TIMOTHY'S QUEST (Children's Book). Kate Douglas Wiggin
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names of various way-stations were printed in gold letters:—
Chestertown. Sandford. Reedville. Bingham. Skaggstown. Esbury. Scratch Corner. Hillside. Mountain View. Edgewood. Pleasant River.
“The names get nicer and nicer as you read down the line, and the furtherest one of all is the very prettiest, so I guess we’ll go there,” thought Timothy, not realizing that his choice was based on most insecure foundations; and that, for aught he knew, the milk of human kindness might have more cream on it at Scratch Corner than at Pleasant River, though the latter name was certainly more attractive.
Gay approved of Pleasant River, and so did Rags; and Timothy moved off down the station to a place on the open platform where a train of cars stood ready for starting, the engine at the head gasping and puffing and breathing as hard as if it had an acute attack of asthma.
“How much does it cost to go to Pleasant River, please?” asked Tim, bravely, of a kind-looking man in a blue coat and brass buttons, who stood by the cars.
“This is a freight train, sonny,” replied the man; “takes four hours to get there. Better wait till 10.45; buy your ticket up in the station.”
“10.45!” Tim saw visions of Mrs. Simmons speeding down upon him in hot pursuit, kindled by Gay’s disappearance into an appreciation of her charms.
The tears stood in his eyes as Gay clambered out of the basket, and danced with impatience, exclaiming, “Gay wants to yide now! yide now! yide now!”
“Did you want to go sooner?” asked the man, who seemed to be entirely too much interested in humanity to succeed in the railroad business. “Well, as you seem to have consid’rable of a family on your hands, I guess we’ll take you along. Jim, unlock that car and let these children in, and then lock it up again. It’s a car we’re taking up to the end of the road for repairs, bubby, so the comp’ny ‘ll give you and your folks a free ride!”
Timothy thanked the man in his politest manner, and Gay pressed a piece of moist cooky in his hand, and offered him one of her swan’s-down kisses, a favor of which she was usually as chary as if it had possessed a market value.
“Are you going to take the dog?” asked the man, as Rags darted up the steps with sniffs and barks of ecstatic delight. “He ain’t so handsome but you can get another easy enough!” (Rags held his breath in suspense, and wondered if he had been put under a roaring cataract, and then ploughed in deep furrows with a sharp-toothed instrument of torture, only to be left behind at last!)
“That’s just why I take him,” said Timothy; “because he isn’t handsome and has nobody else to love him.”
(“Not a very polite reason,” thought Rags; “but anything to go!”)
“Well, jump in, dog and all, and they’ll give you the best free ride to the country you ever had in your life! Tell ‘em it’s all right, Jim;” and the train steamed out of the depot, while the kind man waved his bandana handkerchief until the children were out of sight.
Scene IV.
Pleasant River
JABE SLOCUM ASSUMES THE RÔLE OF GUARDIAN ANGEL.
Jabe Slocum had been down to Edgewood, and was just returning to the White Farm, by way of the cross-roads and Hard Scrabble school-house. He was in no hurry, though he always had more work on hand than he could leave undone for a month; and Maria also was taking her own time, as usual, even stopping now and then to crop an unusually sweet tuft of grass that grew within smelling distance, and which no mare (with a driver like Jabe) could afford to pass without notice.
Jabe was ostensibly out on an “errant” for Miss Avilda Cummins; but, as he had been in her service for six years, she had no expectations of his accomplishing anything beyond getting to a place and getting back in the same day, the distance covered being no factor at all in the matter.
But one needn’t go to Miss Avilda Cummins for a description of Jabe Slocum’s peculiarities. They were all so written upon his face and figure and speech that the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not err in his judgment. He was a long, loose, knock-kneed, slack-twisted person, and would have been “longer yit if he hedn’t hed so much turned up for feet,”—so Aunt Hitty Tarbox said. (Aunt Hitty went from house to house in Edgewood and Pleasant River, making over boys’ clothes; and as her tongue flew as fast as her needle, her sharp speeches were always in circulation in both villages.)
Mr. Slocum had sandy hair, high cheekbones, a pair of kindly light blue eyes, and a most unique nose: I hardly know to what order of architecture it belonged,—perhaps Old Colonial would describe it as well as anything else. It was a wide, flat, well-ventilated, hospitable edifice (so to speak), so peculiarly constructed and applied that Samantha Ann Ripley (of whom more anon) declared that “the reason Jabe Slocum ketched cold so easy was that, if he didn’t hold his head jess so, it kep’ a-rainin’ in!”
His mouth was simply an enormous slit in his face, and served all the purposes for which a mouth is presumably intended, save, perhaps, the trivial one of decoration. In short (a ludicrously inappropriate word for the subject), it was a capital medium for exits and entrances, but no ornament to his countenance. When Rhapsena Crabb, now deceased, was first engaged to Jabez Slocum, Aunt Hitty Tarbox said it beat her “how Rhapseny ever got over Jabe’s mouth; though she could ‘a’ got intew it easy ‘nough, or raound it, if she took plenty o’ time.” But perhaps Rhapsena appreciated a mouth (in a husband) that never was given to “jawin’,” and which uttered only kind words during her brief span of married life. And there was precious little leisure for kissing at Pleasant River!
As Jabe had passed the store, a few minutes before, one of the boys had called out, facetiously, “Shet yer mouth when ye go by the deepot, Laigs; the train’s comin’ in!” But he only smiled placidly, though it was an ancient joke, the flavor of which had just fully penetrated the rustic skull; and the villagers could not resist titillating the sense of humor with it once or twice a month. Neither did Jabez mind being called “Laigs,” the local pronunciation of the word “legs;” in fact, his good humor was too deep to be ruffled. His “cistern of wrathfulness was so small, and the supply pipe so unready,” that it was next to impossible to “put him out,” so the natives said.
He was a man of tolerable education; the only son of his parents, who had endeavored to make great things of him, and might perhaps have succeeded, if he hadn’t always had so little time at his disposal,—hadn’t been “so drove,” as he expressed it. He went to the village school as regularly as he couldn’t help, that is, as many days as he couldn’t contrive to stay away, until he was fourteen. From there he was sent to the Academy, three miles distant; but his mother soon found that he couldn’t make the two trips a day and be “under cover by candlelight;” so the plan of a classical education was abandoned, and he was allowed to speed the home plough,—a profession which he pursued with such moderation that his father, when starting him down a furrow, used to hang his dinner-pail on his arm and, bidding him good-by, beg him, with tears in his eyes, to be back before sun-down.
At the present moment Jabe was enjoying a cud of Old Virginia plug tobacco, and taking in no more of the landscape than he could avoid, when Maria, having wound up to the top of Marm Berry’s hill, in spite of herself walked directly out on one side of the road, and stopped short to make room for the passage of an imposing procession, made up of one straw phaeton, one baby, one strange boy, and one strange dog.
Jabe eyed the party with some placid interest, for he loved children, but with no undue excitement. Shifting his huge quid, he inquired in his usual leisurely manner, “Which way yer goin’, bub,—t’ the Swamp or t’ the Falls?”
Timothy thought neither sounded especially inviting, but, rapidly choosing the lesser evil, replied, “To the Falls, sir.”
“Thy way happens