Всего за 5.99 руб. Купить полную версию
An hour later Mary stood on the threshold of the cottage she had rented, with the keys of possession in her hand. Thanks to Mrs. Barnaby and the rapid gait of the gray mules, much had been accomplished in that time. The groceries they had ordered were already piled on the table in the kitchen. A load of wood was on its way. The new mattresses they had bought at the furniture shop (kept by the undertaker of the village) were promised for delivery early in the afternoon, and they had been introduced at each place as friends of the Barnabys, who were to be charged home prices, and not the ones usually asked of strangers. Mrs. Barnaby was what she called plain-spoken, and although she made a jest of her demands they carried weight.
Their trunks, three of which contained bedclothes and dishes, stood on the front gallery waiting to be unpacked. Inside, the house looked as clean as soapsuds and fresh paint could make it. Mrs. Metz herself had attended to the scrubbing after the last tenant left. But Mary decided that she would feel more comfortable, moving in after strangers, if she should give the furniture a personal washing before they began to use it. While Norman built a fire in the kitchen stove, she unlocked one of the trunks and changed her travelling suit for a gingham dress and apron.
"Let's eat picnic fashion," called Norman, "and unpack afterward. It's nearly one o'clock, and I'm too hungry to wait. I've found a cup I can boil some eggs in, and if we don't use any dishes we won't have any to wash afterwards."
"That's a bright suggestion," Mary called back. "We haven't any time to lose if we are to get everything ready for mamma and Jack by to-morrow afternoon."
When she came dancing out into the kitchen a few minutes later Norman had already begun his luncheon, and was walking around with a cheese sandwich in one hand and a pickle in the other, investigating the premises while he ate. Mary followed his example, and wandered from the open doorway to the open windows, looking at the view from each, and exclaiming over each new discovery. The house was on a slight knoll with a wide cotton-field stretching down between it and the little village. From this distance it looked more than ever like a toy village, against the background of low hills.
"You ought to see it from the top of the windmill," said Norman. "I climbed up while you and Mrs. Barnaby were talking so long at the gate. I'm glad we've got a windmill. It'll save me a lot of pumping, and it makes such a fine watch-tower. You ought to see how far you can look across the country. You can see the creek. It's just a little way back of our place."
"I'm going up this minute!" answered Mary. Slipping her unfinished sandwiches into her apron pocket, she ran out to the windmill and began to swing herself from one cross-piece of the tower to another, as lightly as Norman had done.
"It's perfectly lovely!" she called back from the top. "I'd like to perch up here all afternoon if there wasn't so much to do. I'm going to come up here often. It gives you such a high-up-above-all-your-earthly-ills feeling! There's St. Peter's," she called, "over at the south end of town. I recognize the little stone belfry. What do you suppose that square tower is at the other end of town?"
Norman came out and climbed half-way up the windmill, swinging there below her by one arm, as he slowly munched a ginger-snap.
"Oh, that," he said, as he looked in the direction which she pointed. "That's the Sisters' school. I asked Pedro this morning. It's the Academy of the Holy Angels."
Mary's face glowed as she shook back the hair which the wind kept blowing into her eyes. "That's perfectly fascinating!" she declared. "There's something beautiful to me in the thought that the little town we've come to lies between two such guardians. It's a good omen, and I'm not sorry now that we had to come."
She stayed perched on the windmill, enjoying the view and eating her sandwiches until Norman called her that the wash-water was boiling over on the stove. Then she climbed nimbly down and started towards the kitchen door. The kitchen was in an ell of the house, and from its front window she could see the road which ran in front of the house. Just across it, half hidden by a row of bushy umbrella trees, stood two little blue cottages. They were within easy calling distance, and the voices of half a dozen children at play came cheerfully across to her. Although they spoke in a foreign tongue the chatter gave her a sense of companionship.
"Norman," she suddenly suggested, "let's stay here to-night, instead of going to the boarding-house as mamma and Mrs. Barnaby arranged. I'm not afraid with neighbors so near, and I'm sure mamma wouldn't care if she could see how quiet and peaceful it is here. We'd be saving considerable a night's lodging for two, and we can make this real comfortable and homey by bedtime."
With the promise of hot biscuit and honey for supper Norman agreed to her plan. He was to call at the boarding-house and cancel the arrangements Mrs. Barnaby had made for them, when he went for the milk which Mr. Metz had promised to sell them. It was from the Metz bee-hives they were to have the honey, too. She had engaged it as a special treat for Jack.
Under her direction Norman fell to work making a kitchen cabinet out of two old boxes, while she scrubbed away at the chairs and tables.
"Isn't it funny the way history repeats itself?" she remarked. "This makes me think of the time that Joyce and Jack had getting settled in the Wigwam. I felt so defrauded then because I couldn't have a hand in it, and this seems a sort of compensation for what I missed then."
The exercise seemed to loosen her tongue, for as she worked she went on, "I'm truly glad that I can enjoy both the top and bottom crusts of things. Nobody, I am sure, could have squeezed more pleasure out of this last week than I did. I fairly revelled in all the luxuries we had as Mr. Robeson's guests. It comes so easy to be waited on and to be the fine lady. And on the other hand, it is a real joy to be working this way, blacking stoves and filling lamps and making things look spick and span. I can spend like a lord and I can skimp like a scrubwoman, and I really don't know which I enjoy most."
She did not attempt to put any finishing touches to the house that day, but left such things as the hanging of curtains and the few pictures they had brought until next morning. But before she stopped everything was shining, her room was ready for the night, and a cot was made up for Norman in the room which he was to share with Jack. Later, while she waited for the biscuits to bake and for him to come home with the milk and honey, she wrote a letter to Joyce. She did not take time to go to the bottom of her trunk for writing material, but emptying the sugar from a large paper sack, cut it into several square sheets. With a big tin pan turned bottom upwards in her lap for a desk, she hastily scribbled the events of the day with a lead-pencil, which she sharpened with the carving-knife.
Joyce has that letter yet. It was scribbled in the most careless, commonplace way, just as Mary would have told it had they been together; but Joyce, who could read her little sister like a book, read between the lines and divined the disappointments she had conquered, and saw the courage it took to make the most of every amusing incident in such a cheery way, while she touched only lightly on the serious ones.
"We had a visitor a little while ago," wrote Mary, in closing. "The Reverend Paul Rochester came to call, and where, of all awkward impossible places, do you suppose he found me? Up on the windmill tower. I had gone up again to watch the sunset, for just a minute. The glow on the roofs of the town and the hills beyond was so lovely! If Norman had had any sense he would have ignored my high perch. He was splitting kindling by the back door, making such a noise that we could not hear Mr. Rochester's knock at the front door, so he came around.