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Theophilus G. Pinches - "The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria"

William Morris - "A Dream of John Ball"

Jane Austen - "LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP and Other Early Works"

Laura Lee Hope - "***The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Bobbsey Twins at School***"

Laddie, A True Blue Story

G >> Gene Stratton Porter >> Laddie, A True Blue Story




And neither father nor mother would want her on our place. They
didn't like her family at all. Mother called them the
neighbourhood mystery, and father spoke of them as the Infidels.
They had dropped from nowhere, mother said, bought that splendid
big farm, moved on and shut out every one. Before any one knew
people were shut out, mother, dressed in her finest, with Laddie
driving, went in the carriage, all shining, to make friends with
them. This very girl opened the door and said that her mother
was "indisposed," and could not see callers. "In-dis-posed!"
That's a good word that fills your mouth, but our mother didn't
like having it used to her. She said the "saucy chit" was
insulting. Then the man came, and he said he was very sorry, but
his wife would see no one. He did invite mother in, but she
wouldn't go. She told us she could see past him into the house
and there was such finery as never in all her days had she laid
eyes on. She said he was mannerly as could be, but he had the
coldest, severest face she ever saw.

They had two men and a woman servant, and no one could coax a
word from them, about why those people acted as they did. They
said 'orse, and 'ouse, and Hengland. They talked so funny you
couldn't have understood them anyway. They never plowed or put
in a crop. They made everything into a meadow and had more
horses, cattle, and sheep than a county fair, and everything you
ever knew with feathers, even peacocks. We could hear them
scream whenever it was going to rain. Father said they sounded
heathenish. I rather liked them. The man had stacks of money or
they couldn't have lived the way they did. He came to our house
twice on business: once to see about road laws, and again about
tax rates. Father was mightily pleased at first, because Mr.
Pryor seemed to have books, and to know everything, and father
thought it would be fine to be neighbours. But the minute Mr.
Pryor finished business he began to argue that every single thing
father and mother believed was wrong. He said right out in plain
English that God was a myth. Father told him pretty quickly that
no man could say that in his house; so he left suddenly and had
not been back since, and father didn't want him ever to come
again.

Then their neighbours often saw the woman around the house and
garden. She looked and acted quite as well as any one, so
probably she was not half so sick as my mother, who had nursed
three of us through typhoid fever, and then had it herself when
she was all tired out. She wouldn't let a soul know she had a
pain until she dropped over and couldn't take another step, and
father or Laddie carried her to bed. But she went everywhere,
saw all her friends, and did more good from her bed than any
other woman in our neighbourhood could on her feet. So we
thought mighty little of those Pryor people.

Every one said the girl was pretty. Then her clothes drove the
other women crazy. Some of our neighbourhood came from far down
east, like my mother. Our people back a little were from over
the sea, and they knew how things should be, to be right. Many
of the others were from Kentucky and Virginia, and they were well
dressed, proud, handsome women; none better looking anywhere.
They followed the fashions and spent much time and money on their
clothes. When it was Quarterly Meeting or the Bishop dedicated
the church or they went to town on court days, you should have
seen them--until Pryors came. Then something new happened, and
not a woman in our neighbourhood liked it. Pamela Pryor didn't
follow the fashions. She set them. If every other woman made
long tight sleeves to their wrists, she let hers flow to the
elbow and filled them with silk lining, ruffled with lace. If
they wore high neckbands, she had none, and used a flat lace
collar. If they cut their waists straight around and gathered
their skirts on six yards full, she ran hers down to a little
point front and back, that made her look slenderer, and put only
half as much goods in her skirt. Maybe Laddie rode as well as
she could; he couldn't manage a horse any better, and aside from
him there wasn't a man we knew who would have tried to ride some
of the animals she did.

If she ever worked a stroke, no one knew it. All day long she
sat in the parlour, the very best one, every day; or on benches
under the trees with embroidery frames or books, some of them
fearful, big, difficult looking ones, or rode over the country.
She rode in sunshine and she rode in storm, until you would think
she couldn't see her way through her tangled black hair. She
rode through snow and in pouring rain, when she could have stayed
out of it, if she had wanted to. She didn't seem to be afraid of
anything on earth or in Heaven. Every one thought she was like
her father and didn't believe there was any God; so when she came
among us at church or any public gathering, as she sometimes did,
people were in no hurry to be friendly, while she looked straight
ahead and never spoke until she was spoken to, and then she was
precise and cold, I tell you.

Men took off their hats, got out of the road when she came
pounding along, and stared after her like "be-addled mummies," my
mother said. But that was all she, or any one else, could say.
The young fellows were wild about her, and if they tried to sidle
up to her in the hope that they might lead her horse or get to
hold her foot when she mounted, they always saw when they reached
her, that she wasn't there.

But she was here! I had seen her only a few times, but this was
the Pryor girl, just as sure as I would have known if it had been
Sally. What dazed me was that she answered in every particular
the description Laddie had given me of the Queen's daughter. And
worst of all, from the day she first came among us, moving so
proud and cold, blabbing old Hannah Dover said she carried
herself like a Princess--as if Hannah Dover knew HOW a Princess
carried herself!--every living soul, my father even, had called
her the Princess. At first it was because she was like they
thought a Princess would be, but later they did it in meanness,
to make fun. After they knew her name, they were used to calling
her the Princess, so they kept it up, but some of them were
secretly proud of her; because she could look, and do, and be
what they would have given anything to, and knew they couldn't to
save them.

I was never in such a fix in all my life. She looked more as
Laddie had said the Princess would than you would have thought
any woman could, but she was Pamela Pryor, nevertheless. Every
one called her the Princess, but she couldn't make reality out of
that. She just couldn't be the Fairy Queen's daughter; so the
letter couldn't possibly be for her.

She had no business in our woods; you could see that they had
plenty of their own. She went straight to the door of the willow
room and walked in as if she belonged there. What if she found
the hollow and took Laddie's letter! Fast as I could slip over
the leaves, I went back. She was on the moss carpet, on her
knees, and the letter was in her fingers. It's a good thing to
have your manners soundly thrashed into you. You've got to be
scared stiff before you forget them. I wasn't so afraid of her
as I would have been if I had known she WAS the princess, and
have Laddies letter, she should not. What had the kind of girl
she was, from a home like hers, to teach any one from our house
about making sunshine? I was at the willow wall by that time
peering through, so I just parted it a little and said: "Please
put back that letter where you got it. It isn't for you."

She knelt on the mosses, the letter in her hand, and her face, as
she turned to me, was rather startled; but when she saw me she
laughed, and said in the sweetest voice I ever heard: "Are you
so very sure of that?"

"Well I ought to be," I said. "I put it there."

"Might I inquire for whom you put it there?"

"No ma'am! That's a secret."

You should have seen the light flame in her eyes, the red deepen
on her cheeks, and the little curl of laughter that curved her
lips.

"How interesting!" she cried. "I wonder now if you are not
Little Sister."

"I am to Laddie and our folks," I said. "You are a stranger."

All the dancing lights went from her face. She looked as if she
were going to cry unless she hurried up and swallowed it down
hard and fast.

"That is quite true," she said. "I am a stranger. Do you know
that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can happen to any
one in all this world?"

"Then why don't you open your doors, invite your neighbours in,
go to see them, and stop your father from saying such dreadful
things?"

"They are not my doors," she said, "and could you keep your
father from saying anything he chooses?"

I stood and blinked at her. Of course I wouldn't even dare try
that.

"I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say.

I couldn't ask her to come to our house. I knew no one wanted
her. But if I couldn't speak for the others, surely I might for
myself. I let go the willows and went to the door. The Princess
arose and sat on the seat Laddie had made for the Queen's
daughter. It was an awful pity to tell her she shouldn't sit
there, for I had my doubts if the real, true Princess would be
half as lovely when she came--if she ever did. Some way the
Princess, who was not a Princess, appeared so real, I couldn't
keep from becoming confused and forgetting that she was only just
Pamela Pryor. Already the lovely lights had gone from her face
until it made me so sad I wanted to cry, and I was no easy cry-
baby either. If I couldn't offer friendship for my family I
would for myself.

"You may call me Little Sister, if you like," I said. "I won't
be a stranger."

"Why how lovely!" cried the Princess.

You should have seen the dancing lights fly back to her eyes.
Probably you won't believe this, but the first thing I knew I was
beside her on the throne, her arm was around me, and it's the
gospel truth that she hugged me tight. I just had sense enough
to reach over and pick Laddie's letter from her fingers, and then
I was on her side. I don't know what she did to me, but all at
once I knew that she was dreadfully lonely; that she hated being
a stranger; that she was sorry enough to cry because their house
was one of mystery, and that she would open the door if she
could.

"I like you," I said, reaching up to touch her curls.

I never had seen her that I did not want to. They were like I
thought they would be. Father and Laddie and some of us had wavy
hair, but hers was crisp--and it clung to your fingers, and
wrapped around them and seemed to tug at your heart like it does
when a baby grips you. I drew away my hand, and the hair
stretched out until it was long as any of ours, and then curled
up again, and you could see that no tins had stabbed into her
head to make those curls. I began trying to single out one hair.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I want to know if only one hair is strong enough to draw a
drowning man from the water or strangle an unhappy one," I said.

"Believe me, no!" cried the Princess. "It would take all I have,
woven into a rope, to do that."

"Laddie knows curls that just one hair of them is strong enough,"
I boasted.

"I wonder now!" said the Princess. "I think he must have been
making poetry or telling Fairy tales."

"He was telling the truth," I assured her. "Father doesn't
believe in Fairies, and mother laughs, but Laddie and I know. Do
you believe in Fairies?"

"Of course I do!" she said.

"Then you know that this COULD be an Enchanted Wood?"

"I have found it so," said the Princess.

"And MAYBE this is a Magic Carpet?"

"It surely is a Magic Carpet."

"And you might be the daughter of the Queen? Your eyes are
`moonlit pools of darkness.' If only your hair were stronger,
and you knew about making sunshine!"

"Maybe it is stronger than I think. It never has been tested.
Perhaps I do know about making sunshine. Possibly I am as true
as the wood and the carpet."

I drew away and stared at her. The longer I looked the more
uncertain I became. Maybe her mother was the Queen. Perhaps
that was the mystery. It might be the reason she didn't want the
people to see her. Maybe she was so busy making sunshine for the
Princess to bring to Laddie that she had no time to sew carpet
rags, and to go to quiltings, and funerals, and make visits. It
was hard to know what to think.

"I wish you'd tell me plain out if you are the Queen's daughter,"
I said. "It's most important. You can't have this letter unless
I KNOW. It's the very first time Laddie ever trusted me with a
letter, and I just can't give it to the wrong person."

"Then why don't you leave it where he told you?"

"But you have gone and found the place. You started to take it
once; you would again, soon as I left."

"Look me straight in the eyes, Little Sister," said the Princess
softly. "Am I like a person who would take anything that didn't
belong to her?"

"No!" I said instantly.

"How do you think I happened to come to this place?"

"Maybe our woods are prettier than yours."

"How do you think I knew where the letter was?"

I shook my head.

"If I show you some others exactly like the one you have there,
then will you believe that is for me?"

"Yes," I answered.

I believed it anyway. It just SEEMED so, the better you knew
her. The Princess slipped her hand among the folds of the
trailing pale green skirt, and from a hidden pocket drew other
letters exactly like the one I held. She opened one and ran her
finger along the top line and I read, "To the Princess," and then
she pointed to the ending and it was merely signed, "Laddie," but
all the words written between were his writing. Slowly I handed
her the letter.

"You don't want me to have it?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I want you to have it if Laddie wrote it for
you--but mother and father won't, not at all."

"What makes you think so?" she asked gently.

"Don't you know what people say about you?"

"Some of it, perhaps."

"Well?"

"Do you think it is true?"

"Not that you're stuck up, and hateful and proud, not that you
don't want to be neighbourly with other people, no, I don't think
that. But your father said in our home that there was no God,
and you wouldn't let my mother in when she put on her best dress
and went in the carriage, and wanted to be friends. I have to
believe that."

"Yes, you can't help believing that," said the Princess.

"Then can't you see why you'll be likely to show Laddie the way
to find trouble, instead of sunshine?"

"I can see," said the Princess.

"Oh Princess, you won't do it, will you?" I cried.

"Don't you think such a big man as Laddie can take care of
himself?" she asked, and the dancing lights that had begun to
fade came back. "Over there," she pointed through our woods
toward the southwest, "lives a man you know. What do his
neighbours call him?"

"Stiff-necked Johnny," I answered promptly.

"And the man who lives next him?"

"Pinch-fist Williams."

Her finger veered to another neighbour's.

"The girls of that house?"

"Giggle-head Smithsons."

"What about the man who lives over there?"

"He beats his wife."

"And the house beyond?"

"Mother whispers about them. I don't know."

"And the woman on the hill?"

"She doesn't do anything but gussip and make every one trouble."

"Exactly!" said the Princess. "Yet most of these people come to
your house, and your family goes to theirs. Do you suppose
people they know nothing about are so much worse than these
others?"

"If your father will take it back about God, and your mother will
let people in--my mother and father both wanted to be friends,
you know."

"That I can't possibly do," she said, "but maybe I could change
their feelings toward me."

"Do it!" I cried. "Oh, I'd just love you to do it! I wish you
would come to our house and be friends. Sally is pretty as you
are, only a different way, and I know she'd like you, and so
would Shelley. If Laddie writes you letters and comes here about
sunshine, of course he'd be delighted if mother knew you; because
she loves him best of any of us. She depends on him most as much
as father."

"Then will you keep the secret until I have time to try--say
until this time next year?"

"I'll keep it just as long as Laddie wants me to."

"Good!" said the Princess. "No wonder Laddie thinks you the
finest Little Sister any one ever had."

"Does Laddie think that?" I asked

"He does indeed!" said the Princess.

"Then I'm not afraid to go home," I said. "And I'll bring his
letter the next time he can't come."

"Were you scared this time?"

I told her about that Something in the dry bed, the wolves,
wildcats, Paddy Ryan, and the Gypsies.

"You little goosie," said the Princess. "I am afraid that
brother Leon of yours is the biggest rogue loose in this part of
the country. Didn't it ever occur to you that people named Wolfe
live over there, and they call that crowd next us `wildcats,'
because they just went on some land and took it, and began living
there without any more permission than real wildcats ask to enter
the woods? Do you suppose I would be here, and everywhere else I
want to go, if there were any danger? Did anything really harm
you coming?"

"You're harmed when you're scared until you can't breathe," I
said. "Anyway, nothing could get me coming, because I held the
letter tight in my hand, like Laddie said. If you'd write me one
to take back, I'd be safe going home."

"I see," said the Princess. "But I've no pencil, and no paper,
unless I use the back of one of Laddie's letters, and that
wouldn't be polite."

"You can make new fashions," I said, "but you don't know much
about the woods, do you? I could fix fifty ways to send a
message to Laddie."

"How would you?" asked the Princess.

Running to the pawpaw bushes I pulled some big tender leaves.
Then I took the bark from the box and laid a leaf on it.

"Press with one of your rings," I said, "and print what you want
to say. I write to the Fairies every day that way, only I use an
old knife handle."

She tried. She spoiled two or three by bearing down so hard she
cut the leaves. She didn't even know enough to write on the
frosty side, until she was told. But pretty soon she got along
so well she printed all over two big ones. Then I took a stick
and punched little holes and stuck a piece of foxfire bloom
through.

"What makes you do that?" she asked.

"That's the stamp," I explained.

"But it's my letter, and I didn't put it there."

"Has to be there or the Fairies won't like it," I said.

"Well then, let it go," said the Princess.

I put back the bark and replaced the stone, gathered up the
scattered leaves, and put the two with writing on between fresh
ones.

"Now I must run," I said, "or Laddie will think the Gypsies have
got me sure."

"I'll go with you past the dry creek," she offered.

"You better not," I said. "I'd love to have you, but it would be
best for you to change their opinion, before father or mother
sees you on their land."

"Perhaps it would," said the Princess. "I'll wait here until you
reach the fence and then you call and I'll know you are in the
open and feel comfortable."

"I am most all over being afraid now," I told her.

Just to show her, I walked to the creek, climbed the gate and
went down the lane. Almost to the road I began wondering what I
could do with the letter, when looking ahead I saw Laddie coming.

"I was just starting to find you. You've been an age, child," he
said.

I held up the letter.

"No one is looking," I said, "and this won't go in your pocket."

You should have seen his face.

"Where did you get it?" he asked.

I told him all about it. I told him everything--about the hair
that maybe was stronger than she thought, and that she was going
to change father's and mother's opinions, and that I put the red
flower on, but she left it; and when I was done Laddie almost
hugged the life out of me. I never did see him so happy.

"If you be very, very careful never to breathe a whisper, I'll
take you with me some day," he promised.



CHAPTER II

Our Angel Boy

"I had a brother once--a gracious boy,
Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope,
Of sweet and quiet joy,--there was the look
Of heaven upon his face."

It was supper time when we reached home, and Bobby was at the
front gate to meet me. He always hunted me all over the place
when the big bell in the yard rang at meal time, because if he
crowed nicely when he was told, he was allowed to stand on the
back of my chair and every little while I held up my plate and
shared bites with him. I have seen many white bantams, but never
another like Bobby. My big brothers bought him for me in Fort
Wayne, and sent him in a box, alone on the cars. Father and I
drove to Groveville to meet him. The minute father pried off the
lid, Bobby hopped on the edge of the box and crowed--the biggest
crow you ever heard from such a mite of a body; he wasn't in the
least afraid of us and we were pleased about it. You scarcely
could see his beady black eyes for his bushy topknot, his wing
tips touched the ground, his tail had two beautiful plumy
feathers much longer than the others, his feet were covered with
feathers, and his knee tufts dragged. He was the sauciest,
spunkiest little fellow, and white as muslin. We went to supper
together, but no one asked where I had been, and because I was so
bursting full of importance, I talked only to Bobby, in order to
be safe.

After supper I finished Hezekiah's trousers, and May cut his coat
for me. School would begin in September and our clothes were
being made, so I used the scraps to dress him. His suit was done
by the next forenoon, and father never laughed harder than when
Hezekiah hopped down the walk to meet him dressed in pink
trousers and coat. The coat had flowing sleeves like the
Princess wore, so Hezekiah could fly, and he seemed to like them.

His suit was such a success I began a sunbonnet, and when that
was tied on him, the folks almost had spasms. They said he
wouldn't like being dressed; that he would fly away to punish me,
but he did no such thing. He stayed around the house and was
tame as ever.

When I became tired sewing that afternoon, I went down the lane
leading to our meadow, where Leon was killing thistles with a
grubbing hoe. I thought he would be glad to see me, and he was.
Every one had been busy in the house, so I went to the cellar the
outside way and ate all I wanted from the cupboard. Then I
spread two big slices of bread the best I could with my fingers,
putting apple butter on one, and mashed potatoes on the other.
Leon leaned on the hoe and watched me coming. He was a hungry
boy, and lonesome too, but he couldn't be forced to say so.

"Laddie is at work in the barn," he said.

"I'm going to play in the creek," I answered.

Crossing our meadow there was a stream that had grassy banks, big
trees, willows, bushes and vines for shade, a solid pebbly bed;
it was all turns and bends so that the water hurried until it
bubbled and sang as it went; in it lived tiny fish coloured
brightly as flowers, beside it ran killdeer, plover and solemn
blue herons almost as tall as I was came from the river to fish;
for a place to play on an August afternoon, it couldn't be
beaten. The sheep had been put in the lower pasture; so the
cross old Shropshire ram was not there to bother us.

"Come to the shade," I said to Leon, and when we were comfortably
seated under a big maple weighted down with trailing grapevines,
I offered the bread. Leon took a piece in each hand and began to
eat as if he were starving. Laddie would have kissed me and
said: "What a fine treat! Thank you, Little Sister."

Leon was different. He ate so greedily you had to know he was
glad to get it, but he wouldn't say so, not if he never got any
more. When you knew him, you understood he wouldn't forget it,
and he'd be certain to do something nice for you before the day
was over to pay back. We sat there talking about everything we
saw, and at last Leon said with a grin: "Shelley isn't getting
much grape sap is she?"

"I didn't know she wanted grape sap."

"She read about it in a paper. It said to cut the vine of a wild
grape, catch the drippings and moisten your hair. This would
make it glossy and grow faster."

"What on earth does Shelley want with more hair than she has?"

"Oh, she has heard it bragged on so much she thinks people would
say more if she could improve it."

I looked and there was the vine, dry as could be, and a milk
crock beneath it.

"Didn't the silly know she had to cut the vine in the spring when
the sap was running?"

"Bear witness, O vine! that she did not," said Leon, "and speak,
ye voiceless pottery, and testify that she expected to find you
overflowing."

"Too bad that she's going to be disappointed."

"She isn't! She's going to find ample liquid to bathe her
streaming tresses. Keep quiet and watch me."

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