Chapter VI: Making the Best of It

HAPPIE was awakened "in her chamber towards the east" by the sun streaming in upon her, and with a vague impression that the house was on fire. Never had there been such a blaze of light at that hour in New York, never at any hour such a resplendent, rosy glare. In the girls' little chamber at home it had been at best but a lighter shade of gray light, chastened by the air shaft, that summoned them to a new day.

Happie sprang up to greet the dawn and to look out at her mountains--already it gave her a thrill of pleasure to feel that they were _her_ mountains.

She awakened her sister with her cry of delight, Surely it was going to be worth suffering much discomfort and deprivation to waken every morning to such beauty as this. And when one remembered that the beauty was to restore their mother, what did exile and more or less furniture matter?

More beautiful than when clad in verdure the trees stood outlined against the eastern sky, their perfect symmetry of line and limb thrown into relief by the sunrise glow. Mists tinged with every exquisite tint of color flowed around the mountainsides like the soft draperies of Aurora. Quietly brown at her feet lay the waiting fields, except where the rye of autumn's sowing was beginning to hint of coming green. Pines and firs stood black against the sky, while the faintest tone of red showed to a keen eye that the maple buds were forming and the fresh sap running.

The glad bird chorus of later spring was wanting, but the blithe, brave bluebird uttered his cheering note, liquid as the brooks which taught it to him, and the robin defied possible frosts with his clarion whistle, sounds the more delightful that they were the only spring anthems yet audible.

Laura and Polly fluttered into the room as they heard Happie's exclamation. Happie turned towards them with a shining face.

"Oh, girls, oh, Margery, isn't it heavenly?" she cried in an ecstasy. "Really we must be happy here no matter how we hate it!"

A remark which her sisters hailed with such a shout of laughter that it cheered their mother's waking across the hall.

"The Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him," said Margery softly. "I never before realized what that meant."

Even Laura scrambled into her clothes with considerable cheerfulness after this auspicious beginning of the beginning, and the four girls got down-stairs in good time and in good spirits.

But alas! for the weakness of human nature and the brief duration of its exalted moods! When they began to grapple with the problem of getting breakfast, and of persuading the stove to burn the wood which Bob had piled ready to hand the night before, as if he had long been a country boy used to gathering fuel, the benediction of the dawn began to lose effect.

"Maybe we'd better wait for mother and Aunt Keren to advise us," said Happie at last, sitting back on her heels with ashes on her hair and despair on her face, having vainly blown the fire through the draughts which did not draw.

"What's up?" inquired Bob entering in time to catch her suggestion. "Say, I have to wash at the pump like a farm hand! I hope that freight car will come to-day."

"We're up. So is mother--I heard her--but she isn't down," said Happie. "This fire is too much for me, Bob."

"Don't you mean it is too little for you?" suggested Bob. "I don't see how it possibly can be too much for you--there's none at all. I'll have a try at it; I learned a trick about it last night. You have to light the fire in the southeast corner of the grate--it's not cracked there."

Bob's knowledge of the geography of the cracked stove stood him in good stead, and when Miss Bradbury and Mrs. Scollard came down the fire was under way.

Miss Keren-happuch cracked her egg with a decisive blow on the edge of a saucer--her establishment did not boast an egg cup.

"That Shale stratum which brought our trunks, and Bob and Happie, last night, is going to lend himself, with the aid of Peter Kuntz, our driver, to bringing up our household goods to-day, if the car gets here, as they think it will," she said. "I never realized how appropriately one's effects might be called _goods_--they will indeed be goods to us in this dearth of everything. And the first thing I shall do will be to find a woman to preside over our housework, for I suspect that will be the attitude these independent farmers' wives will take towards it. Bob, perhaps you had better look after the carting, and we two Keren-happuchs, Happie my dear, will look for the woman--as the proverb advises one to do whenever there is trouble."

"Why not ask Jake Shale if he knows of one? He is coming now," suggested Mrs. Scollard. Miss Bradbury hurried out to the steps.

"What is?" the family within heard him ask. "Some one to help you out? I guess. Mebbe she might help you a little first along."

"She?" repeated Miss Bradbury.

"Her, yes," said Jake. "We hain't got so much work now to our place, but she couldn't do it long."

"Oh, your wife!" exclaimed Miss Bradbury, enlightened. "If you will bring her here, I will not look for any one else. You are sure she'll come?"

"I guess," affirmed Jake. And he drove away with Bob on the seat beside him.

The family hailed them with delight reappearing at noon, seated on familiar crates piled high on the wagon. Jake not only brought his wife when he came down in the afternoon, but his elongated son of eighteen, who opened boxes industriously, but who could not be persuaded to open his mouth.

As fast as Noah Shale pried open crates, his father and Bob carried their contents to their place, and the new stove, their own chairs, rugs, and the best beloved of the pictures, which were hurried into something like order that afternoon, gave the forlorn old Ark a very different aspect by the second night from that which it had worn on the family's arrival.

Miss Bradbury surveyed her house by lamp-light--for she had bought oil--with an amused criticism that held the germ of approval.

"Who can kalsomine?" she demanded suddenly of Mrs. Jake passing out of the room to get a few sticks of wood for the hearth which to the joy of all the exiles they found in the living-room, and with a perfect draught.

"What is?" said Mrs. Shale stopping short. "I kin, fer one, and he kin, and the boy could if he wanted, and you could--most anybody, I guess, that wants to. Why did you want to know?"

"I'm going to make these walls clean, at least, upstairs and down," said Miss Bradbury, pointing to the blackened walls and ceilings which seemed to indicate that the wood-fire on the hearth had not always crackled and snapped as it was then doing.

"Make it look whiter," remarked Mrs. Shale, resuming her way with a slightly superfluous statement.

Not only did grass have no chance to grow under Miss Bradbury's feet; it could not so much as sprout. By the next day Jake Shale, young Noah Shale and Peter Kuntz were all wielding kalsomine brushes upstairs and down in the Ark, with Bob as an understudy learning with each stroke to make the next one better.

White and sweet with lime on the morning of the fifth day of life in it, the Ark reflected the sunshine on the wall of Happie's room when she opened her eyes and aroused Margery.

They found Miss Bradbury in the living-room, bending over a trunk that had not heretofore been opened. She turned to meet the girls' bright faces with a smile on her own, and held up her finger warningly.

"It's only five o'clock," she whispered. "Don't wake your mother. This comes of having such brilliant walls to make our eastward-looking chambers light in the morning, girls. I hurried to dress, thinking it was fully half-past six--my clock had stopped. This is the trunk of silkalines and other possibilities of beauty at ten cents the yard. Come and choose the color and pattern for the curtains in your own room, Margery and Happie." She threw out several rolls of the prettiest materials, and the girls plunged into them ecstatically.

"Oh, Aunt Keren, do you think it would matter to any one else if we had this in our room?" cried Margery holding up a roll of silkaline, white with soft green maiden hair fern wandering over it.

"But only look at this yellow jasmine, Margery!" cried Happie, holding up a rival pattern.

"But green for our room with the morning sunshine to lighten it--would you mind, Aunt Keren?" persisted Margery.

"Why should I tell you to choose if I minded?" said Aunt Keren, but the pleasure in her eyes at their pleasure belied the gruffness of her manner.

That day the entire population of the Ark, excepting Penny and Dorée, but including Polly, worked on window curtains, hemming as fast as feminine fingers could fly, and tacking and hanging as fast as Bob could work.

When the sunset breeze wandered around the Ark, it found lovely wistaria blossoms in their green leaves to flutter in Mrs. Scollard's windows; the yellow jasmine responded to his fingers in Miss Keren-happuch's room; Bob offered him crimson roses, Laura and Polly's windows were hung with sweet pea blossoms, while the soft maiden hair fern blew into the two eldest girls' room, brushing lightly against the white counterpane on their bed. The newly kalsomined walls looked fresh and restful, and the sash curtains transformed the exterior scene, still bleak and forbidding.

But the Ark was doomed to ride on troublous waters for a time. The next day Mrs. Jake announced that she must return to her bereft family, and Miss Bradbury vainly went abroad in search of her successor.

"There is nothing for it, Charlotte and other children," said Miss Bradbury, after two days of scouring the country in Jake Shale's open wagon, "but for me to go to town and find some one there. Though how I shall persuade a person accustomed to city improvements, or pretty summer cottages, to come to our primitive Ark, I can't imagine. However, I shall go down on Monday to try."

"Oh! And leave us alone!" cried Margery.

"Yes, _all_ of you alone. How can one leave 'us' alone? It doesn't seem likely on the face of it that half a dozen Scollards could miss one ancient Bradbury, does it?" said Miss Keren-happuch.

"You are the Head of the House, and it is hard to be decapitated, Aunt Keren," said Bob. But decapitated they were on Monday, when the weather wept copiously over their bereavement.

The inmates of the Ark awakened to the swish of rain against the small window panes, and to the thought of Miss Bradbury's departure. They discovered that in the few weeks that had passed since Mrs. Scollard was taken ill, Miss Bradbury had come to seem as much and necessary a part of their lives as their own heads and hands.

Happie and Bob met with dismal faces to offer their morning oblations of wood to the stove.

"If the violets would come, I could bear it better," remarked Happie suddenly.

"If the mud would dry up, and the roads get decent _I_ could bear it better," retorted Bob. It was becoming a family joke, the number of things which they discovered would make life in the Ark bearable. For each of the family felt in the bottom of a courageous heart that the new conditions were hard to bear, and every night Happie lay down lonely and discouraged to wonder how she was going to face another day. Somehow, though, that other day never would seem dreadful to her when she opened her eyes upon it. It was always so beautiful, seen in the light of the sun mounting over the hills before her chamber window.

"I have engaged our friend Pete Kuntz to make the garden this week during my absence, and to put out our vegetables. Pete doesn't plant; he 'puts out' seeds. I shall expect Bob to keep it watered if nature fails us, as I should think she would have to after this flood--no wonder we call this house the Ark!" said Miss Bradbury, as she pulled on her gauntlets, and walked towards the door where Jake Shale was waiting with his drooping steeds to take her to the station. "And good-bye, my family. I shall return _with_ my shield, and not upon it, for by fair means, if possible, but somehow in any case, I shall inveigle a woman up here to work for us."

She nodded to each one, patted Mrs. Scollard on the shoulder as she passed her--Miss Bradbury was not given to kissing--went out the door into the drenching rain, mounted the dismal wagon and slowly drove away.

"Now, motherkins, and other girls," said Happie, wheeling towards the door to hide her eyes, and hoping that the rising inflection which she had forced into her voice might be mistaken for the ring of happiness, "now, let's go up attic! We youngsters have been aching to get at it. I'd like to see if rain on the old attic roof sounds as sweet as poetry says it does--it's a good day to test it."

Margery sighed and Laura groaned. "It's perfectly dreadful!" she said. "I don't see how you can help minding such weather! Think of living here in such storms as this!"

"Yet fancy moving every time the weather changed, Laura," Happie retorted. "We would have to leave an order with Pete Kuntz, Jake Shale and some other teamsters like this: When the sun shines, don't come. If it looks cloudy, keep your horses ready to start if it rains. Then when it rains, hook up, as you would say, and drive right over to the Ark, to move the Scollards, because the third Scollard girl can't live in that house in stormy weather. Don't you think it might be hard to make them understand, Laura? For instance, what would they do if it was cloudy and misting a little? Or how would they know what to do in a shower? No; it's better to live in a house and never mind the weather once you have moved in."

Happie had rattled on, one eye on her mother's face, and was rewarded by her laughing a little when she stopped; her nonsense usually made her mother smile.

"Such a goose-girl, Happie!" she exclaimed. And Happie did not mind Laura's pouting at being made fun of, for she had accomplished what she had set out to do, and had tided her mother over the first consciousness of being left alone.

"I hope Aunt Keren will find a nice, clean, rosy-faced girl to help us, Margery," said Mrs. Scollard, as they mounted atticward.

"I wouldn't mind if she weren't young, and was as brown as a berry, if only she were nice and clean, mama," said Margery pensively.

"Poor daughter! I'm afraid you find exile harder than the rest of us," said her mother, laying her hand on pretty Margery's arm.

"Not a bit!" declared Margery quickly. "It isn't hard for any of us, for you are getting better!"

The steep attic stairs, intended apparently "for the use of flies," Happie remarked, issued into the single gabled room running the entire length and width of the house, dusty and musty, dark in the heavy storm, yet attractive with the charm no attic can escape. Happie plunged under the eaves, followed by Penny and Dorée, who had come up with them, the former singing in her crooning voice that sounded very like the latter's purring, which was loud, for the yellow kitten expected mice.

"There's an old trunk in here, motherums, a little hair trunk that has gone quite bald in spots," Happie called in a muffled voice from under the eaves. "It's as shabby as a trunk can be, but there are things in it--it is heavy--and there's a B in brass nails on one end. The Bittenbenders must have left it here. May we open it? What has become of the Bittenbenders? What was a Bittenbender anyway? And why did they go off and leave Aunt Keren their house, furnished, too, after its way, and with their worn-off-horsehair trunk left behind?" And Happie emerged from her dusty exploration, rubbing her nose violently, and making up queer faces to keep from sneezing.

Her mother laughed. "I don't know what a Bittenbender was, Happie dear, any more than you do. We know it was--collectively--the family who owned this farm, and who owed Aunt Keren more money than this place was worth, which was all that she could get in payment. Though if this farm were taken care of, it could be made a good one. As to the trunk, I'm sure Aunt Keren did not insist on that as a part of her bargain--it must have been left because it was not worth taking."

"Don't open the trunk to-day, Hapsie," protested Margery. "I don't like the rain on the roof nearly as well as I thought that I should. And it's leaking around that gable, and it is so dark and damp and dismal! Let's go down to the kitchen where it is warm and comparatively cheerful. At least the fire is red! Truly I can't stand this dank, dark, dreary, dusty, dismal hole and the beat of that rain."

"Poor Peggy! She's getting her adjectives high, and her spirits low!" cried Happie. "What is it about attic salt? Hers is lumpy from wet weather. Come on, you poor dear! We'll go down to the kitchen and boil eggs. Mother, when do you suppose we shall get anything to eat besides eggs? I asked Jake, and he said the butcher began coming through in June. Now what in the world does the butcher come through? And aren't we to have any meat till he has come through it? We cannot possibly live on eggs till June. We've cooked them in every way by this time, and they still come out eggs--more or less so, at least. For:

'You may boil, you may scramble the rest, if you will,
But the taste of the egglet will cling to it still.'

Laura, go first if you want to be noble, and be the cushion at the bottom of the heap of your family when we all tumble down these breakneck attic stairs!"

"Happie, what an absurd girl you are!" cried Margery. "Jake Shale meant that the butcher came through Crestville after June, carrying meat to the hotels beyond, and then we can get it easily enough. But it is serious business getting it till then. Aunt Keren said she would bring meat when she came back, and if she buys a horse, as she means to, we can drive somewhere where it is to be had."

"Won't it be fun, jogging around the country picking up a roast here and a chop there?" cried incorrigible Happie. "I hope it will be a horse that we all can drive."

"Aunt Keren said she should buy a cheap horse, too tired to be dangerous, and we are to rest him while we drive," said Laura, unconscious of Miss Bradbury's humor, and repeating with entire gravity this statement at which the others all laughed. "For my part," she added, "I shall be mortified to drive such a horse."

"You can sit on the back seat and look like a guest; Margery and I will drive," said Happie. She danced ahead of the others towards the kitchen, swinging Penny to her shoulder as she ran. She stopped short in the doorway with a shocked little cry.

"What's the matter?" said Margery.

"We have no horse to blush for, but we must blush for ourselves; the bread has run over the pans, and down on the table! Only look! And we are all so hungry! It must be as sour as sour! I'm so scatter-brained!" And Happie pulled her own bright locks with a contrite face, offering Penny the ear nearest the shoulder on which she was seated to be boxed. But Penny kissed her sister's flushed cheek instead.