Klee Wyck - Emily Carr [28]
Indian boys were playing football in the street of their village. I drew up to ask direction. The ball bounced exactly under my horse’s stomach. The animal had already gone to sleep and did not notice. Out of a cabin shot a whirl of a little man, riddled with anger. It was Doctor Cabbage.
He confiscated the ball and scolded the boys so furiously that the whole team melted away—you’d think there was not a boy left in the world.
Laying his hand on my sleeping steed, Doctor Cabbage smiled up at me.
“You brave good rider,” he said. “Skookum tumtum (good heart)!”
I thanked Doctor Cabbage for the compliment and for his gallant rescue.
I woke my horse with great difficulty, and decided that honour for conspicuous bravery was sometimes very easily won.
FRIENDS
“We have a good house now. We would like you to stay with us when you come. My third stepfather gave me the house when he was dead. He was a good man.”
I wrote back, “I would like to stay with you in your house.”
Louisa met me down on the mud flats. She had to walk out half a mile because the tide was low. She wore gum boots and carried another pair in her hand for me. Her two small barefoot sons took my bags on their backs. Louisa’s greetings were gracious and suitable to the dignity of her third stepfather’s house.
It was a nice house, and had a garden and verandah. There was a large kitchen, a living-room and double parlours. The back parlour was given to me. It had a handsome brass bed with spread and pillow-slips heavily embroidered, and an eiderdown. There was also a fine dresser in the room; on it stood a candle in a beer bottle and a tin pie-plate to hold hairpins. There was lots of light and air in the room because the blind would not draw down and the window would not shut up.
A big chest in the centre of the room held the best clothes of all the family. Everyone was due to dress there for church on Sunday morning.
Between my parlour and the front parlour was an archway hung with skimpy purple curtains of plush. If any visitors came for music in the evenings and stayed too long, Louisa said,
“You must go now, my friend wants to go to bed.”
The outer parlour ran to music. It had a player-piano—an immense instrument with a volume that rocked the house—an organ, a flute and some harmonicas. When the cabinet for the player rolls, the bench, a big sofa, a stand-lamp with shade, and some rocking chairs got into the room, there was scarcely any space for people.
In the living-room stood a glass case and in it were Louisa’s and Jimmie’s wedding presents and all their anniversary presents. They had been married a long time, so the case was quite full.
The kitchen was comfortable, with a fine cook-stove, a sink, and a round table to eat off. Louisa had been cook in a cannery and cooked well. Visitors often came in to watch us eat. They just slipped in and sat in chairs against the wall and we went on eating. Mrs. Green, Louisa’s mother, dropped in very often. Louisa’s house was the best in the village.
At night Louisa’s boys, Jim and Joe, opened a funny little door in the living-room wall and disappeared. Their footsteps sounded up and more up, a creak on each step, then there was silence. By and by Jimmie and Louisa disappeared through the little door too. Only they made louder creaks as they stepped. The house was then quite quiet—just the waves sighing on the shore.
LOUISA’S MOTHER, Mrs. Green, was a remarkable woman. She clung vigorously to the old Indian ways, which sometimes embarrassed Louisa. In the middle of talking, the old lady would spit on to the wood-pile behind the stove. When Louisa saw she was going to, she ran with a newspaper, but she seldom got there in time. She was a little ashamed, too, of her mother’s smoking a pipe; but Louisa was most respectful to her mother—she never scolded her.
One day I was passing the cabin in the village where Mrs. Green lived. I saw the old lady standing barefoot in a trunk which was filled