Part 14 (1/2)

All the time studyin' how you kin go away an' leave me. Well, I'll show you wuther I'm goin' or not.”

The old man laughed. ”Oh, pleased to have you come along, as the hawk said to the chicken.” She climbed up and sat down beside him and he dodged as if she had struck at him. ”Now stop yo' foolishness an' drive on, Jasper. An' I'll jest bet anythin' that these steers run right off'n the bluff inter the creek. I jest know it.”

”Oh, not with a preacher an' all these good-lookin' women,” replied Jasper. ”Whoa hawr, come here, Buck. Come here, Bright.”

The old wagon creaked, groaned, shuddered and away they went down the hill. Lou and Mrs. Mayfield ”bursting into song,” Jim and Tom laughing.

The dawn had been red and the early morning was still pink, with here and there a mist-veil floating up from the creek. In the air were sudden joys, the indescribable and indefinable glees of a lightsome day, the very childhood of time; and back to the north the migratory bird was singing his way, mimicked and laughed at by the native mocking songster, jongleur of the feathered world. In all this blythe land it did not seem that there was an ache or a pain, of the body or of the heart; the light, the air, the music, all combined to form a wordless sermon on the mount.

”Mr. Reverend, you are silent again,” said Mrs. Mayfield, and the preacher replied: ”I didn't know that, ma'm. I thought I was singing.”

”I'm not singin',” Margaret spoke up, grasping Jasper's arm. ”I haven't been so jolted since the mules ran away with me.”

”Margaret,” said Jasper, ”you'd be jolted in the garden of Eden. Jolted out, I gad,” he roared.

”I wouldn't, no sich of a thing, an' you know it. Lou, air you sh.o.r.e you put everything in the basket.”

”Yes'm.”

”The pickels, and the chickens? I jest know you forgot the coffee, as if I could go all day without it. I never seed the like. Folks air gittin'

mo' an' mo' keerless every day. Of co'se you could put in the pickels--had to do that to leave the coffee out. Now what prompted you to do that?”

”Do what, mother?”

”Why, leave that coffee out?”

”It's in the basket.”

”Then why did you tell me you didn't fetch it? What do you want to torment a body fur? Now, Jasper, whut air you a settin' up here fur, a shakin' like a lump o' calf-foot jelly? You give me the fidgits.”

”Wall, thar won't be n.o.body a laughin' now putty soon,” said Jasper. ”I kin see right now that these steers air goin' to run off inter the creek.”

”They ain't a goin' to do no sich of a thing, an' you know it. Miz Mayfield, did you ever see sich carryin's-on?”

”I have never experienced a more delightful drive, Mrs. Starbuck. We read of the beautiful past, and it seems to me that to-day I have been permitted to live a hundred years ago. A hundred! Five hundred, and should not be surprised to see a troop of knights come galloping down the glen, with armor flas.h.i.+ng and with poetic war-cries on their lips.

Were you thinking of that, Mr. Reverend?”

”No, ma'm. I was thinking of the men, clothed in skins and with shepherd's crooks in their hands, carrying the gospel to the barbarians of old.”

”And I was thinking,” said Tom, ”of old Daniel Boone, with his flint-lock rifle, going to Kentucky. And what were your thoughts, Miss Lou?”

”I wasn't thinkin'--I was just a livin', that's all. Sometimes what a blessin' it is jest to breathe. I reckon we are the happiest when we don't have to think, when we jest set still and let things drift along like the leaf that's a floatin' down the river.”

”Very pretty, my dear,” Mrs. Mayfield replied. ”Thought is not happiness, though bliss may not lie wholly in ignorance. I should think that the happiness most nearly perfect is the half-unconscious rest of a thoughtful mind--the sound sleep of the strong.”

”That's all very well,” said Old Jasper, waving his long lash over the steers. ”But you can't gauge happiness, and half the time you can't tell what fetches it about. Some days you find yo'se'f miserable when thar ain't nuthin' happened, an' the next day, when still nuthin' has tuck place to change things, you find yo'se'f happy. If you kin do a little suthin' to help a po' body along--an' do it, mind you, without thinkin'

that you air doin' it fur a purpose, then the chances air that you'll be happy all day. But ef you help a feller with the idee of it a makin' you happy, it won't, somehow. It's like the card player a givin' a man money becaze he thinks it will fetch him good luck. I ricolleck one time I seed a big feller a bullyin' a po' little devil, an' I told him to quit an' he wouldn't, an' I whaled him. Didn't think nuthin' about it till I got nearly home an' I foun' myse'f a whistlin' like a bird, an' all that day I was as happy as a lark.”

”Of co'se, ef you had a fight,” Margaret spoke up. ”To you it was like eatin' a piece o' June apple pie. Ah, don't I ricolleck once when we went to a political speakin'? I reckon I do. A settin' thar jest as quiet as could be, a listin' to a man that was makin' the puttiest speech, a talkin' like a preacher, an' all at once you hopped up an'

made at him an' I never seed such a fight--an' you come a walkin' back to me with yo' hands full of his hair. Laws a ma.s.sy, don't I ricolleck it?”