It was when she came in sight of the Parlow place on Monday afternoon, she and Prince, that Carolyn May bethought her of the very best person in the world with whom to advise upon the momentous question which so troubled her.
Who could be more interested in the happiness of Miss Amanda than Mr. Parlow himself? If his daughter had loved Uncle Joe and still loved him, it seemed to Carolyn May as though the carpenter should be very eager, indeed, to help overcome the difficulty that lay between the two parted lovers.
The little girl had been going to call on Miss Amanda. Aunty Rose had said she might, and Miss Amanda had invited her “specially.”
But the thought of taking the old carpenter into her confidence and advising with him delayed that visit. Mr. Parlow was busy on some piece of cabinet work, but he nodded briskly to the little girl when she came to the door of the shop and looked in.
“Are you very busy, Mr. Parlow?” she asked him after a watchful minute or two.
“My hands be, Car’lyn May,” said the carpenter in his dry voice. 121
“Oh!”
“But I kin listen to ye—and I kin talk.”
“Oh, that’s nice! You can talk when you are sawing and fitting things, can’t you? Not like when you are nailing. Then your mouth’s full of nails—like Mrs. Gormley’s is full of pins when she’s fitting you.”
“Miz Gormley never fitted me to nothin’ yet,” returned Mr. Parlow grimly, “less ’twas a suit of gossip.”
Carolyn May did not notice this remark, nor would she have understood it. She thought Chet Gormley’s mother a very interesting woman, indeed. She always knew so much about everybody.
Just now, moreover, Carolyn May had something else in her mind; so she ignored Mr. Parlow’s remark about the seamstress. She asked in a half-whisper:
“Mr. Parlow, did you hear about what happened yesterday?”
“Eh?” he queried, eyeing her quizzically. “Does anything ever happen on Sunday?”
“Something did on this Sunday,” cried the little girl. “Didn’t you hear about the snake?”
“What d’ye mean—snake? The old original snake—that sarpint ye read about in the Scriptures?” demanded the carpenter, ruffling up his grey hair till it looked like the topknot of a very cross cockatoo.
“Oh, no, Mr. Parlow!” and then little Carolyn 122 May explained. She told the story with such earnestness that he stopped working to listen, watching her with as shrewd, sharp eyes as ever a real cockatoo possessed.
“Humph!” was his grunted comment at the end. “Well!”
“Don’t you think that was real exciting?” asked Carolyn May. “And just see how it almost brought my Uncle Joe and your Miss Amanda together. Don’t you see?”
Mr. Parlow actually jumped. “What’s that you say, child?” he rasped out grimly. “Bring Mandy and Joe Stagg together? Well, I guess not!”
“Oh, Mr. Parlow, don’t you think that would be just be-a-you-ti-ful?” cried the little girl with a lingering emphasis upon the most important word. “Don’t you see how happy they would be?”
“I’d like to know who told you they’d be happy?” he demanded crossly.
“Why! wouldn’t they be? If they truly love each other and could get over being mad?”
“Humph!” growled Mr. Parlow, “you let their ‘mad’ alone. ’Tain’t none of your business.” Mr. Parlow was really all ruffled up, just as though he were angry at Carolyn May’s suggestion. “I don’t know as anybody’s pertic’lar anxious to see that daughter of mine and Joe Stagg friendly again. No good would come of it.”
Carolyn May looked at him sorrowfully. Mr. Parlow had quite disappointed her. It was plain to 123 be seen that he was not the right one to advise with about the matter. The little girl sighed.
“I really did s’pose you’d want to see Miss Amanda happy, Mr. Parlow,” she whispered.
“Happy? Bah!” snarled the old man, setting vigorously to work again. He acted as if he wished to say no more, and let the little girl depart without another word.
Carolyn May really could not understand it—at least, she could not immediately. It seemed the most natural thing in the world for Mr. Parlow to wish to see his daughter happy and content.
And the little girl knew that Miss Amanda was not happy. As she became better and better acquainted with the woman whom she thought so beautiful she was more and more convinced that the carpenter’s daughter was not of a cheerful spirit.
Mr. Jedidiah Parlow did not seem to care in the least. That must be, Carolyn May told herself, because he was under the influence of the Dark Spirit himself. He was always looking down. Like Mr. Stagg, the old carpenter was immersed in his daily tasks and seldom thought of anything else.
“Why, he doesn’t even know what it means to be happy!” thought Carolyn May. “He never looks up, or out, or away from his carpenter’s bench. Dear me! of course he isn’t interested in Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda’s being in love.”
That Mr. Parlow might have a selfish reason for desiring to keep his daughter and Joseph Stagg apart 124 did not enter the little girl’s mind. She was too young to appreciate such a situation as that might suggest.
After that Sunday walk, however, Carolyn May was never so much afraid of her uncle as before. Why, he had even called Prince “good dog”! Truly, Mr. Joseph Stagg was being transformed—if slowly.
He could not deny to himself that, to a certain extent, he was enjoying the presence of his little niece at The Corners. If he only could decide just what to do with the personal property of his sister Hannah and her husband down in the New York apartment. Never in his life had he been so long deciding a question. He could not bring himself to the point of writing the lawyer either to sublet the furnished apartment or to sell the furniture in it. Nor could he decide to go down himself to sort over Hannah’s little treasures, put the remainder in an auction room, and close up the apartment.
He had really loved Hannah. He knew it now, did Joseph Stagg, every time he looked at the lovely little child who had come to live with him at The Corners. Why! just so had Hannah looked when she was a little thing. The same deep, violet eyes, and sunny hair, and laughing lips——
Mr. Stagg sometimes actually found a reflection of the cheerful figure of “Hannah’s Car’lyn” coming between him and the big ledger over which he spent so many of his waking hours. 125
Once he looked up from the ledger—it was on a Saturday morning—and really did see the bright figure of the little girl standing before him. It was no dream or fancy, for old Jimmy, the cat, suddenly shot to the topmost shelf, squalling with wild abandon. Prince was nosing along at Carolyn May’s side.
“Bless me!” croaked Mr. Stagg. “That dog of yours, Car’lyn May, will give Jimmy a conniption fit yet. What d’you want down here?”
Carolyn May told him. A man had come to the house to buy a cow, and Aunty Rose had sent the little girl down to tell Mr. Stagg to come home and “drive his own bargain.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Stagg, locking the ledger in the safe, “I’ll hustle right out and tend to it. Don’t see why the man couldn’t have waited till noontime. Hey, you, Chet!”
Chet Gormley was not down in the cellar on this occasion. He appeared, wearing a much soiled apron, and with very black hands, having been sorting bolts.
“Here I am, Mr. Stagg,” said the boy cheerfully. “Mornin’, Car’lyn May. And how’s our friend?” and he ventured to pat Prince’s head, having become well acquainted with the dog by this time.
“Never mind that dog, Chet,” said Mr. Stagg. “You pay attention to me. Look out for the store. Don’t have any fooling. And——” 126
“Oh, uncle! may I stay, too? Me and Prince?” cried Carolyn May. “We’ll be good.”
“Pshaw! Yes, if you want to,” responded Mr. Stagg, hurrying away. He did not wish to be bothered with her just then. He desired to walk rapidly.
Chet went to wash his hands and remove the apron. If he was to act as clerk instead of chore boy, he certainly must “dress the part.” Besides, he did not want to be so dirty in Carolyn May’s presence. It seemed to Chet Gormley as though a boy must look his very best to be worthy of companionship with the radiant little vision that Mr. Stagg referred to as “Hannah’s Car’lyn.”
“My! your uncle’s changin’ more and more, ain’t he?” remarked Chet, the optimistic. “He does sometimes almost laugh, Car’lyn. I never see the beat of it!”
“Oh, is he?” cried the little child. “Is he looking up more? Do you think he is, Chet?”
“I positively do,” Chet assured her.
“And he hasn’t always got his nose in that old ledger?”
“Well—I wouldn’t say that he neglected business, no, ma’am,” said the boy honestly. “You see, we men have got to think of business mostly. But he sure is thinkin’ of some other things, too—ya-as, indeedy!”
“What things, Chet?” Carolyn May asked anxiously, hoping that Uncle Joe had shown some 127 recovered interest in Miss Amanda and that Chet had noticed it.
“Why—well—Now, you see, there’s that house you used to live in. You know about that?”
“What about it, Chet?” the little girl asked rather timidly. “Do you mean where I lived with my mamma and papa before they—they went away?”
“Yes. That’s the place.”
“It was an apartment,” explained Carolyn May.
“Yep. Well, Mr. Stagg ain’t never done nothin’ about it. He ain’t sold it, nor sold the furniture, nor nothin’. You know, Car’lyn May, your folks didn’t leave you no money.”
“Oh! Didn’t they?” cried Carolyn May, greatly startled.
“No. You see, I heard all about it. Mr. Vickers, the lawyer, came in here one day, and your uncle read a letter to him out loud. I couldn’t help but hear. The letter was from another lawyer and ’twas all about you and your concerns. I heard it all,” said the quite innocent Chet. He had never been taught that it was wrong to listen to other people’s private matters and to repeat them.
Carolyn May’s lips expressed a round “O” of wonder and surprise. Like his mother, Chet Gormley did not have to be urged when he was telling a bit of news. He was too deeply interested in it himself.
“And Mr. Vickers says: ‘So the child hasn’t 128 anything of her own, Joe?’” Chet went on. “And your uncle says: ‘Not a dollar, ’cept what I might sell that furniture for,’ And he hasn’t sold it yet, I know. He just can’t make up his mind to do it, it seems.
“My maw says Mr. Stagg always was that way—that he hates to let go of anything he once gets in his hands. But it ain’t that, I tell her,” declared Chet. “It’s just that he can’t make up his mind to sell them things that was your mother’s, Car’lyn May,” added the boy, with a deeper insight into Mr. Stagg’s character than one might have given him credit for possessing.
But Carolyn May had heard some news that impressed her more deeply than this idiosyncrasy of Joseph Stagg’s. It made her suddenly quiet, and she was glad a customer came into the store just then to draw Chet Gormley’s attention.
The child had never thought before about how the good things of life came to her—her food, clothes, and lodging. She had never heard much talk of ways and means at home between her father and mother. When she had come to her uncle, if she had thought about it at all, she had supposed her parents had left ample means for her support, even if Uncle Joe did “take her home and look out for her,” as she had suggested to him at their first interview.
But, now, Chet Gormley’s chattering had given her a new view of the facts of the case. There had 129 been no money left to spend for her needs. Uncle Joe was just keeping her out of charity!
“And Prince, too,” thought the little girl, with a lump in her throat. “He hasn’t got any more home than a rabbit! And Uncle Joe don’t really like dogs—not even now.
“Oh, dear me!” pursued Carolyn May. “It’s awful hard to be an orphan. But to be a poor orphan—just a charity one—is a whole lot worse, I guess.
“Of course, uncles aren’t like little girls’ real parents. Papas and mammas are glad, I guess, to pay for clothes and food and schoolbooks, and everything. But if a little girl is only a charity orphan, there aren’t really any folks that want to support her. I wonder if I ought to stay with Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose and make them so much trouble?”
The thought bit deep into the little girl’s very impressionable mind. The idle chatter of the not very wise, if harmless, Chet Gormley was destined to cause Carolyn May much perturbation of spirit.
She did not remain at the store until her uncle returned. Chet urged her to stay and go home with him for dinner when Mr. Stagg came back, but the little girl did not feel that she could do this. She wished to be alone and to think over this really tragic thing that faced her—the ugly fact that she was a “charity child.”
“And you’re a charity dog, Prince Cameron,” 130 she said aloud, looking down at the mongrel who walked sedately beside her along the country road. “I don’t expect you ever thought of it. You never did have any money, and you don’t really know who your parents are. You began being a charity dog so early that it hasn’t never mattered to you at all—that’s how I s’pose it must be.
“And, then, you were always loved. Papa loved you, and so did mamma; and, of course, I always loved you to death, Princey!” she cried, putting both arms suddenly around the dog’s neck.
“I—I guess that’s where it must be,” pursued Carolyn May. “If persons are only loved, it doesn’t matter if they are charity. The love takes all the sting out of being poor, I guess. But I don’t know if Uncle Joe just does love me or not.”
The little girl had loitered along the road until it was now dinner time. Indeed, Aunty Rose would have had the meal on the table twenty minutes earlier. Mr. Stagg had evidently remained at The Corners to sell the cow and eat dinner, too—thus “killing two birds with one stone.”
And here Carolyn May and Prince were at Mr. Parlow’s carpenter shop, just as the old man was taking off his apron preparatory to going in to his dinner. When Miss Amanda was away nursing, the carpenter ate at a neighbour’s table.
Now, Miss Amanda appeared on the side porch.
“Where are you going, little girl?” she asked, smiling. 131
“Home to Aunty Rose,” said Carolyn May bravely. “But I guess I’m late for dinner.”
“I didn’t know but something had happened,” said Mr. Parlow, going, heavy-footed, up the porch steps, “when I seen Joe Stagg hikin’ by more’n two hour ago.”
Carolyn May told about the man wanting to buy the cow. Mr. Parlow sputtered something from the depths of the wash-basin about the buyer “payin’ two prices for the critter, if he bought her of Joe Stagg,” but his daughter hastened to cover this by saying:
“Don’t you want to come in and eat with us, Carolyn May? Your own dinner will be cold.”
“Oh, may I?” cried the little girl. Somehow, she did not feel that she could face Uncle Joe just now with this new thought that Chet Gormley’s words had put into her heart. Then she hesitated, with her hand on the gate latch.
“Will there be some scraps for Prince?” she asked. “Or bones?”
“I believe I can find something for Prince,” Miss Amanda replied. “I owe him more than one good dinner, I guess, for killing that snake. Come in, and we will see.”
The little girl at once became more cheerful. She washed her hands and face at the pump bench, as had Mr. Parlow. She found his big spectacles for him (Miss Amanda declared he always managed to lose them when he took them off); and Carolyn May 132 wiped the lenses, too, before the carpenter set them on his nose again.
“There! I believe I kin see good for the first time to-day,” he declared. “I reckon I could have seen my work better all the forenoon if I’d had my specs polished up that-a-way. You air a spry young’un, Carolyn May.”
With this heart-warming word of approval, they went in to dinner. Miss Amanda was already “dishing up.” Unlike the custom at the Stagg house, the Parlows ate in the dining-room. The kitchen was small.
It seemed quite like old times to Carolyn May. Miss Amanda’s way of setting the table and serving the food was like her mamma’s way. There were individual bread-and-butter plates, and a knife for one’s butter and another for one’s meat, and several other articles of table furnishings that good Aunty Rose knew nothing about.
Carolyn May thought that Miss Amanda, in her house dress and ruffled apron, with her sleeves turned back above her dimpled, brown elbows, was prettier than ever. Miss Amanda had retained her youthfulness to a remarkable degree. Although she was quiet, there was a sparkle in her brown eyes, and a brisk note in her full, contralto voice that charmed the little girl. Her cheerful observations quite enlivened Carolyn May again.
Even Mr. Parlow proved to be amusing when he was “warmed up.” 133
“So you didn’t want to go home with Chet Gormley for dinner, eh?” he repeated. “Mebbe you thought Chet wouldn’t leave nothin’ for anybody else to eat?”
“Oh, no, Mr. Parlow, it wasn’t that!” Carolyn May said, shaking her head.
“But it might ha’ been,” chuckled the carpenter, “if you’d ever seen Chet eat.”
“Now, father!” admonished Miss Amanda.
“Never did see him eat, did you?” pursued the carpenter, still chuckling.
“No, sir.”
“Wal, he’s holler to his heels, and it’s an all-fired long holler, at that! Chet worked for Deacon Allbright, out on the South Road, ’fore he went to Stagg’s store. He only worked there part of a season, for he an’ the deacon couldn’t get along—no more’n twin brothers,” declared Mr. Parlow.
“Fust place, the deacon is rayther near—has enough on the table to eat, but jest enough, an’ that’s all. One o’ them tables where there ain’t no scrapin’s for ary cat or dog when the folks is through. But, to hear Deacon Allbright ask a blessin’ on it, you’d think ev’ry meal was a banquet.
“Wal, Chet was a boy, an’ he was tearin’ hungry, I reckon, when he got to the table, and the deacon’s long-winded prayers was too much for Chet’s appetite. With the dinner dished up and his plate full, that poor hungry little snipe had to wait while the deacon filled his mouth with big words. 134
“An’ one day at dinner, when they had some visitors,” chuckled Mr. Parlow, “it got too much for Chet Gormley. Ha’f-way through the deacon’s blessin’ the boy began to eat. I spect he couldn’t help it. The deacon didn’t have his eyes shut very tight, an’ he seen him, and frowned.
“But that didn’t make no manner o’ odds to Chet. He’d got a taste, and his appetite was whetted. He begun mowin’ away like a good feller. With righteous indignation, the deacon cleared his throat, and then ended his long prayer with this:
“An’ for what we air about to receive, and for what Chet Gormley has already received, let us be truly grateful.”
Carolyn May laughed politely, but she could sympathise with poor Chet. He did look hungry, he was so long and lathlike. So they chatted throughout the meal, and the little girl began to feel better in her mind.
“I think you are lovely, Miss Amanda,” she said as she helped wipe the dishes after the carpenter had gone back to the shop. “I shall always love you. I guess that anybody who ever did love you would keep right on doing so till they died! They just couldn’t help it!”
“Well, now, that is a compliment!” laughed Miss Amanda. “You think if I once made friends I couldn’t lose them?”
“I’m sure they’d always love you—just the same,” repeated Carolyn May earnestly. She had Uncle 135 Joe in mind now. “How could they help doing it? Even if—if they didn’t darest show it.”
“What’s that?” asked Miss Amanda, looking at her curiously.
“Yes, ma’am. Maybe they wouldn’t darest show it,” said the little girl confidently. “But they’d just have to love you. You must be a universal fav’rite, Miss Amanda.”
“Indeed?” said the woman, laughing again, yet with something besides amusement expressed in her countenance. “And how about you, Chicken Little? Aren’t you universally beloved, too?”
“Oh, I don’t expect so, Miss Amanda,” said the child. “I wish I was.”
“Why aren’t you?”
“I—I—Well, I guess it’s just because I’m not,” Carolyn May said desperately. “You see, after all, Miss Amanda, I’m only a charity child.”
“A what?” gasped Miss Amanda, almost dropping the salad dish she was herself wiping. “What are you, child?”
“I’m charity,” Carolyn May repeated, having hard work to choke back the tears. “You know—my papa and mamma—didn’t—didn’t leave any money for me.”
“Oh, my child!!” exclaimed Miss Amanda. “Who told you that?”
“I—I just heard about it,” confessed the little visitor.
“Not from Aunty Rose Kennedy?” 136
“Oh, no, ma’am.”
“Did that—Did your uncle tell you such a thing?”
“Oh, no! He’s just as good as he can be. But, of course, he doesn’t much like children. You know he doesn’t. And he just ’bominates dogs!
“So, you see,” added the child, “I am charity. I’m not like other little girls that’s got papas and mammas. Course, I knowed that before, but it didn’t ever seem—seem so hard as it does now,” she confessed, with a sob.
“My dear! my dear!” cried Miss Amanda, dropping on her knees beside the little girl, “don’t talk so! I know your uncle must love you.”
“Do you s’pose so?” queried Carolyn May, trying not to cry.
“He must! How could he help loving you? Immersed as Joseph Stagg is in business and his own selfish projects, he cannot be so hard-hearted as not to love his only sister’s child.”
Carolyn May clutched at her, suddenly and tightly.
“Oh, Miss Mandy!” she gasped, “don’t you s’pose he loves other folks, too? You know—folks he’d begun to love ever so long ago?”
The woman’s smooth cheeks burned suddenly, and she stood up.
“I’m ’most sure he’d never stop loving a person, if he’d once begun to love ’em,” said Carolyn May, with a high opinion of the faithfulness of Uncle 137 Joe’s character. “But how do I know he ever has loved me the least tiny bit?”
Miss Amanda was evidently impressed by this query. How could the child be sure? Mr. Stagg was not in the habit of revealing his deeper thoughts and feelings to the world. And, yet, if she would but admit it, Amanda Parlow believed that she, if any person could, rightly measured the hardware dealer’s character.
She sat down in a low rocking-chair and drew Carolyn May into her lap. The little girl sobbed a bit, but rested her head quietly on the woman’s bosom.
“Do you want to know if your Uncle Joe loves you?” she asked Carolyn May at last. “Do you?”
“Oh, I do!” cried the little girl.
“Then ask him,” advised Miss Amanda. “That’s the only way to do with Joe Stagg, if you want to get at the truth. Out with it, square, and ask him.”
“Oh, Miss Mandy! would you dare?” gasped Carolyn May.
“It doesn’t matter what I’d dare,” said the other drily. “You go ahead and ask him—and ask him point-blank.”
“I will do it,” Carolyn May said seriously. Afterwards she wondered if that were not the way, too, to settle the difficulty between Uncle Joe and pretty Miss Amanda.
After the child had gone the woman went back into the little cottage, and her countenance did not 138 wear the farewell smile that Carolyn May had looked back to see.
Gripping at her heart was the old pain she had suffered years before, and the conflict that had scared her mind so long ago was roused again. Time, if not the great physician for all wounds, surely dulls the ache of them. Miss Amanda’s emotions had been dulled during the years which had passed since she and Joseph Stagg had broken their troth. Carolyn May—surely with the best intentions in the world—had rasped this wound. The woman sat in the kitchen rocker and wrung her hands tightly as she thought.
How peacefully, how beautifully, her life had begun! She had bloomed into young womanhood and had met every prospect of happiness on its threshold. She had loved and had been loved. She had been as sure of her lover’s heart in those days as she was of her own.
Then had come the crash of all her hopes and all her believing. Too proud to demand an explanation of her lover, too much her father’s daughter to show Joseph Stagg what she really felt and suffered, Amanda Parlow had gone her way, not steeling her heart to tenderness, but striving to satisfy its longings with a work which, after all, she realised was a thankless task.
She lavished her sympathy on the afflicted; but, deep in her soul, she felt no satisfaction in this. She felt that the higher qualities of her nature were not 139 developed. She craved that satisfaction in life which a woman finds in a home, in a husband, and in little children.
“Oh, Joe! Oh, Joe! How could you?” she moaned, rocking herself to and fro. “How could you?”