Back Aa

Mothering on Perilous

<h2><abbr title="Three">III</abbr> ACQUIRING A FAMILY</h2> <h3>Sunday.</h3> Sure enough, the eight new boys were gone before sun-up yesterday, only Philip and Geordie remain, and gardening is at a standstill. All day yesterday and to-day I have thought of the runaways, and wondered if there is any way of making them stay and take advantage of their opportunities. Our young manual-training teacher, and only man, lives at the cottage with the dozen small boys; but, being a man, probably he cannot give them a home feeling, and get them rooted. Only a woman could do that. If I had the courage and cheerfulness, I would go over there and live with those little boys and try to make them feel at home. But it is useless to think of such a thing,—my sadness would repel them,—they would run away faster than ever. <h3>Monday Night.</h3> The heads said to me this morning, "We shall give up trying to keep little boys in the school,—it is useless, though we need them almost as much as they need us. If there were just some one who loves children to stay there and take a real interest in them, they might be satisfied to remain." "I love children," I said, "but I would not think of inflicting myself upon them,—I am not cheerful enough." "Cheerful!" they exclaimed, "why, everybody is cheerful here,—no time for anything else! Suppose you try it!" "I really couldn't think of it," I replied; but, fifteen minutes later, under the spell of their optimism, I was moving over from the big house to the small boys' cottage, from which the manual-training teacher was departing to join the big boys over the workshop. This small cottage is the building in which the work began here five years ago. It is separated from the rest of the school-grounds by a small branch; in its back yard is the wash-house, and beyond this the stable lot slopes down to Perilous Creek. There are four comfortable rooms, neatly papered with magazine pages,—a sitting-room, two bedrooms for the boys, and one for me. The woodwork in mine being battered, I sent Philip down to the nearby village for paint. He returned with a rich, rosy red, and began laying it on my mantelpiece with gusto, while Geordie Yonts put shelves in a goods-box for my bureau. Never have I seen a small chunk of a boy with such a large, ingratiating smile as Geordie's. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image3th.png" width-obs="184" height-obs="300" alt="A woman is standing in front of a horse and pushing Keats forward. Keats is covering his face with his left arm, and keeping his right hand in his pocket. Hen, just more than half the Keats' height, is standing closest to Miss Loring, looking on curiously, holding a twig in his right hand. Miss Cecilia Loring is standing by the gate in the fence welcoming the boys in. There's a large tree in the background seemingly outside of the fenced-in area." title="'Here is Keats back again,—he has got to stay with you women and get l'arning if it kills him dead!'" /> <q class="caption">'Here is Keats back again,—he has got to stay with you women and get l'arning if it kills him dead!'</q></div> In the midst I heard a call from the road, and saw at the gate a nag bearing a woman and two small boys. "Here is Keats back again,—he has got to stay with you women and get l'arning if it kills him dead!" declared his Spartan mother; "and I brung Hen this time, to keep him company,—he haint so tender-hearted." She sternly pushed the weeping Keats off the nag, and he flung himself down in the doorway, howling dismally. But little Hen, who cannot be more than nine, walked composedly into the house, looking about him with interest. He stopped before the almost-completed mantelpiece. "Gee, woman," he said, "that 'ere's the dad-burn prettiest fireboard ever I seed!" "If you like it, you shall have the same in your room, and all the rooms," I said. "Suppose you and Keats go down right now and buy me a gallon more of this paint. And I think we need some candy, too,—say a quarter's worth of peppermint sticks." The tears miraculously left Keats's face, they hurried off, and later we had a feast of candy flavored with paint. <h3>Tuesday.</h3> A terrible night with fleas, and up at five (awful hour!) to teach the boys to make their beds and clean their rooms. Hen's first question was, "Woman, what's your name?" "Loring," I replied. "Haint you got nary nother?" "Yes, Cecilia." "Gee-oh, that's some shakes of a name. How old air you, Cecilia?" "I am old enough to have a Miss before my name always," I said, severely; "you must call me Miss Loring, just as people call your mother Mrs. Salyer." "They don't," he replied, "they call her Nervesty." "All these-here fotch-on women gits called Miss, son," admonished Geordie; "you haint used to their quare ways yet." Later, there was another halloo from the road, and as Joab Atkins slid off the end of a mule, his father remarked to me, with extreme gentleness, that he allowed Joab would be willing to pick a chicken now. Mr. Atkins is a handsome man, with perfect manners. When he said he had a younger son over on Rakeshin he would like to bring us, little Iry, ten years old, a "pure scholar, that knows the speller from kiver to kiver," I told him to bring Iry at once. Just before supper I was pleased to see another runaway returned,—Nucky Marrs, of Trigger Branch. But before his father was out of sight up the road, he calmly announced to me that he didn't aim to stay, and that neither his paw nor anybody else was able to make him. I believed him,—one glance at his vivid face and combative eyes convinced me. "Very well," I said, "if you cannot be happy, of course you must go. But it will hurt my feelings a good deal,—however, don't think of them." "What difference is it to you?" he demanded. "Only this,—I have lost everybody I love in the world, and have come to the cottage to live with you boys because I am so terribly lonely. If you can't like me well enough to stay, life will seem a failure." He pondered a long while, frowning a little, with large gray eyes fixed on my face. Then he said at last, "I don't know as I'll go right off." "Oh, thank you," I replied, gratefully. From seven to eight we have study-hour at the cottage. To-night Geordie watched the clock-hands for twenty minutes before they reached eight, then slammed his geography shut, and commanded, "Tell about the Marrs-Cheever war!" All the boys woke up at once, and Nucky began, slowly: "The Marrses has lived on Trigger ever sence allus-ago. My great-great-great-grandpaw fit under Washington and got a big land-grant out here and come out from Old Virginny. And the Cheevers they has allus lived down the branch from us. More'n thirty year' gone, Israel Cheever he had a new survey made, and laid claim to a piece of our bottom where the lands jines; and him and his brothers tore down the dividing fence and sot it back up on our land; and the next week, my grandpaw and his boys sot it down where it belonged, and while they was at it, the Cheevers come up and they all fit a big battle. And ever sence, first one side and then t'other has been setting back the fence, and gen'ally a few gets kilt and a lot wounded. Six year gone, paw got his three brothers kilt and a leg shot off and a couple of bullets in his lung, in a battle, and haint been able to do a lick of work sence. Blant, my big brother, wa'n't but fifteen then, and he's had to make the living ever sence, with me to help him. And for five year' before he got good-grown, the Cheevers they helt our land, and Blant he laid low and put in all his spare time at gun practice. Then last fall, on the day Blant was twenty, he rounded up Rich Tarrant and some more of his friends, and Uncle Billy's boys and me, and we tore up the fence, and sot it down on the old line where it ought to be; and the Cheevers, Israel and his ten boys, got wind of it, and come up, and there was the terriblest battle you ever seed." "I heared about it," interrupted Geordie, "I heared Blant was the quickest on the trigger of any boy ever lived, and laid out the Cheevers scandlous." "He kilt two of 'em dead that day, and wounded five or six more pretty bad," resumed Nucky, "and the fighting it went on, off and on, all winter. Every now and then, of a moonlight night, the Cheever boys would start to tear down the fence and set it back up; but we kep' a constant lookout, and was allus ready for 'em. Finally they got discouraged trying to fight Blant in the open, and tuck to ambushing. Three of 'em laywayed Blant under a cliff one day in April, and Elhannon got kilt, and Todd and Dalt so bad wounded they left the country and went West. They are the youngest and feistiest of the lot,—t'other boys is mostly married and settled, and not anxious to risk their lives again' Blant's gun no more—and sence they went off, we have had a spell of peace." "What do you do in the war?" "Oh, I keep a lookout, and spy around, and stand guard over the fence with my gun." "Gee, I wisht I had a war in my family!" sighed Philip, fervently. <h3>Thursday.</h3> Two more nights of suffering,—Philip said to me this morning, "I heared you up a-fleaing four or five times in the night." When I found that several panels of the back fence had been washed away by the "tide" of week-before-last, and that neighborhood hogs were coming in and out at will, and making their beds under my very room, I did not wonder. This morning at the breakfast table, Philip's face was so dingy that I inquired, "Have you washed your face?" "Yes," was his reply. Something moved me to inquire further, "When?" "Day before yesterday," he replied, with perfect nonchalance. This is dangerous,—already I can see that Philip is to be, like his illustrious namesake "the glass of fashion and the mold of form," and that the younger boys, will be only too ready to omit disagreeable rites if he does. Poor Keats, who in the matter of beauty certainly lives up to his name, really seems inconsolable. While he cleans the chicken-yard in the mornings, my heart is wrung by hearing him chant the most dismal of songs, <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> Oh bury me not, on the broad pa-ra-a-ree, Where the wild ky-oats will holler over me! </div> </div> and in the hour after supper, when the others play out of doors, he sits with me, telling about Nervesty and the four little children at home, and the spell of typhoid all the family had last year, when his father and little sister Dicey died, and how "Me 'n' Nervesty and Hen" have run the farm since then, tending fifteen acres of corn, besides clearing new-ground, and other labors. Poor little man, it is the knowledge that he is really needed at home, as much as homesickness, that preys on his mind,—his mother is making a noble sacrifice to let him stay in the school. It seems to comfort him somewhat to weep on a sympathetic bosom. Peppermint candy, too, is not without its efficacy. To-day came Taulbee Bolling, a dignified boy of thirteen, with a critical eye, and later, Mr. Atkins again, with the "pure scholar" in tow. Iry is a thin, puny-looking mite of ten, much too small for his trousers. He said "Yes sir" and "No sir" most politely when speaking to me, and carried an old blue-back speller under one arm. So great was my curiosity that I opened the book at once. The result was amazing,—"genealogical" and "irreconcilable" were child's-play to him, "incomprehensibility," a bagatelle. It was interesting to see his scared little face brighten as he climbed up and down the hard words and beheld my growing astonishment. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image4th.png" width-obs="227" height-obs="169" alt="Mr. Atkins is sitting atop a horse looking on as Miss Cecilia Loring is quizzing Iry from a book she's holding open in her right hand. Iry looks very confident with a hat in his left hand and his right hand in his pocket. In the immediate background is a small one-story building. A fence runs from it, against which Miss Loring is leaning. A bare leaf-less tree is just inside the fenced area." title="'Genealogical' and 'irreconcilable' were child's play to him, 'incomprehensibility,' a bagatelle." /> <q class="caption">'Genealogical' and 'irreconcilable' were child's play to him, 'incomprehensibility,' a bagatelle.</q></div> This afternoon while I had the boys mending the back fence, Geordie, who had been left to scrub my floor with carbolic acid solution, came back to the stable-lot bringing a new boy, whom with a flourish of his brush he introduced as follows: "Here's the boy that fit the marshal that kilt his paw. And one time he seed the world and rid on a railroad train. Killis Blair's the name he goes by." Killis is a handsome blonde boy of twelve, not unaware of his double importance. To-night after study-hour there was another catechism by Geordie. "Tell about ridin' on the railroad train!" he ordered. Killis began: "The month before paw got kilt last spring, the officers was a-watching him so clost he was afeared to sell any liquor round about home, so me and him we tuck a barrel acrost the mountains to Virginia, where there's mines, and it would fetch a good price. We loaded fodder on top. The going was awful sorry, and the steers was three days at it. When I got there, I seed men walking round with their hats afire, and went down to the railroad-train and rid on the engine." "What did it look like?" demanded Philip, breathlessly. "Sort of like a saw-mill sot up on wheels." "I'd sooner die as not to see one!" sighed Philip. "I aim to see one when I'm a perfessor," remarked Taulbee. "I bet I see a hundred when I go to be a soldier," said Nucky. "I'd ruther see a railroad-train as to eat!" declared Geordie, and this appeared to be the prevailing sentiment, except with Keats, who said dismally that he didn't crave to see anything that would take him fifty mile' from Nervesty and home. After reflection, Hen agreed with him. "Listen at them two homesicks!" remarked Philip, cuttingly. Geordie folded his fat hands. "Now you might tell about your paw gettin' kilt," he said. Killis said that the officers had been spying around on his "paw" a long time for "stilling" liquor, but that he was too smart for them, and moved the still about, and made liquor by night, and also frightened them by sending word to the marshal he would never be taken alive. That one night they had just "drug" the still up to a new place in the hollow, and he and his father and uncles were sitting around the fire, when there was a yell, and the marshal and a deputy burst in, shooting as they came. That his uncles returned the fire, but before his father could do so, he fell, with a dreadful wound through the stomach. That he himself, when he saw his father fall, snatched a hunting-knife and cut the marshal in the forearm with it as he was running out. The last item he told without bragging, and quite as a matter of course. The other boys gave him looks of approval and envy, all save Nucky. "By Heck, I wouldn't have stopped with his arm," he declared. "I haint," replied Killis, quietly. Evidently I have two heroes on my hands! <h3>Saturday Night.</h3> Moses and Zachariah, two more runaways, were returned this morning, and this afternoon arrived my twelfth boy,—the last, since they cannot sleep more than three in a bed! Jason is a beautiful child of seven, very funny in his little long trousers. I wanted him at sight, but hesitated on account of his youth. When I heard from his father, however, that he had no mother now, I took him at once. Before leaving, Mr. Wyatt said that Jason was right pyeert about learning, and, he added candidly, about meanness too, and he hoped I would not spar' the rod. The rod indeed,—I threw a protecting arm around the angelic-looking child at the word. Indeed, not a few of the parents have warned me against wild and warlike tendencies in their offspring,—Mr. Marrs, for instance, said that Nucky was a master scholar when he could leave off fighting long enough to study his books, and others have admonished me to hold a tight rein. Their warnings are needless,—everything so far has gone with surprising smoothness, confirming my theory that in an atmosphere of love and gentleness the martial traits will be atrophied. To-day things were more tumultuous, Saturday being combined wash-and-cleaning-day at the school, and a hard time for all hands. Ten of the girls came over from the big house to our back yard, and there, assisted by one of my boys, who kept up fires under the big kettles and carried water from the well, did the washing for the entire school; while in every building on the place cleaning, scrubbing and window-washing were in full blast. I was sorry to have to punish little Hen to-night for calling it a "hell of a day." <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.