we were burying snow. calista waters had told us about it, when, late in april, snow was found under a pile of wood in our yard. we wondered why we had never thought of it before when snow was plentiful. we had two long tins which had once contained ginger wafers. these were to be packed with snow, fastened tight as to covers, and laid deep in the earth at a distance which, by means of spoons and hot water, we were now fast approaching.
it was spring-in-earnest. the sun was warm, robins were running on the grass, already faintly greened where the snow had but just melted; a clear little stream flowed down the garden path and out under the cross-walk. the wells’s barn-doors stood open, somebody was beating a carpet, there was a hint of bonfire smoke in the air, there were little stirrings and sounds that belonged to spring as the gasoline wood-cutter belonged to fall.
36 calista was talking.
“and then,” she said, “some hot summer day, when they’re all sitting out on the lawn in the shade, with thin dresses and palm-leaf fans, we’ll come and dig it up, and carry ’em big plates of feathery white snow, with a spoon stuck in.”
we were silent, picturing their delight.
“miss messmore says,” i ventured, not without hesitation, “that snow is all bugs.”
in fact all of us had been warned without ceasing not to eat snow—but there were certain spots where it was beyond human power to resist it: mr. britt’s fence, for instance, on whose pickets little squares of snow rested, which, eaten off by direct application of the lips, produced a slight illusion of partaking of caramels.
delia stopped digging. “maybe they won’t eat it when we bring it to them in summer?” she suggested.
“then we will,” said calista, promptly. of course they would not have the heart to forbid us to eat it in, say, june.
about a foot down in the ground we set the two tins side by side in an aperture lined and packed with snow and filled in with earth.37 over it we made a mound of all the snow we could find in the garden. then we adjourned to the woodshed and sat on the sill and the sawbuck and the work-bench.
“what makes us give it away?” said delia dart, abruptly. “why don’t we sell it? we’d ought to get fifteen cents a dish for it by june.”
we began a calculation, as rapid as might be. each tin would hold at least six dishes.
“why didn’t we bury more?” said calista, raptly. “why didn’t we bury a tubful?”
“it’d be an awful job to dig the hole,” i objected. “besides, they’d miss the tub.”
the latter objection was insurmountable, so we went off to the garden to hunt pig-nuts. a tree of these delicacies grew in the midst of the potato patch, and some of the nuts were sure to have lain winter-long in the earth and to be seasoned and edible.
“let’s all ask to go to the rodmans’ this afternoon and tell margaret amelia and betty about the snow,” calista suggested.
“i can’t,” i said. “i’ve got to go calling.”
they regarded me pityingly.
“can’t you come over there afterwards?” they suggested.
38 this, i knew, was useless. we should not start calling till late. besides, i should be hopelessly dressed up.
“well,” said delia, soothingly, “we’ll go anyhow. are you going to call where there’s children?”
“i don’t think so,” i said, darkly. “we never do.”
that afternoon was one whose warm air was almost thickened by sun. the maple buds were just widening into little curly leaves; shadows were beginning to show; and everywhere was that faint ripple of running water in which spring speaks. but then there was i, in my best dress, my best coat, my best shoes, my new hat, and gloves, faring forth to make calls.
this meant merely that there were houses where dwelt certain grown-ups who expected me to be brought periodically to see them, an expectation persevered in, i believe, solely as a courtesy to my family. twice a year, therefore, we set out; and the days selected were, as this one, invariably the crown and glory of all days: days meet for cleaning out the play-house, for occupying homes scraped with a shingle in the softened soil, for assisting at bonfires,39 to say nothing of all that was to be done in damming up the streams of the curbs and turning aside the courses of rivers.
the first call was on aunt hoyt—no true aunt, of course, but “aunt” by mutual compliment. she lived in a tiny house on conant street, set close to the sidewalk and shaded by an enormous mulberry tree. i sought out my usual seat, a little hardwood stool to whose top was neatly tacked a square of brussels carpeting and whose cover, on being lifted, revealed a boot-jack, a shoe-brush, and a round box of blacking. the legs were deeply notched, and i amused myself by fitting my feet in the notches and occasionally coming inadvertently back to the floor with an echoing bump.
now and then aunt hoyt, who was little and wrinkled, and whose glasses had double lenses in the middle so that i could not keep my eyes from them when she spoke, would turn to address an observation at me.
“how long her hair is! do you think it is quite healthy for her to have such long hair? i’ll warrant you don’t like to have it combed, do you, dear?”
if aunt hoyt had only known the depth of40 the boredom with which i had this inane question put to me! it was one of the wonders of my days: the utterly absurd questions that grown-up people could ask.
for example: “how do you do to-day?” what had any reasonable child to answer to that? of course one was well. if one wasn’t, one would be kept at home. if one wasn’t, one wasn’t going to tell anyway. or, “what’s she been doing lately?” well! was one likely to reply: “burying snow. hunting pig-nuts. digging up pebbles from under the eaves. making a secret play-house in the currant bushes that nobody knows about?” and unless one did thus tell one’s inmost secrets, what was there left to say? and if one kept a dignified silence, one was sulky!
“she’s a good little girl, i’m sure. is she much help to you?” aunt hoyt asked that day, and patted my hair as we took leave. dear aunt hoyt, i know now that she was lonesome and longed for children and, like many another, had no idea how to treat them, save by making little conversational dabs at them.
then there was aunt arthur, who lived in a square brick house that always smelled cool.41 at her house i invariably sat on a brussels “kick-about” in the bay window and looked at a big leather “wonders of earth and sea,” with illustrations. sometimes she let me examine a basket of shells that she herself had gathered at the beach—i used to look at her hands and at her big, flat cameo ring and marvel that they had been so near to the ocean. once or twice, when i wriggled too outrageously, she would let me go into the large, dim parlour, with its ostrich egg hanging from the chandelier and the stuffed blackbird under an oval glass case before the high mirror, and the coral piled under the centre-table and the huge, gilt-framed landscape which she herself had painted. but this day, between the lace curtains hanging from their cornices, i caught sight of calista and delia racing up the hill to the rodmans, and the entire parlour was, so to say, poisoned. in desperation i went back and asked for a drink of water—my ancient recourse when things got too bad.
aunt barker’s was better—there was a baby there. but that day ill-luck went before me, for he was asleep and they refused to let me look at him, because they said that woke him up.42 i disbelieved this, because i saw no reason in it, and nobody gave me a reason. i resolved to try it out the first time i was alone with a sleeping baby. i begged boldly to go outdoors, and mother would have consented, but aunt barker said that a man was painting the lattice and that i would in every probability lean against the lattice, or brush the paint pots, or try to get a drink at the pump, which, i gathered, splashed everybody for miles around. so i sat in a patent rocker, and the only rift in a world of black cloud was that, by rocking far enough, the patent rocker could be made to give forth a wholly delectable squeak. of course fate swiftly descended; i was bidden discontinue the squeak, and nothing remained to me.
then we went to grandma bard’s. i did not in the least know why, but the little rag-carpeted sitting-room, the singing kettle on the back of the coal stove, the scarlet geraniums on the window, the fascinating picture on the clock door, all entertained me at once. grandma bard wore a black lace cap, and she bade me sit by her and instantly gave me a peppermint drop from the pocket of her black sateen apron. she asked me no questions, but while she talked43 with mother, she laid together two rose-coloured—rose-coloured!—bits of her patchwork and quietly handed them to me to baste—none of your close stitches, only basting! then she folded a newspaper and asked me to cut it and scallop it for her cupboard shelf. then she found a handful of hickory nuts and brought me the tack-hammer and a flat-iron....
“oh, mother, let’s not go yet,” i heard myself saying.
going home—a delicate business, because stepping on any crack meant being poisoned forthwith—i tried to think it out: what was it that mother and grandma bard knew that the rest didn’t know? i gave it up. all i could think of was that they seemed to know me.
“isn’t grandma bard just grand?” i observed fervently.
“i’m afraid,” mother said thoughtfully, “that sometimes she has rather a hard time to get on.”
i was still turning this in my mind as we passed the wood yard. the wood yard was a series of vacant lots where some mysterious person piled cords and cords of wood, which smelled sweet and green and gave out cool breaths. sometimes the gasoline wood-cutter worked in44 there, and we would watch till it had gone, and then steal in and bring away a baking-powder can full of sawdust. we never knew quite what to do with this sawdust. it was not desirable for mud-pies, and there was nothing that we knew of to be stuffed with it. yet when we could, we always saved it. perhaps it gave us an excuse to go into the wood yard, at which we always peeped as we went by. this day, i lagged a few steps behind and looked in, expectant of the same vague thing that we always expected, and never defined—a bonfire, a robber, an open cave, some changed aspect, i did not know what. and over by the sawdust pile, i saw, stepping about, a little girl in a reddish dress—a little girl whom i had never seen before. she looked up and saw me stand staring at her; and her gaze was so clear and direct that i felt obliged to say something in defence of my intrusion.
“hello,” i said.
her face suddenly brightened. “hello,” she replied, and after a moment she added: “i thought you was going to say ‘how de do.’”
a faint spark of understanding leapt between us. dressed-up little girls usually did say “how45 de do.” it was only in a kind of unconscious deference to her own appearance that i had not done so. she was unkempt and ragged—her sleeve was torn from cuff to elbow.
“what you doing here?” i inquired, not averse to breaking the business of calling by a bit of gossip.
at this she did for the third time what i had been vaguely conscious of her having done: she glanced over her shoulder toward a corner of the yard which the piled wood concealed from me. i stepped forward and looked there.
on an end of wood-pile which we children had pulled down so as to make a slope to ascend its heights, a man was sitting. his head and shoulders were drooping, his legs were relaxed, and his hands were hanging loose, as if they were heavy. his eyes were closed and his lips were parted, yet about the face, with its fair hair and beard, there was something singularly attractive and gentle. he looked like a man who would tell you a story.
“who’s he?” i asked, and involuntarily i whispered.
the girl began backing a little away from me, her eyes on my face, her finger on her lips.
46 “it’s my father,” she said. “he’s—resting.”
i had never heard of a man resting in the daytime. save, perhaps, on sunday afternoons, this was no true function of men. i longed to look at the man and understand better, but something in the little girl’s manner forbade me. i looked perplexedly after her. then i peered round the fence post and saw my mother standing under a tree, waiting for me. she beckoned. i took one more look inside the fence, and i saw the little girl sit down beside the sleeping man and fold her hands. the afternoon sun smote across the long wood yard, with its mysterious rooms made by the piling of the cords. it seemed impossible that this strange, still place, with its thick carpet of sawdust and its moist odours, should belong at all to the commonplace little street. and the two strange occupants gave the last touch to its enchantment.
i ran to overtake mother, and i tried to tell her something of what i had seen. but some way my words gave nothing of the air of the place and of the two who waited there for something that i could not guess. already i knew this about words—that they were all very well for saying a thing, but seldom for letting anybody taste what you were talking about.
47 i did not give up trying to tell it until we passed the rodmans’. from the direction of their high-board fence i heard voices. margaret amelia and betty and delia and calista were engaged in writing on the weathered boards of the fence with willows dipped in the clear-flowing gutter stream.
“got it done?” i called mysteriously.
they turned, shaking their heads.
“it was all melted,” they replied. “we couldn’t find another bit.”
“oh, well,” i cried, “you come on over after supper. i’ve got something to tell you.”
“something to tell you” would, of course, bring anybody anywhere. after supper they all came “over.” it was that hour which only village children know—that last bright daylight of slanting sun and driven cows tinkling homeward; of front-doors standing open and neighbours calling to one another across the streets, and the sky warm in the quiet surface of some little water from whose bridge lads are tossing stones or hanging bare-footed from the timbers. we withdrew past the family, sitting on the side-porch, to the garden, where the sun was still golden on the tops of the maples.
48 “mother says,” i began importantly, “that she thinks grandma bard has a hard time to get along. well, you know our snow? well, you know you said you couldn’t find any more to bury? well, why don’t we dig up ours, right now, and sell it and give the money to grandma bard?”
i must have touched some answering chord. looking back, i cannot believe that this was wholly grandma bard. could it be that the others had wanted to dig it up, independent of my suggestion? for there was not one dissenting voice.
the occasion seemed to warrant the best dishes. i brought out six china plates and six spoons. these would be used for serving my own family, while the others took the two cans and ran home with them to their families.
we dug rapidly now, the earth being still soft. to our surprise, the tops of the tins were located much nearer to the surface than we had supposed after our efforts of the morning to reach a great depth. the snow in which we had packed the cans had disappeared, but we made nothing of that. we drew out the cans,49 had off their tops, and gazed distressfully down into clear water.
“it went and melted!” said calista, resentfully.
in a way, she regarded it as her personal failure, since the ceremony had been her suggestion in the first place.
“never mind, calista,” we said, “you didn’t know.”
calista freely summed up her impressions.
“how mean!” she said.
we gravely gathered up the china plates and turned toward the house—and now i was possessed of a really accountable desire to get the plates back in their places as quickly as possible.
on the way a thought struck us simultaneously. poor grandma bard!
“let’s all go to see her to-morrow anyhow,” i suggested—largely, i am afraid, because the memory of my entertainment there was still fresh in my mind.
when, after a little while, we came round the house where the older ones were sitting, and heard them discussing uninteresting affairs, we regarded them with real sympathy. they had50 so narrowly missed something so vastly, absorbingly interesting.
from delia’s room a voice came calling as, at intervals, other voices were heard calling other names throughout the neighbourhood—they were at one with the tinkle of the bells and the far-off yodel of the boys.
“delia!”
“good night,” said delia, briefly, and vanished without warning, as at the sound of any other taps. soon after, the others also disappeared; and i crept up on the porch and lay down in the hammock.
“what’s she been doing now?” somebody instantly asked me.
for a moment i thought of telling; but not seriously.
evidently they had not expected an answer, for they went on talking.
“... yes, i had looked forward to it for a long while. of course we had all counted on it. it was a great disappointment.”
somewhere in me the words echoed a familiar and recent emotion. so! they too had their disappointments ... even as we. of course whatever this was could have been nothing like51 losing a fortune in melted snow. still, i felt a new sympathy.
mother turned to me.
“we are going to ask grandma bard to come to live with us,” she said. “will you like that?”
i sat up in the hammock. “all the time?” i joyfully inquired.
“for the rest of the time,” mother said soberly. “it seems as if one ought to take a child,” she added to the others, “when one takes anybody....”
“still,” said father, “till we get in our heads something of what the state owes to old folks, there’s nobody but us to do its work....”
i hardly heard them. to make this come true at one stroke! even to be able to adopt a child! how easily they could do things, these grown-up ones; and how magnificently they acted as if it were nothing at all ... like the giants planting city-seed and watching cities grow to the size and shape of giants’ flower beds....
they went on talking. some of the things that they said we might have said ourselves. in some ways they were not so very different52 from us. yet think what they could accomplish.
watching them and listening, there in the april twilight, i began to understand. it was not only that they could have their own way. but for the sake of things that we had never yet so much as guessed or dreamed, it was desirable to be grown up.
