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St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, September 1878
Dab Kinzer: A Story of a Growing Boy
by William O. Stoddard
Chapter XVII
Sleep?
One of the most excellent things in all the world, and very few people get too
much of it nowadays.
As for Dabney Kinzer, he had done his sleeping as regularly and faithfully as
even his eating, up to that very night after Ham Morris came home to find the
big barn afire. There had been a few, a very few exceptions. There were the
nights when he was expecting to go duck-shooting before daylight, and waked up
at midnight with a strong conviction that he was already too late about
starting. There were perhaps a dozen or so of "eeling" expeditions which had
kept him out late enough for a full basket and a proper scolding. There, too,
was the night when he had stood so steadily by the tiller of the "Swallow,"
while she danced through the dark across the rough waves of the Atlantic.
But on the whole, Dab Kinzer had been a good sleeper all his life till then.
Once in bed, and there had been an end of all wakefulness.
On that particular night, for the first time, sleep refused to come, late as was
the hour when the family circle broke up. It could not have been the excitement
of Ham's and Miranda's return. He'd have gotten over that by this time. No more
could it have been the fire, though the smell of the smoldering hay came in
pretty strongly, at times, through the wide-open windows. If any one patch of
that great roomy bed was better made up for sleeping than the rest of it, Dab
would surely have found the spot, for he tumbled and rolled all over it in his
restlessness. Some fields on a farm will "grow" better wheat than others, but no
part of the bed seemed to grow any sleep. At last Dab got wearily up and took a
chair by the window. The night was dark, but the stars were shining, and every
now and then the wind would make a shovel of itself and toss up the hot ashes
the fire had left, sending a dull red glare around on the house and barns for a
moment, and flooding all the neighborhood with a stronger smell of burnt hay.
"If you're going to burn hay," soliloquized Dab, "it wont do to take a barn for
a stove. Not that kind of a barn. But what did Ham Morris mean by saying I was
to go to boarding-school? That's what I'd like to know."
The secret was out.
He had kept remarkably still, for him, all the evening, and had not asked a
question; but if his brains were ever to work over his books as they had over
Ham's remark, his future chances for sound sleep were all gone. It had come upon
him so suddenly, the very thing he had been wishing for during all those walks
and talks and lessons of all sorts with Ford Foster and Frank Harley ever since
the cruise of the "Swallow."
It was a wonderful idea, and Dab had his doubts as to the way his mother would
take to it when it should be brought seriously before her. Little he guessed the
truth. Ham's remark had found other ears as well as Dabney's, and there were
reasons, therefore, why good Mrs. Kinzer was sitting by the window of her own
room, at that very moment, as little inclined to sleep as was the boy she was
thinking of. So proud of him, too, she was, and so full of bright, motherly
thoughts of the man he would make "one of these days, when he gets his growth."
There must have been a good deal of sympathy between Dab and his mother, for, by
and by, just as she began to feel drowsy and muttered, "Well, well, we'll have a
talk about it to-morrow," Dab found himself nodding against the window-frame,
and slowly rose from his chair, remarking:
"Guess I might as well finish that dream in bed. If I'd tumbled out o' the
window I'd have lit among Mirandy's rose-bushes. They've got their thorns all on
at this time o' night."
It was necessary for them both to sleep hard after that, for more than half the
night was gone and they were to be up early. So indeed they were; but what
surprised Mrs. Kinzer when she went into the kitchen was to find Miranda there
before her.
"You here, my dear? That's right. I'll take a look at the milk-room. Where's
Ham?"
"Out among the stock. Dab's just gone to him."
Curious things people will do at times. Miranda had put down the coffee-pot on
the range. There was not a single one of the farm "help" around, male or female,
and there stood the blooming young bride, with her back toward her mother, and
staring out through the open door. And then Mrs. Kinzer slipped forward and put
her arms around her daughter's neck.
Well, it was very early in the morning for those two women to stand there and
cry; but it seemed to do them good, and Miranda remarked, at last, as she kissed
Mrs. Kinzer: "O mother, it is all so good and beautiful, and I'm so happy."
And then they both laughed in a subdued and quiet way, and Miranda picked up the
coffee-pot while her mother walked away into the milk-room.
Such cream as there seemed to be on all the pans that morning!
As for Ham Morris, his first visit, on leaving the house, had been to the ashes
of the old barn, as a matter of course.
"Not much of a loss," he said to himself; "but it might have been but for Dab.
There's the making of a man in him. Wonder if he'd get enough to eat if we sent
him up yonder. On the whole, I think he would. If he didn't, I don't believe it
would be his fault. He's got to go, and his mother'll agree, I know. Talk about
mothers-in-law. If one of 'em's worth as much as she is, I'd like to have a
dozen. Don't know, though. I'm afraid the rest would have to take back seats
while Mrs. Kinzer was in the house."
Very likely Ham was right; but just then he heard the voice of Dab Kinzer behind
him.
"I say, Ham, when you've looked at the other things I want to show you the
'Swallow.' I haven't hurt her a bit, and her new grapnel's worth three of the
old one."
"All right, Dab. I think I'd like a sniff of the water. Come on. There's nothing
else like that smell of the shore with the tide half out."
No more there is, and there have been sea-shore men, many of them, who had
wandered away into the interior of the country, hundreds and hundreds of long
miles, and settled there, and even got rich and old there, and yet who have come
all the way back again just to get another smell of the salt marshes and the sea
breeze and the outgoing tide.
Ham actually took a little boat and went on board the "Swallow" when they
reached the landing, and Dab kept close by him.
"She's all right, Ham. But what are you casting loose for?"
"Dab, they wont all be ready for breakfast in two hours. The stock and things
can go. The men 'll 'tend to 'em. Just haul on that sheet a bit. Now the jib.
Look out for the boom. There. The wind's a little ahead, but it isn't bad. Ah!"
The last word came out in a great sigh of relief, and was followed by a chuckle
which seemed to gurgle up all the way from Ham's boots.
"This is better than railroading," he said to Dabney, as they tacked into the
long stretch where the inlet widened toward the bay. "No pounding or jarring
here. Talk of your fashionable watering-places! Why, Dab, there aint anything
else in the world prettier than that reach of water and the sand island with the
ocean beyond it. There's some ducks and some gulls. Why, Dab, do you see that?
There's a porpoise inside the bar."
It was as clear as daylight that Ham Morris felt himself "at home" again, and
that his brief experience of the outside world had by no means lessened his
affection for the place he was born in. If the entire truth could have been
known, it would have been found that he felt his heart warm toward the whole
coast and all its inhabitants, including the clams. And yet it was remarkable
how many of the latter were mere empty shells when Ham finished his breakfast
that morning. He preferred them roasted, and his mother-in-law had not forgotten
that trait in his character.
Once or twice in the course of the sail Dabney found himself on the point of
saying something about boarding-schools, but each time his friend suddenly broke
away to discuss other topics, such as blue-fish, porpoises, crabs, or the
sailing qualities of the "Swallow," and Dab dimly felt it would be better to
wait till another time. So he waited.
And then, as they sailed up the inlet, very happy and very hungry, he suddenly
exclaimed: "Ham, do you see that? How could they have guessed where we had gone?
There's the whole tribe, and the boys are with 'em, and Annie."
"What boys and Annie?"
"Oh, Ford Foster and Frank Harley. Annie is Ford's sister."
"What's become of Jenny?"
"You mean my boat? Why, there she is, hitched a little out, there by the
landing."
And Dabney did not seem to guess the meaning of Ham's queer, quizzical smile.
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