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She would surprise him on his return by opening the door to him upon a house swept and garnished. She would show him that she could be of some use even in such a primitive topsy-turvy world as this into which Fate had thrust her willy-nilly. First, she carried red live coals on a shovel from the fireplace to the cook-stove, and piled kindling upon them till it lighted.
Things had come about very much as David had desired and anticipated, and our friend had met quite a number of the "summer people," having been waylaid at times by the rector in whose good graces he stood so high that he might have sung anything short of a comic song during the offertory and presented willy-nilly.
All were running about, each asked the other what this meant; the old men took counsel together, the young men saddled their horses while the women held them; the boys scuffled about, in a hurry to run and fight, but did not know with whom or about what! Willy-nilly, they had to stay behind.
The priests, willy-nilly, now permitted Ulrich to be laid on the leathern sack between them, and while first Sutor, and then Stubenrauch, shrunk away to mutter prayers over a rosary for the senseless lad's restoration to consciousness, and to avoid coming in contact with his wet clothes, the artist entered the vehicle, and without asking permission, took the wine from the priests' basket.
Forgetting what a comfort they had been to him the evening before, this while feeling boyishly ashamed and foolish at having had them with him, in a panic he caught them up and flung them, willy-nilly, out of sight upon Cis's couch; after which, looking sheepish, and wondering if Big Tom had, by any chance, seen them, he put away his bedding, filled the teakettle, and reached down the package of oatmeal.
"Willy-nilly, you must take part in a terrible battle; book against book, man against man, party against party; make war you must, and that systematically, or you will be abandoned by your own party.
Oh," he added, as he glanced it through, "rather ghostly, I must confess, or would be if one were inclined that way; but I imagined your nerves were stronger. Did the pronoun startle you?" "How?" "Why I thought perhaps you considered yourself committed to all this solemnity before your time, or willy-nilly, as the children say. What a comical idea to hang one's self up in a store in this fashion.
I was compelled, willy-nilly, to have recourse to my solitary fellow-traveller the monkey. I sat down beside her; she ceased to whine, and again stretched out her hand to me. The motionless fog enveloped us both with a soporific humidity; and equally immersed in one unconscious thought, we remained there side by side, like blood-relatives. I smile now ... but then another feeling reigned in me.
This was actually done, and our friend was present willy-nilly. He proved a broken reed, however, for in the face of the traders he went back on coöperation. As fortune would have it, our own komatik fell through the ice in taking a short cut across a bay, and we arrived late, having had to borrow some dry clothing from a fisherman on the way.
The charming match-maker had not indulged her passion for making others happy, willy-nilly, for some time not, in fact, since she had arranged the match between Marie Willoughby and Jack Hearst, which, as the world knows, resulted first in a marriage, and then, as the good lady had not foreseen, in a South Dakota divorce.
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