Daniel And Little Dan'l
THE Wise homestead dated back more than a
century, yet it had nothing imposing about it
except its site. It was a simple, glaringly white cot-
tage. There was a center front door with two win-
dows on each side; there was a low slant of roof,
pierced by unpicturesque dormers. On the left of
the house was an ell, which had formerly been used
as a shoemaker's shop, but now served as a kitchen.
In the low attic of the ell was stored the shoemaker's
bench, whereon David Wise's grandfather had sat
for nearly eighty years of working days; after him
his eldest son, Daniel's father, had occupied the same
hollow seat of patient toil. Daniel had sat there for
twenty-odd years, then had suddenly realized both
the lack of necessity and the lack of customers, since
the great shoe-plant had been built down in the vil-
lage. Then Daniel had retired -- although he did
not use that expression. Daniel said to his friends
and his niece Dora that he had "quit work." But
he told himself, without the least bitterness, that
work had quit him.
After Daniel had retired, his one physiological
peculiarity assumed enormous proportions. It had
always been with him, but steady work had held it,
to a great extent, at bay. Daniel was a moral
coward before physical conditions. He was as one
who suffers, not so much from agony of the flesh as
from agony of the mind induced thereby. Daniel
was a coward before one of the simplest, most in-
evitable happenings of earthly life. He was a coward
before summer heat. All winter he dreaded summer.
Summer poisoned the spring for him. Only during
the autumn did he experience anything of peace.
Summer was then over, and between him and another
summer stretched the blessed perspective of winter.
Then Daniel Wise drew a long breath and looked
about him, and spelled out the beauty of the earth
in his simple primer of understanding. Daniel had
in his garden behind the house a prolific grape-vine.
He ate the grapes, full of the savor of the dead sum-
mer, with the gusto of a poet who can at last enjoy
triumph over his enemy.
Possibly it was the vein of poetry in Daniel which
made him a coward -- which made him so vulnerable.
During the autumn he reveled in the tints of the
landscape which his sitting-room windows com-
manded. There were many maples and oaks. Day
by day the roofs of the houses in the village be-
came more evident, as the maples shed their crimson
and gold and purple rags of summer. The oaks re-
mained, great shaggy masses of dark gold and burn-
ing russet; later they took on soft hues, making
clearer the blue firmament between the boughs.
Daniel watched the autumn trees with pure delight.
"He will go to-day," he said of a flaming maple
after a night of frost which had crisped the white
arches of the grass in his dooryard. All day he
sat and watched the maple cast its glory, and did
not bother much with his simple meals. The Wise
house was erected on three terraces. Always through
the dry summer the grass was burned to an ugly
negation of color. Later, when rain came, the grass
was a brilliant green, patched with rosy sorrel and
golden stars of arnica. Then later still came the
diamond brilliance of the frost. So dry were the
terraces in summer-time that no flowers would
flourish. When Daniel's mother had come to the
house as a bride she had planted under a window a
blush-rose bush, but always the blush-roses were
few and covered with insects. It was not until the
autumn, when it was time for the flowers to die, that
the sorrel blessing of waste lands flushed rosily and
the arnica showed its stars of slender threads of
gold, and there might even be a slight glimpse of
purple aster and a dusty spray or two of goldenrod.
Then Daniel did not shrink from the sight of the
terraces. In summer-time the awful negative glare
of them under the afternoon sun maddened him.
In winter he often visited his brother John in
the village. He was very fond of John, and John's
wife, and their only daughter, Dora. When John
died, and later his wife, he would have gone to live
with Dora, but she married. Then her husband also
died, and Dora took up dressmaking, supporting
herself and her delicate little girl-baby. Daniel
adored this child. She had been named for him,
although her mother had been aghast before the propo-
sition. "Name a girl Daniel, uncle!" she had cried.
"She is going to have what I own after I have
done with it, anyway," declared Daniel, gazing with
awe and rapture at the tiny flannel bundle in his
niece's arms. "That won't make any difference, but
I do wish you could make up your mind to call her
after me, Dora."
Dora Lee was soft-hearted. She named her girl-
baby Daniel, and called her Danny, which was not,
after all, so bad, and her old uncle loved the child
as if she had been his own. Little Daniel -- he always
called her Daniel, or, rather, "Dan'l" -- was the only
reason for his descending into the village on summer
days when the weather was hot. Daniel, when he
visited the village in summer-time, wore always a
green leaf inside his hat and carried an umbrella
and a palm-leaf fan. This caused the village boys to
shout, "Hullo, grandma!" after him. Daniel, being
a little hard of hearing, was oblivious, but he would
have been in any case. His whole mind was con-
centrated in getting along that dusty glare of street,
stopping at the store for a paper bag of candy, and
finally ending in Dora's little dark parlor, holding his
beloved namesake on his knee, watching her bliss-
fully suck a barley stick while he waved his palm-
leaf fan. Dora would be fitting gowns in the next
room. He would hear the hum of feminine chatter
over strictly feminine topics. He felt very much
aloof, even while holding the little girl on his knee.
Daniel had never married -- had never even h ad a sweet-
heart. The marriageable women he had seen had not
been of the type to attract a dreamer like Daniel Wise.
Many of those women thought him "a little off."
Dora Lee, his niece, privately wondered if her
uncle had his full allotment of understanding. He
seemed much more at home with her little daughter
than with herself, and Dora considered herself a
very good business woman, with possibly an unusual
endowment of common sense. She was such a good
business woman that when she died suddenly she
left her child with quite a sum in the bank, besides
the house. Daniel did not hesitate for a moment.
He engaged Miss Sarah Dean for a housekeeper,
and took the little girl (hardly more than a baby)
to his own home. Dora had left a will, in which
she appointed Daniel guardian in spite of her doubt
concerning his measure of understanding. There was
much comment in the village when Daniel took
his little namesake to live in his lonely house on
the terrace. "A man and an old maid to bring up
that poor child!" they said. But Daniel called
Dr. Trumbull to his support. "It is much better for
that delicate child to be out of this village, which
drains the south hill," Dr. Trumbull declared.
"That child needs pure air. It is hot enough in
summer all around here, and hot enough at Daniel's,
but the air is pure there."
There was no gossip about Daniel and Miss
Sarah Dean. Gossip would have seemed about as
foolish concerning him and a dry blade of field-grass.
Sarah Dean looked like that. She wore rusty black
gowns, and her gray-blond hair was swept curtain-
wise over her ears on either side of her very thin,
mildly severe wedge of a face. Sarah was a notable
housekeeper and a good cook. She could make an
endless variety of cakes and puddings and pies, and
her biscuits were marvels. Daniel had long catered
for himself, and a rasher of bacon, with an egg,
suited him much better for supper than hot biscuits,
preserves, and five kinds of cake. Still, he did not
complain, and did not understand that Sarah's fare
was not suitable for the child, until Dr. Trumbull
told him so.
"Don't you let that child live on that kind of food
if you want her to live at all," said Dr. Trumbull.
"Lord! what are the women made of, and the men
they feed, for that matter? Why, Daniel, there are
many people in this place, and hard-working people,
too, who eat a quantity of food, yet don't get enough
nourishment for a litter of kittens."
"What shall I do?" asked Daniel in a puzzled way.
"Do? You can cook a beefsteak yourself, can't
you? Sarah Dean would fry one as hard as sole-
leather."
"Yes, I can cook a beefsteak real nice," said
Daniel.
"Do it, then; and cook some chops, too, and
plenty of eggs."
"I don't exactly hanker after quite so much sweet
stuff," said Daniel. "I wonder if Sarah's feelings
will be hurt."
"It is much better for feelings to be hurt than
stomachs," declared Dr. Trumbull, "but Sarah's
feelings will not be hurt. I know her. She is a wiry
woman. Give her a knock and she springs back
into place. Don't worry about her, Daniel."
When Daniel went home that night he carried a
juicy steak, and he cooked it, and he and little Dan'1
had a square meal. Sarah refused the steak with a
slight air of hauteur, but she behaved very well.
When she set away her untasted layer-cakes and
pies and cookies, she eyed them somewhat anxiously.
Her standard of values seemed toppling before her
mental vision. "They will starve to death if they
live on such victuals as beefsteak, instead of good
nourishing hot biscuits and cake," she thought.
After the supper dishes were cleared away she went
into the sitting-room where Daniel Wise sat beside
a window, waiting in a sort of stern patience for a
whiff of air. It was a very close evening. The sun
was red in the low west, but a heaving sea of mist was
rising over the lowlands.
Sarah sat down opposite Daniel. "Close, ain't
it?" said she. She began knitting her lace edging.
"Pretty close," replied Daniel. He spoke with
an effect of forced politeness. Although he had such
a horror of extreme heat, he was always chary of
boldly expressing his mind concerning it, for he had
a feeling that he might be guilty of blasphemy, since
he regarded the weather as being due to an Almighty
mandate. Therefore, although he suffered, he was
extremely polite.
"It is awful up-stairs in little Dan'l's room," said
Sarah. "I have got all the windows open except the
one that's right on the bed, and I told her she needn't
keep more than the sheet and one comfortable over
her."
Daniel looked anxious. "Children ain't ever over-
come when they are in bed, in the house, are they?"
"Land, no! I never heard of such a thing. And,
anyway, little Dan'l's so thin it ain't likely she feels
the heat as much as some."
"I hope she don't."
Daniel continued to sit hunched up on himself,
gazing with a sort of mournful irritation out of the
window upon the landscape over which the misty
shadows vaguely wavered.
Sarah knitted. She could knit in the dark. After
a while she rose and said she guessed she would go
to bed, as to-morrow was her sweeping-day.
Sarah went, and Daniel sat alone.
Presently a little pale figure stole to him through
the dusk -- the child, in her straight white night-
gown, padding softly on tiny naked feet.
"Is that you, Dan'l?"
"Yes, Uncle Dan'l."
"Is it too hot to sleep up in your room?"
"I didn't feel so very hot, Uncle Dan'l, but skeet-
ers were biting me, and a great big black thing just
flew in my window!"
"A bat, most likely."
"A bat!" Little Dan'l shuddered. She began a
little stifled wail. "I'm afeard of bats," she la-
mented.
Daniel gathered the tiny creature up. "You can
jest set here with Uncle Dan'l," said he. "It is jest
a little cooler here, I guess. Once in a while there
comes a little whiff of wind."
"Won't any bats come?"
"Lord, no! Your Uncle Dan'l won't let any bats
come within a gun-shot."
The little creature settled down contentedly in the
old man's lap. Her fair, thin locks fell over his
shirt-sleeved arm, her upturned profile was sweetly
pure and clear even in the dusk. She was so deli-
cately small that he might have been holding a fairy,
from the slight roundness of the childish limbs and
figure. Poor little girl! -- Dan'1 was much too small
and thin. Old man Daniel gazed down at her
anxiously.
"Jest as soon as the nice fall weather comes,"
said he, "uncle is going to take you down to the
village real often, and you can get acquainted with
some other nice little girls and play with them, and
that will do uncle's little Dan'l good."
"I saw little Lucy Rose," piped the child, "and
she looked at me real pleasant, and Lily Jennings
wore a pretty dress. Would they play with me,
uncle?"
"Of course they would. You don't feel quite so
hot, here, do you?"
"I wasn't so hot, anyway; I was afeard of bats."
"There ain't any bats here."
"And skeeters."
"Uncle don't believe there's any skeeters, neither."
"I don't hear any sing," agreed little Dan'l in a
weak voice. Very soon she was fast asleep. The
old man sat holding her, and loving her with a simple
crystalline intensity which was fairly heavenly. He
himself almost disregarded the heat, being raised
above it by sheer exaltation of spirit. All the love
which had lain latent in his heart leaped to life be-
fore the helplessness of this little child in his arms.
He realized himself as much greater and of more
importance upon the face of the earth than he had
ever been before. He became paternity incarnate
and superblessed. It was a long time before he car-
ried the little child back to her room and laid her,
still as inert with sleep as a lily, upon her bed. He
bent over her with a curious waving motion of his
old shoulders as if they bore wings of love and pro-
tection; then he crept back down-stairs.
On nights like that he did not go to bed. All the
bedrooms were under the slant of the roof and were
hot. He preferred to sit until dawn beside his open
window, and doze when he could, and wait with
despairing patience for the infrequent puffs of cool
air breathing blessedly of wet swamp places, which,
even when the burning sun arose, would only show
dewy eyes of cool reflection. Daniel Wise, as he sat
there through the sultry night, even prayed for
courage, as a devout sentinel might have prayed
at his post. The imagination of the deserter was
not in the man. He never even dreamed of appro-
priating to his own needs any portion of his savings,
and going for a brief respite to the deep shadows of
mountainous places, or to a cool coast, where the
great waves broke in foam upon the sand, breathing
out the mighty saving breath of the sea. It never
occurred to him that he could do anything but re-
main at his post and suffer in body and soul and
mind, and not complain.
The next morning was terrible. The summer had
been one of unusually fervid heat, but that one day
was its climax. David went panting up-stairs to
his room at dawn. He did not wish Sarah Dean to
know that he had sat up all night. He opened his
bed, tidily, as was his wont. Through living alone
he had acquired many of the habits of an orderly
housewife. He went down-stairs, and Sarah was in
the kitchen.
"It is a dreadful hot day," said she as Daniel
approached the sink to wash his face and hands.
"It does seem a little warm," admitted Daniel,
with his studied air of politeness with respect to the
weather as an ordinance of God.
"Warm!" echoed Sarah Dean. Her thin face
blazed a scarlet wedge between the sleek curtains
of her dank hair; perspiration stood on her triangle
of forehead. "It is the hottest day I ever knew!"
she said, defiantly, and there was open rebellion in
her tone.
"It IS sort of warmish, I rather guess," said
Daniel.
After breakfast, old Daniel announced his in-
tention of taking little Dan'l out for a walk.
At that Sarah Dean fairly exploded. "Be you
gone clean daft, Dan'l?" said she. "Don't you know
that it actually ain't safe to take out such a delicate
little thing as that on such a day?"
"Dr. Trumbull said to take her outdoors for a
walk every day, rain or shine," returned Daniel,
obstinately.
"But Dr. Trumbull didn't say to take her out if
it rained fire and brimstone, I suppose," said Sarah
Dean, viciously.
Daniel looked at her with mild astonishment.
"It is as much as that child's life is worth to take
her out such a day as this," declared Sarah, viciously.
"Dr. Trumbull said to take no account of the
weather," said Daniel with stubborn patience, "and
we will walk on the shady side of the road, and
go to Bradley's Brook. It's always a little cool
there."
"If she faints away before you get there, you
bring her right home," said Sarah. She was almost
ferocious. "Just because YOU don't feel the heat,
to take out that little pindlin' girl such a day!" she
exclaimed.
"Dr. Trumbull said to," persisted Daniel, al-
though he looked a little troubled. Sarah Dean
did not dream that, for himself, Daniel Wise would
have preferred facing an army with banners to going
out under that terrible fusillade of sun-rays. She
did not dream of the actual heroism which actuated
him when he set out with little Dan'l, holding his
big umbrella over her little sunbonneted head and
waving in his other hand a palm-leaf fan.
Little Dan'l danced with glee as she went out of
the yard. The small, anemic creature did not feel
the heat except as a stimulant. Daniel had to keep
charging her to walk slowly. "Don't go so fast,
little Dan'l, or you'll get overhet, and then what
will Mis' Dean say?" he continually repeated.
Little Dan'l's thin, pretty face peeped up at him
from between the sides of her green sunbonnet. She
pointed one dainty finger at a cloud of pale yellow
butterflies in the field beside which they were walk-
ing. "Want to chase flutterbies," she chirped.
Little Dan'l had a fascinating way of misplacing
her consonants in long words.
"No; you'll get overhet. You just walk along
slow with Uncle Dan'l, and pretty soon we'll come
to the pretty brook," said Daniel.
"Where the lagon-dries live?" asked little Dan'l,
meaning dragon-flies.
"Yes," said Daniel. He was conscious, as he
spoke, of increasing waves of thready black floating
before his eyes. They had floated since dawn, but
now they were increasing. Some of the time he
could hardly see the narrow sidewalk path between
the dusty meadowsweet and hardhack bushes, since
those floating black threads wove together into a
veritable veil before him. At such times he walked
unsteadily, and little Dan'l eyed him curiously.
"Why don't you walk the way you always do?"
she queried.
"Uncle Dan'l can't see jest straight, somehow,"
replied the old man; "guess it's because it's rather
warm."
It was in truth a day of terror because of the heat.
It was one of those days which break records, which
live in men's memories as great catastrophes, which
furnish head-lines for newspapers, and are alluded
to with shudders at past sufferings. It was one of
those days which seem to forecast the Dreadful
Day of Revelation wherein no shelter may be found
from the judgment of the fiery firmament. On that
day men fell in their tracks and died, or were rushed
to hospitals to be succored as by a miracle. And on
that day the poor old man who had all his life feared
and dreaded the heat as the most loathly happening
of earth, walked afield for love of the little child.
As Daniel went on the heat seemed to become pal-
pable -- something which could actually be seen.
There was now a thin, gaseous horror over the blaz-
ing sky, which did not temper the heat, but in-
creased it, giving it the added torment of steam.
The clogging moisture seemed to brood over the
accursed earth, like some foul bird with deadly
menace in wings and beak.
Daniel walked more and more unsteadily. Once
he might have fallen had not the child thrown one
little arm around a bending knee. "You 'most
tumbled down. Uncle Dan'l," said she. Her little
voice had a surprised and frightened note in it.
"Don't you be scared," gasped Daniel; "we
have got 'most to the brook; then we'll be all right.
Don't you be scared, and -- you walk real slow and
not get overhet."
The brook was near, and it was time. Daniel
staggered under the trees beside which the little
stream trickled over its bed of stones. It was not
much of a brook at best, and the drought had caused
it to lose much of its life. However, it was still
there, and there were delicious little hollows of cool-
ness between the stones over which it flowed, and
large trees stood about with their feet rooted in the
blessed damp. Then Daniel sank down. He tried to
reach a hand to the water, but could not. The
black veil had woven a compact mass before his
eyes. There was a terrible throbbing in his head,
but his arms were numb.
Little Dan'l stood looking at him, and her lip
quivered. With a mighty effort Daniel cleared
away the veil and saw the piteous baby face. "Take
-- Uncle Dan'l's hat and -- fetch him -- some water,"
he gasped. "Don't go too -- close and -- tumble in."
The child obeyed. Daniel tried to take the drip-
ping hat, but failed. Little Dan'l was wise enough
to pour the water over the old man's head, but she
commenced to weep, the pitiful, despairing wail of
a child who sees failing that upon which she has
leaned for support.
Daniel rallied again. The water on his head gave
him momentary relief, but more than anything else
his love for the child nerved him to effort.
"Listen, little Dan'l," he said, and his voice
sounded in his own ears like a small voice of a soul
thousands of miles away. "You take the -- um-
brella, and -- you take the fan, and you go real slow,
so you don't get overhet, and you tell Mis' Dean,
and --"
Then old Daniel's tremendous nerve, that he had
summoned for the sake of love, failed him, and he
sank back. He was quite unconscious -- his face,
staring blindly up at the terrible sky between the
trees, was to little Dan'l like the face of a stranger.
She gave one cry, more like the yelp of a trodden
animal than a child's voice. Then she took the open
umbrella and sped away. The umbrella bobbed
wildly -- nothing could be seen of poor little Dan'l
but her small, speeding feet. She wailed loudly all
the way.
She was half-way home when, plodding along in
a cloud of brown dust, a horse appeared in the road.
The horse wore a straw bonnet and advanced very
slowly. He drew a buggy, and in the buggy were
Dr. Trumbull and Johnny, his son. He had called
at Daniel's to see the little girl, and, on being told
that they had gone to walk, had said something
under his breath and turned his horse's head down
the road.
"When we meet them, you must get out, Johnny,"
he said, "and I will take in that poor old man and
that baby. I wish I could put common sense in
every bottle of medicine. A day like this!"
Dr. Trumbull exclaimed when he saw the great
bobbing black umbrella and heard the wails. The
straw-bonneted horse stopped abruptly. Dr. Trum-
bull leaned out of the buggy. "Who are you?" he
demanded.
"Uncle Dan'l is gone," shrieked the child.
"Gone where? What do you mean?"
"He -- tumbled right down, and then he was --
somebody else. He ain't there."
"Where is 'there'? Speak up quick!"
"The brook -- Uncle Dan'l went away at the
brook."
Dr. Trumbull acted swiftly. He gave Johnny a
push. "Get out," he said. "Take that baby into
Jim Mann's house there, and tell Mrs. Mann to
keep her in the shade and look out for her, and you
tell Jim, if he hasn't got his horse in his farm-wagon,
to look lively and harness her in and put all the ice
they've got in the house in the wagon. Hurry!"
Johnny was over the wheel before his father had
finished speaking, and Jim Mann just then drew up
alongside in his farm-wagon.
"What's to pay?" he inquired, breathless. He
was a thin, sinewy man, scantily clad in cotton
trousers and a shirt wide open at the breast. Green
leaves protruded from under the brim of his tilted
straw hat.
"Old Daniel Wise is overcome by the heat," an-
swered Dr. Trumbull. "Put all the ice you have
in the house in your wagon, and come along. I'll
leave my horse and buggy here. Your horse is faster."
Presently the farm-wagon clattered down the road,
dust-hidden behind a galloping horse. Mrs. Jim
Mann, who was a loving mother of children, was
soothing little Dan'l. Johnny Trumbull watched
at the gate. When the wagon returned he ran out
and hung on behind, while the strong, ungainly
farm-horse galloped to the house set high on the
sun-baked terraces.
When old Daniel revived he found himself in the
best parlor, with ice all about him. Thunder was
rolling overhead and hail clattered on the windows.
A sudden storm, the heat-breaker, had come up and
the dreadful day was vanquished. Daniel looked
up and smiled a vague smile of astonishment at Dr.
Trumbull and Sarah Dean; then his eyes wandered
anxiously about.
"The child is all right," said Dr. Trumbull;
"don't you worry, Daniel. Mrs. Jim Mann is tak-
ing care of her. Don't you try to talk. You didn't
exactly have a sunstroke, but the heat was too much
for you."
But Daniel spoke, in spite of the doctor's man-
date. "The heat," said he, in a curiously clear
voice," ain't never goin' to be too much for me again."
"Don't you talk, Daniel," repeated Dr. Trum-
bull. "You've always been nervous about the heat.
Maybe you won't be again, but keep still. When I
told you to take that child out every day I didn't
mean when the world was like Sodom and Gomor-
rah. Thank God, it will be cooler now."
Sarah Dean stood beside the doctor. She looked
pale and severe, but adequate. She did not even
state that she had urged old Daniel not to go out.
There was true character in Sarah Dean.
The weather that summer was an unexpected
quantity. Instead of the day after the storm being
cool, it was hot. However, old Daniel, after his re-
covery, insisted on going out of doors with little
Dan'l after breakfast. The only concession which
he would make to Sarah Dean, who was fairly fran-
tic with anxiety, was that he would merely go down
the road as far as the big elm-tree, that he would sit
down there, and let the child play about within sight.
"You'll be brought home agin, sure as preachin',"
said Sarah Dean, "and if you're brought home ag'in,
you won't get up ag'in."
Old Daniel laughed. "Now don't you worry,
Sarah," said he. "I'll set down under that big ellum
and keep cool."
Old Daniel, at Sarah's earnest entreaties, took a
palm-leaf fan. But he did not use it. He sat peace-
fully under the cool trail of the great elm all the
forenoon, while little Dan'l played with her doll.
The child was rather languid after her shock of the
day before, and not disposed to run about. Also,
she had a great sense of responsibility about the old
man. Sarah Dean had privately charged her not
to let Uncle Daniel get "overhet." She continually
glanced up at him with loving, anxious, baby eyes.
"Be you overhet. Uncle Dan'l?" she would ask.
"No, little Dan'l, uncle ain't a mite overhet,"
the old man would assure her. Now and then little
Dan'l left her doll, climbed into the old man's lap,
and waved the palm-leaf fan before his face.
Old Daniel Wise loved her so that he seemed, to
himself, fairly alight with happiness. He made up his
mind that he would find some little girl in the village
to come now and then and play with little Dan'l.
In the cool of that evening he stole out of the back
door, covertly, lest Sarah Dean discover him, and
walked slowly to the rector's house in the village.
The rector's wife was sitting on her cool, vine-shaded
veranda. She was alone, and Daniel was glad. He
asked her if the little girl who had come to live with
her, Content Adams, could not come the next after-
noon and see little Dan'l. "Little Dan'l had ought
to see other children once in a while, and Sarah Dean
makes real nice cookies," he stated, pleadingly.
Sally Patterson laughed good-naturedly. "Of
course she can, Mr. Wise," she said.
The next afternoon Sally herself drove the rec-
tor's horse, and brought Content to pay a call on
little Dan'l. Sally and Sarah Dean visited in the
sitting-room, and left the little girls alone in the
parlor with a plate of cookies, to get acquainted.
They sat in solemn silence and stared at each other.
Neither spoke. Neither ate a cooky. When Sally
took her leave, she asked little Dan'l if she had had
a nice time with Content, and little Dan'l said,
"Yes, ma'am."
Sarah insisted upon Content's carrying the cookies
home in the dish with a napkin over it.
"When can I go again to see that other little girl?"
asked Content as she and Sally were jogging home.
"Oh, almost any time. I will drive you over --
because it is rather a lonesome walk for you. Did
you like the little girl? She is younger than you."
"Yes'm."
Also little Dan'l inquired of old Daniel when the
other little girl was coming again, and nodded em-
phatically when asked if she had had a nice time.
Evidently both had enjoyed, after the inscrutable
fashion of childhood, their silent session with each
other. Content came generally once a week, and
old Daniel was invited to take little Dan'l to the
rector's. On that occasion Lucy Rose was present,
and Lily Jennings. The four little girls had tea to-
gether at a little table set on the porch, and only
Lily Jennings talked. The rector drove old Daniel
and the child home, and after they had arrived the
child's tongue was loosened and she chattered. She
had seen everything there was to be seen at the rec-
tor's. She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice.
She had to be checked and put to bed, lest she be
tired out.
"I never knew that child could talk so much," Sarah
said to Daniel, after the little girl had gone up-stairs.
"She talks quite some when she's alone with me."
"And she seems to see everything."
"Ain't much that child don't see," said Daniel,
proudly.
The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel
never again succumbed. When autumn came, for
the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was
sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and
the winter upon his precious little Dan'l, whom he
put before himself as fondly as any father could
have done, and as the season progressed his dread
seemed justified. Poor little Dan'l had cold after
cold. Content Adams and Lucy Rose came to see
her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties.
But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel
began to look forward to spring and summer -- the
seasons which had been his bugaboos through life
-- as if they were angels. When the February thaw
came, he told little Dan'l, "Jest look at the snow
meltin' and the drops hangin' on the trees; that is
a sign of summer."
Old Daniel watched for the first green light along
the fences and the meadow hollows. When the trees
began to cast slightly blurred shadows, because of
budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the
terraces, and now and then the air was cleft with
blue wings, he became jubilant. "Spring is jest
about here, and then uncle's little Dan'l will stop
coughin', and run out of doors and pick flowers," he
told the child beside the window.
Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blos-
soms, leaves, birds, and flowers -- all arrived pell-
mell, fairly smothering the world with sweetness
and music. In May, about the first of the month,
there was an intensely hot day. It was as hot as
midsummer. Old Daniel with little Dan'l went
afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the car-
nival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon tree-
branches, of birds and butterflies. "Spring is right
here!" said old Daniel. "Summer is right here!
Pick them vilets in that holler, little Dan'l." The
old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and
watched the child in the blue-gleaming hollow gather
up violets in her little hands as if they were jewels.
The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with
fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped
his forehead. He was heated, but so happy that he
was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new lights
over everything. He had wielded love, the one in-
vincible weapon of the whole earth, and had con-
quered his intangible and dreadful enemy. When,
for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life
had become as nothing, old Daniel found himself
superior to it. He sat there in the tumultuous heat
of the May day, watching the child picking violets
and gathering strength with every breath of the
young air of the year, and he realized that the fear
of his whole life was overcome for ever. He realized
that never again, though they might bring suffering,
even death, would he dread the summers with their
torrid winds and their burning lights, since, through
love, he had become under-lord of all the conditions
of his life upon earth.
-THE END-
Mary E Wilkins Freeman's short story: Daniel And Little Dan'l
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