CHAPTER XII
TWO VERY EARLY CALLERS--EACH ON BUSINESS
Except on Sunday mornings, breakfast at the farm in summer came at six.
The Old Squire himself was often astir at four; and we boys were supposed to get up at five, so as to have milking done and other barn chores off, ready to go into the field from the breakfast table. Gram and the girls also rose at five, to get breakfast, take care of the milk and look after the poultry. Everybody, in fact, rose with the birds in that rural community. But often I was scarcely more than half awake at breakfast; Ellen and Wealthy, too, were in much the same case.
On one of these early mornings when I had been there about three weeks, our drowsiness at the breakfast table was dispelled by the arrival of two early callers--each on business.
Gram was pouring the coffee, when the outer door opened and a tall, sallow, dark-complexioned woman entered, the same whom I had met on the Meadow Brook bridge, while leading Little Dagon. She wore a calico gown and sun-bonnet, and may have been fifty years of age; and she walked in quite as a matter of course, saying, "How do you do, Joseph, how do you do, Ruth?" to the Old Squire and Gram.
"Why, how do you do, Olive?" said Gram, but not in the most cordial of tones. "Will you have some breakfast with us?"
"I have been to breakfast, Ruth," replied this visitor, throwing back her sun-bonnet and thereby displaying a forehead and brow that for height and breadth was truly Websterian. "I came to get my old dress that I left here when I cleaned house for you last spring, and I should also like that dollar that's owing me."
"Olive," rejoined Gram severely, "I do not owe you a dollar."
"Ruth," replied the caller with equal severity, "you do owe me a dollar."
She proceeded, as one quite familiar in the house, to the kitchen closet and took therefrom an old soiled gingham gown.
"Olive," said the Old Squire, "are you quite sure that there is a dollar due you here?"
"Joseph," replied the lofty-browed woman, "do you think I would say so, if I did not know it?"
"No, Olive, I don't think you would," said the Old Squire.
"It's no such thing, Olive," cried Gram, looking somewhat heated. "I always paid you up when you cleaned house for me and when you spun for me."
"Always but that one time, Ruth. Then you did not--into a dollar,"
replied the sallow woman, positively.
An argument ensued. It appeared that the debated dollar was a matter of three or four years standing. There was little doubt that both were equally honest in their convictions concerning it, pro and con. Still, they were a dollar apart, somehow. Furthermore, it came out, that "Olive" when she felt periodically poor, or out of sorts, was in the habit of calling and dunning Gram for that dollar, much to the old lady's displeasure.
The Old Squire sat uneasily and listened to the talk, with growing disfavor. At last he pulled out his pocketbook. "I will pay you the dollar, Olive," he said, "if only to stop the dispute about it."
"You shan't do it, Joseph!" exclaimed Gram. "There's no dollar due her."
But the Old Squire persisted in handing the woman a dollar.
"I do not care whether it is due or not!" he exclaimed. "I have heard altogether too much of this."
"I thank you, Joseph, for doing me justice of my hard-handed employer,"
said the tall woman, austerely.
"Now did ever anybody hear the like!" Gram exclaimed, pink from vexation. "Oh, Olive, you--you--you bold thing, to say that of me!"
"There, there!" cried the Old Squire. "Peace, women folks. Remember that you are both Christians and public professors."
Gram sat and fanned herself, fast and hard. Our visitor folded the dress into a bundle and marched slowly and austerely out.
"Olive, I hope your conscience is clear," Gram called after her severely.
"Ruth, I hope your conscience is as clear as mine," the departing one called back in calm tones, from the yard outside.
She left an awkward silence behind her; breakfast had come to a standstill; and I improved the elemental sort of hush, to whisper to Theodora, who had been at the farm a year, and ask who this portentous disturber of the family credit really was.
"Oh, it is only 'Aunt Olive,'" Theodora whispered back. "She comes here to help us every spring and fall."
"Is she our actual aunt?" I asked in some dismay.
"No, she isn't our real, kindred aunt," said Theodora, "but folks call her Aunt Olive. She is a sister to Elder Witham; and they say she can quote more Scripture than the Elder himself.
"And I'm sort of glad that Gramp gave her the dollar," Theodora added, in a still lower whisper. "Maybe Gram did forget to pay her, once."
But Gram was both incensed and humiliated. She resumed the interrupted coffee pouring and handed the Old Squire his cup, with a look of deep reproach.
Partly to change the unpleasant subject, perhaps, he said to us briskly, "Boys, if we have good luck and get our haying work along, so we can, we will all make a trip over to Norridgewock and see Father Rasle's monument.
"Ruth, wouldn't you like to take a good long drive over to Norridgewock, after the grain is in?" he asked in pacificatory tones.
"Joseph!" replied Gram, "you make me smile! You have been talking of driving over to Norridgewock to visit Father Rasle's monument, and of going to Lovewell's Pond, ever since I first knew you! But you never have been, and I haven't a thought that you ever will go!"
"Well, but something has always come up to prevent it, Ruth," Gramp replied hastily.
"Yes, Joseph, and something will come up to prevent it this year, too."
It was at this point that the second early caller had his arrival announced. Little Wealthy, who had stolen out to watch Aunt Olive's departure and then gone to the barn to see to her own small brood of chicks, came running in headlong and cried, "Oh, Gram! Gram! a great big fox has got one of your geese--on his back--and is running away!"
"What!" exclaimed Gram, setting the heavy coffee-pot down again with a roiling bump. "Oh, Lord, what a morning. Where, child, where?"
"Out beyond the west barn!" cried Wealthy; but by this time Addison, Halse and I were out of doors, in pursuit.
Beyond the west barn, there was a little hollow, or swale, where a spring issued; and a few rods below the spring, a dam had been constructed across the swale to form a goose-pond for Gram's flock. It was a muddy, ill-smelling place; but hither the geese would always waddle forth of a summer morning, and spend most of the day, wading and swimming, with occasional loud outcries.
As we turned the corner of the barn, we met the flock--minus one--beating a retreat to the goose-shed. But the fox was not in sight.
"Which way did he go, Wealth?" cried Addison, for Wealthy had run after us, full of her important news.
"Right across the west field," she exclaimed. "He had the old goose on his back, and it was trying to squall, but couldn't."
"Get the gun, Halse!" exclaimed Addison. "No, it isn't loaded! Bother!
But come on. The fox cannot run far with one of those heavy geese, without resting. He is probably behind the pasture wall."
We set off at speed across the field and heard Gram calling out to us, "Chase him, boys! Chase the old thief. You may make him drop it."
Away through the grass, laden with dew and "hopper spits," we careered, and came on the trail of the fox where he had brushed off the dew as he ran. But the rogue was not behind the pasture wall.