Chapter V: A Change of Plans

For a moment Miss Tempy made no reply to her sister’s speech. Instead, she sat there with her eyes fixed upon Miss Prissy’s face and her thin fingers picking nervously at her dress.

“Haven’t got any money?” she repeated, after a pause. “Haven’t got any money left? Why, then--why, then, we’ll have to take it out of the savin’s bank up to Boston. Of _course_, Bradley must go to college. You know he must, Prissy.”

But Miss Prissy shook her head.

“You don’t understand, Tempy,” she said. “I ought to have talked with you about it long ago. I can see now that I ought to; but, oh, dear! father always said you was too delicate to bother with money matters, and I’ve been used to takin’ all the care myself, and so I’ve jest gone on and on, worryin’ and plannin’ and layin’ awake nights until I can’t go on any further. Oh, Tempy,” she cried, and the tears rolled down her cheeks, “you _don’t_ understand. The money in the Boston bank has all gone too. We haven’t got more than five hundred dollars left in the world, and when _that’s_ gone----!” She waved her hands despairingly.

But still Miss Tempy did not comprehend.

“Why, all of it _can’t_ be gone!” she said. “All of the insurance money and everything! Why, it was five thousand dollars!” She mentioned the sum reverently and in an awestruck whisper.

“Yes,” said Miss Prissy, trying hard not to be impatient; “yes, ’twas five thousand dollars and father died over ten years ago, and we’ve been livin’ on it ever since.”

“But five thousand dollars, Prissy! Five thousand----”

“Oh, my soul and body! Anybody’d think ’twas a million. Jest think, now; jest _think_! We’ve lived on it for prety nigh eleven years; paid for our clothes and livin’ and havin’ the house painted six years ago, and----”

“But it needed paintin’.”

“_Needed_ it! I should think it did! But it cost more’n we’d ought to spend, jest the same. Oh, it’s more my fault than anybody’s. Long’s father lived, the place was kept up, and you and me was used to havin’ things as good as our neighbors, and I went on and on, never thinkin’ we was too extravagant, until, all at once, the money that we first put in the Harniss Bank was used up. And then it come home to me, as you might say, and I realized what we’d been doin’. Oh, I’ve tried and tried; scrimped here and pinched there. What do you s’pose I sold the woodlot for? And then the cran’by swamp?”

“Why, you said we didn’t need ’em, and it was too much trouble to run ’em.”

“_Said!_ Oh, I don’t doubt I said all sorts of things to keep you from knowin’. But I sold ’em to help pay the bills. And then you was took down with the typhoid, and there was that big doctor’s bill; and then Bradley came and he had to have clothes and a little money to spend like the other boys. And now!”

Miss Prissy choked, tried to go on, and then broke down and cried heartily and without restraint.

In all the years since the death of Captain Allen Miss Tempy had never seen her common-sense, practical sister give way like this. The sight alarmed her much more than the story of the financial situation had so far done. She didn’t fully understand the latter even yet, but every one of Miss Prissy’s sobs was to her a call for help that needed an immediate answer.

“There! there! there! dear!” she said, running to the other rocker and putting her arm around her sister’s neck. “You poor thing! You mustn’t cry like that. You’ve jest worried yourself sick. You’re all worn out. I shouldn’t be surprised if you’ve got a little cold, too, in that draughty schoolhouse. Let me make you a good, big cup of pepper tea right away; now do.”

Miss Prissy turned a sob into a feeble laugh.

“Oh, dear me, Tempy,” she said, laying her hand on the other’s arm, “I b’lieve you think pepper tea’ll cure anything--even an empty pocketbook. I wish ’twould pay bills; then, I don’t know but I’d drink a hogshead. But it won’t, nor cryin’ won’t either. Set down, and I’ll tell you jest how things are.”

So Miss Tempy, reluctantly giving up the “pepper tea” idea for the present, went back to her chair, and Miss Prissy continued.

“The money in the Boston savin’s bank is gone,” she said, “and a year or more ago I wrote to the broker folks that bought the bond for us when father died, and they sold it for me and got a little less than a thousand dollars for it. I put the money into the bank at Harniss, and though I’ve tried my best to be economical, there ain’t but five hundred and eighty left. That, and the place here, is all we’ve got.”

In a bewildered fashion Miss Tempy strove to grasp the situation.

“Then we’re poor,” she said. “Real poor, and I thought we was rich. Well, I shall give up that new bonnet I was goin’ to have next spring, and I s’pose I hadn’t ought to subscribe to the _Comforter_ either. I _did_ think so much of it!”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to give up more than the _Comforter_, Tempy. I’ve thought and thought, till my poor head is nearly worn through. We might sell the place, here, but ’twould be like sellin’ our everlastin’ souls--if ’tain’t unreligious to say it--and, besides, property at Orham is so low now that we’d only get ha’f what it’s worth, and when that money’s spent there wouldn’t be _anything_ left.”

“Sell the place! Father’s place! Why, Prissy Allen, how can you talk so! Where would we live?”

“Well, we might hire a little house down at South Orham or somewheres.”

“South Orham! Where all those Portuguese and things live? I’d rather die.” And it was Miss Tempy’s turn to cry.

“You needn’t cry for that, Tempy. We won’t sell yet a while. Not till there’s nothin’ left. But we can’t have the barn shingled, and as for Bradley’s goin’ to college, that, I’m afraid, is out of the question.”

“Oh, dear! dear! And the barn looks awful. Melissy Busteed was sayin’, only last week, that folks was wond’rin’ when we was goin’ to have it fixed. And poor Bradley! My heart was set on his bein’ a minister. I don’t know but I’d live in the poorhouse to make him one. They say Mr. Otis keeps a real nice poorhouse, too,” she added.

Miss Prissy smiled dolefully. “It hasn’t got to the poorhouse yet,” she said. “And I hope we can send Bradley through high school anyhow. But we’ll have to scrimp awful and we must try to earn some money. I was talkin’ to Abigail Mullett at the church fair last August, and she spoke about those aprons and one thing another that I made, and said she never saw such hemmin’ and tuckin’. She said she’d give anything if she could get somebody to do such work for her in the dressmakin’ season. I’ve been thinkin’ maybe she’d put out some of her work to me if I asked her to. She does more dressmakin’ than anybody around; has customers ’way over to Ostable, and keeps three girls sometimes. And you know how the summer folks bought those knit shawls of yours, Tempy? Well, I don’t doubt you could get orders for lots more. We’ll try, and we’ll let Bradley start at high school and see how we make it go.”

So Miss Tempy brightened up, and in a few minutes she had, in her mind, sold so many shawls and Miss Prissy had done so well with her hemming and tucking that she saw them putting money in the bank instead of taking it out. In fact, she was getting rich so fast, in her dreams, that her sister didn’t have the heart to throw more cold water at this time. And even Miss Prissy herself felt unwarrantably hopeful. She had borne the family burdens so long that to share the knowledge of them with another was a great relief. They discussed ways and means for a half-hour longer, and then Miss Tempy insisted on getting that “pepper tea.”

“I honestly believe,” she said, “that if I hadn’t took pepper tea steady for the last four or five years I shouldn’t be here now. That and Blaisdell’s Emulsion has given me strength to bear most anything, even the prospects of the poorhouse. Thank goodness, I’ve got a new bottle of Emulsion, and pepper tea’s cheap, so I shan’t have to give that up, even if we are poorer’n Job’s turkey.”

“All right,” sighed Miss Prissy. “If it’ll make you feel any better to parboil my insides with hot water and pepper, fetch it along. Don’t say anything to Bradley about what we’ve been sayin’. ’Twon’t do any good, and will only make the poor child feel bad.”

But Bradley was not in the dining-room. The book he had been reading was turned face downward on the table, but he was gone, and so was his hat.

“Why, I never!” exclaimed Miss Tempy. “He never went out an evenin’ before without sayin’ anythin’ to me or you. What do you s’pose is the matter?”

“You don’t think he heard what we said, do you?” anxiously asked her sister. “I thought I shut the door.”

“You did shut it, but, now you speak of it, seems to me I remember it wasn’t latched when I come out jest now. I hope he didn’t hear. He’s such a sensitive boy; jest like all the Allens.”

The “pepper tea” was prepared--a double dose this time--and the sisters sat sipping it, Miss Prissy with many coughs and grimaces, and Miss Tempy with the appreciation of a connoisseur. After a moment’s silence she said:

“Prissy, do you know what I’ve been thinkin’? I’ve been thinkin’ what a blessin’ ’twould be if we had Cap’n Titcomb to go to for advice now.”

“Humph! If I’ve thought that once, I’ve thought it a million times in the last year,” was the decided answer.

It was after ten o’clock, and only Bradley’s absence had prevented the ladies from going up to bed, when the outside door of the dining-room opened, and the missing boy came in.

“Bradley Nickerson, where’ve you been?” exclaimed Miss Tempy, running to meet him. “We’ve been pretty nigh worried to death. Why don’t you shut the door? Who’s that out there? Why--why, _Cap’n Titcomb_!”

“What’s that?” cried Miss Prissy, hurrying in. “You don’t mean---- Well! Good evenin’, Cap’n Titcomb; won’t you step in?”

The Captain accepted the invitation. He was as much embarrassed as the “old maids,” even more so than Miss Prissy, who immediately, after a swift, sidelong glance of disapproval at her agitated sister, assumed an air of dignified calmness.

“How d’ye do, Prissy?” stammered the Captain. “Tempy, I hope you’re well. Yes; I’m feelin’ fair to middlin’. No, thanks; I ain’t goin’ to stop long; it’s pretty late for calls. Fact is, Brad here’s got somethin’ to say. Heave ahead, Brad.”

The boy, too, was embarrassed, but as the two looked at him expectantly, he fidgetted with a button on his jacket and said:

“Miss Prissy, I didn’t mean to listen, but the door wasn’t shut tight, and I couldn’t help hearing what you and Miss Tempy were saying a little while ago.”

“There!” exclaimed Miss Tempy. “I was afraid of that door. You remember I said so, Prissy.”

But Miss Prissy didn’t answer; she merely looked at Bradley.

“I heard what you said,” nervously went on the boy, “and when you told about--about what you was going to do so’s I could go to high school, I--I thought first I’d come right in and tell you you mustn’t. But then I thought you wouldn’t believe I meant it, or wouldn’t pay any attention to it if I did, so I went outside to think it over by myself. And then--then I went right up to see the Cap’n.”

“I hope,” said Miss Prissy, sternly, “that you didn’t repeat our talk to Cap’n Titcomb without tellin’ us you was goin’ to.”

“No, no; he didn’t,” hastily broke in the Captain. “He didn’t tell a word. You’ve got a pretty fair kind of boy here, if you want to know,” he added, with more than his usual enthusiasm.

“Hum!” was Miss Prissy’s only comment. “Go on, Bradley.”

“All I told him was,” said Bradley, “that I didn’t think it was right for me to go to school and college when I ought to be earning some money. I’m going on seventeen now, and lots of fellows I know are going to work. I don’t b’lieve I’d make a very good minister,” with a look of appeal at Miss Tempy, “and I’d a good deal rather go to sea. All our folks have been to sea. My father and my grandfather. Yes, and your father, too, you know.” The last as a happy inspiration.

“Don’t you think that we know best what----” began Miss Prissy, but the Captain again interrupted her.

“Let him spin his yarn, Prissy,” he said. “Nothin’ is settled yet, so don’t worry.”

“So I went to the Cap’n,” went on Bradley, “and asked him if he’d take me on board his schooner. I ain’t a sailor, but I know a lot about boats, and I don’t get seasick even when it’s mighty rough; do I, Cap’n Ezra?”

“No,” replied Captain Titcomb, gravely. “You manage to keep your cargo from shiftin’ pretty well for a green hand.”

“And he said he’d take me as a kind of cabin boy; didn’t you, Cap’n? And learn me things, and get me advanced as soon as I was fit for it. And he’ll pay me wages, too; right away. There! And I won’t cost you a cent more. Please let me go?”

“Well, I never!” exclaimed Miss Tempy. She would have continued, but her sister spoke.

“It seems to me,” said the latter, “that you would have done better by us, Bradley, if you’d asked our advice before you went to Cap’n Titcomb or anybody else. We’d planned to give you a good education, so’s you might amount to somethin’ in this world. Seagoin’ is all right--the land knows there’s been enough of it in our family--but everybody says it ain’t what it used to be, and it’s a dreadful hard life. Boy on a schooner, even with the Cap’n here, ain’t much of a place. It’ll be a good while ’fore you amount to much or make much money.”

Bradley would have replied, but Captain Titcomb held up his hand.

“Brad,” he commanded, “go into the galley and shut the door.”

The boy didn’t hesitate; he obediently turned and went into the kitchen. The Captain looked after him approvingly.

“I like a chap that obeys orders,” he observed. “Prissy, you and Tempy know me, and you know I like Brad and want to see him do well. But I want to tell you this: I’ve seen lots of boys, and I was one myself, and if a boy gits the salt water notion into his head, nothin’ll git it out but a good-sized dose of that same water and a first mate and a rope’s end. ’Twon’t git it out then, if he’s really got the disease, but it’ll prove whether it’s growin’ pains or the genuine rheumatics mighty quick. The old man--dad, I mean--was all for makin’ a doctor out of me, but when he caught me one night with my duds tied up in a newspaper ready to run away and ship on a cattle boat, he give in. ‘Sarah,’ he says to mother, ‘I’ve done my best to raise a pill-peddler, but it looks as if ’twas nothin’ but a lob-scouser after all. All right,’ he says; ‘if you’re dyin’ to eat salt-hoss and smell bilge, you can do it, but you’ll do it under somebody that I know, and not on a floatin’ barnyard. Cap’n Tim Mayo’ll take you, if I ask him to,’ he says, ‘and if _he_ don’t work the taste for pickle out of you, then there ain’t nothin’ that can,’ he says.

“Well,” continued the Captain, with a twist of his mouth, “Cap’n Tim tried; I’ll say that for him. I’ll never forgit that first v’yage. But when I come home and told the old man I was goin’ ag’in, he held up his hands. ‘That settles it,’ says he; ‘you’re goin’ to be the same kind of a fool that I am and my father was afore me. It’s the Lord’s doin’s, and I’m thankful I can shift the blame onto Him,’ he says.

“So with Brad. If he’s bound to go to sea, he’ll go, sometime or ’nother. It was my idea to take him as a sort of mixture of roustabout and cabin boy, and try him out. If it _don’t_ cure him, why, I need jest such a feller as he is to make a mate of some of these days. If it does he’s only wasted a summer vacation and got a little cash for it. Seems to me it’s worth the try. You think it over, and send me word up at the Trav’ler’s Rest. I’ll be there for the next week or so. Well, I mustn’t stop any longer. Good night.”

“But, Cap’n,” faltered Miss Tempy, avoiding her sister’s eye, “won’t you set down jest a minute to--to rest yourself ’fore you go back home?”

“No, thank you,” was the quick reply. “It’s gittin’ so late now that if I ain’t careful I’ll have to git up afore I go to bed, like the Irishman Eri Hedge tells about. I hope you won’t think I’m pokin’ my oar into this bus’ness of Brad’s. It’s jest as I say; I like him, that’s all. Well, all right. Tell him if he’s headed up my way to-morrer he’d better drop in and have another talk. So long.”

They watched him go down the walk and up the moonlit road. Then Miss Prissy shut the door, and, after calling Bradley from the kitchen, they adjourned to the sitting-room. Long after the boy had been sent to bed the sisters sat in their rockers, talking of him, of his future and what it was wisest to do. They talked of the Captain, too, but only so far as Bradley’s sailing with him was concerned. It was not until they were on their way upstairs that Miss Prissy said:

“Tempy, I’m wonderin’ if Cap’n Ezra’s comin’ here to-night means that he’ll come often, like he used to.”

“Was you wonderin’ that?” asked Tempy. “I was, too, but I didn’t s’pose you’d like it if I said anything ’bout it. You was so dreadful cool when he was here.”

But the Captain did not again visit the Allen home, although next day Bradley called on him at his room in the hotel. They talked of the proposed plan, of course, but Captain Titcomb did not urge its acceptance. On the contrary, he spoke very plainly of the disagreeable features of a sailor’s calling, and hinted that being aboard a vessel was like being in jail. “Only,” he said, “there’s always a chance for a feller to break out of jail.”

At the end of the interview he said: “Brad, I ain’t askin’ any questions ’bout what made you take this sudden fit, but I’d like to know this: Do the old maids know ’bout that Sampson fund for sailors’ children? They could git over a hundred a year out of that if they applied for it, you understand?”

“I don’t believe they’d take a cent, if it was anything like charity,” replied the boy. “Miss Prissy especial; she’s awful down on folks that she says are living on charity.”

“Um, hum! I see. Well, I know a feller that’s one of the head cooks and bottle-washers of the Sampson crew. Maybe I could rig it so’s---- Well, never mind; don’t say nothin’ yet.”

Three days later it was settled; Bradley was to go to Boston the following Monday with Captain Titcomb and ship with him as the combination “boy and roustabout” for a period of three months. Really, it was settled when the Captain suggested it, but it took some time for the “old maids” to formally make up their minds to the decided change and for Miss Tempy to get rid of her desire for a clergyman in the family.

“Well, Prissy,” she said, “if we can’t have a minister, I think I’d rather have a sea cap’n than most anything else. You see, there’s always been at least one cap’n among the Allens. P’raps Bradley--he’s so smart--will git to be cap’n of a great steamer like one of the Fall River boats. P’raps he really _will_ be cap’n of a Fall River boat. Jest think! Then you and me might go to New York again; or, if Bradley took us to New York for nothin’, p’raps by that time we could afford to go on an excursion from New York to Washington. It’s been one of my dreams to go to Washington and see the President and the Washington Monument and the Senators and all the relics in the Smithsonian Institute.”

Bradley told Gus the great news as soon as it was officially announced by Miss Prissy. Gus was disappointed because her “chum” was not going to high school with her, but she rejoiced with him upon his freedom from the ministry.

“I’m glad you’re not going to be a minister,” she said. “That is, if you had to be one down here in Orham. I should hate to have you living on five hundred a year and donation parties, and your wife scared to death every time she had a new hat for fear Melissa Busteed and the rest would say she was too extravagant. You’re going to go to places and see things. I wish I was, instead of staying here to study lessons and read the _Item_ to grandmother. ‘Cap’n Jonadab Wixon has treated his henhouse to a new coat of whitewash.’ And then grandma wants to know what I s’pose he paid for the whitewash. Ugh!”

“You’ll have good times over at Harniss,” said Bradley, reflectively. “There’s lots of fellows and girls go to high school there.”

“Yes, I s’pose so; but I’ll miss you and Clara. Write to me, won’t you? I want to hear from you, of course, and besides, it’s fun to go to the postoffice and get letters of your own.”

“Yes; I’ll write. And you’ll write to me, won’t you?”

“Yes; I’ll write and tell whose cow is dead and how many summer boarders there are in town, and which one of ‘Hungry Bill’s’ children has got the measles. Great things to write about, there are down here!” she added, disgustedly. “Well, I can write about the parties I go to, if I go to any. I won’t have anybody to go with, now you’re gone.”

Bradley had an uneasy notion that there were plenty of fellows that would be glad to escort her to the “parties.” It flashed across him all at once that Gus was growing positively pretty. It had not occurred to him before; that is, not as it did just then. It was one of the signs that he was getting older.

“Well, good-bye,” he said, holding out his hand.

“Good-bye,” said Gus, taking it. Then they shook hands, said good-bye again, and separated. Bradley almost wished he had kissed her, but seemed like a “soft” thing to do in cold blood; not like “forfeits” at a party, or anything like that.

Monday morning his trunk was packed, and Barney Small called to take him and it to Harniss. The “old maids” wept over him, and Miss Prissy told him to be a good boy and write once a week at least. Miss Tempy said:

“Remember, Bradley, you’re an Allen now, and you must live up to the family. Oh, Prissy! Don’t it seem jest like it used to when father was goin’ on a voyage? Bradley’s growin’ to look _so_ like him.”

And the sisters went into the house to cry together.

The trip to Harniss in the stage seemed much shorter than had that in the same vehicle four years before. Captain Titcomb was with him now, as then, and “Foolish Sol” came out to beg tobacco. But his opportunities were growing less, for the new Orham branch railroad was even then under construction and would be finished in another two years.

Then came the long ride in the train to Boston. Bradley had been as far as Ostable on the memorable occasion when the “Jolly Club” attended the County Fair in a body, a visit which had caused that venerable institution to sit up and take notice. But he had never been farther in that direction, and now he watched while the villages and towns they passed grew bigger and closer together, saw in Brockton the first street car he had ever seen outside of pictures, saw rows upon rows of brick buildings, where people lived all together like “fiddler crabs” in a marshbank, saw smoke and tangled spiderwebs of railroad tracks, and then shot under a great shed and into a big building where there were crowds and crowds of people. And it was Boston.

Then they rode in one of the--to Bradley--wonderful horse cars, through crooked streets lined with the brick buildings, and got out in front of a place where rows of masts fringed a long, narrow wharf. Down this they walked till they came to a three-masted schooner sitting high in the water.

“Brad,” said Captain Titcomb, clapping him on the shoulder, “that’s your boardin’-house for the next three months anyhow. She’s the _Thomas Doane_. What do you think of her?”