Almost from the first day she had decided upon the costume which she would wear. Night after night she sat and made plans in a tumultuous, bubbling flood of anticipation which he could scarcely follow, for it was only after long argument that he had sheepishly surrendered and agreed to “dress up” at all; she sat with a picture torn from an old magazine across her knees–a color-plate of a dancing girl which she meant to copy for herself–poring over it with shining eyes, her breath coming and going softly between childishly curved lips as she devoured every detail of its construction.
It was a thing of brilliantly contrasting colors–the picture which she planned to copy–a sleeveless waist of dullest crimson and a much bespangled skirt of clinging, shimmering black. And that skirt hung clear to the ankles, swinging just high enough to disclose the gleam of silken stockings and satiny, pointed slippers, with heels of absurdly small girth.
The boy only half understood the feverish hunger which glowed in Dryad Anderson’s face, piquantly, wistfully earnest in the dull yellow lantern light as she leaned forward, ticking off each item and its probable cost upon her fingers, and waited doubtfully for him to mock at the expense; and yet, at that, he understood far better than any one else could ever have hoped to comprehend, for Young Denny knew too what it was to wait–to wait for something that was drearily slow in the coming.
One other thing marked Judge Maynard’s proffered hospitality as totally different from all the other half-similar affairs which Boltonwood had ever known. There were to be invitations–written, mailed invitations–instead of the usual placards tacked up in the village post-office as they always were whenever any public entertainment was imminent, or the haphazard invitations which were passed along by word of mouth and which somehow they always forgot to pass on to the boy who lived alone in the dark house on the hill. There were to be formal, mailed invitations, and Young Denny found it hard waiting that night for Old Jerry, who had never been so late before.
The cool red of the horizon behind him faded to a dusky gray and the dusk thickened from twilight to dark while he stood there waiting, leaning heavily upon the pike-pole, shifting more and more uneasily from one tired foot to the other. He had turned at last to go and set a light in answer to the one which was calling insistently to him from the blackness before the Judge’s place when the shrill squeal of complaining axles drifted up to him from far down the long hill road.
Old Jerry came with exasperating slowness that night. The plodding ascent of the fat white mare and creaking buggy was nerve-rackingly deliberate. Young Denny shifted the shaft of his pike-pole to the other hand to wipe his damp palm against the checkered coat as the rig loomed up ahead of him in the darkness. Old Jerry was complaining to himself bitterly in a whining, cracked falsetto.
“’Tain’t reg’lar,” the boy heard him whimpering. “’Tain’t accordin’ to law–not the way I figger it, it ain’t. The Gov’mint don’t expect nobody to work ’til this hour!”
The buggy came to a standstill, with the little, weazened old man leaning far out from the torn leather seat, shading his eyes with one unsteady hand while he peered into the shadows searching for the big-shouldered figure that stepped hesitatingly nearer the wheel. There was something birdlike in the brilliancy of the beady little eyes; something of sparrowlike pertness in the tilt of the old man’s head, perked far over to one side.
“Still a-waitin’, be ye?” he exclaimed peevishly. “Well, it’s lucky you ain’t been kept a-standin’ there a whole sight longer–half the night, mebby! You would a-been, only for my havin’ an orig’nal system for peddlin’ them letters that’s all my own. It’s system does it–but it ain’t right, just the same. The Gov’mint don’t expect nobody to work more’n eight hours to a stretch, and look at me, two hours late and I ain’t home yet! I’d complain, too–I’d complain to the authorities at Washington, only–only”–his thin, high-pitched voice dropped suddenly to a furtively conciliating whisper–“only a-course I don’t want to make no trouble for the Judge.”
Denny Bolton cleared his throat and shuffled his feet uneasily, but this hint for haste was utterly wasted upon Old Jerry. The latter failed completely to note the strained intensity of the face that was upturned before him and went on grumbling as he leaned over to fumble in the box beneath the seat. And the tirade continued in an unbroken, half-muffled stream until he straightened laboriously again, the boy’s usual weekly packet of papers and catalogues in one hand.
“No,” he emphasized deliberately, “I wouldn’t really go so fur’s that–I ain’t figgerin’ on makin’ no complaint–not this time. I got too much regard for the Judge to try to get him into any hot water. But there wa’n’t no real use nor reason in his postin’ all them invitations to once. He could a-begun back a stretch and kinda run ’em in easy, a little to a time, instead of lumpin’ ’em this way, and that would a-give me–”
Young Denny reached out and took the bundle from the extended, unsteady old hand. His own hands were shaking a little as he broke the string and fluttered swiftly through the half dozen papers and pamphlets. Old Jerry never skipped a breath at the interruption.
“But that finishes up the day–that’s about the last of it.” The thin voice became heavily tinged with pride. “There ain’t nobody in the township but what’s got his card to that barn-raising by now–delivered right on the nail! That’s my system.” And then, judiciously: “I guess it’s a-goin’ to be a real fancy affair, too, at that. Must be it’ll cost him more’n a little mite before he gits done feedin’ ’em. They was a powerful lot of them invitations.”
Slowly Denny Bolton’s head lifted. He stood and stared into Old Jerry’s peaked, wrinkled face as if he had only half heard the rambling complaint, a strange, bewildered light growing in his eyes. Then his gaze dropped once more, and a second time, far more slowly, his fingers went through the packet of advertisements. Old Jerry was leaning over to unwind the reins from the whipstock when the boy’s hand reached out and stopped him.
“Ain’t there–wasn’t there anything more for me–tonight?” Young Denny inquired gravely.
Jerry paused impatiently. No other question ever caused him quite such keen irritation, for he felt that it was a slur at his reliability.
“More!” he petulantly echoed the question. “More? Why, you got your paper, ain’t you? Was you expectin’ sunthin’ else? Wasn’t looking for a letter, now was you?”
Denny backed slowly away from the wheel. Dumbly he stood and licked his lips. He cleared his throat again and swallowed hard before he answered.
“No,” he faltered at last, with the same level gravity. “No, I wasn’t exactly expectin’ a letter. But I kind of thought–I–I was just hopin’–”
His grave voice trailed heavily off into silence. Eyes still numbly bewildered he turned, leaning forward a little, to gaze out across the valley at the great square silhouette of Judge Maynard’s house on the opposite ridge, while Old Jerry wheeled the protesting buggy and started deliberately down the hill. Just once more the latter paused; he drew the fat gray mare to a standstill and leaned a last time far out from the seat.
“A-course I didn’t mean nothin’ when I spoke about complainin’ against the Judge,” he called back. “You know that, don’t you, Denny? You know I was just jokin’, don’t you?” A vaguely worried, appealing strain crept into the cracked accents. “An’ a-course you wouldn’t say nothin’ about my speakin’ like that. I think a whole heap too much of the Judge to even try to git him into trouble–and–and then the Judge–he might–you understand that I was only jokin’, don’t you, Denny?”
Young Denny nodded his head silently in reply.