Reels and Spindles: A Story of Mill Life

An hour later Frederic Kaye saw him reappear, riding the apparently restored burro, and smiled grimly.

"Hmm. Well, I'm in for it. I'm to remain under the cloud for an indefinite time. If it succeeds – I'll not regret. If it doesn't, maybe the Lord will square it up to my account, against the thoughtless neglect I showed Salome. Now, I'll go out and interview my old acquaintance of the Sierras. I wonder is his voice as mellifluous as erstwhile!"

"Br-a-a-ay! Ah-umph! A-h-h-u-m-p-h!!" responded Balaam, from afar.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A PICNIC IN THE GLEN

It is amazing how fast time flies when one is busy. At "Charity House" all were busy, and to all the winter passed with incredible swiftness.

To Amy each day seemed too short to accomplish half she desired, and each one held some new, fascinating interest in that study of life which so absorbed her.

"You're the funniest girl, Amy. Even the lengthening of the days, getting a little lighter in the mornings, week by week, so we can see the sun rise and such things, as we walk to work – I'd never think of it, 'cept for you."

"Now you do think of it, isn't it interesting?"

"Yes, I like it. Things seem to mean something, now I know you. Before, well – 'pears like I didn't think at all; I just slid along and took no notice."

"But it's so wonderful. Everything is wonderful, – even the way the months have gone. Here it is spring, the bloodroot lying in a white drift along the brookside, and the yellow lilies opening their funny tooth-shaped petals everywhere in the woods. Yet only a minute ago, as it seems, the dead leaves were falling, and I was on my way for the first time to work in the mill. I belong there now, a part of it. I have almost forgotten how it used to be when I was so idle."

"Seems to me you could never have been idle, Amy. Anyway, you've got on splendid. The 'Supe' says he never had a girl go ahead so fast. Isn't it grand, though, to be out of the mill this lovely day? Saturday-half means ever so much more fun now than it used to do, and doesn't cost half so much money. Don't worry you half so much either, as it did to go shopping all the time. Say, Amy, I've about got Mis' Hackett paid up."

"I'm delighted; it must be wretched to feel one's self in debt, I think."

"It's mighty nice to feel one's self out of it. I've got you to thank for that, too, 'long of lots of other things. Isn't the club doing fine? We wouldn't have had that, either, but for you."

"Nonsense! Indeed, you would. Hallam was as interested as I in the subject; and as soon as we told Uncle Fred, he was even more eager than we. But it is to father we all owe the most, I think."

"So do I. To dream of a splendid gentleman like him, and such a painter, taking so much time and trouble just for a lot of mill folks, I think it's grand. I don't understand how he can."

"Seeing that his own two children are 'mill folks,' I can, readily," answered Amy, laughing. "But, indeed, I know he would go on with it now just as thoroughly, even if we were not in the case at all."

This talk occurred one lovely afternoon when the half-holiday made a club picnic a possible and most delightful thing. The two girls, Gwendolyn and Amy, were a little earlier than the others, and were on their way to the appointed meeting place, "Treasure Island," a small piece of wooded ground rising in the middle of the Ardsley's widest span. From the island to the banks, on either side, were foot-bridges, and in the grove tables and benches had been built by the lads of the organization. It was an ideal picnic ground, and these were ideal picnickers; for those who toil the hardest on most days of the week enter most heartily into the recreations they do secure.

The girls were passing down into the glen where Amy had once lost her way and been rescued by Fayette. It seemed so long ago that she could hardly realize how few months had really elapsed.

She spoke of the matter to her companion, who seemed to be in a reflective mood that afternoon, and who again remarked upon the change in the mill boy, also.

"Your uncle and Cleena Keegan have made him different, too. He's as proud as Punch of his mushroom raising, isn't he? He owes that to Mister Fred; but, odd! he's as scared of Cleena as if she owned him. He didn't forgive that thing about Balaam, and seems to feel he has a right to him, same's Mr. Metcalf has."

"Poor old Balaam, he's made a lot of trouble, first and last; but I guess he's all right now, only Cleena won't let Fayette talk of him. She says it's 'punishment,' – the only sort she can inflict. I don't understand why she wants him punished, anyway."

"Maybe for stealing him that Christmas night out of Mr. Wingate's stable."

"Possibly; I don't know. She's like a mother puss with her kitten. One minute she pets him to foolishness, the next she gives him a mental slap that reduces him to the humblest, most timid mood. Well, I'm glad the burro business is settled, though it's odd how Fayette covets that animal; and the exercise of going up and down to his work, the days he has to go, isn't hurting Hallam at all. I never knew him to be so well and strong as he seems this spring."

"Amy, how was it about Balaam? Ma says she never heard the rights of it yet. And say, she likes that book you lent her, about the woman went round the world alone, visiting them hospitals, better 'n any novel she ever read. She's going to give up the other story papers soon as the subscription runs out an' take one o' them library tickets you were telling about, or your uncle, where they send the books to you by mail and you can have your choose of hundreds. Say, wouldn't it be prime if we could get a big library here?"

"Grand! We will, some day, too."

"My! You say such things as if you expected them to be. How, I'd like to know?"

"Well, if in no other way, by just us mill folks banding together and making a beginning. Indeed, I think my father would give his own little library as a start. There's a fine one at Fairacres, and I'm hoping when Cousin Archibald comes back he'll get interested in our work and help along."

"Might as well look for miracles."

"I do. I'm always finding them, too. There's one at your very feet. Don't tread upon it, please."

Stooping, the girl pulled Gwendolyn's dress away from a tiny green speck, growing in dangerous proximity to the wood road.

"What's it?"

"This baby fern."

"All that fuss about a fern!"

"It's life, it's struggle. See, so dainty, so fine, yet so plucky, forcing its soft frond up through the earth, among all these bits of rocks; never stopping, never fearing, just trusting the Creator and doing its duty. It would be a pity to end it so soon."

"Amy, did I ever! Well, there it is again. I shall never be able to crush anything like that without remembering what you've said just now. I – I wish you wouldn't. It makes me feel sort of wicked. And that's silly, just for a fern."

"Gwen, anything that makes us more merciful can't be silly. Heigho! there are the picnickers all coming along the banks and over the bridges. Truly, a goodly company, yet we began with just you and Lionel, Mary Reese, Hallam, and me. Now there are a hundred members, old and young. There's one of the everyday miracles for you!"

The vigorous young association which went by the name of the "Ardsley Club" flourished beyond even Amy's most sanguine expectation. Three rooms of "Charity House," the sunny western side of the higher story, had been cheerfully offered by Mr. Kaye as a home for the club. These rooms he had had fitted up under his own supervision, though the work had been done by the members themselves, in hours after mill duties were over. The color mixer had supplied the material with which the once ugly white walls were tinted; and upon the soft-hued groundwork there had been stencilled a delicate conventional design. At one end of the large room designated the "reading room" a scroll bore the legend which old Adam Burns had given Amy as a "rule of life": "Simplicity, Sincerity, Sympathy," and opposite gleamed in golden letters the other maxim: "Love Conquers All."

"Love, Simplicity, Sincerity, and Sympathy, which is the synonym of Love, and forms with it the golden circle," was adopted as one of the by-laws, and it is true that each member endeavored to keep this one law inviolably. The result was a spirit of peace and goodwill rarely found in a gathering of so many varying natures. It had been Mr. Kaye's idea to make the affair one of no expense to the members, outside of his own household, but Frederic promptly vetoed that.

"In the first place, there are none of us rich enough to do such a thing. There will be lights, firing, musical instruments, books, current literature, games – any number of things that cost money. Amy's idea is fine. A club of the right sort will be a powerful factor for good in this community of mill workers, but it must be made self-supporting. If you give the use of the rooms and will act as instructor along some lines, – art and literature, which you comprehend better than financiering, respected brother, – you will have done your generous share. Amy and Cleena will keep the rooms in order, with occasional aid from the girl members – after we secure them. A small sum, contributed by each member, will run the whole concern. People who are as constantly employed as these mill operatives have not the leisure nor means to acquire a book education, but a more intelligent, wider-awake, more receptive class is not to be found. Yet let nobody dare to approach them with anything at all in the nature of 'charity' or mental almsgiving. Your democrat beats your aristocrat in the matter of pride every time, and that is a paradox for you to consider. I relinquish the floor."

"After having exhausted the subject," laughed Hallam. But the subject had not been exhausted. Amy proposed the matter the very next day, at "nooning," and secured the members as mentioned by her to Gwendolyn. In a week the membership had doubled; and as soon as the affair was really comprehended, that it was a mutual benefit organization in the highest sense of the word, applications were plentiful.

Uncle Frederic had been a literal globe-trotter, and his journeyings on foot made him able to discourse in a familiar way of things no guide-book ever points out. Nor did Cleena's good cookery come in for any poor show among these healthy, happy folk. The club paid for the simple refreshments provided at their weekly "socials," and Cleena prepared them. Even this day, for their out-of-door reunion, she had made all the needful preparations, and had been so busy she had scarcely remembered to keep a close watch upon Fayette.

"But troth, it's no more nor right he should take his bit fun with the rest," she remarked to herself, as she pulled the last tin of biscuits from the chimney oven and spread them with sweet butter and daintily sliced tongue. "He's aye restless betimes; and – but it's comin', it's comin', me blessed gossoon!"

But to whom Cleena's exclamation referred it would have been difficult to say, – though possibly to Fayette, as her next words seemed to indicate. For the good creature still "conversed with Cleena" in every instance when she happened to be left alone, it being a necessity of her friendly nature that she should talk to somebody.

"Me gineral's never got over the burro business yet, alanna! An' it do seem hard how 't one has so little an' t' other so much. That Mr. 'Super' Metcalf now, as fine a man as treads shoe leather, never a doubt I doubt, yet himself judgin' it fair, since the man Wingate wanted the beast, the man Wingate should have him. Anyway, there he stands, brayin' his head off in the 'Supe's' stable, in trust for the old man'll never bestride him. Nobody rides him at all, Miss Amy says; yet here's me gineral heart-broke for him; an' the cripple goin' afoot; an' all them little Metcalfs envyin' an' covetin'; an' all because a man who's word is law said he'd take him for rent an' just kept him, whether or no. But a good job it was when Mister Fred come home, with money for rent an' a few trifles, but not much besides. Well, where's the need? Eight dollars a week is Miss Amy's wage now, God bless her! an' Master Hal's nigh the same, – let alone them bit pictures the master's be's doin' constant. Mister Fred's the knack o' sellin' 'em too. Well, if the mistress could see – and hark, me fathers! What's that?"

Down in the fragrant glen and on the little island the hungry "Ardsleyites" waited long for the promised supper; and up on Bareacre knoll things were happening that would provide another sensation for the little town, quiet now since the Christmas horsewhipping episode.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A DOUBLE INHERITANCE IN A SINGLE DAY

Almost before she asked it, Cleena answered her own question.

"The powder! the powder! It's Fayetty a-meddlin'! Oh, is he killed, the witless gossoon?"