Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

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CALVIN'S STORY

Passing from the kitchen into the back sitting-room, Calvin found Mr. Sim hunched in his chair, looking injured.

"I didn't know but you had gone without comin' in," he said; "seems to me you've ben a long time with them dishes."

"They're handsome dishes!" replied Calvin. "You wouldn't have me hurry and risk droppin' of them, would you? Well, Sim, I s'pose I must be joggin' along."

"What's your hurry? what's your hurry?" cried Mr. Sim peevishly. "I didn't have no chance to talk at dinner, there was so much clack goin' on;" and he cast a baleful glance at the doorway. "I want to know where you've ben and what you've ben doin' all these years, Calvin. Sit down and fill your pipe, and let's hear about it."

Calvin looked about him. "Well!" he said slowly, "I don't know as there's any such drivin' hurry. Hossy'll be pleased to stay a bit longer, I reckon;" he glanced out of the window at the fat brown horse, who was munching oats sleepily.

"Want to hear where I've been, do you, Sim? All right! Where shall I set? Sam'll want to hear too, won't he?"

"Yes!" cried Mr. Sam from the other room. "Certin' I do, Calvin, certin' I do."

"Well, how about this? Come on into the front room, Sim!"

"No! no!" cried Mr. Sim hastily. "I allus set here, Calvin. You might set in the doorway," he added, "then the other one could hear too."

"Well, of all the darned foolishness ever I heard of!" said Calvin Parks. "Say, boys, how old was you last birthday? Was it fifty, or only five? Mebbe I was mistaken!"

Standing in the doorway, which he seemed to fill with his stalwart sunburnt presence, he looked from one twin to the other, half amused, half indignant. The brothers shuffled their feet and wriggled in their chairs. Their motions were identical, and the furtive glance which Mr. Sam cast at Calvin was mirrored by Mr. Sim. "I can hear fust rate if you sit there, Cal!" said both brothers together.

Calvin Parks pulled a chair into the doorway, and tilted it at a convenient angle. Again he looked from one twin to the other.

"If your Ma was here—" he said slowly; "but there! She ain't, and that's all there is to it. Well, I'm here anyhow, ain't I? and you want to know how I come here. Well, I come behind hossy. Whose hossy? My hossy, and my waggin. Good enough hossy, good enough waggin; but defend me from that way of gettin' about! Land is good to live on: take a farm like this now; I admire it, and barrin' tomfoolishness, I call you two lucky fellows; but come to gettin' about, give me water. This rumblin' and joltin' about over clay ro'ds, and climbin' in and out over a great wheel, and like as not hossy startin' up just as you've got your leg over and throwin' of you into the ro'd—what I say is, darn it all! And think you might be slippin' along in a schooner, and the water lip-lappin', and the shore slidin' by smooth and pleasant, and no need to say 'gerlong up!' nor slap the reins nor feed her oats—I tell you, boys, I get so homesick for it I think some days I'll chuck the whole concern."

"What concern?" inquired Mr. Sam. "You appear to me to ramble in your talk, Calvin, same as you allus did. Ma allus said you was a rambler in your talk and a rover in your ways, and you'd never settle down till you married."

"She did, did she?" said Calvin musing. "I expect she was about right. Well—you see," he cast an apologetic glance at Mary Sands, who had come in quietly and sat down with her sewing in the front room, "I've always laid it to some to the fire. Look at your house here, boys!" he gave a wistful glance round the two bright, tidy, cheerful rooms. "If I had a home like this, would I be a rover? I guess not! I guess I shouldn't need no cobbler's wax on the seat of the chair to hold me down; but if all you had come home to was an empty cellar hole, not a stick nor a stitch—nothing was saved, you remember,—why, you might feel different. I took to the coastin' trade, as you know, and the past ten years I've been master of the 'Mary Sands, Bath and Floridy with lumber.'"

"I want to know!" said Mr. Sam.

"Do tell me!" cried Mr. Sim. "Why—"

Mary Sands had dropped her work at the sound of her own name, and looked up quickly; meeting Calvin Parks's look of unconscious admiration, the wholesome color flushed into her face again, and her brown eyes began to twinkle. She broke in quickly on Mr. Sim's slow speech.

"Was she a good vessel, Mr. Parks? You know I told you I was owner of a schooner, and so I take an interest in vessels, especially coasters."

"If I should say that she was as fine-lookin' a vessel as you was lady," said Calvin deliberately, "you might cast it up that I was makin' personal remarks, which far be it from me to do; but I will say that she is a sweet schooner. There ain't a line of her but what is clean cut and handsome to look at. And as for her disposition! there! I've knowed vessels as was good-lookin', and yet so contrary and cantankerous that you'd rather lay down and take a lickin' than sail in them, any day. I've knowed poor-spirited vessels, and vessels that was just ornery and mean; but 't is handsome is as handsome does with the Mary Sands. She's sweet as her looks; she's capable and she willin'; she's free and yet she's steady. If your Ma was here, Sim and Samuel, I'd say to her, 'Show me the Mary Sands in petticoats and if she was agreeable I'd never need to be called rover again."

"Why," began Mr. Sim again; but again his cousin cut him short with less than her usual courtesy. "She must be a picture of a vessel, surely, Mr. Parks. And how come you to leave, if you liked the life so well? I'm sure Cousins want to hear about that, and I should be pleased too."

Calvin pulled at his pipe in silence for several minutes.

"'Tis hard to explain," he said at last. "I don't know as I can make it clear to you, Miss Hands; but it's a fact that a seaman, and especially a coastwise seaman, now and then takes a hankerin' after the land. Deep-sea voyages, you just don't think about it, and 'twouldn't make no difference if you did. But slippin' along shore, seein' handsome prospects, you know, and hills risin' up and ro'ds climbin' over them and goin' somewhere, you don't know where—and now and then a village, and mebbe hear the church bells ringin' and you forgettin' 'twas Sunday—now and then, some ways, it gets a holt of you.

"Well, it's goin' on a year now that one of them spells come over me. I rec'lect well, 'twas a hot day in August. We was becalmed off the mouth of the river, and the Mary couldn't make no headway, 'peared as though. The crew stuck their jackknives into the mainmast, and whistled all they knew for a wind; and I set there and watched the sails playin' Isick and Josh, Isick and Josh, till, honest, I could feel the soul creakin' inside me with tiredness. I expect the sun kind o' scrambled my brains, same as a dish of eggs; for bumbye a tug come along, goin' to the city, and I wasted good money by gettin' a tow and pullin' into port two days ahead of schedule time. Now see what I got for it! I went to the office, and there was a letter from a lawyer sayin' my owner was dead and had left the schooner to his niece. I didn't read no further, and to this day I don't know what the woman's name is. I set down and took up the paper; at first I was too mad to read. I don't know just what I was mad at, neither, but so it was. Pretty soon my eye fell on a notice of a candy route for sale, hoss and waggin', good-will and fixtures, the whole concern. 'That's me!' I says. 'No woman in mine!'

"I'm showing you what an incapable pumpkin-head I was, Miss Hands, so you can see I ain't keepin' nothin' back. All about it, I sent my papers to the lawyer that night, and next day I bought the candy route and the hoss and waggin! All the candies, lozenges, and peppermint drops; tutti-frutti and pepsin chewin'-gum; peanut toffy and purity kisses; wholesale and retail, Calvin Parks agent, that's me!"

He brought his chair down on four legs and towered once more in the doorway. "There's the first chapter of my orter-biography, Miss Hands and boys," he said. "I must be off now, or I sha'n't get over my route to-day."