Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 3

"Now, Papa Sherwood, I don't mean that kind of fis.h.i.+ng at all!" cried the little woman gaily. "We are going to fish for employment for you, perhaps for a new home."

"Oh!" gasped Nan. The thought of deserting the little cottage on Amity Street was a dreadful shock.

"We must face that possibility," said her mother firmly. "It may be.

Tillbury will see very hard times now that the mills are closed. Other mills and shops will follow suit."

"Quite true, Momsey," agreed the husband and father.

"I am a very logical person, am I not?" said the smiling little lady.

"But the fis.h.i.+ng?" cried Nan curiously.

"Ah, yes. I am coming to that," said her mother. "The fis.h.i.+ng, to be sure! Why, we are going to write letters to just everybody we know, and some we only know by hearsay, and find out if there isn't a niche for Papa Sherwood somewhere outside Tillbury."

"So we can!" cried Nan, clapping her hands.

"I am afraid there is general depression in my line of business everywhere," suggested Mr. Sherwood. "For some years the manufacturers have been forcing cotton goods upon a false market. And the recent attempt to help the cotton growers by boosting the price of raw cotton will come near to ruining the mills and mill workers. It is always so. In an attempt to benefit one cla.s.s of the people another cla.s.s is injured."

"Now, never mind politics, sir!" cried his little wife. "We poor, weak women aren't supposed to understand such things. Only when Nan and I get the vote, and all the other millions of women and girls, we will have no cla.s.s legislation. 'The greatest good for the greatest number' will be our motto."

Mr. Sherwood only smiled. He might have pointed out that in that very statement was the root of all cla.s.s legislation. He knew his wife's particular ideas were good, however, her general political panacea was rather doubtful. He listened thoughtfully as she went on:

"Yes, we must fish for a new position for papa. We may have to go away from here. Perhaps rent the house. You know, we have had good offers for it."

"True," admitted Mr. Sherwood.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Nan, but below her breath so that Momsey and Papa Sherwood did not hear the sigh.

"I am going to write to Cousin Adair MacKenzie, in Memphis. He is quite prominent in business there," pursued Mrs. Sherwood. "We might find a footing in Memphis."

Mr. Sherwood looked grave, but said nothing. He knew that the enervating climate of the Southern river city would never do for his wife. Change of climate might benefit her greatly; the doctors had all said so of late; but not that change.

"Then," continued Nan's mother, "there is your brother, Henry, up in Michigan."

"Oh! I remember Uncle Henry," cried Nan. "Such a big, big man!"

"With a heart quite in keeping with the size of his body, honey," her mother quickly added. "And your Aunt Kate is a very nice woman. Your uncle has lumber interests. He might find something for your father there."

"I'll write to Hen, Jessie," Mr. Sherwood said decisively. "But a lumber camp is no place for you. Let's see, his mail address is Hobart Forks, isn't it? Right in the heart of the woods. If you weren't eaten up by black gnats, you would be by ennui," and he chuckled.

"Goodness!" cried Mrs. Sherwood, making big eyes at him. "Are those a new kind of mosquito? Ennui, indeed! Am I a baby? Is Nan another?"

"But think of Nan's education, my dear," suggested Mr. Sherwood.

"I ought to work and help the family instead of going to school any longer," Nan declared.

"Not yet, Daughter, not yet," her father said quickly. "However, I will write to Hen. He may be able to suggest something."

"It might be fun living in the woods," Nan said. "I'm not afraid of gnats, or mosquitoes, or, or on-wees!"

She chanced to overhear her father and Dr. Christian talking the next day on the porch, and heard the wise old physician say:

"I'm not sure I could countenance that, Robert. What Jessie needs is an invigorating, bracing atmosphere. A sea voyage would do her the greatest possible good."

"Perhaps a trip to Buffalo, down the lakes?"

"No, no! That's merely an old woman's home-made plaster on the wound.

Something more drastic. Salt air. A long, slow voyage, overseas. It often wracks the system, but it brings the patient to better and more stable health. Jessie may yet be a strong, well woman if we take the right course with her."

Nevertheless, Mr. Sherwood wrote to his brother. He had to do so, it seemed. There was no other course open to him.

And while he fished in that direction, Momsey threw out her line toward Memphis and Adair MacKenzie. Mr. Sherwood pulled in his line first, without much of a nibble, it must be confessed.

"Dear Bob," the elder Sherwood wrote: "Things are flatter than a stepped-on pancake with me. I've got a bunch of trouble with old Ged Raffer and may have to go into court with him. Am not cutting a stick of timber. But you and Jessie and the little nipper,"("Consider!"

interjected Nan, "calling me 'a little nipper'! What does he consider a big 'nipper'?") "come up to Pine Camp. Kate and I will be mighty glad to have you here. Tom and Rafe are working for a luckier lumberman than I, and there's plenty of room here for all hands, and a hearty welcome for you and yours as long as there's a shot in the locker."

"That's just like Hen," Nan's father said. "He'd divide his last crust with me. But I don't want to go where work is scarce. I must go where it is plentiful, where a man of even my age will be welcome."

"Your age, Papa Sherwood! How you talk," drawled Nan's mother in her pretty way. "You are as young as the best of 'em yet."

"Employers don't look at me through your pretty eyes, Momsey," he returned, laughing.

"Well," said his wife, still cheerfully, "my fis.h.i.+ng seems to be resultless yet. Perhaps the bait's gone off the hook. Had I better haul in the line and bait again? I was always doing that when I went fis.h.i.+ng with Adair and his brothers, years ago, when I was a little girl."

Her husband shook his head. "Have patience, Jessie," he said.

He had few expectations from the Memphis letter; yet there was a most surprising result from it on the way, something which by no possibility could the little family in the Amity Street cottage have suspected.

Chapter IV. SWEEPING CLEAN

"My goodness me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bess Harley. "Talk about the 'leaden wings of Time.' Why! Time sweeps by us on electrically-driven, ball-bearing pinions. Here's another week gone, Nan, and tomorrow's Sat.u.r.day."

"Yes," Nan agreed. "Time flies all too quickly, for me, anyway. The mills have been closed a week now."

"Oh, dear! That's all I hear," complained Bess. "Those tiresome old mills. Our Maggie's sister was crying in the kitchen last night because her Mike couldn't get a job now the mills were closed, and was drinking up all the money they had saved. That's what the mill-hands do; their money goes to the saloon-keepers!"

"The proportion of their income spent by the laboring cla.s.s for alcoholic beverages is smaller by considerable than that spent by the well-to-do for similar poison!" quoted Nan decisively. "Mike is desperate, I suppose, poor fellow!"

"My goodness me!" cried Bess again. "You are most exasperating, Nan Sherwood. Mike's case has nothing to do with political Economy, and I do wish you'd drop that study out of school----"

"I have!" gasped Nan, for just then her books slipped from her strap; "and history, rhetoric, and philosophical readings along with it," and she proceeded cheerfully to pick up the several books mentioned.

"You can't mean," Bess said, still severely, "that you won't go to Lakeview with me, Nan?"

"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Bess," Nan Sherwood cried. "Is it my fault? Don't you suppose I'd love to, if I could? We have no money.

Father is out of work. There is no prospect of other work for him in Tillbury, he says, and," Nan continued desperately, "how do you suppose I can go to a fancy boarding school under these circ.u.mstances?"