The Cinder Pond Part 2

Although it was picturesque, the Duval shack was not at all nice to live in. Perhaps one person or even two _neat_ persons might have found it comfortable, but the entire, mostly untidy Duval family filled it to overflowing. The main room, which had been built first, was kitchen, parlor, and dining-room. It contained a built-in bunk, besides, in which Mrs. Duval slept. South of it, but with no door between, was Leon Duval's own room. Around the corner, and at some little distance, was a fish-shed. North of the main room, toward land, there was a small bedroom. North of that another small bedroom. Doors connected these bedrooms with the main room and each contained two built-in bunks, filled with straw.

Jeannette spent a great deal of time wondering about her family. First, there was her precious father. _He_ belonged to her. His speech was different from that of Mollie, her stepmother. It differed, too, from the rough speech of the other fishermen that sometimes dried their nets on the dock, or came there to _make_ nets. Even Old Captain, who lived in part of an old freight car on the sh.o.r.e near the smoke-stack, and who was very gentle and polite to little girls, was less careful in his speech than was Leon Duval. Her father's manners were _very_ nice indeed. Jeanne could see that they sometimes surprised persons who came to buy fish.

Sometimes, when the old grandmother wished to be particularly offensive, she called Jeanne's father "a gentleman." Old Captain, too, had a.s.sured her that Leon Duval was a gentleman.

No one, however, accused Mollie of being a lady. Slipshod as to speech, untidy, unwashed, uneducated, and most appallingly lazy, Mollie s.h.i.+fted the burden of her children upon Jeanne, who had cared for, in turn, each of the four red-headed babies. Fortunately, Jeanne liked babies.

Mollie and her mother, Mrs. Shannon, did the housework, with much a.s.sistance from the children. In the evening Mr. Duval sat apart, in the small room next to the fish-shed, with his book. He read a great many books, some written in French, some in English. He obtained them from the city library. He read by the light of a lamp carefully filled and trimmed by his own neat hands. This tiny room, with no floor but the planking of the dock, with only rough boards, over which newspapers had been pasted, for sidewalls and ceiling; with no furniture but a single cot, a small trunk, a large box and three smaller ones, was always scrupulously clean. It was Leon Duval's own room. Like Leon himself, it was small and absolutely neat.

Jeannette and Old Captain were the only two other persons permitted to enter that room. In it the little girl had learned to read, to do small problems in arithmetic, even to gain some knowledge of history and geography. She had never gone to school. First, it was too far. Next, Mollie had needed her to help with the children. Besides she had had no clothes. Mollie's _own_ children had no clothes.

To do Mollie justice, she was quite as kind to Jeannette as to her own youngsters. In fact, she was kinder, because she admired the little girl's very pleasing face, her soft black eyes, and the dark hair that _almost_ curled. She _liked_ Jeanne. She was anything but a _cruel_ stepmother.

She had proved a poor one, nevertheless. Good-natured Mollie was thoroughly and completely lazy. She wouldn't work. She said she couldn't work. Mollie's ill-tempered mother was just about as s.h.i.+ftless; but for her there was some excuse. She was crippled with rheumatism. She was also exceedingly cross. Jeannette was fond of Mollie, but she disliked her stepgrandmother very much indeed. Most everybody did.

Jeanne couldn't remember when there hadn't been a heavy, red-headed baby to move from place to place on the old wharf, as she picked flowers, watched pollywogs turn into frogs, or talked to Old Captain. She didn't mind carrying babies, but her father disliked having her do it.

"Don't carry that child, Jeanne," he would say. "It isn't good for your back. Make him walk--he's big enough. If he can't walk, teach him to crawl. The good G.o.d knows that he cannot hurt his clothes."

Old Captain and Leon Duval were great friends. At first they had been rivals in business, the Captain with a fish-shop in one end of his freight car, Duval with a fish-shop on the wharf. Before long, however, they went into partners.h.i.+p. A good thing for Duval, who was a poor business man, and not so bad a thing for the Captain.

"What are you captain _of_?" asked Jeannette, one day, when her old friend was busy repairing a net.

"Well," returned Old Captain, with a twinkle in his fine blue eye, "some folks takes to makin' music, some folks takes to makin' money, some folks takes to makin' trouble; but I just naturally takes to boats. I allus had _some_ kind of a boat. Bein' as how it was _my_ boat, of course I was Captain, wasn't I? So that's how."

"Didn't you ever have any wives?"

"Just one," replied Old Captain, who loved the sound of Jeannette's soft, earnest little voice. "One were enough. Still, I'm not complainin'. If I'd been real pleased with that one, maybe I'd have tried another. I was spared that."

"Supposing a beautiful lady with blue eyes and golden hair should come walking down the dock and ask you to marry her," queried Jeanne. "What then?"

"I hope I'd have sense enough to jump in the lake," chuckled Old Captain.

"Oh _then_," cried Jeanne, seriously, "I do hope she won't come. I was only thinking how glad you'd be to have her boil potatoes for you so they'd be hot when you got home."

"Most like she'd eat them all herself. An' she _might_ make things hotter than I'd like."

Old Captain's eyes were so blue that strangers looked at them a second time to make certain that they were not two bits of summer sky set in Captain Blossom's good, red face. Once his hair had been bright yellow.

The fringe that was left was now mostly white. He was a large man; nearly twice as large, Jeanne thought, as her father. He was _good_, too. Of course, not twice as good as her good father, because she wouldn't admit that anybody _could_ be better than her beloved "Daddy."

As Captain Blossom said, some people take to music, others to boats. Old Captain, however, took to both; but he had but one song. Its chorus, bawled forth in the captain's big, rather tuneful voice, ran thus:

"We sailors skip aloft to reef the gallant s.h.i.+p, While the landlubbers lie down below, _below_, BELOW; While the landlubbers lie down below."

Jeanne hoped fervently that _she_ was not a landlubber. One day, she asked Old Captain about it.

"What," said he, "when you lives on a dock? No, indeed," he a.s.sured her.

"You're the kind that _allus_ skips up aloft."

One evening, when the sun was going down behind that portion of the town directly west from the Duval shack; and all the roofs and spires were purple-black against a glowing orange sky, Jeanne seized Sammy and Annie; and, calling Michael to follow, raced up the dock toward the huge old furnace smoke-stack. She was careful never to go _very_ close to that, because Old Captain had warned her that it was unsafe; so she paused with her charges at a point where the dock joined the land.

She loved that particular spot because the dock at that point was wider than at any other place. It had been wider to begin with. Then, tons of cinders had been dumped into the Cinder Pond and into the lake, on either side of the wharf; filling in the corners. This made wide and pleasing curves rather than sharp angles, at the joining place.

"Now, Mike," said she, "you sit down and watch the top of that chimney.

And you sit here, Sammy, where you can't fall in. Look up there, Annie.

What do you see?"

"Birdses," lisped Annie.

"Gee! _Look_ at the birds!" exclaimed Michael. "Wait till I shy a rock at them."

"No, you don't," replied Jeanne, firmly. "Those are Old Captain's birds.

I'll tell him to thrash you if you bother them. He showed them to me last night. Now watch."

Everybody watched. The birds were flying in a wide circle above the top of the old chimney. They had formed themselves into a regular procession. They circled and circled and circled; and all the time more birds arrived to join the procession. They were twittering in a curious, excited way. This lasted for at least ten minutes. Then, suddenly, part of the huge circle seemed to touch the chimney top.

"Why!" gasped Michael, "they look as if they were pouring themselves right into that chimney like--like--"

"Like so much water. Yes, they're really going in. See, they're almost gone. They're putting themselves to bed. They're chimney swallows--they sleep in there. See there!"

Two belated birds, too late to join the procession, scurried out of the darkening sky, and twittering frenziedly, hurled themselves into the mouth of the towering stack.

"They're policemen," said Michael. "They've sent all the others to jail."

"Then what about that one!" asked Jeanne, as a last lone bird, all but shrieking as it scurried through the sky, hurled itself down the chimney.

"_That_ one almost got caught," said Sammy. "See, there's a big bird that was chasing it."

"A night-hawk," said Jeanne. "Old Captain says there's always _one_ late bird and one big hawk to chase it. Now we must hurry back--it'll soon be dark."

As the old wharf, owing to the rotting of the thick planking under the cinders, was full of pitfalls, even by daylight, the children hurried back to their home, chattering about the swallows.

"Will they do it again tomorrow night?" asked Michael.

"Yes, Old Captain says they do it every night all summer long. That's their home. Early in the spring there's only a few; but as the summer goes on, there are more and more."

"Will oo take us to see the birdses some nother nights?" asked Annie.

"Yes, if you're good."

"Does 'em take they's feathers off?"

"Oh, Sammy! Of _course_ they don't."

"Does 'em sing all night?"

"No, they sleep, and that's what you ought to be doing."