Abijah's Bubble

Ezekiel Todd, her dry, tight-fisted, lean father, had named her, bawling it out so loud that the more suitable, certainly the more euphonious, “Evangeline,” proffered in a timid whisper by her faded and somewhat romantic mother, was completely smothered.

“I baptize thee, Evang--” began the minister, when Ezekiel's voice rose clear:

“Abijah, I tell ye, Parson--A-b-i-j-a-h--Abijah!” And Abijah it was.

The women were furious.

“Jes' like Zeke Todd. He's too ornery to live. I come mighty near speakin' right out, and hadn't been that Martha held on to me I would. Call her Abbie, for short, Mrs. Todd,” exclaimed Deacon Libby's wife, “and shame him.”

Abbie never minded it. She was too little to remember, she always said, and there were few people in the village of Taylorsville present at the christening who did.

Old Si Spavey, however, never forgot. “You kin call yourself Abbie if you choose,” he used to say, “and 'tain't none o' my business, but I was in the meetin'-house and heard Zeke let drive, and b'gosh it sounded just like a buzz-saw strikin' the butt-end of a log. 'Abijah! Abijah! he hollered. Shet Parson Simmons up same's a steel trap. Gosh, but it was funny!”

Only twice since the christening had she to face the consequences of her father's ill temper. This was after his death, when the needs of the poor mother made a small mortgage imperative and she must sign as a witness. It came with a certain shock, but there was no help for it, and she went through the ordeal bravely, dotting the “i” and giving a little flourish to the tail of the “h”.

The second time was when she signed her application for the position of postmistress of the village. The big mill-owner, Hiram Taylor, brought her the paper.

“Got to put it all in, Miss Abbie,” he said with a laugh. “Shut your eyes and sign it and then forget it. Awful, ain't it?--but that's the law, and there ain't no way of getting round it, I guess.”

Hiram Taylor had left the village years before, rather suddenly, some had thought, when he was a strapping young fellow of twenty-two or three, and had moved West and stayed West until he came back the year before with a wife and a houseful of children. Then the lawyers in the village got busy, and pretty soon some builders came down from Boston, only fifty miles away, and then a lot of bricklayers; and some cars were switched off on the siding, loaded with lumber and lath and brick, and next a train-load of machinery, and so the mills were running again with Hiram sole owner and in full charge. One of the first things he did after his arrival--the following morning, really--was to look up Abbie's mother. He gave a littie start when he saw how shabby the cottage looked; no paint for years--steps rotting--window-blinds broken, with a hinge loose. He gave a big one when a thin, hollow-chested woman, gray and spare, opened the door at his knock.

“Hiram!” she gasped, and the two went inside, and the door was shut.

All she said when Abbie came home from school--she was teaching that year--was: “The new mill-owner came to see me. His name's Taylor.”

That same day a heavy-set man with gray hair and beard, and jet-black eyebrows shading two kindly eyes, got out of his wagon, hitched his horse to a post in front of the school-house and stepped to Abbie's desk.

“I'm Hiram Taylor, up to the mills. Going to send one of my girls to you to-morrow and thought I'd drop in.” Then he looked around and said: “Want another coat of whitewash on these walls, don't you, and--and a new stove? This don't seem to be drawin' like it ought to. If them trustees won't get ugly about it, I got a new stove up to the mill I don't want, and I'll send it down.” And he did. The trustees shrugged their shoulders, but made no objections. If Hiram Taylor wanted to throw his money away it was none of their business. Abbie Todd never said she was cold--not as they had “heard on.”

When the new school building was finished--a brick structure with stone trimmings, steam-heated, and varnished desks and seats--the craze for the new and up-to-date so dominated the board that they paid Abbie a month's salary in advance and then replaced her with a man graduate from Concord. Abbie took her dismissal as a matter of course. Nothing good ever lasted long. When she went up one step she always slid back two. It had been that way all her life.

Hiram heard of it and came rattling into the village, where he expressed himself at a town meeting in language distinguished for its clearness and force. The result was Abbie's application for the position of postmistress.

This time he didn't consult the trustees or anybody else. He wrote a private note to the Postmaster-General, who was his friend, and the appointment came by return mail.

Mr. Taylor would often chat with her through the little window with which she held converse with the public--he often came himself for his mail--but she made no mention of her state of mind. She was earning her living, and she was for the time content. He had helped her and she was grateful--more than this it was not her habit to dwell upon. One thing she was convinced of: she wouldn't keep the position long.

Her mother knew her misgivings, and so did a small open wood fire in the sitting-room. Many a night the two would croon together. The mother shrivelled and faded; Abbie herself being over thirty--not so fresh-looking as she had been--not so pretty--never had been very pretty. Her mother knew, too, how hard she had always struggled to do something better; how she had studied drawing at the normal school when she was preparing to be a teacher; and how she had spent weeks in the elaboration of wall-paper patterns, which she had sent to the Decorative Art Society in Boston, only to have them returned to her in the same wrapper in which they had been mailed, with the indorsement “not suitable.” That's why she didn't think she was going to be postmistress long. Far into the night these talks would continue-long after the other neighbors had gone to bed--nine o'clock maybe--sometimes as late as ten--an unheard-of thing in Taylorsville, where everybody was up at daylight.

Then one day an extraordinary thing happened--extraordinary so far as her modest post-office was concerned. A poster appeared on the wall of her office--a huge card, big as the top of a school desk, bearing in large type this legend: “Rock Creek Copper Company. Keep & Co., Agents,” and at the bottom, in small type, directions as to the best way of securing the stock before the lists were closed. She had noticed the name of the company emblazoned on many of the communications addressed to people in the village--the richer ones--but here it was in cold type--“hot type,” for that matter, for it was in flaming red--on the wall, in front of her window.

Abbie lifted her head in surprise when she saw what had been done without even “By your leave.” She had found auction sales, sheriff's notices and tax warnings opposite her window, but never copper mines. The longer she looked at it the better she liked it. There was a cheery bit of color in its blazing letters, and she was partial to bits of color. That's why she kept plants all winter in the little sitting-room at home, and nursed one cactus that gave out a scarlet bloom once in so many months.

It was Miss Maria Furgusson, of Boston--summer boarder at the next cottage; second floor, six dollars a week, including washing--that revived, kept alive, in fact, fanned to fever heat, Abbie's first impression of the poster. Maria called for her mail, and the intimacy had gone so far that before the week was out “Miss Todd” had been replaced by “Abbie” and then “Ab,” and Miss Furgusson by “Maria”--the postmistress being too dignified for further abbreviation.

“Oh, there's our lovely copper mine--where did you get it? Who put it up?”

Maria was a shirt-waisted young woman with a bang and a penetrating voice. She had charge of the hosiery counter in a department store and could call “Cash” in tones that brought instant service. This, with her promptness, had endeared her to many impatient customers--especially those from out of town who wanted to catch trains. It was through one of these “hayseeds” that she secured board at so reasonable a price in Taylorsville during her vacation.

“What do you know about it?” inquired Abbie. Such things were Greek to her.

“Know? I've got twenty shares, and I'm going to have money to burn before long.”

Abbie bent her head, and took in as much of Miss Furgusson as she could see through the square hole in her window.

“Who gave it to you?” The idea of a girl like Maria ever having money enough to buy anything of that kind never occurred to her.

“Nobody; I bought it; paid two dollars a share for it and now it's up to three, and Mr. Slathers, our floor-walker, says it's going to twenty-five. I've got a profit of twenty dollars on mine now.”

Abbie made a mental calculation; twenty dollars was a considerable part of her month's salary.

“And everybody in our store has got some. Mr. Slathers has made eight hundred dollars, and I know for sure that Miss Henders is going to leave the cloak department and set up a typewriting place, because she told me so; she's got a brother in the feed business who staked her.”

“Staked her? What's that?”

“Loaned her the money,” answered Maria, a certain pity in her voice for one so green and countrified.

“How do you get it?” Abbie's eyes were shining like the disks of a brass letter scale and almost as large--they were still upon Maria.

“The money?”

“No, the stock.”

“Why, send Mr. Keep the money and he buys the stock and sends you back the certificate. Want to see mine? I've got it pinned in--Here it is.”

Abbie opened the door of the glass partition and beckoned to the shopgirl. She rarely allowed visitors inside, but this one seemed to hold the key to a new world.

The girl slipped her fingers inside her shirtwaist and drew out a square piece of paper bearing the inscription of the poster in big letters. At the bottom of the paper a section of cement drain-pipe poured forth a steady stream of water, and the whole was underlined by a motto meaning “Peace and Plenty”--of water, no doubt.