The Story of Waitstill Baxter. Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith
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more emphasis and gusto than strict piety warranted.
“There’ll be SOMEthing in heav-en for chil-dren to do,
None are idle in that bless-ed land:
There’ll be WORK for the heart. There’ll be WORK for the mind,
And emPLOYment for EACH little hand.
“There’ll be SOME-thing to do,
There’ll be SOME-thing to do,
There’ll be SOME-thing for CHIL-dren to do!
On that bright blessed shore where there’s joy evermore,
There’ll be SOME-thing for CHIL-DREN to do.”
Patty’s young existence being full to the brim of labor, this view of heaven never in the least appealed to her and she rendered the hymn with little sympathy. The main part of the verse was strongly accented by jabs at the unoffending dandelion roots, but when the chorus came she brought out the emphatic syllables by a beat of the broken knife on the milkpan.
This rendition of a Sabbath-School classic did not meet Waitstill’s ideas of perfect propriety, but she smiled and let it pass, planning some sort of recreation for a stolen half-hour of the afternoon. It would have to be a walk through the pasture into the woods to see what had grown since they went there a fortnight ago. Patty loved people better than Nature, but failing the one she could put up with the other, for she had a sense of beauty and a pagan love of color. There would be pale-hued innocence and blue and white violets in the moist places, thought Waitstill, and they would have them in a china cup on the supper-table. No, that would never do, for last time father had knocked them over when he was reaching for the bread, and in a silent protest against such foolishness got up from the table and emptied theirs into the kitchen sink.
“There’s a place for everything,” he said when he came back, “and the place for flowers is outdoors.”
Then in the pine woods there would be, she was sure, Star of Bethlehem, Solomon’s Seal, the white spray of groundnuts and bunchberries. Perhaps they could make a bouquet and Patty would take it across the fields to Mrs. Boynton’s door. She need not go in, and thus they would not be disobeying their father’s command not to visit that “crazy Boynton woman.”
Here Patty came in with a pan full of greens and the sisters sat down in the sunny window to get them ready for the pot.
“I’m calmer,” the little rebel allowed. “That’s generally the way it turns out with me. I get into a rage, but I can generally sing it off!”
“You certainly must have got rid of a good deal of temper this morning, by the way your voice sounded.”
“Nobody can hear us in this out-of-the-way place. It’s easy enough to see that the women weren’t asked to say anything when the men settled where the houses should be built! The men weren’t content to stick them on the top of a high hill, or half a mile from the stores, but put them back to the main road, taking due care to cut the sink-window where their wives couldn’t see anything even when they were washing dishes.”
“I don’t know that I ever thought about it in that way”; and Waitstill looked out of the window in a brown study while her hands worked with the dandelion greens. “I’ve noticed it, but I never supposed the men did it intentionally.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Patty with the pessimism of a woman of ninety, as she stole an admiring glance at her sister. Patty’s own face, irregular, piquant, tantalizing, had its peculiar charm, and her brilliant skin and hair so dazzled the masculine beholder that he took note of no small defects; but Waitstill was beautiful; beautiful even in her working dress of purple calico. Her single braid of hair, the Foxwell hair, that in her was bronze and in Patty pale auburn, was wound once around her fine head and made to stand a little as it went across the front. It was a simple, easy, unconscious fashion of her own, quite different from anything done by other women in her time and place, and it just suited her dignity and serenity. It looked like a coronet, but it was the way she carried her head that gave you the fancy, there was such spirit and pride in the poise of it on the long graceful neck. Her eyes were as clear as mountain pools shaded by rushes, and the strength of the face was softened by the sweetness of the mouth.
Patty never let the conversation die out for many seconds at a time and now she began again. “My sudden rages don’t match my name very well, but, of course, mother didn’t know how I was going to turn out when she called me Patience, for I was nothing but a squirming little bald, red baby; but my name really is too ridiculous when you think about it.”
Waitstill laughed as she said: “It didn’t take you long to change it! Perhaps Patience was a hard word for a baby to say, but the moment you could talk you said, ‘Patty wants this’ and ‘Patty wants that.”’
“Did Patty ever get it? She never has since, that’s certain! And look at your name: it’s ‘Waitstill,’ yet you never stop a moment. When you’re not in the shed or barn, or chicken-house, or kitchen or attic, or garden-patch, you are working in the Sunday School or the choir.”
It seemed as if Waitstill did not intend to answer this arraignment of her activities. She rose and crossed the room to put the pan of greens in the sink, preparing to wash them.
Taking the long-handled dipper from the nail, she paused a moment before plunging it into the water pail; paused, and leaning her elbow on a corner of the shelf over the sink, looked steadfastly out into the orchard.
Patty watched her curiously and was just going to offer a penny for her thoughts when Waitstill suddenly broke the brief silence by saying: “Yes, I am always busy; it’s better so, but all the same, Patty, I’m waiting,—inside! I don’t know for what, but I always feel that I am waiting!”
VI. A KISS
“SHALL we have our walk in the woods on the Edgewood side of the river, just for a change, Patty?” suggested her sister. “The water is so high this year that the river will be splendid. We can gather our flowers in the hill pasture and then you’ll be quite near Mrs. Boynton’s and can carry the nosegay there while I come home ahead of you and get supper. I’ll take to-day’s eggs to father’s store on the way and ask him if he minds our having a little walk. I’ve an errand at Aunt Abby’s that would take me down to the bridge anyway.”
“Very well,” said Patty, somewhat apathetically. “I always like a walk with you, but I don’t care what becomes of me this afternoon if I can’t go to Ellen’s party.”
The excursion took place according to Waitstill’s plan, and at four o’clock she sped back to her night work and preparations for supper, leaving Patty with a great bunch of early wildflowers for Ivory’s mother. Patty had left them at the Boyntons’ door with Rodman, who was picking up chips and volunteered to take the nosegay into the house at once.
“Won’t you step inside?” the boy asked shyly, wishing to be polite, but conscious that visitors, from the village very seldom crossed the threshold.
“I’d like to, but I can’t this afternoon, thank you. I must run all the way down the hill now, or I shan’t be in time to supper.”
“Do you eat meals together over to your house?” asked the boy.
“We’re all three at the table if that means together.”
“We never are. Ivory goes off early and takes lunch in a pail. So do I when I go to school. Aunt Boynton never sits down to eat; she just stands at the window and takes a bite of something now ‘and then. You haven’t got any mother, have you?”
“No, Rodman.”
“Neither have I, nor any father, nor any relations but Aunt Boynton and Ivory. Ivory is very good to me, and when he’s at home I’m never lonesome.”
“I wish you could come over and eat with sister and me,” said Patty gently. “Perhaps sometime, when my father is away buying goods and we are left