Winterbound Read online

  “It certainly does. Thanks a lot.” Garry pulled her sleeve down gratefully over the cool soft dressing. “I . . . we . . . Mary didn’t say what we owed you for coming.”

  “Fifty cents,” said Miss Hussey briskly, buttoning up her coat.

  She picked up her little bag again and was gone, driving off down the hill to visit other households in affliction, leaving comfort and cheer behind her.

  For five more days the frost held. Kay and Caroline were up and about again but there was no going out except for Martin, who spent long hours skating with Jimmie on the little pond at the foot of the hill. Life was a monotonous round of watching the thermometer and tending stoves.

  On the sixth night Garry woke up towards dawn with a sudden queer sensation of something having happened, an unfamiliar feeling in the air. Sitting up in the darkness, it took her a full minute to realize what it was. The cold spell had finally broken.

  Garry Finds a Job

  FREEZING still, but the bitterness had gone from the air. It was good to stand outdoors again, to be able to draw breath freely.

  Edna drove over to see them. She had telephoned twice during the combined cold-and-flu siege to ask how they were getting along, but had not been able to visit.

  “Just a lame shoulder,” she explained, “but I wouldn’t have dared try and hold the wheel straight over these roads. But I was bound to get up and see you all today, even if I had to drive with my teeth!”

  Edna was resplendent in a new hat, a new scarf and sweater, and a pair of smart fur-lined driving gloves, a Christmas gift from one of her devoted “old ladies.”

  “I put everything on to show you,” she laughed. “I got a pair of red bedroom slippers, too, and if it wasn’t for driving I’d have worn them. And that reminds me: back in the car there’s a Christmas present we got and couldn’t keep, because we’ve two like it already, so I brought it along for Caroline.”

  “Couldn’t you get it exchanged?” Kay asked.

  “Not this one you can’t. It comes in all sizes, but only one make.” She went back to the car and returned carrying a square grocer’s carton tied securely with twine. “Open it and see.”

  Garry cut the string. There was a stirring and rustling inside, and a black suspicious nose poked out from a nest of tissue paper.

  “A coon kitten from the state of Maine,” said Edna. “My aunt and uncle up there have more cats than you can shake a stick at. Every so often they send us one down. He runs a dairy farm there, and the barns are simply running with cats. Summer visitors always like them, so they get rid of a few that way. Uncle is always talking about getting his gun and clearing some of those cats out, but when it comes right down to it he wouldn’t touch a hair of ’em, and there’s plenty of milk and scraps going, so I guess they don’t bother anyone much. This ’un looked real smart to me, but we’ve two cats already and that’s too many for anyone living in town. I wish clothes lasted as long as cats do! Our old Susie will be thirteen next month.”

  The coon kitten had hoisted himself out of the carton and was beginning a wary tour of the room. His long thick hair was jet black all over, his eyes a deep glowing amber. While Garry ran for a saucer of milk Kay exclaimed:

  “Caroline will love him. He’s just like a Persian, only prettier. Are they always that color?”

  “Black or yellow, mostly. Though there was a grand black and white with white paws I remember as a child; he used to run wild in the woods back of the house and no one could ever get near him. You’d just get a glimpse of him sometimes, along towards fall when the hunting began to grow scarce. Aunt has a family of yellow ones, too, but the yellow kittens mostly get picked up by the summer folk. Either black or yellow’s a good color for cats in the country; if you have one of these grays or tabbies they’re like to get taken for a rabbit or a squirrel some fine day, and you lose ’em. Neal Rowe’s more careful with his gun than most, but there’s lots of hunters don’t bother to look twice when they see something moving.”

  Caroline had gone back to school that day for the first time. Edna had brought sliced ham and a home-baked pie, so the three of them ate lunch together in the living room while the coon kitten prowled and explored.

  “I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone today,” Edna said as she drank her third cup of coffee. “There was a job up this way I’d heard about, but I guess I can’t take it. It’s the woman down here on the state road, right opposite the milk station where the school bus stops. They’ve got a little nursery business called Roadside—raise flowers and seedlings. We always get our tomato and pepper plants from them in spring. The husband’s lame. She had her first baby a few days ago—right in the middle of that cold spell it was—and her sister was staying there but now she’s had to go home and they wanted someone to look after things round the house till Mrs. Collins gets about again. But it would mean going there every day, and I can’t manage it.”

  “I didn’t know you took jobs,” Kay said.

  “Anything I can get, when the taxi business is slack. I clean folks’ summer cottages and close up for them, and I do spring cleaning once in a while. When you live in the country you learn to turn your hand to most anything. I felt sorry about these folks—she’s a real nice woman—but the most I can do is to try and find someone else for them.”

  There was the latest Santa Fé news to be told, scraps from Penny’s letters to be read aloud; all the exchange of local and family gossip that always took place on Edna’s visits. When at last she rose to go Garry said:

  “Guess I’ll ride down the road with you a little way, and walk back.”

  She pulled on rubber boots and a windbreaker. When they were halfway down the hill she said:

  “I’m going after that job myself, if I can get it.”

  Edna smiled as her foot pressed down on the brake.

  “Good for you. I can drop you right there. She’ll be pretty glad.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Housework, getting the dinner—maybe a little washing. Miss Hussey comes in every day, so you won’t have much to do with the baby.”

  “I guess I can do all that. I don’t know an awful lot about cooking, but she can tell me how she wants things done.”

  “I always said you’d fit in anywhere, all right,” Edna said. “You see, there isn’t much of regular hired help around here, but when folks are in a fix anyone will do what they can. I guess they haven’t got an awful lot of money, but she’s willing to pay ten dollars a week.”

  “That’s ten dollars more than I ever earned before,” Garry returned. “Just the other day I was saying that there wasn’t any way to earn money in the country, and here it is. Only I didn’t want to say anything in front of Kay—not till I know whether I’ve got the job or not.” There was another reason too perhaps, which Edna perfectly understood.

  “I remember as well as yesterday,” she said as they turned the corner into the lower road, “the time I was fourteen and I wanted to get a new dress for the church picnic where we lived, and I didn’t have more’n a few cents saved up for it. So I marched off and hired me out, to a woman that took in boarders, to wash dishes and clean the kitchen up twice a day. My aunt was staying on a visit with us, and the way she carried on when she heard about it you’d have thought there was something disgraceful in washing other folks’ dishes instead of one’s own. But my mother was the sensible kind. She said: ‘If Edna wants money let her set to and earn it, and then it’ll mean something to her. As long as there’s dishes to wash I never heard that it mattered what house you wash ’em in, so long as you wash ’em clean.’ So I got my dress, and a nice dress it was, too. I spent all of eight dollars on it, and that was a lot in those days.”

  When Garry reached home a couple of hours later, having trudged the long steep hill road with more buoyancy and self-confidence than she had felt in some time, she found Martin and Caroline already back from school. She entered whistling, tossed her cap on the table and announced:

&nb
sp; “Well, I’ve got a job!”

  Caroline was too absorbed in the coon kitten to pay any attention, but Martin lifted his head.

  “What job?” And Kay exclaimed: “Garry, not that job Edna was talking about? I might have known you were up to something when you sneaked off that way. You can’t do that sort of thing!”

  Garry’s chin went up.

  “I don’t see why. It wouldn’t be the first time an Ellis turned her lily-white hands to something useful. And I want to tell you that I feel right like a million dollars this minute. I never knew anything could give one such a lift. The only thing is I hate to take their money for doing just everyday things, because I don’t believe by the look of the place they’ve got a cent more than they can manage with, and the woman is a dear. She’s young and pretty—she looks a little bit like you, Kay—and the baby’s a darling5 I never saw anything so tiny! If you’d been there yourself, Kay, you wouldn’t have thought twice about it. She was sitting up in bed there with a pink jacket on, with the baby tucked up in a clothes basket beside her, and she was peeling potatoes and hushing the baby at the same time. When I said what I’d come for she acted kind of scared of me at first because she’d heard we were city people, till I told her all about the family and how we were fixed, and I took the potatoes right out of her hands and started doing them myself, for I thought I’d show her I could do that much, anyway.”

  Garry smiled, remembering the expression on Mrs. Collins’s face when the potato bowl was whisked away so promptly. Edna had sensibly refused to come in, feeling that Garry would make her way better alone, as she certainly had. But it was the baby who had really settled the question, for Garry adored all small things, and the sight of her eager face bent over the clothes basket had outweighed any last doubts Mrs. Collins might have had about “city people.”

  “Ten dollars a week, and I start tomorrow. I wish it would last all winter, but it won’t. Still, it’s given me a good idea. If I suit all right I shall get Mrs. Collins to give me a reference. In the country people are always having babies and if I keep in touch with Miss Hussey I might get a lot more jobs when this one’s over.”

  Kay had to laugh, for Garry’s ideas always spread in widening circles like a stone thrown into water.

  “Wait till you see how you like this one. Are you really sure you want it?”

  But Garry was quite serious, even though it meant getting up early every morning to walk the mile and a half to the state road. There was a thrill in having a j ob of any kind for the first time, and she was still young enough to feel work in another person’s house more of an adventure than a task. She washed dishes, scrubbed pantry shelves, swept floors and cooked dinner in a businesslike way; she did the baby’s laundry without wincing; and she even learned to sterilize feeding bottles and to prepare formulas as though she had been used to it all her life. Miss Hussey, coming in on her visit to bathe the baby, gave her a friendly approving smile.

  “Well, well, so you’ve got a new job these days! Not enough to do up home, huh? How’s the family?”

  “All fine. Caroline’s back at school again.”

  “Good.”

  Garry enjoyed these daily visits. She liked Miss Hussey’s brisk cheery ways and amusing gossip, and hurried to get her work forward so that she could watch the bathing and dressing rites. It was all good experience, for she had never had anything to do with a baby as tiny as this, and she learned a lot that she had not known before. Anything small and young Garry loved; baby animals, baby plants, she was used to tending and handling, but this human specimen was something new and every detail of its care absorbed her.

  Mrs. Collins, her first shyness worn off, was friendly and talkative, glad of Garry’s company as well as her help. Both she and her husband were newcomers in the neighborhood; before their marriage Mr. Collins had worked for a firm of nursery gardeners and had only started in business for himself three years ago. He was a kindly, rather silent man, lame from a shell wound in the War; Garry rarely saw him except at mealtimes, or when he tiptoed in once or twice during the morning to look at the baby and perhaps stroke its small hand gently with the tip of one finger as though it were some rare and delicate seedling that he was almost afraid to touch. Most of the time he was busy in the greenhouse or potting shed.

  Garry longed to talk to him about his work but never quite found the courage. The greenhouse where he raised his plants and cuttings had been built onto the house and opened directly from the small living room; as Garry stood at the kitchen sink rinsing clothes or washing dishes she could see the rows of flowerpots behind the glass panes and whenever the door was opened a warm breath of earth and moisture filled the house. Many a time she was sorely tempted to cross the floor and open that door herself, just to take a sniff and look inside, but she reminded herself sternly that she was there to do chores and keep house, not to indulge her own particular hobby. Still the temptation was very strong and one morning she gave in to it. Her hands happened to be still soapy; the doorhandle slipped unexpectedly in her grasp and she all but fell down the two steps on to Mr. Collins’s broad back as he stooped over a tray on the lower shelf. He looked taken aback at this entry but relieved to find it was not an urgent summons for help, and grinned as he pulled her to her feet.

  “Those steps are a bit tricky when you aren’t used to ’em,” he said. “Did you hurt yourself any?”

  “Not a bit. I’m awfully sorry, but I just had a minute to spare and I’ve so wanted to have a look at your plants. I love greenhouses and I hardly ever get a chance to poke round in them.”

  “Look at all you want to,” said Mr. Collins.

  He stopped his work goodnaturedly to show her round, explained how the house was heated and the moisture controlled, let her linger over the rows of potted seedlings and the cuttings set to root in trays of wet sand. Following him as he limped down the aisle between the growing plants Garry found that here was a man who loved his work and could forget all his awkwardness in talking about it. She was full of eager questions and real understanding, and the time flew till she suddenly remembered the potatoes on the stove and the unset dinner table.

  After that she was free of the greenhouse whenever there were odd moments to spare, and as Mrs. Collins was now sitting up and the district nurse’s visits becoming fewer, Garry could generally manage by working at extra speed to gain a little time. When the baby was fed and sleeping, Mrs. Collins settled for her afternoon nap, and the dishes put away, she would slip out and help Mr. Collins. There were plants to spray and water, sometimes seedlings to be re-potted or rooted cuttings set out, empty pots to be scrubbed and stacked away, or potting mold mixed in the big trough at the end of the greenhouse—jobs she enjoyed far more than scraping saucepans and mopping floors.

  “Well, I’ll give you a regular job any time you want it,” he said one day jokingly, and Garry took him up at once.

  “Would you let me work here, if you want extra help later on?”

  “Well, there’s always plenty to do, come spring. But I don’t know as you’d call it a young lady’s work, exactly, except once in a while like now, when you feel in the mood.” He seemed to overlook entirely the kind of work Garry had been doing, this last week. “Handlin’ earth and pots an’ that isn’t any too good on your hands.”

  “I’ve handled plenty,” Garry told him. “I’m only a beginner, Mr. Collins, and I wouldn’t want you to pay me. But there’s a whole lot I could learn working with you, and I’d be glad to do it. I could take care of some of the easier jobs and leave you more time for the rest.”

  Mr. Collins considered.

  “There’s rock-garden plants,” he said. “Folks are crazy about them, right now. If I had money it would pay me to go in for the real Alpines, but there’s plenty others that I’m beginning to have a steady sale for, for there’s one thing they can’t always raise from a packet of seed. Divisions they increase from, mostly. I’ve got a lot of young plants on hand in the cold-frames and I thought I
might do a good bit in that line this year. That’ll call for a lot of dividing and settin’ out, and I don’t know but you might try your hand at that, if you’d care to. But we’ll see later on. Come spring you’ll have plenty doing in your own garden.”

  “I couldn’t get a promise out of him,” she told Kay that evening, “but I mean to try again in the spring. It’s just the chance I need and I don’t mean to let it slip.”

  There was little doing in the way of business at Roadside Nurseries just now. So far not a single customer had stopped by during the week that Garry had spent there, but towards the end of her stay one car actually did draw up, a smart sedan with two well-dressed women in it. Mr. Collins had gone to town that afternoon; Mrs. Collins was giving the baby her two-o’clock bottle, and Garry had just finished her third batch of diapers and was hanging them on the line behind the kitchen stove.

  “Good afternoon. I got such nice cyclamens here last year, and my friend was wondering if you had any more.”

  Mrs. Collins looked flustered.

  “Mr. Collins would know, but he’s out just now. That’s too bad. I suppose you couldn’t …”

  Garry turned promptly.

  “There are some nice ones just coming into bloom. Would you like to see them?”

  She left the washtub, gave a businesslike hitch to her overalls, and led the way into the greenhouse. Roadside Nurseries wasn’t going to miss its one sale of the week if she could help it.

  “They’re down at the end here. Mr. Collins had to go into town to see about a new consignment of plants, but I expect I can help you just as well.”

  Mr. Collins’s trip had been to arrange for a renewal of his bank loan, as Garry very well knew, being by now practically a member of the family, but that explanation wouldn’t sound quite so impressive. The cyclamens (Garry thanked heaven it was an everyday plant she did know, not something unusual with a long Latin name) were on a warm shelf at the far end of the house, and she led her visitors purposely by the aisle where the best-looking plants and seedlings were ranged. The elder of the two women happened to be a genuine gardener; she had taken a fancy to Garry’s voice and appearance and was inclined to linger more than once on the way to chat about this or that.