Oolie/I
I.
A QUIET summer in the country! How charming it will be for an idle bachelor like myself, with no care to engross him, no taste for the usual round of watering-place and mountain and sea-shore, thoroughly tired of flirtation and fashion, yet sadly in need of rest! I can imagine nothing more delightful than to spend the hot months at Greyrock with my tenants. My agent writes me that the fences are out of repair, and a new bridge is sadly needed over Cress-kill, and that will give me quite amusement enough to superintend in an idle, dreamy way.
Thinking thus, I packed my trunk, arranged with my landlady, visited my lawyer, and bid good-by to the city for the summer, and by boat, car, and stage found myself one June afternoon on the little porch of the modest but rambling house that was mine by inheritance. The honey-suckle grew thickly over the porch, shaking its sweet-scented pennons close by my cheek; the locust blossoms were swinging their censers high up in the trees; the grasshoppers and crickets were noisy in the grass. Away off toward the west a gleam of Cress-kill shone clear, while to the north rose the great rock that gave the farm its name. I had time to notice all this before the door was opened by my new tenant, John Austin.
He was a spare, elderly man, with clear blue eyes and a scanty crop of brown hair, curling and thickly sprinkled with gray. His clothes were poor but very clean, and his linen was as white as snow. He had a look of settled sadness about the firm mouth, and the lines in his forehead were deep and many.
All this I saw as I sat talking with him in the little parlor, after we had groped our way in and he had succeeded in opening one of the wooden shutters in spite of a rebellious rosebush that stoutly maintained its right to reign undisturbed, revenging itself by flinging in a shower of drifting petals on the clean striped carpet.
"You have no family, I believe, Mr. Austin?" I said, by way of conversation.
"Yes, Sir, I have one little girl—and—I had a son."
He stopped, and going to the high and narrow mantle-piece, took down a faded daguerreotype of a little boy, with very smooth hair and conscious face. "That has his look, Sir; but he was grown up when we lost him." He took the little battered case in his hands, and fumbling with the fastening, he replaced it on the shelf, and turned his head away.
I found I had touched a painful subject, so hastened to make inquiry in regard to accommodations for the time of my sojourn.
"We are very plain folks, Sir, and don't know much about cooking for city people, and maybe you wouldn't be suited. My wife isn't always able to be about." Here he stopped, and the troubled look came down on his face; "but I'll ask Oolie, Sir." Stepping to the door he called, "Oolie! Oolie!"
There was no answer, so he stepped through the hall, and at the back-door repeated the call, leaving me to marvel greatly whether the owner of the strange name were a fossil or some unknown form of humanity. Apparently he, she, or it, answered, and a colloquy ensued, of which I only heard Mr. Austin's steady tones.
Presently he returned, and, standing with one hand on his side and the other resting on the chair, he said, "Oolie thinks we can manage it, Sir, if the large north room would do for you. It has a pretty look-out, you know, toward the Rock and the Kill. Oolie and I will try our best to make you comfortable."
So it was settled that I should be their lodger for a season. Asking me to remain there a few moments he shut me up in the old parlor, and I at the quaint chairs set regularly about the room, the square-angled sofa, the high mantlepiece, and its array of solemn trifles—silver candlesticks and china vases—glanced at the books on the table, and was puzzled to find a volume of Mrs. Browning's and Motley's Dutch Republic in company with the Lady's Wreath for 1838, the Documentary History of New York, at least three volumes of that trifling work, and that cheerful poem Young's Night Thoughts. There was a bit of ruffle in a little work-basket, and a tiny thimble, which I supposed might belong to "the little girl." I hoped to find this same child a very agreeable companion. So I did.