Sowing Seeds in Danny Part 13

"I think I would say, 'Thank you very much, Mr. Watson and Dr. Clay, I shall be delighted to come if you have room for me.'"

Life had been easier for Mary Barner since Dr. Clay had come to Millford. It was no longer necessary for her to compel her father to go when he was sent for, and when patients came to the office, if she thought her father did not know what he was doing, she got Dr. Clay to check over the prescriptions.

It had been rather hard for Mary to ask him to do this, for she had a fair share of her father's Scotch pride; but she had done too many hard things in her life to hesitate now. The young doctor was genuinely glad to serve her, and he made her feel that she was conferring, instead of asking, a favour.

They drove along the high bank that fell perpendicularly to the river below and looked down at the harvest scene that lay beneath them. The air was full of the perfume of many flowers and the chatter of birds.

The Reverend Hugh Grantley drove swiftly by them, whereupon Danny made his presence known for the first time by the apparently irrelevant remark:

"I know who Miss Barner's fellow is! so I do."

Now if Dr. Clay had given Danny even slight encouragement, he would have pursued the subject, and that might have saved complications in the days to come.

CHAPTER XII

FROM CAMILLA'S DIARY

It is nearly six months since I came to live with Mrs. Francis, and I like housework so well and am so happy at it, that it shows clearly that I am not a disguised heiress. My proud spirit does not chafe a bit at having to serve meals and wear a cap (you should see how sweet I look in a cap). I haven't got the fear on my heart all day that I will make a mistake in a figure that will rise up and condemn me at the end of the month as I used to be when I was book-keeping on a high stool, for the Western Hail and Fire Insurance Company (peace to its ashes!).

"All work is expression," Fra Elbertus says, so why may I not express myself in blueberry pie and tomato soup?

Mrs. Francis is an appreciative mistress, and she is not so entirely wrapped up in Browning as to be insensible to a good salad either, I am glad to say.

One night after we had company and everything had gone off well, Mr.

Francis came out into the kitchen, and looked over his gla.s.ses at me.

He opened his mouth twice to speak, but seemed to change his mind. I knew what was struggling for utterance. Then he laid fifty cents on the window sill, pointed at it, nodded to me, and went out hurriedly. My first impulse was to hand it back--then I thought better of it--words do not come easily to him. So he expressed himself in currency. I put the money into my purse for a luck penny.

Mrs. Francis is as serene as a summer sea, and can look at you without knowing you are there. Mr. Francis is a peaceful man, too. He looks at his wife in a helpless way when she begins to explain the difference between the Elizabethan and the Victorian poets--I don't believe he cares a cent for either of them.

Mrs. Francis entertains quite a bit; I like it, too, and I do not go and cry into the sink because I have to wait on the guests. She entertains well and is a delightful hostess, but some of the people whom she entertains do not appreciate her flights of fancy.

I do not like to see them wink at each other, although I know it is funny to hear Mrs. Francis elaborate on the mother's influence in the home and the proper way to deal with selfishness in children; but she means well, and they should remember that, no matter how funny she gets.

April 18th.--She gave me a surprise to-day. She called me upstairs and read to me a paper she was preparing to read before some society--she belongs to three or four--on the domestic help problem. Well, it hadn't very much to do with the domestic help problem, but of course I could not tell her that so when she asked me what I thought of it I said:

"If all employers were as kind as you and Mr. Francis there would be no domestic help problem."

She looked at me suddenly, and something seemed to strike her. I believe it came to her that I was a creature of like pa.s.sions with herself, capable of grat.i.tude, perhaps in need of encouragement.

Hitherto I think she has regarded me as a porridge and coffee machine.

She put her arm around me and kissed me.

"Camilla," she said gently--she has the softest, dreamiest voice I ever heard--"I believe in the aristocracy of brains and virtue. You have both."

Farewell, oh Soulless Corporation! A long, last, lingering farewell, for Camilla E. Rose, who used to sit upon the high stool and add figures for you at ten dollars a week, is far away making toast for two kindly souls, one of whom tells her she has brains and virtue and the other one opens his mouth to speak, and then pushes fifty cents at her instead.

Danny Watson, bless his heart! is bringing madam up. He has wound himself into her heart and the "whyness of the what" is packing up to go.

May 1st.--Mrs. Francis is going silly over Danny. A few days ago she asked me if I could cut a pattern for a pair of pants. I told her I had made pants once or twice and meekly inquired whom she wanted the pants for. She said for a boy, of course--and she looked at me rather severely. I knew they must be for Danny, and cut the pattern about the size for him. She went into the sewing-room, and I only saw her at meal times for two days. She wrestled with the garment.

Last night she asked me if I would take a parcel to Danny with her love. I was glad to go, for I was just dying to see how she had got along.

When I held them up before Mrs. Watson the poor woman gasped.

"Save us all!" she cried. "Them'll fit none of us. We're poor, but, thank G.o.d, we're not deformed!"

I'll never forget the look of those pants. They haunt me still.

May 15th.--Pearl Watson is the sweetest and best little girl I know.

Her grat.i.tude for even the smallest kindness makes me want to cry. She told me the other day she was sure Danny was going to be a doctor. She bases her hopes on the questions that Danny asks. How do you know you haven't got a gizzard? How would you like to be ripped clean up the back? and Where does your lap go to when you stand up? She said, "Ma and us all have hopes o' Danny."

Mrs. Francis has a new role, that of matchmaker, though I don't suppose she knows it. She had Mary Barner and the young minister for tea to-night. Mary grows dearer and sweeter every day. People say it is not often one girl praises another; but Mary is a dear little gray-eyed saint with the most shapely hands I ever saw. Reverend Hugh thinks so, too, I have no doubt. It was really too bad to waste a good fruit salad on him though, for I know he didn't know what he was eating. Excelsior would taste like ambrosia to him if Mary sat opposite--all of which is very much as it should be, I know. I thought for a while Mary liked Dr.

Clay pretty well, but I know it is not serious, for she talks quite freely of him. She is very grateful to him for helping her so often with her father. But those gray-eyed Scotch people never talk of what is nearest the heart. I wonder if he knows that Mary Barner is a queen among women. I don't like Scotchmen. They take too much for granted.

CHAPTER XIII

THE FIFTH SON

Arthur Wemyss, fifth son of the Reverend Alfred Austin Wemyss, Rector of St. Agnes, Tilbury Road, County of Kent, England, had but recently crossed the ocean. He and six hundred other fifth sons of rectors and earls and dukes had crossed the ocean in the same s.h.i.+p and had been scattered abroad over Manitoba and the Northwest Territories to be instructed in agricultural pursuits by the honest granger, and incidentally to furnish nutriment for the ever-ready mosquito or wasp, who regarded all Old Country men as their lawful meat.

The honest granger was paid a sum varying between fifty and one hundred fifty dollars for instructing one of these young fellows in farming for one year, and although having an Englishman was known to be a pretty good investment, the farmers usually spoke of them as they would of the French-weed or the rust in the wheat. Sam Motherwell referred to his quite often as "that blamed Englishman" and often said, unjustly, that he was losing money on him every day.

Arthur--the Motherwells could not have told his other name--had learned something since he came. He could pull pig-weed for the pigs and throw it into the pen; he had learned to detect French-weed in the grain; he could milk; he could turn the cream-separator; he could wash dishes and churn, and he did it all with a willingness, a cheerfulness that would have appealed favourably to almost any other farmer in the neighbourhood, but the lines had fallen to Arthur in a stony place, and his employer did not notice him at all unless to find fault with him.

Yet he bore it all with good humour. He had come to Canada to learn to farm.

The only real grievance he had was that he could not get his "tub." The night he arrived, dusty and travel-stained after his long journey, he had asked for his "tub," but Mr. Motherwell had told him in language he had never heard before--that there was no tub of his around the establishment, that he knew of, and that he could go down and have a dip in the river on Sunday if he wanted to. Then he had conducted him with the lantern to his bed in the loft of the granary.

A rickety ladder led up to the bed, which was upon a temporary floor laid about half way across the width of the granary. Bags of musty smelling wheat stood at one end of this little room. Evidently Mr.

Motherwell wished to discourage sleep-walking in his hired help, for the floor ended abruptly and a careless somnambulist would be precipitated on the old fanning mill, harrow teeth and other debris which littered the floor below.

The young Englishman reeled unsteadily going up the ladder. He could still feel the chug-chug-chug of the ocean liner's engines and had to hold tight to the ladder's splintered rungs to preserve his equilibrium.

Mr. Motherwell raised the lantern with sudden interest.

"Say," he said, more cheerfully than he had yet spoken, "you haven't been drinking, have you?"

"Intoxicants, do you mean?" the Englishman asked, without turning around. "No, I do not drink."

"You didn't happen to bring anything over with you, did you, for seasickness on the boat?" Mr. Motherwell queried anxiously, holding the lantern above his head.

"No, I did not," the young man said laconically.

"Turn out at five to-morrow morning then," his employer snapped in evident disappointment, and he lowered the lantern so quickly that it went out.

The young man lay down upon his hard bed. His utter weariness was a blessing to him that night, for not even the racing mice, the musty smells or the hardness of his straw bed could keep him from slumber.