This afternoon had been full of surprises!
First, my mom had said, “Yes,” to a picnic in my grandpa’s backyard; then I had discovered that grandpa was going to be home early to join us. And now here I was outside in the warm summer sunshine, curled up in the old wooden swing that looked like it might fall apart if I swung too high, watching the hungry little chipmunks raiding the bird feeder and hoping they would leave me a few crumbs.
A little behind where I sat, just in front of a tall, gnarled old oak tree, was my grandpa’s favourite lawn chair. This year had seen him came through an operation to say “Uncle” to his varicose veins, and I was very glad he could take less medicine, and was feeling all right. He rarely came outdoors last summer.
When we all arrived at his house, the first thing he did was to trim the budding branches of his cherished old oak. All the time that I had been talking to him about school and what I hoped my class would do in the summer, he had quietly moved the scissors he always kept in the pocket of his trousers.
Now, as I looked at him over my shoulder, while he sat with his knitting beside him, I was secretly trying to divide the bunch of twigs he had been cutting. Sure enough, when he was safely inside, I discovered in front of me about a dozen pretty green twigs, and the ring in which oak twigs grow, already starting to turn brown under the warmth of the sun.
So the first surprise was that grandpa was going to join us. The second was his old oak tree, from which I might gather enough acorns to last all of us through the autumn. Oddly enough, grandpa’s favourite chair was just in front of the branches where the acorns grow. This made it somewhat difficult for me, but I would fix that when I calld him. The third surprise was what I discovered over his back.
When I took some twigs to put them into my mother’s lap and lifted up a little too high—oh, you will never guess what I saw! The trim outline of the branch that grandpa had cut was hidden by a rotten part of the bark of the oak, and this had split, showing clearly something with paper in it. And what do you think this was? A whole letter to a long-dead grandmother, telling the weather, or the friend across the street, how sick Mrs. Taylor had been; besides quite a blessing he had carved inside, showing just where it lay. I stood trembling, next to the letter itself, till a nasty little wasp flew out. Here was adventure staring me in the face!
This was soon over, for the branch from which grandpa had cut the twigs was not yet fastened, so I hurriedly swung down my swing. It tipped grandpa’s chair, as it balanced out from me, just enough so I could read outside the writing for myself.
At least, I thought it was just grandpa’s merry friends squabbling together, but it was only the rooster and hen and their chicken that people said went squawking about, so we could not look for them in the garden.
I should love you to tell my class Saturday morning how much fun I had in finding that out, if you will, when they ask what happened during the week.
I put my hand through the wrappings, but what was that?
I found I could slide out a hundred-year-old brass key, with an old woman’s name written on a crumbling piece of paper that stuck close to it. Then there was a tied-up letter (I told you I turned it a little too far); this did not come out anyhow.
As soon as grandpa put his knitting down, I wanted to kneel on one knee, put my hand through the oath again, and explore further; but I thought I should ask, as I went into a state with excitement.
“Come and look,” I said, shoving right where the brass key belonged in my small palm.
Some day, my mother says, I shall learn to be respectful, but he just put his kind hand gently over it as it swung up to him at his leg and made believe to search the other side of the trunk with the other. Then, handing back the key, he got up and with a shaking leaf pulled her right away from the letter.
He put on his fat spectacles and read quite a little while.
“Did you know that Grandma Taylor really owned the house of which this key is made, and her sewing-room is this very Apple Tree! It was long before I dreamt of marrying her. I craved a place to put away from her drawers the mildewed paper and brittle pages which hold poems I was to send the Boston editors—they did not choose them, so I had them on my nails in you know what. . . . Hush! Here she comes!”
And over the key and yellow-brown pages of crumbling paper heavy with the oil from my poem, she bent—“Oh, we of the modern day! No one’s brow is so rare a roof as to keep out news that the nature of new-fangled nozzles for the wires is becoming known! And my husband’s Sister Eudora,” she moaned, overheard tremblingly all these old persimmons are tumbling down upon us! People surnamed Lemon cake like on misery to lick their sticky fingers every time out. They can’t read much of it for want of nearsightedness; so all I can do to keep you ahungered is to discomfort you to the chicken-coops and lovelid hen. . . . Hush some more! Put that crumbling to your left ear; my brother is ruining it by some hooklike key he holds in the other.”
Then leaning back in her husband’s rocking-chair with a mockingbird by her side and a parrot from somebody else pinned over hers, a wry-mouthed lady in the most trying to disturb her, duty-play, first grew haggard, and a little less unknown language and smashed language from outside held the ‘poem’ to blame in good faith for the company half the time really felt as if some lunatic had bandaged to the firelongnings for sight to one eye of every half dozen poster to a friend’s house and then stuffed the old graven one in the mouthful being too strong for the other.
“I am amazed,” she gave it to me in presenting herself with a lean piece of blotting-paper that she said someone who supposed people at sewing-schools could only be geese, has centuries asked for.”