第5章

"Theron! Come out here! This is the funniest thing we have heard yet!"Mrs.Ware stood on the platform of her new kitchen stoop.

The bright flood of May-morning sunshine completely enveloped her girlish form, clad in a simple, fresh-starched calico gown, and shone in golden patches upon her light-brown hair.

She had a smile on her face, as she looked down at the milk boy standing on the bottom step--a smile of a doubtful sort, stormily mirthful.

"Come out a minute, Theron!" she called again;and in obedience to the summons the tall lank figure of her husband appeared in the open doorway behind her.

A long loose, open dressing-gown dangled to his knees, and his sallow, clean-shaven, thoughtful face wore a morning undress expression of youthful good-nature.He leaned against the door-sill, crossed his large carpet slippers, and looked up into the sky, drawing a long satisfied breath.

"What a beautiful morning!" he exclaimed."The elms over there are full of robins.We must get up earlier these mornings, and take some walks."His wife indicated the boy with the milk-pail on his arm, by a wave of her hand.

"Guess what he tells me!" she said."It wasn't a mistake at all, our getting no milk yesterday or the Sunday before.

It seems that that's the custom here, at least so far as the parsonage is concerned.""What's the matter, boy?" asked the young minister, drawling his words a little, and putting a sense of placid irony into them."Don't the cows give milk on Sunday, then?"The boy was not going to be chaffed."Oh, I'll bring you milk fast enough on Sundays, if you give me the word,"he said with nonchalance."Only it won't last long.""How do you mean--'won't last long'?", asked Mrs.Ware, briskly.

The boy liked her--both for herself, and for the doughnuts fried with her own hands, which she gave him on his morning round.He dropped his half-defiant tone.

"The thing of it's this," he explained."Every new minister starts in saying we can deliver to this house on Sundays, an' then gives us notice to stop before the month's out.It's the trustees that does it."The Rev.Theron Ware uncrossed his feet and moved out on to the stoop beside his wife."What's that you say?"he interjected."Don't THEY take milk on Sundays?""Nope!" answered the boy.

The young couple looked each other in the face for a puzzled moment, then broke into a laugh.

"Well, we'll try it, anyway," said the preacher.

"You can go on bringing it Sundays till--till--""Till you cave in an' tell me to stop," put in the boy.

"All right!" and he was off on the instant, the dipper jangling loud incredulity in his pail as he went.

The Wares exchanged another glance as he disappeared round the corner of the house, and another mutual laugh seemed imminent.Then the wife's face clouded over, and she thrust her under-lip a trifle forward out of its place in the straight and gently firm profile.

"It's just what Wendell Phillips said," she declared.

"'The Puritan's idea of hell is a place where everybody has to mind his own business.'"The young minister stroked his chin thoughtfully, and let his gaze wander over the backyard in silence.The garden parts had not been spaded up, but lay, a useless stretch of muddy earth, broken only by last year's cabbage-stumps and the general litter of dead roots and vegetation.

The door of the tenantless chicken-coop hung wide open.

Before it was a great heap of ashes and cinders, soaked into grimy hardness by the recent spring rains, and nearer still an ancient chopping-block, round which were scattered old weather-beaten hardwood knots which had defied the axe, parts of broken barrels and packing-boxes, and a nameless debris of tin cans, clam-shells, and general rubbish.

It was pleasanter to lift the eyes, and look across the neighbors' fences to the green, waving tops of the elms on the street beyond.How lofty and beautiful they were in the morning sunlight, and with what matchless charm came the song of the robins, freshly installed in their haunts among the new pale-green leaves! Above them, in the fresh, scented air, glowed the great blue dome, radiant with light and the purification of spring.

Theron lifted his thin, long-fingered hand, and passed it in a slow arch of movement to comprehend this glorious upper picture.

"What matter anyone's ideas of hell," he said, in soft, grave tones, "when we have that to look at, and listen to, and fill our lungs with? It seems to me that we never FEELquite so sure of God's goodness at other times as we do in these wonderful new mornings of spring."The wife followed his gesture, and her eyes rested for a brief moment, with pleased interest, upon the trees and the sky.Then they reverted, with a harsher scrutiny, to the immediate foreground.

"Those Van Sizers ought to be downright ashamed of themselves,"she said, "to leave everything in such a muss as this.

You MUST see about getting a man to clean up the yard, Theron.It's no use your thinking of doing it yourself.

In the first place, it wouldn't look quite the thing, and, second, you'd never get at it in all your born days.

Or if a man would cost too much, we might get a boy.

I daresay Harvey would come around, after he'd finished with his milk-route in the forenoon.We could give him his dinner, you know, and I'd bake him some cookies.

He's got the greatest sweet-tooth you ever heard of.

And then perhaps if we gave him a quarter, or say half a dollar, he'd be quite satisfied.I'll speak to him in the morning.

We can save a dollar or so that way."

"I suppose every little does help," commented Mr.Ware, with a doleful lack of conviction.Then his face brightened.