Story of Waitstill Baxter | Page 5

us look at them."
"I played with a nice boy over to Boynton's," mused the child.
"That was Ivory, their only child. He is a good little fellow, but his
mother and father will spoil him with their crazy ways."
"I hope nothing will happen to him, for I love him," said the child
gravely. "He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever I saw,
and the littlest!"
"Don't talk about loving him," chided the woman. "If your father
should hear you, he'd send you to bed without your porridge."
"Father couldn't hear me, for I never speak when he's at home," said
grave little Waitstill. "And I'm used to going to bed without my

porridge."

II
THE SISTERS
THE river was still running under the bridge, but the current of time
had swept Jacob Cochrane out of sight, though not out of mind, for he
had left here and there a disciple to preach his strange and uncertain
doctrine. Waitstill, the child who never spoke in her father's presence,
was a young woman now, the mistress of the house; the stepmother
was dead, and the baby a girl of seventeen.
The brick cottage on the hilltop had grown only a little shabbier.
Deacon Foxwell Baxter still slammed its door behind him every
morning at seven o'clock and, without any such cheerful conventions as
good-byes to his girls, walked down to the bridge to open his store.
The day, properly speaking, had opened when Waitstill and Patience
had left their beds at dawn, built the fire, fed the hens and turkeys, and
prepared the breakfast, while the Deacon was graining the horse and
milking the cows. Such minor "chores" as carrying water from the well,
splitting kindling, chopping pine, or bringing wood into the kitchen,
were left to Waitstill, who had a strong back, or, if she had not, had
never been unwise enough to mention the fact in her father's presence.
The almanac day, however, which opened with sunrise, had nothing to
do with the real human day, which always began when Mr. Baxter
slammed the door behind him, and reached its high noon of delight
when he disappeared from view.
"He's opening the store shutters!" chanted Patience from the heights of
a kitchen chair by the window. "Now he's taken his cane and beaten off
the Boynton puppy that was sitting on the steps as usual,--I don't mean
Ivory's dog" (here the girl gave a quick glance at her sister)," but
Rodman's little yellow cur. Rodman must have come down to the
bridge on some errand for Ivory. Isn't it odd, when that dog has all the

other store steps to sit upon, he should choose father's, when every
bone in his body must tell him how father hates him and the whole
Boynton family."
"Father has no real cause that I ever heard of; but some dogs never
know when they've had enough beating, nor some people either." said
Waitstill, speaking from the pantry.
"Don't be gloomy when it's my birthday, Sis!--Now he's opened the
door and kicked the cat! All is ready for business at the Baxter store."
"I wish you weren't quite so free with your tongue, Patty."
"Somebody must talk," retorted the girl, jumping down from the chair
and shaking back her mop of red-gold curls. "I'll put this hateful,
childish, round comb in and out just once more, then it will disappear
forever. This very after-noon up goes my hair!"
"You know it will be of no use unless you braid it very plainly and
neatly. Father will take notice and make you smooth it down."
"Father hasn't looked me square in the face for years; besides, my hair
won't braid, and nothing can make it quite plain and neat, thank
goodness! Let us be thankful for small mercies, as Jed Morrill said
when the lightning struck his mother-in-law and skipped his wife."
"Patty, I will not permit you to repeat those tavern stories; they are not
seemly on the lips of a girl!" And Waitstill came out of the pantry with
a shadow of disapproval in her eyes and in her voice.
Patty flung her arms round her sister tempestuously, and pulled out the
waves of her hair so that it softened her face.--"I'll be good," she said,
"and oh, Waity! let's invent some sort of cheap happiness for to-day! I
shall never be seventeen again and we have so many troubles!
Let's put one of the cows in the horse's stall and see what will happen!
Or let's spread up our beds with the head at the foot and put the chest of
drawers on the other side of the room, or let's make candy! Do you

think father would miss the molasses if we only use a cupful? Couldn't
we strain