  “The summer following our mother’s death was hot and dry,” the frail girl continued, “and the grass around Mr. Eastland’s shack, though tall from early rains, was parched in August. “One morning before he rode in town, our foster-father jokingly told my brother Dean that he would leave the place in his care. ‘Don’t ye let anything happen to it, sonny,’ he said. “Dean, who is always serious, looked up at the old man on the mule as he replied: ‘I’ll take care of it, Daddy Eastland, even with my life.’ “We thought nothing of this. My brother was a dreamer, living, it sometimes seemed, in a world of his own creating. I now realize that my foster-father and I did not quite understand him. “It was an intensely hot day. How the grass got on fire I do not know, but about noon I heard a cry from Dean, who had been lying for hours on the ground in the shade of the shack reading a book of poetry that a traveling missionary had brought to him. He had visited us six months before and had promised the next time he came that he would bring a book for my brother. “When I heard Dean’s cry of alarm and saw him leap to his feet and run toward a swiftly approaching column of smoke, I also ran, but not being as fleet of foot, I was soon far behind him. He had caught up a burlap bag as he passed a shed; then, on he raced toward the fire. I, too, paused to get a bag, but when I started on I saw my brother suddenly plunge forward and disappear. “He had caught his foot in a briar and had fallen into a thicket which, a moment later, with a crackle and roar leaped into flame. “His cap had slipped over his face, thank heaven, and so his truly beautiful eyes and features were spared, but his body was badly burned when the fire had swept over him. “The wind had veered very suddenly and turned the flame back upon the charred land and so, there being nothing left to burn, it was extinguished. “It was at that moment that Daddy Eastland returned. He lifted my unconscious brother out of the black, burnt thicket and carried him to the shack. “‘Boy! Boy!’ he said, and I never will forget the sob there was in his voice. ‘Why did you say ye’d take care of the old place with your life? ’Twasn’t worth one hair on yer head.’ “But Dean was not dead. Slowly, so slowly he came back to life, but his left arm was burned to the bone and his side beneath it. Then, because of the pain, his muscles tightened and he could not move his arm. “We were so far from town that perhaps he did not have just the right care. Once a month a quack physician made the rounds of those remote farms. “However, he did the best that he could, and a year later Dean was able to walk about. How like our mother he was, so brave and cheerful! “‘I am glad that it is my left arm that will not move, Sister,’ he often said. ‘I have a use for my right arm.’ “Our foster-father, noting how it pleased the lad, invented tasks around the farm that a one-armed boy could do to help, but when he was fourteen years of age I discovered what he had meant when he said that he had a use for his right arm. He had a little den of his own in the loft of the old barn with a big opening that overlooked meadow lands, a winding silver ribbon of a river and distant hills, and there he spent hours every day writing. “At last he confessed that he was trying to make verse like that in his one greatly treasured book. It was his joy, and he had so little that I encouraged him, though I could not understand his poetry. I am more like our father, who was a faithful plodding farmer, and Dean is like our mother, who could tell such wonderful stories out of her own head. “At last, when I was eighteen years old, I told Daddy Eastland that I wanted to go to the city to earn my own way and send some money back for Dean. How the lad grieved when I left, for he said that he was the one who should go out in the world and work for both of us, but I told him to keep on with his writing and that maybe, some day, he would be able to earn money with his poetry. “So I came to town and began as an errand girl in a big department store. “Now I earn eighteen dollars a week and I send half of it back to the little rocky farm in New England. Too, I send magazines and books, but now a new problem has presented itself. Mr. Eastland has died, and Dean is alone, and so I have sent for him to come and live with me. “How glad I shall be to see him, but I dread having him know where I live. He will guess at once that I chose a basement room that I might have money to send to him.” It was Miss Selenski who interrupted: “Miss Wiggin,” she said, “while you have been talking, I have chosen you to be my successor. Tomorrow I am to be married, and I promised the ladies who built the model tenements that I would find someone fitted to take my place before I left. The pay is better than you are getting. It is twenty-five dollars a week, with a sunny little apartment to live in. I want all of you girls to come to my wedding and then, when I am gone, Miss Wiggin, you can move right in, and you will be there to welcome that wonderful brother of yours.” It would be hard to imagine a happier girl than Nell when she learned that a brighter future awaited her than she had dared to dream. She tried to thank her benefactor, but her sensitive lips quivered and the girls knew that she was so overcome with emotion that she might cry, and so Miss Selenski began at once to tell them about her wedding plans, and then, soon after she had finished, the girls who had been invited for tea arrived. Miss Selenski knew many of them, and so the conversation became general and little Nell Wiggin was permitted to quietly become accustomed to her wonderful good fortune before she was again asked to join in the conversation. Bobs walked with her to the elevated, and merry plans she laid for the pleasant times the Vandergrifts were to have with their new neighbors. |
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