The Best of Gene Stratton-Porter

by Gene Stratton-Porter

  “My, but they are fine!” she cried.

  Wesley picked up one and slowly turned it in his big hands. He glanced at his foot and back to the shoe.

  “It’s a little bit of a thing, Margaret,” he said softly. “Like as not I’ll have to take it back. It seems as if it couldn’t fit.”

  “It seems as if it didn’t dare do anything else,” said Margaret. “That’s a happy little shoe to get the chance to carry as fine a girl as Elnora to high school. Now what’s in the other box?”

  Wesley looked at Margaret doubtfully.

  “Why,” he said, “you know there’s going to be rainy days, and those things she has now ain’t fit for anything but to drive up the cows—”

  “Wesley, did you get high shoes, too?”

  “Well, she ought to have them! The man said he would make them cheaper if I took both pairs at once.”

  Margaret laughed aloud. “Those will do her past Christmas,” she exulted. “What else did you buy?”

  “Well sir,” said Wesley, “I saw something to-day. You told me about Kate getting that tin pail for Elnora to carry to high school and you said you told her it was a shame. I guess Elnora was ashamed all right, for to-night she stopped at the old case Duncan gave her, and took out that pail, where it had been all day, and put a napkin inside it. Coming home she confessed she was half starved because she hid her dinner under a culvert, and a tramp took it. She hadn’t had a bite to eat the whole day. But she never complained at all, she was pleased that she hadn’t lost the napkin. So I just inquired around till I found this, and I think it’s about the ticket.”

  Wesley opened the package and laid a brown leather lunch box on the table. “Might be a couple of books, or drawing tools or most anything that’s neat and genteel. You see, it opens this way.”

  It did open, and inside was a space for sandwiches, a little porcelain box for cold meat or fried chicken, another for salad, a glass with a lid which screwed on, held by a ring in a corner, for custard or jelly, a flask for tea or milk, a beautiful little knife, fork, and spoon fastened in holders, and a place for a napkin.

  Margaret was almost crying over it.

  “How I’d love to fill it!” she exclaimed.

  “Do it the first time, just to show Kate Comstock what love is!” said Wesley. “Get up early in the morning and make one of those dresses to-morrow. Can’t you make a plain gingham dress in a day? I’ll pick a chicken, and you fry it and fix a little custard for the cup, and do it up brown. Go on, Maggie, you do it!”

  “I never can,” said Margaret. “I am slow as the itch about sewing, and these are not going to be plain dresses when it comes to making them. There are going to be edgings of plain green, pink, and brown to the bias strips, and tucks and pleats around the hips, fancy belts and collars, and all of it takes time.”

  “Then Kate Comstock’s got to help,” said Wesley. “Can the two of you make one, and get that lunch to-morrow?”

  “Easy, but she’ll never do it!”

  “You see if she doesn’t!” said Wesley. “You get up and cut it out, and soon as Elnora is gone I’ll go after Kate myself. She’ll take what I’ll say better alone. But she’ll come, and she’ll help make the dress. These other things are our Christmas gifts to Elnora. She’ll no doubt need them more now than she will then, and we can give them just as well. That’s yours, and this is mine, or whichever way you choose.”

  Wesley untied a good brown umbrella and shook out the folds of a long, brown raincoat. Margaret dropped the hat, arose and took the coat. She tried it on, felt it, cooed over it and matched it with the umbrella.

  “Did it look anything like rain to-night?” she inquired so anxiously that Wesley laughed.

  “And this last bundle?” she said, dropping back in her chair, the coat still over her shoulders.

  “I couldn’t buy this much stuff for any other woman and nothing for my own,” said Wesley. “It’s Christmas for you, too, Margaret!” He shook out fold after fold of soft gray satiny goods that would look lovely against Margaret’s pink cheeks and whitening hair.

  “Oh, you old darling!” she exclaimed, and fled sobbing into his arms.

  But she soon dried her eyes, raked together the coals in the cooking stove and boiled one of the dress patterns in salt water for half an hour. Wesley held the lamp while she hung the goods on the line to dry. Then she set the irons on the stove so they would be hot the first thing in the morning.

  Chapter 3

  Wherein Elnora Visits the Bird Woman, and Opens a Bank Account

  Four o’clock the following morning Elnora was shelling beans. At six she fed the chickens and pigs, swept two of the rooms of the cabin, built a fire, and put on the kettle for breakfast. Then she climbed the narrow stairs to the attic she had occupied since a very small child, and dressed in the hated shoes and brown calico, plastered down her crisp curls, ate what breakfast she could, and pinning on her hat started for town.

  “There is no sense in your going for an hour yet,” said her mother.

  “I must try to discover some way to earn those books,” replied Elnora. “I am perfectly positive I shall not find them lying beside the road wrapped in tissue paper, and tagged with my name.”

  She went toward the city as on yesterday. Her perplexity as to where tuition and books were to come from was worse but she did not feel quite so badly. She never again would have to face all of it for the first time. There had been times yesterday when she had prayed to be hidden, or to drop dead, and neither had happened. “I believe the best way to get an answer to prayer is to work for it,” muttered Elnora grimly.

  Again she followed the trail to the swamp, rearranged her hair and left the tin pail. This time she folded a couple of sandwiches in the napkin, and tied them in a neat light paper parcel which she carried in her hand. Then she hurried along the road to Onabasha and found a book-store. There she asked the prices of the list of books that she needed, and learned that six dollars would not quite supply them. She anxiously inquired for second-hand books, but was told that the only way to secure them was from the last year’s Freshmen. Just then Elnora felt that she positively could not approach any of those she supposed to be Sophomores and ask to buy their old books. The only balm the girl could see for the humiliation of yesterday was to appear that day with a set of new books.

  “Do you wish these?” asked the clerk hurriedly, for the store was rapidly filling with school children wanting anything from a dictionary to a pen.

  “Yes,” gasped Elnora, “Oh, yes! But I cannot pay for them just now. Please let me take them, and I will pay for them on Friday, or return them as perfect as they are. Please trust me for them a few days.”

  “I’ll ask the proprietor,” he said. When he came back Elnora knew the answer before he spoke.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “but Mr. Hann doesn’t recognize your name. You are not a customer of ours, and he feels that he can’t take the risk.”

  Elnora clumped out of the store, the thump of her heavy, shoes beating as a hammer on her brain. She tried two other dealers with the same result, and then in sick despair came into the street. What could she do? She was too frightened to think. Should she stay from school that day and canvass the homes appearing to belong to the wealthy, and try to sell beds of wild ferns, as she had suggested to Wesley Sinton? What would she dare ask for bringing in and planting a clump of ferns? How could she carry them? Would people buy them? She slowly moved past the hotel and then glanced around to see if there were a clock anywhere, for she felt sure the young people passing her constantly were on their way to school.

  There it stood in a bank window in big black letters staring straight at her:

  WANTED: CATERPILLARS, COCOONS, CHRYSALIDES, PUPAE CASES, BUTTERFLIES, MOTHS, INDIAN RELICS OF ALL KINDS. HIGHEST SCALE OF PRICES PAID IN CASH

  Elnora caught the wicket at the cashier’s desk with both hands to brace herself against disappointment.

  “Who is it wants to buy cocoons, but
terflies, and moths?” she panted.

  “The Bird Woman,” answered the cashier. “Have you some for sale?”

  “I have some, I do not know if they are what she would want.”

  “Well, you had better see her,” said the cashier. “Do you know where she lives?”

  “Yes,” said Elnora. “Would you tell me the time?”

  “Twenty-one after eight,” was the answer.

  She had nine minutes to reach the auditorium or be late. Should she go to school, or to the Bird Woman? Several girls passed her walking swiftly and she remembered their faces. They were hurrying to school. Elnora caught the infection. She would see the Bird Woman at noon. Algebra came first, and that professor was kind. Perhaps she could slip to the superintendent and ask him for a book for the next lesson, and at noon—“Oh, dear Lord make it come true,” prayed Elnora, at noon possibly she could sell some of those wonderful shining-winged things she had been collecting all her life around the outskirts of the Limberlost.

  As she went down the long hall she noticed the professor of mathematics standing in the door of his recitation room. When she passed him he smiled and spoke to her.

  “I have been watching for you,” he said, and Elnora stopped bewildered.

  “For me?” she questioned.

  “Yes,” said Professor Henley. “Step inside.”

  Elnora followed him into the room and closed the door behind them.

  “At teachers’ meeting last evening, one of the professors mentioned that a pupil had betrayed in class that she had expected her books to be furnished by the city. I thought possibly it was you. Was it?”

  “Yes,” breathed Elnora.

  “That being the case,” said Professor Henley, “it just occurred to me as you had expected that, you might require a little time to secure them, and you are too fine a mathematician to fall behind for want of supplies. So I telephoned one of our Sophomores to bring her last year’s books this morning. I am sorry to say they are somewhat abused, but the text is all here. You can have them for two dollars, and pay when you are ready. Would you care to take them?”

  Elnora sat suddenly, because she could not stand another instant. She reached both hands for the books, and said never a word. The professor was silent also. At last Eleanor arose, hugging those books to her heart as a mother clasps a baby.

  “One thing more,” said the professor. “You may pay your tuition quarterly. You need not bother about the first instalment this month. Any time in October will do.”

  It seemed as if Elnora’s gasp of relief must have reached the soles of her brogans.

  “Did any one ever tell you how beautiful you are!” she cried.

  As the professor was lank, tow-haired, and so near-sighted that he peered at his pupils through spectacles, no one ever had.

  “No,” said Professor Henley, “I’ve waited some time for that; for which reason I shall appreciate it all the more. Come now, or we shall be late for opening exercises.”

  So Elnora entered the auditorium a second time. Her face was like the brightest dawn that ever broke over the Limberlost. No matter about the lumbering shoes and skimpy dress. No matter about anything, she had the books. She could take them home. In her garret she could commit them to memory, if need be. She could prove that clothes were not all. If the Bird Woman did not want any of the many different kinds of specimens she had collected, she was quite sure now she could sell ferns, nuts, and a great many things. Then, too, a girl made a place for her that morning, and several smiled and bowed. Elnora forgot everything save her books, and that she was where she could use them intelligently—everything except one little thing away back in her head. Her mother had known about the books and the tuition, and had not told her when she agreed to her coming.

  At noon Elnora took her little parcel of lunch and started to the home of the Bird Woman. She must know about the specimens first and then she would walk to the suburbs somewhere and eat a few bites. She dropped the heavy iron knocker on the door of a big red log cabin, and her heart thumped at the resounding stroke.

  “Is the Bird Woman at home?” she asked of the maid.

  “She is at lunch,” was the answer.

  “Please ask her if she will see a girl from the Limberlost about some moths?” inquired Elnora.

  “I never need ask, if it’s moths,” laughed the girl. “Orders are to bring any one with specimens right in. Come this way.”

  Elnora followed down the hall and entered a long room with high panelled wainscoting, old English fireplace with an overmantel and closets of peculiar china filling the corners. At a bare table of oak, yellow as gold, sat a woman Elnora often had watched and followed covertly around the Limberlost. The Bird Woman was holding out a hand of welcome.

  “I heard!” she laughed. “A little pasteboard box, or just the mere word ‘specimen,’ passes you at my door. If it is moths I hope you have hundreds. I’ve been very busy all summer and unable to collect, and I need so many. Sit down and lunch with me, while we talk it over. From the Limberlost, did you say?”

  “I live near the swamp,” replied Elnora. “Since it’s so cleared I dare go around the edge in daytime, though we are all afraid at night.”

  “What have you collected?” asked the Bird Woman, as she helped Elnora to sandwiches unlike any she ever before had tasted, salad that seemed to be made of many familiar things, and a cup of hot chocolate that would have delighted any hungry schoolgirl.

  “I am afraid I am bothering you for nothing, and imposing on you,” she said. “That ‘collected’ frightens me. I’ve only gathered. I always loved everything outdoors, so I made friends and playmates of them. When I learned that the moths die so soon, I saved them especially, because there seemed no wickedness in it.”

  “I have thought the same thing,” said the Bird Woman encouragingly. Then because the girl could not eat until she learned about the moths, the Bird Woman asked Elnora if she knew what kinds she had.

  “Not all of them,” answered Elnora. “Before Mr. Duncan moved away he often saw me near the edge of the swamp and he showed me the box he had fixed for Freckles, and gave me the key. There were some books and things, so from that time on I studied and tried to take moths right, but I am afraid they are not what you want.”

  “Are they the big ones that fly mostly in June nights?” asked the Bird Woman.

  “Yes,” said Elnora. “Big gray ones with reddish markings, pale blue-green, yellow with lavender, and red and yellow.”

  “What do you mean by ‘red and yellow?’“ asked the Bird Woman so quickly that the girl almost jumped.

  “Not exactly red,” explained Elnora, with tremulous voice. “A reddish, yellowish brown, with canary-coloured spots and gray lines on their wings.”

  “How many of them?” It was the same quick question.

  “I had over two hundred eggs,” said Elnora, “but some of them didn’t hatch, and some of the caterpillars died, but there must be at least a hundred perfect ones.”

  “Perfect! How perfect?” cried the Bird Woman.

  “I mean whole wings, no down gone, and all their legs and antennae,” faltered Elnora.

  “Young woman, that’s the rarest moth in America,” said the Bird Woman solemnly. “If you have a hundred of them, they are worth a hundred dollars according to my list. I can use all that are not damaged.”

  “What if they are not pinned right,” quavered Elnora.

  “If they are perfect, that does not make the slightest difference. I know how to soften them so that I can put them into any shape I choose. Where are they? When may I see them?”

  “They are in Freckles’s old case in the Limberlost,” said Elnora. “I couldn’t carry many for fear of breaking them, but I could bring a few after school.”

  “You come here at four,” said the Bird Woman, “and we will drive out with some specimen boxes, and a price list, and see what you have to sell. Are they your very own? Are you free to part with them?”

  “Th
ey are mine,” said Elnora. “No one but God knows I have them. Mr. Duncan gave me the books and the box. He told Freckles about me, and Freckles told him to give me all he left. He said for me to stick to the swamp and be brave, and my hour would come, and it has! I know most of them are all right, and oh, I do need the money!”

  “Could you tell me?” asked the Bird Woman softly.

  “You see the swamp and all the fields around it are so full,” explained Elnora. “Every day I felt smaller and smaller, and I wanted to know more and more, and pretty soon I grew desperate, just as Freckles did. But I am better off than he was, for I have his books, and I have a mother; even if she doesn’t care for me as other girls’ mothers do for them, it’s better than no one.”

  The Bird Woman’s glance fell, for the girl was not conscious of how much she was revealing. Her eyes were fixed on a black pitcher filled with goldenrod in the centre of the table and she was saying what she thought.

  “As long as I could go to the Brushwood school I was happy, but I couldn’t go further just when things were the most interesting, so I was determined I’d come to high school and mother wouldn’t consent. You see there’s plenty of land, but father was drowned when I was a baby, and mother and I can’t make money as men do. The taxes are higher every year, and she said it was too expensive. I wouldn’t give her any rest, until at last she bought me this dress, and these shoes, and I came. It was awful!”

  “Do you live in that beautiful cabin at the northwest end of the swamp?” asked the Bird Woman.

  “Yes,” said Elnora.

  “I remember the place and a story about it, now. You entered the high school yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was rather bad?”

  “Rather bad!” echoed Elnora.

  The Bird Woman laughed.

  “You can’t tell me anything about that,” she said. “I once entered a city school straight from the country. My dress was brown calico, and my shoes were heavy.”

  The tears began to roll down Elnora’s cheeks.

  “Did they—?” she faltered.

  “They did!” said the Bird Woman. “All of it. I am sure they did not miss one least little thing.”