“Miss Keith West’s dog, and in trouble, I take it,” was his opening remark. “I’m goin’ straight past her house, and I’ll fetch him up if you like and relieve your mind, as you seem partial to animals.”
“Could you take me, too?” asked Brooke, returning his smile, “that is, if I shall not make your load too heavy, for though Tatters seems to know you” (Tatters had given the coolest sort of tail wag at the sound of the man’s voice), “I’m afraid he will not go without me.”
“So you are travelling uphill too—climb right in, though I reckon you’ll hev to set on this box here. Do you happen to be one uv Miss Keith’s folks that owns the farm and wuz comin’ to live there when she goes to Boston? Though, as I says to my wife (she’s _Mrs. Banks, Homemade Pies_, and I’m Mr. Banks that peddles ’em, besides raisin’ and pickin’ the berries and apples and pumpkins fer their innards, along with a considerable lot of garden sass), I says, ‘Keith’ll never make up her mind to go; the city isn’t all it’s cracked up to be when onct you’re used to plenty o’ room to move and free empty air.’ What air there is in big cities is so chuck full o’ noise and smell and one thing and another, you wouldn’t know it. Why, it’s worse than the Methody church down in the holler, when they had a revival meetin’ on a summer night, and felt called to close the winders on account of gnats.
“Yes, I lived in N’ York six months,—it’ll be nigh five years ago. You see, the farm didn’t pay as it uster when I raised six children on it and we was all satisfied. Everything doin’ got to be more wholesale and knocked out us small fry. Next, for a spell, I took to the railroad; got a job through one of the big bugs down ter Stonebridge, and after a time got ter be conductor on the through express freight, sleepin’ home every other night. Well, it gave me a chance to see life, I’m glad to say, for which I’d allus hankered, but it was a nervous job, and kep’ me too far above the ground, which was my born station.
“Then the boys coaxed ma and me to go to N’ York, she to keep a flat for ’em,—I suppose maybe you’ve seen one o’ them contrary sort of outfits, a floor divided up small like a parlour box car for racing stock, well enough looking till you close the doors, then everybody shook up together until you’re sick o’ the sight and smell o’ your very own. All of God’s sunlight you get is what’s dribbled in down a flue, like the chute of a feed bin, and not a scrap o’ grass to bleach clothes on, only to hang ’em out in a little narrer place to sweat on a line like bacon in a smoke-house. Mother withered so that summer I was afeared she’d let go the tree before autumn, like a windfall apple; and as for the ‘genteel work for my old age’ the boys had got me—genteel be _damned_! I beg your pardon, Miss—?”