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AUNT 'LIZA'S HERO

AND OTHER STORIES




Works of

Annie Fellows Johnston


THE LITTLE COLONEL SERIES

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  The Little Colonel                                    $.50
  The Giant Scissors                                    .50
  Two Little Knights of Kentucky                        .50
  The Little Colonel Stories                            1.50
    (Containing in one volume the three stories, "The
    Little Colonel," "The Giant Scissors," and "Two
    Little Knights of Kentucky.")
  The Little Colonel's House Party                      1.50
  The Little Colonel's Holidays                         1.50
  The Little Colonel's Hero                             1.50
  The Little Colonel at Boarding-School                 1.50
      (_In Preparation_)
  The Little Colonel in Arizona                         1.50

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OTHER BOOKS

  Joel: A Boy of Galilee                               $1.50
  Big Brother                                           .50
  Ole Mammy's Torment                                   .50
  The Story of <DW55>                                     .50
  Cicely                                                .50
  Aunt 'Liza's Hero                                     .50
  The Quilt That Jack Built                             .50
  Asa Holmes                                            1.00
  Flip's "Islands of Providence"                        1.00
  Songs Ysame (Poems, with Albion Fellows Bacon)        1.00

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  L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
  200 Summer Street          Boston, Mass.

[Illustration: "AT FIRST HE ALWAYS BROUGHT SOME BOY WITH HIM"

    (_See page 43_)]





Cosy Corner Series


AUNT 'LIZA'S HERO

AND OTHER STORIES

By Annie Fellows Johnston

    Author of
    "The Little Colonel Series," "Big Brother," "The
    Story of <DW55>," "Ole Mammy's Torment," etc.

    _Illustrated by_
    W. L. Taylor and others

[Illustration]

    _Boston_ [Illustration: Decoration]
    _L. C. Page & Company_
    [Illustration: Decoration] _1904._




    _Copyright 1889, 1890, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1899,_
    BY PERRY MASON COMPANY

    _Copyright, 1903_
    BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
    (INCORPORATED)

    _All rights reserved_

    Published August, 1903


    Colonial Press
    Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
    Boston, Mass., U. S. A.




ACKNOWLEDGMENT


These stories first appeared in the _Youth's Companion_. The author
wishes to acknowledge the courtesy of the editors in permitting her to
republish them in the present volume.

Messrs. L. C. Page and Company wish also to acknowledge the courtesy of
the editors in granting them permission to use the original
illustrations.




CONTENTS


                                        PAGE
    AUNT 'LIZA'S HERO                     13
    THE CAPTAIN'S CELEBRATION             35
    JODE'S CIRCUS MONEY                   51
    JIMMY'S ERRAND                        71
    WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY AT HARDYVILLE   89
    AN OLD DAGUERREOTYPE                 113




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                  PAGE
  "AT FIRST HE ALWAYS BROUGHT SOME BOY WITH HIM" (_See page 43_)
                                                        _Frontispiece_

  "SHE LISTENED INTENTLY, EXPECTANTLY"                              28

  "SHE SAT SMILING HAPPILY IN THE DEPTHS OF THE BLACK SUNBONNET"    31

  "MR. GATES KICKED HIS FEET AGAINST THE ANDIRONS"                  93




AUNT 'LIZA'S HERO


AUNT 'LIZA BARNES leaned over the front gate at the end of the garden
path, and pulled her black sunbonnet farther over her wrinkled face to
shade her dim eyes from the glare of the morning sun. Something unusual
was happening down the street, judging from the rapidly approaching
noise and dust.

Aunt 'Liza had been weeding her little vegetable garden at the back of
the house when she first heard the confused shouting of many voices. She
thought it was a runaway, and hurried to the gate as fast as her
rheumatic joints would allow.

Runaway teams had often startled the sleepy streets of this little
Indiana village, but never before had such a wild procession raced
through its thoroughfares. Two well-grown calves dashed past, dragging
behind them an overturned, home-made cart, to which they were harnessed
by pieces of clothes-lines and rusty trace-chains.

Behind them came a breathless crowd of shouting boys and barking dogs.
They were gasping in the heat and the clouds of yellow dust their feet
had kicked up. Aunt 'Liza's black sunbonnet leaned farther over the gate
as she called shrilly to the boy who brought up the rear, "What's the
matter, Ben?"

The boy dropped out of the race and came back and leaned against the
fence, still grinning.

"Running isn't much in my line," he panted, as he wiped his fat,
freckled face on his shirtsleeve. "But it was too funny to see them
calves kick up their heels and light out. One is Joe Meadows's and one
is Jeff Whitman's. They're broke in to work single, and pull all right
that way. But the boys took a notion to make 'em work double. This is
the first time they've tried it. Put bits in their mouths, too, and
drive 'em with reins like horses. My! But didn't they go lickety-split!"

Aunt 'Liza chuckled. Seventy-five years had made her bent and feeble,
but her sense of fun and her sympathies were still fresh and quick.
Every boy in the place felt that she was his friend.

In her tumble-down cottage on the outskirts of the town she lived alone,
excepting when her drunken, thriftless son Henry came back to be taken
care of awhile. She supported herself by selling vegetables, chickens,
and eggs.

Most people had forgotten that she had once lived in much better
circumstances. Whatever longings she may have had for the prosperity of
her early days, no one knew about them. Perhaps it was because she never
talked of herself, and was so ready to listen to the complaints of
others, that everybody went to her with their troubles.

The racing calves soon came to a halt. In a few minutes the procession
came back, and halted quietly in front of the little garden gate. Jeff
was leading the calves, which looked around with mild, reproachful eyes,
as if wondering at the disturbance.

"Aunt 'Liza," said Jeff, "can you lend me a strap or something? The
reins broke. That's how they happened to get away from me."

"You can take the rope hanging up in the well-shed if you'll bring it
back before night."

"All right, Aunt 'Liza. I'll do as much for you some day. Just look at
Daisy and Bolivar! We're going to take them to the fair next fall, and
enter them as the fastest trotting calves on record."

"Boys are such harum-scarum creatures," said the old woman, as she bent
painfully over her weeding again. "Likely enough Jeff'll never think of
that rope another time."

But after dinner, as she sat out on a bench by the back door, smoking
her cob-pipe, Jeff came around the house with the rope on his arm.

"Sit down and rest a spell," insisted the old woman. "I get powerful
lonesome day in and day out, with scarcely anybody to pass a word with."

"Where's Henry?" Jeff asked.

"Off on another spree," she answered, bitterly. "I tell you, Jeff, it's
a hard thing for a mother to have to say about a son, but many and
many's the time I've wished the Lord had a-taken him when he was a
baby."

"Maybe he'll come all right yet, Aunt 'Liza," said Jeff.

"Not he. Not an honest day's work has he done since he left the army,"
she went on. "He was steady enough before the war, but camp life seemed
to upset him like. He was just a boy, you see, and he fell in with a
rough lot that started him to drinking and gambling. He's never been the
same since. Pity the war took my poor Mac instead. _He_ never would 'a'
left his old mother to drudge and slave to keep soul and body together."

Jeff listened in amazement to this sudden burst of confidence. He had
never heard her complain before, and scarcely knew how to answer her.

"Why, Aunt 'Liza, I never knew before that you had two sons!" he said.

"No, I suppose not," answered the old woman, sadly. "I suppose
everybody's forgotten him but me. My Mac never had his dues. He never
had justice done him. No, he never had justice done him." She kept
repeating the words.

"He ought to have come home a captain, with a sword, for he was a brave
boy, my Mac was. His picture is in the front room, if you've a mind to
step in and look at it, and his cap and his canteen are hanging on the
peg where he left them. Dear, dear! what a long time that's been!"

Jeff had all a boy's admiration for a hero. He took the faded cap
reverently from its peg to examine the bullet-hole in the crown. He
turned the battered canteen over and over, wishing he knew how it came
by all its dents and bruises. The face that looked out from the old
ambrotype with such steadfast eyes showed honesty in every line.

"Doesn't look much like old Henry," thought Jeff.

"Won't you tell me about him, Aunt 'Liza?" he asked, as he seated
himself on the door-step again. "I always did love to hear about the
war."

It was not often she had such an attentive listener. He questioned her
eagerly, and she took a childish delight in recalling every detail
connected with her "soldier-boy." It had been so many, many years since
she had spoken of him to any one.

"Yes, he was wounded twice," she told him, "and lay for weeks in a
hospital. Then he was six months in a Southern prison, and escaped and
joined the army again. He had risked his own life, too, to save his
colonel. Nobody had shown more courage and daring than he. Everybody
told me that, but other men were promoted and sent home with titles. My
boy came home to die, with only scars and a wasting fever."

Thrilled by her story, Jeff entered so fully into the spirit of the
recital that he, too, forgot that McIntyre Barnes was only one among
many thousands of heroes who were never raised above the rank of
private. Mother-love transfigured simple patriotism into more than
heroism.

As age came on she brooded over the thought more and more. Even the loss
of one son and the neglect by the other did not cause her now such
sorrow as that her country failed to recognize in her Mac the hero whom
she all but worshipped.

Jeff found himself repeating the old woman's words as he went toward
home late in the afternoon:

"No, Mac never had justice done him--he never had his dues."

Several days after that Jeff and Joe stopped at the house again to
borrow a pail.

"We forgot to water the calves this morning," Jeff explained, "and
they've had a pretty tough time hauling brush. They pull together
splendidly now. We've been clearing out Mr. Spalding's orchard."

"Look around and help yourselves," Aunt 'Liza answered, briskly. "When
once I get down on my knees to weed I'm too stiff to get up again in a
hurry. You'll find how it is, maybe, when you get into your seventies."

"Have you heard the news?" asked Joe, as he held the pail for Daisy to
drink.

"No. What, boys?"

"You know Decoration Day comes next week, and for once Stone Bluff is
going to celebrate. A brass band is coming over from Riggsville, and
they've sent to Indianapolis for some big speaker. There's going to be a
procession, and a lot of girls will march around, all dressed in white,
to decorate the graves."

Aunt 'Liza raised herself up painfully from the roll of carpet on which
she had been kneeling. A bunch of weeds was still clasped in her stiff
old fingers.

"Is it really so, Jeff?" she asked, tremulously, as