushes. He taught her to tear the drying husks from the nuts and crack the nuts with stones. At his request Gertie produced two pins from unexpected parts of her small frilly dress. He found a piece of string, and they fished for perch in the creek. As they had no bait whatever, their success was not large.
A flock of ducks flew low above them, seeking a pond for the night.
”Jiminy!” Carl cried, ”it's getting late. We got to hurry. It's awful far to San Francisco and--I don't know--gee! where'll we sleep to-night?”