Huckleberries and New Friends

Grandfather came out of the north door and shaded his eyes with his hand. He gazed searchingly at Elizabeth's favourite tree by the gate under which she and Peggy were sitting with their embroidery.

"Well, well, I'm disappointed," he murmured to himself. "I thought if I see anything of those two girls I'd ask them to go huckleberrying, but I s'pose they've gone off down to the shore, or somewhere."

"Oh, do ask us to go huckleberrying," Elizabeth cried.

"I thought they'd be right out here, sitting under that tree, like enough, doing some chore o' fancy work. It does beat all where they find to hide themselves."

"Oh, what fun!" Peggy cried. "He took me huckleberrying last year, and I got four quarts in about two hours."

"Well, well, I am disappointed. I might's well make up my mind to go alone."

"He will, too, if we don't hurry," Elizabeth said, stuffing her crochet work into the pocket of her blue linen dress. "Run and get into the Ford."

Grandfather, equipped with as many shining pails as a tinware peddler, approached the car and stared at it gravely, though Peggy and Elizabeth were already in possession of the back seat.

"Too bad I couldn't find those girls," he said. "Mother's put a great heap of sweaters and aprons under the seat, so's if I should be lucky enough to pick them up on the way. Well, Lizzie"—this to the machine—"how cranky are you to-day? Crank by name and crank by nature," he made half a dozen ineffectual attempts at starting, and then succeeded suddenly, jumped into the car, and they were off with a snort and a flourish.

"You darling Granddaddy," Elizabeth said in his ear, "we're crazy to go huckleberrying, and Peggy says you know all the spots where they grow thickest."

"Well, well, how did you get here? I dusted my car out carefully just before I started. It don't seem as if I could overlook a couple o' girls o' that size."

"You didn't have your glasses on, Granddaddy."

They took the road to the north, winding white into the hazy distance.

"The road is like a white ribbon," Elizabeth said, "and those little scrubby pines, sitting low all along the way, are like—well, I don't know what they are like, but I like them. I don't complain if the trees on the Cape are not majestic, as they are in other summer resorts. You see a lot more sky when the trees are low."

"You stand up for Cape Cod," her grandfather said. "It's a pretty good place. You know the story of the old farmer who was driving back from his wife's funeral. 'I lived with that woman forty year,' he said, 'and toward the last, I really got to like her.'"

"Is that the way you feel about Cape Cod?" Peggy asked, mischievously. "I thought it was the way you felt about Lizzie."

"Lizzie's got her good qualities, like most o' the rest of us. She ain't got much natural pride about the way she looks, and she hates to admit that a man is stronger than she is, but when he once gets the best of the argument she goes along peaceable. There's a lot o' human nature to Lizzie."

"I'm so excited about these huckleberries I can't wait to get there. Don't you love to see those clumps and clusters of dusky blue berries just waiting to be jingled into the pail? The woods smell so sweet, too, with the wild honeysuckle and wild roses."

"And wild bog cranberry and wild turnip and wild beech plums," Grandfather added. "Well, here we are."

They had switched from the macadam to a road deep with sand through which the light car had been ploughing for the last several minutes. There was a cleared space before them and a path leading into the woods beyond.

"Foller your nose," Grandfather said, "and you'll find berries enough to make huckleberry dumplings for a regiment."

Elizabeth and Peggy slipped into the big gingham aprons that Grandmother had provided, and each slung a pail over an arm.

"I'll bet I can get more than you do," Peggy said.

"If you do, it's because your fingers are longer." Elizabeth looked ruefully at her small, chubby hands.

"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp," Peggy said. "I can quote poetry as well as your friend, Jean, but don't ask me what that's out of, because I don't know. My fingers are longer. I don't know whether that makes any difference or not, but I'll give you a handicap."

"I scorn your handicaps. One, two, three, go. May the best girl win." Elizabeth shot down the path, and the sound of the fruit beginning to spatter into her pail was heard almost immediately.

"I never saw so many blue or huckleberries in my life. I've got the loveliest, thickest patch—come over here, Elizabeth," Peggy shouted from her retreat.

"I've got all the blue or huckleberries in the world right here," Elizabeth mimicked.

"I'll pick a couple o' minutes, and then I'll lie in the bushes and rest a while," Grandfather said, vanishing with a six-quart cranberry measure.

Later when the girls came into the clearing again with their laden pails they found him stretched at full length and apparently fast asleep, but beside him was his heaping measure of berries.

"Granddaddy Swift," Peggy cried, "when did you pick all those?"

"Those?" he said, yawning. "Oh, a couple of hours back."

"I bet you've been working your head off every minute. We've got three quarts apiece. Elizabeth beat me after all, and then turned around and helped me get mine."

"I nearly killed myself doing it. I never want to eat another huckleberry, but I am thirsty for water or something. Don't I hear a spring?"

"There might be one through the trees there. I don't know nothing about it." Grandfather pointed, however, in a definite direction.

Peggy parted the branches, and slipped into a thread of a path which led them directly to a pool of crystal clear water fed by a tiny stream that was bubbling and gushing out of the earth. Protruding from the spring were three bottles of ginger ale that had been so placed that the cool water splashed upon them as it fell. On a rock close by were spread two paper napkins with a pile of bread-and-butter sandwiches on one and a stack of sugar-molasses cookies on the other. Between the two, holding them down, was a box of chocolates from New York's most popular candy manufacturers.

"I don't know nothing about it," Grandfather said, when they dragged him to the feast, "I've been fast asleep back there for upwards of two hours."

"You're a story-teller," Peggy said, "and for a punishment you've got to tell us a real story as soon as you've had your party."

"Nothing ever tasted so good to me in my life," Elizabeth said, as they were brushing off the crumbs.

"That's what she says after every meal she eats," her grandfather chuckled.

"But it's always true. Now here's your pipe and here's your baccy, and while you're filling it, you've got to be thinking of a story to tell us."

"I can't tell stories," he protested. "I'd sing a song if I knew any. There was a song my grandfather used to sing to us when we were children, but I can't remember it. The chorus went like this," he made a great pretence of getting the pitch, and then, rocking himself gently, sang in a solemn, sing-song voice:

I never knew the rights of it, or what the trouble was. Some kind of a disagreement they had."

"But where did the injun pudding and pumpkin pie come in?" Peggy asked. "And what is injun pudding?"

"Don't show your ign'rance, as Moses says," Elizabeth put in. "It's Indian pudding, and you make it out of Indian meal and molasses, and it cooks all day and makes whey, and eaten with ice-cream it's perfectly heavenly. Grandma is going to show me how to make it. I made a cake, you know."

"I heard about that cake," said Peggy, hastily.

"Who's Grandma?" Grandfather inquired, innocently. "I thought we only had grandmothers around our place."

"Grandma likes it better for me to call her that," Elizabeth answered, blushing.

"You needn't think you are getting out of telling us that story," Peggy cried, "tell us about the time you went courting Grandmummy."

"I don't remember nothing about it."

"Tell us about the time you took Eliza Perkins to the Harvest Dance," Elizabeth said, daringly.

"Well, apparently you know something about it already. Women do beat the Dutch, gossiping along about things that happened near fifty years ago as if 'twere yesterday."

"You needn't blame Grandma. I worm all her secrets out of her."

"I'll warrant you do. I calculated for her to remember that Harvest Dance as long as she lived. Did she tell you how she was dressed?"

"Was it a fancy dress party?"

"Certain it was, and I went as King of the Harvest. I had a velvet suit with corn tassels all down the seams, and a velvet tam o'shanter with a big tassel on that. Your gram'ma she was going to be Queen o' the Harvest, till we had a little tiff, and she refused to have anything to do with me."

"She didn't tell us that."

"I calculated she hadn't. Well, she went as an apple, root and branch, all decked out in apple blossoms, with a staff, with artificial apples growing on it, and looking like an apple blossom herself, with her pretty pink cheeks and all the lacy fixings in the world trailing after her. I took Eliza Perkins, who was the best-natured and biggest-hearted girl I ever set eyes on, and the homeliest. Lord have mercy, wasn't she homely! I knew 'twould never do to take a pretty girl, so I picked her out to make your grandma jealous with, and I told her so. She was willing. 'I'll make Laury Ann just about jealous enough,' she said. ''Twouldn't do to have her too jealous.' And she certain played her part well. Your grandma asked me to come around to a candy pull to her house, before the evening was over."

"She didn't tell me any of this, the wretched woman!" Peggy cried. "Did you go to the candy pull?"

"Oh, I went sure enough."

"Did you have a nice time?" Elizabeth asked.

"I didn't have the kind of time I expected," Grandfather twinkled.

"Why not?"

"There wasn't any candy, and there wasn't any pull."

"What was there?"

"Your grandma was there."

"Oh, what did happen? Granddaddy, don't you see me shaking with excitement and suspense?" Peggy demanded.

"Well, Mother and me, we kind of come to an understanding. I guess it's about time I hitched up Lizzie and we started along. She's been a whining and a whinnying back there for some time now. Besides, your grandma calculates to make huckleberry dumplings for supper. She gave me special directions not to ask anybody in to eat 'em. She allowed she was only going to have enough for the immediate family."

"That means I'm coming!" Peggy cried. "I am the immediate family."

"I know what dress Grandma had on that night— her pink muslin with dolman undersleeves, the one that Ruth tried on the other day," Elizabeth said, "and you kissed her in."

"Well, force o' habit is strong. Get your berries together and hop back into the car, or I'll have to start without you." Grandfather led the way through the branches into the clearing where they had left the machine.

"I half expected to see Lizzie grazing around without her harness on," Peggy said. "Grandfather is so convincing."

"You take good care o' that sister of yours." Grandfather was using most of his breath in the effort to crank Lizzie. "Don't let any o' these fat boys that is hanging around her try to run away with her. She's too precious."

"He must have seen Piggy," Peggy said in an undertone to Elizabeth.

"There was a fat boy hanging around your grandma once." He jumped into his seat with the agility of a boy himself, a thin boy, "Giddap, giddap, Lizzie."

"I know," Elizabeth leaned over the seat to say into his ear, "Pork Joe."

"You're a remarkable good guesser after you've been told. Well, Peggy, as I was saying, don't let any young Pork Joe get that pretty sister of yours."

"Did she say anything more to you about that letter from Jean?" Elizabeth asked, snuggling down into the seat beside Peggy again.

"Not a word," Peggy said. "Piggy Chambers is around all the time since he came down, and so I can't get much action. By the way, they want us to go to Provincetown with them to-morrow. Can you go? You'd better. They need chaperoning."

"I think I can. I'll have to ask, of course."

"Provincetown is way down on the tip toe of the Cape, you know. We live in the elbow."

"Whoa, Lizzie." Grandfather threw in his clutch and stopped with a flourish just behind two figures who, laden with pails full of berries, and apparently oblivious of the oncoming machine, were plodding ahead in the dust. "Want a ride, boys?"

Two caps were whipped off with an amazing suddenness, exposing one blazing head of bright red hair and one inimitable grin.

"Yes, thank you, sir," two voices spoke as one.

"One will have to ride behind and one with me," Grandfather said. "Elizabeth, these boys are Jim Robbins' grandsons, and if they are anything like old Jim, they are good young fellows to know. They'll tell you their own names, I guess."

The red-headed boy on the front seat turned and smiled a trifle mischievously.

"I'm Tom Robbins, and this is my cousin, Will Dean, Miss Elizabeth Swift and Miss Peggy Farraday."

"How do you do?" Peggy said, gravely.

"How do you do?" Elizabeth echoed, demurely.

"Captain Swift is pretty good about picking up passengers on the road, isn't he?" asked the boy with the grin.

"When you see two boys limping along in front of you everywhere you go, something's got to be done about it," Grandfather said good humouredly, "anybody might almost think you boys follered me on purpose. Yesterday and day before and day before that, I come across them hoofing it along the road," he explained, "going the same direction I was, and scurse able to take another step."

"We didn't ask you for a ride to-day," the red-headed boy blushed. "We didn't even know you were on the road till we looked up and saw you about a minute before you caught up to us."

"What's those girls giggling about?" Grandfather inquired. "I can't have a minute's serious conversation with anybody without this giggle-giggle-giggle business going on."

"I guess I know what you are smiling about," the Dean boy lowered his voice, "but honest, don't misjudge us just on account of that post-office business. We kind of wanted a chance to square it, you know. Your grandfather thinks we're all right."

"It's been pretty dry weather for the gardens, hasn't it?" Tom Robbins was saying to Grandfather. "Have your vegetables suffered much?"

"Just about all they're capable of."

"Do you see much prospect of a rainy spell?"

"As fur as I'm concerned, I don't know as it will ever rain again."

"That's too bad."

"Ankle getting better?"

"What ankle?"

"The one you sprained the day before yesterday."

"Oh, yes, sir, thank you."

"Which ankle was it, now?"

"The left—I mean, the right."

"I suspected as much," said Grandfather, gravely. "Well, they are pretty nice, clever little girls, ain't they?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Ever play checkers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Your cousin play checkers?"

"Yes, he does."

"Well, it might be good for lame ankles for you to come around and have a game o' checkers with an old man once in a while. Always ask for me in particular because when anybody comes around to the house, especially when I've got a young girl visiting me, I like to be the one that has the privilege of saying whether I'm to home or not."

"Thank you, Captain Swift. We—we will be glad to come."

"Our girls don't go to the post office at night, but Saturday night around mail time they'll probably be dishing out Indian pudding and ice-cream to anybody that might happen along."

"I know two fellows that might happen in," Tom Robbins said.

"I think those boys are really quite nice," Peggy said, as they sat under their favourite tree after supper.

"I think they are," Elizabeth said, "but it was rather mortifying the way they followed us in the first place. They ought to have known better."

"But it only needed a hint from us to make them realize."

"I think boys need those hints. It's the fault of girls if they aren't kept right up to the standard."

"Some of the girls on the Cape are not very particular. They are just out after a good time and don't care how they get it."

"I guess that's mostly just thoughtlessness. Anyhow, these boys haven't been a bit—well—you know—familiar since that first minute."

"No, they haven't one bit. I think Will is quite good fun. Did you notice how he wouldn't sit on the seat with us for fear of crowding us, but just got right down on the floor and stuck his feet out? I think that's the way they really are, and the other was just showing off."

"I think so, too," Elizabeth said. "Anyway, I'm awfully glad we told Grandmother about it. She knew who they were right away, and everything. I wouldn't have known whether I ever ought to speak to them again or not."

"It isn't every grandmother that you could tell a thing like that to," Peggy reflected. "I didn't tell my mother. She just wouldn't have thought it was much account. She trusts me to know the right thing, and that's fine of her when I do know it, but when I don't, it's embarrassing."

"The thing about Grandmother," Elizabeth said, "is that she remembers back so well. She knows what it's like to be a girl, and she thinks all the things that girls think are important. Lots of grown people don't. She imagines right into things, but she doesn't poke around them. She doesn't say much, either, but when you tell her a thing she listens to it."

"I wish any of my relations did that. Father just says, 'All right, Peggy, I'll take it all on trust—where's the morning paper?' whatever I say to him, and Mother says, 'Put in that little wisp of hair, darling,' or 'Look at your nails,' no matter what I say to her. Sister doesn't listen to anything anybody says any more."

"Not even to Mr. Chambers?"

"Him less than anybody, but she spends all her time with him."

"Peggy, don't you think she's got a heart?"

"I don't know what she's got. She kept me awake last night by snivelling for about an hour, and when I got so sorry for her that I couldn't help it, I went in and tried to put my arms around her, and she just turned me out as if I'd been an interloper. I don't know what to make of her lately. If you're looking for a nasty grown-up sister, I'd dispose of her cheap."

"I'm glad she's not happy," Elizabeth said, soberly.

"Well, I'm not. I'm just sore at her about last night, but I'll get over that. You remember that in 'Little Women' about not letting the sun go down upon your wrath. Well, I scarcely ever do."

"I try not to," Elizabeth said. "It isn't getting angry so much that afflicts me. It's a lot of horrid, sensitive ideas that I have. I want to be loved the best, and have things just the way I think is about right—and if I don't, I brood over it."

"Well, I'm a more active nature," Peggy said. "Haven't we had fun to-day?"

"Weren't the huckleberries fun—from bush to kettle, as it were? Weren't those boys cute, to get acquainted with Grandfather?"

"Wasn't it funny we happened to pick them up, when they'd been huckleberrying, too?"

"And oh! Wasn't Grandfather a darling all day—so funny—telling stories and making little surprises, and so nice with the boys and everything. Oh, Peggy, don't you—love my grandfather?"

"I certainly do," said Peggy, solemnly.