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THAT LITTLE GIRL OF MISS ELIZA'S
A STORY FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
BY JEAN K. BAIRD
ROCK ISLAND, ILL. _Augustana Book Concern_
_Printed in the United States of America._
AUGUSTANA BOOK CONCERN, PRINTERS AND BINDERS ROCK ISLAND, ILLINOIS
CHAPTER I.
"The poorest farming land in all the country," someone called it. "Thebest crop of stones and stumps, I ever saw," someone else had said.Everyone smiled and drove on, and Shintown and its people passed fromtheir knowledge.
"Shintown? Where in the name of goodness did they get such a name?" theelderly gentleman in the touring car asked his companion.
"Have to use your shins to get here. It used to be that Shank's mare wasthe only one that could travel the miserable roads. They were merefoot-paths. Even the railroads have shot clear of it. See over there."
There was truth in the words. Shintown, which was no town at all, but afew isolated farmhouses, looked down from its heights on one side uponthe main line of the Susquehanna Valley, five miles away. On the otherside, at a little more than half the distance, the branch of the W. N.P. and P. wound along the edge of the river. Both roads avoided Shintownas though it had the plague. The name was quite enough to discourageanyone. Nature had done its best for the place, the people had donetheir worst. It stood in the valley, and yet on a higher elevation thanthe country adjacent, the mountain being twenty miles distant. It was asthough a broad table had been set in a wide country, with the mountainpeaks as decorous waiters standing at the outer edge.
The houses were sagging affairs. They were well enough at one time, butwere now like a good intention gone wrong. The storm had beaten uponthem for so many years that all trace of paint was gone. The chimneyssloped as far as the law of gravity allowed. Gates hung on one hinge,and the fences had the same angle as an old man suffering with lumbago.
The corners of the fields were weed-ridden. The farmers never had timeto plow clear to the corners and turn plumb. The soil had as many stonesas it had had twenty years before. The whole countryside was sufferingfrom lack of ambition. Crops were small, and food and clothes weremeager. The stock showed the same attributes. It was stunted, dwarfed,far from its natural efficiency in burden bearing, milk-giving oregg-laying.
There was one place not quite like this--the old Wells place at thecross roads. The house was neither so large, nor so rambling as theothers. It stood deep among some old purple beeches, and in summer ithad yellow roses clambering over one entire side. The color waspeculiar, and marked its occupant and owner just a little different fromother people in the community. Everyone conceded that point without aquestion. She was just a little different. The house was all in shadesof golden brown; brown that suggested yellow when the sun shone. It wasa color that not a man in Shintown or a painter at the Bend or Portwould have thought of putting on a house. Who ever thought of painting ahouse anything but white with green shutters or a good, serviceabledrab? Golden browns in several shades! Why, of course, the woman must bepeculiar. She did the work herself too. She arose at daylight to paintthe upper portion and she quit work when travel on the highway began.
That was another peculiarity which the countryside could not understand;a woman who could be independent enough to choose what color she would,in defiance of all set laws, and yet afraid to let folks see herclimbing a ladder to the second story.
If peculiar means being different, Eliza Wells was that. She was thirty,and never blushed at it. She had even been known to mention herbirthdays as "I was twenty-nine yesterday. How time does fly!" And shesaid it after the manner of one who might have said, "To-morrow I setthe old Plymouth Rock on a settin' of Dominick eggs."
But the country folk were kind enough and overlooked her not being asthemselves. There was a knowing smile now and then, a sage nodding ofthe head. Now and then someone went as far as to say, "That's Liza'sway. She never did act like other folks."
Eliza knew she was peculiar and tried her best to be like those abouther. She had never known any other kind of people; for she had been bornand bred in the little place. But do as she could, her own self wouldbreak loose every now and then. In spite of her effort to be like otherpeople, there were times when she could be nothing but her own unusual,individual self.
It was not that she admired the ways of life of the people about her.Had she done so, it might have been easier to have become like them. Butshe argued in this fashion: if all these hundred souls lived in one wayand declared that to be the right way, then surely she was wrong, andher ideas had all gone awry somewhere; for one could not stand against ahundred.
The old Wells place had all the finger-marks of having a peculiaroccupant. Hollyhocks all along the walk to the milk-house, nasturtiumsclimbing over a pile of rock; wistaria clinging to the trunk of a deadtree; wild cucumber vines on a trellis shielding the wood-pile and chipyard. In the recess of the old-fashioned front entrance were old bluebowls filled with nasturtiums.
The old blue delft had been in the family of Eliza's grandmother Sampsonfor generations. Everybody knew it; but Eliza paraded them and seemed asproud of them as though they had just been purchased from Griffith's"five and ten." But she couldn't fool the people of Shintown. They knewa thing or two and they were certain that the bowls were over a hundredyears old.
On hot days, she ate on her kitchen porch, which she had enclosed withcotton fly-net, and she stuck a bunch of pansies in a teacup and hadthem beside her plate.
That was quite enough to show that she was peculiar. No one else in thecountry put flowers on the table. Indeed, no one raised them. What wasthe use? They weren't good to eat.
But Eliza's place was not a farm, else she could not have wasted so muchtime on worthless things. Two acres was all she owned, and she kept halfof that in yard and flowers.
She would have had more room for garden if she would have cut down oneor more of her purple beeches, but she would not do that. When SamHouston suggested it to her, saying in his blunt way, "If you'd plantless of the 'dern foolishness,' you'd have more room for cabbages," shereplied, with a merry glint in her eye, "Sometimes, I think cabbages isthe worst foolishness of all."
Sam could make no reply to that. A man couldn't reason with a woman whohad no more sense than that.
Eliza Wells could afford to be a little different from anybody else. Inthe vernacular of the country, "she was well-fixed." This meant not thatshe had millions, or even a hundred thousand, but there was money enoughout at interest to bring her in fifteen dollars each month. This, withher garden truck and home, made her independent.
To have money in the bank was a distinguishing mark of rank. Not a soulat Shintown except Eliza could boast so much. Sam Houston was the onlyone in the countryside who had tales to tell of a father and agrandfather who lived on interest money.
Her financial independence made Eliza's peculiarities a little morebearable. They were the idiosyncracies of the bloated capitalist.
Eliza drove to the Bend the first of each quarter to draw her interestmoney. She wore a black silk dress and a little bonnet. How she hatedthe stiff shininess of black silk. How miserably awkward she felt withthe caricature of black lace and purple pansies, which custom called abonnet, on her head. But she had been reared to believe that black silkwas th
e only proper dress for a woman, no longer young, and the daysafter twenty years were always placed to the credit of age.
So she wore her black silk, although she saw nothing pretty in it. Thewomen of Shintown envied her the possession of such a mark of gentilityand declared that Eliza had a good bit of style for a woman of her age,and after a fashion all their own were proud of her.
She always drove Old Prince when she went to the Bend. There was alwaysa little shopping before she came home. Quarter day fell on the first ofJuly. The sun was fairly blazing upon the stretch of dusty road whichknew no shadow of tree.
Miss Eliza was anxious to get home. Her hands were sweating in theirheavy gloves. Not a breeze was stirring. The stiff black silk was not aneasy or comfortable dress for a hot day. Yet she let Old Prince take histime. The flies bothered him considerably, and he shied like a youngcolt at every object in the road. He had not been out of the stable-yardfor a week and what energy had been left to him had been bottled up forthis trip to town.
In his youth, some years before, he had been a vicious animal which onlya man with a steady nerve and strong hand could manage. But age had madehim tractable. He went home at a steady gait with the reins hangingloose on his back, except when Eliza shook them to dislodge an annoyingfly.
As they turned the bend of the road at Farwell, Old Prince shiedsuddenly and turned the wheels deep in the ditch. Eliza steadied herselfand seized the reins. "There, old fellow, go quiet. There hain't nothinghere to disturb you."
Her words sounded brave enough, yet she glanced apprehensively about.The new railroads had brought their following of tramps, and Eliza wasfearful. She peered into the clump of elder bushes which grew up alongthe hillside. It was a beautiful rather than a fearful sight which mether eyes. A big woman with great braids of yellow hair sat in the shadeof the underbrush. Eliza did not notice that her dress was exceedinglyshabby. She did notice, however, that a little child lay in her arms.Both were sound asleep as though utterly exhausted by their travels.
They were strangers. Eliza knew that at a glance. She knew all theresidents of the valley. A small traveling bag lay beside the woman. Herhand resting lightly upon it, as though even in sleep she would keep itin custody.
Miss Eliza spoke to Prince who would persist in frolicking and garottingabout like a colt. The public road was not a safe sleeping place for awoman and child. Eliza recognized her duty. Leaning forward, she touchedthe woman's hand lightly with her whip. She did this several timesbefore the woman's eyes opened.
"I've been trying to waken you," said Eliza. "The road is not a safeplace to sleep."
The woman looked wonderingly about, yawned and rubbed her eyes. It wassome minutes before she could get her bearings. When her eyes fell onthe child, she smiled and nodded back at Eliza and then got upon herfeet and began to put herself to rights.
"Where are you going?" asked Eliza.
The woman hesitated, puckered her brows and at last said, "I--I banegone to Yameston."
"Foreign," said Eliza mentally. She had no idea where 'Yameston' was,but it was reasonable to suppose that the woman was cutting acrosscountry to take the flyer at the Port where it stopped to change engineand crews.
"It's no place for a woman to rest. Tramps are thicker thanhuckleberries. Climb in and I'll drive you and your baby part of theway."
The woman could not understand, but she did grasp the meaning of MissEliza's moving to the opposite side of the seat and reaching forth herhand to help her get into the carriage.
When they were safely seated, Miss Eliza touched Old Prince with thewhip. At that instant, the oncoming flyer, as it entered the yard,whistled like a veritable demon. The two were too much for the oldhorse, who had been a thoroughbred in his time and had never known thetouch of a whip. He reared on his hind feet, and then with a mad plungewent tearing down the road which was hemmed in on one side by the hills,and whose outer edge lay on the rocky bluffs of the river.
Miss Eliza held to the reins until they cut into the flesh. Bracingherself against the dash board, she kept Old Prince to the middle of theroad. Just as she felt sure that she could manage him, the rein on thehillside snapped. The tension on the other side turned the animal towardthe edge of the bank. Eliza dropped the useless rein, seized the childin her arms and held it close to her breast, hoping by her own body toprotect it from the fall. It was all the work of a second. She shut hereyes even as she did this.
That Little Girl of Miss Eliza's: A Story for Young People Page 1
