She was dashing round at such a rate that she even failed to notice his silent entrance. He picked up the milk-buckets and scurried away to the barn, well pleased at his escape, but actively curious as to the sort of frolic to which Galena was bound that day.
“There’s no one dead, so it can’t be a funeral,” he muttered, as he tied the white cow’s leg to a post to prevent her kicking while he milked. “It isn’t a wedding either, or else I should have been bound to hear about it. Her aunt has gone to Fredericton, so she ain’t going there.”
He was so absorbed in his meditations that he did not notice that the rope had come unfastened, until the cow by an adroit movement knocked him sprawling. He was used to her pranks by this time, and he contrived to keep the bucket from being kicked over, so his own upset did not count; and as he always pretended to himself that the white cow was a playful creature, instead of, as was actually the case, a bad-tempered animal, his feelings were not ruffled by his being rolled over and having his head thumped against a post.
When he carried the milk-buckets in to the little chamber that was scooped out from the side of the hill, he heard signs of unusual bustle in the kitchen, and poking his head cautiously round the post of the door, he was amazed to see a big baking in progress.
“Is that you, Reggie Furness?” called the voice of Miss Galena, who was darting here and there, apparently trying to do three things at once. “Step lively, will you, and help me here. I want eggs whisked, and currants washed, sugar rolled, and a dozen things done all nearly at once. You can’t have a sitting-down breakfast this morning. But none of us have had that. You will have to be content to feed as you run about.”
“I don’t care how I have my breakfast as long as I do have one,” said Reggie, who had got hold of the whisker, and was turning it at a great rate, while the eggs churned into yellow foam under his active exertions.
Galena laughed at the broadness of the hint, but she had not had six brothers without knowing that boys were the hungriest creatures under the sun; so she brought him a great wedge of pumpkin pie, just to keep him from starving, and promised him some hot cookies as soon as they were out of the oven. The pie was fragrant with spice and black with currants. Reggie was in clover for once in his life. Breakfast, which was part of his wage, consisted in a usual way of buckwheat or oatmeal porridge drowned out with skim milk. There was no porridge pot visible this morning, so plainly there was something very unusual on hand.
“Please, are you going to be married to-day?” he asked, his eyes fairly bulging with curiosity. The ham boiler was on the stove, and it was beginning to bubble, while delicious odours filled the kitchen and made their way out through the open door. His question was only a wild hazard. He had never heard that Miss Galena had any views with regard to matrimony, but he guessed that in any case it would please her to be asked, and so he would be the more likely to find out what he wanted to know so badly. He was through with the whisking by now, and Miss Galena had set him rolling sugar. He would not have taken any, of course, being irreproachably honest so far as he understood what honesty meant; but he saw no harm in continually licking his fingers as he drew the sugar in a lump for the rolling-pin. It was good! He would have enjoyed rolling sugar all day long.
Galena burst into a great laugh of derision, but she was not ill-pleased at the suggestion.
“Dear me, no; I am not going to be married yet, though you never can tell what may happen.” She lifted her head and tried to look sprightly, but she was so worn with hard work and much dyspepsia that the attempt was rather a failure.
Reggie looked disappointed. If the festivity were not a wedding or a funeral, he did not see what it could be. No church functions were in progress this month, for the parson was away on holiday, and it would not have been considered in good taste to have a church frolic in his absence.
Galena’s eyes sparkled. She was aching for someone to talk things over with. The men were always in a hurry when they came in from the field, and there was not another woman within half a mile of the place. She hesitated, and was lost.
“We are going to have a great frolic to-night; it was only decided late last night, that is why I am so driven with cooking this morning. We are going to have a big surprise party at old Wrack Peveril’s; you know where he lives—over the Ridge at Ripple. They say he is a most fearfully disagreeable old man. He lives quite alone, and has done so for more years than you have been alive. I have heard he made a vow that no woman should enter his house, on account of his only daughter having run away from him to get married. Don’t you expect it will make him sit up when all the lot of us go walking in?”
“Suppose he won’t let you inside the door?” Reggie stared at her with bulging eyes. He was thinking of what had happened at his own poor home two winters before, when he and Mose had gone to bed, and had been hounded out of it by a surprise party that threatened to pull the shingles off the roof if they were not admitted. Mose had been furious at the invasion, for the cupboard was empty, and the stark poverty of the home had been all laid bare to the laughing, careless crowd who had taken the place by storm.
“Suppose he can’t keep us out!” she mocked. “I just love surprise parties when there is a spice of mischief in them. When we go to parson’s and take more food than we could eat in a month, and leave it all behind for him and Mrs. White, it is most as tame as going to church on Sunday, or having a missionary meeting and giving money to convert the heathen; but when we go to surprise someone who does not want to see us, why, that is where the fun begins.”
Reggie nodded in token of understanding, but he was spared the necessity of reply by the entrance of Nathan Gittins, the eldest brother of Galena, who ran the farm and the saw-mill, all the four brothers in between having left New Brunswick for the Far West when they came to man’s estate.
All the way to school that morning Reggie fumed over the injustice to old Wrack Peveril in forcing a surprise party, mostly of women, upon him when he had said that no woman should enter his house.
Reggie had not had much to do with women since his mother died. He had been only a shaver of five years old then, and he had been “dragged up” ever since by his step-brother, Mose Paget, who owned a long strip of rather unfertile land running parallel with the creek, but separated from the water by Sam Buckle’s quarter-section of water frontage. All through morning school Reggie debated the matter with so much absorption that he had no attention to give to mischief, and in consequence earned the good-conduct mark, to his great amazement.
Directly school was out he set off to climb the Ridge, not going by the ordinary trail that led past Ripple, but taking a bee-line through the woods and up over the gap where the forest fire had been two years before. He had serious business on hand, while his conscience troubled him a little, because he was going to betray the confidence of Galena. He had made up his mind to warn Wrack of what was impending, so that the old man should have a chance of doing as he liked about being at home when the visitors came.
The day was very hot although it was October. The maples on the Ridge were aflame with their autumn splendours, and the scarlet of the oaks at Cumberland Crossing was a sight to see. But Reggie had scant attention for the beauties of nature, for he was in a hurry. Make the best speed he could, it would still be almost impossible for him to get back to the schoolhouse before afternoon school began, and if he had no satisfactory excuse for being late he would have the cane. To be late at morning school was a forgivable offence, because of the long distances the scholars had to come and the heaviness of the morning “chores” at most of the homes; but there was no excuse for being late in the afternoon, because no one went home then, and it did not take long to eat the noon-piece each scholar brought in his or her school bag.
From the top of the Ridge to Ripple was easy going, downhill all the way. Reggie crashed through the undergrowth at a great rate. He had no watch, and could only guess at the time. Every minute gained would make one stroke of the cane the less, for the rule was one stroke for every minute late, so it was necessary to use dispatch.