CHAPTER I
FROM MAINE TO CALIFORNIA

It was a long journey for a little girl, so long indeed that the old life had almost faded from her mind, and seemed like something done in another existence. When she was younger still she had once surprised her mother by saying, "Mother, where did I live before I came here?" The pale, care-worn woman had glanced at her in vague surprise and answered rather fretfully, "Why, nowhere, child."

"Oh, but I remember things," said the little girl with a confident air, looking out of eyes that seemed to take an added shade from her present emotions.

"Nonsense! You can't remember things that never happened. That's imagining them, and it isn't true. If you told them they would be falsehoods. There, go out and get me a basket of chips."

She was afraid of telling falsehoods, most of those rigid people called them by their plain name, "lies," and whipped their children. So the little girl kept them to herself; she was a very good and upright child as a general thing and knew very little about her tricky father. But she went on imagining. Especially when she studied geography, which she was extravagantly fond of, yet she could never quite decide which country she had lived in.

Through those months of journeying in the big vessel over strange waters, for she had been born in an inland hamlet with a great woods of hemlock, spruce, and fir behind the little cottage, and two or three small creeks wandering about, she had many strange thoughts. Though at first she was quite ill, but Uncle Jason was the best nurse in the world, and presently she began to run about and get acquainted. There were only a few women passengers. One middle-aged, with a son sixteen, who was working his way; a few wives emigrating with their husbands, three women friends who were in the hope of finding an easier life and perhaps husbands, though they hardly admitted that to each other.

She often sat in Uncle Jason's lap, hugged up to his breast. Of course, her mother had been his sister, they had settled upon that, and he did not contradict. She was lulled by the motion of the vessel and often fell asleep, but in her waking moments these were the memories that were growing more vague and getting tangled up with various things.

Her father had taught school at South Berwick the winter she could recall most readily, and came home on Saturday morning, spending most of the time at the store. Woodville was only a sort of hamlet, though it had a church, a school, and a general store. Sometimes he would go back on Sunday, but oftener early Monday morning. Then late in the summer he was home for a while, and went away after talks with her mother that did not always seem pleasant. He took very little notice of her, in her secret heart she felt afraid of him, though he was seldom really cross to her. And then he went away and did not appear again until the winter, when there seemed a great deal of talking and business, and he brought a boxful of clothes for them, and seemed in excellent spirits. He was in business in Boston, and would move them all there at once, if grandmother would consent, but she was old, and had had a stroke, and could not get about without a cane. The old house was hers and she would finish out her days there. Of course, then, her mother could not go. She had a new, warm woollen frock and a cloak that was the envy of the other children, and absolute city shoes that she could only wear on Sunday, and, of course, were presently outgrown.

She studied up everything she could concerning Boston, but her mother would not talk about it. In the summer, grandmother had another stroke and then was bedridden. It was a poor little village, and everybody had hard work to live, summers were especially busy, and winters were long and hard. Grandmother was fretful, and wandered a little in her mind. Now and then a neighbor came in to spell Mrs. Westbury, and there was always some mysterious talking that her mother did not care for her to hear. Grandmother lived more than a year and was a helpless burden at the last. After she had gone the poor mother sank down, overwhelmed with trouble. David Westbury had persuaded the old lady to sign over the house for a business venture he was to make in Boston that would put him on the road to fortune. And now it was found that he had decamped, that there had been no business but speculating, and she no longer had a home for herself and her child.

They were very poor. People bore straits bravely in those days and suffered in silence. The poor mother grew paler and thinner and had a hard cough. In the spring they would be homeless. By spring she would be – and what would happen to the child! A little bound-out girl, perhaps.

Laverne was not taken into these sorrowful confidences. She did not go to school, her mother needed to be waited upon. One bright afternoon she went out to skate on the creek. The school children joined her, and it was almost dark when they started for home. The little girl's heart upbraided her, but she had carried in the last armful of wood, and had not told her mother. What would they do to-morrow!

She went in hesitatingly. Oh, how good and warm the room felt and two candles were burning. A man sat beside the stove with a sort of frank, bright, yet weather-beaten face, a mop of chestnut-colored hair, a beard growing up to his very mouth, but with the brightest blue eyes she had ever seen, merry blue eyes, too, that looked as if there was just a twinkle back of the lashes.

"This is my little girl, Laverne," said her mother. "We have always called her Verne, seeing there were three of the same name. And this is" – the mother's tone had a curious tremble in it, as if she caught her breath – "this is Uncle Jason."

The first glance made them friends. They both smiled. She was like her mother in the young days, and had the same dimple in her cheek, and the one in her chin where the children used to hold a buttercup. She put out both hands. They had been so lonely, so poor, and she was glad all over with a strange feeling, just as if they had come to better times.

What a supper they had! She was very hungry. She had been quite used to eating bread and molasses, or a little moist brown sugar. And here was a great chunk of butter on the edge of her plate, and the room was fragrant with the smell of broiled ham.

If she had known anything about fairies she would have believed in enchantment at once. And there was part of a splendid cake, and orange jam, and she could hardly make it real. No neighbor had known all their straits, and the little girl had borne them as bravely as her mother. Then, so many people had pinches in the winter, for crops were often poor.

She helped her mother with the dishes and then she sat down on a stool beside Uncle Jason. Presently, her head sank on his knee and she went fast asleep. She never heard a word of what her mother and Uncle Jason were saying.

At nine o'clock he carried her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed, and she never woke up while her mother undressed her. He went over to the store where he had bargained for a room. The storekeeper, Mr. Lane, had been as much surprised to see Mr. Chadsey as Mrs. Westbury. He had been born in the old town and his romance had blossomed and blighted here.

"Now, I tell you," Seth Lane said to his wife, when the store was shut and they were preparing for bed, "if that scalawag Westbury was dead there'd be a weddin' in this town straight away. My, how Chadsey was cut up over hearin' his mean villainy an' gettin' hold of the house! I never b'lieved the old woman knew what she was about. And Chadsey's come back in the nick o' time, for I don't b'lieve she'll go through March."

Jason Chadsey planned for their comfort, and went to Boston the next day, but could find no trace of David Westbury, dead or alive.

As for the little girl, when she woke up in the morning she thought she had had the loveliest dream that could ever haunt one. But when she saw the bountiful breakfast she was amazed to the last degree.

"Was Uncle Jason really here?" she asked timidly. She was quite sure her mother had been crying.

"Yes, dear. He has gone to Boston and will be back in a few days. Oh, Laverne, I hope you will learn to love him. Some day, when you are older, you will understand why he came back, and he will be your best friend when" – when I am gone, she was about to say, but checked herself, and substituted "all your life. When I was a little girl he was a kind and generous big boy. Then he went to sea, and was back only a few times. For years I had heard nothing from him – he has been round the world, everywhere. And he has a big, tender heart – "

"Oh, I am sure I shall be glad to love him. Why, you seem to go right to his heart;" and the child's face glowed with enthusiasm.

"Yes, yes." She began to cough and sat down suddenly, putting her handkerchief to her mouth.

"The salt, quick, Verne," she gasped.

She lay on the old wooden settee and stuffed her mouth full of salt.

"Oh, what can I do?" cried the child, in mild alarm.

"Run for Aunt Cynthy Beers. Tell her to come quick."

The neighbor, who was the village nurse, came back with the child. Then she was despatched for the doctor. He shook his head gravely.

"Doctor, you must keep me alive a little while longer," she pleaded.

"Oh, you are good for some time yet, only you must not make the slightest exertion. Cynthy, how long can you stay?"

"Ten days or so. Then I have to go over on the Creek," she answered laconically.

"That will do." Then he gave sundry charges to Miss Beers, and left the remedies she was to use, but that lady knew what was meant.

Mrs. Westbury beckoned the nurse to her when he had gone.

"Don't tell Laverne," she said. "Don't say anything about – "

"That's cruel. Why, she ought to know and be prepared."

"No, no; I will not have a word said. I cannot explain, no one can. And if she took it hard, don't you see, it would drive me wild and shorten my days. I'm all worn out. And she will be provided for."