Tess of the Storm Country. Grace Miller White
until the squatter girl felt that it was going to burst. Something crawled over her bare foot and brought her to her senses. Leaning over she drew to her lap a long, slimy lizard, which she held caressingly in her fingers. She lifted him high up and looked at him through the moonlight.
"Green," she said slowly, "ain't he a dandy. But I don't dare carry him even a little way for fear he'll lose his house. I bet he has a pile of green babies."
Dropping the lizard beside the rock, she sped away.
Just before reaching the Longman cabin, she raised her voice and sang again,
"Rescue the perishin',
Care for the dyin'."
Some one opened the door and she bounded in.
"Glad ye come, Tessibel," said Mrs. Longman, a small wizened old woman. "The brat air sick to-day. He does nothin' but squall so that my head air a bustin' the hours through. Give him to Tessibel, Myry."
"After she air rested a spell," replied Myra, who resembled her mother, but was smaller and thinner. "He seems to have a pain, Tess."
"Mebbe he has," responded Tessibel, "give him to me."
The wee boy stopped his tears immediately. His back grew limp and his fists opened out as Tessibel began to sing. This time the song was, "Did ye ever go into an Irishman's shanty?"
The child fell asleep and Tessibel laid him gently in the box prepared for him. Bed room was scarce in the huts of the fishermen and the small members of the family slept on rope beds, let down from the ceiling. But Myra's child, still too tender and always sick, slept in a box which his grandfather, "Satisfied" Longman, had made for him as soon as he was born.
"It air a seemly night for the men to fish," commented Myra when Tessibel had seated herself again. "I air always a hopin' that nothin' will happen to none of them."
"The hull bunch air cute," assured Tessibel, "and Daddy can row faster than any man on this here lake."
"But when them game men gets after 'em with the permit to shoot, that's what I fears," complained Mrs. Longman—and she sighed.
The fisherwoman's life she had led had been harder than most women bore, for Ezra was going a crooked path, while Myra, well—the brat slept in the cradle. Both girls saw her glance toward it and read her thoughts.
Myra's face deepened in color, Tessibel hummed a tune.
"'Taint no use to try to bring up children anywheres decent," the woman broke in sharply, after a silent moment. "God! but to see one's own—"
"Ma," Myra's voice was pleading, "it air over and ye said—"
"I knows I did, and so did yer Daddy. But I ain't thinkin' only of ye to-night, Myra, look at the mess that Ezry's a makin' of things, and just 'cause ye won't marry him, Tessibel."
"I ain't never goin' to marry no one," said Tess sullenly; "goin' to stay with Daddy."
"Yer Daddy won't live allers," interposed Mrs. Longman, "and what's more, yer better off with a man what will look after ye as Ezy will. Be ye a thinkin' of it at all, Tessibel?"
The girl shook her head.
"Nope, 'taint no use; don't like Ezy anyway."
"Ezry ain't the worst boy in the world," defended the mother; "if the right woman gets him, Tess, he'll make her a good man. Ye couldn't think of tryin' him, could ye?"
Tessibel shook her head again. She shuddered perceptibly, and Myra thought she realized the feeling in the girl's heart.
"Don't bother her, ma, don't bother—"
"If ye'd a bothered a little yerself, Myra," broke in the woman pettishly, "we might all been better off. It ain't 'cause of the brat, air it, Tessibel?"
She shot a glance at the infant's box.
"Why 'cause of the brat," asked Tessibel sharply, "why 'cause of the brat?"
"He air a come-be-chance, ye know—"
"That ain't no fault of his'n, air it," demanded Tessibel. "Nope, 'tain't nothin' to do with the brat. I loves him, I does, come-be-chance or no. It don't make no difference to me."
Myra pressed Tessibel's bare toe with hers in loving fellowship.
"Ye allers was a funny gal, Tessibel," ruminated Mrs. Longman. "Now Ezy says that yer takin' a likin' to such things as toads, lizards and snakes, shows as how ye needs some one to help ye. God'll make ye a happy mother if ye'll keep yer nose low in the air, and not think too much of yer betters."
Ezra, then, had told his mother of the student. A frown deepened on the girl's brow. She hated Ezra Longman with an inward fury for what he had said that day.
"Ye might have a come-be-chance, yerself, Tessibel," warned Mrs. Longman as she went to bed, clambering up the long ladder to the loft, leaving the girls alone.
CHAPTER IV
Outside the Longman hut the wind had quickened its pace up the dark lake, but inside there was no sound save the small snore of the infant.
"Don't hurt you and me bein' friends, does it, Myry," broke in Tessibel impetuously, "'cause I can't love Ezry?"
"Nope, I wouldn't love him nuther. Ma don't know all that's to know and I wouldn't a married the brat's pa if I could," and she shivered, for she knew that she had lied to Tess.
This was the first time Myra had mentioned her trouble, that is, in just that confidential manner. Tessibel came closer. Had it not been a mystery since the coming of the brat, who had been responsible for his tiny life?
"It air some un what ye knows, too, Tessibel," Myra said, shifting her eyes from her companion's face to the box where the infant lay, but Tess did not ask the name. Suddenly Myra leaned over and whispered something in the other girl's ear, and Tessibel started as if she had been stung by an adder.
"Nope … it ain't him," she cried, starting up, "he air bad but not so bad as that."
"It were him," replied Myra, "and he beat me that night on the ragged rocks and that air what broke my arm. Ye remember?"
Tessibel nodded. She had heard a secret that not even Myra's mother knew—she felt intuitively that Myra intended her to keep silent. She did not dare to speak again, fearing the woman above was not asleep. But Myra, with less fear, resumed,
"'Taint no hopin' the brat will live, and if he does he'll get his eatin's alright. What brats don't? But, Tessibel, I telled ye this to keep ye away from the ragged rocks for there air no tellin' what will happen to ye. And yer that pretty—"
Tessibel stared blankly.
"Pretty! pretty!" she gasped, stumbling over the words, "ye say pretty. Me—pretty, Myra Longman?"
"As if ye didn't know it," scoffed Myra, "but yer face air allers so dum dirty that ye can't see nothin' but yer eyes, and yer matty old hair—it air a shame to live like ye do."
Tessibel sat up. This was her first ambitious moment. Never had lips said such things to her, and she had always known Myra Longman. Rising from the chair she disappeared into the outer room, and Myra could hear the splashing of water and the shuffling of feet as Tessibel stood first on one and then the other, washing her dirty face. She mopped the long red hair in and out of the wash-basin, and Myra was not prepared for the vision which Tessibel made in her new state of cleanliness. The impetus of being good-looking by an effort of her own had blackened the copper colored eyes. The long fringed lashes dripped with pearls of water while the skin had reddened from the vigorous rubbing, but it was very, very clean.
"I wants yer comb, Myry Longman," said Tessibel slowly shaking