Laughing Last - Jane Abbott (portable ebook reader .txt) 📗

What made life at Sunset Lane so delightful to Sidney was that she never knew from one day to the next what she was going to do. Back at Middletown everything was always arranged ahead—they did this on Tuesday and this on Wednesday and always on Saturday there was the League. At Sunset Lane she did not even know when it was Tuesday or Thursday unless she stopped to think; jolly things happened as though they popped out of the blue ether.

Like that Miss Letty dropped in one evening after supper.

“Do you want to ride over to Wellfleet with me enough to be ready at six o’clock?” she asked Sidney very casually, as though it were nothing at all to suggest. Sidney had longed to ride with Miss Letty in the sideboard buggy behind King who, Mr. Dugald declared, had come off the Ark with Noah. And to go to Wellfleet, perhaps see her friend Cap’n Phin Davies!

“Can we call on Cap’n Davies?” she asked eagerly.

Miss Letty smiled. “I reckon I couldn’t steer King away from Elizy Davies’ house. I thought I’d take you there and leave you while I give my lessons and then I’d ride ’round and have a visit with Elizy and Phin and maybe some of Elizy’s gingerbread. Elizy and I went to school together.”

The next morning Sidney was ready and on her, way to Miss Letty’s house before six o’clock. She had been far too excited to eat any of the breakfast Aunt Achsa had set out for her but Miss Letty, guessing this, made her sit down and eat a bit of toast and a boiled egg.

“It’s a long way between here and Wellfleet and King’s slower than he used to be.”

Seated next to Miss Letty, jogging along through the misty morning, Sidney could not speak for pure rapture of delight. She had never ridden behind a horse in her life! She thought King a giant steed; with every swish of his long tail her heart skipped a beat, the move of his great muscles under his heavy flanks held her fascinated gaze. Miss Letty talked to him as though he were human and the animal understood and tossed his head. She said: “Now, King, we’re going to Wellfleet and we got to get there before noon.” And then she let the reins slacken and slip down between her knees as though she had no further care. One certainly could not do that with an automobile! Sidney did not wonder now that Miss Letty preferred King to a Ford.

She wished she dared ask Miss Letty how old King really was but she did not think it polite anymore than if she asked Miss Letty how old she was. King was not handsome, he was bony like his mistress, but he certainly understood everything. Miss Letty said he knew they were going to Elizy Davies’ by the way he loped ahead; King, too, had a strong liking for Elizy Davies’ gingerbread.

“She feeds it to him in great hunks. And he won’t eat anyone else’s gingerbread, either. Scornful as you please even when I offer him some. Now I say that’s discriminating for a horse. I suppose it’s what folks call horse-sense.”

Sidney did not know which she liked better, watching the gleaming marshes through which the highway wound or listening to Miss Letty’s spasmodic conversation. Miss Letty pointed out old landmarks to Sidney, then told her something of the school at Truro to which she and Elizy Davies had gone, then of the little girls to whom she was about to give music lessons. She had taught their mothers. Then she lapsed into a deep silence broken only by an occasional “cl-lk” to King which she made with her tongue against her teeth and to which King paid no attention except for a flick of his right ear.

Sidney, looking down at the great bony hands limply holding the reins, thought it very funny to picture them on the keyboard of a piano. If she had spoken her thoughts aloud Miss Letty would have told her, quite calmly, that she couldn’t play a note now, but that she knew when notes were played right and she could still rap lagging fingers smartly across the knuckles. Folks would have her, anyway. Sidney did not know, of course, that Miss Letty was a tradition and that Cape Cod clings to its traditions.

“You’ll think Phin Davies’ house the queerest thing you ever saw. It isn’t a house nor is it a boat; it’s as much one as t’other and not anything, I’d say, but what two crazy men getting their heads together rigged up. Cap’n Davies said as long as he had to live ashore he wanted his house to look like a boat, he didn’t care what folks said, and he hunted the Cape over to find a builder who wouldn’t apply to have him locked up in an asylum, straight off. He got a man from Falmouth, who’d been a master once on a trader and sort of knew how Phin Davies felt. But there was Elizy carrying on awful about it and saying she’d always looked forward to the time when she could have a nice house—and there the two of them were. And the house is as ’tis. Phin has the front of it that’s as like the bow of a ship without any rigging as they could make it, and Elizy has the back that’s got as up-to-date a kitchen as any on Cape Cod.”

A winding road, all sweet with wild primroses led up to the queer house on the eminence. Sure enough, there was the front part like the forward hull of a ship, deck-houses and all; and the back like any sensible New England home. Sidney giggled delightedly.

“But there aren’t two finer people on this Cape!” declared Miss Letty. “And there’s Phin coming to meet us. Reckon he spied King through his glasses along beyond Wellfleet.”

Cap’n Phin Davies was overjoyed to see Sidney. “Why, it’s the little gal I found on the train!” he repeated over and over. “Elizy,” he called lustily toward the kitchen door, “come and see! It’s the little gal I told you ’bout that I found on the train.”

Elizy Davies came hurrying from the kitchen door. She was lean to gauntness and tall and wore round, steel-rimmed glasses low on the sharp bridge of her nose. Sidney immediately understood how she had been able to hold out for her half of the house. But she greeted Sidney with kindly interest and Miss Letty with real affection.

“I thought you’d be over this way today. Anne Matthews said Maida was going to have a lesson. Got my gingerbread all mixed.”

Miss Letty had not gotten out of the buggy. She turned King’s head.

“Thought I’d leave Sidney here while I gave my lessons,” she explained briefly and then clucked to King.

Mrs. Davies took Sidney into her part of the house. It was cool and dark and sweet-smelling and very, very neat. Sidney sat down in a stiff rocker and answered Mrs. Davies’ questions concerning her Aunt Achsa and Lavender, while Cap’n Davies stumped restlessly about.

“Now I cal’late you’ve heard enough, Elizy, and I’m goin’ to carry my little shipmate off and show her my part o’ the old hull.”

Elizy accepted his suggestion with a smile and admitted that she had to finish up her work. Immensely relieved Sidney followed Cap’n Davies. With the enthusiasm of a boy he took her to the front rooms of the house and showed her his treasured possessions. There was not a corner of the globe that had not contributed something to his collection of mementoes. And each meant to the old seafarer, not its own intrinsic value, but a certain voyage. “I got that when we took a