THE STORY OF WAITSTILL BAXTER
The STORY Of WAIT STILL BAXTER CHAPTER 1 The Sisters FAR, far up in the bosom of New Hampshire's granite hills the Saco has its birth. As the mountain rill gathers strength it takes Through...
...The ladies were all members of the church and had presumably made their peace with God, but the good doctor fancied that their pleasure in joining the angels was mild compared with their relief at parting with the deacon...
...Couldn't we strain the milk, but leave the churning and the dishes for an hour or two, just once...
...What is it...
...He had "experienced religion" at fifteen and made profession of his faith, but all well brought up boys and girls did the same in those days—their parents saw to that...
...sighed Waitstill, with a half sob in her voice...
...You're real smart and capable for your age, and you've done your full share of the work every day, even when you were at school...
...Time to Get Busy "My dear, a burglar fired a revolver at a Boston man, and the bullet struck a button, thus saving his life...
...I can pull my hair over my ears for a few days, and when the holes are all made and healed even father can not make me fill them up again...
...I'll be careful," promised Waitstill, Bobbing quietly...
...Lots of church members wear them, so it can't be a mortal sin...
...Patty, I will not permit you to repeat those tavern stories, they are not seemly on the lips cf a girl...
...Isn't it odd when that dog has all the other store steps to sit upon he should choose father's when every bone in his body must tell him how father hates him and the whole Boynton family...
...Deacon Foxwell Baxter still slammed his door behind him every morning at 7 o'clock and, without any such cheerful conventions as goodbys to his girls, walked down to the bridge to open his store...
...We do indeed...
...And, though people do talk about him, they can't say the things they say of Master Aaron Boynton...
...No, Patty, I never forgot that, day or night...
...Why not...
...These dainties were seldom renewed, for it was only a very bold child or one with an ungovernable appetite for sweets who would have spent his penny at Foxy Baxter's store...
...If you say 'yes' I can think of something wonderful to do...
...The sky was leaden...
...She knew that she was simply serving as an escape valve and that after the steam was "let off" she would be more rational...
...I'll pierce your ears if you say so and let you wear your own coral drops...
...The woman was found, and, incredible as it may seem, she said "Yes" when the deacon, whose ardor was kindled at having paid three months' wages, proposed a speedy marriage...
...The river was still running under the bridge, but the current of time had swept Jacob Cochrane out of sight, though not out of mind, for he had left here and there a disciple to preach his strange and uncertain doctrine...
...Men appeared, running hither and thither like ants and going through mysterious operations the reason for which the river could never guess...
...Goody, goody...
...Mrs...
...God watched and listened, knowing that there would be other prophets, true and false, in the days to come, and other processions following them...
...He is a good little fellow, but his mother and father will spoil him with their crazy ways...
...Ivory loves his mother, and she loves him with all the mind she has left...
...Yes, the winter was over, and Ivory was glad, for it had meant no coasting and skating and sleighing for him but long walks in deep snow or slush, long evenings, good for study, but short days and greater loneliness for his mother...
...The river has seen strange sights in its time, though the history of these two tiny villages is quite unknown to the great world outside...
...Baxter succumbed after the manner of her predecessors and slipped away from a life that had grown intolerable...
...Oh...
...It was April, but there were still patches of snow here and there, fast melting under a drizzling rain...
...She has the best blood of New England flowing in her veins, and I suppose it was a great comedown for her to marry Aaron Boynton, clever and gifted though he was...
...You've been a great help, and I've had a sight of comfort out of the baby, hut I wouldn't go through it again, not even for her...
...Father will take notice and make you smooth it down...
...His name is Jacob Cochrane, but you mustn't think or talk about him...
...I think she should live out of doors more," replied the doctor...
...Her stepmother stood beside her with a young baby in her arms, but when she saw what held the gaze of the child she drew her away, saying, "We mustn't look, Waitstill...
...chided Waitstill, "for it will never last you...
...the stepmother was dead and the baby a girl of seventeen...
...Come along...
...In the course of its frequent turns and twists and bends it meets with many another stream and sends it, .fuller and stronger, along its rejoicing way...
...Ivory Boynton never speaks a word of my looks, nor a word that father and all the world mightn't hear...
...Then in its turn the Little Ossipee joins forces and the river, now a splendid stream, flows onward to Bonny Eagle, to Moderation and to Salmon falls, where it dashes over the dam like a young Niagara and hurtles in a foamy torrent through the ragged defile cut between lofty banks of solid rock...
...That was Master Aaron Boynton, the schoolmaster, and his wife...
...and Patty clapped her' hands in triumph...
...He was thought a sharp and_shrewd trader, but his honesty was never questioned, indeed, the only trait in his character that ever came up for general discussion was his extraordinary, unbelievable, colossal meanness...
...very plainly and neatly...
...Louisville Courier-Journal...
...Now he's opened the door and kicked the cat...
...Of course we are motherless," continued Patty wistfully, "but poor Ivory is worse than motherless...
...This so eclipsed every other passion in the man and loomed so bulkily and insistently in the foreground that had he cherished a second vice no one would have observed it, and if he really did possess a casual virtue it could scarcely have feared its head in such ugly company...
...Baxter sighed, as the young girl was watching with her one night when the end seemed drawing near...
...The trouble was diagnosed as "liver complaint," but scarcity of proper food, no new frocks or kind words, hard work and continual bullying may possibly have been contributory causes...
...Well, Mary needs more freedom,, she can't sit quietly so long," said the doctor...
...cried Patty...
...I know I hadn't ought to put the care on you, Waitstill, and you only fourteen," poor Mrs...
...It's a burning shame, and you only twenty-one yourself...
...They have been born, waxed strong and fallen almost to decay while Saco water has tumbled over the rocks and spent it-' self in its impetuous journey to the sea...
...don't you s'pose you can stiffen up and defend yourself a little mite...
...Widening out placidly for a moment's rest in the sunny reaches near Pleasant point it gathers...
...It was a gray world, a bleak, black and brown world, above and below...
...Now he's taken his cane and beaten off the Boynton puppy that was sitting on the steps as usual...
...She was a fine, handsome girl, the orphan daughter of up country gentlefolks who had died when she was eighteen, leaving her alone in the world and penniless...
...itself for a new plunge at Union falls, after which it speedily merges itself in the bay and is fresh water no more...
...CHAPTER II Deacon Baxter's Wives WAITSTILL frowned, but did not interfere further with Patty's intemperate speech...
...If only I was wise enough to know how we could keep from these little deceits, yet have any liberty or comfort in life...
...Hurry up...
...Let's put one of the cows in the horse's stall and see what will happen...
...Well," she answered critically, "at least we know where our father is...
...Waity, after all, though we never have what we want to eat and never a decent dress to our backs, nor a young man to cross the threshold, I wouldn't change places with Ivory Boynton, would you...
...Baxter slammed the door behind him and reached its high noon of delight when he disappeared from view...
...besides Ivory Boynton would tell you so if you didn't...
...He's a good little fellow, and, though it's rather hard for Ivory to be burdened for these last five years with the support of a child who's no nearer kin than a cousin, still he's of use, minding Mrs...
...He is surely the best of sons, Ivory Boynton...
...I called our school "organic" because its aim is to preserve and perfect the entire being, to provide an environment with which to supply the needs of the growing mind and spirit as surely as appropriate food is furnished for the growing body...
...Boynton and the house when Ivory's away...
...Waitstill paused a moment in her task of bread kneading...
...Ivory was season wise, and his quick eye had caught many a sign as he walked through the woods from his schoolhouse...
...Perry thought so, for he had witnessed three most contented deaths in the Baxter house...
...But some dogs never know when they've had enough beating nor some people either," said Waitstill, speaking from the pantry...
...We'll make a tiny lead pencil dot right in the middle of the lobe, then you place the needle on it, shut your eyes and jab hard...
...I played with a nice boy over to Boynton's," mused the child...
...I wish you weren't quite so free with your tongue, Patty...
...His sign bore the usual legend, "West India Goods and Groceries," and probably the most profitable articles in his stock were rum, molasses, sugar and tobacco, but there were chests of rice, tea, coffee and spices, barrels of pork in brine, as well as piles of cotton and woolen cloth on the shelves above the counter...
...Your father'd ought to be opposed for his own good, but I've never seen anybody that dared do it...
...If it hurts dreadfully I'll have only one pierced today and take the other tomorrow, and if it hurts very dreadfully perhaps I'll go through life with one earring...
...I hope nothing will happen to him, for I love him," said the child gravely...
...He'll never hire help, you know that...
...Father is against all adornments, but that's because he doesn't want to buy them...
...A new and different color haunted the tree tops, and one had only to look closely at the elm buds to see that they were beginning to swell...
...asked Waitstill quaveringly...
...Baxter, being unusually busy, offered a man a good young heifer if he would jog about the country a little and pick him up a housekeeper, a likely woman who would if she proved energetic, economical and amiable be eventually raised to the proud position of his wife...
...And the river watched and listened, too, as it hurried on toward the sea with its story of the present .that was some time to be the history of the past...
...Old Foxy showed little outward sign of his loss...
...Lois Boynton took the handful of budding things and sniffed their fragrance...
...The Saco could remember the "cold year," when there was a black frost every month of the twelve, and -though almost all the corn along its shores shriveled on the stalk, there were two farms where the vapor from the river saved the crops,- and all the seed for the next season came from the favored spot, to be known as "Egypt" from that day henceforward...
...Say you will...
...When Jacob Cochrane was leading his overwrought, ecstatic band across the river, Waitstill Baxter, then a child was watching the strange, noisy company from the window of a little brick dwelling on the top of the Town House hill...
...She is a terrible care for him and like to spoil his life," said Patty...
...I don't mean Ivory's dog" (here the girl . gave a quick glance at her sister), "but Rodman's little yellow cur...
...At one of the falls on the Saco the two little hamlets of Edgewood and Riverboro nestle together at the bridge and make one village...
...All is ready for business at the Baxter store...
...Baxter was ordinarily called "Old Foxy" by the boys of the district and also, it is to be feared, by the men gathered for evening conference at the various taverns, or at one of the rival village stores...
...requirements.—Marietta L. Johnson in The Survey...
...There's been three here and that's enough...
...And Waitstill flushed...
...When my hair is once up and the coral pendants are swinging in my ears I shall expect to hear something about my looks, I can tell you...
...Let us be thankful for small mercies, us Jed Morrill said when the lightning struck his mother-in-law and skipped his wife...
...I expect to faint, but when I 'come to' we can decide which of us will pull the needle through to the other side...
...His third wife, the one originally secured for a housekeeper, bore him a girl, very much to his disgust, a girl named Patience, and great was Wait-still's delight at this addition to the dull household...
...Mary has a weak heart, and is rather anemic...
...I was born at sunrise, so I'm 'going on' eighteen and can't waste any time...
...Patty, Patty, I am afraid you are given over to vanity...
...Baxter's deaconhood did not include very active service in the courts of the'Lord...
...Father couldn't hear me, for I never speak when he's at home," said grave little Waitstill...
...If he brings anybody home I'll take Patience and run away, as Job did, or if he leaves me alone I'll wash and iron and scrub and cook till Patience grows up, and then we'll go off together and hide somewhere...
...These ideas have been, expressed again and again at educational gatherings...
...I shall never be seventeen again and we have so many troubles...
...He doesn't look any wickeder than the others," said the child...
...Education As Growth "I HAVE advised Mary's mother to keep, her from school," said the doctor decidedly...
...He had a small farm of 'fifteen or twenty acres, with a pasture, a wood lot and a hayfield, but the principal source of his income came from trading...
...Issuing from the door of the Riverboro townhouse and winding down the hill through the long rows of teams and carriages that lined the roadside, came a procession of singing men and singing women...
...You won't, will you...
...There is absolutely nothing that she has to do at school that may be detrimental to her...
...Don't marry for a home, Waitstill...
...This was a matter of some regret, for there was a general feeling that it would be a good thing for the Baxter girls to have someone to help with the housework and act as a buffer between them and their grim and irascible parent...
...You've got the loveliest eyes and hair in River-boro, and you know it...
...Such minor "chores" as carrying water from the well, splitting kindling, chopping pine or bringing wood into the kitchen were left to Waitstill, who had a strong back or if she had not had never been unwise enough to mention the fact in her father's presence...
...No, not worse, Patty," said Waitstill, taking the bread board and moving toward the closet...
...Have you got the pencil and the needle and the waxed silk...
...Oh, to be deserted and left with" you alone on this hilltop, what joy it would be...
...I don't know how I'm going to do everything alone," said the girl, forcing back her tears...
...Patty suggested...
...the road and the footpath were deep in a muddy ooze flecked with white...
...His shop window seldom dusted or set in order, held a few clay pipes, some glass jars of peppermint or sassafras lozenges, black licorice, stick candy and sugar gooseberries...
...It's only me that's ever wrong, anyway, for you are always an angel...
...I've got the waxed silk all ready and chosen the right sized needle, and I'll promise not to jump or screech more than I can help...
...Oh, my dear, my dear...
...It was only your inside girlhood that died," insisted Patty stoutly...
...I'm not big enough to be the head of the family...
...Or let's spread up our beds with the head at the foot and put the chest of drawers on the other side of the room, or let's make candy...
...It might be said, to defend the fair fame of the church, that Mr...
...Why have you done that...
...I don't believe father would ever run away and desert us...
...Why did he fall, and why did she pray, mother...
...Strange, complex things now began to happen, and the river played its own part in some of these, for there were disastrous freshets, the sudden breaking up of great jams of logs and the drowning of men who were engulfed in the dark whirlpool below the rapids...
...Who was the man that fell down in the road, mother, and the woman that knelt and prayed over him...
...You've always made the brown bread, and mine will never suit father...
...Then the child would in a sense give the school the diploma, ft the education fulfilled his...
...Look at the nosegay I gathered for you as I came through the woods...
...Now the bread is set, but I don't believe I have the courage to put a needle into your tender flesh, Patty...
...It was six years ago that I founded this School of Organic Education...
...that's the'reason I'm willing to die...
...I've made out to live till now when Patience is old enough to dress herself and help round, but I'm all beat out and can't try any more...
...chanted Patience from the heights of a kitchen chair by the window...
...It's 10 o'clock...
...Do you think father would miss the molasses if we only use a cupful...
...I know," she said faintly, "I hate to leave you to bear the brunt alone, but I must...
...I had taught all grades, had had experience as a critic teacher in a city training school, and had been principal of a department in a state normal school...
...We also know that he is thoroughly alive...
...We never do a thing that we are ashamed of or that other girls don't do every day in the week...
...I've outgrown those longings years ago...
...You've always said I should have your mother's coral pendants when I was old enough...
...Now children paddled with bare feet in the river's sandy coves and shallows, and lovers sat on its alder shaded banks and exchanged their vows just where the shuffling bear was wont to come down and drink...
...Or hides in Conway's fragrant brakes Ketreating from the glare of day...
...I suppose I can wash, but I don't know how to iron starched clothes, nor make pickles, and oh...
...The "outside is as fresh as the paint on Uncle Barty's new ell...
...The schoolteacher says he is wonderful at his books and likely to be a great credit to the Boyntons some day or other...
...I suppose little Rodman is some comfort to the Boyntons, even if he is only ten...
...Spring is on the way, mother, but it isn't here yet, so don't stand there in the rain," he called...
...Nonsense...
...As for the women of the village, they were mortified that the Deacon had been able to secure three wives and refused to believe that the universe held anywhere a creature benighted enough to become his fourth...
...Father hasn't looked me square in the face for years, besides my hair won't braid and nothing can make it quite plain and neat, thank goodness...
...When it has journeyed more than 100 miles and is nearing the ^eean it greets the Great Ossipee river and accepts its crystal tribute...
...She .assented, partly because she had nothing else to do with her existence sp far as she could see, and also because she fell in love with the children at first sight and forgot, as girls will, that it was, their father whom she was marrying...
...He's no blood relation of mine, and I can't stand him another day...
...You've got more courage than ever I had...
...Somebody must talk," retorted the girl, jumping down from the chair and shaking back her mop of red gold curls...
...Pierce my ears...
...The brick cottage on the hilltop had grown only a little shabbier...
...Besides, I'll never wear the earrings at home...
...You've forgot to name our one great blessing, Waity, and I believe, anyway, yau're talking to keep my mind off the earrings...
...Well, what of it...
...Who was the big man at the head, mother...
...I really don't...
...I'll put this hateful, childish, round comb in and out just once more, then it will disappear forever...
...Take good care of Patience and don't let her get into trouble...
...They'd be above it...
...The mother was a timid, colorless, docile creature, but Patience, nevertheless was a sparkling, bright eyed baby, who speedily became the very center of the universe to the older child...
...Baxter turned her pale, tired face away from Waitstill's appealing eyes...
...Come and bore my ears, there's a darling...
...He only made believe to fall down, as the Cochranites do...
...the way they carry on is a disgrace to the village, and that's the reason your father won't let us look at them...
...Waitstill, the child who never spoke in her father's presence, was a young woman now, the mistress of the house...
...Then it's because he's shy and silent and has so many troubles of his own that he doesn't dare say anything...
...Come, we'll take the workbasket and go out in the barn where no one will see or hear us...
...You know it will be of no use unless you braid it...
...I'll be good," she said, "and oh, Waity, let's invent some sort of cheap happiness for today...
...It remembers the yellow moccasined Sokokis as they issued from the Indian Cellar and carried their birchen canoes along the wooded shore...
...Now it leaves the mountains and flows through "green Fryeburg's woods and farms...
...Don't talk about loving him," chid-ed the woman...
...If she was young, healthy, smart, tidy, capable and a good manager, able to milk the cows, harness the horse and make good butter he would give a dollar and a half a week...
...The day, properly speaking, had opened when Waitstill and Patience had left their beds at dawn, built the fire, fed the hens and turkeys and prepared the breakfast, while the deacon was graining the horse and milking the cows...
...your father don't like it...
...At the rip« age of twenty-five he was selected to fill a vacancy and became a deacon, thinking it might be good for trade, as it was, for some years...
...He was very active at the time of the "Cochrane craze," since any defense of the creed that included lively detective work and incessant spying on his neighbors was particularly in his line, but for many years now, though he had been regular in attendance at church, he had never officiated at communion and his deaconal services had gradually lapsed into the passing of the contribution box, a task of which he never wearied, it was such a keen pleasure to make other people yield their pennies for a good cause without adding his own...
...Then bring the camphor bottle to revive me, and the coral pendants, too, just to give me courage...
...The roar of a lion, tearing and chewing the arm of one of the bystanders, and the cheers of the throng when a plucky captain of the local militia thrust a stake down the beast's throat—these sounds displaced the former warwhoop of the Indians and the ring of tlje ax in the virgin forests along the shores...
...An infuriated elephant lifted the side of the old Edgewood tavern barn, and the wild laughter of the roistering rum drinkers who were tantalizing the animals floated down to the river's edge...
...I can never kill a rooster, mother, it's no use to ask me to...
...I inquired...
...And Waitstill came out of the pantry with a shadow of disapproval in her eyea and in her voice...
...He is very wicked...
...Here are pussy willows and red maple blossoms and mayflowers, would you believe it...
...Convinced of sin, but entranced with promised pardon, spiritually intoxicated by the glowing eloquence of the latter day prophet they were worshiping, the band of "Coch-ranites" marched down the dusty road and across the bridge, dancing, swaying, waving handkerchiefs and shouting hosannas...
...Probably it will be you, I'm such a coward...
...Ivory Boynton lifted the bars that divided his land from the highroad and walked slowly toward the house...
...Pneumonia, coupled with profound discouragement, carried her off in a few years to make room for the second wife, Waitstill's mother, who was of different fiber and greatly his superior...
...Do you think anybody will ever want me...
...The stream is a wonder of beauty just here, a mirror of placid loveliness above the dam, a tawny, roaring wonder at the fall and a mad, white flecked torrent as it dashes cn its way to the ocean...
...You're late tonight, Ivory," she said...
...Tis that makes me willing to bear any burden father chooses to put upon us...
...I'm fourteen...
...Don't be gloomy when it's my birthday, sis...
...So the months and years wore on drearily enough until when Patience was eight the third Mrs...
...Deacon Baxter had now been a widower for nine years, and the community had almost relinquished the idea of his seeking a fourth wife...
...Here Patty swept the hearth vigorously with a turkey wing and added a few corncobs to the fire...
...I knew the "system" through and through—had "banked" on it, defended it, worked for it—and finally turned from it...
...Rodman must have come down to the bridge on some errand for Ivory...
...No, Patty...
...Aunt Abby Cole will say it's just odd enough to suit me...
...Patty flung her arms around her sister tempestuously and pulled out the waves of her hair so that it softened her face...
...Perry says I am already a well favored young woman...
...Only this: A man could shoot.,at me with a shotgun and never hit a button...
...You can get along all right...
...I fear not," said Patty...
...Rod wanted his supper early so that he could go off to singing school, but I kept something warm for you, and I'll make you a fresh cup of tea...
...It would have to be the 'old driver,' as Jed Morrill calls the evil one...
...But whoever did it the result would be the same—we should be deserted and live happily ever after...
...Typhoid fever it was, combined with complete loss of illusions and a kind of despairing rage at having made so complete a failure of her existence...
...So Mary remained in school at Fair-hope...
...But the children in our school are out of doors more than half the school day...
...Your own mother did that, and so did I, and we were both punished for it...
...Then houses and bains appeared along its banks, bridges were built, orchards planted, forests changed into farms, white painted meeting houses gleamed through the trees, and distant bells rang from their steeples on quiet Sunday mornings...
...All at once myriads of great hewn logs vexed its downward course, slender logs linked together in long rafts and huge logs drifting down singly or in pairs...
...He's opening the store shutters...
...The two boys by this time had reached the age of diacretion, and one of them evinced the fact by promptly running away to parts unknown, never to be heard from afterward...
...I came to look at education as a growth, not merely an acquiring of information...
...Do you mean I'm to take your your place, be a mother to Patience and keep house and everything...
...She bore him two sons, and it was a matter of comment at the time that she called them, respectively, Job and Moses, hoping that the endurance and meekness connected with these names might somehow help them in their future relations with their father...
...But the mill wheels turned, the great saws buzzed, the smoke from tavern chimneys rose In the air, and the rattle and clatter of stagecoaches resounded along the road...
...That was Ivory, their only child...
...If change of conviction or backsliding occurred later on that was not their business...
...only our pleasures always have to be taken behind father's back...
...There are cares that swell the heart and make it bigger and warmer, Patty, just as there are cares that shrivel it and leave it tired and cold...
...He showed me a humming bird's nest, the first I ever saw, and the littlest...
...Oh, mother, how soon could I be married and take Patience to live with me...
...while the other, a reckless and unhappy lad, was drowned while running on the logs in the river...
...I don't see but you'll have to, unless your father marries again...
...The Lord couldn't expect us to bear all we bear," exclaimed Patty, "without our trying once in a while to have a good time in our own way...
...No doubt...
...The almanac day, however, which opened with sunrise had nothing to do with the real human day, which always began when Mr...
...Why not put a theory into practice and find out whether children would know as much at ;the end of a given time if their real interests and desires were followed, if the needs of the growing organism were supplied instead of making requirements of the children...
...She need not sit quietly except when she is so occupied that she wishes to do so," I protested...
...This very afternoon up goes my hair...
...You'll never go through life with one tongue at the rate you use it now...
...The next year Mr...
...Time sped...
...There were days and moonlight nights, too, when strange sights and sounds of quite another nature could have been noted by the river as it flowed under the bridge that united the two little villages...
...I daren't let you wear eardrops without father's permission...
...He could see her now as he neared the house, standing in the open doorway, her hand shading her eyes, watching, always watching, for some one who never came...
...In fact, Doctor, she may bring her dolls to school if she wishes...
...Men chained the river's turbulent forces and ordered it to grind at the mill...
...We can't...
...The tree trunks, black, with bare branches, were outlined against the gray sky...
...It was in those years that the silver skinned salmon leaped in its crystal depths, the otter and beaver crept with sleek % et skins upon its shore and the bro?,n deer came down to quench his thirst at its brink, while at twilight the stealthy forms of bear and panther ,and wolf were mirrored in its glassy surfaio...
...And I'm used to going to bed Without my porridge...
...You mean we've each other...
...Here I am seventeen today, and Dr...
...When your mother died and left father and you and the house to me my girlhood died, too, though I was only fourteen...
...nevertheless, spring had been on the way for a week, and a few sunny days would bring the yearly miracle for which all hearts were longing...
...She was as plucky and clever and spirited as she was handsome, and she made a brave fight of it with Foxy, long enough to bring a daughter into the world, to name her Waitstill and start her a little way on her life journey, then she, too, gave up the struggle and died...
...I'll do my best...
...Some fat robins had been bouncing about in the schoolyard at noon, and the sparrows had been chirping and twittering on the fence rails...
...Love lightens Ivory's afflictions, but that is something you and I have to do without, so it seems...
...If your father should hear you he'd send you to bed without your porridge...
...Baxter, after a few days' acquaintance, drove into the dooryard of the house where she was a visitor and, showing her his two curly headed boys, suddenly asked her to come and be their stepmother...
...I won't have another mother in this house" flashed the girl...
...asked Waitstill, relenting at the sight of the girl's eager, roguish face...
...Then after a pause, she said with a flash of spirit, "Anyhow, Waitstill, he's your father after all...
...The first, be it said, was a mere ig> norant girl, and he a beardless youth of twenty, who may not have shown his true qualities so early in life...
...Father has no real cause that I ever heard of...
...Now Ivory has to protect her—• poor, daft, innocent creature—and hide her away from the gossip of the village...
...Caravans, with menageries of wild beasts, crossed the bridge now every year...
...Foxwel...
...As the mountain rill gathers strength it takes Through Bartlett's vales Its tuneful way...
...I wish the angels would put the idea into his head, though, of course, it wouldn't be the angels...
Vol. 6 • May 1914 • No. 21
