Part 8

‘Well, I’d like to hire Boro when you don’t need him. I can use more horses. Will you take a sack of meal and some goose eggs as part payment?’

Michael went home across the cold fields with a light heart, and the next day the spring work seemed to begin in earnest. Helen made pancakes for breakfast, Michael finished ploughing and began to sow, and Katherine and Basil filled a box with hay, as a nest for the goose.

Only a few days later Mr. Hall came to Michael with grave news. ‘My boy,’ he said, ‘I am going to leave here at the end of this month, and I want you to come with me.’

‘Going away!’ cried Michael, stupefied.

‘Yes, we are opening a Farm School at Kolpin. It is for orphaned boys, like yourself, who have land, but who are too young to work it. By the time they are eighteen or nineteen and are ready to go back they will know how to make the most of what they have. I wish you would come with us.’

Michael grew red with excitement.

‘I’d like to go all right,’ he said, ‘but of course I couldn’t leave the farm and the children.’

‘Michael, you are very brave, and you did fairly well last year, yet you made hardly enough to carry you through the winter.’

‘I have planted more this year,’ said the boy confidently.

‘Yes,’ said Mr. Hall, ‘and each year you will plant a little more until you are working all your land. But if you knew something about modern farming you could make it yield at least four times as much as it does.’

‘How could I?’

‘You would know what to plant in a field one year in order to get good corn the next; which soil is good for wheat and which for potatoes; and how to make old land young.’

‘I’d like it mighty well,’ sighed Michael, ‘but I must stick to the farm and the children. Mother wanted us to stay together.’

‘I would not ask you to come if we could not take the children, too.’

‘But,’ cried Michael in alarm, ‘you said it was a place for orphans; I promised mother I would never let the children go to an asylum.’

‘It is a school, not an orphanage,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘The children would be happy there.’

‘Not if it’s an orphan place,’ said Michael, and shook his head stubbornly.

Mr. Hall could not move him, and at the end of the month went away sadly, leaving Michael behind.

The boy took up his work with a lonely heart, but he did not lose courage. He loved every inch of his farm; the windy furrows against the sky, with the long-tailed magpies stalking over them; the clump of white birches in the hollow; the purple woodland and the gray windmill where he would carry his grain in the autumn to have it ground into flour. Even the little hump of a cottage, which he had built with his own hands, had grown dear to him; but most of all he loved his sisters and his small brother, and he had the joy of keeping the family together, as his mother had begged him to do.

One day in early summer, when the crops were pushing up bravely and the girls were weeding the turnip patch, Mr. Hall again stood before them. He had come over from Kolpin for things that had been left behind, and was to return that afternoon.

‘Can you give me some dinner?’ he called to Helen, and she ran to put the kettle on. When Michael came home, at noon, his heart gave a bound of joy. Not only was he glad to see Mr. Hall, but he was proud to show him his summer fields.

[Illustration: BASIL HERDING GEESE]

‘Yes, Michael,’ said Mr. Hall, ‘you have the making of a great farmer, but you must remember that land in Poland is no longer farmed as it was before the war. You will have to compete with modern methods. Now that we are well started at Kolpin, you must bring the children and make us a visit. I wish you would come to stay, Michael. Think it over!’ But Michael could not make up his mind.

‘If it were not an orphan place----’ he began.

‘Michael,’ said Mr. Hall seriously, ‘your mother would wish you and the others to go to school. She would want the girls to learn to cook and sew and keep house as she did. Do you think it is right for you to keep them from it? Come back with me to-day, all of you, and at the end of a week let the younger ones decide whether they will stay or not. That is only fair. Try it!’

Michael, who was beginning to see that perhaps he had no right to decide the question alone, put it to vote.

‘Let’s try it for a week,’ said Helen; and Katherine and Basil went wild with excitement.

After dinner they all climbed into the farm wagon, which was half filled with hay, and rolled away merrily behind the spanking grays. Toward evening they came to a white house at the end of an avenue of big trees, where people with kind eyes and kind voices were waiting for them; but the first thing that they saw as they drove in was a stork’s nest on the roof of the barn. Three angular little storks settled down for the night beneath their mother, while the father stork stood beside them, dark against the melting gold of sunset.

‘A stork’s nest,’ cried Katherine; ‘this will be a lucky place!’

‘That is not the only nest here,’ said the House Mother, ‘come and see the others.’

The first nest was a long, brown house full of big boys who were just sitting down to a supper of rice with peas, black bread, cocoa, and apples. Here Michael was to live.

The second nest was a square little house like something in a story book. Here Helen and Katherine were to live, with Basil. The floors were as smooth as silk. At the windows hung daffodil curtains, which made the rooms seem full of sunshine. There were little white beds, one for each child, with sheets such as these children had had when their mother was alive; and in the kitchen was a great stove, with a chimney-hood like the one in their old home.

Every one at the farm school was busy. Michael went out to the fields or to the barns with the other boys. Helen made beds and washed dishes. Katherine shelled peas. All passed a part of each day in the schoolroom. Even Basil learned to count the geese that were placed in his care. He knew that there were eight in all, so if there were only five in the path there must be three behind the hedge.

That week Michael watched the children closely. He knew that they were having better food than he could give them, and when he saw them starting gayly for the blackberry patch with their tin pails, or saw Helen in a clean pink apron watering the foxgloves and hollyhocks with a happy smile, he nodded wisely. In his own heart he longed to stay, for he had seen enough of the well-tilled acres on the river Bug to know that here he could learn to be a successful farmer.

‘What shall I do with my farm if we stay?’ he asked Mr. Hall.

‘You may take a week in the spring to plant grain and another in the fall to harvest it. We can use Boro here.’

At the end of the week Mr. Hall called the family together. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘which is it to be, go or stay?’

‘Stay!’ they shouted joyously.

Michael added, ‘If mother could see us all here I know she would be glad.’

‘Every one is glad,’ said Mr. Hall. ‘Look!’ and he pointed toward the barn, where, on the roof-tree they saw the old stork rise on his toes and clap his beak and his wings with great content.

ELENA’S CIAMBELLA

As Elena scampered over the road, the town clock struck a quarter to four. Elena had an important engagement. Her mother had sent her to draw a jar of water from the public well outside the town; and on the way back she was to stop at the bakery to get her _ciambella_, which was to come out of the oven at four.

Now a _ciambella_ is an Easter cake, but it is different from any other cake in the world. It is made of flour and sugar and olive oil, and tastes like a crisp cooky. If you are a girl yours will be in the form of a dove; if a boy, in the form of a galloping horse, with a handle of twisted dough from mane to tail to carry it by. Whichever it may be, an Easter egg will be baked inside the _ciambella_, and the cake will be stuck full of downy feathers, which wave and look festive.

Elena’s cake was an unusually large one, in the shape of a dove, of course, with wings and tail feathers and an open beak. It had been brought to the bakery on a tray by Elena’s mother, and left to be baked.

[Illustration: HER MOTHER HAD SENT HER TO DRAW A JAR OF WATER]

As Elena panted up the hill she saw Giuseppa outside the _cabane_ or hut, helping her mother with the washing. The baby stood in a high, narrow box where he could look on and yet was out of mischief, and there he waved his arms and shouted with excitement as the suds flew.

‘Where are you going?’ called Giuseppa as Elena passed.

‘To get my _ciambella_,’ cried Elena. ‘Have you got yours?’

Giuseppa shook her head. ‘I’m not going to have any,’ she said.

‘Not this year,’ added her mother, looking up; ‘perhaps next. But we are going to make the _cabane_ clean for Easter.’

Giuseppa and Elena looked at each other sympathetically.

‘Too bad!’ exclaimed Elena. ‘Well I must hurry. _Ciao_, Giuseppa.’

‘_Ciao_, Elena.’ (A parting that is pronounced ‘chow’ and means good-bye.)

When Elena reached the bakery she found a great crowd there. The four o’clock cakes were coming out of the oven. Far back in the glow Elena could see her own _ciambella_ on the stone floor of the oven, larger than all the rest, its feathers waving tantalizingly in the heat.

In the midst of the women and children stood the cook, with smooth black hair and huge earrings of gold and pearls, which reached to her shoulders, and with a clean flowered kerchief tucked into her corset. She was bare-armed and brown, and held what looked like a great pancake-turner with a very long handle. With this she could reach into the depths of the oven, which was as big as a pantry, and scoop out the cakes, even those quite at the back. There were all sorts of cakes, large and small; some were cookies, and some were big loaves made with almonds and honey and eggs. The whole place smelt delicious, and every one stood on tiptoe to see his own cake pulled out of the oven. Finally Elena’s _ciambella_ was put into her hands, still hot and fragrant, though she had waited for it to cool somewhat on a tray.

Just then a little girl named Letitia came in to ask for coals with which to light the fire at home. The cook raked a few from the oven and put them into the pot of ashes that Letitia carried. Covering them with her apron, Letitia went out with Elena.

‘Just look at my _ciambella_,’ said Elena proudly, as she carried it carefully on both hands. ‘Isn’t it a beauty?’

‘Yes,’ said Letitia, ‘I am going to have one, too. It will be baked to-morrow. Of course,’ she added, ‘it won’t be quite as big as yours, because Maria will have one and Gino will have a horse. But they’ll all taste the same.’

‘Just think!’ said Elena, ‘Giuseppa isn’t going to have any at all.’

‘Not any?’ cried Letitia. ‘How dreadful! I never heard of a house without a _ciambella_! They must be very poor.’

‘Yes, but at school Giuseppa always has a clean apron and clean hands. She helps her mother a lot, too. Well, chow, Letitia.’

‘Chow, Elena.’

The girls parted, and Elena walked proudly through the streets, carrying the cake as though in a procession.

She climbed the outside stair, which led to her house, built over the donkey stable. Her mother had gone out to the fountain to polish her pots. The big dim room, with its brown rafters and the dark furniture ranged along the walls, was very quiet. A patch of sunshine made a bright spot on the stone floor, and in it a white pigeon drowsed. It did not move, even when Elena stepped over it. The little girl looked down and laughed at the comical resemblance between the pigeon and her _ciambella_; but her own pigeon sat up very straight and stiff, because it had an Easter egg baked inside it.

Elena set the cake carefully on a big chest while she struggled to open the bottom drawer of the bureau. There she laid the cake in a nest of clean aprons and handkerchiefs, to rest until Saturday afternoon, when it would be taken out to be blessed. Not until Sunday morning would its fine feathers be plucked and its crisp wings bitten off.

The _ciambella_ safely lodged in the drawer, Elena climbed on a chair and got a piece of bread and some sheep’s cheese from the cupboard; then she ran to find her mother.

The next days were very busy. Every one in Sezze was cleaning house frantically before Easter. Washing hung over every balcony, the yellow and flowered handkerchiefs and aprons making the whole street gay. Every bit of furniture was polished, windows were cleaned, curtains washed and floors scrubbed. Above all, the copper water jars and basins were taken out to the fountains and scoured with lemon and sand until they shone like red gold. There was the warmth of spring in the air after a cold winter. On the slopes below the town the almond trees were in blossom and the snow had disappeared from the mountains, the tops of which were drifted with clouds.

Far below the town a fertile plain--the Pontine Marshes--stretched out to the sea. Often the plain was covered with mists, for it was full of swamps that bred mosquitoes and malaria. People who lived there did so at a risk. Often they came up to the town sick with fever, and sometimes they died; but the gardens and fields produced such fine vegetables and brought so much money from the markets in Rome that men kept on. There were no houses down there, so far as the eye could see, only _cabanes_ or huts thatched with reeds from the marshes and in the distance looking like haystacks. Giuseppa’s father worked on the flats, and the family lived in a _cabane_, but it was high up on the mountain, just below the town, where land was cheap.

It was true that Giuseppa’s father was very poor, but he was also saving his money to build a little stone house to take the place of the _cabane_. He told the children that when they had the house they should also have a _ciambella_ every year. In the meantime Giuseppa helped her mother to make the _cabane_ as neat as possible for Easter. It was a poor place indeed; round, with a thatched roof, which came to a peak at the top. Inside there was only one room, and that had an earthen floor and no windows. There was no opening except the doors, and no chimney.

When the fire was built on the floor in the middle of the room the smoke struggled up through holes in the roof; but the family lived out in the sun most of the time, and went into the _cabane_ only when it rained or was very cold. As Elena went back and forth for water those busy days she sometimes looked over the wall and saw Giuseppa hanging clothes on the bushes or beating a mattress; and there was smoke coming through the roof as if water was being heated. Elena felt very sorry for Giuseppa, and every night prayed God to send her a _ciambella_.

Giuseppa, not knowing this, felt bitter toward Elena and jealous of her great, feathered cake. Also she herself prayed earnestly for a _ciambella_. On Easter morning she made herself as fine as she could, and went to church. She combed back her short hair and laid a white embroidered handkerchief over it. She had small gold earrings and a coral necklace, and she put on a light blue cotton apron and her corn-colored handkerchief with roses, over her shoulders.

On her way home Elena came running after her. ‘Oh, Giuseppa,’ she asked earnestly, ‘did you get a _ciambella_?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ said Giuseppa, and passed on.

Elena was much disappointed. She had prayed hard, and felt that a cake should have been sent to Giuseppa. Then suddenly she stopped short in the street. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘perhaps God hasn’t got a _ciambella_, and I have!’

She went home thoughtfully and opened the drawer and looked a long time at her _ciambella_. Then she ate her dinner of boiled chicken, and artichokes fried in batter. After dinner Elena took the cake lovingly in her arms and carried it into the street. It was the last time it would be on parade. She passed the groups of children, all munching _ciambella_, and made her way to Giuseppa’s hut. Giuseppa was outside, feeding the baby from a bowl of bread and milk.

‘Happy Easter!’ cried Elena.

‘Happy Easter!’ replied Giuseppa, her eyes fixed on the cake.

‘I brought my _ciambella_ to eat with you,’ said Elena cautiously, ‘and you may hold it, and, oh, Giuseppa, you may have the egg!’

Giuseppa grew scarlet. ‘I never saw such a beauty,’ she said, ‘and what feathers!’

‘I stuck them into the dough myself;’ said Elena, ‘that is why there are so many.’

‘Do you know,’ said Giuseppa shyly, ‘I _prayed_ for a _ciambella_.’

‘And you got it!’ cried Elena triumphantly.

AN EVERYDAY STORY

Michel trudged home to supper. All day he had been forking heavy, slippery seaweed into carts. His arms and legs ached, but he had earned five francs. That would be something to tell Uncle Ives when he got back from his cruise to the Bay of Biscay.

The seaweed, washed up on the beach by a month’s storm, was community property, prized as fertilizer and as bedding for the live stock. The mayor had appointed a day for each family to gather its share, and Michel had been hired by an absent citizen to harvest his part of this strange sea crop.

As he started home, the world, hitherto wrapped in a golden mist, began to darken; and looking at the sky, Michel was surprised to see a great mounting cloud, which had not been there a few moments before. As he opened the cottage door, it was nearly jerked from his hand by a sudden gust. He dropped his wooden shoes at the door, and entered the kitchen in his felt slippers.

His grandmother sat near the fireplace, giving little Martha her supper. On the hearthstone knelt Guen. There was an appetizing smell of frying fish. Now and then a drop of rain came down the chimney and splashing into the pan, made a great sizzling. The wooden shutters, closing with a bang, shut out the last glimmer of twilight. ‘Go out, Michel, and fasten them open,’ said Grandmother; ‘we will keep the lamp in the window to-night.’

‘I am glad Uncle Ives got off the coast before the storm came,’ said Guen. ‘Don’t you suppose the Jeanot is in the Bay of Biscay by this time, Grandmother?’

‘God knows,’ sighed the old woman. She turned the fish in the pan, Josef came in red-cheeked and muddy from a game of ball, and they had supper.

The bed in which Michel and Josef slept was built into the wall and heaped with pillows and bedding. It had sliding doors, which could be closed, so that it looked like a handsome carved wardrobe; but usually they were left open, showing the pretty chintz curtains. That night when Michel, sitting on Uncle Ives’s sea chest, pulled off his stockings, the storm was raging around the little stone house like a howling wolf. But the four children slept like dormice under their feather beds. Only grandmother, peering between her curtains, watched the flickering lamp all night long.

Michel had never been beyond the smell of the sea, and there was brine in his blood. He knew that sooner or later he, too, like his father and all his forebears, would become an Iceland fisherman; in fact he lived for the day when, as _mousse_ or cabin boy, he would take ship under his Uncle Ives for the Arctic Circle; for Michel lived in the town of Paimpol, in that part of Brittany called the _Côte du Nord_. From this port every year in March a fishing fleet sails for northern waters, to return in August for a few weeks’ respite before starting for the Bay of Biscay to buy salt for the next year’s catch. Toward September those who have not slipped forever into the silence of the North are back in their homes for the cozy winter months, there to make ready for a fresh voyage in the spring. But there are always some for whom there is only a tablet in the gray church by the sea, like the one for Michel’s father, ‘Jules Karadoc, lost on the Iceland Coast’; and under the darkened rafters hangs the model of many a brave little ship gone down.

For the people of Brittany storm and shipwreck are things of every day. They work and eat and sleep as usual, but the women, who do not go to sea, learn to sigh with the wind and to pray as they work.

The next morning, after Josef and Guen had gone to school, Michel, taking a pail, ran down to the beach for clams. The sun was shining again, the tide was out, and only the banks of seaweed and the driftwood flung high on the beach gave any sign of last night’s storm.

Michel dug busily for clams, detecting their presence with the keenness of experience, and then with a full pail started homeward. As he skirted the town, the clack of many wooden shoes hurrying over the cobbles caught his ear. A crowd was running through the streets. Full of curiosity, Michel ran too, headlong for the square in the center of the town.

The wooden shoes were still thumping in from all sides, and about the telegraph office pressed a silent group of women, the tragedy of the sea written on their faces. No one spoke. Only the rapid click of the telegraph key came through the open door. Then a man appeared, holding high a bit of paper.

‘Susanne Allanic,’ he called; and added quickly, ‘Your man’s safe!’

Susanne, standing on the edge of the crowd, with a baby in her arms, threw up her head, gave a cry, and broke into sobs.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Michel sharply, for Allanic was one of the Jeanot’s crew.

‘The Jeanot’s gone down,’ said a woman breathlessly; ‘four men are missing. We don’t know who they are.’