CHAPTER XII

“JORDAN STORMY BANKS”

“All well as common, Liza?” inquired Abram, knocking the mud off his feet at the kitchen door.

“Yes,” she replied, but with a shade of anxiety. “The doctor hasn’t got home yet. Come in, Abram. Have you been over the run?”

“I guess I won’t come in,” said the farmer. He was large-framed, stooping, and clothed in homespun wool of an indescribable dull color. His wamus was belted in; his broad, slouching hat showed several holes. He placed a hand on each side of the doorway and leaned in while he talked. “Yes. I’ve been over there. Liza-Robert came nigh to losin’ her milk-house last night. The milk-lids was afloat and the spring is clear under water.”

“Tuh! tuh!” ejaculated Liza. “And I expect the Rocky Fork is clear out of its banks.”

“I should say it was,” imparted Abram deliberately. “It’s half-way up the Narrows and all over the meadow t’other side. Table Rock came down in that blow yesterday!”

Liza uttered a cry. Table Rock had overhung the Narrows ever since her memory began.

“Hall’s mill has been carried off and lodged in the bottom-lands. The stone’s sunk and the frame’s split in two or three pieces.”

“Why, Abram!”

“Yes, it’s consider’ble high waters. The Ridenours was out in a canoe over their corn-field this mornin’.”

“How’s Eli?”

“Doin’ well, as far as I know.”

“The doctor said he’d maybe have to stay by him a while last night. Seems like he was threatened with inflammation.”

“If Doc’s t’other side of the Fork he’ll not ford it for a while. It’s all ’round the school-house. Willey told me this mornin’ Mr. Pitzer couldn’t take up school till the water went down again. That g’ography man’ll have to put off his doin’s, too. There’s a sight of timber down on the hill. I don’t know when we’ve had such a storm.”

“Did it do you any damage?”

“Well, no. Uprooted a few apple trees. That’s about all. Any chores you’d like done outdoors?”

“I’m much obliged to you, Abram, but there isn’t anything. The cows always come up to the bars. I s’pose Samantha’s well?”

“So’s to be around. The children’s folks have come to see ye, have they?”

“Yes, it’s a kind of an adopted aunt of their mother’s.”

“Well,” said Abram, taking his hands off the sides of the door, “I must get on toward home.”

He came back after going a few steps.

“I’ll look in again before night, Liza.”

“I’d be obliged if you would, Abram.”

Neither spoke of feeling anxious about the young doctor. Still Liza girded herself more cheerfully to go out and gather her demoralized poultry. A primrose-colored west brightened the whole landscape. The beaten-down grass had already begun to lift itself, and a pleasant, drying breeze was flowing down the valley. The broken clouds drifted to all parts of the sky. Liza gathered drenched and gaping chickens into her apron, where they trod upon each other with cold pink feet, and piped shrilly for food and comfort. She had a special basket behind the stove for these weather-orphans, where their down would curl once more, and all of them subside into a buttercup-colored mass, too sleepy to peep. There was one chicken that ran persistently through the weeds away from her, yet calling with all his might for aid from some quarter. He stretched his thin neck here and there and disconsolately shook his pin-feather wings. Now lost in a forest of rag-weed, he made the tops quiver over him as he ran; and now slipping through the garden palings, he scampered dismayed up and down the bank of a deep canal, the channel whereof he had known before the deluge as a neat garden path between beds of vegetables. Liza reached through and gathered him to the asylum in her apron just as she observed Bluebell picking her way to the lower bars. The run was roaring through the meadow, and she rose up apprehensively.

“Don’t go down to the water, Bluebell. You can’t cross now.”

“But Tildy’s on the other side and beckoned to me: I just want to talk across to her.”

“I’m afraid you’ll fall in if you go too near. Remember the run’s up.”

“I’ll be careful. Tildy can’t come over, and she does want to see me so bad!”

“You’ve both been weather-bound,” said Liza smiling. “Well, you be careful. Where’s the baby?”

“She’s talking to Aunt Melissa. I gave her my new doll to hold.”

Precious as little sisters may be, there are times when the mature girl of nine or ten feels that she cannot have them “tagging” after her; when she gives them a sop in the shape of her best plaything, or engages them in conversation with some elderly and charming relative, while she slips out to gallop where heedless baby shoes would have to be carried.

Tildy had been signaling at the other side of the run for some time.

Bluebell ran down the wet meadow, feeling joyful at being out of doors once more. The hills were half-smiling. She could not help noticing how the trees tossed. In the south-west was a cushion of foliage so large, so green, so apt to dimple with the wind, that the little girl never could help wishing to sit and tumble about on it.

The run showed wide and turbid from the back door, but on near approach it seemed a ranting young river. Sticks and even rails were being eddied away by what was day before yesterday a few strands of clear water.

How wide was the separation between Bluebell and Tildy!

Resentment of the Perintha Pancost truce had been swept from Tildy’s face by later occurrences.

“We can’t go to school any more,” she called.

“Oh, yes, we can when the waters go down.”

“The’ won’t be any school-house. The Rocky Fork’s all around it. Our spring-house pretty near went, and if the run rises much higher it’ll carry off our house and your house, too.”

Bluebell looked back at the weather-beaten homestead.

“It would look like Noey’s Ark. But it says there isn’t to be another flood, Tildy, ’cause the rainbow’s put in the sky for a sign that the waters shall no more cover the face of the earth!”

“Hain’t been any rainbow this wet spell,” said Tildy impressively.

Bluebell searched the whole sky, and brought her eyes down again clouded with apprehension. There had been no rainbow this wet spell.

“I don’t believe it will rise to the roofs of the houses and the tops of the mountains,” she cried, with an upward inflection of appeal.

“I wish’t it would. Then you could sit on your roof and I could sit on mine, and sail sticks and boats across to each other. I’ve been havin’ lots of fun with mother’s old bread-bowl. Why didn’t you come down soon as it quit rainin’? I beckoned to you.”

“I didn’t see you. Where’s Teeny?”

“She’s helpin’ mother with her weavin’. Why don’t you take off your shoes and stockin’s?”

“I don’t know,” replied Bluebell looking down at her low shoes and then at the lush, soft grass. She always had envied Tildy her untrammelled toes, but her father had a prejudice against bare feet in all weathers. Tildy, that fortunate creature, could walk sidewise in the dusty summer road, dragging one foot and thus making a beautiful broad mark, with stopping posts indicated, like the picture of a fence. But if Bluebell attempted it she filled her stockings with dust and rendered her shoes a dismal sight.

Tildy now came down to the brink and made her impression in the yielding soil.

“Look there,” said she, displaying two fine black slippers of glossy mud. “Take yours off, too, and maybe we can wade some.”

Bluebell found a dry stone, sat down upon it, and peeled her feet pink and bare.

“Come along up the run,” called Tildy. “I’ve got my boat up here.”

So they scampered along on each side, the ooze coming between Bluebell’s toes with a delicious rush.

The bread-bowl beached on Tildy’s side, was ready for service. She had a pole to steer it with, and setting it afloat, ran along turning and guiding it as anxiously as if it were a bulrush basket with another little baby in it. Bluebell ran by her side of the stream, and begged that the vessel might make a voyage to her. With a push of the pole, Tildy turned its prow, but it got caught against a snag, and she labored long to free it. Finally, the cracked and rather unseaworthy vessel came triumphantly in, and Bluebell caught it with joy.

The two girls felt as if they had shaken hands across the separating stream. Bluebell had some of the baby’s seed cookies in her pocket. She wiped the bowl very dry with bunches of grass, and made a nest of fresh grass in the centre, on which a handful of thimble cakes were then carefully deposited, and the gallant craft started on its return trip.

It moved down stream, and both girls accompanied it. Tildy poled with care lest the cargo might get slopped. Now, there was a rail coming down stream in the centre of the current, pointing like a long black finger to the fact that that bowl must be got out of the way, or there would be a collision on the high seas.

Bluebell danced and exclaimed while Tildy poled in set determination. Alas for the noble bread-bowl! In despair she stuck the pole into it, brought it with a swish to land with its grass and seed-cakes scattered to the stream, and losing her balance fell partly in herself.

“Oh, Tildy!” screamed Bluebell, when Tildy scrambled on the bank, dripping to her waist.

“This makes the second time this week I’ve got wet,” said she solemnly. “I don’t b’lieve I want to wade now.” She sat down on the grass and wrung her clothes. Her mood was very sombre indeed.

“I expect I’ll take sick and die,” she said. “Father used to get wet to his hide before he took bed-fast. And I’m a good deal his build.”

“Just as soon as my father comes home,” cried Bluebell, “I’ll ask him to ride Ballie over the run and give you some medicine.”

“You needn’t throw it up to me that you’ve got a father when I ain’t got any,” said Tildy, dismally.

“Why, Tildy! I _never_!”

“You did, too. But mebbe you ain’t got any either, now.”

“My father’s comin’ home to-night!”

“Mebbe he is.”

“He’s just gone to see his patients, and he’s comin’ right straight home!”

“Table Rock fell down over the Narrows yesterday.”

“I don’t care if it did!” warded off Bluebell, with quivering lip.

“My Uncle Abram says it could ’a’ hit your father just as easy as not!”

“But it didn’t!”

“But somethin’ may have happened to him. If he tries to cross the Rocky Fork now, he’s sure to get drownded! Uncle Abram says he feels uneasy. Looky there, now! Mebbe that’s his hat comin’ down the run!”

Bluebell suspended a great sob and watched the black object approaching. It reeled nearer and nearer--it looked _so_ much like father’s black hat: she saw the band: she saw the brim dip--

“Ho!” cried Doctor Garde’s little girl triumphantly, “that’s just a chunk o’ burnt wood, Miss Tildy Banks, and my father ain’t any more drowned than you are!”

Tildy, who felt herself more drowned than she wished to be, and decidedly uncomfortable--for there is a difference between sky-water and run-water--merely responded, “Huh, Madam!”

Bluebell started back to pick up her stockings and shoes. She heard a long ringing neigh from the lane.

“There!” she cried, shaking a shoe at Tildy, “there’s my own father come home to my house this very minute! I’m going right to the bars,” she added, thrusting her tender feet into the shoes after wiping them on her stockings, “and I’ll tell him all the mean things you said. And I won’t ask him to give you the medicine, so I won’t.”

“I don’t want it,” responded Tildy: “he hain’t got any but nasty stuff.”

Doctor Garde’s little girl did not stay to argue. She scampered to the lower bars, flung over them, and splashed across the puddles to the upper bars. Ballie’s glossy, tossing head appeared around the barn-corner. But her saddle was empty and turned to one side, the pill-bags dangling, her bridle hung loose, and as soon as she saw the little girl, she uttered a neighing scream.