第4章 OLD KENNEBEC(2)

"I want to stay down by the river this afternoon," said Rose. "Ever so many of the girls will be there, and all my sewing is done up. If grandpa will leave the horse for me, I'll take the drivers' lunch to them at noon, and bring the dishes back in time to wash them before supper.""I suppose you can go, if the rest do," said her grandmother, "though it's an awful lazy way of spendin' an afternoon. When I was a girl there was no such dawdlin' goin' on, I can tell you. Nobody thought o' lookin' at the river in them days; there wasn't time.""But it's such fun to watch the logs!" Rose exclaimed. "Next to dancing, the greatest fun in the world.""'Specially as all the young men in town will be there, watchin', too," was the grandmother's reply. "Eben Brooks an' Richard Bean got home yesterday with their doctors' diplomas in their pockets. Mrs. Brooks says Eben stood forty-nine in a class o' fifty-five, an' seemed consid'able proud of him; an' I guess it is the first time he ever stood anywheres but at the foot. I tell you when these fifty-five new doctors git scattered over the country there'll be consid'able many folks keepin' house under ground.

Dick Bean's goin' to stop a spell with Rufe an' Steve Waterman.That'll make one more to play in the river.""Rufus ain't hardly got his workin' legs on yit," allowed Mr.Wiley, "but Steve's all right. He's a turrible smart driver, an' turrible reckless, too. He'll take all the chances there is, though to a man that's lived on the Kennebec there ain't what can rightly be called any turrible chances on the Saco.""He'd better be 'tendin' to his farm," objected Mrs. Wiley.

"His hay is all in," Rose spoke up quickly, "and he only helps on the river when the farm work isn't pressing. Besides, though it's all play to him, he earns his two dollars and a half a day.""He don't keer about the two and a half," said her grandfather. "He jest can't keep away from the logs. There's some that can't. When I first moved here from Gard'ner, where the climate never suited me"--"The climate of any place where you hev regular work never did an' never will suit you," remarked the old man's wife; but the interruption received no comment: such mistaken views of his character were too frequent to make any impression.

"As I was sayin', Rose," he continued, "when we first moved here from Gard'ner, we lived neighbor to the Watermans. Steve an' Rufus was little boys then, always playin' with a couple o' wild cousins o' theirn, consid'able older. Steve would scare his mother pretty nigh to death stealin' away to the mill to ride on the 'carriage,''side o' the log that was bein' sawed, hitchin' clean out over the river an' then jerkin' back 'most into the jaws o' the machinery.""He never hed any common sense to spare, even when he was a young one," remarked Mrs. Wiley; " and I don't see as all the 'cademy education his father throwed away on him has changed him much." And with this observation she rose from the table and went to the sink.

"Steve ain't nobody's fool," dissented the old man; "but he's kind o' daft about the river. When he was little he was allers buildin' dams in the brook, an' sailin' chips, an' runnin' on the logs; allers choppin' up stickins an' raftin' 'em together in the pond. I cal'late Mis' Waterman died consid'able afore her time, jest from fright, lookin' out the winders andseein' her boys slippin' between the logs an' gittin' their daily dousin'. She could n't understand it, an' there's a heap o' things women-folks never do an' never can understand,--jest because they air women-folks.""One o' the things is men, I s'pose," interrupted Mrs. Wiley.