Dawn
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 11: Not Pats but Scratches
Mrs. Colebrook went home the next day. She wore the air of an injured martyr at breakfast. She told her brother that, of course, if he preferred to have an ignorant servant girl take care of his poor afflicted son, she had nothing to say; but that certainly he could not expect HER to stay, too, especially after being insulted as she had been.
Daniel Burton had remonstrated feebly, shrugged his shoulders and flung his arms about in his usual gestures of impotent annoyance.
Susan, in the kitchen, went doggedly about her work, singing, meanwhile, what Keith called her “mad” song. When Susan was particularly “worked up” over something, “jest b’ilin’ inside” as she expressed it, she always sang this song—her own composition, to the tune of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”:
“I’ve taken my worries, an’ taken my woes,
I have, I have,
An’ shut ‘em up where nobody knows,
I have, I have.
I chucked ‘em down, that’s what I did,
An’ now I’m sittin’ upon the lid,
An’ we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marchin’ home.
I’m sittin’ upon the lid, I am,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
I’m tryin’ to be a little lamb,
Hurrah! Hurrah!
But I’m feelin’ more like a great big slam
Than a nice little peaceful woolly lamb,
But we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marchin’ home.”
When Daniel Burton, this morning, therefore, heard Susan singing this song, he was in no doubt as to Susan’s state of mind—a fact which certainly did not add to his own serenity.
Upstairs, Keith, wearily indifferent as to everything that was taking place about him, lay motionless as usual, his face turned toward the wall.
And at ten o’clock Mrs. Colebrook went. Five minutes later Daniel Burton entered the kitchen—a proceeding so extraordinary that Susan broke off her song in the middle of a “Hurrah” and grew actually pale.
“What is it?—KEITH? Is anything the matter with Keith?” she faltered.
Ignoring her question the man strode into the room.
“Well, Susan, this time you’ve done it,” he ejaculated tersely.
“Done it—to Keith—ME? Why, Mr. Burton, what do you mean? Is Keith—worse?” chattered Susan, with dry lips. “It was only a little hash I took up. He simply won’t eat that oatmeal stuff, an’—”
“No, no, I don’t mean the hash,” interrupted the man irritably. “Keith is all right—that is, he is just as he has been. It’s my sister, Mrs. Colebrook. She’s gone.”
“Gone—for good?”
“Yes, she’s gone home.”
“Glory be!” The color came back to Susan’s face in a flood, and frank delight chased the terror from her eyes. “Now we can do somethin’ worthwhile.”
“I reckon you’ll find you have to do something, Susan. You know very well I can’t afford to hire a nurse—now.”
“I don’t want one.”
“But there’s all the other work, too.”
“Work! Why, Mr. Burton, I won’t mind a little work if I can have that blessed boy all to myself with no one to feed him oatmeal mush with a spoon, an’ snivel over him. You jest wait. The first elemental thing is to learn him self-defiance, so he can do things for himself. Then he’ll begin to get his health an’ strength for the operator.”
“You’re forgetting the money, Susan. It costs money for that.”
Susan’s face fell.
“Yes, sir, I know.” She hesitated, then went on, her color deepening. “An’ I hain’t sold—none o’ them poems yet. But there’s other magazines, a whole lot of ‘em, that I hain’t tried. Somebody’s sure to take ‘em some time.”
“I’m glad your courage is still good, Susan; but I’m afraid the dear public is going to appreciate your poems about the way it does—my pictures,” shrugged the man bitterly, as he turned and left the room.
Not waiting to finish setting her kitchen in order, Susan ran up the back stairs to Keith’s room.
“Well, your aunt is gone, an’ I’m on,
An’ here we are together.
We’ll chuck our worries into pawn,
An’ how do you like the weather?”
she greeted him gayly. “How about gettin’ up? Come on! Such a lazy boy! Here it is away in the middle of the forenoon, an’ you abed like this!”
But it was not to be so easy this time. Keith was not to be cajoled into getting up and dressing himself even to beat Susan’s record. Steadfastly he resisted all efforts to stir him into interest or action; and a dismayed, disappointed Susan had to go downstairs in acknowledged defeat.
“But, land’s sake, what could you expect?” she muttered to herself, after a sorrowful meditation before the kitchen fire. “You can’t put a backbone into a jellyfish by jest showin’ him the bone—an’ that’s what his aunt has made him—a flappy, transparallel jellyfish. Drat her! But I ain’t goin’ to give up. Not much I ain’t!” And Susan attacked the little kitchen stove with a vigor that would have brought terror to the clinkers of a furnace fire pot.
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