january was half over before it was possible for the lanes to take their long-promised trip to new york to look up bird and bring her back, as her uncle had exacted, a legal sister to lammy.
moving from the small house into the large one, even though the necessary repairs were to be made by degrees, was more of an undertaking than mrs. lane had bargained for. also it took lammy a long time to get “the bones back in his legs,” though happiness and dr. jedd’s tonics worked wonders.
dr. jedd had suggested that a furnace required much less care than three or four stoves, and so one had been put in. mrs. jedd, who had very good taste, and a tactful way of expressing it that never gave offence, suggested to mrs. lane that, instead of covering the mahogany parlour set with red plush, the floor with a red-figured tapestry brussels, replacing the small window-panes with great sheets of glass, bricking up the wide fireplace,[259] and then closing the whole room up except, as joshua said, for funerals, it should be turned into a comfortable living-room.
this suited joshua, the older boys, and lammy exactly, and though lauretta ann demurred at first, saying, “it didn’t seem hardly respectable not to hev a best room,” she quickly yielded, and said that it “would be a real comfort to have a separate place to eat in when there was a lot of baking on hand and the kitchen all of a tousle, likewise to set in after meals.”
so the old furniture was recovered with a suitable dull green corduroy, and some comfortable morris chairs added, “that pa and the boys wouldn’t be tempted to set back on the hind legs of the mahogany, which is brittle.” a deep red rug, that would not have to be untacked at housecleaning times, covered the centre of the floor, with grandmother lane’s long thanksgiving dinner-table in the centre, and a smaller round one with folding leaves in the corner, for the entertaining of the friends who were constantly dropping in for a chat and a cup of tea and crullers or a cut of mince pie, for no one in the county had such a reputation for crullers and mince meat, combined with a lavish use of them, as lauretta ann lane.
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next mrs. jedd ventured to suggest that the fireplace be left open and some of the big logs, with which aunt jimmy had always kept the woodshed filled, simply because her mother had done so before her, used for a nightly hearth fire.
mrs. lane said she hadn’t any andirons and the ashes would make dust, but joshua was so pleased with the idea of returning to old ways that she yielded; and when, on the old fire-board being removed to clean the chimney of soot and swallows’ nests, a pair of tall andirons and a fender were found, the matter settled itself, and mrs. lane soon came to take pride in the cheerful blaze, while the best dishes, which were of really handsome blue and white india porcelain, were ranged in racks over the mantel-shelf.
then there was a sunny southwest window, and joshua fastened a long shelf in front of this for his wife’s geraniums, wax-plant, and wandering jew that had shut out the light from the best window in the kitchen, and these brought in the welcome touch of greenery in spite of the particoloured crimped paper with which she insisted upon decorating the pots.
“how bird will love this room!” lammy said a dozen times a day, as he remembered how prettily[261] she had arranged the scanty furnishings at the house above the crossroads, and disliked everything that savoured of show or cheap finery, and it seemed to him that bird’s companionship was the only thing necessary to prove that heaven, instead of being a far-away region, at least had a branch at the fruit farm in laurelville.
the doctor said that lammy must not return to school until the midwinter term, and so he spent his time in the shop back of the barn, making many little knickknacks for the house, not a few of them being intended for bird’s room, for which he also designed a low book-shelf that made a seat in the dormer window, and a table with a hinge that she could use when she wished to draw or paint, and then close against the wall.
this room was next to mrs. lane’s, and had two dormer windows and a deep press closet lighted by a high window, under which the washstand stood. it was furnished with a white enamelled bed and a plain white painted dresser, upon which, lammy said, bird could paint whatever flowers she chose. there were frilled curtains of striped dimity at the windows, and a quilt and bed valance of the same, for mrs. lane despised any ornamental fabric that would not wash and “bile.” the floor[262] was covered with matting, but three sheepskin rugs of home raising and dyed fox colour were placed, one at the side of the bed, one before the bureau, and one under the wall table, upon which bird’s paint-box stood close to the leather-paper portfolio that lammy had made to hold the precious sketches.
he had tried his best to find a wall paper with a red “piney” border, but they told him at the great paper warehouse at northboro that they had never seen such a paper, so he took wild-rose sprays instead.
lammy had also filled a small bark-covered box with christmas ferns, ebony spleenwort, wintergreen, partridge-berries, and moss, for the window-ledge, while fresh festoons of ground-pine topped the windows even though christmas was long past. in fact, lammy could hardly keep away from the room, and often when he went in, he met his mother, for whom it had the same attraction, and then they would both laugh happily and, closing the door, come away hand in hand.
it never occurred to a single member of this simple, warm-hearted family, that there was any possibility of there being a slip between cup and lip, and in this faith they presently set out upon[263] their pilgrimage to new york, for which event lammy wore a high collar and a new suit, his first to have long trousers.
the minister’s wife and dinah lucky took joint charge of the house while the lanes were in new york, for they intended staying several days, perhaps a week, as dr. jedd said the change was exactly what they all needed after the doings and anxieties of the past eight months, and mr. cole, the lawyer from northboro, gave them the card of a good hotel close to the grand central station, where they would be well treated and neither snubbed nor overcharged. for he well knew that in a new york hotel, laurelville’s sunday-best clothes looked as strangely out of place as dr. jedd’s carryall would on fifth avenue.
during the past few weeks, alfred rawley, the new superintendent of the northboro school of industrial art, had made several visits to the lanes, at first upon business connected with aunt jimmy’s legacy, and then because he seemed to like to come. he was a fine-looking man of fifty, and not only a stranger in northboro, but a bachelor without home ties. he seemed greatly interested in bird, about whom lammy talked so constantly that the visitor could not but hear of her, and asked to see the portfolio[264] of drawings in which were some of hers, and he praised them very highly for their promise.
the lanes arrived in new york just before dark of a tuesday afternoon, and spent the rest of the evening in looking out of their windows at the remarkable and confused thoroughfare below them that was made still more of a spectacle by the glare of electric lights. lammy wished to go and look for bird at once, but his father wouldn’t hear of doing so until broad daylight, saying:—
“sakes alive, it ain’t safe. i’ve been across hill’s swamp without a lantern on a foggy night a-callin’ up lost sheep, but that down there with them queer kind o’ two-wheel carts that bob along in narrow places like teeter snipe crossin’ the mill-dam, i’ll not venture it, leastwise not with mother along.” so lammy went to bed to kill time, but a little later curiosity got the better of joshua, and he spent an hour in the lobby, where he learned, besides several other things, that the “teeter snipe” carts were called “hansome cabs.”
to the surprise of the early-rising country folk, it was eleven o’clock the next morning before they found themselves ready to take a south-bound fourth avenue car, for the visit to bird, and joshua told the conductor four times in ten blocks where they wished[265] to get off, and what they were going for, while mrs. lane sat still, smiling and quivering all over from the shiney tips of her first boots (other than congress gaiters) to the jet fandango atop of a real northboro store bonnet, and the smile was so infectious that it soon spread through the entire car.
when they got off at 24th street and made the sidewalk in tremulous safety, they marched east in silence, counting the numbers as they went.
“’tain’t much of a neighbourhood,” sniffed mrs. lane, wondering at the ash barrels and pails of swill that lined the way.
“don’t jedge hasty, mother,” said joshua; “we mustn’t be hard on city folks that ain’t got our advantages in the way o’ pigs to turn swill into meat, and bog-holes ter swaller ashes what don’t go to road-makin’.”
“we must be near there,” gasped lauretta ann, presently. she had been persuaded to have her new gown made a “stylish length” by hope snippin, the village dressmaker, in consequence of which she was grasping her skirts on both sides, floundering and plunging along very much like an old-style market schooner, with its sails fouled in the rigging.
“oh, mother, look there!” said lammy, with white, trembling lips. he had been running on[266] ahead and keeping track of the numbers, but he now stood still, pointing to a half block of burned and ruined buildings, walled in ice and draped with cruel icicles that seemed to pierce his very flesh as he gazed at them.
for a minute they were all fairly speechless and stood open-mouthed, then joshua, recovering first, settled his teeth firmly back in place, and laughing feebly, said: “been a fire, i reckon; thet’s nothing. i’ve heard somethin’ gets afire as often as every week in n’york. they must be somewhere, and we’ll jest calm down and ask the neighbours over the way—in course they’ll know.”
but to joshua’s wonder they didn’t, at least not definitely, and all he could learn was that the o’mores had moved somewhere a couple of blocks “over.”
“gosh, but ain’t n’york a heathen town,” muttered joshua; “jest think, folks burned out an’ their neighbours don’t take no trouble about ’em; we might even get knocked down, and i bet they wouldn’t be a bit surprised. i’d like to strike fer home.”
as they wandered helplessly along block after block, the crowd of workmen and children in the streets coming home to dinner told that it was noon.
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there was no use in going they did not know where, and they had not met a single policeman whom they could question. as they stood upon a corner consulting as to what they had best do, a group of girls coming up and dividing passed on either side of them, one bold-looking chit in a red plush hat and soiled gown singing out something about “when reuben comes to town,” and giving lammy a push at the same time.
as he turned to avoid her, he heard his name called, and breaking from her mates, a slender little figure with big black eyes dropped her satchel and flung her arms around his neck, heedless of the merriment and jeers of her companions. bird was found at last!
there was no longer any use in trying to keep up the barrier of pride, or of pretending she was happy, and bird led her friends home to the new flat, wherein o’more had established his family on his return.
that afternoon there was a long powwow in which mrs. o’more made herself very disagreeable, as she had come to rely upon bird and did not wish to have billy back upon her hands, but john o’more stood firm by his promise, saying, even if he’d never made it, bird should have her choice after[268] the way she’d stood by billy in time of need. “she stuck by her blood kin, and she’s a lady through and through, and we’re different, and it’s neither’s fault that we’re a reproach to each other,” was o’more’s summing up. “if you can keep her, you can take her, but god help little billy! the doctor says good care a couple o’ years more, an’ he’ll have a chance for his leg. i can pay for care, but it’s not to be bought around here.”
mrs. lane saw the tears in the rough man’s eyes, and her big mother-heart throbbed, and to some purpose, as usual.
“our doctor’s wife would take him to board, i guess,” she said, after thinking a minute. “she took a little boy from northboro last summer, and did real well by him, her children bein’ grown now and out of hand. dr. jedd, he’d give him care besides. i’ll take him along with us if you think he’ll grieve, and you can write or come up and settle it.”
it was only then that bird’s happiness was complete, and little billy hugged and hugged her, and cried in his piping voice, “now we’re going to fly away out of the cage to your country for sure this time,” and bird answered joyfully and truthfully, “yes.”
“and the sooner we’ll fly, the better i’ll like it,”[269] added joshua. “this very afternoon would suit me.”
but lauretta ann had determined upon two things: she was going to buy the material for a black silk gown in new york, also a handsome china jar to contain the remains of the pewter tea-pot and be “a moniment to aunt jimmy,” in the centre of the india china on the living-room mantel-shelf. mrs. o’more, sullenly accepting her defeat, and now in her element, which was buying dress goods, offered to conduct the stranger through the mazes of sixth avenue department stores; so after a hasty lunch they set out, while her husband and joshua lane talked matters over, and the children were in a seventh heaven of anticipation.
“one thing’s on me mind,—that ring the girl sold to buy doctorin’ for billy. i only hope she got the worth of it, and that the man’s on the square, for she won’t give me the name of the gent that bought it, and when i’m picked a bit out o’ me trouble, i’d like to buy back the same, for the keepsake is her only fortune. maybe some day you can coax the name out o’ her.”
“likely i can—plenty o’ time for that,” drawled joshua, who usually knew more than he appeared to.
the next afternoon five tired but happy people arrived at the centre and electrified the neighbourhood by hiring a hack to take them to laurelville, joshua having only been persuaded to stay two days of the proposed week’s excursion.
“i’m goin’ to have hope snippin up to-morrow morning to shorten my gown,” was mrs. lane’s greeting to the minister’s wife when she opened the door in alarm at the unexpected return, while twinkle leaped into bird’s arms, fairly screaming with dog joy.
it was evident, however, that the sudden return was not wholly a surprise. somebody had sent a telegram to somebody, and joshua’s manner in the interval before supper cast the suspicion upon him. after bird had seen her pretty room and coaxed billy, who was nodding drowsily, to eat his bread and milk and go to bed before the real supper, she came down to the living-room, where the table was spread for the first time instead of in the kitchen, for dinah lucky came in a few hours every day now to do the heavy work and give mrs. lane more leisure. a stranger was sitting by the fire. he rose and took bird by the hand very gently and drew her to the lounge beside him, at the same time handing her a letter. she was too much surprised to notice that no one introduced[271] her or told his name. she opened the letter; her keepsake ring rolled into her lap as she read:—
“dear bertha o’more: i know all about you now, and i believed in you from the first. here is your ring; wear it about your neck as before for a keepsake, until some day, ten years or so hence—then ask the one you love best to put it upon your left hand. with the respect of your friend,
“marion clarke’s father.
“p.s. the bearer of this letter is alfred rawley, your grandmother’s youngest brother!”
in spite of her bewilderment, her first thought was, “so he was really marion’s father!” next spring she would beg him to give tessie the holiday that he had offered her that christmastide in the twilight of the church.
joshua lane capered about like a young kid as his wife tried to chase him into a corner, exclaiming, “now you jest up and tell me how long you’ve known all this, and not told your lawful wife!”
“wal, let me see,” he said, counting on his fingers; “considerable longer than it’ll take us to eat supper,” was all the answer she received.
that night bird opened her bedroom window and looked out into the frosty moonlight, where far away in the distance the runaway christmas trees were outlined against the sky and the roots of red peony that lammy planted were waiting under the ground for their spring blooming time to come. stretching out her arms as she drew in great reviving breaths of the clear, frosty air, then clasping her hands together, she whispered, “terry, dear, you know it all; you know your bird is free again, and that she remembers, and now you must help her to fly the right way.”
