Camp-meeting time was over, and the church at The Corners was to open for its regular Sunday services.
“Both Satan and the parson have had a vacation,” said Mr. Stagg, “and now they can tackle each other again and see which’ll get the strangle hold ’twixt now and revival time.”
“You should not say such things, especially before the child, Joseph Stagg,” admonished Aunty Rose.
Carolyn May, however, seemed not to have heard Uncle Joe’s pessimistic remark; she was too greatly excited by the prospect of Sunday-school. And the very next week-day school would begin!
By this first week in September the little girl was quite settled in her new home at The Corners. Prince was still a doubtful addition to the family, both Uncle Joe and Aunty Rose plainly having misgivings about him. But in regard to the little girl herself, the hardware merchant and the housekeeper were of one opinion, even though they did not admit it to each other. 84
Aunty Rose remained, apparently, as austere as ever, while Joseph Stagg was quite as much immersed in business as formerly. Yet there were times, when she and the child were alone, that Mrs. Kennedy unbent, in a greater or less degree. And on the part of Joseph Stagg, he found himself thinking of sunny-haired, blue-eyed “Hannah’s Car’lyn” with increasing frequency.
“Didn’t you ever have any little girls, Aunty Rose?” Carolyn May asked the housekeeper on one of these intimate occasions. “Or little boys? I mean of your very own.”
“Yes,” said Aunty Rose in a matter-of-fact tone. “Three. But only to have them in my arms for a very little while. Each died soon after coming to me. There was something quite wrong with them all, so the doctors said.”
“Oh, my dear! All three of them?” sighed Carolyn May.
“Two girls and a boy. Only one lived to be three months old. They are all buried behind the church yonder. My husband, Frank Kennedy, was not one of us. I married out of Meeting.”
The little girl knew that she meant her husband, long since dead, had not been a member of the congregation of Friends. She leaned against Mrs. Kennedy’s chair and tucked what was meant to be a comforting hand into that of Aunty Rose.
“Now I know something about you,” Carolyn May said softly. 85
“What is that?” asked the woman, her eyes smiling at the child if her lips did not.
“I know why it is you don’t know just how to cuddle little girls and show ’em how much you love ’em. All little children, I mean—not only me.”
Aunty Rose looked down at her with unchanging countenance, but Carolyn May looked fearlessly up into the woman’s face. No amount of grimness there could trouble the child now. For she knew something else about Aunty Rose. The housekeeper loved her!
“Yes, you didn’t have your little babies long enough to learn how to cuddle and snug ’em up. That’s it. You ought to learn, Aunty Rose.”
“What for?” asked Aunty Rose Kennedy rather sharply.
“Why! so you could take me up into your lap and hug and kiss me—just as my mamma used to do.”
“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, I guess, Car’lyn May,” said Aunty Rose. “Seems to me too much hugging spoils children.”
“Oh, no, indeed!” cried the little girl confidently. “Never! My papa used to snug me up lots. Do you know what he used to call me?”
“No.”
“It was just for fun, you know. Just a pet name. Snuggy. He ’most always called me that. ’Cause I liked to be snuggled up.”
Aunty Rose made no rejoinder. 86
The next morning early Carolyn May, with Prince, went over into the churchyard and found the three little stones in a row. She knew they must be the right ones, for there was a bigger stone, with the inscription, “Frank Kennedy, beloved spouse of Rose Kennedy,” upon it. “Spouse” puzzled the little girl at first, but she felt timid about asking Aunty Rose about it.
The names on the three little stones were Emeline, Frank, Jr., and Clarissa. Weeds and tall grass had begun to sprout about the tombstones in the old churchyard.
Carolyn May pulled the unsightly weeds from about the little, lozenge-shaped stones and about the taller one, and she dug out a mullen plant that grew on one of the graves.
While she was thus engaged, a tall man in black—looking rather “weedy” himself, if the truth were told—came across the graveyard and stood beside her. He wore a broad band of crêpe around his hat and on his arm, and was very grave and serious-looking.
“Who are you, little girl?” he asked, his voice being quite agreeable and his tone kindly.
“I’m Car’lyn May, if you please,” she replied, looking up at him frankly.
“Car’lyn May Stagg?” he asked. “You’re Mr. Stagg’s little girl? I’ve heard of you.”
“Car’lyn May Cameron,” she corrected seriously. “I’m only staying with Uncle Joe. He is my 87 guardian, and he had to take me, of course, when my papa and mamma were lost at sea.”
“Indeed?” returned the gentleman. “Do you know who I am?”
“I—I think,” said Carolyn May doubtfully, “that you must be the undertaker.”
For a moment the gentleman looked startled. Then he flushed a little, but his eyes twinkled.
“The undertaker?” he murmured. “Do I look like that?”
“Excuse me, sir,” said Carolyn May. “I don’t really know you, you know. Maybe you’re not the undertaker.”
“No, I am not. Though our undertaker, Mr. Snivvins, is a very good man.”
“Yes, sir,” said the little girl politely.
“I am the pastor here—your pastor, I hope,” he said, putting a kind hand upon her head.
“Oh, I know you now!” said Carolyn May brightly. “You’re the man Uncle Joe says is going to get a strangle hold on Satan, now that vacation is over.”
The Reverend Afton Driggs looked rather odd again. The shocking frankness of the child came pretty near to flooring him.
“I—ahem! Your uncle compliments me,” he said drily. “You don’t know that he is ready to do his share, do you?”
“His share?” repeated the puzzled little girl.
“Towards strangling the Evil One,” pursued the 88 minister, a wry smile curling the corners of his lips.
“Has he got a share in it, too?” asked Carolyn May.
“I think we all should have,” said the minister, looking down at her with returning kindliness in his glance. “Even little girls like you.”
Carolyn May looked at him quite seriously.
“Do you s’pose,” she asked him confidentially, “that Satan is really wicked enough to trouble little girls?”
It was a startling bit of new philosophy thus suggested, and Mr. Driggs shook his head in grave doubt. But it gave him something to think of all that day; and the first sermon preached in The Corners church that autumn seemed rather different from most of those solid, indigestible discourses that the good man was wont to drone out to his parishioners.
“Dunno but it is worth while to give the parson a vacation,” pronounced Uncle Joe at the dinner table. “Seems to me, his sermon this morning seemed to have a new snap to it. Mebbe he’ll give old Satan a hard rub this winter, after all.”
“Joseph Stagg!” said Aunty Rose admonishingly.
“I think he’s a very nice man,” said Carolyn May suddenly. “And I kep’ awake most of the time—you see, I heard poor Princey howling for me here, where he was tied up.” 89
“Hum!” ejaculated Mr. Stagg. “Which kept you awake—the dog or the minister?”
“Oh, I like Mr. Driggs very much,” the little girl assured him. “And he’s in great ’fliction, too, I am sure. He—he wears crêpe on his hat and sleeve.”
“Hum, so he does,” grunted Mr. Stagg. “He’s ’most always in mourning for somebody or something. I tell him his name ought to be Jeremiah instead of ‘Sweet Afton,’” which comment was, of course, lost on Carolyn May. But she said seriously:
“Do you s’pose, Uncle Joe, that he looks up enough? It does just seem to me as though poor Mr. Driggs must always be looking down instead of looking up to see the sunshine and the blue sky and—and the mountains, like my papa said you should.”
Uncle Joe was silent. Aunty Rose said, very briskly for her:
“And your papa was right, Car’lyn May. He was a very sensible man, I have no doubt.”
“Oh, he was quite a wonderful man,” said the little girl with full assurance.
It was on the following morning that school opened. The Corners district school was a red building, with a squatty bell tower and two front doors, standing not far up the road beyond the church. Carolyn May thought it a very odd-looking schoolhouse indeed. 90
The school she had attended in New York was a big brick-and-stone building, with wide corridors, well-ventilated rooms, a lovely basement gymnasium, a great hall, a roof garden in summer, part of which was enclosed with glass and steam-heated in winter.
Inside the little red schoolhouse were only rows of desks and “forms”—all marred, knife-marked, and ink-stained. The initials of the very “oldest inhabitant” of The Corners, Mr. Jackson Sprague, were carved in the lid of one desk. And the system of education followed in this school seemed to be now much what it had been in Mr. Sprague’s day.
Miss Minnie Lester taught the school, and although Miss Minnie looked very sharply through her glasses at one, Carolyn May thought she was going to love the teacher very much.
Indeed, that was Carolyn May’s attitude towards almost everybody whom she met. She expected to love and to be loved. Was it any wonder she made so many friends?
But this country school was conducted so differently from the city school that Carolyn May found herself quite puzzled on many points.
She had to divide her desk with another little girl, Freda Payne. Freda was a black-eyed, snappy little girl who could whisper out of the corner of her mouth without the teacher’s seeing her do it. She instructed Carolyn May from time to time regarding this new world the city child had entered into. 91
“Goodness me! didn’t you ever have a slate before?” she whispered to Carolyn May.
“No,” the little city girl confessed. “They don’t let us use them where I went to school. They make too much noise. And, then, they aren’t clean.”
“Clean! Course they’re clean, if you keep ’em clean,” declared Freda fiercely.
She showed the stranger the bottle of water she kept in her desk and the sponge with which she washed her slate.
“But the sponge is dirty. And it smells!” ventured Carolyn May, with a slight shudder. She had heard of germs, and the mussy-looking bit of sponge was not an attractive object.
“’Tain’t neither!” snapped Freda, making her denial positive with two negatives. “The boys spit on their slates and wipe ’em off on their jacket sleeves. That’s nasty. But us girls is clean.”
Carolyn May could not see it, however, and she ignored her own slate.
“You can’t use that pencil to write with on paper,” Freda caught her up with another admonition.
“That’s a slate pencil, if it has got wood around it.”
“Oh, dear me! Is it?” sighed the new pupil. “And I haven’t any other here, that I can see.”
“Well, I’ll lend you one. But don’t chew the lead. I hate to have folks chew my lead pencils.”
Carolyn May promised not to lunch off of the borrowed writing instrument.
But these were not all the pitfalls into which the 92 new pupil fell. The morning session was not half over before she wished for a drink of water. Of course, she asked her seatmate about it.
“You must raise your hand till Miss Minnie sees you. You’ll have to waggle your hand good to make her look, like enough,” added Carolyn May’s mentor. “Then, if she nods, you go back to the entry and get your drink.”
“Oh,” was the comment of the city child, and she immediately raised her hand. She did not have to “waggle” it much before Miss Minnie took notice of her.
“Well, Carolyn May?” she said.
“May—may I get a drink—please?” almost whispered Carolyn May, for she felt very much embarrassed.
Miss Minnie nodded. The little girl rose and went back to the entry on the girls’ side of the house. She looked all about this rather large square room without finding what she sought.
Against two walls were rows of pegs, on which were hung the coats and hats and dinner baskets, or dinner pails, of the pupils. In the corner was a shelf with a dingy bucket upon it and a rusty tin dipper hanging beside it.
Finally, Carolyn May came slowly back to her seat. Miss Minnie was busy with a class of older pupils. Freda asked—of course out of the corner of her mobile mouth:
“Did you get your drink?” 93
Carolyn May shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I didn’t see any faucet.”
“Faucet! What’s that for?” demanded the other little girl.
“Why, to get the water out of. Isn’t there a cold-water tank? And don’t you have paper cups?” demanded Carolyn May. “I didn’t see a thing like what we use in our school in New York.”
“Mercy me, Carolyn May!” fairly hissed Freda. “What are you talking about? We don’t have water laid on in the schoolhouse like they do at home. The pump’s in the yard. And whoever heard of paper cups? Why, paper won’t hold water!”
“Yes, they do,” the other little girl said eagerly. “They are all folded, and you take one and open it, and it holds water.”
“I think you’re fibbing!” declared her seatmate flatly.
“Oh!” gasped the new pupil, deeply hurt by the imputation.
“Yes, I do!” said Freda. “I’ve got a folding nickel cup. But who ever heard of paper cups? Everybody drinks out of the dipper.”
“That rusty old saucepan?” murmured Carolyn May in wonder.
“Huh, you’re awful finicky!” scoffed the other.
“Is the water in that pail on the shelf?”
“Yes. And don’t you spill none, or Miss Minnie will get mad at you.” 94
“I guess I’ll wait till I get home at noon recess,” said the little city girl. “I’m—I’m not so thirsty now.”
There proved, too, at the start, to be a little difficulty with Miss Minnie. Prince would not remain at home. He howled and whined for the first half of Monday morning’s session—as Aunty Rose confessed, almost driving her mad. Then he slipped his collar and tore away on Carolyn May’s cold trail.
He heard the children’s voices as they came out of the school at recess, and charged into the group in search of his little mistress. Carolyn May was just getting acquainted with the other pupils of her own age and was enjoying herself very much.
“Carolyn May,” pronounced Miss Minnie from the girls’ door-stoop, “you must take that horrid dog home at once! Hurry, or you will be late for the next class.”
Carolyn May was hurt by the teacher’s tone and words, and she knew Prince felt bad about it. He fairly slunk out of the schoolyard by her side, and some of the pupils laughed.
She pulled his collar up a hole tighter and begged Prince to be good and remain at home till noon. Yet, ten minutes after the session had again opened there sounded a rattling on the porch floor, and into the school marched the dog, having drawn the staple with which his chain had been fastened to the bole of the tree in Mr. Stagg’s back yard.
Miss Minnie was both alarmed and angry. Some 95 of the little girls shrieked and wept when Prince pranced over to Carolyn May’s seat.
“If you do not shut that awful dog up so that he cannot follow you here, Carolyn May, I shall speak to your uncle, Mr. Stagg, about it. Ugh, the ugly beast! Take him away at once!”
This was entirely too much for the little girl’s good temper. Her best friend, she felt, was maligned.
“Miss Minnie,” she said breathlessly, “I don’t see how you can say Prince is ugly. I think he is beautiful! And he is just as kind as he can be!”
She was so hurt and excited because her canine friend was so disliked that she did not even cry one tear! The teacher, remaining well out of reach of the dog, repeated her command.
“Take that dog straight home, and don’t let him get in this schoolhouse again! I will not allow the other children to be so frightened.”
So Carolyn May’s schooldays at The Corners did not begin very happily, after all. She had always loved and been loved by every teacher she had ever had before. But Miss Minnie seemed prejudiced against her because of Prince.
The little girl felt bad about this, but she was of too cheerful a temperament to droop for long under the pressure of any trouble. The other children liked her, and Carolyn May found plenty of playmates. She would never loiter with them, however, in the schoolyard at noon or after school. Instead, 96 she would hurry home and release poor Prince from duress.
It had been found impossible to keep the dog on a chain. He had almost choked himself once, and again had torn his ears getting his collar off. So the strong chicken coop under the big tree in the back yard which had first been his prison was again his cell while his little mistress was at school.
“Of course,” Carolyn May said to Aunty Rose, “we mustn’t let poor Princey know it’s because of Miss Minnie that he has to be shut up. He might take a dislike to her, just as she has to him; and that would be dreadful! If she’d only let him, I know he’d lie down right outside the schoolroom door while I was inside, and be just as good!”
But Miss Minnie remained obdurate. She did not like any dogs, and in her eyes Prince was especially objectionable.
One of the bigger girls made up a rhyme about Carolyn May and Prince, which began:
“Car’lyn May had a mongrel dog,
Its coat was not white like snow;
And everywhere that Car’lyn went
That dog was sure to go.
“It followed her to school one day,
Which made Miss Minnie sore;
But when Car’lyn tied the mongrel up,
It was bound to bark and roar.”
There were many more verses; the big girl was always adding new ones.
“I don’t mind it—much,” Carolyn May confessed to Aunty Rose, “but I wouldn’t like Prince to hear that poetry. His feelings might be hurt.”
It was on the last Friday in the month that something happened which quite changed Miss Minnie’s attitude towards “that mongrel.” Incidentally, The Corners, as a community, was fully awakened from its lethargy, and, as it chanced, like the Sleeping Beauty and all her retinue, by a Prince.
The school session on Friday afternoons was always shortened. This day Mr. Brady, one of the school trustees, came to review the school and, before he left, to pay Miss Minnie her salary for the month.
Carolyn May had permission from Aunty Rose to go calling that afternoon. Freda Payne, whom she liked very much, lived up the road beyond the schoolhouse, and she had invited the little city girl to come to see her. Of course, Prince had to be included in the invitation. Freda fully understood that, and Carolyn May took him on his leash.
They saw Miss Minnie at her desk when they went past the schoolhouse. She was correcting written exercises. Carolyn May secretly hoped that her own was much better than she feared it was.
Not far beyond the schoolhouse Prince began to growl, and the hairs stiffened on his neck. 98
“Whatever is the matter with you, Prince?” demanded Carolyn May.
In a moment she saw the cause of the dog’s continued agitation. A roughly dressed, bewhiskered man sat beside the road eating a lunch out of a newspaper. He leered at Carolyn May and said:
“I guess you got a bad dog there, ain’t ye, little girl?”
“Oh, no! He’s us’ally very polite,” answered Carolyn May. “You must be still, Prince! You see,” she explained, “he doesn’t like folks to wear old clothes. If—if you had on your Sunday suit, I’m quite sure he would not growl at you.”
“He wouldn’t, hey?” said the man hoarsely, licking his fingers of the last crumbs of his lunch. “An’ suppose a feller ain’t got no Sunday suit?”
“Why, then, I s’pose Prince wouldn’t ever let you come into our yard—if he was loose.”
“Don’t you let him loose now, little girl,” said the fellow, getting up hurriedly, and eyeing the angry dog askance.
“Oh, no, sir. We’re going visiting up the road. Come away, Prince. I won’t let him touch you,” she assured the man.
The latter seemed rather doubtful of her ability to hold the dog long, and he hobbled away towards the schoolhouse. Prince really objected to leaving the vicinity, and Carolyn May scolded him all the way up the road to Freda’s house.
Carolyn May had a very pleasant call—Freda’s 99 mother even approved of Prince—and it was an hour before the two started for home. In sight of the schoolhouse Prince gave evidence again of excitement.
“I wonder what is the matter with you now,” Carolyn May began, when suddenly she sighted what had evidently so disturbed the dog.
A man was crouching under one of the schoolhouse windows, bobbing up now and then to peer in. It was the man whom they had previously seen beside the road.
“Hush, Prince!” whispered little Carolyn May, holding the dog by the collar.
She, too, could see through the open window. Miss Minnie was still at her desk. She had finished correcting the pupils’ papers. Now she had her bag open and was counting the money Mr. Brady had given her.
“O-o-oh!” breathed Carolyn May, clinging to the eager dog’s collar.
The man at the window suddenly left his position and slipped around to the door. In a moment he appeared in the schoolroom before the startled teacher.
Miss Minnie screamed. The man, with a rough threat, darted forward to seize her purse.
Just then Carolyn May unsnapped the leash from Prince’s collar and let him go.
“Save Miss Minnie, Princey!” she cried after the charging dog. 100
Prince did not trouble about the door. The open window, through which the tramp had spied upon the schoolmistress, was nearer. He went up the wall and scrambled over the sill with a savage determination that left no doubt whatever in the tramp’s mind.
With a yell of terror, the fellow bounded out of the door and tore along the road and through The Corners at a speed never before equalled in that locality by a Knight of the Road.
Prince lost a little time in recovering his footing and again getting on the trail of the fleeing tramp. But he was soon baying the fellow past the blacksmith shop and the store.
The incident called the entire population of The Corners, save the bedridden, to the windows and doors. For once the little, somnolent village awoke, and, as before pointed out, a Prince awoke it.
Hiram Lardner, the blacksmith, declared afterwards that “you could have played checkers on that tramp’s coat tails, providin’ you could have kep’ up with him.”
When Prince came back from the chase, however, the tramp’s coat tails would never serve as a checkerboard, for the dog bore one of them in his foam-flecked jaws as a souvenir.