Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Adventures of Ann
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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> The Adventures of Ann
"I think we'd better search the barn, anyhow," some one else said,
and a good many murmured assent.
"Wait a minute, I'll be down," said Phineas, shutting his window.
How long poor Ann lay there shaking, she never knew. It seemed hours.
She heard Phineas go down stairs, and unlock the door. She heard them
tramp into the barn. "O, if I had hidden him there!" she thought.
After a while, she heard them out in the yard again. "He could _not_
have gotten into the house, in any way," she heard one man remark
speculatively. How she waited for the response. It came in Phineas
Adams' slow, sensible tones: "How could he? Didn't you hear me unbolt
the door when I came out? The doors are all fastened, I saw to it
myself."
"Well, of course he didn't," agreed the voice.
At last, Phineas came in, and Ann heard them go. She was so thankful.
However, the future perplexities, which lay before her, were enough
to keep her awake for the rest of the night. In the morning, a new
anxiety beset her. The poor thief must have some breakfast. She could
easily have smuggled some dry bread up to him; but she did want him
to have some of the hot Indian mush, which the family had. Ann,
impulsive in this as everything, now that she had made up her mind to
protect a thief, wanted to do it handsomely. She did want him to have
some of that hot mush; but how could she manage it?
The family at the breakfast table discussed the matter of the
horse-thief pretty thoroughly. It was a hard ordeal for poor Ann, who
could not take easily to deception. She had unexpected trouble too
with Nabby. Nabby _had_ waked up the preceding night.
"I didn't see anything," proclaimed Nabby; "but I heerd a noise. I
think there's mice out in the grain-chist in the back chamber."
"I must go up there and look," said Mrs. Polly. "They did
considerable mischief, last year."
Ann turned pale; what if she should take it into her head to look
that day!
She watched her chance very narrowly for the hot mush; and after
breakfast she caught a minute, when Phineas had gone to work, and
Mrs. Polly was in the pantry, and Nabby down cellar. She had barely
time to fill a bowl with mush, and scud.
How lightly she stepped over that back chamber floor, and how
gingerly she opened the grain-chest lid. The thief looked piteously
out at her from his bed of Indian corn. He was a handsome man,
somewhere between forty and fifty. Indeed he came of a very good
family in a town not so very far away. Horse-thiefs numbered some
very respectable personages in their clan in those days sometimes.
They carried on a whispered conversation while he ate. It was
arranged that Ann was to assist him off that night.
What a day poor Ann had, listening and watching in constant terror
every moment, for fear something would betray her. Beside, her
conscience troubled her sadly; she was far from being sure that she
was doing right in hiding a thief from justice. But the poor man's
tears, and the mention of his daughter, had turned the scale with
her; she could not give him up.
Her greatest fear was lest Mrs. Polly should take a notion to search
for mice in the grain-chests. She so hoped Nabby would not broach the
subject again. But there was a peculiarity about Nabby--she had an
exceedingly bitter hatred of rats and mice. Still there was no danger
of her investigating the grain-chests on her own account, for she was
very much afraid. She would not have lifted one of those lids, with
the chance of a rat or mouse being under it, for the world. If ever a
mouse was seen in the kitchen Nabby took immediate refuge on the
settle or the table and left some one else to do the fighting.
So Nabby, being so constituted, could not be easy on the subject this
time. All day long she heard rats and mice in the grain-chests; she
stopped and listened with her broom, and she stopped and listened
with her mop.
Ann went to look, indeed that was the way she smuggled the thief's
dinner to him, but her report of nothing the matter with the grain
did not satisfy Nabby. She had more confidence in Mrs. Polly. But
Mrs. Polly did not offer to investigate herself until after supper.
They had been very busy that day, washing, and now there was churning
to do. Ann sat at the churn, Mrs. Polly was cutting up apples for
pies; and Nabby was washing dishes, when the rats and mice smote her
deaf ears again.
"I knew I heerd 'em then," she said; "I don't believe but what them
grain-chists is full of 'em."
"I am going to look," quoth Mrs. Polly then, in a tone of decision,
and straightway she rose and got a candle.
Ann's heart beat terribly. "O, I wouldn't go up there to-night," said
she.
"Yes; I am going. I'm going to satisfy Nabby about the rats in the
grain-chest, if I can."
She was out the door, at the foot of the stairs, Nabby behind her,
dishcloth and plate in hand, peering fearfully over her shoulder. Ann
was in despair. Only one chance of averting the discovery suggested
itself to her. _She tipped over the churn._ "O, oh!" she screamed.
Back rushed Mrs. Polly and Nabby, and that ended the rat-hunt for
that night. The waste of all that beautiful cream was all Mrs. Polly
could think of--prudent housewife that she was.
So in the night, when the moon was up, and the others were sound
asleep, Ann assisted her thief safely out of the grain-chest and out
of the house. "But, first," said Ann Wales, pausing bravely, with her
hand on the grain-chest lid, speaking in a solemn whisper, "before I
let you out, you must make me a promise."
"What?" came back feebly.
"That you will never, never, steal a horse again. If you don't
promise, I will give you up, now."
"I promise I won't," said the man, readily.
Let us hope he never did. That, speeding out into the clear winter
night, he did bear with him a better determination in his heart. At
all events, there were no more attempts made to rob the new
Horse-House at the Braintree meeting-house. Many a Sunday after that,
Red Robin stood there peaceful and unmolested. Occasionally, as the
years went by, he was tied, of a Sunday night, in Mrs. Polly Wales'
barn.
For, by and by, his master, good brave young John Penniman, married
Ann Wales. The handsomest couple that ever went into the
meeting-house, people said. Ann's linen-chest was well stocked; and
she had an immense silk bonnet, with a worked white veil, a velvet
cloak, and a flowered damask petticoat for her wedding attire. Even
Hannah French had nothing finer when she was married to Phineas Adams
a year later.
All the drawback to the happiness was that John had taken some land
up in Vermont, and there the young couple went, shortly after the
wedding. It was a great cross to Mrs. Polly; but she bore it bravely.
Not a tear sparkled in her black eyes, watching the pair start off
down the bridle-path, riding Red Robin, Ann on a pillion behind her
husband. But, sitting down beside her lonely hearth when she entered
the house, she cried bitterly. "I did hope I could keep Ann with me
as long as I lived," she sobbed.
"Don't you take on," said Nabby, consolingly. "You take my word
for't, they'll be back 'afore long."
Nabby proved a true prophet. Red Robin did come trotting back from
the Vermont wilds, bearing his master and mistress before long.
Various considerations induced them to return; and Mrs. Polly was
overjoyed. They came to live with her.
Riding through the wilderness to Vermont on their wedding journey,
Ann had confessed to her husband how she had secreted the thief who
had tried to steal his Red Robin. She had been afraid to tell; but he
had turned on the saddle, and smiled down in her face. "I am content
that the man is safe," said John Penniman. "Prithee, why should I
wish him evil, whilst I am riding along with thee, on Red Robin, Ann?"