At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern. Reed Myrtle
you’re going to cry,” he answered, his voice trembling, “this is the one place for you to do it, but I don’t want you to cry.”
“I won’t, then,” she said, wiping her eyes on a wet and crumpled handkerchief. In a time astonishingly brief to one hitherto unfamiliar with the lachrymal function, her sobs had ceased.
“You’ve made me cry nearly a quart since morning,” she went on, with assumed severity, “and I hope you’ll behave so well from now on that I’ll never have to do it again. Look here.”
She led him to the window, where a pair of robins were building a nest in the boughs of a maple close by. “Do you see those birds?” she demanded, pointing at them with a dimpled, rosy forefinger.
“Yes, what of it?”
“Well, they’re married, aren’t they?”
“I hope they are,” laughed Harlan, “or at least engaged.”
“Who’s bringing the straw and feathers for the nest?” she asked.
“Both, apparently,” he replied, unwillingly.
“Why isn’t she rocking herself on a bough, and keeping her nails nice, and fixing her feathers in the latest style, or perhaps going off to some fool bird club while he builds the nest by himself?”
“Don’t know.”
“Nor anybody else,” she continued, with much satisfaction. “Now, if she happened to have two hundred and twelve feathers, of the proper size and shape to go into that nest, do you suppose he’d refuse to touch them, and make her cry because she brought them to him?”
“Probably he wouldn’t,” admitted Harlan.
There was a long silence, then Dorothy edged up closer to him. “Do you suppose,” she queried, “that Mr. Robin thinks more of his wife than you do of yours?”
“Indeed he doesn’t!”
“And still, he’s letting her help him.”
“But – ”
“Now, listen, Harlan. We’ve got a house, with more than enough furniture to make it comfortable, though it’s not the kind of furniture either of us particularly like. Instead of buying a typewriter, we’ll rent one for three or four dollars a month until we have enough money to buy one. And I’m going to have a cow and some chickens and a garden, and I’m going to sell milk and butter and cream and fresh eggs and vegetables and chickens and fruit to the sanitarium, and – ”
“The sanitarium people must have plenty of those things.”
“But not the kind I’m going to raise, nor put up as I’m going to put it up, and we’ll be raising most of our own living besides. You can write when you feel like it, and be helping me when you don’t feel like it, and before we know it, we’ll be rich. Oh, Harlan, I feel like Eve all alone in the Garden with Adam!”
The prospect fired his imagination, for, in common with most men, a chicken-ranch had appealed strongly to Harlan ever since he could remember.
“Well,” he began, slowly, in the tone which was always a signal of surrender.
“Won’t it be lovely,” she cried ecstatically, “to have our own bossy cow mooing in the barn, and our own chickens for Sunday dinner, and our own milk, and butter, and cream? And I’ll drive the vegetable waggon and you can take the things in – ”
“I guess not,” interrupted Harlan, firmly. “If you’re going to do that sort of thing, you’ll have people to do the work when I can’t help you. The idea of my wife driving a vegetable cart!”
“All right,” answered Dorothy, submissively, wise enough to let small points settle themselves and have her own way in things that really mattered. “I’ve not forgotten that I promised to obey you.”
A gratified smile spread over Harlan’s smooth, boyish face, and, half-fearfully, she reached into her sleeve for a handkerchief which she had hitherto carefully concealed.
“That’s not all,” she smiled. “Look!”
“Twenty-three dollars,” he said. “Why, where did you get that?”
“It was in my dresser. There was a false bottom in one of the small drawers, and I took it out and found this.”
“What in – ” began Harlan.
“It’s a present to us from Uncle Ebeneezer,” she cried, her eyes sparkling and her face aglow. “It’s for a coop and chickens,” she continued, executing an intricate dance step. “Oh, Harlan, aren’t you awfully glad we came?”
Seeing her pleasure he could not help being glad, but afterward, when he was alone, he began to wonder whether they had not inadvertently moved into a bank.
“Might be worse places,” he reflected, “for the poor and deserving to move into. Diamonds and money – what next?”
V
Mrs. Smithers
The chickens were clucking peacefully in their corner of Uncle Ebeneezer’s dooryard, and the newly acquired bossy cow mooed unhappily in her improvised stable. Harlan had christened the cow “Maud” because she insisted upon going into the garden, and though Dorothy had vigorously protested against putting Tennyson to such base uses, the name still held, out of sheer appropriateness.
Harlan was engaged in that pleasant pastime known as “pottering.” The instinct to drive nails, put up shelves, and to improve generally his local habitation is as firmly seated in the masculine nature as housewifely characteristics are ingrained in the feminine soul. Never before having had a home of his own, Harlan was enjoying it to the full.
Early hours had been the rule at the Jack-o’-Lantern ever since the feathered sultan with his tribe of voluble wives had taken up his abode on the hilltop. Indeed, as Harlan said, they were obliged to sleep when the chickens did – if they slept at all. So it was not yet seven one morning when Dorothy went in from the chicken coop, singing softly to herself, and intent upon the particular hammer her husband wanted, never expecting to find Her in the kitchen.
“I – I beg your pardon?” she stammered, inquiringly.
A gaunt, aged, and preternaturally solemn female, swathed in crape, bent slightly forward in her chair, without making an effort to rise, and reached forth a black-gloved hand tightly grasping a letter, which was tremulously addressed to “Mrs. J. H. Carr.”
“My dear Madam,” Dorothy read.
“The multitudinous duties in connection with the practice of my profession have unfortunately prevented me, until the present hour, from interviewing Mrs. Sarah Smithers in regard to your requirements. While she is naturally unwilling to commit herself entirely without a more definite idea of what is expected of her, she is none the less kindly disposed. May I hope, my dear madam, that at the first opportunity you will apprise me of ensuing events in this connection, and that in any event I may still faithfully serve you?
“With kindest personal remembrances and my polite salutations to the distinguished author whose wife you have the honour to be, I am, my dear madam,
“Yr. most respectful and obedient servant,
“Oh,” said Dorothy, “you’re Sarah. I had almost given you up.”
“Begging your parding, Miss,” rejoined Mrs. Smithers in a chilly tone of reproof, “but I take it it’s better for us to begin callin’ each other by our proper names. If we should get friendly, there’d be ample time to change. Your uncle, God rest ’is soul, allers called me ‘Mis’ Smithers.’”
Somewhat startled at first, Mrs. Carr quickly recovered her equanimity. “Very well, Mrs. Smithers,” she returned, lightly, reflecting that when in Rome one must follow Roman customs; “Do you understand all branches of general housework?”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be makin’ no attempts in that