CHAPTER XIV
Wherein a New Position Is Tendered Elnora, and Philip Ammon Is Shown Limberlost Violets
The next morning Mrs. Comstock called to Elnora, "The mail carrier stopped at our box."
Elnora ran down the walk and came back carrying an official looking letter. She tore it open and read:
My dear Miss Comstock:
At the weekly meeting of the Onabasha School Board last night, it was decided to add the position of Lecturer on Natural History to our corps of city teachers. It will be the duty of this person to spend two hours a week in each of the grade schools exhibiting and explaining specimens of the most prominent objects in nature: animals, birds, insects, flowers, vines, shrubs, bushes and trees. These specimens and lectures should be appropriate to the seasons and the comprehension of the grades: This position was unanimously voted to you. I think you will find the work delightful and much easier than the routine grind of the other teachers. It is my advice that you accept and begin to prepare yourself at once. Your salary will be $750 a year, and you will be allowed $200 for expenses in procuring specimens and books. Let us know at once if you want the position, as it is going to be difficult to fill satisfactorily if you do not.
Very truly yours,
David Thompson, President, Onabasha Schools.
"I hardly understand," marvelled Mrs. Comstock.
"It is a new position. They never have had anything like it before. I suspect it arose from the help I've been giving the grade teachers in their nature work. They are trying to teach the children something, and half the instructors don't know a blue jay from a kingfisher, a beech leaf from an elm, or a wasp from a hornet."
"Well, do you?" anxiously inquired Mrs. Comstock.
"Indeed, I do!" laughed Elnora, "and several other things beside. When Freckles bequeathed me the swamp, he gave me a bigger inheritance than he knew. While you have thought I was wandering aimlessly, I have been following a definite plan, studying hard, and storing up the stuff that will earn these seven hundred and fifty dollars. Mother, dear, I am going to accept this, of course. The work will be a delight. I'd love it most of anything in teaching. You must help me. We must find nests, eggs, leaves, queer formations in plants and rare flowers. I must have flower boxes made for each of the rooms and filled with wild things. I should begin to gather specimens this very day."
Elnora was on her feet. Her face was flushed and her eyes bright.
"Oh, what great work that will be!" she cried. "You must go with me so you can see the little faces when I tell them how the goldfinch builds its nest, and how the bees make honey."
So Elnora and her mother went into the woods behind the cabin to study nature.
"I think," said Elnora, "the idea is to begin with fall things in the fall, keeping to the seasons throughout the year."
"What are fall things?" inquired Mrs. Comstock.
"Oh, fringed gentians, asters, ironwort, every fall flower, leaves from every tree and vine, what makes them change colour, abandoned bird nests, winter quarters of caterpillars and insects, what becomes of the butterflies and grasshoppers—just myriads of stuff. I never can use the half there will be to show. I shall have to be very wise to select the things it will be most beneficial for the children to learn."
"Can I really help you?" Mrs. Comstock's strong face was pathetic.
"Indeed, yes!" cried Elnora. "I never can get through it alone. There will be an immense amount of work connected with securing and preparing specimens."
Mrs. Comstock lifted her head proudly and began doing business at once. Her sharp eyes ranged from earth to heaven. She investigated everything, asking innumerable questions. By noon she was as eager and interested as Elnora. The morning was filled with happiness for both of them. Near noon Mrs. Comstock took the specimens they had collected, and went to prepare dinner, while Elnora followed the woods down to Sintons' to show her letter.
She had to explain what became of her moths, and why college would have to be abandoned for that year, but Margaret and Wesley vowed not to tell. Wesley waved the letter excitedly, explaining it to Margaret as if it was a personal possession. Margaret was deeply impressed, while Billy volunteered first aid in gathering material.
"Now, anything you want in the ground, Snap can dig it out," he said. "Uncle Wesley and I found a hole three times as big as Snap, that he dug at the roots of a tree."
"We will train him to hunt pupae cases," said Elnora.
"Are you going to the woods this afternoon?" asked Billy.
"Yes," answered Elnora. "Dr. Ammon's nephew from Chicago is visiting in Onabasha. He is going to show me how men put some sort of compound on a tree, hang a light by it, and take moths that way. It will be interesting to watch and learn."
"May I come?" asked Billy.
"Of course, you may come!" answered Elnora.
"Is this nephew of Dr. Ammon a young man?" inquired Margaret.
"About twenty-six, I should think," said Elnora. "He said he had been out of college and at work in his father's law office three years."
"Does he seem nice?" asked Margaret, and Wesley smiled.
"Finest kind of a person," said Elnora. "He can teach me so much. It is very interesting to hear him talk. He knows considerable about moths that will be a help to me. He had a fever and he has to stay outdoors until he grows strong again."
"Billy, I guess you better help me this afternoon," said Margaret. "Maybe Elnora had rather not bother with you."
"There's no reason on earth why Billy should not come!" cried Elnora, and Wesley smiled again.
"I must hurry home and get my dinner or I won't be ready," she added.
Hastening down the road with glowing face she entered the cabin.
"I thought you never would come," said Mrs. Comstock. "If you don't hurry Mr. Ammon will be here before you get dressed."
"I forgot about him until just now," said Elnora. "I am not going to dress. He's not coming to visit. We are only going to the woods for more specimens. I can't wear anything that requires care. The limbs take the most dreadful liberties with hair and clothing."
Mrs. Comstock opened her lips, looked at Elnora and closed them. In her heart she was pleased that the girl was so interested in her work that she had forgotten Philip Ammon's coming. But it did seem to her that such a pleasant young man should have been greeted by a girl in a fresh dress. "If she isn't disposed to primp at the coming of a man, heaven forbid that I should be the one to start her," thought Mrs. Comstock. So she did the primping in honour of the occasion. It consisted of a fresh gingham dress and hair coiled a little more loosely than usual.
Ammon came whistling down the walk between the cinnamon pinks, pansies, and strawberries. He carried several packages, while his face flushed with more colour than on the previous day.
"Only see what has happened to me!" cried Elnora, offering her letter.
"I'll wager I know!" answered Ammon. "Isn't it great! Every one in Onabasha is talking about it. At last there is something new under the sun. All of them are pleased. They think you'll make a big success. This will give an incentive to work. In a few days more I'll be myself again, and we'll overturn the fields and woods around here."
He went on to congratulate Mrs. Comstock.
"Aren't you proud of her though?" he asked. "You should hear what folks are saying! They say she created the necessity for the position, and every one seems to feel that it is a necessity. Now, if she succeeds, and she will, all of the other city schools will have such departments, and first thing you know she will have made the whole world just a little better. Let me rest a few seconds; my feet are acting up again. Then we will cook the compound and put it to cool."
He laughed as he sat breathing shortly.
"It doesn't seem possible that a fellow could lose his strength like this. My knees are actually trembling, but I'll be all right in a minute. Uncle Doc said I could come. I told him how you took care of me, and he said I would be safe here."
Then he began unwrapping packages and explaining to Mrs. Comstock how to cook the compound to attract the moths. He followed her Into the kitchen, kindled the fire, and stirred the preparation as he talked. While the mixture cooled, he and Elnora walked through the vegetable garden behind the cabin and strayed from there into the woods.
"What about college?" he asked. "Miss Brownlee said you were going."
"I had hoped to," replied Elnora, "but I had a streak of dreadful luck, so I'll have to wait until next year. If you won't speak of it I'll tell you."
Ammon promised, and Elnora recited the history of the Yellow Emperor. She was so interested in doing the Emperor justice she did not notice how many personalities went into the story. A few pertinent questions told Ammon the rest. He looked at the girl in wonder. In face and form she was as lovely as any one of her age and type he ever had seen. Her school work far surpassed that of most girls of her age he knew. She differed in other ways. This vast store of learning she had gathered from field and forest was a wealth of attraction no other girl possessed. Her frank, matter-of-fact manner was an inheritance from her mother, but there was something more. Once, as they talked, he thought "sympathy" was the word to describe it and again "comprehension." She seemed to possess a large sense of brotherhood for all human and animate creatures. She spoke to him as ff she had known him all her life. She talked to the grosbeak in exactly the same manner as she laid strawberries and potato bugs on the fence for his family. She did not swerve an inch from her way when a snake slid by her, while the squirrels came down from the trees and took corn from her fingers. She might as well have been a boy, so lacking was she in any touch of feminine coquetry toward him. He studied her wonderingly.
As they went along the path they reached a large slime-covered pool surrounded by decaying stumps and logs thickly covered with water hyacinths and blue flags. Ammon stopped.
"Is that the place?" he asked.
Elnora assented.
"The doctor told you?"
"Yes. It was tragic. Is that pool really bottomless?"
"So far as we ever have been able to discover."
Ammon stood looking at the water, while the log, sweet grasses, thickly sprinkled with blue flag bloom, over which wild bees clambered, swayed around his feet. Then he turned to the girl. She had worked hard. The same lavender dress she had worn the previous day clung to her in limp condition. But she was as evenly coloured and of as fine grain as a wild rose petal; her hair was really brown, but never was such hair touched with a redder glory, while her heavy arching brows added a look of strength to her big gray-blue eyes.
"And you were born here?"
He had not intended to voice that thought.
"Yes," she said looking into his eyes. "Just in time to prevent my mother from saving the life of my father. She came near never forgiving me."
"Ah, cruel!" cried Ammon.
"I find a great deal in life that is cruel, from our standpoints," said Elnora. "It takes the large wisdom of the Unfathomable, the philosophy of the Almighty, to bear some of it. But there is always right somewhere, and at last it seems to come."
"Will it come to you?" asked Ammon, who found himself suffering intensely.
"It has come," said the girl serenely. "It came a week ago. It came in fullest measure when my mother ceased to regret that I had been born. Now, work that I love has come—that should constitute happiness. A little farther along is my violet bed. I want you to see it."
As Philip Ammon followed he definitely settled upon the name of the unusual feature of Elnora's face. It should be called "experience." She had known hard experiences early in life. Suffering had been her familiar more than joy. He watched her with intense earnestness, his heart deeply moved. She led him into a swampy half-open space in the woods, stopped and stepped aside. Ammon uttered a cry of surprised delight.
A few decaying logs were scattered around, the grass grew in tufts long and fine. Blue flags waved, clusters of cowslips nodded gold heads, but the whole earth was purple with a thick blanket of violets nodding from stems a foot in length. Elnora knelt, and slipping her fingers through the leaves and grasses to the roots, gathered a few violets and gave them to Philip.
"Can your city greenhouses surpass them?" she asked.
Ammon sat on a log to examine the blooms.
"They are superb!" he said. "I never saw such length of stem or such rank leaves, while the flowers are the deepest blue, the truest violet I ever saw growing wild. They are coloured exactly like the eyes of the girl I am going to marry."
Elnora handed him several others to add to those he held.
"She must have wonderful eyes," she commented.
"No other blue eyes are quite so beautiful," he said. "In fact, she is altogether lovely."
"It is customary for a man to think the girl he is going to marry lovely. I wonder if I should find her so."
"You would," said Ammon. "No one ever fails to. She is tall as you, very slender, but perfectly rounded; you know about her eyes; her hair is black and wavy—while her complexion is clear and flushed with red."
Elnora knelt among the flowers as she looked at him.
"Why, she must be the most beautiful girl in the whole world!" she cried.
Ammon laughed.
"No, indeed!" he said. "She is not a particle better looking in her way than you are in yours. She is a type of dark beauty, but you are just as perfect. She is unusual in her combination of black hair and violet eyes, although every one thinks them black at a little distance. You are quite as unusual with your fair face, black brows and brown hair; indeed, I know many people who would prefer your bright head to her dark one. It's all a question of taste—and being engaged to the girl," he added.
"That would be likely to prejudice one," laughed Elnora.
"Edith has a birthday soon; if these last will you let me have a box of them to send her?"
"I will help gather and pack them for you, so they will carry nicely. Does she hunt moths with you?"
Back went Philip Ammon's head in a gale of laughter.
"No!" he cried. "She says they are 'creepy.' She would scream herself into a spasm if she were compelled to touch those young caterpillars I saw you handling yesterday."
"Why would she?" marvelled Elnora. "Haven't you told her that they are perfectly clean, helpless, and harmless as so much animate velvet?"
"No, I have not told her. She wouldn't care enough about caterpillars to listen."
"In what is she interested?"
"What interests Edith Carr? Let me think! First, I believe she takes pride in being just a little handsomer and better dressed than any girl of her set. She is interested in having a beautiful home, fine appointments about her, in being petted, praised, and the acknowledged leader of society. She likes to find new things which amuse her, and to always and in all circumstances have her own way about everything."
"Good gracious!" cried Elnora, staring at him. "But what does she do? How does she spend her time?"
"'Spend her time!'" repeated Ammon. "Well, she would call that a joke. Her days are never long enough. There is endless shopping, to find the pretty things; regular visits to the dressmakers, calls, parties, theatres, entertainments. She is always rushed. I never get to see half as much of her as I would like."
"But I mean work," persisted Elnora. "In what is she interested that is useful to the world?"
"Me!" cried Ammon promptly.
"I can understand that," laughed Elnora. "What I can't understand is how you can be in" She stopped short in confusion, but she saw that he had finished the sentence as she had intended. "I beg your pardon!" she cried. "I didn't mean to say that. But I cannot understand these people I hear about who live only for their own amusement. Perhaps it is very great; I'll never have a chance to know. To me, it seems the only pleasure in this world worth having is the joy we get out of living for those we love, and those we can help. I hope you are not angry with me."
Ammon sat silently looking far away, with deep thought in his eyes.
"You are angry," faltered Elnora.
His look came back to her as she knelt before him among the flowers and he gazed at her steadily.
"No doubt I should be," he said, "but the fact is I am not. I cannot understand a life purely for personal pleasure myself. But she is only a girl, and this is her playtime. When she is a woman in her own home, then she will be different, will she not?"
Elnora never resembled her mother so closely as when she answered that question.
"I would have to be well acquainted with her to know, but I should hope so. To make a real home for a tired business man is a very different kind of work from that required to be a leader of society. It demands different talent and education. Of course, she means to change, or she would not have promised to make a home for you. I suspect our dope is cool now, let's go try for some butterflies."
As they went back along the path together Elnora talked of many things, but Ammon answered absently. Evidently he was thinking of something else. But the moth bait recalled him and he was ready for work as they made their way back to the woods. He wanted to try the Limberlost, but Elnora was firm about keeping on home ground. She did not tell him that lights hung in the swamp would be a signal to call up a band of men whose presence she dreaded. So they set out, Ammon carrying the dope, Elnora the net, Billy and Mrs. Comstock following with cyanide boxes and lanterns.
First they tried for butterflies and captured several fine ones with little trouble. They also called swarms of ants, beetles, bees, and flies. When it grew dusk, Mrs. Comstock and Ammon went to prepare supper. Elnora and Billy remained until the butterflies went to bed. Then they lighted the lanterns, repainted the trees and followed the home trail.
"Do you 'spect you'll get just a lot of moths?" asked Billy, as he walked beside Elnora.
"I am sure I hardly know," said the girl. "This is a new way for me. Perhaps they will come to the lights, but few moths eat; and I have some doubt about those which the lights attract settling on the right trees. Maybe the smell of that dope will draw them. Between us, Billy, I think I like the old way best. If I can find a hidden moth, slip up and catch it unawares, or take it in full flight, it's my captive, and I can keep it until it dies naturally. But this way you seem to get it under false pretences, it has no chance, and it will probably ruin its wings struggling for freedom before morning."
"Well, any moth ought to be proud to be taken anyway, by you," said Billy. "Just look what you do! You can make everybody love them. People even quit hating caterpillars when they see you handle them and hear you tell all about them. You just must have some to show people how they are. It's not like killing things to see if you can, or because you want to eat them, the way most men kill birds. I think It is right for you to take enough for collections, to show city people, and to illustrate the Bird Woman's books. You go on and take them! The moths don't care. They're glad to have you. They like it!"
"Billy, I see your future," said Elnora. "We will educate you and send you up to Mr. Ammon to make a great lawyer. You'd beat the world as a special pleader. You actually make me feel that I am doing the moths a kindness to take them."
"And so you are!" cried Billy. "Why, just from what you have taught them, Uncle Wesley and Aunt Margaret never think of killing a caterpillar until they look whether it's the beautiful June moth kind or the horrid tent ones. That's what you can do. You just go ahead!"
"Billy, you are a jewel!" cried Elnora, throwing her arm across his shoulders as they came down the path.
"My, I was scared!" said Billy with a deep breath.
"Scared?" questioned Elnora.
"Yes, sir-ee! Aunt Margaret scared me. May I ask you a question?"
"Of course, you may!"
"Is that man going to be your beau?"
"Billy! No! What made you think such a thing?"
"Aunt Margaret said likely he would fall in love with you, and you wouldn't want me around any more. Oh, but I was scared! It isn't so, is it?"
"Indeed, no!"
"I am your beau, ain't I?"
"Surely you are!" said Elnora, tightening her arm.
"I do hope Aunt Kate has ginger cookies," said Billy with a little skip of delight.