Say and Seal, Volume I

"I wouldn't let Mr. Linden hear me say that, Phil, if I was you."

"Don't mean ter. Aint you great! But I say,—Joe Deacon says you did."

"Joe Deacon's made a mistake for once in his life," said Reuben rather contemptuously—"and it isn't the first, by several."

"Reuben," said Mr. Linden approaching the group, "you may all go and find where the best trees are, and then come back and report to me. I put you in charge. Understand"—he added, raising his voice a little, "Reuben Taylor is leader of the search—whoever does not obey his orders, does not obey mine."—And in a minute the courtyard was clear. Then Mr. Linden turned and walked up to the house.

"Now what are you ladies going to do with yourselves?" he said. "Will you come out and sit under the trees and look on—taking the chance of being hit by a stray nut now and then?"

"We can't go wrong to-day," said Faith, with whom the spirit of enjoyment was well at play. "When mother feels in the mood of it we'll come. We can find you—we know where to look. Weren't you obliged to us for doing the waiting at the ferry?"

"And for looking so picturesque in the distance,—it was quite a thing to be grateful for. I think you will have no difficulty in finding where we are—there will be noise enough to guide you. I hope you have not brought a book along, Miss Faith."

"Why, Mr. Linden?"

"The 'running' brooks are good letter-press," he said—"and the grey stones, and that white oak in the meadow. And is not that woodpecker a pretty illustration?"

"I have looked at them often," said Faith. "I don't know how to read them as you do. There isn't any brook here, though, that I know of, but Kildeer river. You'll like Neanticut, Mr. Linden. I'm so glad you let us come. I'll read everything—that I can."

"I don't know how long everything'll last you, child—at the rate you've gone on lately," said Mrs. Derrick who stood in the doorway.

Faith smiled again, and shook her head a little at the same time as her eye went from the woodpecker to the green leaves above his head, then to the bright red of some pepperidge trees further off, to the lush grass of the meadow, and on to the soft brownish, reddish, golden hues of distant woodland. Her eye came back as from a book it would take long to read thoroughly.

"I am so glad it is such a day!" she repeated.

"I see my boys are coming back," Mr. Linden said, with a smile which hardly belonged to them,—"I must go and get their report. Au revoir, Miss Faith." And he went forward into the midst of the little swarm—so manageable in his hands, so sure to sting anybody else.

"Child," said Mrs. Derrick, looking over Faith's head from her more elevated position of the door-sill (looking at it too); "Child, why don't you get—" and there, for the first and last time in her life, Mrs. Derrick stopped short in the middle of a sentence.

"What, mother?"

But Mrs. Derrick replied not.

"What do you want me to get, mother?"

"I don't know as I want you to get anything,—child you've got enough now for me. Not that he wouldn't like it, either," said Mrs. Derrick musingly—"because if he wouldn't, I wouldn't give much for him. But I guess it's just as well not." And Mrs Derrick stroked her hand fondly over Faith's head, and told her that if she stood out there without a bonnet she would get sunburnt.

"But mother!" said Faith at this enigmatical speech, "what do you mean? Who wouldn't like what?"

"What does it signify, child?—since I didn't say it?"

"But mother," persisted Faith gently, "what had I better get that I haven't?"

"I don't know as you had better get it, child—and I never said he wouldn't like it, I'm sure," said Mrs. Derrick with a little self-vindication.

"Who, mother?"

"Why—nobody," said Mrs. Derrick,—"who's talking of anybody?"

"Dear mother," said Faith, "don't you mean to tell me what you mean?"

"I guess it's just as well not," her mother repeated. "The fact that he'd like it don't prove anything."

Faith looked at her, coloured a little, laughed a little, and gave up the point.

The morning passed on its pleasant way in quietness; at least with the old farmhouse and its two occupants. Mrs. Derrick was not without her knitting, and having come from the door sat comfortably click-clacking her needles together—and her thoughts too perhaps—before the cheerful blaze of the fence sticks. Faith had a book with her—a little one—with which she sat in the kitchen doorway, which looked towards the direction the nut party had taken; and apparently divided her attention between that volume and the one Mr. Linden had recommended. For she looked down at the one and looked off at the other by turns, in a sort of peaceful musing and note-taking, altogether suited to the October stillness and beauty. Now and then she got up to replenish the fire. And then the beauty and her musing got the better of the reading, and Faith sat with her book in her hand, looking out into the dream-provoking atmosphere. No sound came from the far-off nut trees; the crickets and grasshoppers and katydids alone broke the stillness of the unused farm. Only they moved, and the wind-stirred leaves, and the slow-creeping shadows.

When these last were but an hour's length from the tree stems, Faith proposed an adjournment to the nut trees before the party should come back to lunch. The fire was mended, the pot of coffee put on to warm; and they locked the door and set out.

It was not hot that day, even under the meridian sun. They crossed an orchard, and one or two farm fields, on the skirts of which grew single trees of great beauty. White oaks that had seen hundreds of years, yet stood in as fresh and hale green youth as the upstart of twenty; sometimes a hemlock or a white pine stretching its lithe branches far and wide and generously allowed to do so in despite of pasture and crops. Then came broken ground, and beyond this a strip of fallow at the further border of which stood a continuous wall of woodland, being in fact the crest of the bank of the little river Faith had referred to.

And now, and truly for one or two fields before, the shouts and cries of the nut-hunters rang through the air. For just edging, and edging into, the border of trees last spoken of, were the great chestnuts and hickories; and underneath and among them many little dark spots were flying about; which spots, as Mrs. Derrick and Faith came up, enlarged into the familiar outlines of boys' caps, jackets, and trowsers, and ran about on two legs apiece.

CHAPTER X

The two ladies paused at a safe distance,—there seemed to be nothing but boys astir—boys and nuts; and these last not dropping from the tree, but thrown from hand to hand (hand to head would be more correct) of the busy throng. Some picking up, some throwing stones to bring down, others at some flat stone 'shucking,' others still filling their baskets. And four boys out of five, cracking and eating—whatever else they were about. The grass, trodden down by the many feet, lay in prostrate shadow at the foot of the great tree; and the shadows of other trees fell and met in soft wavy outline. From the side of one old tree a family of grey squirrels looked out, to see the besiegers lay waste the surrounding country; in the top of another—a tall hickory, full clad with golden leaves, Mr. Linden sat—to view the same country himself; well knowing that he had given the boys full occupation for at least fifteen minutes. He was not very visible from below, so thickly did the gold leaves close him in; but Faith heard one of the boys call out,

"You Johnny Fax! if you throw stones in that tree, you'll hit Mr.Linden."

"Trust Johnny Fax for not never throwin' so high as he is," said JoeDeacon.

"I don't want to—" said Johnny Fax—"I don't want to fetch him down."

Whereupon there was a general shout, and "Guess you'd better not, Johnny!"—"He might come, if you didn't just hit him," vociferated from various quarters.

"My!" Mrs. Derrick said, surveying the golden hickory, "how on earth did he ever get up?—And how do you s'pose, Faith, he'll ever get down!"

Faith's low laugh was her only answer; but it would have told, to anybody who could thoroughly have translated it, Faith's mind on both points.

Apparently he was in no haste to come down—certainly meant to send the nuts first; for a sudden shower of hickory nuts and leaves swept away every boy from the tree near which Faith and her mother stood, and threw them all into its vortex. Drop, drop, the nuts came down, with their sweet patter upon the grass; while the golden leaves fell singly or in sprays, or floated off upon the calm air.

"Child," said Mrs. Derrick, "how pretty it is! I haven't seen such a sight since—since a long while ago," she added with a sobering face.

"I want to be there under the tree," said Faith looking on enviously. "No mother—and I haven't seen it before in a long time, either. It's as pretty as it can be!"

"Run along then, child," said her mother,—"only take care of your eyes. Why shouldn't you? I don't want to pick up nuts myself, but I'll go down and pick you up."

Faith however kept away from the crowd under the hickory tree; and went peering about under some others where the ground was beaten and the branches had been, and soon found enough spoil to be hammering away with a stone on a rock like the rest. But she couldn't escape the boys so, for little runners came to her constantly. One brought a handful of nuts, another a better stone—while a third told her of 'lots' under the other tree; and Reuben Taylor was ready to crack or climb as she chose to direct.

"If you'll come down the other side, Miss. Faith," said Reuben, "down by the bank, you could see it all a great deal better."

Faith seized two or three nuts and jumped up, and Reuben led the way through the leaf-strewn grass to the other side of the mob. But mobs are uncertain things! No sooner was Faith seen approaching the hickory, though yet full three feet from the utmost bound of its shadow, than a sudden pause in the great business of the day was followed by such a tumultuous shout of "Three cheers for Miss Faith Derrick!—the prettiest girl in Pattaquasset!"—that she was well nigh deafened. And promptly upon that, Joe Deacon stepped up to Reuben and whispered,

"That'll fetch him down!"

Faith did not hear the words—she only heard Reuben's indignant,

"Joe Deacon! behave yourself. What makes you always leave your manners home? that big basket of yours would have held 'em all, easy."