Mothering on Perilous. Lucy S. Furman
"Loring," I replied. "Haint you got nary nother?" "Yes, Cecilia." "Gee-oh, that's some shakes of a name. How old air you, Cecilia?" "I am old enough to have a Miss before my name always," I said, severely; "you must call me Miss Loring, just as people call your mother Mrs. Salyer."
"They don't," he replied, "they call her Nervesty."
"All these-here fotch-on women gits called Miss, son," admonished Geordie; "you haint used to their quare ways yet."
Later, there was another halloo from the road, and as Joab Atkins slid off the end of a mule, his father remarked to me, with extreme gentleness, that he allowed Joab would be willing to pick a chicken now. Mr. Atkins is a handsome man, with perfect manners. When he said he had a younger son over on Rakeshin he would like to bring us, little Iry, ten years old, a "pure scholar, that knows the speller from kiver to kiver," I told him to bring Iry at once.
Just before supper I was pleased to see another runaway returned—Nucky Marrs, of Trigger Branch. But before his father was out of sight up the road, he calmly announced to me that he didn't aim to stay, and that neither his paw nor anybody else was able to make him. I believed him—one glance at his vivid face and combative eyes convinced me.
"Very well," I said, "if you cannot be happy, of course you must go. But it will hurt my feelings a good deal—however, don't think of them."
"What difference is it to you?" he demanded.
"Only this—I have lost everybody I love in the world, and have come to the cottage to live with you boys because I am so terribly lonely. If you can't like me well enough to stay, life will seem a failure."
He pondered a long while, frowning a little, with large gray eyes fixed on my face. Then he said at last, "I don't know as I'll go right off."
"Oh, thank you," I replied, gratefully.
From seven to eight we have study-hour at the cottage. To-night Geordie watched the clock-hands for twenty minutes before they reached eight, then slammed his geography shut, and commanded,
"Tell about the Marrs-Cheever war!"
All the boys woke up at once, and Nucky began, slowly: "The Marrses has lived on Trigger ever sence allus-ago. My great-great-great-grandpaw fit under Washington and got a big land-grant out here and come out from Old Virginny. And the Cheevers they has allus lived down the branch from us. More'n thirty year' gone, Israel Cheever he had a new survey made, and laid claim to a piece of our bottom where the lands jines; and him and his brothers tore down the dividing fence and sot it back up on our land; and the next week, my grandpaw and his boys sot it down where it belonged, and while they was at it, the Cheevers come up and they all fit a big battle. And ever sence, first one side and then t'other has been setting back the fence, and gen'ally a few gets kilt and a lot wounded. Six year gone, paw got his three brothers kilt and a leg shot off and a couple of bullets in his lung, in a battle, and haint been able to do a lick of work sence. Blant, my big brother, wa'n't but fifteen then, and he's had to make the living ever sence, with me to help him. And for five year' before he got good-grown, the Cheevers they helt our land, and Blant he laid low and put in all his spare time at gun practice. Then last fall, on the day Blant was twenty, he rounded up Rich Tarrant and some more of his friends, and Uncle Billy's boys and me, and we tore up the fence, and sot it down on the old line where it ought to be; and the Cheevers, Israel and his ten boys, got wind of it, and come up, and there was the terriblest battle you ever seed."
"I heared about it," interrupted Geordie, "I heared Blant was the quickest on the trigger of any boy ever lived, and laid out the Cheevers scandlous."
"He kilt two of 'em dead that day, and wounded five or six more pretty bad," resumed Nucky, "and the fighting it went on, off and on, all winter. Every now and then, of a moonlight night, the Cheever boys would start to tear down the fence and set it back up; but we kep' a constant lookout, and was allus ready for 'em. Finally they got discouraged trying to fight Blant in the open, and tuck to ambushing. Three of 'em laywayed Blant under a cliff one day in April, and Elhannon got kilt, and Todd and Dalt so bad wounded they left the country and went West. They are the youngest and feistiest of the lot—t'other boys is mostly married and settled, and not anxious to risk their lives again' Blant's gun no more—and sence they went off, we have had a spell of peace."
"What do you do in the war?"
"Oh, I keep a lookout, and spy around, and stand guard over the fence with my gun."
"Gee, I wisht I had a war in my family!" sighed Philip, fervently.
Thursday.
Two more nights of suffering—Philip said to me this morning, "I heared you up a-fleaing four or five times in the night." When I found that several panels of the back fence had been washed away by the "tide" of week-before-last, and that neighborhood hogs were coming in and out at will, and making their beds under my very room, I did not wonder.
This morning at the breakfast table, Philip's face was so dingy that I inquired, "Have you washed your face?"
"Yes," was his reply.
Something moved me to inquire further, "When?"
"Day before yesterday," he replied, with perfect nonchalance.
This is dangerous—already I can see that Philip is to be, like his illustrious namesake "the glass of fashion and the mold of form," and that the younger boys, will be only too ready to omit disagreeable rites if he does.
Poor Keats, who in the matter of beauty certainly lives up to his name, really seems inconsolable. While he cleans the chicken-yard in the mornings, my heart is wrung by hearing him chant the most dismal of songs,
Oh bury me not, on the broad pa-ra-a-ree,
Where the wild ky-oats will holler over me!
and in the hour after supper, when the others play out of doors, he sits with me, telling about Nervesty and the four little children at home, and the spell of typhoid all the family had last year, when his father and little sister Dicey died, and how "Me 'n' Nervesty and Hen" have run the farm since then, tending fifteen acres of corn, besides clearing new-ground, and other labors. Poor little man, it is the knowledge that he is really needed at home, as much as homesickness, that preys on his mind—his mother is making a noble sacrifice to let him stay in the school. It seems to comfort him somewhat to weep on a sympathetic bosom. Peppermint candy, too, is not without its efficacy.
To-day came Taulbee Bolling, a dignified boy of thirteen, with a critical eye, and later, Mr. Atkins again, with the "pure scholar" in tow. Iry is a thin, puny-looking mite of ten, much too small for his trousers. He said "Yes sir" and "No sir" most politely when speaking to me, and carried an old blue-back speller under one arm. So great was my curiosity that I opened the book at once. The result was amazing—"genealogical" and "irreconcilable" were child's-play to him, "incomprehensibility," a bagatelle. It was interesting to see his scared little face brighten as he climbed up and down the hard words and beheld my growing astonishment.
This afternoon while I had the boys mending the back fence, Geordie, who had been left to scrub my floor with carbolic acid solution, came back to the stable-lot bringing a new boy, whom with a flourish of his brush he introduced as follows:
"Here's the boy that fit the marshal that kilt his paw. And one time he seed the world and rid on a railroad train. Killis Blair's