Part 22 (1/2)

Supper was ready and Theodora had been blowing the horn for us, long and loud; in fact, we met her by the corn-field, whither she had at length come in search of us. I hastily told her of the capture, but the Old Squire said, ”Don't tell your grandmother till the boys come with the cubs, then we will show them to her.”

So we went into the house and leisurely got ready for supper. At length, Addison and Halse came to the kitchen door with their basket; and Gramp said, ”Come here, Ruth, and see two little fellows who helped eat your old goose.”

Gram came out looking pretty stern at the word goose, and when Ad pulled the bag partly away and showed the two fox cubs, casting up the whites of their roguish eyes at her, she exclaimed harshly, ”Ah, you little scamps!”

”But, oh, aren't they cunning! Aren't they pretty!” exclaimed Theodora and Ellen.

”Well, they are sort of pretty,” admitted Gram, softening a little as she looked at them. ”I suppose they are not to blame for their sinful natures, more than the rest of us.”

We then told her of our exploit, digging them out of the burrow. The Old Squire thought that the mother fox would not trouble the farm-yard further, now that her family was disposed of.

After supper, Addison gathered up boards about the premises and built a pen out behind the west barn, in which to inclose the young foxes. As nearly as I can now remember, the pen was about fifteen feet long by perhaps six feet in width, with board sides four feet high. We also covered the top of it with boards upon which we laid stones. A pan for water was set inside the pen, and we gave them, for food, the various odds and ends of meat and other waste from the kitchen. For a day or two we enjoyed watching them very much.

They did not thrive well, but grew poor and mangy; and I may as well go on to relate what became of them. After we had kept them in the pen about a month, a dog, or else a fox, came around one night and dug under the side of the pen, as if making an attempt to get in and attack them.

The outsider, apparently, was not successful in breaking in, and probably went away after a time, but it had dug a sufficiently large hole for the two young foxes to escape; they were discovered to be missing in the morning. Addison thought that it might possibly have been the mother fox.

One of these cubs--as we believed--came back to the pen under singular circ.u.mstances eight or nine months later. Having no use either for the old boards, or for the ground on which the pen stood, it was not taken away, but remained there throughout the autumn and following winter.

One day in April we heard two hounds baying, and as it proved, they were out hunting on their own account and had started a fox. We heard them from noon till near four in the afternoon, when Ellen, who was in the kitchen at one of the back windows, saw them, and, at a distance of twenty rods or less in advance of them, a small fox, coming at speed across the field, heading toward the west barn.

Addison and I were working up fire-wood in the yard at the time, and Ellen ran out to tell us what she had seen. We now heard the hounds close behind the barn, and getting the gun, ran out there. The fox, hard pressed evidently, had run straight to that old pen and taken refuge in it, through a hole in the top where the covering boards were off. But before we reached the spot, one of the hounds had also got in and shaken the life out of the refugee.

We could not positively identify the fox, yet it was a young fox, and we all thought that it resembled one of the cubs which we had kept in the pen. I am inclined to think that, finding itself in sore straits, it came to the old pen where, though a captive, it had once been safe from dogs which came about the place.

CHAPTER XIII

WE ALL SET OFF TO HAVE OUR PICTURES TAKEN

A few days later--I think it was June 15th--Gram's constant, urgent reminders prevailed, and directly after the noontide meal we all set off for the village, to have our pictures taken. The old lady had never ceased to mourn the fact that there were two of her sons whose photographs had not been taken before they enlisted. This was not so unusual an omission in those days as it would be at present; having one's photograph taken was then a much less common occurrence. Indeed, the photograph proper had hardly begun to be made, at least, not in the rural districts. The ambrotype was still the popular variety of portrait.

Personally, I confess to a lingering liking for the old ambrotype, the likeness taken on a glazed plate, on which the lights are represented in silver, and the shades are produced by a dark background. I like, too, the respectful privacy of the little inclosing case which you opened to gaze on the face of your friend. Best of all, I like its great durability and fadelessness. The name itself is a pa.s.sport to favor in a picture, from _ambrotos_, immortal, and _tupos_, type, or impression: the immortal-type. Your pasteboard photograph so soon grows yellowed, dog-eared and stale! For certain purposes I would be glad to see the dear old ambrotype revived and coming back in fas.h.i.+on. True, you had to squint at it at a certain angle to see what it was; but when you obtained the right view, it was wonderfully lifelike and comforting.

One obstacle and another had delayed the trip for several weeks, but on that sunny June day the word to go was given. With much care and attention to clean faces, and hair, our best clothes were donned, for to have one's picture taken was then one of the great occasions of a youngster's life. There was earnest advice given on all sides in regard to ”smiling expressions.” Little Wealthy, especially, was exhorted so much in this respect, that she actually shed tears before we started. A ”smiling expression” sometimes comes hard. Nor was she alone in her anxiety. I remember being a good deal worried about it, and that I had secretly resolved--since the sitting was said to occupy less than a minute--to draw a long breath, set my teeth together hard, and hold on to my ”smiling expression” for that one minute, at least, if I died for it afterwards.

Indeed, the young folks of this later generation will hardly be able to understand what an ordeal it was to sit for an ambrotype, in 1866.

Ambrotypes were the kind of pictures which Gram had in view. Moreover, she had no notion of investing in more than one likeness apiece for each of us. This ambrotype was to be kept in the family archives, for the benefit of generations to come; the idea of having a dozen taken, or even half a dozen, to give away to one's friends, had not at that time entered the minds of country people in that portion of New England.

We had at first intended to start by nine in the morning and arrive by ten or eleven, so as to have the benefit of the midday sun--an important requisite for an ambrotype. But it was eleven o'clock before all were properly ready, and Gram then decided to have our noon meal before setting off. We got off a few minutes past noon. All the doors of the farmhouse were locked, or otherwise fastened, the garden gate closed and the horses harnessed. The Old Squire with Gram led the way in the single wagon, and we six cousins, with Addison driving old ”Sol,”

followed in the express wagon, three on a seat. We were conscious that we presented a curiously holiday appearance and laughed a great deal as we rattled along the road, although secretly each felt not a little anxious.

”Oh, but it's nothing!” Halstead exclaimed over and over. ”All you have to do is to sit still a minute; the cammirror is the thing that does the work;”--for he was a little shaky on the p.r.o.nunciation of the word camera, or the workings of it. To Addison and Theodora's great amus.e.m.e.nt, he went on to inform the rest of us in a superior tone, that the cammirror took a reflection from a person's face, much as a looking-gla.s.s does, and then threw it on a ”mess of soft chemical stuff”

which the artist had spread on a little pane of gla.s.s. ”Being soft, the reflection naturally sticks in it,” Halse continued. ”Then all the fellow has to do is to harden it up--and there you are.

”But he has to be pretty careful, or you come out upside down,” Halstead added. ”I had a notion of buying one of those cammirrors once, before I came here, and starting in the business. I wish I had now. It is a sight better business than farming. I knew a fellow out at New Orleans that made thirteen dollars in one day, taking pictures.”

”I wonder that you didn't get a 'cammirror,' Halse,” Addison remarked.