Homespun Tales | Page 9

bring the dishes back in time to wash them before supper."
"I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though
it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there
was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin'
at the river in them days; there was n't time."
"But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to dancing,
the greatest fun in the world."
"'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too,"
was the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home

yesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks
says Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed
consid'able proud of him; an' I guess it is the first time he ever stood
anywheres but at the foot. I tell you when these fifty-five new doctors
git scattered over the country there'll be consid'able many folks keepin'
house under ground. Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufe an'
Steve Waterman. That'll make one more to play in the river."
"Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr. Wiley,
"but Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible reckless,
too. He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man that's lived on
the Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any turrible chances
on the Saco."
"He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.
"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on the
river when the farm work is n't pressing. Besides, though it's all play to
him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day."
"He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He jest
can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first
moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me--"
"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an'
never will suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption
received no comment: such mistaken views of his character were too
frequent to make any impression.
"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here from
Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was
little boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn,
consid'able older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death
stealin' away to the mill to ride on the 'carriage,' 'side o' the log that was
bein' sawed, hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin' back 'most
into the jaws o' the machinery."
"He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young

one," remarked Mrs. Wiley; "and I don't see as all the 'cademy
education his father throwed away on him has changed him much."
And with this observation she rose from the table and went to the sink.
"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o' daft
about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in the
brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin' up
stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cai'late Mis' Waterman
died consid'able afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out the winders
and seein' her boys slippin' between the logs an' gittin' their daily
dousin'. She could n't understand it, an' there's a heap o' things
women-folks never do an' never can understand,--jest because they air
women-folks."
"One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley.
"Men in general, but more partic'larly husbands," assented Old
Kennebec; "howsomever, there's another thing they don't an' can't never
take in, an' that's sport. Steve does river-drivin' as he would horse-racin'
or tiger- shootin' or tight-rope dancin'; an' he always did from a boy.
When he was about twelve to fifteen, he used to help the river-drivers
spring and fall, reg'lar. He could n't do nothin' but shin up an' down the
rocks after hammers an' hatchets an' ropes, but he was turrible pleased
with his job. 'Stepanfetchit,' they used to call him them
days,--Stepanfetchit Waterman."
"Good name for him yet," came in acid tones from the sink. "He's still
steppin' an' fetchin', only it's Rose that's doin' the drivin' now."
"I'm not driving anybody, that I know of," answered Rose, with
heightened color, but with no loss of her habitual self-command.
"Then, when he graduated from errants," went on the crafty old man,
who knew that when breakfast ceased, churning must begin, "Steve
used to get seventy-five cents a day helpin' clear up the river--if you
can call this here silv'ry streamlet a river. He'd pick