Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin
Читать онлайн книгу.
and who made the journey a lively and eventful one by her total lack of desire to proceed over the road from Edgewood to Acreville. But that, the cow’s tale, belongs to another time and place, and the coward’s tale must come first; for Elisha Simpson was held to be sadly lacking in the manly quality of courage.
It was the new minister’s wife who called Nimbi-Pamby the Little Prophet. His full name was Elisha Jeremiah Simpson, but one seldom heard it at full length, since, if he escaped the ignominy of Nimbi-Pamby, Lishe was quite enough for an urchin just in his first trousers and those assumed somewhat prematurely. He was “Lishe,” therefore, to the village, but the Little Prophet to the young minister’s wife.
Rebecca could see the Cames’ brown farmhouse from Mrs. Baxter’s sitting-room window. The little-traveled road with strips of tufted green between the wheel tracks curled dustily up to the very doorstep, and inside the screen door of pink mosquito netting was a wonderful drawn-in rug, shaped like a half pie, with “Welcome” in saffron letters on a green ground.
Rebecca liked Mrs. Cassius Came, who was a friend of her Aunt Miranda’s and one of the few persons who exchanged calls with that somewhat unsociable lady. The Came farm was not a long walk from the brick house, for Rebecca could go across the fields when haying-time was over, and her delight at being sent on an errand in that direction could not be measured, now that the new minister and his wife had grown to be such a resource in her life. She liked to see Mrs. Came shake the Welcome rug, flinging the cheery word out into the summer sunshine like a bright greeting to the day. She liked to see her go to the screen door a dozen times in a morning, open it a crack and chase an imaginary fly from the sacred precincts within. She liked to see her come up the cellar steps into the side garden, appearing mysteriously as from the bowels of the earth, carrying a shining pan of milk in both hands, and disappearing through the beds of hollyhocks and sunflowers to the pig-pen or the hen-house.
Rebecca was not fond of Mr. Came, and neither was Mrs. Baxter, nor Elisha, for that matter; in fact Mr. Came was rather a difficult person to grow fond of, with his fiery red beard, his freckled skin, and his gruff way of speaking; for there were no children in the brown house to smooth the creases from his forehead or the roughness from his voice.
II
The new minister’s wife was sitting under the shade of her great maple early one morning, when she first saw the Little Prophet. A tiny figure came down the grass-grown road leading a cow by a rope. If it had been a small boy and a small cow, a middle-sized boy and an ordinary cow, or a grown man and a big cow, she might not have noticed them; but it was the combination of an infinitesimal boy and a huge cow that attracted her attention. She could not guess the child’s years, she only knew that he was small for his age, whatever it was.
The cow was a dark red beast with a crumpled horn, a white star on her forehead, and a large surprised sort of eye. She had, of course, two eyes, and both were surprised, but the left one had an added hint of amazement in it by virtue of a few white hairs lurking accidentally in the centre of the eyebrow.
The boy had a thin sensitive face and curtly brown hair, short trousers patched on both knees, and a ragged straw hat on the back of his head. He pattered along behind the cow, sometimes holding the rope with both hands, and getting over the ground in a jerky way, as the animal left him no time to think of a smooth path for bare feet.
The Came pasture was a good half-mile distant, and the cow seemed in no hurry to reach it; accordingly she forsook the road now and then, and rambled in the hollows, where the grass was sweeter to her way of thinking. She started on one of these exploring expeditions just as she passed the minister’s great maple, and gave Mrs. Baxter time to call out to the little fellow, “Is that your cow?”
Elisha blushed and smiled, and tried to speak modestly, but there was a quiver of pride in his voice as he answered suggestively:
“It’s—nearly my cow.”
“How is that?” asked Mrs. Baxter.
“Why, Mr. Came says when I drive her twenty-nine more times to pasture thout her gettin’ her foot over the rope or thout my bein’ afraid, she’s goin’ to be my truly cow. Are you fraid of cows?”
“Ye-e-es,” Mrs. Baxter confessed, “I am, just a little. You see, I am nothing but a woman, and boys can’t understand how we feel about cows.”
“I can! They’re awful big things, aren’t they?”
“Perfectly enormous! I’ve always thought a cow coming towards you one of the biggest things in the world.”
“Yes; me, too. Don’t let’s think about it. Do they hook people so very often?”
“No indeed, in fact one scarcely ever hears of such a case.”
“If they stepped on your bare foot they’d scrunch it, wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, but you are the driver; you mustn’t let them do that; you are a free-will boy, and they are nothing but cows.”
“I know; but p’raps there is free-will cows, and if they just WOULD do it you couldn’t help being scrunched, for you mustn’t let go of the rope nor run, Mr. Came says.
“No, of course that would never do.”
“Where you used to live did all the cows go down into the boggy places when you drove em to pasture, or did some walk in the road?”
“There weren’t any cows or any pastures where I used to live; that’s what makes me so foolish; why does your cow need a rope?”
“She don’t like to go to pasture, Mr. Came says. Sometimes she’d druther stay to home, and so when she gets part way she turns round and comes backwards.”
“Dear me!” thought Mrs. Baxter, “what becomes of this boy-mite if the cow has a spell of going backwards?—Do you like to drive her?” she asked.
“N-no, not erzackly; but you see, it’ll be my cow if I drive her twenty-nine more times thout her gettin’ her foot over the rope and thout my bein’ afraid,” and a beaming smile gave a transient brightness to his harassed little face. “Will she feed in the ditch much longer?” he asked. “Shall I say Hurrap’? That’s what Mr. Came says—HURRAP!’ like that, and it means to hurry up.”
It was rather a feeble warning that he sounded and the cow fed on peacefully. The little fellow looked up at the minister’s wife confidingly, and then glanced back at the farm to see if Cassius Came were watching the progress of events.
“What shall we do next?” he asked.
Mrs. Baxter delighted in that warm, cosy little ‘WE;’ it took her into the firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows, but all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, “What shall WE do next?” She became alert, ingenious, strong, on the instant.
“What is the cow’s name?” she asked, sitting up straight in the swing-chair.
“Buttercup; but she don’t seem to know it very well. She ain’t a mite like a buttercup.”
“Never mind; you must shout ‘Buttercup!’ at the top of your voice, and twitch the rope HARD; then I’ll call, ‘Hurrap!’ with all my might at the same moment. And if she starts quickly we mustn’t run nor seem frightened!”
They did this; it worked to a charm, and Mrs. Baxter looked affectionately after her Little Prophet as the cow pulled him down Tory Hill.
The lovely August days wore on. Rebecca was often at the parsonage and saw Elisha frequently, but Buttercup was seldom present at their interviews, as the boy now drove her to the pasture very early in the morning, the journey thither being one of considerable length and her method of reaching the goal being exceedingly roundabout.
Mr.