ROCKY FORK

BY MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK T. MERRILL

NEW EDITION

BOSTON LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.

Copyright, 1911, By Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Co.

All rights reserved Electrotyped and Printed by THE COLONIAL PRESS C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, U.S.A.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Rocky Fork

CHAPTER I DOCTOR GARDE’S LITTLE GIRL

MANY years ago the morning sun looked down among the tall hills of central Ohio, and saw one little girl patting along a path. The path wound down through a hollow, and up, up over wood-clothed heights which she thought nearly touched the sky.

At first glance this little girl appeared to be a large slat sun-bonnet taking a walk on a pair [10]of long pantalettes. But at second glance one brown, thin arm escaped from a short sleeve might have been seen carrying a calico bag by its drawing-string; and under the pantalettes a pair of stout-shod little feet skipped along.

It was not more than seven o’clock. The tall meadow grass was glittering, and every bird known to the State was singing with his morning voice. When she reached the small run which twisted along the hollow, and put her foot on the first of the stepping-stones which crossed it, the little girl could not help stopping to gaze in the water. The minnows played around the stone with a quiver of their tiny bodies which fascinated the gazer. She stooped cautiously and tried to catch one in her hand, but sunshine on the pebbles was not more elusive.

“Good-morning, little girl,” said a winning voice; and the little girl jumped up, reeled, set one foot in the water, and brandished her reticule in the effort to regain her balance. The sugared butter-bread and sweet cookies tumbled against currant-pie and cherries, and all [11]settled to an upside-down condition as she finally got on the bank and saw a gentleman preparing to trip across the stones.

It was an uncommon thing to meet any one, and especially a stranger, on that long two-mile path to school. But it was a wonderful thing to meet such a grand stranger. She dropped a bobbing curtsy, and the gentleman, having crossed, stopped and smiled. He had glittering black eyes, and curly hair and whiskers, glittering teeth and boots, fine clothes, and altogether the look of a “town gentleman.”

“Whose little girl are you?” inquired this town gentleman affably, rubbing the wet soles of his boots on the grass.

Under the long slat sun-bonnet a round face blushed all about its blue eyes and quite back to its auburn hair, and a timid voice piped from the calico funnel: “I’m Doctor Garde’s little girl.”

“Ah! where does Doctor Garde live?”

“Right back there in that big house.”

“And who lives in this house I just passed?”

“Mrs. Banks. Her little girls go to school with me.”

[12]“Yes. And where do you go to school?”

“In the school-house ’way at the other side of the hills.”

“Oho! many children go there?”

“All of ’em in our districk. There’s Willeys, and Pancosts, and Harrises, and Halls, and Bankses, and Martins, and me, and my little sister’s going when she gets big enough.”

“Yes. Well, thank you. I may call there in the course of the day. Does that path lead back to your school-house?”

“Yes, sir. But you must turn to the right at the big sand-banks, and cross the foot-log over Rocky Fork by Hall’s mill.”

The gentleman nodded, and passed on smiling as Doctor Garde’s little girl dropped him another curtsy. She skipped across the stones and hastened up rising ground to the Banks’. Theirs was a weather-beaten domicile, part log and part frame, with a covered stoop at one door on which Tildy sat plaiting her long hair preparatory to going to school.

Tildy, it must be confessed, was a raw-boned girl, but with a low-browed, serious face. Her nature leaned to the solemn side of life, as her [13]sister Teeny’s leaned towards what was merry. Matilda liked to sit in the grass and dress her locks, or to watch from the doorstep the rocks and glooms on each side of her home.

Teeny appeared within, tying her bonnet, the string of her reticule across her arm. A bunch of old-fashioned pink roses was pinned to her dress, which hooked in front and was just long enough to sweep her heels when she walked. Teeny was a big girl who felt quite a young woman, since she was “going on” fifteen, ciphered in long division, and had finished a sampler with her name, “Christine Banks,” embroidered under a beautiful piece of poetry. “We’re takin’ curran’-pie for our dinner to-day, Melissy,” announced Tildy solemnly as Doctor Garde’s little girl ran up.

“I got some, too,” she responded with triumph. So little made a triumph in that region and time.

“’Tain’t sweetened with sugar.”

“’Tis, too! I saw Liza put in heaps.” She sat down on the steps and explored her reticule. There was rather a sorry mess in its depths, but the slices of bread were reduced [14]again to their proper basis, and the other goodies piled carefully on them.

“Why don’t you call me Bluebell?” she suggested with a rather hopeless accent.

“’Cause that ain’t your name,” said Tildy, strictly.

“I guess my father always calls me that.”

“’Tain’t your name, anyhow. Your name is Melissy Jane Garde, goin’ on eight years old.”

“It’s just Melissy,” cried the younger, doggedly, as if she would like to disown that.

“My mother called me Bluebell, too, and she’s gone to heaven. I sh’d think you might call me what my mother called me.”

“Your name’s Melissy,” repeated Tildy, looking with undisturbed eyes upon the distance. Here the argument dropped, as it usually did. The defeated party turned to other things.

“I pretty near fell in the run. The’ was a man come along and scared me so. He was prettier than my father!” exclaimed Melissa, pausing after this climax; “that is, dressed up prettier; and he said he was coming to [15]school to-day. I wonder what he’s coming there for?”

“Prob’ly it’s somebody the directors is sending to whip us,” opined Matilda with serious resignation. “They say Mr. Pitzer ain’t strict enough.”

“Oh, do you s’pose it is?” cried the credulous little girl beside her. “I never got whipped at school yet.”

“Now, Tildy,” exclaimed the pink-faced elder sister, stepping out, “if you don’t hurry up we’ll go on and leave you.”

“I think I’ll stay at home,” said Tildy, reflecting on the fine stranger’s probable errand.

“No, you won’t,” cried her mother’s voice from an inner room, making a pause in the monotonous rattle of a loom; and though it was a plaintive voice and not very decided, Tildy was moved by it to get her sun-bonnet and follow the other two. They were making a round of the garden, to gather pinks, hollyhocks, bouncing-betties, bachelor-buttons, and asparagus sprays. Having tied up a bunch apiece, they left the house and began their root-matted and rocky ascent. There were levels [16]above where the woods made a twilight at noon, where ferns crowded to their knees, and some stood as high as their waists. Who could help stopping to inhale that breath which is no plant’s but a fern’s?

“There’s vinegar-balls on this oak,” remarked Tildy, casting her eyes up as they passed under a dark-leaved tree. So, sticks and climbing being brought to bear upon the tree, one or two small apple-shaped bunches were brought down to yield a tart juice to sucking lips. I do not pretend to say the balls were wholesome. But the same lips loved the white, honey-filled ends of clover-blossoms, tender sticks of sweet-briar when stripped of its skin, and they doted on “mountain-tea,” a winter-green of three rich fleshy leaves, which clung all over these heights in fragrant mats. The three girls were lovers of Mother Outdoors. Melissa especially gloried in the woods. The noble tree arches, the dew, and sweet earth-smell filled her with worshipping joy. It was so nice to be a little girl with a sun-bonnet hanging off her shoulders by the strings, and the great woods cooling her face, and sighing [17]away off as if thinking up some song to sing to her!

In due course they came to three giant ridges of sand. These stood in a clear place, and nobody in that region troubled himself about the geological cause of their existence in the heart of the woods. There they were, too tempting to be resisted. Melissa dropped her reticule, Tildy seriously followed her example, and Christine forgot her dress hooking in front and her claims to big girlhood. All three mounted the dunes, sat down, gathered their clothing close about their feet, and shot down the sides as if on invisible sleds. This queer sort of coasting was great fun. When it seemed expedient to adjourn, they shook the clean sand from their dresses, and the eldest and youngest untied their low shoes to turn them upside down. Matilda being barefoot and therefore free from such civilized cares, improved the time by taking an extra slide, which was too much for the other girls, so they tried it again.

Thus the morning waxed later. So by the time they crossed the foot-log over Rocky Fork [18]and approached the log school-house, “books” were actually “taken up.”

The school-house was chinked with clay and had double doors which opened close beside a travelled road. The woods and heights rose behind it, and at one side a sweep of play-ground extended into a viney hollow where hung the grape-vine swing for which all the girls in school daily brought pocketfuls of string.

CHAPTER II MR. PITZER

CHRISTINE stepped over the threshold and dropped a curtsy which dipped her dress in the dust. Matilda followed and was taken with a similar convulsion on the same spot. Then the smallest bobbed violently; all this homage being paid to a somewhat threadbare man who sat behind a high desk opposite the door.

Continuous high desks on a raised platform extended around the walls, and continuous benches ran in front of them. Here sat the elders of the school—the big boys and girls, with their backs to smaller fry who camped on long benches set along the middle of the floor, swinging their heels and holding spellers in their hands. The benches were made of split logs, the flat sides planed smooth, and the round sides bored with holes into which legs were stuck; as these legs were not always even, [20]boys at opposite ends of a bench could “teeter-totter” the whole row of urchins between them. There were no backs against which you might rest your shoulders, but any tired little fellow might lie down if he took his own risks about rolling off. There had been teachers who would not allow the muscles thus to relax. But Mr. Pitzer was a kind, soft-hearted old man, who, as Matilda has hinted, was not considered strict enough. He had taught the school many seasons.

The directors said he might do for summer, but each winter they determined to engage some strapping modern pedagogue who could control the young men and wild young women who sallied knowledge-ward during the long term. Still Mr. Pitzer was found in his place. He taught manners and morals as well as the common branches, and his sweet, severe face under iron-gray hair became stamped on every mind that entered the double doors.

The tardy pupils, unchallenged, hung their bonnets and dinner-bags on nails in the wall, Teeny took her big-girls’ seat, and straightway lay flat on her desk in the agonies of writing [21]a morning copy, while the other two sat side by side on a bench murmuring the first reading-lesson. A hum like the music of many hives sounded all over the room. “D-i-s—dis, d-a-i-n, dain, disdain,” crossed “in-com-pat-i-bil-i-ty;” and the important scratching of slate-pencils in the hands of ciphering big boys, seemed to supplement a breathing and occasional sputter of quill pens.

“Second Reader may stand up!” cried the master.

Bluebell’s class, including her tall friend Matilda, formed in a row in front of the master’s desk, each holding his reader clinched before his face.

A polished walnut ferule lay at Mr. Pitzer’s hand, and the text-book sprawled on the desk. He wore spectacles of so slight an iron frame that the glasses seemed suspended miraculously between his stern eyes and the eyes turned up to him. Like a commander giving some military order, he now cried out: “Attention!”

At the signal every girl dipped low and every boy bent forward with a bow. It would have [22]been a misdemeanor for the girls to bow and the boys to curtsy, and they knew it. Then the boy at the top of the class began to read in a voice which could be heard on the opposite side of the road; he was followed by a timid little girl who put her nose close to the book and spelled and whispered; and she in turn by a merry girl who had been put back from the Third Reader when the master was cross, for pronouncing ships wrecked, “shipses rick-ed.” Very little did she care, for, knowing the Second Reader by heart, it was easy for her to rattle off the story of The Three Boys and the Three Cakes, with a moral. Bluebell read in a clear, sensitive, appreciative voice, and Tildy followed. They spelled the words which the master pronounced to them, and had another lesson set. The military order was then varied:

“Obedience!”

At this they saluted as before, and took their seats.

Business went on as usual. The large girls recited in smart, high voices, and the boys blundered in monotone, excepting little Joe Hall, [23]who was such a mite of a fellow, yet so smart that he knew almost as much as the master. Joe had ciphered farther into the jungles of arithmetic than anybody else, and could parse as fast as his tongue would run. He always had his atlas lessons, and some said had been clear through the geography, while his writing was so wonderful that the master sometimes let him set copies when he himself was very busy.

“Somethin’s the matter with the master this mornin’,” whispered Tildy to Bluebell, as they wriggled around trying to rest their backs.

It was true. He stalked about with his hands under his coat-tails, sticking his under lip out. Even Joe Hall’s grandiloquent rendering of Fourth Reader text could not draw his mind from some internal strain; and after recess the trouble came out.

Mr. Pitzer read the rules of the school. Whenever he had heard complaint, he brought out those ponderous rules and visited them upon the pupils that they might know what he required of them, even if he did not exact it. Every listener, except the new or very dull ones, [24]knew these rules by heart. They were written on tall cap sheets in the best of flourishes, and covered the whole duty of boy and girl.

To-day the master read them with frowns and a sonorous voice.

“Article Thirteenth!” he thundered at last; “Every boy or girl in going to or from school shall treat with civility all persons whom they meet upon the highway, he or she making a bow or a curtsy as the case may be. It shall be a high misdemeanor to treat impolitely any stranger or strangers in the schoolroom, or the play-ground, or the highway.”

And here as if to test Mr. Pitzer’s pupils in their behavior, a strange man did step over the threshold, taking off his hat as he did so.

The schoolmaster stopped and glared. But Bluebell’s heart came into her mouth. She felt unreasonably terrified and trapped by fate. For it was the curly, glittering gentleman who had promised to come to the school-house, possibly on that dread errand suggested by Tildy—to whip the whole school!

CHAPTER III THE GEOGRAPHY-SCHOOL TEACHER

“MAY I have a few minutes’ conversation with you?” said the fine stranger to Mr. Pitzer. The schoolmaster bowed stiffly, said “Certainly, sir,” with some pomp, and came forward. He evidently felt distrust, not to say hostility; but after Article Thirteenth, he was bound to set the school an example in politeness.

There was a stricture around Bluebell’s heart while she watched them talking in low tones near the door. The stranger was pliant, eager and voluble. Oh, how he did want to get at them all with his stick! Would Mr. Pitzer give them over to such shame and pain! She reflected about the black ripe cherries in her reticule, and wished she had propitiated the good old man by giving them to him at recess. The school stopped droning, and held its breath, just as the earth does before a storm, to catch some hint of this colloquy. Mr. Pitzer [26]seemed more and more mellowed to the man’s proposals. The curves of his stern face turned upwards; he nodded his head at the end of every sentence; and finally, leading the way to his high desk, he told the school that Mr. Runnels had something important to impart to them.

Bluebell shut her eyes, and cowered. Little Joe Hall sat bolt-upright, and all the big scholars turned around on their seats.

“He’s going to begin with them on this bench,” whispered Tildy to Bluebell. Mr. Runnels smiled with his teeth and picked up the ferule.

Oh, how earth brightened again as his business unfolded! The faint, worm-eaten odor of the glass-smooth bench which she clutched, seemed quainter to Bluebell than ever before. She had heard the Fourth Reader class sing out the tale of Ginevra; and that chest, “carved by Antony of Trent,” had just such an indescribable, pungent smell, she felt certain, as the desk and seats of this school-house. It had always given her a pleasant sensation; it now added to her joy; her heart expanded; [27]Mr. Runnels was a very nice man. He did not even hint that a school ought to be whipped wholesale; Tildy Banks didn’t know anything about it. His errand was to organize a geography school!

“The method,” said Mr. Runnels, “is altogether new. I have a fine and complete set of painted maps representing every part of the earth’s surface, and the exercise of storing the mind with this important science is not only vastly improving, but novel and delightful. All of you speak to your parents. The charge is trifling, but the benefit will be lasting. Everybody is invited free to the organization of the school to-night at Harris’s chapel west of this school-house. All the boys and girls and young people of the next district will be there. So don’t fail to urge your parents to bring you. So many bright eyes,” said Mr. Runnels with a charming smile—

The school giggled with delight—

—“so many intelligent faces, instructed by a wise, kind master—”

Mr. Pitzer straightened his back and smiled around—

[28]—“must surely take an interest in this beautiful globe on which we live.”

Mr. Runnels went on and gave them a short lecture on geography. He told them anecdotes of that ignoramus who did not believe the world was round and turned on its axis, because, if this were the case, his father’s mill-pond would spill all its water. The children laughed uproariously, though few of them had ever thought of the earth except as an expanse of rocks, trees and robe-like sward, cleft by the Rocky Fork.

Mr. Pitzer and the geography-teacher parted with ceremonious bows. The schoolmaster himself made a few cautious remarks to cool his own enthusiasm; but the next class, which was the grave elders’ arithmetic, constantly broke out with fractional questions about a different science.

At last the sun had retreated from the middle of the floor to the very door-sill. By this token they knew it was high noon. Spellers were laid straight on the benches around the wall, desk lids were shut down over their miscellany. Eyes looked expectantly at the master, [29]and all arms were folded. He uttered one magic word: “Dismissed!”