All you need in a Thanksgiving story: a boy, a new friend, a desire, and a selfless resolution. Enjoy!This was before the day of town waterworks in Forestville. Most folks relied for water upon a cistern in the back yard, or a well lined with moss-covered stone. Dick Hart's father, when he built their new home, looked ahead a few years, however, and saw that town water would come; and so the house was piped for that day. In the meantime, the water was to come from a lead-lined tank in the attic, which supplied the faucets by gravity: and to fill this tank there was a pump in the kitchen.
Dick hated that pump the first time he saw it. It stood higher than he did. with a great long iron handle like a cudgel; and it was painted red and black, so that it had a sinister and wicked air about it. Dick hated the pump still more when they were in the new house; for it devolved upon him to keep the tank filled.
"That 's your job, Dick," his father told him. "I leave it to you to look out for it."
Dick looked dubiously from the pump to his father. "All right, Dad," he agreed. "Here goes. I 'll fill it up for a starter, anyway."
Even then he had a pretty good idea that it would be quite a job to fill that tank; and it was. That first day he pumped endlessly, first pulling upward the heavy iron handle, and then pushing it down with all his strength. At first it came easily, but after ten minutes or so it was moving more and more stiffly, and there was a blister on Dick's palm. He wrapped a handkerchief around it to ease the smart, and worked on.
A little pipe, opening into the sink, served as telltale. When the tank in the attic was filled, water would trickle from this pipe. Dick stuck to it till the first trickle came, but he was so stiff and sore that night that even his fatigue could not make him sleep. And he dreamed about that red-and-black pump.
In later days he discovered that when the tank in the attic was empty, it required just fifteen hundred strokes to fill it. Thereafter he counted them laboriously, and when the goal was nearly reached, watched the telltale pipe eagerly for the first drops of water. He became so expert that his ear could catch the faint puff of air from the little pipe that told him the water had begun its trickling progress down from the attic, and that meant his task was done.
Dick's mother did most of her own housework: but her washing was done by a woman who "came in by the day." This woman's name was Attson—Mrs. Attson. She was a tall, gaunt woman, with a face that reminded Dick of Abraham Lincoln's, so raw-boned it was. and so lined with the burdens she had borne. Her husband was dead. Dick knew; and she had two children, little girls. each as thin and gaunt as their mother. To support them she did washing, scrubbing, and kindred odd jobs, toiling from dawn to dark at her own home or at the houses of those for whom she worked.
Dick did not like her the first time he saw her. She was too ugly, somehow. There was a fierce repulsion in him at her ugliness. He had an instinctive sense that a woman should be graceful, and smooth of contour, and agreeable to the eye, as was his mother. But as he grew to know the washerwoman better, he was not so sure that she was ugly, after all. There was something about her face—well, to watch it. and to see how it changed when she smiled, and to notice the kindly light in her tired eyes,—it sort of made a fellow choke up, somehow.
Dick saw a good deal of her. too, for that infernal pump kept him in the kitchen no inconsiderable part of the day. He used to toil and toil at that red-and-black handle, while Mrs. Attson bent above the wash-tubs, her shoulders moving up and down, while she scrubbed, as regularly as the walking-beam on a river steamer. Dick wondered how she could keep going so steadily. She never seemed to tire, while he himself found his back aching and his sides nigh splitting with grinding pain after he had wrestled with that pump for a while.
One day—a hot day, it was. in late September—Dick counted from one stroke up to five hundred, knew his task was but a third done, and flung back from the pump and dropped in a chair, panting and hot. He glared at that grim iron thing, and suddenly saw red with rage. He threw himself at it and whipped the handle up and down like mad for a moment. Mrs. Attson looked up from her tubs, and wiped her sudsy hands on her apron.
"That don't do no good, Dickie," she said gently.
Her voice quieted him. somehow, and he dropped the pump-handle and sat down again.
"I know it," he said sullenly. "The old thing kicks like a steer if you work it fast, and not so much water goes up, either. I 've counted, and I know."
"Lemme try it a spell," she said; and stepping across to the pump she laid hold of the handle. Dick flushed and jumped to his feet and pushed in front of her.
"No, no!" he protested, ashamed. "It— it ain 't work for a woman."
She chuckled softly, her grim old face wrinkling comfortably. "Shucks, Dickie!" she said. "It hai n't work for me, it 's play—changin' from the tubs fer a spell."
She thrust him aside, and he submitted. Then Mrs. Attson, with the same tireless motion of her shoulder with which she bent above her tubs, manipulated the pump-handle for a while. Dick was dead tired. He just sat there and watched, and automatically he counted the strokes. Suddenly he realized that she had passed the five-hundred mark. At that he leaped up again.
"Here!" he said gruffly, gratitude chocking him. "I guess you 've done enough of that. I can do the rest."
She relinquished the pump-handle to him. "It does hit you in the back some, do n't it?" she agreed.
Dick finished filling the tank, and, when it was done, searched guiltily around till he found the coal-bucket, which he usually left Mrs. Attson to fill for herself. He filled it for her, without ostentation, and left it behind the stove.
And thereafter a sort of partnership was struck up between the two. On the day when Mrs. Attson was at the house, Dick took particular pains to see that the coal and other things she needed were ready to her hand; and she, in her turn, helped him out when he was tired at the pump. And so, without much being said on either side, Dick got better acquainted with the gaunt, tired, hard-working woman every day.
Dick's elder brother had gone away to college the year before—to a college in the New Hampshire hills. When he came home in the summer for the long vacation, he brought with him, among others of his various belongings, a pair of snow-shoes. Dick had read of such things, but he had never seen them. Forestville had an occasional snow of a foot or so, but it never stayed long, and there was little use for snow-shoes thereabouts. Nevertheless, when Dick saw them, he wanted a pair. He kept the ambition to himself, for the older folks would no doubt laugh at such a desire.
"I could use them sometimes," he told himself. "And anyway, when I got to college, I 'd have them all ready. Or I might go to Canada sometime—or something."
He asked his brother, casually, what they cost, and was told they could be purchased for six dollars—a good pair, long and narrow, on the woods model, built to glide easily through thick brush, where the broader, more familiar shape would knock against every tree.
"I 'm going to get them," Dick resolved, and said to his brother, "If I send you the money, will you get me a pair?"
"What use have you got for snow-shoes?" his brother asked.
"We-ell, I just want some," Dick protested, flushing. "I guess I can hang 'em on the wall of my room till I go to college, can 't I?"
His brother chuckled. "Sure! I 'll get you a pair, all right, if you 'll send the money. But where are you going to raise it?"
"Oh, I 'll get it!" Dick promised.
And thereupon his ambition took more definite form, and he set about the task of amassing a fortune—six dollars.
It seems comparatively little. But to a boy of Dick 's age it is wealth. dick had no particular earning capacity. He could cut lawns, and carry coal, and empty ashes, and that was about all. He began experiments, and found a surprising number of folks willing to let him cut their grass "for fifteen cents."
Dick got his father 's permission to borrow the lawn-mower, and began his business career. He tackled a little lawn first, and finished the job, as he thought, before demanding payment. But his employer was a sharp-eyed little old lady, who came out to her veranda and pointed accusingly to the rough edges of the grass around her flower-beds and along her walks.
"You must trim that up," she told him. "The job isn 't finished till you do."
Dick had forgotten that part of the task. he hurried home to get a sickle and set to work. Using a sickle had seemed easy enough when others did it, but Dick found it far from that. The blade seemed to slide through the grass without making the slightest impression, and more than once it darted around alarmingly near his ankles. He was reduced, at length, to picking the rough grass off with his fingers, or to holding a bunch with his hand while he sawed it loose with the sickle.
He got the job done at last. It took two of his afternoons after school, and, by that time, half of his other prospective customers had found someone else to do the work for them. He asked his first client if he should come again the following week.
"Oh, no," she told him, "it 's so late in the fall that I 'm sure it won't need cutting again this year."
Dick pocketed his fifteen cents gloomily. He had earned his money, but his occupation was gone. Within the week he had cut two more lawns. One was terraced, and the strain of running the lawn-mower along the slanting surface of the terraces was all but too much for him. He literally chewed that grass off. It took him all Saturday morning, and when it was done, the man who owned the lawn came out and looked sternly at the finished product and said:
"Young man, that is n't a good clean job! I don't want to refuse you your money, but it will be a lesson to you to do things properly. I can't pay you unless you go over the lawn again."
Dick looked at those terraces. "We-ell," he said doubtfully, "I— guess I 'd rather let the fifteen cents go."
That cured Dick of the lawn business. He realized there was no money in it, and set about to find new sources of revenue. He found them: but in them all, he discovered, money came hard. He began to have a new respect for money. Heretofore, he had felt somewhat injured at his father's occasional refusal of a request for a coin. Now he began to wonder whether his father had to work as hard as this for the money he earned. It gave him a new outlook on many things.
His mother discovered Dick's new desire for income, and, watching him for a few days, saw that it persisted. She decided to encourage it.
"Dick," she said one day. "I think you ought to have a chance to earn money regularly, don't you ?"
Dick looked at her in surprise. His mother had a curious habit, it seemed, of reading his heart and his thoughts, "Uh-huh," he said doubtfully. "Yes, I think so."
"Well, I 'll tell you," she suggested. "I believe I will put you on a salary."
"Salary?" he repeated.
"Yes, salary. I think I 'll pay you twenty-five cents a week for your chores around the house, and, say, a cent a hundred strokes for the pumping you do."
She watched him, and Dick's eyes grew glassy with the mental effort of computation; then his face lighted eagerly.
"All right," he said soberly. "I—guess that 'd be fine."
The tank in the attic needed to be filled about three times a week. That meant about forty-five hundred strokes—forty-five cents a week besides the quarter for chores. Seventy cents a week! Riches! He went to his room and laboriously added up. He would have the six dollars, he decided, by the third week in November—by Thanksgiving!
"Golly!" he thought. "And I 'll-bet there 'll come a big snow then, too. There 's pretty near always snow Thanksgiving."
A little later his mother heard the pump in the kitchen working desperately, and she smiled to herself. That night Dick, of his own accord. took a bath. Next night he did the same. She smiled again and told Dick's father what she had done.
"The boy 's making a market for his own work: he 's using up the water so the tank will have to be filled oftener," she explained.
"Hope it 'll last!" his father retorted.
Thanksgiving that year came on the twenty-fourth of November. On the seventeenth Dick
counted his money. He had five dollars and thirty cents. His goal, those snow-shoes, was in sight!
On the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Dick's mother told his father, "I 've ordered our turkey again this year from Mr. Aiken out in the country."
"Good!" his father agreed. "He sent us a fine fat one last year."
"And I think." Mrs. Hart added, "that we 're going to have the finest pumpkin pie you ever saw. Mr. Aiken says he has a big yellow pumpkin all picked out for us."
Dick's mouth fairly watered. Next morning Mrs. Attson came to do the washing, as usual. She and Dick were the best of friends now, though Dick, as he had begun to earn wages by his efforts, had the conscience to do his own pumping. Dick toiled at the pump while she toiled above the tubs. He watched her over his shoulder, and it seemed that she was even more gaunt than she had been in the summer. She looked worried, too. he thought.
By and by he was sure of it, for she began to tell him what it was that was worrying her. One of her daughters was sick, "just sort of pindling away," Mrs. Attson said. Did n't seem to feel right, no matter what happened; had n't any appetite hardly at all. Did n't he think even little girls ought to have good appetites for their "vittles"?
Dick did. "I don't see how she can enjoy Thanksgiving without a good appetite," he said, chuckling to himself at thought of the good things his mother was planning.
Mrs. Attson smiled also. "I 'm plannin' a right nice Thanksgiving dinner for her, too," she declared. "If it don't make her hungry, I don't know what will."
Dick labored away at the pump.
"What are you going to have?" he asked.
Mrs. Attson beamed proudly. "Why," she said. "I 'm plannin' a right nice dinner, even if we do have to piece out afterwards for a spell." She soused one of Dick's shirts in the soapy water, and scrubbed it up and down, and soused it again. "I 'm going to git a nice piece of meat, not chuck like we has Sundays sometimes, but a right nice piece. Rump steak, maybe. And she 's going to have the best part of it. And some rice and potatoes—sweet potatoes fried in sugar the way she likes 'em. And I 'm going to make some apple fritters from some apples I got, too."
Dick pumped his hardest, but he could n't look at Mrs. Attson. Her voice was so proud! And Dick was horrified. He had supposed every one had turkey for Thanksgiving. He did n't know there was such a thing as Thanksgiving without turkey. Why, it would n't be Thanksgiving without turkey, that 's all!
He pumped harder than ever; and then Mrs. Attson asked, as proudly as before, "Don't you think that ought to wake up her appetite a lot?"
"I—sure do," Dick choked hurriedly. Then her growled something at himself under his breath. What the deuce was he crying for, anyhow? Guess it must be the steam in this kitchen—or something.
He decided not to finish his pumping that day. He turned around without a word and scurried past Mrs. Attson and up to his room. After a little while he heard the pump going steadily. She was filling the tank for him! He got up and started downstairs to stop her—but he could not face her. She was so proud of that Thanksgiving she had planned. Rump steak!
"Mother, is—rump steak cheap?" he asked that night.
"Why, yes, dear," his mother answered. "Why in the world–"
But she did not pursue the question.
Before he went to bed, Dick counted his money again. Somehow he felt guilty at having so much.
Tuesday morning, when he woke up, it was snowing. It snowed all day. There were ten inches of snow on the ground when Dick's father came home that night. Dick looked out of his window before he went to bed. It had stopped snowing. But before the dawn, the flakes were falling again, a thin, driving snow, the kind that keeps coming.
Dick had had an uncomfortable Tuesday; he had done some hard thinking Tuesday night; and Wednesday morning he got out his money—he kept it in a drawer in his bureau—and counted it again. Then he did some more thinking, then put the money away again and thrust the drawer shut with extra emphasis. And forthwith he seemed to see the tall, gaunt figure of a woman with a face curiously like that of Lincoln, and she was laboring with something, her shoulders rising and falling. She was working the red-and-black handle of a red-and-black pump–
Then Dick could see nothing, for the mistiness of his eyes. But he could hear a cracked, tired voice, filled with infinite pride, saving. "Rump steak, maybe, and some rice and potatoes."
"Oh—oh—oh, doggone it!" Dick exclaimed savagely; and he jerked open that drawer and picked up his money, coin by coin.
"What are you buying a turkey for?" Mr. Hoiman, the fat grocer, asked quizzically when Dick made his purchase.
"Oh—I 'm just getting one—for somebody," Dick explained lamely. "And—I want some cranberries, too. And a pumpkin. A big one."
Mrs. Attson lived in a ramshackle little house, unpainted, with a sway-backed roof, down near the railroad tracks. Dick had hauled the washing down there once or twice when his mother did not wish the work done at their home. He trudged down that way through the deep snow in the early dusk of that Wednesday afternoon. with a heavily loaded basket on his arm. It had been snowing all day. There must be a foot and a half or two feet of snow on the ground, a record-breaker for Forestville.
Dick did n't mind—so much. "I prob'ly could n't walk on them if I had 'em," he said to himself.
Nobody saw him, he felt sure. It was almost dark. There was a light in the window of Mrs. Attson's house, so he knew some one was at home. He laid the basket gently in the deep snow by the door, and then slipped out to the street, where, from behind a telephone-pole, he threw snowballs at the door till he caught the click of the latch. Some one was going to open it.
Then he put down his head and fled.
His father had not come home when he arrived, but his mother was reading a letter from the older brother at college. "Jim says they 're having snow up there, too." she said. "He 's been snow-shoeing. And Dick—he says you said something about buying some snow-shoes. Did you?"
Dick flushed painfully. "Why—yes 'm," he confessed.
She looked at him thoughtfully. "Dickie," she exclaimed suddenly, "was that why you 've been working so hard, and saving your money? I knew you were n't spending any, and I wondered!"
"Uh-huh," Dick admitted, gulping hard.
"That 's fine, boy!" she told him proudly. "How much have you saved? Perhaps I can make up what you need."
Dick hesitated and kicked at a chair and threw his hat out into the hall. "I—I—it 's gone!" he said gruffly.
"Gone!—what?" she asked, puzzled.
"The money," he said.
"But—but—where?"
Dick suddenly flared at her. "If I knowed where it was would n't I go get it?" he demanded. And then, quite suddenly, he knew he was going to blubber, and so he turned and stumbled at a run up the stairs to his room.
His mother was still staring out into the hall when his father came home. She rose to help Mr. Hart off with his coat.
"Oh, by the way," said that gentleman, when their greetings were over, "Holman told me Dick bought a turkey and all the fixings there today. Why was that? Did n't Aiken's bird come?"
"Why—yes!" said Mrs. Hart, in a puzzled tone. "I don't know what it was for."
"Is he here?" Mr. Hart asked; then called: "Hey! Dick!"
Dick opened his door upstairs. "What?" he growled.
"Who was it you were buying a turkey for, Dick?" his father asked.
Mr. and Mrs. Hart looked up to the darkened upper hall, but Dick did not appear at the banisters. Presently—the pause was curious—the boy answered slowly:
"Oh—I was just doing an errand for Mrs. Thompson. She forgot to do hers—till to-day—to do her shopping."
They heard his door close.
"That sounds funny!" Mr. Hart remarked after a minute. "Suppose you call up Mrs. Thompson and ask her about it."
Dick's mother smiled and stepped to the telephone.
She had just finished talking to Mrs. Thompson when the bell rang again. She answered, and spoke softly for a moment before she rejoined her husband in the living-room. There were happy tears in her eyes.
"Mrs. Attson just called up," she said gently. "She wanted to thank us. Some one left a Thanksgiving basket at their door to-day—tonight. Mrs. Hughes, across the road, saw the boy. It was Dickie. Mrs. Attson thought we had sent him with it."
Mr. Hart's eyes widened ludicrously. "Great fishes!" he cried. "But—where did that boy get the money?"
Mrs. Hart told him, then, of the little hoard Dick said was "gone."
"The—darned little scamp!" Mr. Hart exclaimed. "Telling you a lie like that. Huh!"
"Not exactly," declared Mrs. Hart. "And he really did do a small errand at Holman's for Mrs. Thompson, she told me."
Thereafter they sat for a little space, staring into the fire. And then Mr. Hart rose suddenly and went the telephone in the hall. "Telegraph office," he directed the operator.
When Dick came down to supper, his parents smiled at him knowingly. He looked—and felt—sheepish; and he felt more so when, without preamble, his father said, in what he evidently intended to be an offhand manner:
"By the way, Dick—thought you might want to have some fun with this snow. So I telegraphed to Chicago just now. They 're to send the best pair of snow-shoes in town—by express. Be here by Saturday."
Dick looked at his father, and then he looked at his mother. Mr. Hart coughed gruffly. His mother smiled happily through her tears. Dick choked, and grinned; his eyes were glowing—and wet.
"Huh—thanks, Dad!" he said.
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