The Desert and the Sown | Page 9

drink that water and the snakes will grow and wriggle and work all through ye, and eat your insides out, and you'll die. Your mother"--in a whisper--"she drunk that water, and she died. Your sister Ruth, and Dirck, and Jimmy, they drunk it, and they died. Now if Emmy wants to die"--Large eyes of horror fastened on the speaker's face. "No--o, she don't want to die, the Loveums! She don't want Becky to have no little girl left at all! No; we mustn't ever drink any of that bad water--all full of snakes, ugh! But if Emmy's thirsty, see here! Here's good nice water. It's going to be always here in this pail--same water the little lambs drink up in the fields. Becky 'll take Emmy up on the hill sometime and show where the little lambs drink."
Grief had not clouded the farmer's oversight in petty things. He noticed the innocent pail on the area bench, never empty, always specklessly clean.
"What is this water?" he asked.
Becky was surly. "Drinking water. Want some?"
"What's it doing here all the time?"
"I set it there for Emmy. She can't reach up to the bucket."
Abraham tasted the water suspiciously. The well-water was hard, with a tang of iron. The spring soft, and less cold for its journey to the barn.
"Where did you get this water?"
"Help yourself. There's plenty more."
"Becky, where did this water come from? Out o' the well?"
Becky gave a snort of exasperation. "Sam Lewis brought it from the barn! I'm too lame to be histin' buckets. I've got the rheumatiz' awful in my back and shoulders, if ye want to know!"
"Becky, you're lying to me. You've been listening to what don't concern you. Now, see here. You are not going to ask the men to carry water for you. They've got something else to do. _There's_ your water, as handy as ever a woman had it; use that or go without."
Abraham caught up the pail and flung its contents out upon the grass, scattering the hens that came sidling back with squawks of inquiring temerity.
When next Emmy came for water, the old woman took her by the hand in silence and led her into the dim meat-cellar, a half-basement with one low window level with the grass. There was the pail, safe hidden behind the soft-soap barrel.
"I had to hide it from your pa," Becky whispered. "Don't you never let him know you're afraid o' the well-water. He drunk it when he was a little boy. He don't believe in the snakes. But _there wa'n't none then_. It's when water gets old and rotten. You can believe what Becky says. She knows! But you mustn't ever tell. Your father 'd be as mad as fire if he knowed I said anything about snakes. He'd send me right away, and some strange woman would come, and maybe she'd whip Emmy. Emmy want Becky to go?" Sobs, and little arms clinging wildly to Becky's aproned skirts. "No, no! Well, she ain't goin'. But Emmy mustn't tell tales or she might have to. Tattlers are wicked anyway. 'Telltale tit! Your tongue shall be slit, and all the little dogs'--There! run now! There's your poppy. Don't you never,--never!"
Emmy let her eyes be wiped, and with one long, solemn, secret look of awed intelligence she ran out to meet her father. She did not love him, and the smile with which she met him was no new lesson in diplomacy. But her first secret from him lay deep in the beautiful eyes, her mother's eyes, as she raised them to his.
"Ain't that wonderful!" said Becky, with a satisfied sigh, watching her. "Safe as a jug! An' she not five years old!" For vital reasons she had taught the child an ugly lesson. Such lessons were common enough in her experience of family discipline. She never thought of it again.
That year which took Emmy's mother from her brought to the child her first young companion and friend. Adam Bogardus came as chore-boy to the farm,--an only child himself, and sensitive through the clashing of gentle instincts with rough and inferior surroundings; brought up in that depressed God-fearing attitude in which a widow not strong, and earning her bread, would do her duty by an only son. Not a natural fighter, she took what little combativeness he had out of him, and made his school-days miserable--a record of humiliations that sunk deep and drove him from his kind. He was a big, clumsy, sagacious boy, grave as an old man, always snubbed and condescended to, yet always trusted. Little Emmy made him her bondslave at sight. His whole soul blossomed in adoration of the beautiful, masterful child who ordered him about as her vassal, while slipping a soft little trustful hand in his. She trotted at his heels like one