Anything Once - Isabel Ostrander (reading tree TXT) 📗

eggs, and it looks as if the job was finished. Lou, are you sure you’re all right?”

82The old man danced up and down in the road, spattering flecks of egg about him.

“We’ll see about that,” he shrilled. “You come along with me! You’re my witnesses─”

“We’ll be your witnesses that you were on the wrong side of the road, and knew it,” Jim helped Lou to her feet. “They warned you, and you wouldn’t turn out.”

With an outburst of inarticulate rage the old man dashed off down the road, and Lou, helpless with laughter, clung to Jim’s slippery sleeve.

“Don’t mind him,” she gasped. “Old skinflint! Oh, Jim, you l-look like an omelet.”

83CHAPTER VI
The Red Note-Book

For a moment Jim laughed with her; then the seriousness of their situation was borne in upon him, and his face sobered.

“It’s the kind of an omelet that won’t come off in a hurry, I’m afraid,” he said. “How on earth are we going to walk into Riverburgh like this?”

It was the first time that he had appealed to her, and Lou’s laughter ceased also, but her cheerful confidence did not fail her.

“We gotter find some place where we can git cleaned up, that’s all,” she replied practically. “Most anybody would let you do that, I guess, if you told them what happened, an’ if you can’t ask–why, I kin. Anybody ’cept a mean old thing like that! I s’pose I ought to be sorry that his wagon’s broke an’ his eggs are all over us instead of where they 84was goin’, but I’m not a mite. Long’s he wasn’t hurt, I’m kinder glad.”

“Still, those people in the car ought to have stopped to see the extent of the damage they had done, even if they did have the right-of-way,” Jim observed. “The old fellow had his grievance, but he got my goat when he said he didn’t care if your neck was broken or not, and I wouldn’t have helped him if I could.”

“‘Goat’?” Lou repeated.

Jim had no opportunity to explain, for at that moment a woman in a faded gingham gown toiled hurriedly over the brow of the hill, and, on seeing them, stopped, with one hand at her breast.

“Oh!” she gasped. “There’s wasn’t anyone hurt, was there? I saw the accident from my porch, and I came just as quick as I could.”

Jim explained, and the woman listened, wide-eyed.

“You both come straight along with me,” she invited when he had finished. “I’ll lend you some overalls, and you and the little girl can just sit around while your clothes dry.”

85She led the way back to a tiny but very neat cottage, with flowers blooming in the door-yard and a well-tended truck-garden in the rear. Broad hay-fields stretched on either side, but only two little boys were visible, tossing the hay awkwardly with pitchforks almost bigger than they were themselves.

The woman left them standing for a minute on the back porch, and then came out to them, bearing a cake of soap, a towel, and a pair of overalls and shirt, which, although immaculately clean, bore many patches and darns, and were deeply creased, as though they had been laid away a long time.

“Take these down to the barn.” She handed them to Jim. “You’ll find a spigot there, and cold water’s best for egg-stains. I left some rags in the empty box-stall that you can use to clean your shoes, and then, if you’ll give me your clothes that you’ve got on now, I’ll soak them and get them out while the sun’s high; corduroy takes a long time to dry.”

When Jim had expressed his gratitude and departed for the barn, the woman led Lou into the kitchen, and, providing her also with 86clean garments, she dragged a wash-tub out on the porch.

“I–if you’ll let me, I’d like to wash my own things and Jim’s.” Lou appeared shyly in the door in a gown several sizes too large for her. “He’d like it, too, I think, and he can help with the hayin’ till the things git dried out enough, so’s we kin go on.”

“Oh, would he?” the woman asked quickly. “I’d pay him well if he’s looking for work; I can’t get any hands, though I’ve tried, and the hay is rotting for want of being turned. I didn’t think I’d seen you two around here before, but I’ve known old Mr. Weeble always.”

“You mean that–that with the egg-wagon? He was givin’ us a lift into Riverburgh; we’re just traveling through,” Lou added shortly.

“Did he pick you up back near his place?” At Lou’s nod the woman exclaimed: “Then you two haven’t had a bite of dinner! You put your things to soak and I’ll go right in the house and get you up a little something; it’s past two.”

87Lou started to protest, but the woman disappeared into the kitchen, and Jim appeared from the barn. He was attired in a shirt which strained at his broad shoulders, and overalls which barely reached his shoe-tops.

The girl noticed something else also as he turned for a moment to look toward the field where the little boys were so valiantly at work; a red-leather note-book, which she had never known that he carried, bulged now from the all too small overall-pocket.

“You can bet I’ll pitch hay for her till sundown,” he declared, when Lou had explained the situation to him. He dropped beside the tub the bundle of egg-soaked clothing which he carried, and added: “It is mighty good of her to do all this for us, isn’t it? I tell you, Lou, the credit side of the list is going up even if it did have a bit of a jolt this morning, and you’re the biggest item on it.”

This speech was wholly unintelligible to the girl, but she bent over the tub without reply, and Jim went on hurriedly, aware that he had made a slip of some sort.

88“I wonder where all the men of the family are? She can’t get any hands─”

“There are all the men of the family.” The woman had reappeared in time to catch his last remark, and she pointed out toward the two small toilers with a faint smile. “There was another, their father–my son–but he died; so we’re doin’ the best we can by ourselves. But there’s a little bite ready for you on the end of the kitchen-table, and it’s getting cold.”

The food tasted good, and the little red cloth beneath the dishes was clean, but the signs of carefully concealed poverty were everywhere visible to Jim’s eyes, and he suspected another reason for the lack of farm-hands than scarcity of labor. He hurried through his meal, and went at once to the hay-field, while Lou, after insisting on clearing the dishes away, went back to the wash-tub, and their hostess returned to her own belated ironing.

Upon the girl’s usually serene brow there was a frown of perplexity as she worked, and her thoughts were far afield, for in that backward 89glance which she had given from the egg-wagon to the approaching car just before the crash came she had recognized in its occupants the quartet who sat in front of her at the circus the previous evening. The ladies were closely swathed in their veils, but she remembered the distinctive plaids of their silk coats, and the stout gentleman who sat between them in the tonneau, with goggles and hat snatched off in the excitement of the impending smash-up, was unmistakably the one who had called out “Good work!” when Jim was performing on the horse.

The other gentleman who had made up the quartet was the one who drove the car, and her quick glance showed her that he was even then trying to avoid the crash.

The details had been photographed upon her brain with instantaneous clarity, but it was not with these that her thoughts were busied; the remark which the younger lady had made at the circus just before Jim rode toward the exit-flap of the curtain had returned and could not be banished from her mind:

90“Didn’t he look like Jimmie Abbott?”

Her companion had told the girl that his name was Botts, but beyond that, and the fact that he was on the way to New York, he had vouchsafed no further information about himself, nor had Lou asked. She could not understand why his journey was hedged about with so many silly rules, nor why he chose to obey them; that was his affair, and he was just a part of this wonderful adventure which had started with her departure from the Hess farm.

Yet away down in her heart was a little hurt feeling for which she could not have assigned a cause even to herself. Of course she trusted him, and he would not have lied to her, but could there really be another “Jim” in the world who looked quite like him, and whose name was so nearly the same?

She had sensed instinctively, and the more clearly perhaps because of her lack of worldly experience, that he was different, not only from herself, but from all whom they had encountered upon their journey, yet could he 91really be that grand young lady’s “Jimmie,” after all?

As she stepped aside to lift the basket into which the sodden garments had fallen from the wringer, her foot chanced to crunch upon something that yielded with a crisp rustle, and she glanced down. It was the little red note-book which she had seen in Jim’s overall-pocket when he came from the barn; it must have fallen out as he crossed the porch to go to the hay-field.

It had opened, and the front cover was pressed back, with the stamp of her heel, showing plainly upon the first page, and as she stooped slowly and picked it up Lou could not help reading the three words which were written across it in a bold, characteristic hand: