Hello my friends,
And welcome back to Drift Off.
I'm Joanne,
And I'm so glad you're here with me tonight.
Wherever you're listening from.
Tucked into bed.
Curled up on the couch.
Already halfway to sleep.
I want you to know that this is your time now.
Nothing else to do.
Nowhere else to be.
Just you,
My voice,
And a story to carry you off.
Tonight I have a real treat for you.
We're stepping away from our usual chapter books for a standalone story called Miss Callista's Peppermint Bottle.
Written by one of my very favorite authors,
Lucy Maud Montgomery,
The same beloved storyteller behind Anne of Green Gables.
This is a quieter,
Lesser-known tale of hers,
But it has all the warmth and gentle wisdom she's loved for.
It's a story about second chances,
About seeing the good in people the world has given up on.
And about one very determined,
Very kind-hearted woman named Miss Callista.
I think you're going to love spending this evening with her.
So,
Before we begin,
Let's take a few minutes to settle in together.
Go ahead and find your favorite position.
The one your body sinks into without even trying.
Let your shoulders drop away from your ears.
Let your jaw soften.
Let your hands rest heavy and still.
And as you continue to relax and rest.
Imagine the day slipping further away from you.
Whatever you carried with you into today.
You can set it down now.
It will still be there tomorrow if it needs you.
But right now.
There's nothing to solve.
Nothing to remember.
Nothing to do.
Feel the weight of your body sinking a little deeper.
Your legs feel heavy.
Your arms feel heavy.
Even your eyelids feel heavy now,
Soft and warm.
Like they simply don't want to stay open any longer.
So get all comfy and cozy under the covers.
And when you're ready.
Let's begin.
Miss Callista was perplexed.
Her nephew,
Caleb Cramp,
Who had been her right-hand man for years and whom she had trained well into her ways,
Had gone off to the Klondike,
Leaving her to find someone to take his place.
But the right man was slow to appear.
And Miss Callista was looking about her carefully.
She could afford to wait a while.
Since the crop was all in.
And the fall plowing done.
So the need for a new hired man wasn't as pressing as it might have been otherwise.
There were no shortage of applicants,
Such as they were.
Miss Callista was known to be a kind and generous employer,
Though she had her own particular ways,
And she expected them followed calmly and completely.
She had a small,
Well-kept farm and a comfortable house,
And her hired men always lived well.
Caleb Cramp had been about as perfect as they came.
And Miss Callista didn't expect to find his equal.
Still,
She had her standards,
And although three weeks had passed since Caleb left,
Three weeks during which she'd had to make do with a neighbor's boy,
No one had yet stepped into his empty and much-wanted shoes.
Miss Callista was somewhat hard to please,
Certainly.
She wasn't thinking about herself as she sat by her front window in the chilly November twilight.
Instead,
She was thinking about the poor quality of hired men these days.
And reflecting that it was high time the wheat was threshed,
The house banked for winter,
And a dozen other small jobs seen too.
Chess Maben had come by that afternoon.
Ask about the empty position.
And had offered to work for less than Miss Callista usually paid.
But she turned him down flatly.
More flatly,
In fact,
Than she turned down drunken Jake Stinson from the Morris Yale Road.
It wasn't that Miss Callista had any special grudge against Chess Maben,
Or knew anything truly bad about him.
She was simply following the pattern that the world so often falls into.
The tendency to keep a person down once they're down.
And make it hard for them to rise again.
Nothing succeeds like success,
And the opposite is just as true,
That nothing fails like failure.
There wasn't a soul in Cooperstown who wouldn't have agreed completely with Miss Callista's decision.
Chess Maven was only 18,
Though he looked several years older.
No wrongdoing had ever actually been proven against him.
But people suspected him all the same.
He came from bad stock,
Folks said wisely.
" Adding that what's bred in the bone is bound to come out in the flesh.
His father,
Old Sam Mabin,
Had been a shiftless,
Tricky sort of man,
As everyone knew,
And had ended his days in the poorhouse.
Chess's mother had died when he was just a baby.
And he'd grown up however he could,
Hand to mouth,
With that cloud of family reputation hanging over him.
People always looked at him sideways,
And whenever any mischief turned up in the village,
He was usually the first one blamed.
He was thought sulky and lazy,
And the local know-it-alls predicted a bad end for him sooner or later,
And,
In their own way,
Did their best to help that prediction come true.
When Miss Callista shut the door on Chessmabe in that chilly evening,
She gave him no further thought.
There were more pressing matters on her mind than old Sam Mabin's son.
There was no one else in the house that night,
Which wasn't unusual.
But it did feel a little unsettling,
Given that the sum of $500 happened to be sitting at the very moment in the upper right-hand drawer of the sideboard.
Until the day before.
That money had been safely kept at the Milledgeville Bank.
But some worrying rumors had begun circulating about that institution.
And Miss Callista,
Who was nothing if not careful.
Had gone to the bank that very morning and withdrawn her savings.
She planned to go to Kerrytown the next day and deposit it in the savings bank there.
She wouldn't keep it in the house a moment longer than she had to.
And it troubled her even to keep it overnight.
As she admitted to Mrs.
Galloway that afternoon during a friendly chat over the back fence.
Not that it isn't safe enough,
She said.
For not a soul but you knows I've got it.
But I'm not used to keeping so much money by me.
And there are always tramps about.
It doesn't worry me some.
I wouldn't think twice about it if Caleb was still here.
I suppose being all alone makes me nervous.
Miss Callista was still a little uneasy when she went to bed that night.
But she was a sensible woman and wasn't about to give in to foolish worry.
She locked the doors and windows carefully,
As she always did.
And check that the latches were secure.
The one on the dining room window,
Which looked out on the backyard,
Wasn't secure at all.
It had been broken for years,
In fact.
But,
As Miss Callista told herself,
It had been broken just like that for six years now.
And nobody had ever tried to get in through it.
So there was no reason to think tonight would be different.
She fell asleep quickly and slept soundly,
Worry or no worry.
It was well past midnight.
When she suddenly woke and sat bold upright in bed.
She wasn't in the habit of waking in the night.
And she had the strong feeling that some sound had woken her.
She lay still and listened.
Her room was directly above the dining room.
And there was an old,
Empty stovepipe hole that opened right up through the ceiling below,
Near the head of her bed.
There was no mistaking it.
Something or someone was moving carefully around the room downstairs.
It wasn't the cat.
She'd shut him in the woodshed before bed.
And he couldn't possibly have gotten loose.
It had to be some sort of tramp or beggar.
Miss Callista might fret over imaginary dangers,
But faced with a real one,
She was calm and clear-headed.
Quietly and quickly.
She slipped out of bed and got dressed.
Then crept out into the hallway.
The late moonlight came through the hall windows,
Gave her just enough light to see by.
And she made her way downstairs and was standing in the dining room doorway before any sound gave her away.
There,
At the sideboard,
Going hastily through the neat contents of an open drawer,
Stood the shadowy shape of a man.
Barely visible in the moonlit gloom.
When Miss Callista's stern figure appeared in the doorway.
The intruder spun around with a start,
And then,
With a startled cry,
Lunged,
Not at her,
But for the open window behind him.
Miss Callista,
Realizing at once that he meant to escape.
Felt a very human urge to land a blow before he got away.
She grabbed the nearest thing at hand.
A bottle of peppermint essence sitting on the sideboard,
And threw it after him.
The bottle caught the fleeing thief squarely on the shoulder just as he leapt through the window.
And shards of glass clattered down onto the windowsill.
A moment later.
Miss Callista found herself alone.
Standing by the sideboard in something of a daze.
The whole thing had happened so fast it almost felt like the tail end of an odd dream.
But the open drawer.
And the broken glass glinting in the moonlight on the sill were real enough.
Ms.
Callista quickly gathered herself.
Shut the window.
Lick the lamp.
Swept up the glass,
And set the overturned chairs back in place.
A quick check of the sideboard confirmed the $500 was still safe and touched in its drawer.
Miss Callista kept watch there for the rest of the night.
Turning the whole matter over in her mind.
In the end,
She decided to keep it to herself.
She had no real proof of who the thief had been.
And nothing good would come of making a fuss that might land suspicion on someone who was entirely innocent.
The next morning,
Miss Callista wasted no time setting out for Kerrytown,
Where she deposited the money safely in the bank.
She let out a long breath of relief once she was outside the building again.
I feel as if I could enjoy life once more,
She thought to herself.
Goodness me,
If I'd have to keep that money in the house even a week.
I'd have been half out of my mind by the end of it.
She had errands to run and friends to visit in town.
So the dull autumn day was nearly over by the time she finally made her way back to Cooperstown and stopped at the corner store for a box of matches.
The store was full of men,
Smoking and talking around the stove.
And Miss Callista,
Who couldn't stand tobacco smoke.
Wasn't in the mood to wait any longer than she had to.
But Abiram fell,
Was busy with another customer.
So she sat down primly by the counter to wait her turn.
The door opened,
Letting in a gust of raw November wind and chasmabin.
He gave Mr.
Fell a sullen nod,
And walked down the store to mutter something to a man at the far end.
Miss Callista lifted her head as he passed.
And caught a scent in the air like a hound catching a trail.
There was tobacco smoke,
Certainly,
And the smell of dried herring from the open boxes on the counter.
But underneath it all.
Clear as anything.
Was the unmistakable smell of peppermint.
It hadn't been there before Chess may have been walked in.
He didn't linger long.
He was already out the door and walking down the darkening road by the time Miss Callista left the store and drove briskly after him.
It never took Miss Callista long to make up her mind about anything.
And she had already worked out the whole matter of Chess Maven's Guild while Mr.
Fell was wrapping up her matches.
The boy glanced up warily as she brought her plump,
Grey pony alongside him.
Good evening,
Chester,
She said,
With brisk friendliness.
I can give you a lift if you're headed my way.
Climb in,
Quickly now.
Dapple's a bit restless tonight.
A flush of color,
Just visible under his weathered skin,
Rose in Chess Maven's face.
For a moment.
It looked as though he might blurt out a sharp refusal.
But Miss Callissa's expression was so open,
And her tone so kind,
That he thought better of it,
And climbed in beside her.
Dapple broke into an eager trot down the long hill,
Lined with its bare,
Wind-bent maple trees.
After a few minutes of silence.
Miss Callista turned to her quiet companion.
Chester,
She said.
As calmly as if she were asking the most ordinary question in the world.
Why did you climb into my house last night and try to steal my money?
Chess Maven jumped,
As though he meant to leap straight out of the buggy.
But Miss Callista's hand was already on his arm,
Gentle but firm,
And there was a steady,
Knowing look in her grey eyes.
It won't do you any good to run from me,
Chester.
I know it was you,
And I want an answer.
An honest one's mind to my question.
I'm your friend,
And I mean you no harm.
If you'll only tell me the truth.
Her clear,
Steady gaze held his uncertain one until,
At last,
The stubborn set of his face began to soften.
Well,
He said finally,
Low and rough.
I was just desperate,
That's all.
I've never really done wrong before in my life.
But people have always been down on me.
I get blamed for everything.
And nobody wants a thing to do with me.
I'm willing to work.
But I can't get hired anywhere.
I'm in rags,
I haven't a scent,
And winter's coming.
I heard you telling Mrs.
Galloway about the money yesterday.
I was behind the fur hedge and you didn't see me.
I went off and thought it all through.
I figured I'd find some way in and use the money to get out west,
As far from here as I could get,
And start over somewhere nobody knew me,
Somewhere I might have half a chance.
I've never had one here.
You can send me to jail if you want.
At least there they'd feed and clothe me.
I'd be no worse off than anybody else.
The words had come out sullen and half-choked,
Full of all the frustration of a boy who's always been pushed down by the life he was born into.
Miss Callista brought Dapple to a stop in front of her gate.
I'm not sending you to jail,
Chester.
I believe you've told me the truth.
Yesterday you asked me for Caleb's old position and I said no.
Well,
I'm offering it to you now,
If you'll come.
I'll hire you.
And pay you just as well as I paid him.
Chess Maven looked at her disbelieving.
Miss Callista,
You can't mean that.
I mean every word of it.
You say you've never had a chance.
Well,
I'm giving you one now.
A chance to set things right and make something of yourself.
Not a soul will ever hear about last night from me.
And I'll do my best to forget it myself,
If you show me you deserve it.
What do you say?
Chas lifted his head and looked her straight in the eye.
I'll come,
" he said,
His voice rough.
There's no use trying to thank you properly,
Miss Calesta.
But I mean to live my thanks.
And he did.
The good people of Cooperstown were scandalized when they heard Miss Callista had hired Chess Maven,
And predicted the poor,
Misguided woman would live to regret it.
But not every prediction comes true.
Miss Callista only smiled serenely and went on her quiet way,
And Chess Mabin turned out so capable and steady that he stayed on,
And in time the town forgot its old suspicions and came to think of him as a thoroughly reliable young man.
Miss Callista made a man out of Chessmaben,
People said.
He ought to be mighty grateful to her.
And he was.
But only he and Miss Callista and the peppermint bottle ever knew just how deep that gratitude ran,
And none of the three ever told.
If you're still awake,
My friend,
That's perfectly alright.
There is no rush at all.
I'm going to read that story through for you once more now,
Just as gently as before.
So you can drift off to sleep whenever you're ready.
Miss Callista was perplexed.
Her nephew,
Caleb Cramp,
Who had been her right-hand man for years,
And whom she had trained well into her ways,
Had gone off to the Klondike.
Leaving her to find someone to take his place.
But the right man was slow to appear.
And Miss Callista was looking about her carefully.
She could afford to wait a while.
Since the crock was all in.
And the fall plowing done.
So the need for a new hired man wasn't as pressing as it might have been otherwise.
There were no shortage of applicants,
Such as they were.
Miss Callista was known to be a kind and generous employer,
Though she had her own particular ways,
And she expected them followed calmly and completely.
She had a small,
Well-kept farm and a comfortable house,
And her hired men always lived well.
Caleb Cramp had been about as perfect as they came.
And Miss Callista didn't expect to find his equal.
Still,
She had her standards,
And although three weeks had passed since Caleb left,
Three weeks during which she'd had to make do with a neighbor's boy,
No one had yet stepped into his empty and much-wanted shoes.
Miss Callista was somewhat hard to please,
Certainly.
She wasn't thinking about herself as she sat by her front window in the chilly November twilight.
Instead,
She was thinking about the poor quality of hired men these days.
And reflecting that it was high time the wheat was threshed,
The house banked for winter,
And a dozen other small jobs seen too.
Chess Maven had come by that afternoon.
Ask about the empty position.
And had offered to work for less than Miss Callista usually paid.
But she turned him down flatly.
More flatly,
In fact,
Than she turned down drunken Jake Stinson from the Morris Yale Road.
It wasn't that Miss Callista had any special grudge against Chess Maben,
Or knew anything truly bad about him.
She was simply following the pattern that the world so often falls into.
The tendency to keep a person down once they're down.
And make it hard for them to rise again.
Nothing succeeds like success.
And the opposite is just as true,
That nothing fails like failure.
There wasn't a soul in Cooperstown who wouldn't have agreed completely with Miss Callista's decision.
Chess Maven was only 18,
Though he looked several years older.
No wrongdoing had ever actually been proven against him.
But people suspected him all the same.
He came from bad stock,
Folks said wisely.
Adding that what's bred in the bone is bound to come out in the flesh.
His father,
Old Sam Mabin,
Had been a shiftless,
Tricky sort of man,
As everyone knew,
And had ended his days in the poorhouse.
Chess's mother had died when he was just a baby.
And he'd grown up however he could,
Hand to mouth,
With that cloud of family reputation hanging over him.
People always looked at him sideways,
And whenever any mischief turned up in the village,
He was usually the first one blamed.
He was thought sulky and lazy,
And the local know-it-alls predicted a bad end for him sooner or later,
And,
In their own way,
Did their best to help that prediction come true.
When Miss Callista shut the door on Chasmabe in that chilly evening,
She gave him no further thought.
There were more pressing matters on her mind than old Sam Mabin's son.
There was no one else in the house that night,
Which wasn't unusual.
But it did feel a little unsettling.
Given that the sum of $500 happened to be sitting at the very moment in the upper right-hand drawer of the sideboard.
Until the day before.
That money had been safely kept at the Milledgeville Bank.
But some worrying rumors had begun circulating about that institution.
And Miss Callista,
Who was nothing if not careful.
Had gone to the bank that very morning and withdrawn her savings.
She planned to go to Kerrytown the next day and deposit it in the savings bank there.
She wouldn't keep it in the house a moment longer than she had to.
And it troubled her even to keep it overnight.
As she admitted to Mrs.
Galloway that afternoon,
During a friendly chat over the back fence.
Not that it isn't safe enough,
She said.
For not a soul but you knows I've got it.
But I'm not used to keeping so much money by me.
And there are always tramps about.
It doesn't worry me some.
I wouldn't think twice about it if Caleb was still here.
I suppose being all alone makes me nervous.
Miss Callista was still a little uneasy when she went to bed that night.
But she was a sensible woman and wasn't about to give in to foolish worry.
She locked the doors and windows carefully,
As she always did.
And check that the latches were secure.
The one on the dining room window,
Which looked out on the backyard,
Wasn't secure at all.
It had been broken for years,
In fact.
But,
As Miss Callista told herself,
It had been broken just like that for six years now.
And nobody had ever tried to get in through it.
So there was no reason to think tonight would be different.
She fell asleep quickly and slept soundly,
Worry or no worry.
It was well past midnight.
When she suddenly woke and sat bold upright in bed.
She wasn't in the habit of waking in the night.
And she had the strong feeling that some sound had woken her.
She lay still and listened.
Her room was directly above the dining room.
And there was an old,
Empty stovepipe hole that opened right up through the ceiling below,
Near the head of her bed.
There was no mistaking it.
Something or someone was moving carefully around the room downstairs.
It wasn't the cat.
She'd shut him in the woodshed before bed.
And he couldn't possibly have gotten loose.
It had to be some sort of tramp or beggar.
Miss Callista might fret over imaginary dangers,
But faced with a real one,
She was calm and clear-headed.
Quietly and quickly.
She slipped out of bed and got dressed.
Then crept out into the hallway.
The late moonlight came through the hall windows,
Gave her just enough light to see by.
And she made her way downstairs and was standing in the dining room doorway before any sound gave her away.
There,
At the sideboard,
Going hastily through the neat contents of an open drawer,
Stood the shadowy shape of a man.
Barely visible in the moonlit gloom.
When Miss Callista's stern figure appeared in the doorway.
The intruder spun around with a start,
And then,
With a startled cry,
Lunged,
Not at her,
But for the open window behind him.
Miss Callista,
Realizing at once that he meant to escape.
Felt a very human urge to land a blow before he got away.
She grabbed the nearest thing at hand.
A bottle of peppermint essence sitting on the sideboard,
And threw it after him.
The bottle caught the fleeing thief squarely on the shoulder just as he leapt through the window.
And shards of glass clattered down onto the windowsill.
A moment later.
Miss Callista found herself alone.
Standing by the sideboard in something of a daze.
The whole thing had happened so fast it almost felt like the tail end of an odd dream.
But the open drawer.
And the broken glass glinting in the moonlight on the sill were real enough.
Miss Callista quickly gathered herself.
Shut the window.
Lick the lamp.
Swept up the glass,
And set the overturned chairs back in place.
A quick check of the sideboard confirmed the $500 was still safe and touched in its drawer.
Miss Callista kept watch there for the rest of the night.
Turning the whole matter over in her mind.
In the end,
She decided to keep it to herself.
She had no real proof of who the thief had been.
And nothing good would come of making a fuss that might land suspicion on someone who was entirely innocent.
The next morning,
Miss Callista wasted no time setting out for Kerrytown,
Where she deposited the money safely in the bank.
She let out a long breath of relief once she was outside the building again.
I feel as if I could enjoy life once more,
She thought to herself.
Goodness me,
If I'd have to keep that money in the house even a week.
I'd have been half out of my mind by the end of it.
She had errands to run and friends to visit in town.
So the dull autumn day was nearly over by the time she finally made her way back to Cooperstown and stopped at the corner store for a box of matches.
The store was full of men.
Smoking and talking around the stove.
And Miss Callista,
Who couldn't stand tobacco smoke.
Wasn't in the mood to wait any longer than she had to.
But Abiram fell,
Was busy with another customer.
So she sat down primly by the counter to wait her turn.
The door opened,
Letting in a gust of raw November wind and chasmabin.
He gave Mr.
Fell a sullen nod,
And walked down the store to mutter something to a man at the far end.
Miss Callista lifted her head as he passed.
And caught a scent in the air like a hound catching a trail.
There was tobacco smoke,
Certainly,
And the smell of dried herring from the open boxes on the counter.
But underneath it all.
Clear as anything.
Was the unmistakable smell of peppermint.
It hadn't been there before Chess Maven walked in.
He didn't linger long.
He was already out the door and walking down the darkening road by the time Miss Callista left the store and drove briskly after him.
It never took Miss Callista long to make up her mind about anything.
And she had already worked out the whole matter of Chess Maven's Guild while Mr.
Fell was wrapping up her matches.
The boy glanced up warily as she brought her plump,
Gray pony alongside him.
Good evening,
Chester,
She said,
With brisk friendliness.
I can give you a lift if you're headed my way.
Climb in quickly now.
Dapple's a bit restless tonight.
A flush of color,
Just visible under his weathered skin,
Rose in Chess Maven's face.
For a moment,
It looked as though he might blurt out a sharp refusal.
But Miss Killis's expression was so open,
And her tone so kind,
That he thought better of it,
And climbed in beside her.
Dapple broke into an eager trot down the long hill,
Lined with its bare,
Wind-bent maple trees.
After a few minutes of silence.
Miss Callista turned to her quiet companion.
Chester,
She said,
As calmly as if she were asking the most ordinary question in the world.
Why did you climb into my house last night and try to steal my money?
Chess Maven jumped,
As though he meant to leap straight out of the buggy.
But Miss Callista's hand was already on his arm,
Gentle but firm.
And there was a steady,
Knowing look in her gray eyes.
It won't do you any good to run from me,
Chester.
I know it was you,
And I want an answer.
An honest one's mind to my question.
I'm your friend,
And I mean you no harm.
If you'll only tell me the truth.
Her clear,
Steady gaze held his uncertain one until,
At last,
The stubborn set of his face began to soften.
Well,
He said finally,
Low and rough.
I was just desperate,
That's all.
I've never really done wrong before in my life.
But people have always been down on me.
I get blamed for everything.
And nobody wants a thing to do with me.
I'm willing to work.
But I can't get hired anywhere.
I'm in rags,
I haven't a scent,
And winter's coming.
I heard you telling Mrs.
Galloway about the money yesterday.
I was behind the fur hedge and you didn't see me.
I went off and thought it all through.
I figured I'd find some way in and use the money to get out west,
As far from here as I could get,
And start over somewhere nobody knew me,
Somewhere I might have half a chance.
I've never had one here.
You can send me to jail if you want.
At least there they'd feed and clothe me.
I'd be no worse off than anybody else.
The words had come out sullen and half-choked,
Full of all the frustration of a boy who's always been pushed down by the life he was born into.
Miss Callista brought Dapple to a stop in front of her gate.
I'm not sending you to jail,
Chester.
I believe you've told me the truth.
Yesterday you asked me for Caleb's old position and I said no.
Well,
I'm offering it to you now,
If you'll come.
I'll hire you.
And pay you just as well as I paid him.
Chess Maven looked at her disbelieving.
Miss Callista,
You can't mean that.
I mean every word of it.
You say you've never had a chance.
Well,
I'm giving you one now.
A chance to set things right and make something of yourself.
Not a soul will ever hear about last night from me.
And I'll do my best to forget it myself,
If you show me you deserve it.
What do you say?
Chas lifted his head and looked her straight in the eye.
I'll come,
" he said,
His voice rough.
There's no use trying to thank you properly,
Miss Calesta.
But I mean to live my thanks.
And he did.
The good people of Cooperstown were scandalized when they heard Miss Callista had hired Chess Maven,
And predicted the poor,
Misguided woman would live to regret it.
But not every prediction comes true.
Miss Callista only smiled serenely and went on her quiet way.
And Chess Maben turned out so capable and steady that he stayed on.
And in time,
The town forgot its old suspicions and came to think of him as a thoroughly reliable young man.
Miss Callista made a man out of Chessmaben,
People said.
He ought to be mighty grateful to her.
And he was.
But only he and Miss Callista and the peppermint bottle ever knew just how deep that gratitude ran,
And none of the three ever told.
Sweet dreams my friends.
Sleep well you
