The Hallowell Partnership

CHAPTER IV

THE MARTIN-BOX NEIGHBORS

Marian picked her way up the shore to the board bridge, with Finnegan prancing behind her. She felt a little abashed as she remembered her rather tart indifference to young Burford's cordial invitation of the week before. But all her embarrassment melted away as she crossed the little bridge and met Sally Lou's welcoming face, her warm clasping hands.

"You don't know how hungry I have been to see you," vowed Sally Lou, her brown eyes kindling under the scarlet bonnet.

"We've been counting the hours till we should dare to go to call on Miss Northerner, haven't we, kiddies? This is my son, Edward Fairfax Burford, Junior, Miss Hallowell. Three years old, three feet square, and weighs forty-one pounds. Isn't he rather gorgeous – if he does belong to me! And this is Thomas Tucker Burford. Eighteen months old, twenty-six pounds, and the disposition of an angel, as long as he gets his own way. And this is Mammy Easter, who came all the way from Norfolk with me, to take care of the babies, so that I could live here on the contract with Ned. Wasn't she brave to come out to this cold, lonesome country all for me? And this martin-box is my house, and it is anxious to meet you, too, so come right in!"

Marian climbed the high, narrow outside steps that led to the tiny play-house on stilts, and entered the low, red doorway, feeling as if she had climbed Jack's bean-stalk into fairyland. Inside, the martin-box was even more fascinating. It boasted just three rooms. The largest room, gay with Mother Goose wall-paper and rosy chintz, was obviously the realm of Edward, Junior, and Thomas Tucker. The next room, with its cunning miniature fireplace, its shelves of books, its pictures and photographs, and its broad high-piled desk, was their parents' abode; while the third room boasted fascinating white-painted cupboards and sink, a tiny alcohol stove, and a wee table daintily set.

"Aren't you shocked at folks that eat in their kitchen?" drawled Sally Lou, observing Marian with dancing eyes. "But all our baking and heavy cooking is done for us, over on the quarter-boat. I brought the stove to heat the babies' milk; and, too, I like to fuss up goodies for Ned when he is tired or worried. Poor boys! They're having such an exasperating time with the contract this week! Everything seems possessed to go awry. We'll have to see to it that they get a lot of coddling so's to keep them cheered up, won't we?"

"Why, I – I suppose so. But how did you dare to bring your little children down here? They say that this is the most malarial district in the State."

"I know. But they can't catch malaria until May, when the mosquitoes come. Then I shall send them to a farm, back in the higher land. Mammy will take care of them; and I'll stay down here with Ned during the day and go to the babies at night. They're pretty sturdy little tads. They are not likely to catch anything unless their mother is careless with them. And she isn't careless, really. Is she, Tom Tucker?" She snatched up her youngest son, with a hug that made his fat ribs creak. "Come, now! Let's brew some stylish afternoon tea for the lady. Get down the caravan tea that father sent us, Mammy, and the preserved ginger, and my Georgian spoons. And fix some chicken bones on the stoop for Miss Northerner's puppy. This is going to be a banquet, and a right frabjous one, too!"

It was a banquet, and a frabjous one, Marian agreed. Sally Lou's tea and Mammy's nut-cakes were delicious beyond words. The bright little house, the dainty service, Sally Lou's charming gay talk, the babies, clinging wide-eyed and adorable to her knee, all warmed and heartened Marian's listless soul. She was ravished with everything. She looked in wonder and delight at the high sleeping-porch, with its double mosquito bars and its duck screening and its cosey hammock-beds. ("Ned sleeps so much better here, where it is quiet, than on that noisy boat," Sally Lou explained.) She gazed with deep respect at the tiny pantry, built of soap-boxes, lined with snowy oil-cloth. She marvelled at the exquisite old silver, the fine embroidered table-linen, the delicate china. And she caught her breath when her eyes lighted upon the beautiful painting in oils that hung above young Burford's desk. It was a magical bit of color: a dreamy Italian garden, walled in ancient carved and mellowed stone, its slopes and borders a glory of roses, flaunting in splendid bloom; and past its flowery gates, a glimpse of blue, calm sea. She could hardly turn her eyes away from the lovely vista. It was as restful as an April breeze. And across the lower corner she read the clear tracing of the signature, a world-famous name.

Sally Lou followed her glance.

"You surely think I'm a goose, don't you, to bring my gold teaspoons, and my wedding linen, and my finest tea-set down to a wilderness like this? Well, perhaps I am. And yet the very best treasures that we own are none too good for our home, you know. And this is home. Any place is home when Ned and the babies and I are together. Besides, the very fact that this place is so queer and ugly and dismal is the best of reasons why we need all our prettiest things, and need to use them every day, don't you see? So I picked out my sacredest treasures to bring along. And that painting – yes, it was running a risk to bring so valuable a canvas down here. But doesn't it just rest your heart to look at it? That is why I wanted it with us every minute. You can look at that blue sleepy sky, and those roses climbing the garden wall, and the sea below, and forget all about the noisy, grimy boats, and the mud, and sleet, and malaria, and the cross laborers, and the broken machinery, and everything else; and just look, and look, and dream. That is why I carted it along. Especially on Ned's account, don't you see?"

"Y-yes." At last Marian took her wistful eyes from the picture. "I wish that I had thought to bring some good photographs to hang in Rod's state-room. I never thought. But there is no room to pin up even a picture post-card in his cubby-hole on the boat. I must go on now. I have had a beautiful time."

"There goes your brother this minute! In that little red launch, see? He is going up the ditch. Ring the dinner-bell, Mammy, that will stop him. He can take you and your dog up to Gates's Landing and save you half an hour's muddy walk."

Mammy's dinner-bell pealed loud alarm. Roderick heard and swung the boat right-about. His sober, anxious face lighted as Marian and Sally Lou gayly hailed him.

"I'm glad that you've met Mrs. Burford," he said, as he helped Marian aboard and hoisted Finnegan astern with some difficulty and many yelps; for Finnegan left his chicken-bones only under forcible urging. "She is just about the best ever, and I hope you two will be regular chums."

"I love her this minute," declared Marian, with enthusiasm. "Where are you bound, Rod? Mayn't Finnegan and I tag along?"

Rod's face grew worried.

"I'm bound upon a mighty ticklish cruise, Sis. It is a ridiculous cruise, too. Do you remember what I told you last week about the law that governs the taxing of the land-owners for the making of these ditches?"

"Yes. You said that when the majority of the land-owners had agreed on doing the drainage work, then the law made every owner pay his tax, in proportion to the acreage of his land which would be drained by the ditches, whether he himself wanted the drainage done or not. And you said that some of the farmers did not want the ditches dug, and that they were holding back their payments and making trouble for the contractors; while others were making still more trouble by blocking the right of way and refusing to let the dredges cut through their land. But how can they hold you back, Rod? The law says that all the district people must share in the drainage expenses, whether they like to or not, because the majority of their neighbors have agreed upon it."

"The law says exactly that. Yes. But there are a lot of kinks to drainage law, and the farmers know it. Burford says that two or three of them have been making things lively for the company from the start. But just now we have only one troublesome customer to deal with. And she is a woman, that is the worst of it. She is a well-to-do, eccentric old lady, who owns a splendid farm, just beyond the Gateses. She paid her drainage assessment willingly enough. But now she says that, last fall, the boys who made the survey tramped through her watermelon-field and broke some vines and sneaked off with three melons. At least, so she indignantly states. Maybe it is so; although the boys swear it was a pumpkin-field, and that they didn't steal so much as a jack-o'-lantern. Furthermore, she has put up barb wire and trespass notices straight across the contract right of way; and she has sent us notice that she is guarding that right of way with a gun, and that the first engineer who pokes his nose across her boundary line is due to receive a full charge of buckshot. Sort of a shot-gun quarantine, see? Now we must start dredging the lateral that crosses her land next Monday, at the latest. It must be done at the present stage of high water, else we'll have to delay dredging it until fall. Carlisle planned to call on her to-day, and to mollify her if possible, but he's too sick. So I must elbow in myself, and see what my shirt-sleeve diplomacy can do. I'm glad that I can take you along. Perhaps you can help to thaw her out."

"Of all the weird calls to make! What is the old lady like, Rod?"

"Burford says that she is a droll character. She has managed her own farm for forty years, and has made a fine success of it. Her name is Mrs. Chrisenberry. She is not educated, but she is very capable, and very kind-hearted when you once get on the right side of her. Yonder is her landing. Don't look so scared, Sis. She won't eat you."

Marian's fear dissolved in giggles as they teetered up the narrow board walk to the low brick farm-house. They could not find a door-bell; they rapped and pounded until their knuckles ached. Finnegan yapped helpfully and chewed the husk door-mat. At last, a forbidding voice sounded from the rear of the house.

"You needn't bang my door down. Come round to the dryin' yard, unless you're agents. If you're agents, you needn't come at all. I'm busy."

Meekly Rod and Marian followed this hospitable summons.

Across the muddy drying yard stretched rows of clothes-line, fluttering white. Beside a heaped basket of wet, snowy linen stood a very short, very stout little old lady, her thick woollen skirts tucked up under a spotless white apron, her small nut-cracker face glowering from under a sun-bonnet almost as large as herself. She took three clothes-pins from her mouth and scowled at Rod.

"Well!" said she. "Name your business. But I don't want no graphophones, nor patent chick-feed, nor golden-oak dinin'-room sets, nor Gems of Poesy with gilt edges. Mind that."

Marian choked. Rod knew that choke. Tears of strangling laughter stood in his eyes as he humbly stuttered his errand.

"W-we engineers of the Breckenridge Company wish to offer our sincere apologies for any annoyance that our surveyors may have caused you. We are anxious to make any reparation that we can. And – er – we find ourselves obliged, on account of the high water, to cut our east laterals at once. We will be very grateful to you if you will be so kind as to overlook our trespasses of last season, and will permit us to go on with our work. I speak for the company as well as for myself."

The old lady stared at him, with unwinking, beady eyes. There was a painful pause.

"Well, I don't know. You're a powerful slick, soft-spoken young man. I'll say that much for you." Marian gulped, and stooped hurriedly to pat Finnegan. "And I don't know as I have any lastin' gredge against your company. Them melons was frost-bit, anyway. But if you do start your machinery on that lateral, mind I don't want no more tamperin' with my garden stuff. And I don't want your men a-cavortin' around, runnin' races on my land, nor larkin' evenings, nor comin' to the house for drinks of water. One of them surveyors, last fall, he come to the door for a drink, an' I was fryin' crullers, an' he asked for one, bold as brass. Says I, 'Help yourself.' Well, he did that. There was a blue platter brim full, and if he didn't set down an' eat every single cruller, down to the last crumb! An' then he had the impudence to tell me to my face that they was tolerable good crullers, but that he'd wager the next platterful would taste better than the first, an' he'd like to try and find out for sure!"

"I don't blame him. I'd like to try that experiment myself," said Rod serenely. The old lady glared. Then the ghost of a twinkle flickered under the vasty sun-bonnet.

"Well, as I say, I ain't made up my mind yet. But I'll let you know to-night, maybe. Now you'd better be goin'. Looks like more rain."

"Can't we help you with the clothes first?" asked Marian. The old lady shook out a huge, wet table-cloth and stood on tip-toe to pin it carefully on the line.

"You might, yes. Take these pillow-cases. But don't you drop them in the mud. My clothes-line broke down last week, and didn't I spend a day of it, doin' my whole week's wash over again!"

The strong breeze caught the big cloth and whipped it like a banner. Finnegan, who had been waiting politely in the background, beheld this signal with joy. With a gay yelp he bolted past Marian and seized a corner of the table-cloth in his teeth.