The Daughter of Anderson Crow
"Certainly you don't. You never do. I've got to do all the thinkin' fer
this fambly. Next year she's twenty-one years old an' her own boss,
ain't she? I ain't her guardeen after that, am I? What happens then, I'd
like to know."
"You jest have to settle with the court, pay over to her what belongs to
her and keep the thousand every spring jest the same. Her people,
whoever they be, are payin' you fer keepin' her an' not her fer stayin'
here. 'Tain't likely she'll want to leave a good home like this 'un, is
it? Don't worry till the time comes, Anderson."
"That's jest the point. She's lived in New York an' she's got used to
it. She's got fine idees; even her clothes seem to fit different. Now,
do you s'pose that fine-lookin' girl with all her New York trimmin's 's
goin' to hang 'round a fool little town like this? Not much! She's goin'
to dig out o' here as soon's she gits a chance; an' she's goin' to live
right where her heart tells her she belongs--in the metropolees of New
York. She don't belong in no jim-crow town like this. Doggone, Eva, I
hate to see 'er go!"
There was such a wail of bitterness in the old constable's remark that
Mrs. Crow felt the tears start to her own eyes. It was the girl they
both wanted, after all--not the money. Rosalie, coming home with her
party some time afterward, found the old couple still seated on the
porch. The young people could not conceal their surprise.
"Counting the stars, pop?" asked Edna Crow.
"He's waiting for the eclipse," bawled noisy Ed Higgins, the grocer's
clerk. "It's due next winter. H'are you, Anderson?"
"How's that?" was Anderson's rebuke.
"I mean Mr. Crow," corrected Ed, with a nervous glance at Rosalie, who
had been his companion for the evening.
"Oh, I'm jest so-so," remarked Anderson, mollified. "How was the party?"
"It wasn't a party, Daddy Crow," laughed Rosalie, seating herself in
front of him on the porch rail. "It was an experience meeting. Alf
Reesling has reformed again. He told us all about his last attack of
delirium tremens."
"You don't say so! Well, sir, I never thought Alf could find the time to
reform ag'in. He's too busy gittin' tight," mused Anderson. "But I guess
reformin' c'n git to be as much a habit as anythin' else."
"I think he was a little woozy to-night," ventured 'Rast Little.
"A little what?"
"Drunk," explained 'Rast, without wasting words. 'Rast had acquired the
synonym at the business men's carnival in Boggs City the preceding fall.
Sometimes he substituted the words "pie-eyed," "skeed," "lit up," etc.,
just to show his worldliness.
After the young men had departed and the Crow girls had gone upstairs
with their mother Rosalie slipped out on the porch and sat herself down
upon the knee of her disconsolate guardian.
"You are worried about something, Daddy Crow," she said gently. "Now,
speak up, sir. What is it?"
"It's time you were in bed," scolded Anderson, pulling his whiskers
nervously.
"Oh, I'm young, daddy. I don't need sleep. But you never have been up as
late as this since I've known you."
"I was up later'n this the time you had the whoopin'-cough, all right."
"What's troubling you, daddy?"
"Oh, nothin'--nothin' at all. Doggone, cain't a man set out on his own
porch 'thout--"
"Forgive me, daddy. Shall I go away and leave you?"
"Gosh a'mighty, no!" he gasped. "That's what's worryin' me--oh, you
didn't mean forever. You jest meant to-night? Geminy crickets, you did
give me a skeer!" He sank back with a great sigh of relief.
"Why, I never expect to leave you forever," she cried, caressing his
scanty hair. "You couldn't drive me away. This is home, and you've been
too good to me all these years. I may want to travel after a while, but
I'll always come back to you, Daddy Crow."
"I'm--I'm mighty glad to hear ye say that, Rosie. Ye see--ye see, me an'
your ma kinder learned to love you, an'--an--"
"Why, Daddy Crow, you silly old goose! You're almost crying!"
"What's that? Now, don't talk like that to me, you little
whipper-snapper, er you go to bed in a hurry. I never cried in my life,"
growled Anderson in a great bluster.
"Well, then, let's talk about something else--me, for instance. Do you
know, Daddy Crow, that I'm too strong to live an idle life. There is no
reason why I shouldn't have an occupation. I want to work--accomplish
something."
Anderson was silent a long time collecting his nerves. "You wouldn't
keer to be a female detective, would you?" he asked drily.
CHAPTER X
Rosalie Has Plans of Her Own
"Do be serious, daddy. I want to do something worth while. I could teach
school or--"
"Not much! You ain't cut out fer that job. Don't you know that ever'body
hates school-teachers when they're growed up? Jerusalem, how I still
hate old Rachel Kidwell! An' yet she's bin dead nigh onto thirty years.
She was my first teacher. You wasn't born to be hated by all the boys in
the district. I don't see what put the idee of work inter your head You
got 'bout eight thousand dollars in the bank an'--"
"But I insist that the money is yours, daddy. My fairy godmother paid it
to you for keeping, clothing, and educating me. It is not mine."
"You talk like I was a boardin' school instead o' bein' your guardeen.
No, siree; it's your money, an' that ends it. You git it when you're
twenty-one."
"We'll see, daddy," she replied, a stubborn light in her dark eyes. "But
I want to learn to do something worth while. If I had a million it would
be just the same."
"You'll have something to do when you git married," observed he sharply.
"Nonsense!"
"I s'pose you're goin' to say you never expect to git married. They all
say it--an' then take the first feller 'at comes along."
"I didn't take the first, or the second, or the third, or the--"
"Hold on! Gosh a'mighty, have you had that many? Well, why don't you go
into the matrimonial agent's business? That's an occupation."
"Oh, none of them was serious, daddy," she said naïvely.
"You could have all of the men in the county!" he declared proudly.
"Only," he added quickly, "it wouldn't seem jest right an' proper."
"There was a girl at Miss Brown's a year ago who had loads of money, and
yet she declared she was going to have an occupation. Nobody knew much
about her or why she left school suddenly in the middle of a term. I
liked her, for she was very nice to me when I first went there, a
stranger. Mr. Reddon--you've heard me speak of him--was devoted to her,
and I'm sure she liked him. It was only yesterday I heard from her. She
is going to teach school in this township next winter."
"An' she's got money?"
"I am sure she had it in those days. It's the strangest thing in the
world that she should be coming here to teach school in No. 5.
Congressman Ritchey secured the appointment for her, she says. The
township trustee--whatever his name is--for a long time insisted that he
must appoint a teacher from Tinkletown and not an outsider. I am glad
she is coming here because--well, daddy, because she is like the girls
I knew in the city. She has asked me to look up a boarding place for
next winter. Do you know of any one, daddy, who could let her have a
nice room?"
"I'll bet my ears you'd like to have your ma take her in right here. But
I don't see how it c'n be done, Rosie-posie. There's so derned many of
us now, an'--"
"Oh, I didn't mean that, daddy. She couldn't come here. But don't you
think Mrs. Jim Holabird would take her in for the winter?"
"P'raps. She's a widder. She might let her have Jim's room now that
there's a vacancy. You might go over an' ast her about it to-morrer.
It's a good thing she's a friend of yourn, Rosalie, because if she
wasn't I'd have to fight her app'intment."
"Why, daddy!" reproachfully.
"Well, she's a foreigner, an' I don't think it's right to give her a job
when we've got so many home products that want the place an' who look
unpopular enough to fill the bill. I'm fer home industry every time, an'
'specially as this girl don't appear to need the place. I don't see what
business Congressman Ritchey has foolin' with our school system anyhow.
He'd better be reducin' the tariff er increasin' the pensions down to
Washington."
"I quite agree with you, Daddy Crow," said Rosalie with a diplomacy that
always won for her. She knew precisely how to handle her guardian, and
that was why she won where his own daughters failed. "And now,
good-night, daddy. Go to bed and don't worry about me. You'll have me
on your hands much longer than you think or want. What time is it?"
Anderson patted her head reflectively as he solemnly drew his huge
silver time-piece from an unlocated pocket. He held it out into the
bright moonlight.
"Geminy crickets!" he exclaimed. "It's forty-nine minutes to twelve!"
Anderson Crow's policy was to always look at things through the small
end of the telescope.
The slow, hot summer wore away, and to Rosalie it was the longest that
she ever had experienced. She was tired of the ceaseless twaddle of
Tinkletown, its flow of "missions," "sociables," "buggy-horses," "George
Rawlin's new dress-suit," "harvesting," and "politics"--for even the
children talked politics. Nor did the assiduous attentions of the
village young men possess the power to shorten the days for her--and
they certainly lengthened the nights. She liked them because they were
her friends from the beginning--and Rosalie was not a snob. Not for the
world would she have hurt the feelings of one poor, humble, adoring soul
in Tinkletown; and while her smile was none the less sweet, her laugh
none the less joyous, in her heart there was the hidden longing that
smiled only in dreams. She longed for the day that was to bring Elsie
Banks to live with Mrs. Holabird, for with her would come a breath of
the world she had known for two years, and which she had learned to love
so well.
In three months seven men had asked her to marry them. Of the seven, one
only had the means or the prospect of means to support her. He was a
grass-widower with five grown children. Anderson took occasion to warn
her against widowers.
"Why," he said, "they're jest like widders. You know Dave Smith that
runs the tavern down street, don't you? Well, doggone ef he didn't turn
in an' marry a widder with seven childern an' a husband, an' he's led a
dog's life ever sence."
"Seven children and a husband? Daddy Crow!"
"Yep. Her derned husband wouldn't stay divorced when he found out Dave
could support a fambly as big as that. He figgered it would be jest as
easy to take keer of eight as seven, so he perlitely attached hisself to
Dave's kitchen an' started in to eat hisself to death. Dave was goin' to
have his wife apply fer another divorce an' leave the name blank, so's
he could put in either husband ef it came to a pinch, but I coaxed him
out of it. He finally got rid of the feller by askin' him one day to
sweep out the office. He could eat all right, but it wasn't natural fer
him to work, so he skipped out. Next I heerd of him he had married a
widder who was gittin' a pension because her first husband fit fer his
country. The Government shet off the pension jest as soon as she got
married ag'in, and then that blamed cuss took in washin' fer her. He
stayed away from home on wash-days, but as every day was wash-day with
her, he didn't see her by daylight fer three years. She died, an' now
he's back at Dave's ag'in. He calls Dave his husband-in-law."
It required all of Anderson's social and official diplomacy to forestall
an indignation meeting when it was announced that a stranger, Miss
Banks, had been selected to teach school No. 5. There was some talk of
mobbing the township trustee and Board of County Commissioners, but
Anderson secured the names of the more virulent talkers and threatened