24 New worlds to conquer

In the ancient writings of China, which are so ripe in usable wisdom, there is a saying which I shall now confess I had meant to take as a lodestar to keep this rambling chronicle from falling into utter confusion. The saying runs something like this: ‘Count not time by the risings and the settings of the sun, nor by the turn of the years, but by those events great or small which have left an indelible impression; for we live not by virtue of length of days but by the brunt of experience.’

It seems an easy guide, a most simple formula, but alas! like the perfection of most simple things, it requires art of a high order and which therefore now appalls me. And yet the nice economy of arrangement suitable to the novel does not lend itself to this sort of narrative. How easy it would be, and how flattering to vanity, if at this point I could make a tidy cleavage. If, having stumbled into the world of English books and formed in a rash moment a fantastic ambition, I could sail along like a resolute heroine, sure of myself and the future. If, having discovered this wonderland, I could even say that it had brought me nothing but profit and pleasure, how neatly I might patch my quilt of years.

But nothing could be further from the truth. And truth, permit me to interpolate, is not the same for all of us. No, not even any given circumstance or experience stands in the same relationship to what we call truth, for any one of us.

After all, there are so many truths, and all of them are fragmentary. Truths, let us say, of the geometric order, which give us the impression of necessity; truths of the physical order, of which we conceive they might be mended; truths of the natural order, more contingent, at a given point, at a given moment in time; and so on, through a thousand speculations. Obviously, we pass from one order of truths to another, and, equally obviously, the character of truth itself changes with the objects affirmed, the speculations dealt in, with the passage of time. Which is merely to say that not only are the most commonplace concepts subject to endless alteration, but even so-called scientific truths never stand still. Everything is relative and subject to the demonstration of evidence. Applied to ordinary beliefs and experience, their sum-total of truth as bearing upon ourselves is therefore nothing more nor less than what we can extract from these things for our individual unfoldment and expression. There is no other truth and it is fruitless and foolish to quarrel with any one’s fumbling manipulation of such problematic facts and heterogeneous experiences as come his way.

We learn a little, I think, chiefly by reason of the intensity of our interests, even though our reasoning may be neither particularly intelligent nor profound. In my own case, it is safe to say that I had at least a healthy curiosity, and a genuine interest in human beings. The daily round had no meaning except in so far as some happening brought out a sharp reaction in myself or others. More especially in others, for, as I have already shown, when I was a child I had little amusement except to watch the behaviour of our friends and acquaintances.

But now, in the months that followed my discovery of the public library, a painful change took place in my scrambling mental processes. In proportion as I became absorbed in a new type of reading, accepting everything therein as grand and glorious, I began to suspect the austere old tales on which I had been fed.

More painful still, I began to suffer (what every child of an immigrant race must suffer, I suppose) a vexing doubt of my parents. Certainly they did not behave like the brilliant creatures in these books. What was even more appalling, now that I began to look about me with a searching eye, I soon perceived that in most part we were horribly different from our American neighbours. We had no style. Mamma was as indifferent to the prevailing fashion as she was unimpressed by the manners of Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Smith. When I rushed home in tears because the beauteous daughters of a small contractor snickered at my clothes, all the comfort I got was a thorough scolding for my own ill-bred sensibility. It must be the squire of Ferry-Cot in me! Silly man, he was always vain and wanting to be admired by every fool. One must be above such nonsense. Indeed, people of character were entirely unconscious of trifles of this sort. She was utterly ashamed of me, and set me to patching a flannel petticoat.

Well, there you see what a nut I had to crack! Why, to begin with, even Tilly did not have to wear flannel petticoats, let alone patch them. The prospect was dreary as a November drizzle. Our house was as un-American as our garments. There was no carpet sprinkled with glowing roses in the parlour. There was no parlour, in fact, but a common room where the slippery sofa, on which I slept, apologized for itself in a shadowy corner and where mamma’s big black bureau, glowering from the opposite wall, defiantly kept the secret of our antiquated finery.

The chairs, which wandered in and out as the occasion demanded their services elsewhere, were not the sort of pieces visitors marked with awe. It is true that, when the house was paid for, a high-masted organ came to rest between the two tall windows that looked out upon a rather pleasant grassy slope and the tumbling brook, which was the one really beautiful thing in the whole district.

But the advent of the organ only strengthened my suspicions. It always quarrelled with the bureau, and, moreover, reminded me of Papa Halson’s psalm singing. The contractor’s daughter executed the Black Hawk Waltz and Robin’s Return on a glittering piano that reposed on a bank of red roses.

There were no pictures on our painted grey walls. We had no vases with spear grass and coloured leaves; no wreaths of wax flowers lay under a crystal dome on our haphazard table, which held, instead, a trio of plants that bloomed the year round. Nor had we any bric-à-brac, cockle shells, or cupids—all that mamma’s cabinet boasted were cups and saucers, plates and pots, and a berry dish with a plain green border. It was very disheartening. Wherever I looked, our foreignness shrieked at me. We were hopelessly Icelandic, and doubtless doomed to remain so to the end of time. Mamma was not likely to be influenced by what I told her of Mollie MacDonald’s house, even though her papa had the contract for the new meat market on Central Avenue. Though I were to outbabble the brook, I could never convince my parent of the importance of conformity with popular fashions, nor make her see the horrid crime of being different.

Nor could I expect much help from papa. Novel ideas intrigued him, it is true, and he might have grown enthusiastic over a tortuous system of breathing, or a new heresy with regard to Original Sin, but to tatting on the towels and flying birds on the pillow shams he would have remained indifferent, if not totally oblivious.

Indeed, I had ample reason to suspect that dear papa attached so little importance to such things that you might have set the kitchen range in the front room, and the organ in the shed, for all he cared. He might have thought it uncomfortable, and a trifle queer, perhaps, but not half so queer as the doctrine of the Trinity, and the Plan of Salvation. Any such topsy-turvy arrangement he would have accepted quite cheerfully as the normal aberration of human conduct, which always ran to fetish and feverish worship of the ridiculous.

But that it was really momentously significant to hang curtains of Nottingham lace at the windows and perch a plaster shepherdess on a nervous pedestal he could never have seen. All this you may be sure caused me no end of bitter cogitation, for I had the gloomy intuition that I should have to fight alone for some semblance of modernity and American culture. And, to make everything worse, the books I read so avidly led me to suspect that all was not well even with the contractor’s daughter—there was something not altogether convincing in her superior attitudes, and though I should have greatly rejoiced over a green carpet with purple dandelions, I was not quite easy in my mind that such a choice represented the last word in perfection.

I still derived peculiar joy from the barren halls and long fires of the Norsemen. Nevertheless, I was determined to take myself in hand and, starting with the outside, make the best of a sad situation. The logical first step was to get rid of my frightful clothes. Here was I, bottled up in prim poplins, unadorned as an egg, while all the decent little American misses billowed about in frills.

My battle with mamma ended characteristically. If her dressmaking did not please me, I was entirely free to do better myself, said she. In fact, there was no earthly reason why my superior wisdom and taste should languish unseen.

That was a bit of a dilemma, I must confess, and the best I could do was beg a few coins of papa, and, calling upon the angels, I let the scissors take their course through the spotted brillianteen which was to clothe me in grace and beauty.

Well, there is this to be said about that remarkable creation, it certainly puffed! It was so agreeably free-and-easy that in a high wind it might readily have been mistaken for a gay and giddy balloon.

But, sad to say, a floating garment does not make a free mind. It seemed that I had exchanged my prim poplin for a prudish spirit. I could no longer enjoy anything for its own sake—I was much too occupied with the discouraging business of acquiring respectable scruples. Where formerly, as I have tried to show, existence, even at its worst, had a romantic flavour, because I had accepted it as a series of astonishing events, life was now become a most confusing tangle of social commandments.

As may be imagined, my passionate desire to become an unspotted American would not permit any question of these things. The less sense they made and the more they conflicted with my natural inclinations, the more certain I was of their sanctity. Consequently I contracted a virulent and lingering type of the comparison mania. Everything I had valued and enjoyed underwent a dubious dissecting. I perceived, for instance, how scandalously unprogressive, inefficient, and disorderly the poor Halsons had been, and though I had wept to see them depart, I was moved to thankfulness that I should no longer be lured by the Sunday chocolate to endanger my own future. The same was true of Katie. I still loved her, but I shuddered to think how joyously I had joined her and Mamma Pepolenski in their last berry-picking orgy, for no lovelier reason than to peddle our harvest from door to door.

Heaven help me! So crude was my orientation at the time (and this only last year, mind you!) that I had actually thought it a capital adventure. Panting up the hill-side in tow of fat Mamma Pepolenski, whose agility was incredible, I had felt myself treading diamonds instead of dew and heading straight into the red eye of the rising sun. And, with two little pails strung from a cord round my middle, I had tasted the delectable thrill of competition, as I valiantly, but in vain, attempted to keep pace with Katie as we stripped the tall raspberry bushes of their glowing spoils.

Yes, I had even thought it marvellously enterprising to traipse behind her sturdy figure as she offered this sun-born gift to the haggling ladies of the town. Dear me, how fortunate it was that the Pepolenskis had gone back to Poland, where, it is to be hoped, Katie found the good husband for whom she had prepared herself so well, and laid away in tissue her ankle-length veil.

Now all such robust vulgarities had come under a fearful ban, for I had come to a point where I innocently imagined that the hurdy-gurdy going round in my head was solemn thinking. I had reached the trying stage where I no longer reacted naturally to the common scene, but must, forsooth, listen to the carping of a timid, inner mentor. I no longer enjoyed, as once I had done, the cheery spectacle of old Mrs. Scheider, as she came waddling over the brow of the hill, shooing her pearl-grey geese before her, as shrill a scold as her fiercest gander. Oh, no, I was much too conscious that her tough old feet were bare and her high round stomach unrestrained by a respectable corset! The kindly old world was no longer just an interesting place full of queer people who behaved with enchanting idiocy- it was fast becoming an appalling problem, which, in spite of its ‘orneriness,’ must be solved on strictly American lines.

For this brilliant assumption I had, of course, a perfect authority: my beautiful, slim-waisted, pompadoured school-teacher.

Perhaps it was the pompadour that made her seem so high-minded, as though she kept a bolster of wisdom tucked on top of her head, ready for all eventualities. Certainly, she did her best to elevate the assorted savages under her discipline. We hailed the flag with less indifference under her shining example, and never doubted that in the land of liberty for which it waved in the breeze we were all free and equal. In a vague way, I recollect that our easy conversion to this pleasant myth had something to do with the Pilgrim Fathers. Nor was this surprising, for, whenever Miss Brent found occasion to orate upon this remarkable set of fathers, her smooth pompadour seemed to swell with golden satisfaction, and something very like a purr crept into her exultant voice.

Even I, who thus early thought but little of the domestic virtues, was carried away with wondering amazement at their peculiar accomplishments.

Never before had I even imagined that such a sober lot of men could have left behind them anything faintly glamorous. But, somehow or other, Miss Brent created this happy impression as she recounted their exploits with bated breath. They had subdued The Wilderness! One saw the forest melting away like snow before their determined tread—simply whisking away into nothingness, and civilization in the shape of meeting-houses, stocks, and gallows popping up in its stead. Piety was the mainspring of all these miracles—indeed, it left me gasping. The Pilgrim Fathers not only bore with equanimity the struggle for daily existence, but gladly supported the chill of the meetinghouse, where they praised the Lord from morning to night. Now, that was something! I tried it, and failed abysmally before the day was half spent.

Other wonders they accomplished with equal facility. They converted the Indians, and invented pumpkin pies. Yes, even jack-o’-lanterns were their idea, said Miss Brent, a trifle apologetically, and hastened on to more impressive examples.

Under Pilgrim guidance, the skittery female somewhat redeemed her sex. Abigail, Mary, and Mehitabel applied themselves to the loom and the distaff, and cheerfully filled the cradles and the graveyard, thereby leaving us the imperishable precept of righteous mothers in Israel. Naturally, wantons and witches were dealt with as beseemed a godly people who had left the sinful shores of England to plant the flag of liberty on the rock-bound coasts of Maine.

Of course, these concrete examples only served to show that Divine Providence had predestined the moral tone of the future republic. Even the most backward and barbarous among us must realize that the Pilgrim Fathers had stamped their sterling character upon the fabric of the nation. They had laboured as instruments of fate for those who were to come after them—yes, for even those of us who, like Ishmael, were of doubtful origin. And how they had laboured! Pretty Miss Brent folded her arms across a dainty bosom and transfixed us with luminous blue eyes. Why, think of it, with only scratchy chicken quills, the dear old things had penned reams of homilies for the uplift of the colony and females in particular. In the midst of subduing the wilderness, they had actually found time to settle the line of my lady’s dress and fix the number of bows on her bonnet! In the same humble spirit they had studied the ways of the heathen and thereby learned the secret of planting the yellow maize, and the fine art of eating corn on the cob. They had tamed the wild turkey—tamed, too, the obstreperous spirits of the young by inventing the courting trumpet. Such mundane matters out of the way, the fine flower of their genius was free to concentrate upon a multiplicity of rules for human conduct, to the ends that even a fool should have found it difficult to err, bounded by so many safeguarding prohibitions.

Well, well, it was all most remarkable, and we were certainly glad that the sturdy little Mayflower survived the bounding billows to fetch such a cargo of piety and wisdom to these darkened shores.

To be strictly truthful, however, there were dark moments when I saw quite clearly my thorough unfitness for adoption into such a meritorious fraternity. My ancestors, remote and near, had never shown much humility, and I had the horrid feeling that any Norseman who might have dared to dictate his lady’s shift would have found himself among the shades of Helja’s halls in no time at all. Obviously, as a race, we not only laughed at laws, but were woefully lacking in modesty. Even mamma, with her stern rectitude, never dreamed of washing her intimate garments in a hidden pool like the pious matrons of old Boston Town. Not she! They flapped in the sun for all to see, and something told me that even the passage of the President would have given mamma no alarm. On the contrary, she would have expected the August Eye to brighten on beholding such a fine example of sun-bleaching.

Other offences stared me in the face. Heretofore, I had suffered no qualms when mamma poured a nip of brandy in papa’s coffee on a frosty morning, nor realized the enormity of growing merry over a bottle of port on New Year’s Eve. But now, of course, I must mend my ways—eschew, as far as possible, the reprehensible manners of my mistaken forebears. Whatever the cost, I simply must become an upright and useful member of the Great Republic.

Tilly sympathized with my ambition. The problem was, to find a logical starting-place. With so many perverse notions in my head, she suggested that the Elsie Dinsmore classics might help me to see the light. Elsie, she assured me, was exactly the kind of girl the Pilgrim Fathers would have approved. Why, even the Lutheran minister, who frowned upon all novels as inventions of dissolute and idle minds, found no fault in Elsie.

I flew for the book, and got for my speed a blighting experience. The sweet little darling of that tremendously popular series affected me like cold porridge. With the best will in the world, I simply could not see any particular virtue in dear little Elsie’s sitting on a piano-stool until she fainted, rather than play the waltz tune her worldly papa demanded on a Sunday. To tell the truth, when the wicked man repented of his folly and was duly converted at the bedside of his pale angel, I lost heart completely. There was not the slightest use fooling myself any longer that such tender sensibilities were within my spiritual province. I must watch for something less dainty on which to feed my hungry ego.

The glorious opportunity fairly leaped at me when the village drunkard slit his throat—from ear to ear, mind you, and no halfway measure. Now, there was something to tickle the nerve ends and try moral fibre.

‘Heaven save us! What a sight to see!’ giggled Stina who brought the news. ‘Just picture it, Mrs. Goodman! Lying stark and stiff in his own gore, and not a soul to care! To think what some of us come to in this wicked world.’

Good old Stina had by now joined the hill community, and each evening she came floating down the stony path that led to our door to fetch the quart of milk mamma always set aside for her, and rarely did she fail to bring some morsel of gossip. As might be expected, the milk required a preliminary drop of coffee to spur her up the hill again with the green lard pail. But this was more than gossip—ja, sure, it was life at its worst, and the devil’s doing! So there she sat, chirping away in the tone—slightly chill and breathless—she thought suitable to sorrow and tribulation. In so far as was possible to such a happy human magpie, her mien was sternly serious.

‘Sure, it’s a terrible thing,’ said she, shaking her head and reaching for a rolled pancake, ‘a terrible, terrible thing, even for a sinner bereft of his senses by alcohol, to lie forlorn, and lost, with not a soul caring—with none to shed a pitying tear.’

There was the gallant mission for you! Something more commendable than pining away on a piano-stool. I must shed that pitying tear. In fact, I could feel the moisture pressing upon my eyelids the moment the thought was born, for you must know I instantly saw myself drooping above the dead, shedding the soft, benignant tear. It was a very moving idea.

But, alas, hard on the heels of the beautiful vision came the chilling recollection that here was no ordinary death. On sober reflection, I saw the feasibility of a little moral support. I still wanted to weep for the lone, lorn sinner, but after all, the deed would be doubly glorious shared with another. There was no use offering the opportunity to Tilly. Something told me that Mrs. Rhinertson would frown upon any connection with suicide. She was a respectable church woman. No one worked harder at a rummage sale, or baked better pies for the thanksgiving festivals. She, nor her offspring, had little need to rush into the alleys of life to perform an act of grace. Laura J. was a better prospect.

To begin with, the Johnsons were a funny lot—so said the neighbours. Mr. Johnson was a noisy, virile woodsman, who literally blew into the house on his infrequent visits, roard at Laura (who was a step-daughter) in good-natured bluster, tossed his own progeny about like balls, and drove his poor wife nearly crazy. How such a morose and melancholy female had ever captured his fancy was a complete mystery. In the five years of my close friendship with Laura I never once heard her mother laugh, express a cheerful opinion, or even agree to anything whatsoever. She moved about the house in a perpetual miasma of irritable gloom, attacking every bit of work with a kind of suppressed fury, and saying nothing until some inner geyser erupted, and brought a sharp staccato reprimand to her thin, colourless lips.

Between mother and daughter the queerest of relationships persisted. A sort of honourable undeclared warfare. In everything save mutual stubbornness, they were poles apart. Young Laura was tender-hearted, erratic, gay. The mother affected you like a cold vinegar compress. The warmest emotion shrank to zero under the chilly sting of her mere presence. Yet the poor lady must once have possessed some fatal charm to acquire a double dose of husband and five boiling progeny.

Laura had her own peculiar method of attack. Bouncing into the kitchen, she announced stentoriously: ‘I’m going to L.G.’s, ma.’

No sound from ma, but the banging of a pot lid, or the thumping of a swishing broom.

‘Ma! I’m going to L.G.’s, I tell you—I’m going for supper.’

Still the screaming silence.

‘Ma! Ma!—’

‘Am I deaf, crazi ungi!‘ (‘Crazy youngster.’)

‘Well, I’m going! Do you want me to do anything first?’

‘You are not! Fetch some kindling, and be quiet!’

‘Sure, ma, but what’s the matter with that lump, Ole? Can’t he do something?’

No reply, naturally, nor did Laura expect it. Blythe and bouncing, she filled the kindling basket, and then, instantly assuming her embattled expression, returned to the attack.

‘Well, I’m going, ma.’

‘I said not. Be quiet.’

‘Ma—I’m going.’

Valiant sniff from the corner of the room, where ma was angrily kneading a mess of bannock.

‘Goody-bye, ma!’ shouted her daughter, straightening her tarn, which was always shifting to one ear. Not a word from ma, only a perceptible thickening of the atmosphere.

‘Good-bye, ma!‘ roared the persistent child, bounding for the door, and rattling the cracked knob. ‘GOOD-BYE, MAMMA!’

Then, in final, but honourable surrender, ma returned the roar: ‘Good-bye—crazi ungi!‘

This curious method of procedure never varied. The silent, soured woman always said no to every proposal, and never once succeeded in keeping her crazi ungi from doing exactly as she pleased. The moment the door shut behind her, Laura beamed upon the world, cheerful as a cricket. For the moment she was the victor, and all was well.

In the end, this everlasting friction, gloom, and struggle, bore a bitter harvest which, unfortunately, neither the acid mother had wisdom to foresee, nor the victim of her perverseness sufficient guidance to escape.

But that is to borrow from the future. At the present time neither Laura nor I took the daily round very deeply to heart. We were much too busy with our own emotions, and a new and sharpened awareness of the world. When I gave any thought, beyond a half-alarmed wonder, to those curious scenes, it was to reflect that Mrs. Johnson was like thunder, noisy, but ineffectual, whereas mamma was like lightning—and pity the poor object she wished to annihilate!

Well, you will see that the neighbours had some justice on their side. The Johnsons were queer enough; which, for my present purpose, was rather an asset. I had only to suggest that Mamma Johnson would undoubtedly disapprove our charitable excursion to be sure of Laura’s passionate support. Otherwise, knowing her to be full of morbid notions under her surface gaiety—screaming with terror at the sight of a dead gopher, and thoroughly convinced of the reality of ghosts—even my best persuasion might utterly fail me.

So that was the unscrupulous line I followed. Laura gave a sharp yelp at mention of the suicide, but the moment I mentioned her mother’s possible objection, her mind was made up. The idea was crazy, but of course she’d go. She had as much right to make a fool of herself as I. So far so good, thought I. Yet it would never do to take along such a sceptic. Besides, my romantic instincts were cruelly wounded. Was it foolish, said I, to show ourselves merciful towards this forlorn sinner who lay forsaken and forsworn in the undertaker’s parlour? How would she like to be left like that without so much as a single flower on her breast, or a solitary tear shed above her bier?

Laura wept as easily as she raged. ‘Gosh! I never thought of that. You say the darndest things, L.G.’ Whereupon I strained my noble efforts, drawing upon Stina’s touching vocabulary to such an extent that we both sat down on a boulder behind our barn and wept deliciously.

Our better natures thus firmly to the fore, we finally resolved to scour the neighbourhood for posies. White asters would be most fitting, we thought, with just a touch of scarlet to strike a tragic note, and a background of asparagus fern to give our bouquet a professional touch. Old Mrs. Scheider had a huge asparagus bed, and a bank of sweet-william under the kitchen window. She was rather a nice old lady, even though she walked about in bare feet the colour of baked mud.

Mrs. Scheider received us with beaming enthusiasm. Ach, Himmel! So we felt sorry for the poor man who cut his throat? Good hearts we had—we should have a handful of fresh pretzels for such a pretty thought. And all the flowers we wanted. Oh, but weren’t we scared? Such a corpse was not a pretty sight?

The pretzels were nice and salty, the flowers all we could have desired, yet it must be owned that a chilly gravity descended upon us when we left the Scheider yard and turned our steps towards town. By the time we reached Recktor’s Parlours (which was a gloomy, one-story building appropriately opposite a flourishing saloon) neither of us dared to look at the other. The same, horrid expectation shook us both. Left to individual inclination, we should have bolted, but pride is stronger than cowardice. There was nothing for it but to turn the clammy knob, and plunge into the dark terror behind that dreadful door.

What was this? No dead strewn about? No miles of coffins? Just a pleasant, tidy room, with varnished chairs in rows. Two healthy ferns beside a table, and a little folding organ in the dark corner. Not even a cavernous clerk. A curtained window at the back let in a stream of white autumnal sunshine. There was a scent of incense in the air! Quite an ordinary little man, with a mild blue eye, tidy fringe of hair round the pale pancake of his scalp, and neatly waxed moustache, materialized suddenly to ask us in mildest tone the nature of our errand.

Exactly what tumbled from our stiffened lips I cannot say. Some sort of trembling duo about the poor suicide and the posies, which I thrust forward in great haste.

‘Oh—’ exclaimed the little man, with, I thought, an unbecoming humour quickening his glance. ‘How very thoughtful—you will want to place them yourselves, of course.’

O Vision of the Pitying Tear, how far and fast it had flown. ‘No! No!’ I wanted to shout, but that sly twinkle, for now I was sure it was a derisive twinkle, decided me.

‘Of course,’ I repeated, with what I imagined a perfect imitation of mamma upholding the honour of her ancestors.

Believe me, it was a bad moment. Glancing at my gallant partner, I perceived that her habitual sallow hue was now peculiarly vivid, as though some elemental sprite had poured pea-soup under her skin, and the glassy stare of her eyes was anything but enheartening. However, I had always a mean sort of tenacity, which, early and late, has stood me in good stead.

‘Come along, L.J.,’ said I, grabbing her arm, and making after the little man, whose very back, it seemed to me, quivered with challenging amusement.

At the threshold of the terrible door he suddenly fell back, and, moving aside, motioned us to enter. Well, there was no escape now. None whatever. Unless the angel Michael did us a swift and saintly favour, we must go on with the bluff, and drape our garden flowers on that hideous breast. For, of course, we must have expected, and, perhaps, in our savage soul, really secretly hoped for the worst.

So how to explain our mingled feelings when the poor dead lay at last before our wild young eyes, I do not know. For here was no ghastly sight, but a quiet, most painfully respectable gentleman. Not a hair out of place, his greying moustachios sprucely turned, and a gleaming expanse of starched shirtfront, on which I hastily laid my floral token. He might have been the Lutheran pastor lying in state, so well had the city, which let him starve in the gutter, made amends now that it was too late.

Outside, we frankly bolted, running like a pair of frightened hounds back to the comfort of our shaggy hills.

‘Gosh!’ wheezed my faithful sidekick, as we clambered upon a good grey boulder, where we could swing our legs and look down the shining runway of the creek that skirted papa’s turnip patch. ‘Gosh darn, I never was so scared! And to think it was all for nothing—they must have sewed him up neat as a sock!’ Which ended the matter, for we discovered that we had a cent between us, and decided that a couple of liquorice sticks would soothe our rumpled nerves and set the world to rights.