pump, and Rags was held under the spout. This was a new and bitter experience, and he wished for a few brief moments that he had never joined the noble army of deserters, but had stayed where dirt was fashionable. Being released, the sense of abnormal cleanliness mounted to his brain, and he tore breathlessly round in a circle seventy-seven times without stopping. But this only dried his hair and amused Gay, who was beginning to find the basket confining, and who clamored for “Timfy” to take her to “yide.”
Timothy attended to himself last, as usual. He put his own head under the pump, and scrubbed his face and hands heartily; wiping them on his—well, he wiped them, and that is the main thing; besides, his handkerchief had been reduced to a pulp in Gay’s service. He combed his hair, pulled up his stockings and tied his shoes neatly, buttoned his jacket closely over his shirt, and was just pinning up the rent in his hat, when Rags considerately brought another suggestion in the shape of an old chicken-wing, with which he brushed every speck of dust from his clothes. This done, and being no respecter of persons, he took the family comb to Rags, who woke the echoes during the operation, and hoped to the Lord that the squirrels would run slowly and that the field-mice would be very tender, to pay him for this.
It was now nearly eight o’clock, and the party descended the hillside and entered the side door of the station.
The day’s work had long since begun, and there was the usual din and uproar of railroad traffic. Trucks, laden high with boxes and barrels, were being driven to the wide doors, and porters were thundering and thumping and lurching the freight from one set of cars into another; their primary objects being to make a racket and demolish raw material, thereby increasing manufacture and export, but incidentally to load or unload as much freight as possible in a given time.
Timothy entered, trundling his carriage, where Lady Gay sat enthroned like a Murray Hill belle on a dog-cart, conscious pride of Sunday hat on week-day morning exuding from every feature; and Rags followed close behind, clean, but with a crushed spirit, which he could stimulate only by the most seductive imaginations. No one molested them, for Timothy was very careful not to get in any one’s way. Finally, he drew up in front of a high blackboard, on which the names of various way-stations were printed in gold letters:—
Chestertown. Sandford. Reedville. Bingham. Skaggstown. Esbury. Scratch Corner. Hillside. Mountain View. Edgewood. Pleasant River.
“The names get nicer and nicer as you read down the line, and the furtherest one of all is the very prettiest, so I guess we’ll go there,” thought Timothy, not realizing that his choice was based on most insecure foundations; and that, for aught he knew, the milk of human kindness might have more cream on it at Scratch Corner than at Pleasant River, though the latter name was certainly more attractive.
Gay approved of Pleasant River, and so did Rags; and Timothy moved off down the station to a place on the open platform where a train of cars stood ready for starting, the engine at the head gasping and puffing and breathing as hard as if it had an acute attack of asthma.
“How much does it cost to go to Pleasant River, please?” asked Tim, bravely, of a kind-looking man in a blue coat and brass buttons, who stood by the cars.
“This is a freight train, sonny,” replied the man; “takes four hours to get there. Better wait till 10.45; buy your ticket up in the station.”
“10.45!” Tim saw visions of Mrs. Simmons speeding down upon him in hot pursuit, kindled by Gay’s disappearance into an appreciation of her charms.
The tears stood in his eyes as Gay clambered out of the basket, and danced with impatience, exclaiming, “Gay wants to yide now! yide now! yide now!”
“Did you want to go sooner?” asked the man, who seemed to be entirely too much interested in humanity to succeed in the railroad business. “Well, as you seem to have consid’rable of a family on your hands, I guess we’ll take you along. Jim, unlock that car and let these children in, and then lock it up again. It’s a car we’re taking up to the end of the road for repairs, bubby, so the comp’ny ‘ll give you and your folks a free ride!”
Timothy thanked the man in his politest manner, and Gay pressed a piece of moist cooky in his hand, and offered him one of her swan’s-down kisses, a favor of which she was usually as chary as if it had possessed a market value.
“Are you going to take the dog?” asked the man, as Rags darted up the steps with sniffs and barks of ecstatic delight. “He ain’t so handsome but you can get another easy enough!” (Rags held his breath in suspense, and wondered if he had been put under a roaring cataract, and then ploughed in deep furrows with a sharp-toothed instrument of torture, only to be left behind at last!)
“That’s just why I take him,” said Timothy; “because he isn’t handsome and has nobody else to love him.”
(“Not a very polite reason,” thought Rags; “but anything to go!”)
“Well, jump in, dog and all, and they’ll give you the best free ride to the country you ever had in your life! Tell ‘em it’s all right, Jim;” and the train steamed out of the depot, while the kind man waved his bandana handkerchief until the children were out of sight.
Scene IV.
Pleasant River
JABE SLOCUM ASSUMES THE RÔLE OF GUARDIAN ANGEL.
Jabe Slocum had been down to Edgewood, and was just returning to the White Farm, by way of the cross-roads and Hard Scrabble school-house. He was in no hurry, though he always had more work on hand than he could leave undone for a month; and Maria also was taking her own time, as usual, even stopping now and then to crop an unusually sweet tuft of grass that grew within smelling distance, and which no mare (with a driver like Jabe) could afford to pass without notice.
Jabe was ostensibly out on an “errant” for Miss Avilda Cummins; but, as he had been in her service for six years, she had no expectations of his accomplishing anything beyond getting to a place and getting back in the same day, the distance covered being no factor at all in the matter.
But one needn’t go to Miss Avilda Cummins for a description of Jabe Slocum’s peculiarities. They were all so written upon his face and figure and speech that the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not err in his judgment. He was a long, loose, knock-kneed, slack-twisted person, and would have been “longer yit if he hedn’t hed so much turned up for feet,”—so Aunt Hitty Tarbox said. (Aunt Hitty went from house to house in Edgewood and Pleasant River, making over boys’ clothes; and as her tongue flew as fast as her needle, her sharp speeches were always in circulation in both villages.)
Mr. Slocum had sandy hair, high cheekbones, a pair of kindly light blue eyes, and a most unique nose: I hardly know to what order of architecture it belonged,—perhaps Old Colonial would describe it as well as anything else. It was a wide, flat, well-ventilated, hospitable edifice (so to speak), so peculiarly constructed and applied that Samantha Ann Ripley (of whom more anon) declared that “the reason Jabe Slocum ketched cold so easy was that, if he didn’t hold his head jess so, it kep’ a-rainin’ in!”
His mouth was simply an enormous slit in his face, and served all the purposes for which a mouth is presumably intended, save, perhaps, the trivial one of decoration. In short (a ludicrously inappropriate word for the subject), it was a capital medium for exits and entrances, but no ornament to his countenance. When Rhapsena Crabb, now deceased, was first engaged to Jabez Slocum,
