Such was the introduction of Carolyn May to The Corners. It was not a very exciting life she had entered into, but the following two or three weeks were very full.
Aunty Rose insisted upon her being properly fitted out with clothing for the summer and fall. Mrs. Price sent on by express certain of the child’s possessions that would be useful, but Aunty Rose declared the local seamstress must make a number of dresses for Carolyn May. The latter had to go to the dressmaker’s house to be fitted, and that is how she became acquainted with Chet Gormley’s mother.
Mrs. Gormley was helping the dressmaker, and they both made much of Carolyn May. Aunty Rose allowed her to go for her fittings alone—of course, with Prince as a companion—so, without doubt, Mrs. Gormley, who loved a “dish of gossip,” talked more freely with the little girl than she would have done in Mrs. Kennedy’s presence.
One afternoon the little girl appeared at the dressmaker’s (it was only two houses nearer the centre of Sunrise Cove than the Parlow cottage) 62 with Prince’s collar decorated with short, curly shavings. This Elizabethan ruff may or may not have caused the dog to look “extinguished,” as Carolyn May pointed out, but it certainly made him uncomfortable. However, he endured this dressing-up to please his little mistress.
“I take it you’ve stopped at Jed Parlow’s shop, child,” said Mrs. Gormley with a sigh.
“Yes, ma’am,” returned Carolyn May. “Do you know, he’s very lib’ral.”
“‘Lib’ral’?” repeated Mrs. Gormley. “I never heard of old Jed Parlow bein’ accused of that before. Did you, Mrs. Maine?”
Mrs. Maine was the dressmaker; and she bit off her words when she spoke, much as she bit off her threads.
“No. I never—heard Jed Parlow—called that—no!” declared Mrs. Maine emphatically.
“Why, yes,” little Carolyn May said quite eagerly, “he gives me all the shavings I want. I—I guess folks don’t just understand about Mr. Parlow,” she added, remembering what her uncle had first said about the carpenter. “He is real lib’ral.”
“It’s a wonder to me,” drawled Mrs. Gormley, “that he has a thing to do with a certain party, Mrs. Maine, considerin’ how his daughter feels towards that certain party’s relation. What d’you think?”
“I guess—there’s sumpin—to be said—on both sides—o’ that controversy,” responded the dressmaker. 63
“Meanin’ that mebbe a certain party’s relative feels just as cross as Mandy Parlow?” suggested Mrs. Gormley.
“Yep,” agreed the other woman, biting off her answer and her thread at the same instant.
Carolyn May listened, much puzzled. She wondered just who “a certain party” could be. It sounded very mysterious.
Mrs. Maine was called away upon some household task, and Mrs. Gormley seemed to change the subject of conversation.
“Don’t your uncle, Mr. Stagg, ever speak to you about Mandy Parlow?” she asked the little girl.
Carolyn May had to think about this before answering. Then she remembered.
“Oh, yes,” she said brightly.
“He does? Do tell!” exclaimed Mrs. Gormley eagerly. “What does he say?”
“Why, he says her name is Miss Amanda Parlow.”
Mrs. Gormley flushed rather oddly and glanced at the child with suspicion. But little Carolyn May was perfectly frank and ingenuous.
“Humph!” ejaculated Chet’s mother. “He never says nothing about bein’ in love with Mandy, does he? They was goin’ with each other steady once.”
The little girl looked puzzled.
“When folks love each other they look at each other and talk to each other, don’t they?” she asked. 64
“Well—yes—generally,” admitted Mrs. Gormley.
“Then my Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda Parlow aren’t in love,” announced Carolyn May with confidence, “for they don’t even look at each other.”
“They used to. Why, Joseph Stagg and Mandy Parlow was sweethearts years and years ago! Long before your mother left these parts, child.”
“That was a long time ’fore I was borned,” said the little girl wonderingly.
“Oh, yes. Everybody that went to The Corners’ church thought they’d be married.”
“My Uncle Joe and Miss Mandy?”
“Yes.”
“Then, what would have become of Aunty Rose?” queried Carolyn May.
“Oh, Mrs. Kennedy hadn’t gone to keep house for Mr. Stagg then,” replied Mrs. Gormley. “He tried sev’ral triflin’ critters there at the Stagg place before she took hold.”
Carolyn May looked at Mrs. Gormley encouragingly. She was very much interested in Uncle Joe and Miss Amanda Parlow’s love affair.
“Why didn’t they get married—like my papa and mamma?” she asked.
“Oh, goodness knows!” exclaimed Mrs. Gormley. “Some says ’twas his fault and some says ’twas hern. And mebbe ’twas a third party’s that I might mention, at that,” added Mrs. Gormley, pursing up her lips in a very knowing way. 65
Here was another mysterious “party”! Carolyn May wondered if this “party” could be related to the “certain party” who seemed so familiar to both of the “dressmaking ladies.”
“You couldn’t get nothin’ out of either Mr. Stagg or Mandy about it, I don’t believe. They’re both as tight-mouthed as clams,” pursued Mrs. Gormley. “But one day,” she said, growing confidential, “it was in camp-meeting time—one day somebody seen Joe Stagg drivin’ out with another girl—Charlotte Lenny, that was. She was married to a man over in Springdale long ago. Mr. Stagg took Charlotte to Faith Camp Meeting.
“Then, the very next week, Mandy went with Evan Peckham to a barn dance at Crockett’s, and nobody ain’t ever seen your uncle and Mandy Parlow speak since, much less ever walk together.
“Now stand up, child, and let’s see if this frock fits. I declare, your uncle is a-fittin’ you out right nice.”
If the truth were told, Uncle Joe did not agree to the making of all these “frocks and furbelows” for Hannah’s Car’lyn without the filing of some objections.
“I tell you, Aunty Rose,” he said to his austere housekeeper (and it took courage for him to say this), “I tell you the child will get it into her head that she can always have all these things. Her father didn’t leave anything—scarcely any money at all. I don’t suppose, if I sell out that flat, I’d get a hundred 66 dollars for it. How are all these frocks and furbelows going to be paid for?”
“You can stop in at the First National, Joseph Stagg, and draw enough out of my account to pay for them,” said Aunty Rose placidly.
“Huh? I guess not!” ejaculated the hardware dealer angrily. “I can pay my just debts yet, I hope—and them of Hannah’s Car’lyn, too. If there’s money got to be spent on the child, I’m the one to spend it.”
“Then don’t talk as though you were afraid the sheriff was going to tack a notice on your store door to-morrow morning,” returned the old lady tartly. To herself she observed, out of his hearing: “It will do Joseph Stagg good to learn to spend money, as well as to make it.”
But Mr. Stagg did not take kindly to this, nor to other innovations that the coming of Carolyn May to The Corners brought about. Especially was he outspoken about Prince. That faithful follower of “Hannah’s Car’lyn” he failed to discover any use for or any good in.
Prince was a friendly creature, and he did not always display good judgment in showing his affection. In his doggish mind he could not see why Mr. Stagg did not like him; he approved of Mr. Stagg very much indeed.
One particularly muddy day he met the returning hardware merchant at the gate with vociferous barkings and a plain desire to implant a welcoming tongue 67 on the man’s cheek. He succeeded in muddying Mr. Stagg’s suit with his front paws, and almost cast the angry man full length into a mud puddle.
“Drat the beast!” ejaculated Mr. Stagg. “I’d rather have an epileptic fit loose around here than him. Now, look at these clo’es! I declare, Car’lyn, you’ve jest got to tie that mongrel up—and keep him tied!”
“All the time, Uncle Joe?” whispered the little girl.
“Yes, ma’am, all the time! If I find him loose again, I’ll tie a bag of rocks to his neck and drop him in the deepest hole in the brook. He’d oughter been drowned by that man when he was a pup.”
After this awful threat, Prince lived a precarious existence, and his mistress was much worried for him. Never, when Uncle Joe was at home, could the dog have a run. Aunty Rose said nothing, but she saw that both the little girl and her canine friend were very unhappy.
Mrs. Kennedy, however, had watched Mr. Joseph Stagg for years. Indeed, she had known him as a boy, long before she had closed up her own little cottage around on the other road and come to the Stagg place to save the hardware merchant from the continued reign of those “trifling creatures” of whom Mrs. Gormley had spoken.
As a bachelor, Joseph Stagg had been preyed upon by certain female harpies so prevalent in a country community. Some had families whom they 68 partly supported out of Mr. Stagg’s larder; some were widows who looked upon the well-to-do merchant as a marrying proposition.
Aunty Rose Kennedy did not need the position of Mr. Stagg’s housekeeper and could not be accused of assuming it from mercenary motives. Over her back fence she had seen the havoc going on in the Stagg homestead after Hannah Stagg went to the city and Joseph Stagg’s final female relative had died and left him alone in the big house.
One day the old Quaker-like woman could stand no more. She put on her sunbonnet, came around by the road to the front door of the Stagg house, which she found open, and walked through to the rear porch on which the woman who then held the situation of housekeeper was wrapping up the best feather bed and pillows in a pair of the best home-spun sheets, preparatory to their removal.
The neighbours enjoyed what followed. Aunty Rose came through the ordeal as dignified and unruffled as ever; the retiring incumbent went away wrathfully, shaking the dust of the premises from her garments as a testimony against “any sich actions.”
When Mr. Stagg came home at supper time he found Aunty Rose at the helm and already a different air about the place.
“Goodness me, Aunty Rose,” he said, biting into her biscuit ravenously, “I was a-going down to the 69 mill-hands’ hotel to board. I couldn’t stand it no longer. If you’d stay here and do for me, I’d feel like a new man.”
“You ought to be made over into a new man, Joseph Stagg,” the woman said sternly. “A married man.”
“No, no! Never that!” gasped the hardware dealer.
“If I came here, Joseph Stagg, it would cost you more money than you’ve been paying these no-account women.”
“I don’t care,” said Mr. Stagg recklessly. “Go ahead. Do what you please. Say what you want. I’m game.”
Thereby he had put himself into Aunty Rose’s power. She had renovated the old kitchen and some of the other rooms. If Mr. Stagg at first trembled for his bank balance, he was made so comfortable that he had not the heart to murmur. And, besides, he believed in keeping his word. He had declared himself “game.”
But that had all happened years before. This matter of expense for Hannah’s Car’lyn was an entirely different matter. Moreover, the mischievousness of Prince, the mongrel, was really more than Mr. Joseph Stagg thought he was called upon to bear.
Of course, Carolyn May let Prince run at large when she was sure Uncle Joe was well out of sight of the house, but she was very careful to chain him 70 up again long before her uncle was expected to return.
Prince had learned not to chase anything that wore feathers; Aunty Rose herself had to admit that he was a very intelligent dog and knew what punishment was for. But how did he know that in trying to dig out a mole he would be doing more harm than good?
The mole in question lived under a piece of rock wall near the garden fence. When let free for his first morning run, Prince had been much interested in the raised roofs of the tunnels he found in the sod down there.
Aunty Rose called the mole “a pesky creature.” Uncle Joe had threatened to bring home a trap with which to impale it. How should Prince know—and this was the question Carolyn May asked afterwards—that he would not be considered a general benefactor if he managed to capture the little blind nuisance?
At any rate, when Uncle Joe came home to dinner on one particular Saturday he walked down to the corner of the garden fence, and there saw the havoc Prince had wrought. In following the line of the mole’s last tunnel he had worked his way under the picket fence and had torn up two currant bushes and done some damage in the strawberry patch.
“And the worst of it is,” grumbled the hardware dealer, “he never caught the mole. That mongrel really isn’t worth a bag of dornicks to sink him in 71 the brook. But that’s what he’s going to get this very evening when I come home. I won’t stand for him a day longer.”
Carolyn May positively turned pale as she crouched beside the now chained-up Prince, both arms about his rough neck. He licked her cheek. Fortunately, he could not understand everything that was said to him, therefore the pronouncement of this terrible sentence did not agitate him an atom.
But his little mistress held to him tightly, dry sobs shaking her slight form. Uncle Joe went in to dinner with little appreciation of the horror and despair that filled the soul of Hannah’s Car’lyn, out under the tree in the back yard.