Chapter XIV: Under the Stars

Mr. Burke’s wagon came rattling down the road, its load of bottles jumping around in their boxes in a way that threatened their existence as bottles.

“Whoa, there!” shouted Mr. Burke when he espied the children standing at the side of the road. He pulled in his horse so suddenly that he threw the reliable beast back on his haunches.

“Well, thank the Lord, you’re all right!” cried Mrs. Burke, clambering down from the wagon backward in her usual fashion. Her face was deadly pale. “You _are_ all right, ain’t you?” she added.

“All right; every one of us!” Mark called back.

“Well, by cricky, that was goin’ _some_!” said Mr. Burke.

“It was stopping some!” cried Mark, letting Mr. Burke take his hand, which he had come down out of the wagon to do. But Mark was too much absorbed in the fact of their rescue by the queer little man to be interested in the danger they had escaped.

“Say, Mr. Burke, who do you suppose caught Hurrah?” he said.

“Yes, who’d you s’pose? Who’d you s’pose?” echoed Poppy, dancing about like a firefly. “That man! The queer little man! And we know his name; it’s Kickabout! Did you ever!”

Poppy was in such haste to tell all the news herself that her tongue tripped over her words and she stammered.

“Oh, Poppy, it is not! It’s Ichabod!” Prue said disgustedly. “He said Ichabod Lemuel Rudd. Kickabout! Whoever heard such a name!”

“No, nor the other one, the right one,” said Poppy. “Ain’t Hurrah just fine? I tell you, he can go like a colt!”

Poppy spoke with great enthusiasm thrown into her voice, because she felt considerable fear of Mr. Burke’s disapproving of Hurrah’s running away.

Mr. Burke shook his head, frowning.

“Well, I’m not so sure about the performance bein’ fine! It depends on how you look at it. There’s a lot of people wouldn’t call a horse that ran away so killin’ fine for a little girl to drive,” he said.

“Oh, but it was paper! There’s hardly ever handbills blowing around in the road. You don’t see ’em!” Poppy swept the road in both directions with a wide gesture of her right arm, meaning to prove that handbills were not to be seen. “It came along just flopping, and it flopped right in under Hurrah’s legs. You couldn’t blame him for getting nervous. I think it’s great the way he ran, and folks saying he’s old!”

“If you want a good jounce it’s the old horse you think you know’ll be givin’ it to you,” said Mr. Burke, again shaking his head dubiously. “I’ll be watchin’ out for handbills cavortin’ along after this, for I suppose you’ll have to drive back, seein’ as none of you, nor my wife no more, could drive the wagon. Whatever did you do with your little friend, wid the long nose on him, Mark? There’s no sign of him.”

“He dropped down through the undergrowth and took to his heels like a rabbit when he saw you coming. He said, ‘Oh, it’s the bottle man!’ and off he went,” said Mark. “I was asking him to come to see my father; he seemed half to want to, but instead he melted off quicker than an icicle.”

“Which is about the shape an’ size of him! Maybe he was afraid the bottle man would put him in one of them flat, thin bottles, an’ be off to set the black little wisp of a man he is on the shelf, mistakin’ him for ink! It is a queer one he is, whatever’s the matter wid him!” laughed Mr. Burke.

“Now, I’m thinkin’ that we’ll make a camp for the night, for I promised ye we’d sleep out, though we might push on an’ find a place under cover, did you vote for it.”

“We vote to sleep out!” cried Isabel, who had been so badly frightened by the runaway that she now spoke for the first time.

“Oh, mercy, yes; all the nights,” said Poppy decidedly.

“Well, I’d not wonder if this was the one night we were gone. I’m thinkin’ I’ll be turnin’ back to-morrow an’ make the rest of the trip the next time,” said Mr. Burke, not caring to explain to Poppy that Hurrah’s running had brought his wife and himself to this decision as they gave chase to the buckboard with hearts frozen with fear.

“Let us once get them, and no great harm done, and it’s back we’ll go with those children to-morrow, Thomas Burke, and take no risk of another scare,” Mrs. Burke had said, as she and her husband tore down the road in pursuit of Hurrah amid the rattling bottles.

“We should be willing to stay longer,” said Poppy, most politely.

“Now, that’s kind of you!” Mr. Burke spoke with extreme heartiness, but though she looked at him quickly, Poppy’s sharp eyes could not discover that he was making fun of her. “All the same, I’d forgotten to remember, but now I’m remembering not to forget, that I must go back to Greenacres to-morrow an’ take in the country beyond another time. I’d like the opinion of the sailors on the good ship Buckboard as to the best place to anchor for the night.”

“Take soundings, Captain,” said Mark, responding in kind to Mr. Burke’s fooling, offering him a piece of ribbon that had been around a candy box, hardly long enough to “take soundings” in a bath tub.

Mr. Burke tied the horses to trees and started out, followed by the four children.

“I’ll stop where I am,” Mrs. Burke announced, making herself comfortable in the wagon. “I’m that tired with the fright and holding myself fast when we walloped along, chasing you young ones, that sittin’ down looks good to me. When you’ve found the place to sleep you’ll be back here, anyways, to get the things there’s here, and I may as well be one of ’em.”

It was not necessary to go far to find a camping place that could not have been bettered. Isabel was right when she said it was a pity not to use it for more than one night, so perfect it was.

They came upon a glade surrounded by trees, reached by a sloping clearing, so that there would be no difficulty in bringing the horses to it. A little spring was just beyond, making its presence known by a thread of sound as it trickled down over rocks on its way to the river that flowed on to the outskirts of Greenacres. It was such a sweet, refreshingly restful little sound, so full of hints of flowers watered by the spring, of far-off, hidden places where the stream rose, such a gentle lullaby to which to sleep, that Mr. Burke said it was a shame not to stay awake to think how nice it was to sleep by, and he couldn’t see why Isabel and Mark laughed.

“Well, unless we marched on to Eden, an’ I’m not clear where we’d be findin’ it, since Adam an’ Eve destroyed the map of the road there, we’d never come upon another such spot to spend the night, so it’s back Mark an’ I go to bring the chariot an’ band wagon of this circus, an’ the star performer, who is Mrs. Thomas Burke, by the same token!” announced Mr. Burke, leading the way again to whence they had started out.

“Put a fire in the range, Poppy, an’ cut the fruit cake, while Isabel an’ Prue lays the damask an’ the silver, for we’ll have supper once we get here,” Mr. Burke turned back to say.

Neither the fire, nor the range to hold it, nor silver, nor damask were to be seen when the Burkes came back with Mark, bringing horses and belongings. But the little girls had laid the largest leaves which they could find for plates in a circle on the grass, and Isabel had cleverly bound twigs into an approach to the shape of a vase and had put them in the center of the circle, which represented the table, so that it really might be imagined to be a table, if one brought to it a respectable amount of imagination.

There were wonderful things to eat--or was it that the shadowy, poetic spot transformed everything with its charm?

Bread and butter is every-day enough to us lucky people who have not been taught what it is to lack it, yet this white bread, with its golden-brown crust--“the color of Mark’s eyes,” Prue said, unexpectedly observant--the yellow, yellow butter, fragrant of the grass and clover which had gone to make its cream, seemed raised above bread and butter known in houses, and to be a sort of fairy food. And there were slices of beef as thin as leaves, and of ham, all rosy and white; and jams and jellies in glasses--surely no jam and jelly had ever looked like this at home! And cake! Golden, with white icing, as if a peach had stayed out too late on its tree and got caught in the first light snow of November. There was white cake with a brown coating in layers and on top, that proved, when bitten into, to be not ordinary chocolate icing, but fudge. It was fudge delicious enough to make any one’s very palate sing, all crumbly, yet smooth and soft, chocolatey, yet buttery--the sort of fudge that every fudge-maker knows comes by luck in boiling and beating, and may or may not ever be got a second time!

And there were big, bulging blackberries, full of juice and sweetness, but not of seeds, all ready to go to pieces and yield up their perfect flavor when any one pressed them, with a delighted tongue, up against the roof of a mouth that would surely promptly open to get another such berry! And, last of all, there was lemonade, kept cool in stone jugs, because thermos bottles, not even all that the Hawthornes and Waynes and Lindsays owned, would not hold enough.

“Some supper!” said Poppy, or meant to.

What she really said was, “Thum thupper!” a thick lisp, because of too large a mouthful of fudge cake and the fudge clogging her tongue.

“If you asked me,” said Mark solemnly, “I’d say it wasn’t a supper, but a banquet.”

“Does it make it a banquet to eat too much?” asked Prue. “Because, if it does, it is; I have eaten too much, a great deal too much, and I’m so uncomfortable that I love it--to feel so tight! Because I never, NEVER in all my life, ate such good things!”

“Why not sit up all night?” suggested Isabel, her eyes fixed on the afterglow of the sunset seen through the trees, its soft colors still more softened by the half-veiling green, and upon the few stars beginning to appear in the east, opposite the purpling pinks of the west.

“We all turn in at nine,” said Mr. Burke, consulting his able-bodied, open-faced watch. “It’s now eight o’clock an’ fifteen minutes. Mark my words, by nine there won’t be one of you hardly able to see where you’re turnin’ in, that sleepy will you be! I’m goin’--with Mark’s help--to turn the buckboard over an’ let the three little girls have plenty blankets an’ sleep under it; ’twill make a kind of roof over ’em for keepin’ off dampness. The big wagon’s not altogether comfortable, but Mark’ll make out in it, along wid us. You’re not so fussy, sleepin’ out, as you do be in your homes, when you complain if there’s a small wrinkle in the sheet under you! How’d it be to be givin’ us a small concert till bedtime--if there’s enough breath in you after that supper? Some nice songs, an’ then hymns, last of all, for a help to night prayers an’ safe sleepin’?”

The children all sang well, all but Prue, whose ear was not wholly reliable. Isabel was decidedly musical; she was alive to beauty in every form, and her voice was sweet and true. Mark had a rarely lovely voice, a pure, high boy soprano that was a delight, but Poppy, Poppy with her plain little face, her red hair and freckles, had the gift of a voice so exquisite that no one could think of her as a child while she was singing; she became only a voice to be listened to with the same sort of joy felt when the little brown thrasher sings unseen on a tree near by. She seemed only a song so lovely that it was impossible to consider the body from which it sprang.

“All right,” said Poppy, at once assenting to Mr. Burke’s suggestion.

Without waiting for any one else, she at once began to sing “Loch Lomond,” that haunting, sweet, pathetic song, filled with patient sorrow for a joy that is done.

The others joined in, Isabel singing softly her true little alto, keeping it down because she loved to listen to Poppy and Mark.

They sang and sang “Annie Laurie,” “Bonny Charley,” “Sweet Afton,” “Bonny Doon,” for they all loved the Scotch songs best, and Isabel Lindsay, as her name showed, had a right to, if the blood of her Highland forebears was truly in her.

“Well, now, some Irish ones, the best of all!” hinted Mr. Burke, and he started them with “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms,” which they all knew. He was half offended that they knew few others, but Mark saved his feelings by singing “Kathleen Mavourneen” as it should be sung, and making him cry a little without being ashamed that they all knew it.

By this time there were many stars in the east and south. Cassiopeia’s Chair and Andromeda and Perseus were up, as well as the Great Bear, in the north, though only Isabel and Mark knew them all. Isabel’s mother had taught them to her in the twilight talks they always had, and which Isabel was missing that night, and Mark had learned them from his father when he was a tiny lad, out under the stars, camping with his wonderful daddy.

“Now the hymns,” said Mr. Burke, once more looking at his watch. “An’, moreover, there’s not time for half I’d like of them, if we keep to the hour.”

“Let us not keep to the hour, dear Mr. Burke; let us keep to the singing,” whispered Isabel, putting her hand on his arm.

“I’ll not believe you’re of Scotch descent at all; it’s Irish your ancestors were, acushla!” declared Mr. Burke, looking fondly down on her. No one could ever resist Isabel; her sweetness was of the sort that penetrates and softens hearts.

So they did not “keep to the hour,” but sang their hymns until Prue fell asleep and Mark was drowsy. Isabel could have sung on all night, and Poppy grew more like an electric spark the later the evening wore on.

Mr. Burke and his wife tipped over the buckboard; Mark tried to help, but he was too sleepy to be of much use. Isa thought that it looked unpleasantly queer, propped up with its seat beneath and its wheels in the air, and Prue voiced her feeling.

“I hate it; it’s scarey for night, wouldn’t matter in daytime,” she said.

“We can’t see it when we’re asleep under it,” said Isa, careful not to show that she agreed. “It will be like a nice, funny little house.”

Leafy branches made a good mattress, a new horse blanket that had never been used was so heavy that the cool hours after midnight would not chill the three little girls, snuggled up together under the buckboard, with the big brown and red plaid blanket spread over them.

Mark said good-night and crawled into his own shelter in the big wagon the moment the buckboard was established upside down.

“Goodness, but I’m sleepy!” he said, yawning and staggering as he walked off.

Nobody was to undress. Prue’s orderly soul was further afflicted by lying down to sleep, even on a wildwood bed of boughs, with all her clothes on.

“Isn’t it queer?” she whispered, welcoming with both arms Isa, who was to sleep in the middle, because both Prue and Poppy wanted to be next to her.

It _was_ decidedly queer, but it really was exceedingly nice!

The night seemed deep and vast out here under the stars, surrounded by its complete silence. The little sounds of earth went on, the children discovered after the first few minutes, when they had thought the stillness unbroken. Leaves rustled steadily; sometimes a twig snapped; little birds stirred and chirped softly, sweetly; the crickets and other insects played a ceaseless symphony of the night with their legs drawn over their wings, or their wings whirring in the air. Yet, with all these many soft sounds of earth, the stillness of the night seemed somehow to brood over them and remain unbroken. Isabel and Poppy had been sure that they should not go to sleep all night. It was a pity that going off tight asleep in a few minutes kept them from knowing and being very much surprised that they were not awake one-half hour!

Isabel woke with a great start. She did not know how long she had been asleep, but it seemed to her a long time, though it still was dark. Something had touched her face, something damp and cold!

Poppy was gone; Isabel put out her hand, groping for her, though the space in which they lay was so small that she could not have missed Poppy if she had been there. Poppy was gone! Prue was there, asleep. Isabel grasped her and spoke her name close to her ear.

“Prue, Prue, something is here! Poppy’s gone!” she said.

“Oh, are you awake! I’m dying!” said Poppy hoarsely from somewhere near in the darkness.

“Oh, did you feel it, too?” whispered Isabel, putting out her hand and catching Poppy’s arm as she came, crawling and shaking, toward the bed.

“It got--it got up on--on--me,” Poppy managed to gasp.

With that, Isabel shrieked horribly and dove under the blanket, and Prue and Poppy ably seconded her screams.

“Mr. Burke! Mr. Burke! Mrs. Burke! Mark!” the three little girls screamed.

“Well, what in the name of Mike----” said Mr. Burke, coming toward them.

He turned a flashlight in upon the terror-stricken three and burst out laughing.

“Well, wherever did you get Bunkie? An’ why do you scare the poor little beast’s hide off of him?” Mr. Burke inquired.

“Bunkie!” shouted the three little girls in one breath, and threw off the blanket to sit up and see if it possibly could be Bunkie.

It certainly was Bunkie, standing afar, wistfully wagging his tail, puzzled to be received so unkindly when he had followed the trail of his beloveds’ journey, wearily and patiently, and was so delighted to have overtaken them, so sure that Isa would be as glad to see him as she always was, as he was to see her. But Poppy and she had both jumped up when his nose touched their cheeks, and they had thrown him off the bed where he had joyously leaped to say that he had come up with them at last, shrieking as if he were a rat!

Poor Bunkie, low in his mind, tired and longing, stood wagging his tail and eyeing his mistress wistfully.

“Oh, Bunkie, Bunkie, my dearest!” cried Isabel, holding out her arms.

This was as it should be! With a whine of happiness, Bunkie sprang into these arms and curled down between Isa and Prue to finish the night.