Nine by the clock on a summer day, along a country road in northern Connecticut, with old stone walls covered with three children tripped merrily on their way, now under the shade of spreading trees, now through stretches of sunlight and over stout plank bridges, their bare feet oblivious of stones. They reached at last a mountain path, into which they turned, through wide bars, toward Huckleberry Hill.
Their tin pails made an enchanting tink-tink with the pint cups they had brought for drinking at the deep cool spring under an overhanging rock and for the frequent measuring of the black and blue berries they were sure to find. One pail was filled with a substantial luncheon, and the day promised hours of pleasure with hardly recognized toil.
Up, up they climbed, by patches of mountain laurel, by spicy clumps of sweet fern, where wild rose vines trailed in tangled thickets, to the huckleberry bushes that stretched far in scattered bunches, with crisp dry grass between for sitting-places.
Never an odor, on Scottish heath or Southern meadow, on river bank or in cultivated garden, like the fragrance of Huckleberry Hill! Never a sound more suggestive of delight than the tink-tink of tin cups and pails, swinging up a mountain path!
They threw themselves at last on Table Rock, a broad flat stone claimed for their own. It was their upland couch, their dining-room, and best of all their hall of confidence. It was so easy there to talk of the mystery of clouds, of brooks, of birds and all the wonders of a world yet new!
"Clouds are sheep and wool put up there to dry," Doris had declared, until her last birthday. It being her tenth, Mark, with older brother authority, had insisted that such childish nonsense should be laid aside. She lay back on the rock, calling as a final protest to the fleecy flocks above, "Why can't I believe it if I want to? I b'lieve they're real live mother sheep, with lots of baby lambs cuddled up."
It was so easy, there, to wonder at the blue of the violets. Why were there so few blue flowers? Was it because the sky was so big and blue and they needed "pink and white posies and red, red rosies" to make up? Keren thought so.
"I read the other day, in a book Mr. Mather lent me," said Mark, "about 'the sea, blue and fathomless as the sky.' Some day I am going to see it."
"Me too, Buddy!" shouted Doris, with emphatic nods of her curly chestnut head; "you're only three years older'n me, an' I'm going to do every single thing you do."
Her blue eyes looked adoringly into his, clear and gray, with shadowy depths. He tossed back his fair hair and fanned himself with his broad hat.
"Well, Baby, we'll see."
"You can do anything, Doris! You've got a name, a big brother, a sweet, sweet mother and brown curly hair. What could you do, I'd to know, if you was an orphan bound out Mis' Jones until you was eighteen, had red hair" - she gave a heavy auburn braid a vicious tug - "and such an awful name, Kerenhappuch?"
"Oh, that's not so bad, the name I mean," said Mark comfortingly. "Where'd you get it?"
"Last birthday, when I was twelve, Mis' Jones told me about it 'cause I cried. She ain't no ways mean, Mis' Jones ain't; she's kind, only she don't know how to mother. She said a queer old uncle of my mother's promised to leave me a thousand dollars when I was twenty-one, if he could name me some Bible name that wa'n't common. So he called me Kerenhappuch after Job's youngest daughter. It's just awful!"
"Nevie mind!" Doris patted the brown hands clasped around Keren's knee.
"If it had only been Elizabeth or Rachel or Mary! The Bible says, 'In all the land were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job,' and I ain't even fair to look upon."
"You've got beautiful brown eyes," said Mark with honest boyish admiration.
"And a nose full of freckles!" She sighed disconsolately.
"Who'll pick the first pint?" shouted Mark, springing to his feet; "here is a nice bush for you, Doris."
"Mother," said Doris, one winter evening long afterward, "what did the minister mean this afternoon when he said, 'Mark is called to some great work, Mrs. Banner?"
"You cannot understand, my child; you are only a little girl."
"But, mother, I can understand a great deal now; you know I am twelve."
A bright fire flamed and crackled and glowed in the wide kitchen fireplace. A kettle sending out savory whiffs of steam hung on the crane, a teapot simmered on coals drawn out on the hearth, and a table was spread with a snowy homespun cloth and dishes of dark blue ware. Like the widow's in Chaucer's old tale,
"Here bord was served most with whyt and blak,
Milk and broun breed, in which she fond no lak."
Rye bread and butter and a pitcher of milk stood waiting. An empty platter suggested the steaming dish. Candles were ready for lighting and a tray with snuffers and a box of paper lighters, white and pink and green, stood beside them.
The room was full of the atmosphere of home with many evidences of daily toil. A "big" spinning-wheel stood in one corner, and there were signs that the "little" wheel was not far away. A peep into the "loom room" would have found it keeping company with reel and bobbins. But while the hands folded for a moment in the mother's lap were hard with toil, the mother's face was fine under bands of chestnut hair, dark as Doris's own save for silver threads at the tempies. Her white cap-strings were untied, and a kerchief folded over her homespun dress left her full white throat bare.
Plain living was evidently her lot and high thinking her habit. On a table by the east window lay writing materials, a battered Latin Grammar, a Virgil and lexicon, a copy of Euclid and a little book of Greek paradigms. On a stool near by, a modern Geography, Colburn's "First Lessons in Arithmetic," a "History of the United States," a "Peter Parley" and an English Grammar lay in careful order on a framed slate. Three bookshelves fastened to the wall bore an unusual assortment for a farmer's kitchen. A well-used Milton, an equally worn Shakespeare, "Watts's Hymns" and a "Pilgrim's Progress" evidently held the place of honor. "Watts on the Mind," "Ancient Geography," "Ancient and Modern History," "Sullivan's Political Class Book," "Botany," "Newman's Rhetoric," "Intellectual Philosophy," Cicero's "Orations," "The Anabasis," "Butler's Analogy," read some faded titles. Opening a theological work, the name "Simeon West, his book. Minister of Warren Parish," gave a clue to the situation.
Hannah West was the only child of this preacher of Calvinism, whose prophet and interpreter, Jonathan Edwards, laid inflexible bounds to creed and practice. While his daughter learned from her mother all kinds of practical housewifery, the father chose that she should spend two hours a day in his study. All her life Hannah bore evidence of this rare opportunity, and it found full expression in her motherhood.
Eight years had flowers and snow, with changing seasons, covered the grave of her farmer lover, and since the day of her widowed loneliness began she had resolutely set her life to a standard of brave cheer, for the children's sake. In such an atmosphere they grew in grace and stature. There was much regular labor, much merriment, some play and a general wholesomeness of living that made existence full of interest, and hope for the future strong.
"How can Mark do great things, mother? He's the funniest boy I ever saw. Why, just this morning he pulled off your cap, put it on his own head and danced all 'round. He picked me up in the barn and set me on a board. I just couldn't jump and I squealed and squealed. I wasn't 'fraid, you know, with Buddy, and he winked and blinlked and then looked solemn till I laughed so I cried. He does such antics, mother. There he comes with Tabby on his shoulder."
"Halloa, Crinkles. Here's the milk, mother, good measure to-night. It is good to get in! Yes, everything is snug; there will be snow before morning. I'm as hungry as a bear! Anything to eat?"
"Plenty, thank God."
"Say, mother," said Doris as they gathered around the table, "if only 'Melia was here with the babies, wouldn't it be perfect? I feel so big to be aunt to twinny-boys, only I never saw 'em. Won't they ever come home, mother?"
"Fifty miles is too far for babies to drive this weather; we must wait patiently, Doris."
"Yes, I s'pose. There is a good deal of farness in this world, isn't there, mother?" Doris asked wistfully.
"Yes, dear, but more near-ness after all. What did Mr. Mather say about your lesson, Mark?"
"Well, not so bad. That Greek verb is the queerest customer I ever got hold of - beats the Latin all to pieces for variety."
"I'm going to learn it some day too!" Doris's blue eyes were big and round.
"It's too hard for your little brown head," said Mark, but Doris shook her curls, chanting defiantly,
"Yes I be,
You will see!"
"What, is that, my son?"
"Halloa!" A man's deep voice calling from the road, and a sharp rap, brought Mark to his feet. As he threw open the door Keren, clasping a large bundle in her arms, stepped over the threshold.
"Say, Mark," called Mr. Jones from the road, "me and Mis' Jones have got to go over to the farm; brother Jim's took very bad and suddin. The hired man can take care of himself and the critters, but we can't leave the gal there and we can't take her. Ask your mother if she can stay with you. I don't know when we'll git back."
"Mother?"
"Yes, Mark, and welcome."
The door closed and these lives, to be inexcably bound together, were shut into the ineffable warmth and shelter of a home. Outside snow fell softly through a windless night, until morning broke on a world white as the drifting clouds of heaven.