Amanda - Anna Balmer Myers (read e book TXT) 📗

no different from others, only he’s dead so abody shouldn’t talk about him.”

Amanda sighed and turned to her mother. “Mother, I’m going up to put on an old dress and when Phil comes we’re going over to the woods for arbutus.”

“All right.”

But the aunt did not consider it all right. “Why don’t you help cut carpet rags?” she asked. “That would be more sense than runnin’ out after flowers that wither right aways.”

“If we find any, Millie is going to take them to market to-morrow and sell them. Some people asked for them last week. It’s rather early but we may find some on the sunny side of the woods.”

“Oh,” the woman was mollified, “if you’re goin’ to sell ‘em that’s different. Ain’t it funny anybody buys flowers? But then some people don’t know how to spend their money and will buy anything, just so it’s buyin’!”

But Amanda was off to the wide stairs, beyond the sound of the haranguing voice.

“Glory!” she said to herself when she reached her room. “If my red hair didn’t bristle! What a life we’d have if Mother were like that! If I ever think I have nothing to be thankful for I’m going to remember that!”

A little while later she went down the stairs, out through the yard and down the country road to meet her brother. She listened for his whistle. In childhood he had begun the habit of whistling a strain from the old song, “Soldier’s Farewell” and, like many habits of early years, it had clung to him. So when Amanda heard the plaintive melody, “How can I leave thee, how can I from thee part,” she knew that her brother was either arriving or leaving.

As she walked down the road in the April sunshine the old whistle floated to her. She hastened her steps and in a bend in the road came face to face with the boy.

At sight of her he stopped whistling, whipped off his cap and greeted her, “Hello, Sis. I thought that would bring you if you were about. Oh, don’t look so tickled over my politeness—I just took off my hat because I’m hot. This walk from the trolley on a day like this warms you up.”

His words brought a light push from the girl as she took her place beside him and they walked on.

“That’s a mournful whistle for a home-coming,” Amanda told him. “Can’t you find a more appropriate one?”

“My repertoire is limited, sister—I learned that big word in English class to-day and had to try it out on some one.”

“Phil, you’re crazy!” was the uncomplimentary answer, but her eyes smiled with pride upon the tall, red-haired boy beside her. “I see it’s one of your giddy days so I’ll sober you up a bit—Aunt Rebecca’s at the house.”

“Oh, yea!” He held his side in mock agony.

“Again? What’s the row now? Any curtain lectures?”

“Be comforted, Phil. She’s going home to-night if you’ll drive her to Landisville.”

“Won’t I though!” he said, with the average High School boy’s disregard of pure English. “Surest thing you know, Sis, I’ll drive her home or anywhere else. What’s she doing?”

“Helping Mother cut carpet rags.”

“Well, that’s the only redeeming feature about her. She does help Mother. Aunt Rebecca isn’t lazy. I’m glad to be able to say one nice thing about her. Apart from that she’s generally as Millie says, ‘actin’ like she ate wasps.’ But she can’t scare me. All her ranting goes in one ear and out the other.”

“Nothing there to stop it, eh, Phil?”

“Amanda! That from you! Now I know how Caesar felt when he saw Brutus with the mob.”

“It’s a case of ‘Cheer up, the worst is yet to come,’ I suppose, so you might as well smile.”

In this manner they bantered until they reached the Reist farmhouse. There the boy greeted the visitor politely, as his sister had done.

“My goodness,” was the aunt’s greeting to him, “you got an armful of books, too!”

“Yes. I’m going to be a lawyer, but I have to do a lot of hard studying before I get that far.”

“Umph, that’s nothin’ to brag about. I’d think more of you if you stayed home and helped Amos plant corn and potatoes or tobacco.”

“I’d never plant tobacco. Chewing and smoking are filthy habits and I’d never have the stuff grow on any farm I owned.”

“But the money, Philip, just think once of the money tobacco brings! But, ach, it’s for no use talkin’ farm to you. You got nothin’ but books in your head. How do you suppose this place is goin’ to be run about ten years from now if Amanda teaches and you turn lawyer? Amos is soon too old to work it and you can’t depend on hired help. Then what?”

“Search me,” said the boy inelegantly. “But I’m not worrying about it. We may not want to live here ten years from now. But, Mother,” he veered suddenly, “got any pie left from dinner? I’m hungry. May I forage?”

“Help yourself, Philip. There’s a piece of cherry pie and a slice of chocolate cake in the cellar.”

“Hurray, Mother! I’m going to see that you get an extra star in your crown some day for feeding the hungry.”

“But you spoil him,” said Aunt Rebecca as Phil went off to the cellar. “And if that boy ain’t always after pie! I mind how he used to eat pie when he was little and you brought him to see us. Not that I grudged him the pie, but I remember how he always took two pieces if he got it. And pie ain’t good for him, neither, between meals.”

“I guess it won’t hurt him,” said Mrs. Reist; “the boy’s growin’ and he has just a lunch at noon, so he gets hungry till he walks in from the trolley. Boys like pie. His father was a great hand for pie.”

“Well,” said the aunt decisively, “I would never spoiled children if I had any. But I had none.”

“Thank goodness!” Amanda breathed to herself as she went out to the porch to wait for her brother.

“Um, that pie was good,” was his verdict as he joined her. “But say, Sis, didn’t you hear the squirrels chatter in there?”

“Come on.” Amanda laughed as she swung the basket to her arm and pulled eagerly at the sleeve of the boy’s coat. “Let’s go after the flowers and forget all about her.”

Along the Crow Hill schoolhouse runs a long spur of wooded hills skirting the country road for a quarter of a mile and stretching away into denser timberland. In those woods were the familiar paths Amanda and Phil loved to traverse in search of flowers. In April, when the first warm, sunshiny days came, the ground under the dead leaves of the overshadowing oaks was carpeted with arbutus. Eager children soon found those near the crude rail fence, but Amanda and Phil followed the narrow trails to the secluded sheltered spots where the May flowers had not been touched that spring.

“No roots, Phil!” warned the girl as they knelt in the brown leaves and pushed away the covering from the fragrant blossoms.

“Sure thing not, Sis! We don’t want to exterminate the trailing arbutus in Crow Hill. Say, I passed two kids this morning as I was going to the trolley. They had a bunch of arbutus, roots and all. Believe me, I acted up like Aunt Rebecca for about two minutes. But it’s a shame to take the roots. I almost hate to pick the flowers—seems as if they’re at home here in the woods—belong here, in a way.”

“I know what you’re thinking about, Phil; that little verse:

‘Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk? Oh, be my friend, and teach me to be thine.’

I agree with the first half of the requirement, but the latter half can’t always be followed. At any rate, the wild rose is better left on the stem, for it withers when plucked. But with arbutus it’s different. Why, Phil, some of the people who come to market and buy our wild flowers would never see any if they could not buy them in the city. Imagine, if you can, yourself living in a big city, far away from Crow Hill, where the Mayflowers grow—Philadelphia or New York, or some such formidable-sounding place. The city might engross your attention so you’d be happy for months. But along comes spring with its call to the woods and meadows. Still the city and its demands grip you like a vise, and you can’t run away to where the wild green things are pushing to the light. Suppose you saw a flower-stand and a tiny bunch of arbutus—”

“I’d pay my last dollar for them!” declared Philip. “Guess you’re right. According to your reasoning, we’re as good as missionaries when we find wild flowers and take or send them to the city market to sell. Aunt Rebecca wouldn’t see that. She’d see the money end of it. Poor soul! I’m glad I’m not like her.”

“Pharisee,” chided his sister.

“Well, do you know, Manda, sometimes I think there’s something to be said in favor of the Pharisee.”

The girl gave him a quizzical look.

The serious and the light were so strangely mingled in the boy’s nature. Amanda caught many glimpses into the recesses of his heart, recesses he knew she would not try to explore deeper than he wished. For the natures of brother and sister were strongly similar—light-hearted and happy, laughing and gay, keen to enjoy life, but reading some part of its mysteries, understanding some of its sorrows and showing at times evidences of searching thought and grave retrospect.

“How many dollars’ worth do we have?” the boy asked in imitation of Aunt Rebecca’s mercenary way.

“Oh, Phil! You’re dreadful! But I bet the flowers will be gone in no time when Millie puts them out.”

“I’d wager they’d go faster if you sold them,” he replied, looking admiringly at the girl. “You’d be a pretty fair peddler of flowers, Sis.”

“Oh, Phil, be sensible.”

“I mean it, Amanda. You’re not so bad looking. Your hair isn’t common red, it’s Titian. And it’s fluffy. Then your eyes are good and your complexion lacks the freckles you ought to have. Your nose isn’t Grecian, but it’ll do—we’ll call it retrouss�, for that sounds nicer than pug. And your mouth—well, it’s not exactly a rosebud one, but it doesn’t mar the general landscape like some mouths do. Altogether, you’re real good-looking, even if you are my sister.”

“Philip Reist, you’re impertinent! But I suppose you are truthful. That’s a doubtful compliment you’re giving me, but I’m glad to say your veracity augurs well for your success as a lawyer. If you are always as honest as in that little speech you just delivered, you’ll do.”

“Oh, I’ll make grand old Abe Lincoln look to his laurels.”

And so, with comradely teasing, threaded with a more serious vein, an hour passed and the two returned home with their baskets filled with the lovely pink and white, delicately fragrant, trailing arbutus.

They found the supper ready, Uncle Amos washed and combed, and waiting on the back porch for the summons to the meal.

Mrs. Reist peeped into the basket and exclaimed in joy as she breathed in the sweet perfume of the fresh flowers. Millie paused in the act of pouring coffee into big blue cups to “get a sniff of the smell,” but Aunt Rebecca was impatient at the momentary delay. “My goodness, but you poke around. I like to get the supper out before it gets cold.”

There was no perceptible hurry at her words, but a few