Homespun Tales. Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

be the fourth time that he had asked Rose this question of all questions, but there was no unerceptible difference in his excitement, for there was always the possible chance that she might change her mind and say yes, if only for variety. Wanting a thing continuously, unchangingly, unceasingly, year after year, he thought,—longing to reach it as the river longed to reach the sea,—such wanting might, in course of time, mean having.

      Rose drove up to the bridge with the men's luncheon, and the under boss came up to take the baskets and boxes from the back of the wagon.

      “We've had a reg'lar tussle this mornin', Rose,” he said. “The logs are determined not to move. Ike Billings, that's the han'somest and fluentest all-round swearer on the Saco, has tried his best on the side jam. He's all out o' cuss-words and there hain't a log budged. Now, stid o' dog-warpin' this afternoon, an' lettin' the oxen haul off all them stubborn logs by main force, we're goin' to ask you to set up on the bank and smile at the jam. 'Land! she can do it!' says Ike a minute ago. 'When Rose starts smilin',' he says, 'there ain't a jam nor a bung in me that don't melt like wax and jest float right off same as the logs do when they get into quiet, sunny water.'”

      Rose blushed and laughed, and drove up the hill to Mite Shapley's, where she put up the horse and waited till the men had eaten their luncheon. The drivers slept and had breakfast and supper at the Billings house, a mile down-river, but for several years Mrs. Wiley had furnished the noon meal, sending it down piping hot on the stroke of twelve. The boys always said that up or down the whole length of the Saco there was no such cooking as the Wileys', and much of this praise was earned by Rose's serving. It was the old grandmother who burnished the tin plates and dippers till they looked like silver; for—crotchety and sharp-tongued as she was—she never allowed Rose to spoil her hands with soft soap and sand: but it was Rose who planned and packed, Rose who hemmed squares of old white table-cloths and sheets to line the baskets and keep things daintily separate, Rose, also, whose tarts and cakes were the pride and admiration of church sociables and sewing societies.

      Where could such smoking pots of beans be found? A murmur of ecstatic approval ran through the crowd when the covers were removed. Pieces of sweet home-fed pork glistened like varnished mahogany on the top of the beans, and underneath were such deeps of fragrant juice as come only from slow fires and long, quiet hours in brick ovens. Who else could steam and bake such mealy loaves of brown bread, brown as plum-pudding, yet with no suspicion of sogginess? Who such soda biscuits, big, feathery, tasting of cream, and hardly needing butter? And green-apple pies! Could such candied lower crusts be found elsewhere, or more delectable filling? Or such rich, nutty doughnuts?—doughnuts that had spurned the hot fat which is the ruin of so many, and risen from its waves like golden-brown Venuses.

      “By the great seleckmen!” ejaculated Jed Towle, as he swallowed his fourth, “I'd like to hev a wife, two daughters, and four sisters like them Wileys, and jest set still on the river-bank an' hev 'em cook victuals for me. I'd hev nothin' to wish for then but a mouth as big as the Saco's.”

      “And I wish this custard pie was the size o' Bonnie Eagle Pond,” said Ike Billings. “I'd like to fall into the middle of it and eat my way out!”

      “Look at that bunch o' Chiny asters tied on t' the bail o' that biscuit-pail!” said Ivory Dunn. “That's the girl's doin's, you bet; women-folks don't seem to make no bo'quets after they git married. Let's divide 'em up an' wear 'em drivin' this afternoon; mebbe they'll ketch the eye so 't our rags won't show so bad. Land! it's lucky my hundred days is about up! If I don't git home soon, I shall be arrested for goin' without clo'es. I set up 'bout all night puttin' these blue patches in my pants an' tryin' to piece together a couple of old red-flannel shirts to make one whole one. That's the worst o' drivin' in these places where the pretty girls make a habit of comin' down to the bridge to see the fun. You hev to keep rigged up jest so stylish; you can't git no chance at the rum bottle, an' you even hev to go a leetle mite light on swearin'.”

IV. “Blasphemious Swearin'”

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      “Steve Waterman's an awful nice feller,” exclaimed Ivory Dunn just then. Stephen had been looking intently across the river, watching the Shapleys' side door, from which Rose might issue at any moment; and at this point in the discussion he had lounged away from the group, and, moving toward the bridge, began to throw pebbles idly into the water.

      “He's an awful smart driver for one that don't foller drivin' the year round,” continued Ivory; “and he's the awfullest clean-spoken, soft-spoken feller I ever see.”

      “There's be'n two black sheep in his family a'ready, an' Steve kind o' feels as if he'd ought to be extry white,” remarked Jed Towle. “You fellers that belonged to the old drive remember Pretty Quick Waterman well enough? Steve's mother brought him up.”

      Yes; most of them remembered the Waterman twins, Stephen's cousins, now both dead,—Slow Waterman, so moderate in his steps and actions that you had to fix a landmark somewhere near him to see if he moved; and Pretty Quick, who shone by comparison with his twin. “I'd kind o' forgot that Pretty Quick Waterman was cousin to Steve,” said the under boss; “he never worked with me much, but he wa'n't cut off the same piece o' goods as the other Watermans. Great hemlock! but he kep' a cussin' dictionary, Pretty Quick did! Whenever he heard any new words he must 'a' writ 'em down, an' then studied 'em all up in the winter-time, to use in the spring drive.”

      “Swearin' 's a habit that hed ought to be practiced with turrible caution,” observed old Mr. Wiley, when the drivers had finished luncheon and taken out their pipes. “There's three kinds o' swearin',—plain swearin', profane swearin', an' blasphemious swearin'. Logs air jest like mules: there's times when a man can't seem to rip up a jam in good style 'thout a few words that's too strong for the infant classes in Sunday-schools; but a man hed n't ought to tempt Providence. When he's ridin' a log near the falls at high water, or cuttin' the key-log in a jam, he ain't in no place for blasphemious swearin'; jest a little easy, perlite 'damn' is 'bout all he can resk, if he don't want to git drownded an' hev his ghost walkin' the river-banks till kingdom come.

      “You an' I, Long, was the only ones that seen Pretty Quick go, wa'n't we?” continued Old Kennebec, glancing at Long Abe Dennett (cousin to Short Abe), who lay on his back in the grass, the smoke-wreaths rising from his pipe, and the steel spikes in his heavy, calked-sole boots shining in the sun.

      “There was folks on the bridge,” Long answered, “but we was the only ones near enough to see an' hear. It was so onexpected, an' so soon over, that them as was watchin' upstream, where the men was to work on the falls, would n't 'a' hed time to see him go down. But I did, an' nobody ain't heard me swear sence, though it's ten years ago. I allers said it was rum an' bravadder that killed Pretty Quick Waterman that day. The boys hed n't give him a 'dare' that he hed n't took up. He seemed like he was possessed, an' the logs was the same way; they was fairly wild, leapin' around in the maddest kind o' water you ever see. The river was b'ilin' high that spring; it was an awful stubborn jam, an' Pretty Quick, he'd be'n workin' on it sence dinner.”

      “He clumb up the bank more'n once to have a pull at the bottle that was hid in the bushes,” interpolated Mr. Wiley. “Like as not; that was his failin'. Well, most o' the boys were on the other side o' the river, workin' above the bridge, an' the boss hed called Pretty Quick to come off an' leave the jam till mornin', when they'd get horses an' dog-warp it off, log by log. But when the boss got out o' sight, Pretty Quick jest stood right still, swingin' his axe, an' blasphemin' so it would freeze your blood, vowin' he would n't move till the logs did, if he stayed there till the crack o' doom. Jest then a great, ponderous log, that hed be'n churnin' up an' down in the falls for a week, got free an' come blunderin' an' thunderin' down-river. Land! it was chock full o' water, an' looked 'bout as big as a church! It come straight along, butt-end foremost, an' struck that jam, full force, so 't every log in it shivered. There was a crack,—the crack o' doom, sure enough, for Pretty Quick,—an' one o' the logs le'p' right out an' struck him jest where he stood, with his axe in the air, blasphemin'.