Elsie Singmaster

THE REBELS TAKE TO ARMS

When Sarah woke at six o'clock the next morning, the faint gray of the winter sunrise was in the sky. She opened her eyes drowsily, trying to account for the heavy depression which seemed to weigh her down. Then, when her outstretched arms found no sturdy little figure beside her, and a glance across the room showed the smooth, unopened trundle-bed, she remembered suddenly all that had happened on that sad yesterday. Her father was gone, and Albert and the twins, and there was no telling how long she would be allowed to stay in the farmhouse. She realized how impossible it would be for a little girl—in the gray dawn Sarah felt very small and young—to hold out long against so determined a man as Daniel Swartz. She turned her face deeper into the pillow.

Then, suddenly, a soft sound recalled her to herself. It was the whinnying of Dan and Bill, calling for their breakfast, already long overdue. And the cows must be fed and milked, and the chickens must have their warm mash. Sarah was upon her feet in an instant. She was not quite alone so long as these helpless creatures depended upon her.

An hour later, she drove out of the yard on her way to the creamery. With activity, ambition had returned; she began even to hope that her uncle might be persuaded to let her stay. The sun had risen clear and bright, and all the cheerfulness of Sarah's disposition responded to it.

She wondered, as she drove along the frozen roads, whether it would not be possible to add a third cow to her dairy. And she could keep more chickens. Her father had taught her how to look after them,—their hens always laid better than Aunt Eliza's. And if the chickens did well, and if Ebert would put out the crops for her,—poor Sarah meant to go ahead just as though her uncle had not said that he would farm,—and if the children were allowed to come back, and then if William came home—She knew in the bottom of her heart that they were air castles, but she found them pleasant abiding-places.

The men, waiting in line at the creamery, called to her kindly, all but Jacob Kalb, whose wagon was third from the delivery door.

Henry Ebert was at that moment chirruping to his horse to move into place before the platform.

"Sarah!" he called. "Wait once. I move a little piece back, and you can come in first."

Jacob Kalb approved of no such chivalrous impulses.

"Those that come first should have first place," he growled. "I can't wait all day."

But the men only laughed. None of them liked Jacob Kalb.

Sarah swung Dan into line before the door. A week before, she would have called out,—

"blaff" being the Pennsylvania German word for bark, but now she sternly checked her poetic fancies. Sarah had made up her mind to be very wise and politic. But she could not repress a smile of satisfaction over her brilliant combination of Pennsylvania German and English.

Jacob saw the smile and watched her, scowling. It irritated him to see her there, businesslike and cheerful, and it did not give him any pleasure to hear a neighbor call to her that he would stop for her milk-can the next morning. Sarah shouted back her thanks.

Ebert consented willingly to put out the crops. He had a great admiration for smart little Sarah.

"Next week I begin to plough," he promised.

Then Sarah slapped the reins on Dan's back and was off. There was plenty to do at home: the house to put in order, several hens to set, and some baking to be done. As she drew near the farm, she became apprehensive. Suppose her Uncle Daniel should have taken possession while she was away! She had locked the door, but the fastenings of the windows were not very secure. And to whom, in such a case, should she go? Not to any of the farmers round about: they were poor and had many children.

She could not take Uncle Daniel's charity,—she knew that, no matter how hard she worked, he would still consider it charity,—and she could not live with Aunt Mena, who had the twins. She thought vaguely of going with her trouble to Miss Miflin. But Miss Miflin had no home.

There was no sign of any alien presence as she drove up the lane. The cat sat comfortably on the doorstep, a sure sign that there were no strangers about. Sarah stopped thankfully to pat him before she fitted the key into the lock.

"You poor Tommy, where would you go if Sarah went away?"

Still talking to the cat, she pushed open the door. Then she stood still, as though she were turned to stone.

Within, all was confusion. She did not see that it was the sort of confusion which could be created in a few minutes and as quickly straightened out. Immediately in front of the door the old settle had been turned over on its stately back, and the chairs were piled high on the table in a sort of barricade.

Sarah's first thought was of thieves. Then she realized that she was looking straight into the barrel of a shot-gun.

It made no difference that it was the same broken gun which she had carried upstairs with her the night before, and that she knew it would not shoot. She was terrified at first beyond the power of speech. She leaned, weak and faint, against the door-post, and presently demanded who was there.

Two voices answered her.

"Hands up!"

Then Sarah rushed forward.

"Ellen Louisa!" she cried. "Louisa Ellen!"

The twins had been carried to Aunt Mena's and put to bed without waking. Then Aunt Mena had sat down before the kitchen fire to explain to her husband why she had brought them home.

"Daniel, he says I shall take them. He takes the farm, and he will pay me each week a dollar for Ellie and Weezy. He has to, or I will not keep them. And I get my share of pop's and mom's things what Ellie had, too. They won't do these children no good. But I will not manage Ellie and Weezy like him. He is too cross. I will first tame them. But he is not cross to Albert. Now these twins shall do for a few days what they want. They dare go to school this year and next yet, then they must stop."

In the morning Aunt Mena began her process of taming, which would undoubtedly have proved successful with persons more amenable than the twins. In the first place, she let them sleep as long as they liked. When Ellen Louisa woke, she saw by the century-old clock, ticking on the high chest of drawers, that it was seven o'clock. She nudged Louisa Ellen, who scrambled out of bed.

"We must hurry or we will be late to—" At that moment Louisa Ellen, instead of rolling out of a low trundle-bed, fell with a loud thump, from the high four-poster. She realized that they were not at home. Then upon them both dawned the recollection of the night before, and the weary days before that.

"P-pop, he wouldn't like it that we were here," said Louisa Ellen. "He said we should stay always by Sarah."

Ellen Louisa did not answer, but began to put on her shoes and stockings with lightning speed. The twins never wasted many words.

As soon as Aunt Mena heard them stirring about, she came to the foot of the steps.

"Wee-zy," she called. "El-lie! Breakfast."

"Our names—" began Ellen Louisa shrilly; then she was stopped by Louisa Ellen's hand on her mouth.

"Don't make her mad over us," advised Louisa Ellen. "She might pen us up."

"We will go to school," said Ellen Louisa. "Then we will go home to dinner. Pop wouldn't like it if we weren't in school."

But Aunt Mena did not approve.

"In a couple of days you shall go again in the school. But you are not going any more in the Spring Grove School. It is not any more your district."

"N-not to Miss Miflin!" gasped Ellen Louisa.

"No, you are no more in Miss Miflin's district."

"B-but—" Ellen Louisa felt her braid of black hair sharply tweaked. Louisa Ellen was a shade thinner than Ellen Louisa and a trifle quicker witted.

"You didn't have to tell Aunt Mena right out that we were going home," she said, when they had finished their breakfast. "Now come on."

The coast was, at that moment, perfectly clear. Aunt Mena was in the cellar getting the cream ready to churn, and Aunt Mena's husband was in a distant field, ploughing. The twins seized caps and shawls and fled. Ellen Louisa made for the high road.

"What have you for!" cried Louisa Ellen. "That way she will look for us. We go this way to the Spring Grove road. Come on."

Ten minutes later, when Aunt Mena came to the door, they were not in sight. Aunt Mena was not much troubled. She did not know that Sarah had been allowed to stay in the farmhouse.

"Pooh! they will go to Daniel, and he will fetch them home, or I will fetch them home. It is all one."

And Aunt Mena went back to her work.

The twins had a ride in a farmer's cart, which brought them to the foot of the lane. Realizing that they were too late for school, they decided to go home until the afternoon session. Then Sarah would write a note of explanation to Miss Miflin. To the twins Sarah's notes were as all-powerful as Aladdin's lamp. To Miss Miflin they were sources of both mirth and grief. She laughed because they were so irresistibly funny, and then she almost cried because they reminded her of plans and hopes once dear to her heart, which had been ended forever by misunderstanding and resentment.

"Dear Teacher," Sarah wrote. "Please excuse the zwillings" (there were times in the stress of hasty composition when English words eluded Sarah's grasp as they eluded Jacob Kalb's) "for being late. They cannot come now so early like always, while they must help a little in the morning.

Their father,
Sarah Wenner."

Sarah considered that the signature was a happy combination of the respect due to fathers and the sign of her stewardship of his affairs.

Sometimes Miss Miflin started to go to see little Sarah, who had been the best and brightest pupil she had ever had, but she never got quite to the house. She blamed herself for William's going away, and she thought that they too might blame her. So she turned back.

The twins had not been at all alarmed by the closed house. Sarah always drove to the creamery. They did not realize that Albert had been taken away, and supposed that he had gone with her, since they were not there to look after him. Prying open the cellar door, which was fastened by a loose bar that could be moved from the outside, they were soon in the house. They were wild with delight over their escape.

"Let us get ready for Aunt Mena if she comes," proposed Louisa Ellen. "Let us built such a fort."

It was "such a fort" which had frightened Sarah. Now the twins flung themselves upon her. They had run off, they had come home, they were not going to school till afternoon, they—But where was Albert?

"He is by Uncle Daniel," answered Sarah slowly.

"Then we will fetch him." The twins made a dash for the door. But Sarah held them back.

"No," she said. "Uncle Daniel will keep Albert by him. And perhaps Aunt Mena will fetch you again, and perhaps Uncle Daniel will take the farm away from us, and perhaps we cannot be any more together."

The twins were amazed and bewildered. Sarah's solemnity worried them more than the catalogue of evils.

"What shall we do?" they asked.

"You can learn your lessons and say them to me. And you can sew your patchwork and be quiet and smart."

All the rest of the morning, and all the afternoon, there was quiet such as the farmhouse had never known when a twin was within it and awake. Dinner was eaten almost in silence, and then Sarah, locking the door behind her, and with many long glances over the fields and road, went out to feed the stock.

She fancied that she saw a little face pressed to the kitchen window of the Swartz farmhouse, far away across the brown fields, but she could not be sure. Albert was so little, he had learned to be fond of Uncle Daniel, who was constantly giving him presents of candy and peanuts; it would be easy enough, Sarah thought, for them to keep him there.

It was almost supper time, and the early dusk was falling, when the twins were ready to recite their lessons. It is safe to say that never, even in Pennsylvania Germandom, was there a class like this which Sarah held. Fortunately the twins were good arithmeticians, for Sarah could not have corrected their mistakes; she had been too long away from school for that. The twins never guessed that, when she insisted upon a careful explanation of each simple process, she was learning from them.

They had not heard as yet Miss Miflin's careful pronunciation of the words of the spelling lesson; so when Sarah said "walley" or "saw," they answered at once "v-a-l-l-e-y" or "t-h-a-w," never dreaming that Sarah's speech embodied all the mistakes which Miss Miflin tried to correct.

When it came to the geography lesson, Sarah shone. The twins had not had the advantage of hearing their father and William speculate about strange and distant lands; they had a certain amount of book-knowledge, but no imagination to enliven it.

"How wide is the Amazon River at its mouth?" asked Sarah.

"Two hundred miles," answered the twins glibly.

"How wide is that?"

Louisa Ellen responded. To her a river was a line on a map. She would make this river wide enough even to suit Sarah.

"About as wide as the coal-bucket," answered Louisa Ellen.

At that moment, before Sarah had time to explain to Louisa Ellen the phenomenal dullness of her mind, the latch of the door was lifted softly and allowed to drop.

"It is Aunt Mena," said the twins together.

Sarah motioned them to the settle.

"Sit there till I tell you to get up," she commanded. "I will go up to the window and look down."

The twins held each other's hands in fright. Was Jacob Kalb coming again to carry them out?

"Aunt Mena couldn't fetch us alone," said Ellen Louisa.

Then they started up in fright, realizing that Sarah was falling downstairs. She righted herself immediately, at the bottom, and rushed past them to fling wide the door.

A tiny little figure stood without.

"I sought I would come once home," said Albert. "So I runned off."

Speech suddenly became impossible, as Albert found himself almost smothered under a multitude of caresses. When they let him go, he drew a sticky package from his blouse.

"I brought some candy along for you," he said; whereupon he was almost smothered again.

Never had the old farmhouse known more happiness than filled it that night. Never was waffle-batter so light or appetites so good. Then, what games! Sarah was a teacher, book in hand,—that was her favorite. Then they were children lost in the woods, and Sarah was a bear,—that was the twins'.

No one but Sarah realized how strange it was that they should be playing there so contentedly. It seemed to her that a vast space of time divided this day from yesterday. It seemed almost as though her father had come back, or as though William might come in upon them. Little Sarah almost listened for his step.

Then, like a warning to dream no more, there came first an imperative lifting of the latch, then a loud knock on the door.

"What do you want?" asked Sarah.

"Albert is to come right aways home." That was Jacob Kalb.

"The twins are to come right out." That was Aunt Mena. For the first time in thirty years Aunt Mena's butter had failed to "get," and she was angry and impatient. She had forgotten her gentle intention to "tame" the twins. "Come right aways out, or you will get a good whipping."

The twins looked critically at the strong wall between them and the enemy. It seemed a time when the dictates of wisdom might yield to those of personal satisfaction.

"We won't," said Louisa Ellen.

"Jacob Calf!" called Ellen Louisa.

"Go upstairs and take Albert," commanded Sarah. Then she turned to the door. "You can't have my children."

"I give you a last chance," said Aunt Mena. "I don't care for the dollar a week. Shall the twins have a good home, or shall they not have a good home?"

"You cannot have my children," said Sarah again, her heart pounding like a trip-hammer.

"Well, then," called Aunt Mena furiously, as she went away.

Jacob Kalb lingered. If Mena Illick refused to take the twins, Swartz might be compelled to leave them all there. Then Jacob could not have the house.

"You ought to be srashed!" he shouted to Sarah. "You are a bad girl. You put Albert out here."

Then Jacob began to pound on the door.

It was five minutes later when Sarah came upstairs. Her face was white and her hands shook. Yet she was laughing.

"Why don't you tell him if he don't go away you will shoot him with the gun?" demanded Louisa Ellen.

Sarah laughed hysterically.

"That was just what I did tell him," she said.