Kit of Greenacre Farm | Page 4

"I made certain logical deductions from certain facts. How was I to know he was hunting gypsy moths and other winged beasts when I saw him bending over bushes in our berry patch? Anyhow it would simplify matters if Dad would let us know when he expected illustrious visitors. Did you see old Hannibal's face and Evie's, too? They were so disappointed at not having a prisoner in tow to exhibit to the Gilead populace on the way over to the jail."
Mrs. Gorham glanced up over her spectacles at the circle of faces around the sitting-room table. The girls had volunteered to help her pick over berries for canning the following day. It was a sacrifice to make, too, with the midsummer evening calling to them in all its varied orchestral tones: Katydids and peep frogs, the swish of the wind through the big Norway pines on the terraces, and the scrape of Shad's old fiddle from the back porch. It was Friday evening, and Mr. and Mrs. Robbins had driven over to the Judge's to attend a community meeting, the latter being one of Cousin Roxy's innovations in Gilead.
"Land alive," she had been wont to say. "Here we are all living on the same hills and valleys and never meeting 'cept on Sundays when we have to, or now and again when there happens to be a funeral. I declare if I didn't drive about all the time behind Ella Lou, I'd never know how folks were getting on. So every two weeks the Judge and I are going to hold an old-time social, only we call it a community meeting so as to try to give it the new spirit. It's just as well for us to remember that we ain't all dead yet by a long shot, 'though I do think there's a whole lot that ain't got any more get up and get to them than Noah's old gray mule that had to be shoved off the Ark."
Mr. Robbins had invited the erstwhile prisoner to accompany them, but he had decided instead to keep on his way to the old Inn on the hill above the village, much to Jean and Helen's disappointment.
Helen had discovered that his first name was Stanley, which relieved her mind considerably.
"If it had been Abijah or Silas, I know I could never have forgiven him for getting in the berry patch," she said, "but there is something promising about Stanley. Seems as if he lit like Mercury just when there wasn't anything happening here at all."
"Wonder if I turned out that oil stove," Mrs. Gorham said thoughtfully. "Seems like I smell something. Shad," raising her voice, "do you get up and go out in that 'ell' room and see if I turned out that fire under the syrup. I smell smoke."
"Oh, Lord," groaned Shad, laying aside his cherished instrument. "You could smell ice if you half tried."
He got up lumberingly and sauntered out through the kitchen into the long lean-to addition, that was used as a summer kitchen now, and the moment he opened the door there poured out a thick volume of black smoke and flying soot. The old-fashioned oil stove had a way of letting its wicks "work up," as Shad said, if left too long to its own devices.
There was a spurt of flame from the woodwork behind the stove, and Shad slammed the door to, and ran for the water bucket.
It seemed incredible how fast the flames spread. Summoned by his outcry, the girls formed a bucket brigade from the well to the kitchen door, while Shad, his mouth bound around in a drenched Turkish towel, fought the blaze single handed.
Mrs. Gorham made straight for the telephone, calling up the Judge, and two or three of the nearest neighbors for help. The Peckham boys from the sawmill were the first to respond, and five minutes later Hiram was on the spot, having seen the rising smoke and flare in the sky from Maple Lawn.
"You'll never save the place," old Mr. Peckham told them flatly. "The well's low and everything is dry as tinder. Better start carrying things out, girls, because the best we men-folks can do is to keep the roofs wet down and try to save the barn."
While the fire was confined to the "ell" kitchen, the two older Peckham boys set to work up-stairs, under Jean's direction. Kit had made for her father's room the first thing. When Jean opened the door she found her piling the contents of the desk and chiffonier drawers helter-skelter into blankets.
"It's all right, Jean," she called. "I'm not missing a thing. You tie the corners up and have the boys carry these down-stairs and bring back the clothes-basket and a couple of tubs for the books. Tell Helen to