HESTER STANLEY'S 
 FRIENDS 
 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOl 
 SPOFFORD
 
 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS.
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT 
 
 SPOFFORD'S 
 STORIES FOR GIRLS 
 
 Hester Stanley at St. Marks. 
 
 She never writes dull or unprofitable pages, 
 and it is something to be grateful for that such 
 writers take hold of the matter of making a 
 worthy literature for the young. Los Angelet 
 Herald. 
 
 Hester Stanley's Friends. 
 
 Her breadth and culture, her geniality and 
 optimism, pervade these pages, while the sim- 
 pler elements of a good story are not lacking. 
 Literary World. 
 
 Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth. $1.25 each. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers 
 BOSTON, MASS.
 
 HESTER STANLEY'S 
 FRIENDS. 
 
 BY 
 
 HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 
 
 ElfagtratrtJ 
 BY FRANK T. MERRILL. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
 
 Copyright, 1898, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Thanks for courtesy of reprint are due to Messrs. 
 Harper and Brothers, Mr. S. S. McClure, the Publishers 
 of " St. Nicholas," of the " Youth's Companion," of the 
 " Congregationalist," and others. 
 
 20921 oO
 
 / 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE 3 
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS .... 29 
 
 JULE'S GARDEN 61 
 
 APRIL SHOWERS 83 
 
 RAFE 107 
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE 129 
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER 145 
 
 REMADE 173 
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S 201 
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE 231 
 
 AT OLD BENBOW 265
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 FROM DRAWINGS BY FRANK T. MERRILL. 
 
 "MRS. TENTERDEN CAME UP ONE OF THE WALKS 
 WITH HER ARMS FULL OF GREAT WHITE 
 LILIES " Frontispiece 
 
 "'FOR A DOLLAR?' ASKED THE FLORIST, SMIL- 
 ING" . . Page 76 
 
 " THEN THE WALLS OF THE ROOM WERE VIBRANT 
 
 ABOUT THEM, AND SlGNOR PAZZANI WAS 
 
 PLAYING ON THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE " . 140 
 " ' NEVER MIND THAT,' SAID THE DOCTOR, SITTING 
 
 DOWN ON A STUMP" 175
 
 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS.
 
 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 
 
 \ T 7HEN Bella Brook left St. Mark's for 
 * home, it was with but a vague idea of 
 what home was, for she had not been there in 
 all of four or five years, having usually spent the 
 vacations with Mrs. Tenterden, an old friend of 
 her own father's. Her home was several hundred 
 miles away, and it had been thought unwise that 
 she should make such a journey three or four 
 times a year. 
 
 In reality it had been unwise to let her go 
 instead to Mrs. Tenterden's, for it was not only 
 accustoming her to a way of life different from 
 anything she had had in the past, or was likely 
 to have in the future, but it was weaning her 
 from the old associations, from the mother and
 
 4 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 the children, and separating her even from the 
 chance of learning to love and be loved by the 
 step-father there. 
 
 How delightful it was, though, the last time 
 she went to Mrs. Tenterden's ! A coach had 
 taken her at the station, and rolled out along 
 wide highways and into green lanes, and at 
 length had entered the avenue of ancient cedars, 
 gnarled in wrestling with perhaps ten thousand 
 storms, and at the portico Mrs. Tenterden, in her 
 floating muslins, had hurried down the steps to 
 meet her with open arms, and Adrian and Louis 
 at the same time had come in from their gallop 
 on the sands, and Evelyn and Rosa had run up 
 from the terrace, with its great urns and vases 
 heaped with flowers and overlooking the sea. 
 And then the girls had taken her up to her room, 
 and Mrs. Tenterden had a new dress of soft 
 white wool, with broad ribbons, ready for her to 
 put on as soon as she had emerged, under the 
 hands of Fifine, the maid, from the dust and soil 
 of her journey ; and a little later they had all had 
 tea on the terrace as the moon rose and the sun 
 set, and the soft purple twilight put on a sort of
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 5 
 
 glory with the splendor of the heavens and the 
 shimmer of the sea ; and then they had lingered, 
 telling the school news and the family news, 
 with the flower scents floating about them, till 
 the sound of the surf booming below had slowly 
 silenced them, and then they had all gone in to 
 sweet sleep and lovely dreams. 
 
 The next morning how perfect was the sun- 
 shine pouring over the sheer velvet lawns and 
 through the crimson flames of the roses ; how 
 sweet was the breath of the honeysuckle; how 
 intoxicating the full soft wind blowing apart the 
 curtains ; how delicious all the sense of light and 
 beauty and luxury ! the sense, too, that here 
 she could stay indefinitely if she would; here, 
 where there were no lesson bells, no teachers, no 
 hours, no bonds, no restraints at all, but just 
 delightful pleasure and rest and idleness ! Well, 
 she was a little tired, and that must be her 
 excuse if pleasure seemed too pleasant. 
 
 Mrs. Tenterden, in a loose burnoose of some 
 creamy stuff, held about her throat by a gold 
 cord and tassel, came up one of the walks with 
 her arms full of great white lilies. How beauti-
 
 6 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 ful she was ! still a young woman, and a very 
 wealthy one, who had wished to adopt Bella at 
 the time of her father's death, and had compro- 
 mised with the mother on permission to have 
 Bella in the vacations, and had made those 
 vacations seem to Bella like life in fairy-land. 
 As she looked at her, Bella was conscious that 
 she admired Mrs. Tenterden much as she did the 
 sky, the sea, the roses and lilies ; and that she 
 loved her beyond every one in the world but 
 Miss Marks. Her mother, of course, first; but 
 that was a part of herself. She felt a little shy 
 concerning her mother; she was only sixteen, 
 and she had not seen her mother for nearly five 
 years. 
 
 "You think we do nothing here but suck the 
 honey out of the flowers," said Mrs. Tenterden, 
 as Bella sprang to take part of the armful, and 
 put them into the tall vases waiting in the hall, 
 through whose length and breadth this sweet 
 wind was rioting with curtains and draperies. 
 " Now I am going to tell you. / was up at sun- 
 rise, and such a pageant you never saw, unless 
 you have been up at a July sunrise too. It put
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 7 
 
 me in mind to-day of what the sunrise might 
 have been the morning after the 'Midsummer- 
 Night's Dream.' " 
 
 That was one of the charms of Mrs. Tenterden, 
 Bella thought, that she talked to you at sixteen 
 just as she would have talked if you had been 
 thirty-six. "Now," said Mrs. Tenterden, "as 
 soon as you have breakfasted, the phaeton is 
 coming round, and I am going to run down and 
 see my poor people at least nobody is poor 
 such a morning as this ; it's enough just to be in 
 the world if you are not in suffering or pain 
 but my poorer people ; and perhaps you will go 
 with me, and we can talk it over on our way. 
 I mean to have the ' Midsummer-Night's Dream ' 
 played on the terrace here, and with all the 
 music too." 
 
 And then Evelyn and Rosa and Adrian came 
 in ; and Louis, who had breakfasted with his 
 mother hours before, as he said, twenty-four 
 hours, had another cup of coffee; and Mrs. 
 Tenterden took a glass of milk, that she might 
 be rebuking no one by thought of her earlier 
 repast; and Mrs. Vane and Miss Morley, who
 
 8 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 were visiting at Clifftop, appeared, having break- 
 fasted in their rooms ; and Bella hardly knew, 
 when the phaeton came round, whether she 
 would rather stay with the gay party on the 
 morning porch or go with the ponies and Mrs. 
 Tenterden. But all the same, she went ; and the 
 hoofs of Louis's horse were presently to be heard 
 after them. 
 
 What a pleasant way it was to do good ! Bella 
 thought. Here was the hamper that the house- 
 keeper had put up, with its closely fastened jars 
 of soup that the cook had prepared, with the 
 jellies, the delicately sliced bread, the tiny butter 
 balls, the cutlet for this one, the strawberries for 
 that, the roll of flannel for the old man's knees, 
 the little dresses that the girls had made at their 
 leisure for the new baby, the hot- water bag for 
 the sick old woman, the paper novels that they 
 were done with at the house, to be left here and 
 there wherever there was a reader, and the rest 
 of the phaeton heaped with roses for dropping at 
 this door and that, as if one marked one's way 
 with flowers. Now they stopped, and a child 
 at the gate took what they left there ; now they
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 9 
 
 went inside a door and chatted with the person 
 that met them ; now Mrs. Tenterden left Bella, 
 and Louis tied his horse and came and sat in the 
 phaeton while his mother delayed with some 
 particular case that needed cheering or the ten 
 minutes' reading of a Psalm; everywhere they 
 left the roses ; and at last they drove home 
 through a wood where the horses' feet sounded 
 as if they trod on velvet, where they could see 
 lanes of sunlight down green mossy depths, as if 
 leading to lands of enchantment, and hear the 
 song of birds too shy for open air and not yet 
 hushed to noonday quiet. 
 
 " It is the very wood where Titania and Peas- 
 blossom and Cobweb and the others held their 
 revellings, is it not ? " said Mrs. Tenterden. 
 " Here, Louis," as he overtook them, " now 
 come here and advise with your mother you 
 are the practical one and tell me how we can 
 turn the sea-terrace into the Athenian forest, and 
 where we can get our players, and who shall be 
 Helena, and who Demetrius, and who Nick 
 Bottom, and who Oberon, and where we shall find 
 the music Mendelssohn's music, you know."
 
 10 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Just out of school, with all its tasks and con- 
 straints, gentle and uplifting as the life at St. 
 Mark's had been, what freedom and light sur- 
 rounded these bright days for Bella ! But she 
 used to wish for Marcia and Hester to help her 
 con her part of the play ; she used to wish for 
 them on purple evenings when she leaned over 
 the parapet to watch the stars break in the sea 
 as it creamed up the beach below ; she used to 
 wish for them in the mornings when she and 
 Kosa and Adrian, the groom sedately behind, went 
 galloping their ponies through the wood, where 
 every now and then the sea broke into sight 
 upon the left, and on the right the water-lilies 
 bloomed in the still pools where green sunshine 
 seemed to fall. 
 
 And certainly she wished for Hester and Mar- 
 cia when at last came the festival night of the 
 play on the terrace a clear dark night without 
 a moon. Eeal trees were brought in from the 
 forest and guyed in place, and the conservatories 
 were half emptied of their palms and oleanders 
 and camellias and long banner-like banana-trees 
 to make the greenery ; real theatre people man-
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 11 
 
 aged the lights ; and there was a part of the Sym- 
 phony Orchestra hidden in the green for the 
 music ; the guests were coming and going and 
 rustling and exclaiming ; Mrs. Tenterden and 
 Mrs. Vane were directing everything ; and Miss 
 Morley and her lovers were making a by-play of 
 their own. It seemed to Bella, in the midst of 
 it all, that she was no young girl playing a part, 
 but a captive loosed, a bird set free, a spirit of 
 the air itself. And the music, the all but 
 heavenly music, that had in it the murmuring 
 of the leaves, the sparkling of the forest dew, 
 the twittering of the fays, the passion of the 
 lovers, the beauty of night, and Athens, and 
 fairy-land, and love, all mingled together like the 
 breath of many flowers in one delicious odor 
 when this music added itself to all the rest, she 
 was so beside herself with the delight of the 
 whole thing that if she had had many lines to 
 say she would have forgotten every one of them. 
 And when, after it was all over, Louis and Eosa 
 stole down the cliff path with her to the beach, 
 and walked slowly along till they saw a boat, 
 and put out in that, Louis rowing them, till
 
 12 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 there was nothing about them but the purple 
 heaven full of stars, their rays breaking in the 
 purple sea, nothing to be heard but the dip of 
 the oars and the soft wide singing of the sea 
 itself to drown out remembrance of the music 
 then it was all like a dream, from which Bella 
 knew she must presently awake to reality. 
 
 A week later, at the close of three days and 
 nights of hot and dusty travel, the train stopped 
 at the place where her mother lived, and which 
 she had always called her home, and on the first 
 glance at which she could not help exclaiming, 
 " Poor mother ! oh, poor mother ! " 
 
 There was no one to meet her at the station ; 
 there was no hack there at all; she had to leave 
 her trunks with the baggage-master, who prom- 
 ised to send them with a man and a wheel- 
 barrow ; and she inquired her way on foot to 
 Mrs. Parmenter's for that had been her 
 mother's name since the second marriage. She 
 found the house at last, almost picturesque with 
 some trees and some grass, and a general absence 
 of paint, but shabby and ill kept to the point
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 13 
 
 of disgust, with slats gone from the loose blinds, 
 window-panes broken, doors hanging on broken 
 hinges, and fences down in spots. A child on 
 whose face there was not a clean spot to kiss sat 
 in the path making mud-pies with a spoon, but 
 did not give way for her ; another, a little 
 younger, stared at her with its thumb in its 
 mouth and its kitten held upside down ; and a 
 third, face and tier daubed with molasses, leaned 
 from the open window, trying how far she could 
 reach out and not break her neck. 
 
 Was this her mother's home? Were those 
 two the children born since she had been at 
 school ? Was this one in the molasses the little 
 Ally whom she had left such a fair white darling 
 in the cradle ? Was that person lounging in a 
 hammock made of a piece of sacking and a barrel 
 stave, without a waistcoat under his drab linen 
 blouse, reading a paper and smoking a pipe, the 
 man who had married her mother her step- 
 father ? Was this her own sister Flossy leaping 
 down the stairs to meet her, with holes in her 
 stockings, with no collar on, with her hair in a 
 matted snarl ? Was this Ben, her big brother,
 
 14 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 pushing back his chair and tripping over a hole 
 in the carpet, looking a little less like a gentle- 
 man than his step-father ? Was this Oh, 
 goodness, no more of it ! But they were dismal 
 facts, the hall, with great stains on the paper ; 
 the stairs, with half the carpet-rods gone and the 
 carpet bulging loosely; the doors banged and 
 battered ; the slatternly servant-girl, whose hair 
 had never been combed, whose gown had never 
 been washed, all sozzled and drozzled with dish- 
 water and kerosene and fat and dirt. But where, 
 oh, where was her mother, where was her 
 mother? And Bella burst into tears, and ran 
 past them all up the stairs to her mother's room, 
 where Mrs. Parmenter lay prostrate and half 
 dead with one of her headaches, that she used 
 to say produced torment and threatened idiocy. 
 
 But it was of no use to cry. The children 
 must think it was from joy and excitement at 
 getting home again oh, getting home again ! 
 The mother must not be disturbed by a thought 
 of any kind with that trip-hammer of pain fall- 
 ing on her temples. 
 
 Bella was to share Flossy's room, and when
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 15 
 
 she had been welcomed by her step-father, and 
 had found a place clean enough to kiss on the 
 cheeks of the little ones, she went and took off 
 her things, and proceeded to open her trunks, 
 which had arrived, most of the children pushing 
 and edging into the room and gaping open- 
 mouthed at the operation, only uttering thrilled 
 ohs and ahs as Bella shook out her white frocks 
 and her dainty tea-gowns all Mrs. Tenterden's 
 gifts and lifted tray after tray to find some- 
 thing suitable to wear without soiling in the 
 dusty confusion of the house. 
 
 " My goodness ! what a closet ! " she ex- 
 claimed, as she opened the door. "Please get 
 me a duster, Flossy. Mercy ! there 's no end to 
 the dust. Where 's Bridget ? Is that her name ? 
 Can't she come and wash this place, so that I 
 can hang up my gowns ? " 
 
 " She won't," said Flossy. 
 
 " Won't ? Why not, pray ? " 
 
 " She won't ; that 's all about it. Ma 's sick 
 all the time, and she has to do everything." 
 
 " Then I '11 do it myself," said Bella. 
 
 "You!"
 
 16 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 "Somebody must. We shall return to the 
 dust of which we were made, at this rate." And 
 presently she had a scrubbing-pail and a cloth, 
 and had emptied that closet, and washed down 
 its walls, and wiped up its floor, and felt a thrill 
 of satisfaction, although her delicate hands were 
 smarting and her heart was really aching. 
 
 " I don't like to hang my nice things on these 
 walls," she said then. " I wonder if there is n't a 
 sheet I can have ; " and she went with the chil- 
 dren to find one. " But not like this," she said. 
 
 " They 're all like this," said Flossy. 
 
 " I mean a whole one." 
 
 " There is n't a whole one in the house," said 
 Bessy. 
 
 And Bella sat down and sewed up the rip in 
 one, and hemmed over the corners of another, 
 and hung one under and one over the dresses, and 
 shut the closet door, and proceeded to the bureau. 
 " Oh, what a mess ! " she cried. 
 
 " I 'm going to give the two upper drawers to 
 you," said Flossy. 
 
 "Well," said Bella, feeling despair hanging 
 just over her, " we '11 put the whole thing to
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 17 
 
 rights." And the bureau was cleared and wiped, 
 and the drawers set in order, and the gifts she 
 had brought for the family distributed, to their 
 infinite delight, a delight which touched Bella 
 almost to tears, those children must have had so 
 little, and then they all went down together. 
 
 It had been pathetic to Bella to see that pleas- 
 ure over her small gifts, small, because as 
 Mrs. Tenterden had been at the expense of her 
 education and wardrobe and everything else 
 while at St. Mark's, Bella had not felt it quite 
 right to spend a great deal of her money for the 
 gifts ; but the doll she had dressed herself was 
 hugged to Kitty's heart with rapturous glee ; the 
 little stereoscope and its photographs gave Bessy 
 as much pleasure as a trip through a European 
 gallery would have given herself ; Ben took his 
 Macaulay with a hungry avidity that gave her 
 a real pain to see ; Tommy would have been in 
 a state of bliss with his piccolo if the mother's 
 headache had allowed him to use it ; and Flossy 
 received her parasol entirely regardless of the 
 fact that she had n't an article of wearing apparel 
 
 fit to associate with it. 
 
 2
 
 18 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Things were no better downstairs. The par- 
 lor had been gradually dismantled to replace the 
 destruction of articles in the sitting-room, so that 
 its doors were closed, the only doors that were 
 closed, or that would close, in the house, by the 
 way. The sitting-room carpet was little better 
 than a rag ; the ceiling had been smoked in rings 
 every here and there by the lamps ; there was a 
 great spot on the wall where Mr. Parmenter 
 leaned his hand in changing his slippers, which 
 were kept behind the stove in an accumulation 
 of fluffy dust, and another spot where ink had 
 spattered; the paint of the mantelpiece was 
 blistered, and had peeled off in places ; one of 
 the table legs was broken ; there was not a whole 
 chair in the room ; the looking-glass had a crack 
 in it; the windows were thick with dust and 
 finger-marks inside and splashes of rain outside ; 
 and in the open drawer of the table between 
 them was a dirty comb and brush. The dining- 
 room But words fail. When Bella saw the 
 table set for tea, with its soiled and crumpled 
 cloth, its cracked and nicked and smoked and 
 mismated dishes, no napkins, no order, the chil-
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 19 
 
 dren elbowing and pushing and grabbing, their 
 own spoons in the sugar, their own knives in 
 the butter, it was impossible for her to eat a 
 morsel, and she went out into the kitchen, which, 
 as she remembered the snow-white tables, the 
 spotless floors, the shining range, the glittering 
 rows of pans in Mrs. Tenterden's kitchen the only 
 time she was ever inside it, seemed to her squalor 
 itself. There she made a slice of French toast, 
 and took it up with a cup of tea to her mother. 
 
 " Ah, how nice that is ! " sighed 'the mother, 
 as she saw the tray, which Bella had contrived 
 to find, covered with the only clean napkin she 
 could lay her hands on. " How good it is ! 
 Bridget never makes a cup of tea like that ; you 
 must have made it yourself, dear." And Bella, 
 dimly comprehending her mother's helplessness 
 and disappointment, felt her heart ready to 
 break, and longed to be a comfort to her. She 
 combed out her mother's long and pretty hair 
 then, and got some water and cooled her face 
 and her hands for her, and coaxed her into the 
 chair while she freshened and made the bed. 
 " Oh," said the mother, " you are going to be
 
 20 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 such a comfort to me. I ought to have some 
 compensation for all I have been through." 
 
 Bella cried herself to sleep that night, think- 
 ing of her mother, and pitying and loving her, 
 and pitying Flossy too, and her big brother Ben, 
 and feeling already a yearning affection for the 
 little half brothers and sisters, and longing to 
 be of use to them. 
 
 " Is n't it time for school ? " she asked the 
 next morning. 
 
 "Oh, we don't go to school," said Flossy, 
 shamefacedly. 
 
 "Don't! Oh, why not?" 
 
 "Well, there isn't any very near, and our 
 clothes, you see," said Flossy, making a down- 
 ward and outward motion of her hands that 
 expressed plainly as words the whole state of 
 disrepair. " Ben is trying to study all by him- 
 self, and sometimes I hear the primer lessons, 
 and sometimes ma hears me." 
 
 " Oh dear, dear ! " said Bella ; " that is n't any 
 way. I think you will all have to come to 
 school to me. My box of school-books will be 
 handy now, and we '11 have a school-room pleas-
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 21 
 
 ant days out under the apple-trees and rainy 
 days in my room." And the idea, perhaps ow- 
 ing to its novelty, was at once acquiesced in, 
 a solemn compact being made from which it 
 should not be possible to withdraw. " But first," 
 said Bella, " we must help Bridget clear up ; " 
 and she found the stub of a broom, which was 
 all the broom there was, and swept the floors 
 herself. "I shouldn't mind it," she thought, 
 "if it were for theatricals, and I'm sure these 
 are theatricals." And then she apportioned a 
 share of the dusting to Flossy and Bessy, and 
 afterward had them go upstairs with her and try 
 and make the beds decent, for the mother was 
 occupied with the baby, nursing which was about 
 all she could do when she did n't have a headache. 
 " If we make our beds," said Bella, " and do the 
 dusting and mending, it leaves time for Bridget 
 to do the heavier work, don't you see ? " And 
 of course, led off by Bella just from school, look- 
 ing to them so exquisite in her fresh pink print 
 and clean ruffle, they were willing and ready 
 to do all she wished ; and when, after what she 
 called a scrap and scramble dinner, they found
 
 22 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 her on her knees sewing up the holes in the 
 old carpet, it did n't seem so hard to Flossy and 
 Bessy to give an hour themselves to darning 
 table-cloths and mending sheets and pillow-cases 
 and their own underwear before they swarmed 
 out to play again. 
 
 But it was up-hill work. What little property 
 there was to live upon was in trust for the 
 mother, and Mr. Parmenter had nothing to do 
 with it ; thus they were sure of enough shelter 
 and food and fire. Mr. Parmenter was very 
 good-natured, and kept himself in what he called 
 his office most of the time. But when, in a few 
 weeks, Bella's attempt at tidying the house 
 slowly dawned on him, and he realized that the 
 children hacj. clean faces and clean tiers and 
 smooth hair at table, and saw Bella washing 
 and wiping windows and trying to cover the 
 stains on the wall, he seemed spurred to some 
 unusual exertion, for a paper-hanger and white- 
 washer one day appeared and made a new thing 
 of the downstairs region, and another day a 
 carpet came home that, if its colors set Bella's 
 teeth on edge, was at least whole and clean ; and
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 23 
 
 it was some satisfaction to observe that her step- 
 father approved of her, and was willing to help 
 her after a fashion all he could, while her mother 
 seemed to feel that an angel had come into the 
 house and no less. Bella used to think some- 
 times that probably she would become an angel 
 if things went on without mending : if Kitty bit 
 Ally, and Ally scratched Tommy, and Tommy 
 pinched Bessy, and Bessy made faces at Flossy, 
 and Flossy slapped Bessy, and Ben grumbled 
 and growled at the whole of them. Yet she 
 thought she saw the least slight ray of improve- 
 ment and patience, who knew ? Still she did 
 not dare remember the sweet decorum and hap- 
 piness of St. Mark's and Waterways, the bright 
 luxurious gayety of Clifftop and Mrs. Tenterden. 
 She had not heard from Clifftop, moreover, for 
 so long that she felt as if they might have for- 
 gotten her. 
 
 She was thinking of this one day, with her 
 eyes just one big tear, when Mr. Parmenter 
 brought her a letter. It was from Mrs. Tenter- 
 den ; it had about it still that sweet odor of 
 violets which was about all her things. Bella
 
 24 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 could have kissed it as she turned it over, and 
 held it a moment before breaking the pretty seal. 
 In this letter Mrs. Tenterden wrote that Bella 
 had been left undisturbed during all these weeks, 
 in order that she might acquire perfect knowl- 
 edge on which to make her decision, and now the 
 choice was offered to her to stay where she was, or 
 go to Mrs. Tenterden's and be her own daughter. 
 "My own," wrote Mrs. Tenterden, "in every- 
 thing ; sharing with Evelyn and Eosa and Adrian 
 and Louis while I live and after I die, with my 
 children for your brothers and sisters, with my 
 love for you, with yours for me." 
 
 While Bella read the words the vision rose of 
 the lovely home at Clifftop, the precision and 
 order and luxury, the beautiful rooms, the silent 
 servants, the glimmering of the sea, vision, too, 
 of the city life in winter, with its Symphony 
 concert and matine'e, with its flower mission, its 
 reading in the hospital, and with the affection of 
 Eosa and Evelyn, of Adrian and Louis, and Mrs. 
 Tenterden's surrounding grace and sweetness and 
 beauty, a life of goodness made easy, of pleas- 
 ure, of power; and she seemed to hear that
 
 BELLA'S CHOICE. 25 
 
 hidden music of the "Midsummer-Night's Dream" 
 pulsing through the whole of it. And dimly as 
 she mused, across her reverie came her mother's 
 weak voice, fretting because Kitty would not let 
 the baby alone ; because Tommy would not have 
 his face washed ; because Ally had no clean gown 
 to put on ; because Bessy would n't lay down 
 her fairy-book, and take Tommy and put him to 
 sleep. And Bella roused herself to see Flossy, 
 smart with soiled ribbons, strolling off with that 
 flaunting Ewers girl ; to see her step-father 
 vainly struggling to get his hand into his sleeve 
 through the torn lining ; to see Ben worried and 
 perplexed with his slate and problem. " Oh 
 no," she said to herself ; and presently she wrote 
 to Mrs. Tenterden: "One day I shall die, I 
 suppose everybody does and go to heaven, 
 maybe, and heaven then will seem no lovelier 
 to me than life with you does now. It makes 
 me cry. I don't know how I shall bear it. 
 But of course I can ; and by-and-by I shall be 
 happy. I have been away too long ; and no, oh 
 no, I cannot go, for I am needed. It is a great 
 thing to be needed ; and my duty is here."
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS 
 CHRISTMAS.
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS 
 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 \T 7HEN Hester went home with Marcia 
 * * Meyer for the Christmas holidays, she 
 took with her several crisp bank-bills that Miss 
 Marks gave her from the allowance her father 
 had left for her, and some of the embroidery 
 she had learned how to do of the nuns in her 
 South Sea Island home, which looked like frost 
 crystals laid on snow, and with which she meant 
 to make a Christmas frock for the dear baby that 
 had been named for her. 
 
 Mr. Meyer was at the station with the great 
 family sleigh brimming with little Meyers, and 
 it really seemed so delightful to Hester to be 
 met by such a loving swarm of welcoming arms 
 and smiles and voices, that she wondered how 
 Marcia could bear to stay at school at all.
 
 30 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 "Why, if you didn't go away," said Marcia, 
 "you wouldn't know how good it is to come 
 back." 
 
 " I was so afraid they would n't let you come," 
 said Rosy, nestling close to Hester, after the 
 robes had been tucked in, and feeling that her 
 years were more on the level of Hester's friend- 
 ship than Marcia's were. 
 
 " Why, of course they would when papa said 
 to," exclaimed Agnes. 
 
 "That settles it," said Mr. Meyer. "Steady, 
 Hassan ! " to one of the prancing horses. " The 
 world trembles when papa nods all except the 
 world under his own roof. No, John, you can't 
 have the reins. I shall put you over on the back 
 seat among the girls, sir, if you don't let them 
 alone. The horses are restive enough now." 
 
 And the horses had their heads down, and the 
 fences were skimming by, and the snow was 
 spinning from their heels in big snowballs over 
 the dasher, and John and Bert were whooping as 
 if they were cow-boys riding the mule in a 
 circus, and all at once they turned a short 
 corner, and there was a vast soft snow-bank, and
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 31 
 
 over went the sleigh, and out tumbled children, 
 robes, satchels, snowballs, screams, laughter, and 
 all ; and when they scrambled from the powdery 
 drift the horses stood hanging their heads 
 meekly, and Mr. Meyer, reins in hand, was ring- 
 ing out a great laugh. 
 
 " I could n't have done any worse if I had had 
 the reins myself," exclaimed John, shaking the 
 snow out of his collar, and helping to tip the 
 sleigh back. 
 
 " That 's the way papa brings us up, Hester," 
 cried Marcia, climbing in again. "Lets us 
 tumble up, you see." 
 
 But Hester thought it was all part of the play, 
 and presently, comfortably bestowed again, they 
 skimmed along till they reached a dim pine wood, 
 where the motion of the horses shook down soft 
 showers of snow from the low branches through 
 which the sunset showed like embers of a dying 
 fire, and from under which they came out on the 
 frozen lake, dashing along the smooth surface 
 with their hoofs clicking like castanets. 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Meyer pulled up the horses to 
 avoid running down a party of children on the
 
 32 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 ice, a tiny fellow dragging a smaller child on a 
 board, and a girl with a shawl over her head and 
 about her arms running along beside them, with 
 now a step and now a slide, blue with cold, but 
 her laugh gay as a bird's song. 
 
 "They're going to get on the runners," 
 screamed Eosy. "Don't let them, papa; oh, 
 don't let them ! " 
 
 " Whip behind ! " cried Bert. 
 
 " Oh, papa ! Are n't you ashamed, Eosy ? " 
 cried Marcia. " Do let them ! Here, catch on, 
 boy ! Now give me your hand " to the girl. 
 " Go slow, papa, please ; let her tumble right in 
 here with us ; there 's so many of us, we "11 keep 
 each other warm. And see ! the baby '11 fall off 
 that board if the horses start. What a pretty 
 baby ! What great blue eyes ! Here, hand her 
 over, son. Now, you see, you can hold on 
 there." 
 
 And as the boy caught on for answer, the little 
 girl and the half-frightened smaller child were 
 tucked in among them, and the horses were 
 making their best rate of speed down the lake. 
 
 " Did n't you ever have a sleigh-ride before ? "
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 33 
 
 asked Marcia of the little girl. "Don't crowd 
 that way, Agnes." 
 
 "No, 'm." 
 
 "Nor I, either," said Hester, leaning gently 
 toward the child, smiling at her with her own 
 great dark eyes, and taking one of her cold hands 
 into her muff. 
 
 " You ! " said the child. " Lor', 'm ! " as if that 
 were something unnatural. "But sometimes," 
 she added, to present the best side of her case, 
 " Ben takes me on the board. And sometimes I 
 take him only it 's heavy. He 's going to 
 make a sled," she continued her confidences 
 presently, "when he gets a hammer and some 
 nails. He 's got a knife, a real beauty of a jack- 
 knife, and he's whittled out the runners. He 
 can use a stone instead of a hammer when he 
 gets the nails." 
 
 "I'll give him some nails," said Bert, leaning 
 back. 
 
 " Take care, Bert, you '11 fall ! " 
 
 " I Ve got lots of nails," said Bert. " They 're 
 not all crooked. We pick 'em up to trade with 
 the fellows." 
 
 3
 
 34 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " We 've asked Santa Clans to," said the little 
 girl, timidly. " We 've written him a letter, and 
 sent it on the wind, and we Ve told him up the 
 chimney ; only our chimney is a funnel, and may 
 not reach him. But of course he could throw 
 nails down a funnel, you know." 
 
 "And is that all you want Santa Glaus to 
 bring you ? " asked Marcia. 
 
 " Yes, 'm ; I I guess so," said the little girl, 
 looking up with wondering eyes. 
 
 " Oh, dear, dear ! " cried Marcia. " Just hear 
 that, Hester, and look at her ! And here am I 
 wanting a silver dog-collar, and a chatelaine, and 
 a sealing-wax set, and a bonbonniere, and " 
 
 "You'd better talk about being unselfish, 
 Marcia," cried Rosy, whose conscience was in 
 trouble, " when there would n't be anything left 
 for the rest of us if you had all those. And 
 Rafe 's been longing for a set of ' British Ballads ' 
 and you know I want a davenport for my room, 
 and papa's half promised me a gold chain and 
 locket." 
 
 "Then I shall have a gold chain and locket 
 too," exclaimed Agnes. " I don't know but I 'd
 
 A CHEISTMAS THAT WAS CHEISTMAS. 35 
 
 prefer all the Abbott books. And Helen wants 
 a purse, with a big gold piece and some postage- 
 stamps in it ; and Mabel expects a French doll 
 with real hair, that shuts its eyes, and " 
 
 " And I 've put in for a bicycle, and Bert for a 
 new pair of skates," exclaimed John, whirling 
 himself about. " And Bert and I want " 
 
 " Oh, hold on ! " said their father. " You want 
 the earth ! " 
 
 And then he turned the horses and drove 
 back so fast against the wind that it was all 
 they could do to hold their breath and not waste 
 any more till they left the little strangers at 
 the opening of the woods on the shore, where 
 their home was to be seen, and stopped at last 
 at the door of their own large old-fashioned 
 house, with the red roof gleaming among the 
 bare elm boughs. And there, with Helen and 
 Mabel and Georgie and Tot to welcome them in 
 the blazing firelight of the hall, and the mother 
 and Miss Persis hurrying downstairs from Eafe, 
 and Charlotte Eisley running across the street to 
 make another, it seemed to Hester that there was 
 no such place in all the world as Marcia's home.
 
 36 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 It was the next morning, when Miss Persis 
 went out to walk with Marcia and Hester, 
 Charlotte Eisley coming along, that the twins, 
 Helen and Agnes, seeing Eosy put on her cloak 
 to follow, insisted upon making part of the com- 
 pany too, picking up John with his sled as they 
 went, and following the older ones, who were 
 making their way to the little house in the wood 
 by the lake-side. 
 
 " Indeed," said Miss Persis, " this will never do. 
 I can't go to see people in want with an army 
 with banners." 
 
 " Oh, we '11 stay outside," said John. 
 
 " John, you are really the last one I want." 
 
 " I shall go, just the same," said John. " And 
 I dare say you 11 be tired enough to be hauled 
 home on my sled, Miss Persis." 
 
 So they went along through the wintry wood, 
 sliding and running and singing, stopping to 
 listen to the echo, and to gather the lovely 
 feathery ghosts of grasses and the long stems of 
 seed-vessels appearing through the snow, to look 
 after a darting squirrel and a fleet rabbit; and 
 then they came to the forlorn little house with a
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 37 
 
 funnel out of one window, and an old hat and 
 some rags in the broken panes of another, and 
 Miss Persis and Marcia and Hester went in, 
 leaving the rest outside. 
 
 There was a great contrast between the gay 
 little people tying hemlock boughs to their feet 
 for snow-shoes, trying to walk, falling backward, 
 shouting and screaming with laughter, and the 
 scene within the house, where the father of the 
 children taken into the sleigh the evening before 
 lay powerless to lift his head, and the mother, 
 with helpless knees, unable to walk or stand, 
 had to hitch herself about as she could to do the 
 work; where the wood to be burned was only 
 such as Mamy and Ben could bring in green 
 from the forest, where they were now gone for 
 some; where all the food was some meal, the 
 milk of the cow that little Ben took care of, and 
 the occasional egg of a half -starved Brahma hen ; 
 where the father had no medicine, the children 
 no clothes, the mother no hope. 
 
 Miss Persis gave the mother the little coat of 
 Bert's that she had brought, and Helen's out- 
 grown cloak, and the beef and bread ; and Mar-
 
 38 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 cia felt dreadfully embarrassed when the poor 
 woman cried, and murmured her thanks, and 
 said she never thought it would come to this, 
 and it had seemed as if they were forsaken, 
 and if she only had the use of her feet to 
 get about and do for the father it wouldn't 
 be so bad, and that the children were all the 
 life she had, and it broke her heart to look at 
 them ! 
 
 "She's such a pretty woman," said Marcia, 
 when safely outside again, " and how that sick 
 man's eyes did follow her!" 
 
 " Don't you suppose there is anything to 
 be done for him ? " asked Charlotte Eisley, 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " Probably, if he were taken to a hospital," said 
 Miss Persis. "Not at home. I couldn't have 
 supposed there was such poverty in our part of 
 the world. They are so hidden in this wood. 
 And those children growing up like barbarians ; 
 no church " 
 
 " No school, no books, no toys," said Charlotte. 
 
 "I wish you would n't talk about it any more," 
 said Marcia, scuffing the snow before her. "I
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 39 
 
 wish we had n't seen it. And just at Christmas- 
 time too." 
 
 Sitting late that afternoon by Eafe's lounge, 
 where the lame back still held him prisoner, in 
 the room whose wide windows always let in so 
 much of the sky, Hester found herself confiding 
 to him her thoughts of the morning. " It was 
 dreadful," she said. 
 
 " Oh, never mind that ! " cried Marcia. " Look 
 here at the sun in those distant windows, just a 
 nest of rubies." 
 
 " I don't see," Hester went on regardlessly, 
 " why poor people live here, where they have to 
 suffer such things. My gentle South Sea sav- 
 ages, who never know what hunger and cold are, 
 are a great deal happier." 
 
 " Only they are savages," said Kaf e ; " and 
 these people are where their children can learn all 
 there is to know, and be all there is to be. Only 
 you 'd rather be a savage than a sponge, and a 
 poor person where there are books and schools 
 than a savage." 
 
 " I did n't think of that," said Hester. " But 
 why are people poor?"
 
 40 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Rafe laughed. "There you've touched the 
 sore spot of the world. But we must do some- 
 thing for these people." 
 
 " It made me feel as if I had no right to my 
 fur cloak," said Hester. 
 
 " Oh, come ! " said Marcia. 
 
 " And certainly," persisted Hester, " as if I 
 ought to be sewing for them instead of on this 
 embroidery for the dear baby, who would be just 
 as happy in something else." 
 
 " Your wonderful embroidery, Hester ! I do 
 believe you 're crying, Hester," from Marcia. 
 
 "It it makes you to think of those chil- 
 dren who have nothing, and would be so happy 
 with a few nails," exclaimed Hester. 
 
 " I say," said Eafe, presently, " there 's a lot of 
 stuff wasted at Christmas." 
 
 " Oh, I knew it I knew it was coming ! I 
 know just what you are going to say." 
 
 " For my part, I think if just the money that 
 is wasted by the Meyer family in buying useless 
 things that nobody wants," said Kafe, "or at any 
 rate can do without, like your silver dog-collar, 
 Marcia, your bon-bons, my ' British Ballads,' that
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 41 
 
 I really can have from the public library, Eosy's 
 davenport, if that is what she 's to have, and 
 Agnes's gold chain and locket, why, if the 
 money for all that raff of things was saved and 
 given to those What 's-their-names, this Stuart 
 family, it would send the father to a hospital, 
 where he could be cured, and made fit to go to 
 work again, and get a doctor and a wheel-chair 
 for the mother, and clothes and food for the 
 children enough to keep them comfortably the 
 whole year." 
 
 " Oh ! " cried Hester, " then then it would 
 be wicked " She stopped, for she was on the 
 point of censuring the possible doings of the 
 Meyer family. 
 
 "Oh, you needn't stop!" said Marcia. "It 
 will be wicked for me to have my gold-handled 
 umbrella, my chatelaine, my what-and-all ; for 
 Agnes to have her locket ; for mamma to have 
 the jewelry papa always gives her at Christmas." 
 
 " Wicked is too much to say," said Eafe, fall- 
 ing back on his cushions. "But it would be 
 lovely to have the money to give these Stuarts, 
 would n't it ? A few nails ! "
 
 42 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " And it 's wicked for you to be sewing on that 
 embroidery in this light, Hester Stanley," said 
 Marcia, giving Hester's work a twitch. "We 
 ought to have the lamps in, and be making a 
 linsey-woolsey for that Mamy Oh, dear ! I 
 wish we 'd never gone sleighing up the lake." 
 
 But Hester gathered up the work. " Miss 
 Marks gave me twenty-five dollars of my allow- 
 ance," said she, " to buy my Christmas gifts with, 
 because I have spent so little of it. But I know, 
 Marcia, that you and Eafe and Charlotte would 
 rather I gave it to those poor children than to 
 you. But I shall finish this for my baby, be- 
 cause because oh, because I want to ! " 
 cried Hester, as if she must have one piece of 
 wickedness for her share. 
 
 And then Miss Persis came and began to play 
 to Rafe the music that she always played for 
 him at twilight, the dreamy music that carried 
 his thoughts up to the stars as he saw them 
 coming out through the wide window, that made 
 his room a chamber of peace, and that always 
 quieted dissensions among the dear stormy 
 Meyer children.
 
 A CHKISTMAS THAT WAS CHKISTMAS. 43 
 
 " Hester has twenty-five dollars to spend on 
 Christmas presents," said Marcia next day at the 
 breakfast-table. " Get down, Beauty ! " to her 
 black cat, "I just gave you some ; it 's my 
 turn now. Yes ; and I Ve contrived to save five, 
 and so has Eafe. How much have you, Kosy ? 
 And you, Helen?" 
 
 " I don't know if I care to say," said Rosy. 
 
 " Oh, don't you ! I might have known. Well, 
 Helen ? " 
 
 "I I have twenty-five cents," said Helen, 
 bashfully. 
 
 "Dear, dear, you're almost as badly off as 
 Mamy Stuart. And you, Agnes ? " 
 
 " Oh, a whole boxful of nickels. I don't know 
 how many. And Bert would have had more, 
 but Mabel and Georgie tipped them down the 
 crack of the garret floor." 
 
 "We can get them again. I don't suppose 
 you Ve saved anything, John ? " 
 
 " Not a penny," said John. 
 
 " Well, instead of parcelling hers out in little 
 driblets among us all, and getting things nobody 
 really wants, things not of much use, you
 
 44 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 know, Hester is going to do a world of good 
 with her money, and give it all in one lump to 
 those Stuart people." 
 
 "I didn't say quite that, Marcia," said Hester, 
 gently. "I said I knew you and Kafe and 
 Charlotte Eisley would rather I did. But I 
 don't know about Eosy and Agnes and Helen 
 and John, and the rest. I don't know as I 
 would have the right, quite," she said, turning 
 her timid fawn's eyes on them each in turn, " to 
 give away their presents unless they said so." 
 
 " Of course they 11 say so." 
 
 Mr. Meyer glanced over the edge of his paper 
 at his wife, who was making Tot's cambric tea, 
 and she glanced back again, but neither of them 
 spoke. 
 
 " I say so," said John. 
 
 " I I don't know," said Rosy. 
 
 "If you aren't " 
 
 "Oh, you can say it, Marcia Meyer," cried 
 Rosy. "But it isn't anything of the sort. It's 
 because I thought I'd like to have a present 
 from Hester herself. And I was going to give 
 her one."
 
 A CHEISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 45 
 
 " Give and take ! You are one of the people 
 who deceive themselves with an idea of their 
 own virtue all the way through life." 
 
 " Marcia," said her mother, softly. 
 
 'Well, I suppose the Stuart children want 
 clothes and food and schooling as much as you 
 want a sentimental gift from Hester. Oh, how 
 the girls at Waterways will rattle you when you 
 get there ! " 
 
 "No, indeed, Eosy," said Hester. "I shall 
 be one of the big girls then, and I '11 stand by 
 you just as Marcia stands by me now." 
 
 " Well," said Eosy, " of course I '11 do what you 
 want me to, Hester. But but you'll let us 
 give you our presents, won't you ? " 
 
 "If if you don't mind," said Hester, "I 
 think Don't you think it would be better 
 to give them to Mamy and Ben and that baby 
 there ? It Why, it would be queer for me to 
 take your presents, and and prevent you from 
 having mine." 
 
 " Well " began Marcia. 
 
 " You 're always saying ' well,' Marcia," said 
 Eosy, her irritation still uppermost.
 
 46 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 "And you're always spilling things. You 
 never will learn how to eat an egg. Besides, 
 all's well that ends well. Well, now, what do 
 you say ? Give me my napkin-ring, Totty 
 dearest. Blessed pinkums ! Speak now, or else 
 forever hold your peace. Shall Hester, instead of 
 giving you Christmas presents, give the money 
 to the suffering Stuart children ? And shall you, 
 instead of giving her any, do the same ? Those 
 contrary-minded will say no." 
 
 There was a gurgling and stammering of ex- 
 planation and exclamation to be heard all round 
 the table, and stopping suddenly, but somehow 
 none of it made no. 
 
 "And that is only the beginning of it," said 
 Marcia, folding her napkin. " I am not going to 
 receive any Christmas presents this year, either. 
 Papa and mamma were to give me a silver dog- 
 collar, or a chatelaine chain, or something, and, 
 instead, I am going to ask them to let me have 
 the money to go with Hester's. A little girl 
 from the South Sea Islands sha'n't have all the 
 generosity there is in this house." 
 
 " Oh, Marcia ! " from Hester.
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHKISTMAS. 47 
 
 " And so I sha'n't make any Christmas 
 presents to you, either. At least " 
 
 " Oh, Marcia," exclaimed Eosy, in bitterness of 
 spirit, her face scarlet, "you're just going to 
 spoil Christmas ! " 
 
 "Spoil Christmas by making suffering people 
 happy?" 
 
 " We have a right to our Christmas as well as 
 they," spluttered Kosy, choking over her milk. 
 
 "Anybody would suppose presents made the 
 whole of Christmas, and there wasn't any 
 church all dressed in green to enjoy, sweet as a 
 pine wood, and the choir boys to sing, there 
 was n't any dinner and pudding in blue fire, and 
 games and For my part I thought Christmas 
 meant being glad Christ came, and we ought to 
 keep it so as to make it seem like a day in 
 heaven." 
 
 " We 're living here," persisted Eosy. 
 
 " Well, if you can't get up the spirit to have 
 Christmas without having all your miserliness 
 gratified, you don't deserve Christmas! That's 
 all I have to say." 
 
 "I'm glad of it. I hope you '11 stay at Water-
 
 48 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 ways next Christmas. You know I must do 
 whatever you do, and let papa give them the 
 price of my gold locket." 
 
 "You can wear a little ticket instead of the 
 locket, saying, ' I gave my locket to the poor.' " 
 
 " You are going too far, are n't you, my dear ? " 
 said her father, looking up from his paper again 
 a moment. 
 
 "I suppose so, papa dear. But I believe in 
 heroic treatment as much as Miss Bwown does." 
 
 " Oh, I thought you loved me, Marcia ! " sobbed 
 Eosy. 
 
 " So I do, so I do, you poor dear ! " cried 
 Marcia, upsetting her chair, and running round 
 to throw her arms about Rosy, who hid her face 
 in Marcia's neck then, creating all the confu- 
 sion proper to the Meyer meals, with the table- 
 cloth half dragged off and a water carafe broken. 
 " And you '11 be the happiest in the end if you do 
 just as Hester and I do. I know you !" 
 
 Suddenly, as Marcia returned to her seat, the 
 tears were spurting out of Helen's eyes, and 
 there was a sort of stifled wail from Agnes. 
 " We 've all got to do it if Marcia and John and
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 49 
 
 Rosy do. And I wanted my purse with the gold 
 piece." 
 
 " Well, well, well," said Marcia, with disgust. 
 " No one is obliged to do it. Besides, we did n't 
 mean the little ones, anyway ; only us big ones." 
 
 " I guess I 'm big enough for it if John is ! " 
 cried Bert. 
 
 "Oh, Marcia, we're big enough too," cried 
 Mabel and Georgie. "Don't leave us out oh, 
 please don't, Marcia ! " 
 
 " And besides," continued Marcia, " it is only 
 putting ourselves alongside of papa and mamma 
 and Miss Persis, who make Christmases for 
 others and get their fun out of that. Oh, when 
 you see the Stuart children so surprised and glad 
 and everything! Only think, nothing but 
 Indian-meal mush to eat, and not enough of 
 that. Perhaps they never tasted a butter-scotch 
 in their lives. Why, we 're all going to do it, I 
 do declare!" she cried. "Who would have 
 believed it? Aren't we a lovely family, after 
 all, we Meyers ? " And she upset her chair 
 again, and ran round to her father this time, and 
 hugged him with all her might. 
 
 4
 
 50 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " But," said her father, extricating himself from 
 her embrace where no one could have told which 
 was his beard or her hair, " your mother and I don't 
 seem to have been consulted in this business. 
 How do you know I want my child to go with- 
 out such a necessary article as a silver dog- 
 collar, or a gold chain and locket, or a seal ring 
 and what was all the rest ? in order that I 
 may give the worth of them to Mr. Stuart's 
 children ? " 
 
 " Oh no, my dear," said Mrs. Meyer, from her 
 end of the table and the muffler in which that 
 always neuralgic face of hers was enveloped. 
 
 "But, Marcia," he said in an undertone, "I 
 think we must except the little ones, Mabel and 
 Georgie and " 
 
 " I don't believe they 'd like it, papa, when the 
 time came, and they found they hadn't done 
 just as we had." 
 
 " Tot ? " said her father. 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " cried Marcia, with another hug ; 
 " you are the best, the dearest, the kindest I 
 don't wonder mamma worships you." 
 
 " My dear, if you worship me," said Mr. Meyer,
 
 A CHEISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 51 
 
 raising his voice, " I will thank you for a little 
 more incense. Marcia, take my coffee-cup to 
 your mother, please." And then the mother had 
 to be hugged half to death. 
 
 " Oh, I 'm so delighted ! " cried Marcia, hurry- 
 ing back to the table with a pencil and an old 
 letter envelope. "Hester, what a little trump 
 you are ! You began all this." 
 
 "No; Eafe did, Marcia." 
 
 " Now I 'm going to see how much we have 
 for the Stuarts. In the first place, Hester's 
 twenty-five dollars. Twenty-five. My dog-col- 
 lar, thirty." 
 
 " Oh, I could have got that for twenty," said 
 her father. 
 
 "Not the best. And you give the best, you 
 and motherkins. Rosy's davenport, eighteen ; 
 the gold locket for Agnes, too, eighteen more ; 
 and Helen's purse and eagle, fifteen. Then 
 Eafe's ' British Ballads,' twenty-five ; Bert's new 
 skates the old ones will do, Bert five. Were 
 you going to give John the bicycle really, papa ? 
 Yes ? Oh, how splendid ! That is eighty dol- 
 lars ; he 'd break a cheaper one all to pieces, and
 
 52 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 it would break him all to pieces too. Oh, you 
 never will be content to go without that bicycle 
 in the world, John ! " 
 
 " Yes, I will too." 
 
 " It means for always, John, you know. Not 
 this year or next " 
 
 " You count that bicyle in, Marcia Meyer. It's 
 more than any of you. Next year '11 take care 
 of itself. And Laddy '11 lend me his sometimes, 
 anyway." 
 
 "Well. And books and toys and things for 
 the rest fifteen more. Two hundred and thirty- 
 one dollars ! And my five, and your ten, Eosy 
 I guess it 's about ten and the box of nickels. 
 Papa, does Christmas always cost you a couple 
 of hundred dollars?" 
 
 " And more, too," said Mr. Meyer, with a groan 
 that made Hester look up and laugh. " It 's a 
 regular ' stand and deliver ! ' There 's my gift 
 to your mother, you know, and what it costs me 
 for your mother's gift to me," he said, laughing. 
 
 " Well, I suppose your gift to mamma would 
 be about a hundred dollars. Or is that too 
 low ? "
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 53 
 
 " Oh, by no means ! " said the father. " You 
 might say seventy-five." 
 
 " I '11 say a hundred. And I suppose she was 
 going to give you a dressing-gown that would 
 cost fifty. A hundred and fifty. And now, Miss 
 Persis ? " 
 
 "Oh, I throw my fortunes into the general 
 lot," said Miss Persis. 
 
 " That 's hardly fair, Miss Persis," said Mr. 
 Meyer. 
 
 " It was going to be a black silk, Miss Persis," 
 murmured the mother. 
 
 A little flush mounted Miss Persis's pale cheek. 
 " I '11 make the old one answer," she said pres- 
 ently. "I should feel condemned to be having 
 a new black silk with the suffering I saw yester- 
 day unrelieved." 
 
 " Miss Persis, then," resumed Marcia. " She 's 
 not going to let us get ahead of her. How much 
 does a black silk cost, mamma ? Five hundred 
 dollars ? " 
 
 "Marcia! Fifty!" 
 
 "Well, now, let's see. Five and twenty-one 
 twenty-six ; naught 's naught ; carry three. 
 Four hundred and thirty-one dollars, papa I "
 
 54 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " Throw off the odd figures, Marcia," pleaded 
 her father, his eyes sparkling. 
 
 " Oh no, indeed ! After we 've had a little 
 conference as to what we were going to spend 
 for each other, and Miss Persis and Charlotte 
 and all, I rather think we shall make it up 
 to five hundred. If it had only been fifty, it 
 would have helped some. Hester shall be the 
 treasurer." 
 
 " Oh no," whispered Hester ; " Miss Persis, 
 please." 
 
 " And let 's see," went on Marcia, irrepres- 
 sibly, "that will give the Stuart father six 
 months in the hospital where they cure such 
 things at ten dollars a week ; and a wheel-chair 
 for the mother to get round in, at twenty- 
 eight " 
 
 " And a sled for the boy, Marcia," cried John. 
 "That boy shall have his sled. Sliding on an 
 old board ! " 
 
 " Yes. A thick new cloak and arctic boots 
 for Mamy." 
 
 " And a barrel of flour, and some beans, and 
 pease, and pork, and bacon, and "
 
 A CHEISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 55 
 
 " And tea and sugar," said Mrs. Meyer. 
 
 *And 'Robinson Crusoe,'" said Bert. 
 
 K And the ' Girls' Own Fairy Book.' " 
 
 * And a doll." 
 
 " And, if you please," said Hester, " I think 
 they would like a chimney. Does it cost much 
 to build a chimney ? Only fifteen or twenty 
 dollars there ? Oh, ever since I have been in 
 the North it seems to me that everything is in 
 a chimney." 
 
 " Oh, they won't know themselves," said Mar- 
 cia. " And just think how lovely to give them 
 such comfort and happiness, and to cure their 
 father! Don't you begin to feel happier now, 
 Georgie ? " 
 
 " But it 's going to be a very dry Christmas," 
 said John. And then they adjourned upstairs, 
 where Rafe was now ready to receive them and 
 hear all about it. 
 
 But if it were going to be a dry Christmas, it 
 was a most jolly ten days beforehand, with the 
 shopping and running and talking, in which last 
 every one had unrestricted part, with the meas- 
 uring and planning and cutting, with new
 
 56 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 clothes bought, old clothes made over, with 
 something for each individual to do in the matter 
 of the little Stuarts. And Mamma Meyer had 
 so much help that, after all, she found time to 
 make a new dressing-gown from the pattern of 
 the old one and part of her old velvet shawl, for 
 they all felt the indulgent father must have that, 
 at any rate. And when the proper Christmas 
 snow-storm arrived and cleared away, and the 
 Eisleys sent for them one and all to come across 
 the street for a merrymaking on Christmas night 
 itself, and the green was up, and the stars came 
 out frostily, and the church bells began to ring, 
 and every one was running every way, even Eafe 
 singing, "There was racing and chasing on 
 Cannobie Lee," they all said, upon comparing 
 notes, that they felt as if this was going to be 
 the first Christmas they had ever had. And at 
 last, John and Kosy having been chosen to go 
 Hester having refused because she thought it 
 might trouble the Stuarts to see so many the 
 great business of the hour was despatched with 
 their father and Miss Persis in the sleigh. And 
 when they came back, and told of the sick
 
 A CHRISTMAS THAT WAS CHRISTMAS. 57 
 
 father's bursting out crying, and of the mother's 
 wheeling her new chair across the room, and 
 throwing her arms over him as he lay there help- 
 less, and the children's astonished silence at first, 
 and then their yells of delight, and the embraces 
 they gave Kosy and John, who backed away 
 from them red and grinning, and how glad they 
 felt driving home in the light of a big yellow 
 moon that came rolling up purposely to light the 
 way, when they heard it all, Marcia and 
 Hester just threw their arms about each other 
 and cried too. 
 
 And when little Tot woke up later that even- 
 ing, and found something lying in the bed with 
 her something soft and cool and sweet-smell- 
 ing and rubbed her eyes, and scrambled out to 
 turn up the night-lamp, and saw a wonderful 
 wax doll, all smiles and rosiness, enough to 
 warm any little mother-heart alive, she made a 
 noise that called all the family about her. "I 
 don't want to be left out," she was roaring, as 
 she stood in her little long night-dress at the 
 head of the stairs. " I 'm plenty big enough. I 
 yove my old dolly best. I yant the Stuart baby
 
 58 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 to have it." And nothing pacified her till 
 Michael put on his coat, and took the lovely wax 
 lady in her silken dress, and went and tied it on 
 the door-handle of the little house in the woods. 
 And Hester and Marcia, watching with Eafe for 
 him to come back in the light of the great 
 Christmas moon across the snow, declared to 
 each other that as long as they lived they never 
 expected to be so useful again, or so happy as 
 they were that Christmas Eve!
 
 JULE'S GARDEN,
 
 JULE'S GARDEN. 
 
 A LL the girls at St. Mark's had their little 
 ** plots of garden, if they chose, and the 
 Trustees were given a vase of flowers from the 
 best one every year ; and in return the Trustees 
 gave the successful young gardener rare shrubs 
 and seeds and potted plants. Once Hester 
 Stanley was the successful one; for her father 
 had sent her the bulbs of some wonderful 
 orchids from the South Sea Islands. She shared 
 them with Marcia, who let them die ; and then 
 she shared again her half with Jule, who was 
 extravagantly fond of flowers ; and every year 
 after that the vase of flowers was picked from 
 Jule Spencer's garden. For Jule knew a good 
 deal about flowers and their care before the min- 
 ister urged her father to send her to St. Mark's, 
 although the minister did not call it St.
 
 62 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Mark's, but the Girls' School at Waterways. 
 And indeed it was Jule's garden at home that 
 indirectly sent her to Waterways. 
 
 She had been standing once on the river-bank 
 beside Jack, who was fishing, or thought he was, 
 when she suddenly exclaimed, 
 
 " Oh, there he is ! Look, across the river ! 
 He's set down his camera. Oh, he's going to 
 take the barn! It's the minister! Oh, and 
 with so many places, to take that, the very ugli- 
 est spot on the whole point!" And she began 
 to twist her curls, always a sign of distress 
 with little Jule, the boys said. 
 
 " It 's the gobbler he 's taking," said Jack. 
 
 " I don't care. It brings in the barn, too, and 
 the hen-yard " 
 
 "The gobbler knows he's taking him," said 
 Jack. 
 
 " Oh, yes, he 's a beauty, standing there on the 
 bulkhead for the hens to admire him. But all 
 the same " 
 
 " All the same, little Jule, you feel the disgrace 
 of having that hen-yard handed down to poster- 
 ity," said Mr. Jack, pulling in his line with
 
 JULE'S GARDEN. 63 
 
 nothing on it. There never was anything on it ; 
 but that made no difference in Jack's liking to 
 lie along the rock and drop his line in and pull 
 it out again. 
 
 " Oh, Jack," said Jule, " you might make that 
 place decent ! You might drive out those hens 
 and fix their run somewhere else " 
 
 " I might go up in a balloon," said Jack, jerk- 
 ing his sinker. " There, you run along, puss, and 
 let the poor hens alone. Take life easy till 
 school begins." And he leaned along the rock as 
 if he really would be disappointed if a fish bit. 
 The spring sun shone pleasantly, the birds darted 
 across the blue sky, the wind was sweet with the 
 smell of new furrows and leafy things ; softly 
 the sound of a hurdy-gurdy came from the dis- 
 tance, and Jack was too comfortable to bother 
 himself about hens and hen-yards. So little Jule 
 went her way, feeling that if it were any one but 
 Jack she could be cross. 
 
 She had so often thought it was such a pity 
 that spot should be given up to hens ! And she 
 had a superlative dislike of hens ; she felt there 
 must be an untouchable roughness about their
 
 64 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 feathers, the thought of which set her teeth on 
 edge ; and, moreover, she was mortally afraid of 
 them. An old mother-hen had once flown in her 
 face when she was only picking up a chicken, 
 and had finished for her the whole hen-family. 
 How lovely that bank would be with terraces 
 and rock-work and geraniums and beds of pop- 
 pies ! She had spoken to Tom about it, but he 
 had pooh-poohed ; and her mother said it would 
 be too much trouble; and her father said the 
 men were busy, and why did n't she make her 
 own gardens ? One day, indeed, a year ago, she 
 had opened the gate in the lath-fence, and had 
 flirted her handkerchief and shooed, her heart 
 beating furiously, and had reached in with her 
 trowel, digging a hole into which she had 
 dropped a root of violets, pressed it down, poured 
 some water over it, shooing all the time, and had 
 shut the gate and run. The hens ran, too, and 
 in ten minutes there wasn't a shred of that 
 violet left. 
 
 However, there were more serious things in 
 life than gardens. There was the bureau-cloth 
 she was embroidering for her mother, the socks
 
 JULE'S GAEDEN. 65 
 
 she was knitting, and her lessons to be learned. 
 There was the loaf of bread to be taken to Mrs. 
 Nourse's, where poor Danny Nourse, who had 
 lost his left hand, was bemoaning the hard fate 
 that had taken it off and would oblige him to 
 wear a hook, when so little money would buy an 
 artificial hand for him who must earn his own 
 living by the work of his hands. " Father has n't 
 any money or he would give it to Danny. And 
 there is n't any way in which I can earn a nickel. 
 Oh," sighed Jule, " it is dreadful to be so useless." 
 
 Poor Danny really needed his hand, for his head 
 was of little use to him. Jule, in a time of enthu- 
 siasm, had offered to teach him to read, and had 
 accomplished her work only after long devotion. 
 
 " B-a-g," Danny would spell. 
 
 " Well," Jule would say, " what is it ? " 
 
 " B-a-g," Danny would reiterate. 
 
 " Well, what does that spell ? Don't you know, 
 Danny ? Why, what do you carry things in ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Pocket ! " cried Danny, quite delighted 
 with himself. 
 
 A year of effort on Jule's part, and, indeed, on 
 Danny's too, and the accident to Danny's hand
 
 66 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 put an end to lessons. It had been a distressing 
 time to Jule, too, when the operation took place. 
 She had gone down with some broth her mother 
 sent, and found the doctor just ready to remove 
 the mutilated hand, but the one who was to give 
 the ether not arrived, and Mrs. Nourse in the 
 other room and quite incapable. 
 
 " I '11 not be afther waitin' for the likes o' him, 
 docthor dear," said Danny. " Go ahead wid ye ! " 
 
 " You don't know anything about it, my lad," 
 said the doctor. 
 
 "I do, thin. I'll not holler," turning his 
 fevered eyes to the kitchen door, " for the fear o' 
 troublin' her. I 'd not be havin' her hear me." 
 
 " No, no, my boy." 
 
 "I 'd be glad it wor over," pleaded Danny. " I 
 could bear the hurt for the little time. Oh, my 
 poor hand that was a help to me, it 's losin' ye I 
 am ! There 's the little Miss Jule, the craythur ! 
 If she '11 just sit by an' look at me, with the swate 
 smile of her, an' maybe hould the other hand, 
 I'll not stir a scrap, docthor dear. I'd be 
 ashamed, ye know. An' it 's herself wud put the 
 comfort intil me. Oh, Miss July darlint, forby
 
 JULE'S GARDEN. 67 
 
 the pain I 'd be spakin' more respectful like, 
 it 's meself is as glad to see ye as the doves of 
 Cashel. If ye '11 hold by me hond, I won't lave ye 
 know it 's hurtin' me at all, it is ! " And Jule felt 
 her heart sink and shake ; but she sat down and 
 took his well hand in both of hers, and then 
 the other doctor bustled in, and Jule wanted 
 to shut her eyes, but did n't, because she knew 
 that Danny wished her to smile at him. " Be- 
 gorra ! " said Danny, as the doctor adjusted the 
 towel round the ether sponge and came to place it 
 over his mouth. " It 's me roight hond '11 be left 
 till me now ! " She felt as if she were assisting at 
 Danny's execution. But the doctor's kind words 
 to him reassured her, and she was able to look 
 at the brave boy, and smile, and now and then 
 press the hand she held till at length he slept. 
 And at that she turned her head away and closed 
 her own eyes, and began to say all the prayers 
 she knew. Then, as she felt that the doctors were 
 not giving Danny a particle of pain, the once hate- 
 ful smell of the ether reminded her of heaps of 
 oranges, and afterwards, when she sometimes saw 
 brides, and smelled their garlands of orange-
 
 68 HESTEK STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 flowers, instead of festivity and joy only, it made 
 her think of the gracious strength of ether, that 
 brought almost the greatest blessing of God to 
 man, surcease from pain. 
 
 So, it may be seen, Jule felt an interest in 
 Danny's welfare, and did all in her power for 
 him, and sighed to think, do what she would, 
 she could not raise money for an artificial hand 
 that might help him to a livelihood. 
 
 * Well," thought Jule, as she left Jack and 
 his fishing, that spring morning, " if I can't get 
 any one to see to that place, I can't." But she 
 paused when she reached the fence of the hen- 
 yard, and looked through wistfully. There was 
 not a hen in the place \ They had all gone up 
 their queer slatted walk into the upper yard, 
 where Tom was scattering corn. What an in- 
 spiration came to Jule that minute, what cour- 
 age! Her heart beat in her throat; but she 
 opened the little lath gate, stepped over the sill, 
 ran like the wind across the hen-yard and up 
 the rocks, and drew a loose board over the little 
 door made for the hens to go down into their run. 
 
 " Now you 're there, you stay there," she said,
 
 JULE'S GARDEN. 69 
 
 for the large upper run was really quite enough 
 for them. A young rooster crowed insultingly 
 at that, and another took up the tale, and Jule 
 scampered as if a whole flight of cockerels were 
 after her. 
 
 But presently, summoning up courage, she 
 took a survey of the premises, a dingle between 
 two bluffs sloping from the river to the barn at 
 a height above ; at the base of the barn a stone 
 pig-pen, whose wall was six feet high. The 
 barnyard heap was no longer thrown down there, 
 but a bulkhead had once been built below to 
 keep the compost from washing into the river. 
 " Woodbine and there 's plenty in the woods 
 could grow over the back of that barn," 
 thought Jule, "and the Boston ivy, if I could 
 get some, would cover the pig-pen like a mat. 
 Oh, would n't it be lovely ! " And then she 
 looked in despair at the earth the hens had 
 scratched bare, the heaps of stones, the impossible 
 confusion of boards and cans and bottles. " I '11 
 try," she exclaimed presently. 
 
 " Oh, Danny, would you mind coming out to 
 the Falls woods ? " she asked, a little later.
 
 70 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " Dade, thin, I wud," said Danny, " an' be glad 
 in me sowl, so I wud." And they came home 
 in an hour with baskets of wild woodbine roots 
 and sweet-briers ; and Danny's one hand and 
 Jule's two disposed them at the barn corners, 
 and by the big bowlders at the dingle-side. 
 
 " Now," said Jule, having watered them thor- 
 oughly, " the ladies in the brick house down town 
 may give us some slips of their Boston ivy, and 
 they '11 make a beautiful green wall of the pig- 
 pen in time, you know, Danny." 
 
 Then Jule went in and knit at her sock. 
 " Mother dear," said she, after knitting several 
 rounds, " can't I have the bulbs the dahlias in 
 the front yard made last year ? " 
 
 " The bulbs ? " said her mother, pinching her 
 pastry. " What for ? " 
 
 " Oh, I know ! " said Jule. 
 
 " Mis' Nourse won't care about a garden ; but 
 you can have 'em, I guess." 
 
 And the next day the Boston ivy and the 
 dahlia-bulbs were in place, and Jule and Danny 
 had fastened the board against the hens, and had 
 nailed pickets at the top of the fence there, two
 
 JULE'S GARDEN. 71 
 
 of the Virginia-creepers being set to climb over 
 the fence eventually and hide it altogether. 
 
 " Oh," cried Jule, " I am going to make the 
 wilderness blossom like a rose ! " And then the 
 two little people began to toil over the road from 
 the ploughed fields with baskets of earth that 
 they tumbled into the crannies and along the 
 slope. And they laboriously brought up stones 
 from the shore day after day, and slowly made 
 a rude wall for a terrace below the pig-pen, fill- 
 ing the space with earth. 
 
 " They do be sayin'," remarked Danny, " that 
 the min out there to Washington, or wheriver, 
 has the givin' o' flower-sades be the peck, good 
 loock till 'em, an' ye can have thim for the askin'. 
 Sorra a bit uv me knows." 
 
 That night Jule found who was her member 
 of Congress, and the reply to her modest request 
 came, to the wonderment of the family, as a 
 package addressed to Miss Julia Spencer, and 
 containing, she fancied, the seeds of half the 
 flowers that blow. " Oh, here are larkspurs ! " 
 she cried. " You know how tall and blue they 
 are. And stocks, and phlox, and feverfew, and
 
 72 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 marigolds, and candytuft, oh, and nasturtiums ! 
 Sweet alyssum, too, and balsam, and salvia, and 
 cosmos, and morning-glories, oh, and hollyhocks ! 
 How perfectly delightful ! " 
 
 " That 's what your country does for you," said 
 Jack. 
 
 " It 's a dear country ! " cried Jule. And the 
 frost being gone, it took only a day to sow the 
 terrace-bed in plots. Then they picked up and 
 raked and spaded in comfort on the incline 
 towards the bulkhead. " The great beds of pop- 
 pies there will be so splendid from the river ! " 
 cried Jule. 
 
 " The tides '11 be drowndin' thim out intirely, 
 so they will, Miss Jule," said Danny. 
 
 " But it won't hurt them." 
 
 " They '11 be af ther flowerin' in the islands of 
 the dape say." 
 
 " I'll risk it," said Jule. " I '11 drop the seeds." 
 
 " An' the next high tide '11 be doin' the rest," 
 said Danny ; and it did. There was not a poppy- 
 seed left. 
 
 Then they sowed nasturtiums by the fence 
 where she used to have the horrible vision of the
 
 JULE'S GARDEN. 73 
 
 hens. " You hold the string for their climbing, 
 Danny, till I tie it. I '11 put in the stick. Now 
 another. I tell you, it tires your back ! But 
 when it 's a gold and scarlet curtain here, won't 
 it be glorious ? Oh ! can't you see it, splendid 
 with dew, and the sun shining on it ? " 
 
 After this there were morning-glories sowed 
 on the other upper side, till the woodbine should 
 be grown next year. And what joy it was to 
 watch those woodbines for their first pout ! Jule 
 gave them water morning and night. " Oh, 
 they 're alive ! " she shouted ; and she sat down be- 
 fore the first buds and warbled little songs of 
 
 joy- 
 
 Jule had some geraniums of her own in the 
 kitchen. She had early cut off slips ; and now 
 she set them in the crannies of that ugly eastern 
 corner. And then school began. But the 
 moment school was out, and she had done all 
 her mother wished, she was down in her retreat, 
 wondering if this were a sprouting seed or that 
 were a weed, watering and pottering and learning 
 the ways of nature out of nature's book. 
 
 The loss of the poppies was sad. There had to
 
 74 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 be another wall to hold a terrace beyond any rise 
 of the tide. With the only silver piece she had, 
 she hired old Jerry to dig a trench ; and when he 
 saw her lugging up the stones, he worked over- 
 time every day to help her. And although it took 
 them the rest of the summer, they laid that wall, 
 and plastered it from a half barrel of cement 
 they found in the cellar ; but it was not till the 
 fall ploughing that they could fill it with earth. 
 And if Jule knit Jerry all the socks he wore that 
 winter, it was not in the way of payment, but 
 because she loved to do it. 
 
 But it had been fatiguing to fetch the water 
 from the river in the evenings after the hot days, 
 and nobody in the house took much interest. 
 Her father had consented to the banishment of 
 the hens, but her mother said it was a waste of 
 time ; and it seemed as if every one had something 
 for her to do when her flowers needed her, for the 
 leakage from barn and pig-pen made the soil so 
 rich that the weeds grew faster than the flowers. 
 
 Danny was picking potato-bugs in the field 
 when Jule was taken with a cold ; and when she 
 was about again and went down, the garden was
 
 JULE'S GAKDEN. 75 
 
 a wilderness of white-weed and wild carrot. " I 
 must have some flowering bushes that the weeds 
 can't hurt," said Jule, as she took up her gera- 
 niums, by and by, and gathered her seeds, still 
 rejoicing in her zinnias and cosmos. She had 
 quantities of seeds ; the family could not imagine 
 what she was doing when they saw her putting 
 them into papers, but supposed it was all in the 
 way of her foolishness about the garden. They 
 did not know that the store-keeper had got her 
 some bulbs, which she had put in the ground in 
 September for early growth, and was going to 
 take his pay in flower-seeds, or they might have 
 objected to such independent proceedings on her 
 part. 
 
 But when the next spring opened, the snow 
 was not gone before the little gardener was down 
 in her preserve, pulling off old stalks and pre- 
 paring for the new campaign. Then Danny and 
 r.;he went off to a pasture where once a house had 
 stood with damask-roses in its yard ; and they 
 came back with lilac-rods that went into the 
 ground up the slope behind the geraniums, and 
 with no end of the roses. And no young prin-
 
 76 HESTEK STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 cess ever took more enjoyment in the glint of 
 her rubies than Jule did when those rose-stems 
 strung themselves with tiny red leaf-buds. 
 
 Jule had now saved another dollar, and had 
 gone down to a florist's. "I want so many 
 things," she sighed. " And I have only a dollar. 
 Do you suppose I could get a couple of trumpet- 
 vines, and a honeysuckle, and a Seven Sisters 
 rose, and a hydrangea, and a scarlet japonica, and 
 a flowering almond, and a spice-plant " 
 
 "For a dollar?" asked the florist, smiling. 
 " Well, I don't know. I suppose you would n't 
 mind if I throw in a Jacque-rose and a chry- 
 santhemum ? " 
 
 " Oh," cried Jule, with sparkling eyes, " do you 
 really mean so?" And the treasures she bore 
 off were almost more than she could carry. 
 
 There were disappointments about the little 
 garden this year; the flies hurt this, and the 
 slugs that, and the drought and the rain the 
 others, and the watering was more than she 
 could do without Danny, and Danny used to 
 wail that he could n't be in two places " to onst, 
 so he couldn't." Still, there were moments of
 
 JULE'S GARDEN. 77 
 
 satisfaction when the pleasure-boats went up the 
 river, or when she saw the minister shooting by 
 in his boat and looking at her roses. 
 
 But the third summer Jule's undertaking was 
 a success. " Wife," said her father, " our Jule 's 
 got quite a garden down at the old hen-run. 
 I '11 rig a spout from the spring in the barn, so 
 she won't have to be dragging water." 
 
 " Sis," said Tom, " I 'm going to do a day's 
 work in your garden. What shall it be ? " 
 
 " Jule," called Jack, "I've got a syringa-bush 
 from the Squire's for your garden." So true it 
 is that nothing succeeds like success. 
 
 But these were scattered offerings. Usually 
 Jule, and Danny, when he could, plodded on 
 alone, and had their reward of pure joy in 
 beauty. 
 
 It was a day in the depth of summer that 
 Jule went shopping down town with her mother. 
 Mrs. Spencer was hard to please ; and while this 
 and that were handed down, Jule amused herself 
 with the advertisements posted on the shed ; 
 " Take Pill's Powders," half covered by a circus 
 picture, on which again were pasted smaller
 
 78 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 notices of the " Sale of a Farm," the loss of a 
 White Cat with a black tip to its tail, the Village 
 Improvement Society's reward of fifty dollars, 
 the finding of a Sum of Money, an Auctioneer's 
 Sale. Jule was still spelling them out when 
 her mother in some excitement left the shop- 
 keeper, who had been talking to her in an ani- 
 mated way. " I want you to run right home, 
 Jule," she said, " and go down to your garden 
 I 'm glad you put on your white print I sup- 
 pose your hair 's all a snarl," lifting the hat to 
 smooth the yellow curls. "Make haste some 
 one 's coming there." 
 
 " But I 'd rather wait for you," said Jule. 
 
 " Never mind me. I '11 be there pretty soon." 
 And according to her custom Jule wonderingly 
 did as she was told. " That old hen-run ! " she 
 heard her mother murmuring. 
 
 Jule reached the garden and was down on the 
 bulkhead just in time to see a flock of sails 
 swelling up the stream, and circling a little way 
 above like swans, while a fleet of row-boats 
 followed, trimmed out with flags. There were 
 girls singing in the boats, and some one in the
 
 JULE'S GAKDEN. 79 
 
 last boat was blowing a cornet. It seemed to 
 Jule as lovely as a crowd of water-nymphs could 
 be. Looking back to see if her mother was com- 
 ing, she saw her father and Jack and Tom hurry- 
 ing down the bank where Jack used to drop his 
 line; and while she was looking back, a boat 
 rowed up, the rowers grasping the bulkhead, 
 while some one stepped out the minister! 
 
 The minister turned directly and addressed 
 the people in the boats, who stopped their music 
 at once. " My friends," Jule heard him saying, 
 "you have all seen the photograph I chanced 
 to take of this place as it was three years ago. 
 You all see it now the building a tower of 
 verdure, the walls turned to banks of living 
 green, the fences transformed to curtains of blos- 
 soming splendor. Where all was shapeless con- 
 fusion, here are terraces that in spring blushed 
 red with roses, and where now the lilies stand 
 in ranks of white and gold. The spot that was 
 a waste haunted by the owl and the dragon - 
 that is, by the gobbler and the hen is turned 
 to a blaze of glory. So, in accordance with your 
 decree, I now deliver the reward of fifty dollars
 
 80 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 for the greatest improvement within our borders 
 to Miss Julia Spencer ! " And then, before he 
 stepped into his boat, and the oars dipped, and 
 the sails of the others ran up, and the whole 
 shining flotilla moved away, the minister had 
 handed to the astonished child, who stood wind- 
 ing her curls about her fingers, a purse through 
 whose meshes sparkled five golden eagles. And 
 then a shout went up from all the boats, and 
 the cornet began to play, and the girls sang, 
 " Come into the garden, Maud," till the music 
 was nothing but an enchanting echo in the 
 distance; and Jule, in her bewildered amaze- 
 ment, came near dropping the purse into the 
 river. 
 
 " Well, that 's what I call worth while," cried 
 Jack, when Jule had left oft crying her tears of 
 surprise. " What you going to do with it, Sis ? " 
 
 And then Jule drew herself up with pride and 
 gladness. " I am going to get Danny his arti- 
 ficial hand." 
 
 " And it will be the best thing that ever grew 
 in a garden ! " cried her father.
 
 APRIL SHOWERS.
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 
 
 T)OOR Miss Risley ! She did not, the least in 
 * the world, know what to do with Charlotte. 
 " If I can't govern a child without whipping her," 
 she used to say, " I won't try to govern her at 
 all." But the mischief was that she did try to 
 govern Charlotte, and Charlotte was ungovern- 
 able. 
 
 There was not a demurer puss alive than this 
 little girl when she walked to church beside her 
 aunt on a Sunday, with her bright curls tied 
 away in a blue ribbon that returned the blue of 
 her eyes, although her face, if you looked closely, 
 was all ready to break out in smiles. 
 
 You never would think it was her voice that 
 presently would be piping up the tune of some 
 popular ballad to the sacred words the choir 
 sung simply to see how they would go.
 
 84 HESTER STANLEY'*: FRIENDS- 
 
 You never would think it was she wbo, aiw 
 a critical examination of Miss Marvin's new 
 wrap during the sermon, wrote in large script on 
 a blank leaf of the hymnal the awful words 
 "Bargain Counter," and watched her chance to 
 pin it no, I cannot tell it. Only Charlotte 
 had to beg Miss Marvin's pardon in dust and 
 ashes, and her aunt's pardon, and the minister's, 
 and say penitential psalms, and go without 
 sugar, and save her pennies, too, till she had 
 enough to buy a new hymnal. 
 
 It was in Miss Eisley's system of rewards and 
 punishments that Charlotte was sent to spend 
 the next Sunday and meditate alone in the 
 garret ; and that when Miss Eisley came home 
 from church she had the pleasure of seeing a 
 large board, which Charlotte could never have 
 suspended under the window if John Meyer 
 had not come over to help her, bearing in black 
 paint and huge letters the words " Children Not 
 Wantid Hear," the truth of which legend made 
 its offence all the greater. 
 
 But Charlotte could not seem to help it; 
 mischief was her natural element. She did not
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 85 
 
 mean to be naughty; she wished to be good. 
 She loved her aunt, for that was all she had of 
 her own to love. She shed showers of tears 
 while the wickedness of her capers was explained 
 to her. She would kiss Miss Risley, with 
 repeated hugs, and hide her mop of yellow curls 
 in her neck, and promise everything and per- 
 form nothing, the joys of disobedience, of idling, 
 of startling, being greater than the love. 
 
 And there were the Meyers across the street ; 
 and Miss Eisley used to say the Meyer children 
 were enough to demoralize a whole neighborhood 
 the poor dears. 
 
 She did n't say " the poor dears." 
 
 She tried to forbid them the house except on 
 state occasions, when they were invited to a 
 solemn banquet of hot biscuit and jam, to which 
 they went eagerly every time, forgetting the 
 misery of the last time, and from which they 
 poured home whooping with the escape of vitality 
 that they could not carry at the high pressure of 
 good behavior another minute. 
 
 The Meyer children, of course, were the 
 greatest comfort to Charlotte. She used to
 
 86 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 admire Rafe from an awful distance, he was so 
 fine and lordly, and always did what was right, 
 and looked like St. John and all the prophets, as 
 Marcia said, having the prophets and apostles 
 confused in her mind. But as for John Meyer, 
 and Marcia, too, when she was at home on her 
 vacations, Charlotte always found them a very 
 present help in time of naughtiness, in which 
 they were hand in glove, and usually made more 
 noise about it than the incarnation of the Spirit 
 of Mischief in the Rheingold does. 
 
 Mr. Meyer had been talking of moving south 
 for a long time. " Oh, why does n't he go ? " 
 moaned Miss Bisley, although she knew she 
 should miss the older ones of the family sadly. 
 And then her heart smote her for Charlotte's 
 loneliness if he did; and yet, she said, why 
 should she suffer everything, and have her head 
 splitting with the racket, and her nerves kept 
 a-twitter with fear of damage to her portraits 
 and her precious polished old furniture and heir- 
 looms, in order to have Charlotte amused ? 
 
 " I will be good ! Oh, auntie, I will be good ! " 
 Charlotte would exclaim, her heart full of peni-
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 87 
 
 tence and her eyes fountains of tears. And then 
 there came Marcia with the sun shining in her 
 red hair, going birdnesting with John, and all 
 the little Meyers tearing after them, and what 
 could Charlotte do but follow, and come home 
 dishevelled and drenched and torn, having broken 
 up the fun half-way by a spasm of repentance ? 
 
 "It is more than I can do to keep you in 
 clothes," cried her aunt. " Every gown you have 
 is torn, and this is sopping ! " And she straight- 
 way rummaged from one of the old chests in 
 the garret a little short gown and cap and petti- 
 coats of a remote ancestress, and clad Charlotte 
 in them for the mortification of the flesh, while 
 she and Peggy darned and patched the torn 
 ginghams of to-day. 
 
 But poor Miss Eisley failed of her purpose. 
 Charlotte was immensely delighted with herself 
 in her antique dress ; and she watched and called 
 across the road, and exhibited herself to her 
 friends. "Don't I look just like great-great- 
 grandma?" she cried, framed by the casement. 
 And it was the picture she made in the window 
 that gave John the idea.
 
 88 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Her aunt had sent her over to ask the Meyer 
 children to tea. They were going to have hot 
 muffins and preserved plums and chocolate, 
 which she announced to the invited guests at 
 once. It was in the Easter vacation, and Marcia 
 was at home, and stooping over a little fire on 
 the schoolroom hearth, scrambling eggs that she 
 had rifled from one of the haymows. 
 
 "And I got caught in the shower and wet 
 through for my pains," said Marcia. " John, you 
 let those eggs alone ! I 'm going to make a nogg 
 for mamma with those. Oh, it 's a great deal nicer 
 at St. Mark's than here. There goes the baby ! " 
 Tot was the Meyer baby then. " I wish I was 
 back at school and you were with me, Charlotte." 
 
 " I don't know," said Charlotte. 
 
 " I do," said Marcia. 
 
 " It 's pretty good fun here when auntie lets 
 me come over. And I run away when she 
 doesn't, you know," said Charlotte, with frank- 
 ness. 
 
 "It's better fun at school with the pillow- 
 fights in the dormitory, when it isn't Miss 
 Brown's week, and roasting chestnuts on hair-
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 89 
 
 pins in the lamp, and telling ghost stories in the 
 dark. And there's Mr. Marquand's school 
 across the bay, and Joe and the boys Oh, I 
 wish you knew Bella she's just perfectly 
 lovely ! As for Miss Brown well, Miss Marks 
 is our angel of light, anyway, and I suppose 
 she'll make an angel of me sometime." 
 
 " She has a lot to do, then," said Eafe. Eafe 
 before that accident was one boy, and Rafe after- 
 ward was another. "You can't make bricks 
 without straw." 
 
 " I 've heard of a man of straw and a rope of 
 straw, but I never heard of a straw angel ! " 
 
 " We should, if you were one." 
 
 " Dear me, how much you know about angels ! " 
 
 " I don't know why I do in this family," said 
 Rafe. " It is n't a little heaven below." 
 
 "Let's make it one!" cried Marcia. "Chil- 
 dren, attention ! Charlotte, you take one of the 
 chair-legs and I '11 take the other " 
 
 " I dare you ! " said Rafe. 
 
 " Helen, you take a rung, and John the other. 
 Bert, you're too little to be much good, but 
 remember you're a manl You'll do for the
 
 90 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 front on one side, and Rosy and Agnes the other. 
 You dare us now ? Quick ! All together ! " 
 And before Eafe, who in his dignity had scorned 
 to move, could resist the attack, the chair was 
 lifted like a palanquin. 
 
 "Put me down! Put me down ! " cried Rafe. 
 
 " Will you be good ? " said Marcia. " Will you 
 go on lording it over us ? Will you call me a 
 straw angel? Will you divide those gum 
 imperials ? " 
 
 " You put me down ! " cried Rafe. And as the 
 little ones were weakening, the chair was low- 
 ered. And then the moment the feet were on 
 the floor, some one, were it Marcia, or Char- 
 lotte, or John, or Helen, no one knew which, 
 gave a push, a jerk, and the chair went one way 
 and Rafe another, and Rafe did not get up again, 
 but lay a white heap on the floor. 
 
 As quick as saying, Charlotte whipped through 
 the door, across the green and the road, to her 
 own yard, and then up to the garret, hiding her- 
 self under the rafters. " Oh, I 've killed him ! 
 I 've killed him ! " she was crying. " What shall 
 I do? Oh, what shall I do?"
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 91 
 
 But while she was bewailing herself Marcia's 
 voice came up under the window, and she ran 
 to look out, her face streaming with tears, but 
 at Marcia's words breaking into sunshine and 
 smiles. 
 
 "It's all right!" said Marcia. "He came 
 round all right. It isn't anything. He says 
 it isn't. It hit him in the back. We're 
 awfully rough. But we'll all be over to 
 
 I/Gel ~ 
 
 " Oh ! I am so glad ! " cried Charlotte. " I 'm 
 so glad ! Come up here now, Marcia. Auntie 's 
 gone out, and we can rummage. Here 'a lots of 
 things ! " 
 
 And all her grief forgotten, they were pulling 
 brocade gowns and lace capes and velvet coats, 
 faded to a tarnished splendor, from their chests 
 and trying them on and parading the dusky garret 
 like old ghosts come again, when John ran up 
 and found them. 
 
 "I'll tell you what I'll do," said Charlotte. 
 " 1 11 go over in the high pasture before tea and 
 get some frogs' eggs for Eafe's aquarium. You 
 come, too, John."
 
 92 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 I can't," said John. " They sent me for the 
 doctor." 
 
 " Then you go right along ! " said Marcia. 
 
 " Well, I can go alone," said Charlotte. " And 
 perhaps I can scoop up a newt he '11 like the 
 little old man in the water." 
 
 " He 's got one," said Marcia. 
 
 "Then I'll get him a sod of violets for his 
 garden." 
 
 "But your aunt said you mustn't cross the 
 pasture again 
 
 "I don't care. Besides, she won't mind as 
 long as it 's for Eafe." 
 
 " She 'd call it in the interest of science." 
 
 "Oh, Marcia! How much you know! Do 
 you suppose I ever could know as much if I 
 went to school at St. Mark's?" 
 
 "Oh, you might," said Marcia, with a queer 
 look, " if you worked as hard as I do." 
 
 " I 'm so tired of saying my lessons to auntie ! 
 Those pillow-fights must be Oh, and do you 
 really " 
 
 " Oh, we really do ! " said Marcia. " And John 
 is going to Mr. Marquand's in a year or two "
 
 APKIL SHOWERS. 93 
 
 " I don't suppose auntie '11 ever let me " 
 
 " We '11 make her let you ! " cried John. 
 
 "John, if you were sent for the doctor, it's 
 because the doctor 's wanted," exclaimed Marcia. 
 " I shall have to go and see ! " And then they all 
 scampered downstairs and off in their different 
 directions. 
 
 It had been a bright April day with a south 
 wind, and many a flashing bluebird's wing. The 
 saxifrage was shivering in the cranny of every 
 rock, and the grass was as green as velvet, and 
 here and there a clump of violets had bloomed ; 
 the sky was full of little clouds blushing toward 
 sunset, and the birds were darting, and the frogs 
 were piping, and Charlotte danced along feeling 
 all April in her veins. 
 
 There was a pool where the cattle drank and 
 the swallows and blue dragon-flies dipped and 
 circled in the later summer-time, and Charlotte, 
 going her gay way to the further brook, forgot it 
 till she saw it, and then she stopped so short 
 that she stumbled, and, trying to recover herself, 
 fell head over heels into its stagnant, shallow 
 water.
 
 94 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 And when she had scrambled out of the mire 
 she found something ailed her ankle, it was 
 broken, she thought, or sprained, or strained ; 
 she could not say which, and it hurt dreadfully, 
 and she could not walk, and she did not see how 
 she was ever going to get home. " Oh ! " she 
 groaned, " why did I ever come ? Why did I 
 help pull that chair out? I wish there never 
 had been a chair in the world ! Oh ! " 
 
 All unconscious of Charlotte's absence, the 
 guests invited to the festival of muffins and plum 
 preserves had been received by Miss Risley her- 
 self, they imagining Charlotte was in bed for 
 misdemeanor, she wondering where on earth 
 Charlotte was, but understanding they were to 
 be taken care of while the doctor was attending 
 to Rafe, whose back was hurt more seriously 
 than had been supposed. The thought of Rafe 
 interfered with their enjoyment of the delicious 
 sugary tartness of their feast not a little, until 
 Miss Risley, who had kept going to window and 
 door, finally sent them home, and started out 
 with the servants to find her delinquent. 
 
 "I must have done something terrible,"
 
 APKIL SHOWERS. 95 
 
 groaned poor Miss Kisley, "that I should be 
 afflicted with this child! I never know what 
 it is to have one moment's peace!" 
 
 Meanwhile Charlotte was lying out in the 
 pasture, as wet as you please, and very angry and 
 discouraged ; for she had crept only a little way 
 before the pain in her ankle made everything 
 seem so black that she had to pause and stay 
 where she was. She hallooed her best, but no 
 one passed that way, and no one heard her. 
 
 She saw the color in the sunset sky, like a 
 vast crimson flower with a golden heart, fade 
 away till a great planet hung over a sea of amber 
 air, and then the twilight drew a veil across the 
 planet, and pale, sweet stars flickered out in 
 a multitude, and it darkened into deep night, 
 so deep and so far that it suddenly seemed 
 to Charlotte, as she stopped complaining long 
 enough to look up, that she almost saw into 
 heaven. A blue star, like an immense jewel, 
 was swinging up out of the northeast, and a 
 meteor slipped along and left a trail of light, 
 and the sense of her naughtiness gave these 
 great things a very depressing effect.
 
 96 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 It began to be quite cold; she was already 
 chill with her wetting. It looked to her as if 
 she were going to be left here all night. And 
 maybe she would die. She wondered why no 
 one missed her; why her aunt, or the Meyers, 
 or even the minister, was not looking for her; 
 if they did n't care enough about her to notice 
 she was gone. 
 
 Then she remembered that they were all hav- 
 ing the hot buttered muffins and plum preserves. 
 And very likely Marcia was telling that story of 
 the African lion and the polar bear, and it was 
 enough to make you die of laughing. As she 
 thought of the muffins, she felt extraordinarily 
 hungry ; as she thought of the story, she cried 
 a little. Then she worried along on her elbows, 
 and reached the stump where the cows, when 
 there were cows there, rubbed themselves, and 
 she pulled herself up, and stood on one leg, and 
 gingerly put her other foot on the ground, and 
 walked off as well as she ever did in her life. 
 
 She didn't know what to make of it it 
 looked like a miracle but she had an inner 
 consciousness that miracles were not likely to be
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 97 
 
 wrought for her. At any rate, she had no time 
 to think of it, out here all alone in the dark. 
 She gave a scream and ran like a deer, and never 
 stopped to wonder what had become of her lame 
 ankle. 
 
 "Oh, children," said Marcia, as they were 
 trooping home, "how good you were! It was 
 beautiful of you to behave so. Now, Miss Eisley 
 won't think it is we that are ruining Charlotte. 
 I will tell you this very moment the story of the 
 African lion and the polar bear. 
 
 " ' I may be draggled,' said the polar bear, ' but 
 I am naturally as white as the driven snow 
 about me.' 
 
 " ' And I,' said the African lion, ' am as yellow 
 as the sand of my deserts when the sun shines 
 on them.' 
 
 "'My very first food,' said the polar bear, 
 ' was ice-cream ' Goodness ! This is Char- 
 lotte's story ; she always rolls over at the funny 
 part. Where do you suppose she can be 
 gone ? " 
 
 And just then Charlotte appeared among them, 
 and they all had to go back and intercede for her 
 
 7
 
 98 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 with her aunt, who paid no attention to a word 
 they said, but shut the door in their faces, and 
 plunged Charlotte into a hot bath, and rubbed 
 her till she tingled, crying herself with perplexity 
 and anxiety, and saying she did n't know what 
 was to become of Charlotte, till Charlotte cried 
 with her. 
 
 " I think you must give me a whipping to-mor- 
 row," said Charlotte, solemnly. " If it will make 
 me better. But you know I only disobeyed I 
 was n't being wicked I was getting something 
 for a sick person Eafe is a little sick " 
 
 " A little sick ! " cried her aunt. " It is ten to 
 one he will never be any better. You have 
 broken his back among you ! " 
 
 And then Charlotte howled. " Oh, it won't do 
 any good to whip me ! " she sobbed. " You will 
 have to send me to prison ! I ought to go to the 
 House of Correction ! " 
 
 "I will make this the house of correction!" 
 said Miss Risley. 
 
 "Why don't you send me to school?" asked 
 Charlotte, stopping her sobs suddenly. " Mar- 
 cia is going back day after to-morrow. Oh, I
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 99 
 
 want to go where I sha'n't see Eafe and think of 
 it every day ! " 
 
 "Not till I can't govern you myself," said 
 Miss Eisley. 
 
 In the middle of the night a little barefooted 
 white figure beside her bed waked Miss Eisley. 
 " Oh, do you really think Eafe is going to die ? " 
 she whispered. 
 
 "No, I don't!" snapped Miss Eisley. "You 
 go right back to bed. Perhaps he '11 be a hunch- 
 back, unless the doctor has some way to prevent 
 it. You see what comes " 
 
 But Charlotte had rushed back in a tempest of 
 cries and sobs, and from time to time in the 
 night Miss Eisley heard her, till she could bear 
 it no longer, and she got up and took her into 
 her own bed, and left her there asleep at last, 
 and darkened the room and stole away at sunrise. 
 
 But early in the forenoon Charlotte was over 
 at the Meyers', where the frightened children 
 were now very quiet and awestruck, and was up 
 in Eafe's room. 
 
 " I 'm going to have a whipping when I go 
 back," she said. "But I wanted to run over first
 
 100 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 and tell you that if it was I that hurt you, I will 
 spend all my life waiting on you ! " 
 
 " Charlotte, there is n't any straw in your sort 
 of angel, whatever Marcia's is ! " whispered Raf e. 
 Presently, between little gasps, he added, "And 
 
 I guess it is n't as bad as you think. I 
 shall be abed a good while, the doctor says 
 
 and I always did like to lie abed." 
 
 But Charlotte knew he was in pain, and she 
 went downstairs with her face all blubbered 
 with tears again, and threw herself into Marcia's 
 arms with inconsolable outcry. " I don't know 
 how I can bear it," she sobbed. 
 
 "That child will have to be sent away to 
 school," said Mr. Meyer, "and have her mind 
 diverted, or she'll be sick." And he went on 
 pacing up and down. 
 
 "Miss Eisley thinks that would be shirking 
 her duty," said Marcia, quite worn out herself 
 with all the sorrow and excitement. "As if 
 Miss Marks could n't do it twice as well ! 
 Besides, Charlotte, you know perfectly it was I 
 and not you who did it." 
 
 " Oh, no, I don't know. And it does n't make
 
 APRIL SHOWERS. 101 
 
 it any better. It 's done. And auntie 's going to 
 have Dr. Grump and the minister to tea to-night, 
 to see what ought to be done with me. And I 
 wish it was my back! And I don't care what 
 they do!" 
 
 But John had pricked up his ears at her 
 words. And it was in consequence that, an 
 hour or two afterwards, he might have been 
 seen sitting on the step of Miss Eisley's side 
 piazza with Charlotte, every now and then going 
 into the dining-room, apparently on a tour of 
 observation. 
 
 " I say it 's just stretched on a frame and 
 held by nails," said he. "It's easy enough to 
 pull 'em out, and we'll lift it down, it's light, 
 and put it in the passage; no one comes out 
 here yet. It's luck being across that recess. 
 There 's the red satin quilt we can hang over the 
 corner, you know. And there 's the very things 
 they wear, upstairs in the garret now. And 
 we '11 hear every word the doctor and the minis- 
 ter say " 
 
 "We'll do it!" said Charlotte. "It'll be 
 better fun than tableaux ! " brightening as if
 
 102 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 the sun had come out. And they went in and 
 stood like entranced creatures before the great 
 life-sized copy of Charlotte's great-great-grand- 
 mother and her brother, painted when they were 
 children, the boy carrying a riding-whip and the 
 girl holding an orange. 
 
 The tea-table was arrayed that afternoon in 
 Miss Kisley's best damask and old blue, and 
 Peggy came in to light the candles in the side 
 candlesticks on the table, the roof of the piazza 
 making the room shadowy. She felt as if there 
 were something wrong about the room ; she 
 couldn't tell what it was; and just then the 
 knocker fell, and Miss Eisley was receiving the 
 guests in her high and mightiest state, and 
 presently, after brief blessing, the ceremonies 
 were opened with the grape-fruit half filled with 
 sugar and sherry, the aroma having made two 
 unbidden little mouths water for some time and 
 still making them water. 
 
 "I have asked you here and left word when 
 Charlotte comes in for she and John Meyer 
 are off on some raid that she shall go to bed 
 supperless "
 
 APKIL SHOWERS. 103 
 
 " Oh ! " came a groan, as if from a mouse in the 
 wainscot. 
 
 " So that I might consult you about her," said 
 Miss Eisley. "I am sure," pride at the fore 
 again, " there is no real harm in the child. But 
 she overflows with spirits, and and and I 
 can't govern her. She is oh, she is her father 
 all over. And you knew dear Charles " and 
 here Miss Eisley fumbled for her handkerchief. 
 
 " It 's tiring my hand dreadfully to hold this 
 orange up so," the child in the picture was mur- 
 muring with lips that did not dare to move. 
 " And I want to sneeze. I 've caught cold. And 
 I can't look at nothing one moment longer." 
 
 "You keep still or I'll make you!" growled 
 another whisper. 
 
 What made Miss Risley start so as she wiped 
 her eyes, wandering from the bright table to the 
 shadowy walls ? Were her troubles getting too 
 much for her and her mind failing ? Had that 
 dim portrait of her great-grandmother when a 
 child winked at her? 
 
 " My dear Miss Kisley," the minister was say- 
 ing, " Charlotte is a dear child." It was all the 
 
 D"
 
 104 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 little boy in the picture could do not to kick 
 the little girl in the picture. "But she needs 
 brothers and sisters " 
 
 " As if I had n't you and the rest ! " the whis- 
 per came again. 
 
 " She needs a care that I don't know how to 
 give her ! " cried Miss Kisley. 
 
 " Send her to school," mumbled Dr. Grump, 
 his mouth full of the broiled oysters. " Excel- 
 lent school Meyer's oldest girl Waterways 
 dear but cheap at any price save your life 
 and your reason make a woman of her " 
 
 " Kerchew ! " came a sneeze from the great- 
 grandmother in the picture, and the next instant 
 two little wretches were racing out of the room 
 and the picture frame was empty ! 
 
 " Oh, my Copley ! " shrieked Miss Kisley. 
 " Charlotte ! Charlotte, do you hear me ? Come 
 here, miss, this very minute ! " 
 
 And well, it was a very bad quarter of an 
 hour that followed. But that was when it was 
 arranged that Charlotte should go to school with 
 Marcia on Saturday morning.
 
 BAFE.
 
 RAFE. 
 
 \ 17 HEN Eafe at last fell asleep, after the 
 * * doctors were through with him and had 
 given him a composing draught, he had a singu- 
 lar dream. He had always the hearing of Fine 
 Ears, and he had heard the doctors in the next 
 room saying the injury to his back was such 
 that it was doubtful if he ever walked again. 
 For a moment a wave of anger had swept over 
 him, a fierce surge of rage. Against whom ? 
 against what? He knew not. His heart sank 
 with the uselessness of his anger. It was idle 
 to feel any indignation with the children who 
 had pulled the chair out and let him fall 
 Marcia and Charlotte and John and Helen and 
 the rest ; he was one of them and as much in 
 the sport as they had been. But at any rate 
 there were the doctors; their shoulders were
 
 108 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 broad enough to bear his wrath. Much they 
 knew ! Walk again ? Of course he should walk 
 again ! He would walk again just to defy them ! 
 He heard the children crying in the room above ; 
 he looked up and saw his mother's eyes brim- 
 ming like two violets full of dew ; something 
 made his heart stand still for half a beat. Was 
 it really so serious, after all ? He would not give 
 up till his father gave up. Was that his father ? 
 He saw him in the mantel mirror, face down 
 on the lounge in the other room, whose door 
 had sprung ajar ; he heard him yes, he heard 
 him groan. It was a dreadful sound; he felt 
 himself trembling; his blood seemed to spin in 
 a hot torrent. He would let them see whether 
 he would walk or not ! And then the beads 
 started out on his forehead, on his breast all 
 over him ; he had called on every power he had 
 and he had not moved a line. And with that, 
 the fright, the horror, the effort, the composing 
 draught all worked together, and he was sink- 
 ing, sinking, sinking, and slowly drowned in 
 sleep. 
 
 As he slept, and in his dream, the day was
 
 KAFE. 109 
 
 dying and he was far from home ; he could see 
 the last rays of the sun sparkling in the win- 
 dows of the house up there or was it the 
 pillared porch of some building in the skies ? 
 Whatever it was, between him and its shining 
 stairs stretched a weary space, long wastes of 
 furze, pitfalls of bog, fields of stubble a rough 
 and rocky country where the dark gathered. A 
 storm was coming up he could not tell if it 
 were the wind or some wild beast that howled. 
 And there beyond, in the calm, upper light of 
 the hillside, lay the dear home, where the sun, 
 bursting from the low cloud, glittered on the 
 panes. How could he ever reach it ? How was 
 he to cross that interminable country, with its 
 flints, its stubble, its miry spots, its horrid shad- 
 ows ? His heart failed him, and he was cold 
 with the chill of death. And suddenly a strange 
 buoyancy seemed to possess him ; he looked up 
 over his shoulder, and a great form towered 
 there, a great, beautiful shape clad in white, 
 with long, rosy wings that shed a glow about 
 them. 
 
 " Oh, you are going to carry me ! " cried Kafe.
 
 110 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 " No," said the angel, " you are going to walk. 
 I am going to walk with you." 
 
 " What is your name ? " said Eafe, looking up 
 again wonderingly. 
 
 " I am called the Love of God," said the angel ; 
 and he put his strong, warm hand under Rafe's 
 arm, and they began to move. And half the 
 weary length of the long way was behind them ; 
 and at the roughest places that strong, warm 
 hand seemed to lift Eafe so that his feet skimmed 
 over the top of the flints and the prickly stub- 
 ble and never felt them. And they left storm 
 and cloud far aside, and the miry spots were but 
 pools reflecting heaven, in one of them he saw 
 a star when he could see no star in the sky. 
 And he was up on the clear, high level, twilight 
 and blue darkness wrapping the country he had 
 crossed, the steps of home shining in the yet 
 higher light, when the pleasant wind gave a 
 great sob and he woke to hear Bridget cry, " Oh, 
 for the love of God, docthor dear, you do be 
 hurting the b'y ! " 
 
 He had probably dreamed all this while 
 Bridget was exclaiming and the doctor was lift-
 
 EAFE. HI 
 
 ing him. He was not in any pain, but he was 
 quite angry with Bridget for waking him. Yet 
 it was a delightful dream that Bridget had given 
 him, an immensely vivid dream to him; it all 
 swept over him again. Then he looked up at 
 her and smiled. And Bridget threw her apron 
 over her head, crying, " Oh the poor craythur ! " 
 and running from the room. 
 
 There had been an injury to the spinal cord, 
 occasioning a temporary paralysis, and he could 
 not speak. But he had no desire to speak. He 
 closed his eyes and thought over his pleasant 
 dream; its meaning flashed through his brain 
 like a light. He was drowsing off again, and 
 seemed to hear the angel say : " Any love helps, 
 you know. But the Love of God helps and lifts, 
 too." 
 
 He was saying it to himself as he woke again 
 and saw his mother sitting by the bedside cry- 
 ing. That was a love that hurt, he thought. 
 He did not like to see her crying; it declared 
 that something dreadful was the matter with 
 him. His poor little ailing mother, who had 
 such trouble with her strong, unruly brood,
 
 112 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 he was sorry to have her feel so distressed. She 
 held his limp hand in hers. He tried to tell her 
 not to worry, to say he was all right. His eyes 
 darkened with horror when he found that even 
 a sound was impossible. He was faint and 
 everything was growing black. But there was 
 his mother still crying, he must reassure her, 
 at any rate. The will to do it seemed to tingle 
 through him as if he had caught hold of a huge 
 magnet, and suddenly his mother exclaimed, " Oh, 
 he understands ! He is conscious ! He has 
 pressed my hand ! " 
 
 " He will come round then," said the doctor. 
 " The vitality of youth is an enormous element. 
 It has given new life to the nerve force." 
 
 " It was love that gave it," thought Eafe, and 
 he pressed his mother's hand again. 
 
 " Oh, my dear boy ! " she cried, wiping his fore- 
 head and her own eyes. " My darling one ! It 
 is too great an effort ! " 
 
 "It has saved him," the doctor said. "He 
 might have sunk away into nothingness but for 
 that effort." 
 
 " But for that love," thought Rafe. " That was
 
 RAFE. 113 
 
 the love that helps," he thought, as he fell off to 
 sleep again. 
 
 "And the Love of God helps and lifts, too," 
 said the angel in his thoughts. 
 
 It was some time after this, when he could 
 both speak and move his arms, that Miss Persis, 
 to whom he had told his dream, which was still 
 such a real thing to him, and who often left the 
 children to their own devices that she might 
 come and relieve his mother, was sitting beside 
 his bed and reading. She read in a low and lull- 
 ing tone the Twenty-third Psalm. " He leadeth 
 me beside the still waters," she said. 
 
 "Oh, they are very still waters!" exclaimed 
 Rafe, with a weary bitterness. 
 
 " I suppose you mean," said Miss Persis, " that 
 this pain and paralysis seem cruel." 
 
 " Of course I do ! " he cried. 
 
 " Don't you think, Rafe dear," said poor Miss 
 Persis, " that you are very young to to pass 
 sentence on God ? " She hesitated, thinking he 
 might not understand her, but went on, remem- 
 bering how preternaturally illness sometimes 
 sharpens the understanding, as a pear ripens first
 
 114 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 round the sting of the wasp. " Don't you think 
 that you are that I am too small and dull 
 to attempt to solve the riddle of the universe ? 
 The best minds have failed to solve that riddle, 
 to discover the mystery of pain. Do you sup- 
 pose you can ? " 
 
 " I can feel it," said Eafe, grimly. 
 
 " I don't suppose," she said, " that you ever, on 
 a spring morning, when you saw the sky burn- 
 ing velvet-blue behind the rosy apple blossoms, 
 the air clear as crystal and overflowing with 
 sunshine, were filled with a sense of the beauty 
 of the world, every one of your nerves thrilling 
 with the joy of it?" 
 
 " I don't know," said Eafe. 
 
 " Or, on a summer evening, when all was ten- 
 der purple and stars looked down from far above 
 and up from far beneath, and you heard bells 
 ringing over the water, and the breath of a flower 
 floated by like a waft of the air of another 
 world ? ". 
 
 "I don't know," said Eafe, again. "No, I 
 guess not. I did n't want to go to bed, though. 
 Yes, I suppose so."
 
 KAFE. 115 
 
 "And I have been, too. And I felt as if it 
 were God's very word spoken to me, His own 
 voice and message. And my heart sprang to 
 hear it, and I answered Him with my joy." 
 
 " Well, may be," said Eafe, rather indifferently. 
 
 " And do you suppose it may not be that 
 when some pain as sharp, some suffering as 
 strong in its way as the joy was in that way, 
 comes to us, and again makes every nerve thrill 
 and answer, it is n't equally a message from 
 God, that He is not saying that word also 
 to us ? " 
 
 "Why?" demanded Eafe. "I hadn't done 
 anything ! Oh, I never did anything very, very 
 wrong, you know would you fix the pillows, 
 Miss Persis ? They are so hot 1 I am so tired ! 
 except to make John mind, and he ought to 
 mind." 
 
 " ' Why ? ' That is the question the thinkers 
 of all time have asked," Miss Persis said, as she 
 made him easier. " And no one knows the an- 
 swer. We only know there must be an answer, 
 because God is good." 
 
 "How do you know that?" asked Eafe, his
 
 116 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 big eyes burning with the pain just then. " If 
 He made pain, was that good?" 
 
 " I suppose the dragon-fly, bursting his sheath, 
 suffers pain. But what wings he gets by means 
 of it to fly through all heaven ! " 
 
 "But why couldn't it have been made so there 
 would n't have been the pain ? " 
 
 "There it is. And we don't know. We do 
 know that suffering, rightly taken, strengthens 
 the wings of the soul and gives them great flight 
 heavenward. And it gives insight, too. You 
 understand what I say to you now, for instance, 
 but six months ago I should not have thought 
 of talking this way." 
 
 " Yes," said Rafe, " I have grown so old. I 
 don't have anything to do but to think now and 
 to ache. I'd like to be the way I was six 
 months ago, though ! I 'm dead tired of wrest- 
 ling with this pain, Miss Persis." 
 
 Miss Persis seldom pitied Rafe in words, fear- 
 ing her pity might only weaken him. "The 
 young Greeks that you are so fond of reading 
 about," she said, "developed their limbs and 
 muscles with constant struggle and wrestle.
 
 RAFE. 117 
 
 And it really made them resemble the ideal they 
 had of their own gods. Perhaps we grow to 
 resemble our loftier ideal only by struggle and 
 wrestle of the soul, and suffering is the only 
 thing we have to wrestle with. It is like the 
 angel of the Lord that came for the patriarch to 
 wrestle with in the night, you remember. We 
 can't tell what great, fine thing this wrestling 
 may make us. ' For now are we the sons of God, 
 and it doth not yet appear what we shall be,' " 
 said Miss Persis. "Anyway, pain must be a 
 sort of consecration, Rafe. It brings us nearer 
 to God." 
 
 " It does n't me," said Eafe. 
 
 "But it will. Suffering is surely the secret 
 place of God, for we cannot penetrate its reason, 
 and, you know, ' He that dwelleth in the secret 
 place of the Most High shall abide under the 
 shadow of the Almighty.' If God gives pain, 
 He gives it as He does other blessings 
 
 " Other blessings ! " 
 
 " He gives it with His own hand. You take 
 it straight from Him. And how close it brings 
 you "
 
 118 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 "I don't want to be close to any one who 
 gives me such aching. Oh, Miss Persis, let me 
 hold your hand ! " 
 
 "Don't you remember what the prophet 
 thought God said to him ? ' When thou passest 
 through the waters, I will be with thee ; and 
 through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee : 
 when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt 
 not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle 
 upon thee. . . . Fear not ; for I am with thee.' 
 That is, you know, if you want Him, if you call." 
 
 " Oh, I don't care ! I don't care for anything, 
 if I am never to go out again or run or grow. 
 It 's a little easier now. But I heard the doctors 
 say " 
 
 " If any one took you, Eafe, into a wonderful 
 place, all shining and clear, with steps leading 
 up into the very courts of heaven, only you were 
 blind and could not see a thing of the glory and 
 loveliness, and a hand came and tore away the 
 film over your eyes, even if it hurt, would you 
 not love the hand ? Some time, because of this 
 pain and suffering, your larger vision will see 
 into a world of which you do not dream to-day.
 
 RAFE. 
 
 And I suppose there must be an especial purpose 
 in opening your eyes to it. Now I think it is 
 time for nourishment " 
 
 " It 's always time for something hateful," said 
 Eafe. 
 
 And while Miss Persis sat and softly sang, 
 Eafe shut his eyes and tried to sleep and could 
 not and had to think. And what he thought 
 was that there was no power on earth to help 
 him, and where could he look for help? Too 
 young, too weak, too ignorant to reach it, in the 
 long midnights when sleep failed him, in the 
 long hours before the gray of dawn, it must have 
 been that the Lord's protection came to the child, 
 called him by name, and wrapped him round. 
 
 It was several weeks later that Miss Persis 
 had been reading in Kevelation a chapter that 
 always took Eafe's fancy with the story of the 
 city of jewels descending out of heaven from 
 God. " ' Neither shall there be any pain there,' " 
 she repeated, after she had finished it. The 
 night was warm, and the window was opened 
 wide, and the curtains drawn apart, and Eafe, 
 among his pillows, could see the moon flooding
 
 120 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 all the sapphire hollow of the sky with light. 
 There had been a storm in the distance, and 
 some enormous snowy clouds were piled in lofty 
 masses above a base of -low, purple thunder- 
 clouds where the silent lightnings still shot to 
 and fro, and every few moments the reflection of 
 the lightnings filled the high, snowy masses with 
 a splendor of quivering, wavering, evanescent 
 flame, till they seemed like towers of fire-opal 
 itself. 
 
 "You can almost see it now," said Eafe, 
 "that city." 
 
 " What a beautiful world it is ! " said Miss 
 Persis, as she built up his pillows again. " What 
 a beautiful being God must be to have dreamed 
 of such beauty and to have made it if it is not, 
 indeed, a part of Him." 
 
 " Yes," said Rafe. 
 
 " See the moon how she rides up in majesty." 
 
 " She is like a queen going to her palace, 
 that great tower there in the clouds," said Kafe. 
 
 " Yes. We are so apt to personify the wonder- 
 ful things of nature. Are you quite comfortable 
 now ? But she is not a queen ; she is not mov-
 
 RAPE. 121 
 
 ing consciously, nor of herself. It is the force of 
 God that moves her, as it is that bursts the 
 flower from the bud, that brings the fragrance of 
 the honeysuckle to you on the breath of the 
 night." 
 
 " And that makes me see the beauty of it all," 
 said Eafe. 
 
 " If beauty is a part of God," Miss Persis said, 
 after they had looked out in silence a little while, 
 " how freely He is giving Himself to us all the 
 time ! How He must love us ! For you see 
 beauty is everywhere, in the crystal of the grain 
 of sand as much as in the high arch of heaven. 
 How can one see the summer night that pale, 
 far planet there, like an outpost of universes yet 
 beyond and not believe in God and not love 
 Him ? " 
 
 " I do believe in Him, Miss Persis," said Eafe. 
 " I do love Him." 
 
 Sitting in the window-seat, Miss Persis began 
 softly to sing the Hundredth Psalm to a sweet 
 old chant, the moonlight falling over her. Rafe 
 had heard it many times, but it seemed to him 
 that night, hearing it, as if he had gone a little
 
 122 HESTEK STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 way behind the words and the music into the 
 heart of things. 
 
 "One almost thinks," said Miss Persis, pres- 
 ently, " that what the apostle said of faith, that 
 it is the evidence of things not seen, is hardly 
 the whole of truth on such a night as this." 
 
 " When we feel as if we could see so far into 
 heaven," said Eafe. 
 
 " But what a mighty thing faith is," she went 
 on, as if thinking aloud. " I wonder a boy needs 
 anything more heroic to fire his fancy to great 
 deeds than the tremendous words about those 
 ' who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought 
 righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the 
 mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, 
 escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness 
 were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned 
 to flight the armies of the aliens.' " 
 
 " Oh ! " said Eafe, " I shall never do anything 
 like that ! I shall only be lying here." 
 
 " That is not so sure," said Miss Persis. " But 
 if you do there will be some reason for it. I 
 was reading the other day what Fra Ugo Bassi 
 said in the hospital where the people, lying in
 
 RAFE. 123 
 
 their beds in five converging chambers, heard 
 him. Although I do not believe all as he did, 
 yet I find the thought great and beautiful, and so 
 will you. Suffering is the cup that we all pray 
 may pass from us ; and Fra Ugo Bassi says, 
 
 'But if Himself He come to thee, and stand 
 Beside thee, gazing down on thee with eyes 
 That smile, and suffer that will smite thy heart 
 With their own pity to a passionate peace 
 And reach to thee Himself the Holy Cup 
 (With all its wreathen stems of passion-flowers 
 And quivering sparkles of the ruby stars), 
 Pallid and royal, saying, " Drink with Me," 
 Wilt thou refuse ? Nay, not for Paradise ! 
 The pale brow will compel thee, the pure hands 
 Will minister unto thee ; thou shalt take 
 Of that communion through the solemn depths 
 Of the dark waters of thine agony 
 With heart that praises Him, that yearns to Him 
 The closer through that hour. Hold fast His hand 
 Though the nails pierce thine, too ! Take only care 
 Lest one drop of the sacramental wine 
 Be spilled, of that which ever shall unite 
 Thee, soul and body, to thy living Lord ! 
 Therefore gird up thyself, and come to stand 
 Unflinching under the unfaltering hand 
 That waits to prove thee to the uttermost. 
 It were not hard to suffer by His hand 
 If thou couldst see His face but in the dark! 
 That is the one last trial : be it so.' "
 
 124 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " In the dark," said Eafe ; " that is what faith 
 is for, I suppose ; that is where the angel in my 
 dream helps, too." 
 
 " For to believe in God is to love Him ; and 
 love is that strong angel," said Miss Persis. 
 
 " But always to be lying here is so hard, Miss 
 Persis!" 
 
 " Yet so much easier for the company of that 
 great angel with the rosy wings." 
 
 " And never to do anything for Him ! " 
 
 "How can you tell?" coming back from the 
 window where she had lingered and bringing him 
 a rose with the dew on it. " Sometimes I think 
 what a wonder may be wrought," she said, " by 
 such long preparation and the sanctification of 
 pain. When I look forward I see a man fitted 
 by it for work among the toiling millions in the 
 far east, in the islands of the sea, with the cow- 
 boys of the plains, in the dark quarters of the 
 city, for God's work anywhere, everywhere ! I 
 hear his voice like a silver trumpet telling the 
 message suffering has brought him, the cheer the 
 love of God has taught him " 
 
 "Oh, Miss Persis!"
 
 EAFE. 125 
 
 "But, even if that never comes, it may be 
 something greater and better yet just to lie and 
 bear God's will to lie in the daily and hourly 
 touch of His hand doing something for Him 
 so every suffering moment. It must be a vast 
 and wonderful work that needs such a lifetime 
 for making ready, as if some knight forged his 
 own armor piece by piece and kept his vigil, 
 too." 
 
 " Oh, Miss Persis, you put the heart in one so ! " 
 
 " No, not I, but that strong angel, the Love of 
 God, whose touch makes suffering sweet, even if 
 it does not make its reason plain. Perhaps only 
 when I meet you yourself a great, swift seraph 
 sweeping through space on your divine errand 
 shall I know what all this meant, this weary 
 time of pain and suffering in the dark." 
 
 " It is n't always in the dark," said Rafe.
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE.
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE. 
 
 TT hung in the garret, on one of the big nails 
 * there, all around it the usual lumber of 
 an old house, trunks, broken chairs, a super- 
 annuated chest of drawers, a spinning-wheel, 
 cobwebs. 
 
 Years and years ago a tramp had been taken 
 in at the door in a fainting condition. He lay 
 all day in stupor on the settee where they had 
 placed him ; and, moved with pity, and in some 
 slight consternation as to what was to become 
 of him, and of themselves too, if this state con- 
 tinued, the household did what they could for 
 him. Just before dark he began to murmur a 
 broken jargon of English and foreign tongues, and 
 took his little black fiddle from his side, and gave 
 it to Mr. Martin with as impressive an air as if 
 he bestowed a kingdom, the children looking on, 
 
 9
 
 wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Then he died, 
 and was buried, and nobody ever knew anything 
 further about him; and the children twanged 
 the fiddle awhile, and at last it was hung up 
 in the garret, and there had been the end of it. 
 
 The little fiddle hung forgotten on its nail ; 
 but the children grew in strength and beauty 
 every day, and made the house nearly as lively 
 as the ark must have been in all the forty days 
 before it rested on Ararat. Sometimes the little 
 fiddle vibrated to their laughter, and gave it a 
 faint echo from its hollow breast, but that was 
 all the share it had in it. 
 
 What a cheerful group they were, Belle and 
 Jessie and Fred and Frank, and the twins always 
 rolling over each other, and chuckling as if that 
 were the freshest joke in the world. They were 
 just as cheerful when a dozen years had passed, 
 and the children were becoming men and 
 women, childish boisterousness was turning into 
 high-bred gayety, and the special talent was 
 developing that belonged to each of them. 
 
 But the general talent of that family was for 
 charity. They had a genius for it, a genius, as
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE. 131 
 
 Mrs. Martin's neighbors used to say, for turning 
 themselves out of the house in order to let some- 
 body else in : a little house, but the largest you 
 ever knew, for it held the most, hospitable to 
 rich and poor, the wayfarer never leaving it un- 
 refreshed, the sufferer uncomforted. 
 
 Yet the means to do so much were but limited. 
 Mr. Martin had but a small income ; Mrs. Martin 
 found it necessary to count every penny twice 
 over, to turn and piece and remake, and never 
 to waste a crumb. But, when that was all done, 
 there was always something left for the widow 
 and fatherless ; and the moment there was any- 
 thing to do, either for North Street or the Five 
 Points or Borrioboola, Mrs. Martin's door was 
 the one first rapped at. And what a vivid inter- 
 est it was that was taken throughout that house 
 in every case that came up, from the time the 
 little bright heads could cluster together, the 
 little fingers hold a needle, the little legs run 
 an errand ! You could never see a prettier sight 
 than those bright heads, those glowing faces, 
 those pitying eyes. "My bunch of blossoms," 
 Mr. Martin used to call them, and say they gave
 
 132 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 their honey to every bee that vagabondized about 
 them. And by and by, when Belle was eighteen, 
 and Jessie just turning sixteen, and the rest 
 coming on, this same sympathy with all suffer- 
 ing was as active as of old ; and Jessie's lovely 
 face seemed every day to grow lovelier with the 
 melting tenderness she felt to every one that 
 needed gentle word or deed ; and when she sang 
 her songs in the evening, the trait seemed some- 
 how to have strained itself through the rich 
 sweet tones of her voice, and to make the hearer's 
 heart respond to its touch and always fill his 
 eyes with tears. 
 
 " Our Jessie," the father used to say, " ought 
 to have different instruction with that voice. If 
 you hadn't been such a Sandemanian, wife, all 
 your life, we should have laid by enough to send 
 her to Italy and have her voice cultivated as it 
 should be." 
 
 " Well, dear, would you throw away all your 
 pleasant memories of pain relieved and all the 
 benefit it has wrought the children's characters, 
 and take it out in music ? " his wife would ask. 
 " I should like to have Jessie's voice attended
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE. 133 
 
 to ; but, bless you, it might do her more harm 
 than good." 
 
 "Harm ! " said Belle once, as they talked it over. 
 
 " Yes, dear ; we all have our vanities, and to 
 nurse one's pride " 
 
 " Oh, mamma, but to stand up and lift a thou- 
 sand people on your voice as if it were wings for 
 them ! Think of that, of the delight she 
 could give so many, and then of the fortune 
 she could make and the things she could do ! 
 We would have that children's hospital, and " 
 
 " Very true," sighed Mrs. Martin. 
 
 " Very true," sighed her husband. " It would 
 take fifteen hundred dollars to send Jessie to 
 Italy. She would be too old to have it do her 
 voice any good by the time I could get so much 
 together." And just there came in the minis- 
 ter's wife to see about the concert she was get- 
 ting up for the benefit of the poor De Sarcie 
 children, whose parents lately organist and 
 soprano in the little church were lost in the 
 " Destroyer " on their way to Europe for some pur- 
 pose, at which concert Jessie was to sing a song, 
 if she could find the courage.
 
 134 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " You need n't be afraid, Jessie," said the minis- 
 ter's good wife ; " there 's nobody in the audience 
 knows a note more music than you do." 
 
 " Oh, but lie will, the violinist, you know ; 
 and Madame Eeuter, if she comes " 
 
 " She 's coining. We 're to pay expenses. And 
 she represented the case to Signor Pazzani, and 
 told him they were the children of musicians, 
 and he volunteered. It was too good of him ! 
 They're to stay with me." 
 
 " Oh, not both of them, Mrs. King ; one 's 
 enough, with all your care. Send one here," said 
 Mrs. Martin. 
 
 " Well, I should be glad to, really. I '11 send 
 you the signor. Now, Jessie, sing ' The harp 
 that once through Tara's halls,' just as if you 
 were on the platform, and we were all down on 
 the seats before you." 
 
 And so Jessie sang it, and her voice swelled 
 out as if a young sibyl sang, with the words, 
 
 11 Thus Freedom now so seldom wakes 
 
 The only throb she gives 
 Is when some heart indignant breaks, 
 To show that still she lives." 
 
 And the minister's wife cried and went home.
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE. 135 
 
 One afternoon next week Madame Reuter came 
 down, and Mrs. King brought the Signer Pazzani 
 into the Martins' parlor, and left him. 
 
 It was not much preparation the Martins had 
 been able to make for their distinguished guest ; 
 they could only fill his room full to overflowing 
 with Belle's flowers, that grew and blossomed in 
 every window the winter long. As for their 
 table, it was always a miracle of snow and silver 
 and parsley-trimmed dishes, and it was impos- 
 sible for them to make much difference. They 
 found, though, that it was of no consequence, for 
 the signor was indifferent to everything but 
 bread and fruit and salad, and presently looked 
 about him for the young lady who was to sing. 
 " You are she," he said presently to Jessie, and 
 began talking with her about her music while he 
 crumbled his bread. But it was not till some 
 hours after they left the table that he came 
 down from his room and demanded to hear what 
 she could do. 
 
 Poor Jessie had no more idea of hesitating or 
 refusing than if an angel of annunciation had 
 appeared and bidden her. She went instantly
 
 136 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 to the piano, though Belle ran before her to play 
 the accompaniment. Belle had to play the pre- 
 lude twice over, though, before Jessie could com- 
 mand her voice; and in the first measures it 
 trembled so that she was afraid she would have 
 to stop, and she was pale as death. "Courage, 
 courage, my child," cried the signer, and she took 
 a little and went on. And soon she forgot the 
 signor and her fright, and was singing as freely 
 as a bird in the wildwood. " It is grand ! it is 
 delicious ! " cried the signor, in his own tongue, 
 which Jessie and Belle understood tolerably. 
 "It is a voice in a thousand. In a thousand ? 
 A voice in millions ! It is the nightingale's ! 
 and it must have care, study, training 
 Italy." 
 
 Jessie shook her head, and felt very much like 
 crying. She knew if she ever showed the least 
 desire for Italy, her father would cramp himself, 
 her mother forego her comforts, the children 
 deny themselves everything; they would sell 
 the piano, move into a meaner house, live on 
 little, give nothing away. She had never inti- 
 mated that she thought the thing worth while.
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE. 137 
 
 Now she shook her head again and ventured to 
 say in such Italian as she had : " It is impossible. 
 Please don't speak of it; it would only make 
 grief here. But thank you for the kind words." 
 
 And then the signer gazed hard at the lovely 
 face with its Madonna-like oval, and its great 
 soft dark eyes, and said : " Nothing is impossible. 
 Now I must seek my violin. It was to come by 
 express, but has not, the good house-mother 
 says." 
 
 No ; it had not come, and, what was more, it 
 never would come in its old shape. The ex- 
 press had met with an accident, and all its con- 
 tents had been shattered. The violin that the 
 Queen of Holland had given Signer Pazzani, that 
 Jacques Stainer had made himself in the Tyrol 
 two hundred years ago and more, was nothing 
 but a handful of chips. 
 
 It would have been ludicrous, if it had not 
 been in reality harrowing, to see the signer's 
 grief and rage when he heard of the destruction 
 of his darling, and had the broken bits put into 
 his hand. He remembered nothing more about 
 Jessie's voice, about the evening concert; he sat
 
 138 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 down among the fragments, like Marius in the 
 ruins of Carthage, and bewailed himself. 
 
 It was an intensely cold and still winter's day; 
 there was not a sound to be heard in the village, 
 save now and then a distant sleigh-bell, the 
 dropping of some huge icicle, or the loud report 
 of some nail as it sprung with the frost in the 
 rafters. As the sign or sat there now with the 
 broken volute of his violin in his left hand, and 
 the other hand wound in his hair distractedly, 
 one of these nails went off, as you might say, 
 with more of an explosion than usual upon the 
 frosty silence of the afternoon, followed by a 
 clear resonant note that for half a moment 
 seemed to fill the house with a silvery vibration. 
 They all heard it, and looked up bewildered ; and 
 suddenly Jessie, with a joyous cry, sprang to her 
 feet and darted from the room. The garret door 
 had been left open by somebody, she found. In 
 a moment she was back, and had placed in the 
 hands of the signer, whose mood of frenzy had 
 been succeeded by one of silent desperation, the 
 little black fiddle. 
 
 "It fell from its nail," she was saying. "It
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE. 139 
 
 was that we heard. It wanted to come and com- 
 fort you, you see. Is it good for anything ? Can 
 you mend your own with it ? It is so old ! " 
 
 " Why do you bring me this, my child ? " he 
 asked sadly, but took it, and ran his eye over it. 
 Something seemed to strike him as he did so. 
 He bent his head quickly, lifted the violin to his 
 ear, and tapped it and listened, ran his finger 
 down its lines, took out his handkerchief and 
 dusted it minutely. His hands began to shake. 
 He was holding his breath. He was comparing 
 the measurements of the little black fiddle with 
 certain figures in a memorandum-book drawn 
 from his pocket. He peered into its every 
 dimension in a sort of mad haste. He took a 
 magnifier, and then with a bit of chamois leather 
 began rubbing the end of the little black fiddle 
 as if he were polishing a jewel. All at once he 
 cried out, 
 
 "Aha! Behold it! It is here! Eead it, my 
 children, read! ' Sotto la disciplines d? A. Stra- 
 divarius, Cremona. I H S.' It is his, the Giu- 
 seppe del Jesu's, when the great Antoine was his 
 master. That is his seal, that ' I H S.' Oh, the
 
 140 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 rogue ! But he knew music ! And Antoine 
 Stradivarius has had it in his hands ; has looked 
 at its sides, its table, its ouies, its lustrous varnish ; 
 has drawn the how across it; has said it was 
 good ! Quick ! where are my strings ? We will 
 see ; we will see. There is no bridge. That is 
 all right. The bridge would not have answered. 
 My Stainer bridge is whole yet." 
 
 He was silent in a long but hurried unrolling 
 and fastening of strings, an endless tuning and 
 hearkening and tuning again, and then the walls 
 of the room were vibrant about them, and Signor 
 Pazzani was playing on the little black fiddle; 
 and the sweet, powerful sonority, the suave, 
 silvery, intense tone, the mellow but majestic 
 strength, were ringing in their ears " Like the 
 humming of a swarm of angels' wings," said the 
 signor, suddenly leaving off, with his bow in 
 the air. 
 
 " Ah, look at it ! What grace in the curves ! 
 how severe the volute ! how elastic and bound- 
 ing the tone ! and the color ! How purple and 
 rich and full of lustres it will come out when I 
 shall restore it! Oh, I shall restore it!" he
 
 THE LITTLE BLACK FIDDLE. 141 
 
 cried gay ly, smiling on them one and all "It 
 will be mine. You will not think of keeping it. 
 You can none of you play on it," he began to 
 implore. "It's a Guarnerius, the Giuseppe del 
 Jesu's. It is worth money it is worth more ; 
 you shall have a thousand, you shall have fifteen 
 hundred, you shall have two thousand dollars 
 for it!" 
 
 " Oh, hush, indeed ! " cried Jessie. " Of course 
 you shall have it, Sir. It is valueless to us ; it 
 is yours ! " 
 
 " Stay, stay a moment, Jessie," said her father. 
 " The little black fiddle is mine. That poor old 
 vagabond, fallen from his high estate, gave it to 
 me. It is a way bread has of coming back upon 
 the waters after many days. If the signer wants 
 to pay me a thousand dollars for it, we will com- 
 pass the other five hundred by ourselves, and 
 you shall go to Italy." 
 
 And the next morning Signor Pazzani went off 
 with the little black fiddle tucked under his arm, 
 and Mr. Martin went to the city with him to 
 secure the passage of Jessie and her aunt in the 
 next steamer that sailed for foreign shores. And
 
 142 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 the little fiddle had some share in it, after all. 
 And one day, Lucia wrote from Italy to Marnie 
 Maurice that the most beautiful singing she had 
 ever heard in her life, oh, singing sweet as any 
 angel's could be, sweet as a silver flute, had 
 turned out to be Jessie Martin's, and she must 
 make haste and come with her own delicious 
 voice to the same master. And Jessie wrote to 
 Hester that there might be mansions in heaven 
 as lovely as the old palace up in the Sicilian hills 
 where Marnie was going some day to stay with 
 Lucia, but she didn't see how they could be 
 lovelier. And Lucia wrote a postscript saying 
 that Hester would have to come and see, 
 which shows how small the world is, and that 
 there is not a very great distance in reality be- 
 tween the Gulf of Palermo and the Bay of Pango 
 Pango on the other side of the earth.
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRAND- 
 MOTHER.
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 
 
 O OMETIMES, in one or other of the vacations, 
 ^ Miss Marks took Hester home with her 
 to the college city where her own friends lived ; 
 and it was there that she made friends with 
 Billy McKilly and his grandmother. The dear 
 grandmother used to tell Hester stories of her 
 own far-away youth ; and in return Hester told 
 her of the life in the far-away South Sea Islands. 
 And when Billy understood that Hester had 
 lived where palm-trees grew, that her father 
 had miles of cocoanut trees, that she was 
 acquainted with beautiful wild peacocks, and 
 with a bat whose wings opened almost wider 
 than he could stretch his arms, then she seemed 
 to him a part of the unknown and foreign 
 regions where menageries and circuses came 
 from. And you can imagine if he did not 
 10
 
 146 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 regard her with favor when you are told that 
 there was nothing in the world that seemed to 
 him so fine as a circus. 
 
 Billy lived in that part of the town known 
 as Library Close. And although there was a 
 great entertainment of wild beasts and riders 
 and acrobats coming to town, it seemed to him 
 the strangest thing that the fact made so little 
 impression on the people of Library Close, with 
 whom apparently the world went on as if a 
 circus were no more than a fly on the wall. And 
 such a circus, too ! He had told Hester about it, 
 hoping to fire her imagination to a point that 
 might benefit himself. He wanted her to have 
 the great pleasure of going ; but he meant to 
 contrive a way for himself, even if he had to 
 crawl under the tent. But he preferred to go 
 in an honorable way, and to that end he was 
 continually running in, all eagerness and per- 
 spiration, the dear little rosy urchin, to tell 
 his grandmother some new feature of the bill- 
 boards. And here it was the very day, and no 
 one had said a word to him or to Hester about 
 it!
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 147 
 
 "It's the tallest giraffe you ever saw. It is 
 truly, grandmother ! Its neck goes 'way up to 
 the top of the bill boards. And there 's a Bengal 
 tiger, and a Nafrican lion " 
 
 " How you talk ! " 
 
 " And a white peacock, and a phoenix " 
 
 " No ! " 
 
 " Yes ; there 's the picture of it rising from 
 the ashes. And it 's it 's quite wonderful, 
 grandmother. And there's the unicorn " 
 
 "Pooh, pooh!" 
 
 " Why, grandmother, it 's on the bill ! I saw 
 it!" 
 
 " But there is n't any such animal." 
 
 " Perhaps it is n't an animal. Is a is a bird 
 an animal ? Do you suppose Sindbad's roc was 
 an animal, grandmother ? " 
 
 " No, I don't," said grandmother shortly, snip- 
 ping off her thread. 
 
 "Well, then, the unicorn may be something 
 like that." 
 
 " Yes," said his grandmother, " exactly like 
 that." 
 
 "I don't know," said Billy, looking at her
 
 148 HESTER STANLEY'S FPJENDS. 
 
 wistfully. "It sounds as if you were making 
 fun. But there it is in the picture, the lion and 
 the unicorn a-fighting for the crown " 
 
 "My darling Billy, my dear little innocent," 
 cried grandmother, fumbling for her peppermints, 
 "could you think your old grandmother made 
 fun of you ? Why, I Ve no more doubt of it 
 than nothing at all ! " 
 
 " Did n't you ever see a circus, grandmother ? 
 Never ? " 
 
 " No, never. They did n't have them where 
 I lived." 
 
 " Why what what sort of a place " 
 with some diffidence, and a look of wonder in 
 his big blue eyes. 
 
 " Oh, a very good place except that they 
 did n't have circuses there." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Billy, then, with infinite compas- 
 sion in his tone. 
 
 " And when I grew up I was in a city. And 
 I was busy. I went to other places. I was 
 ignorant. I did n't know a circus was so de- 
 lightful." 
 
 " It is delightful. Is n't it, grandmother ? "
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 149 
 
 " Why, you tell me so. That 's a big pepper- 
 mint. I thought of you when I sent for the 
 heart-shaped ones. You have such a warm little 
 heart of your own." 
 
 " I wish you could see a circus, grandmother 
 dear." 
 
 " I Ve no doubt I should enjoy it," said grand- 
 mother, with calmness. 
 
 " Oh, I know you would ! " 
 
 " But circuses are not for me." 
 
 " I don't see why." 
 
 " Don't see why," with less calmness, " when 
 I can't move out of my chair all day, and only 
 look at the world from that little balcony half 
 full of flower-boxes ? " 
 
 " I suppose you could be carried in the hand- 
 barrow," sa\d Billy, doubtfully. 
 
 Grandmother laughed. " Do you think I am 
 like the girl in the song ? " said she. And then 
 she sang in her sweet, thin old voice, 
 
 " No, I won't be a nun, 
 Oh, I won't be a nun, 
 I am so fond of pleasure 
 I could never be a nun ! "
 
 150 HESTEK STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 "But I don't want you to be a nun," said 
 Billy, a little undetermined regarding her mean- 
 ing. " I only want you to go to the circus." 
 
 " What would be said of a person who wanted 
 to see a circus so badly she had to be carried to 
 it in a barrow ! They 'd take her for another 
 clown. It would be worse than the old woman 
 on her white horse at Banbury Cross." 
 
 "Did that mean Queen Elizabeth, grand- 
 mother ? There 's a picture of her in my history 
 on her white horse." 
 
 "Dear soul, how many questions you do 
 ask ! " 
 
 " Well," said Billy, when he had satisfactorily 
 tipped a thimble on the end of his nose, " you 
 know if you didn't want to go all the way to 
 the tent and see the whole Show, part of it comes 
 out in the streets, and you could see that if you 
 would go over to Capitol Street." 
 
 " Why, Billy McKilly, what are you thinking 
 of ? It 's half a mile ! I do wish you 'd let my 
 work-basket alone." 
 
 " Well, it 's worth going a whole mile to see. 
 Can't I have that thimble, grandmother ? "
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 151 
 
 "That thimble? I don't know. What do 
 you want it for ? " 
 
 " It 's got a hole in it. It 'd make an elegant 
 sinker, you know." 
 
 " Oh, I don't want you to go fishing. I 'm 
 afraid you '11 get drowned. No, you can't have 
 the thimble." 
 
 "As if I was a girl ! Men don't get drowned 
 when they go a fishing. I '11 run it full of lead. 
 Oh, grandmother, I wish you could go to the 
 circus ! I should so like to take you to the 
 circus ! I should like to hear you laugh when 
 the clown gets the whip cracked at him. It 
 makes your heart just beat when you see the 
 great tent swell up there, and the sun shine 
 through the flag on top of it, and all the other 
 tents round it. You don't know, you don't know 
 what it means, you know you only know it's 
 it 's fine ! " cried Billy. " And there 's all sorts 
 of a crowd outside, and men hollering, and men 
 asleep in the grass under the edge of the tent 
 they 've been up all night loading and unloading, 
 and driving stakes, and stretching canvas. And 
 when you go inside, it seems as if the roof was
 
 152 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 a ground-glass shade, you know ; and the smell 
 of the grass is just the sweetest smell, and there 's 
 crowds and crowds of faces, and it 's warm, and 
 there 's lemonade, pink lemonade. And they 
 come riding in. Oh, it 's splendid ! the knights 
 and ladies dressed in gold cloth and the clown 
 he bets he can do what the others do, and 
 makes a mess of it, and he winks at you and 
 puts his finger through the paper hoops " 
 
 " He 's a sort of bad, silly boy grown up, I 
 suppose," said grandmother. 
 
 " I don't know. Sometimes he makes believe 
 he 's astonished at the others, and then all of a 
 sudden he turns a somerset over the backs of 
 four elephants at once and does better 'n all ! 
 And oh, you are so pleased, and you clap and 
 holler like everything ! And then there 's the 
 beautiful lady in short dresses dancing on horse- 
 back I suppose she 's a lady. But perhaps " 
 
 " She 's a fairy ? " 
 
 " There ain't any such thing, grandmother ! I 
 should think you thought I was a little boy ! " 
 
 " Dear sakes, no ! " 
 
 "And there's the flying trapeze, too," Billy
 
 BILLY AND HIS GEANDMOTHER. 153 
 
 resumed, "if you don't shut your eyes. And 
 there 's a boy rides round the ring standing on 
 one foot on a horse without a saddle, going lick- 
 ety-split, and the hand plays every minute, and 
 the ring-master oh, he's a daisy!" 
 
 "What does he do? Yes, that's a darning- 
 needle, and that 's a mattress needle, and this is 
 a common needle, and you may thread it for me. 
 Why, Billy McKilly, are you left-handed ? " 
 
 "No. But you see Oh, he cracks his 
 whip, and he says, 'This way, Mr. Merryman,' 
 and they all mind him like a row of bricks. I 'd 
 like to be that boy hanging by his chin on the 
 flying trapeze. I'd be scared but I'd like to 
 do it. I 'd like to be the clown, too," said Billy, 
 his eyes at all sorts of angles with the needle's 
 eye. 
 
 " You put me in mind of Nick Bottom. There, 
 give it to me. I'd be ashamed if I couldn't 
 thread a needle." 
 
 " Was he a clown ? So would I if I was a girl. 
 It 's just the best fun being a clown " 
 
 "I've heard that sometimes clowns are very 
 melancholy people, Billy."
 
 154 HESTER STANLEY'S FHIENDS. 
 
 "Oh, they couldn't be! Why, they're made 
 to make folks laugh. They're just as happy 
 they always have a trick horse to sell, and his 
 name is January. I wish my father 'd buy him 
 You 'd see a clown riding on a donkey, wrong 
 end first, in the parade, if you could go down to 
 Capitol Street. I wish you could go, grand- 
 mother," twisting the scissors round his thumb 
 till they were in danger of flying off and putting 
 an end to seeing altogether. 
 
 "Well, yes, so do I. But I can't, my dear 
 little son. So let us talk of something else. 
 And don't bite that wax any more, if you please ; 
 it is n't made to chew." 
 
 " I don't believe you ever saw a parade, or you 
 wouldn't want to talk of something else," said 
 Billy, reproachfully. 
 
 "No, I never did. Now, Billy, that's a glove 
 needle, and that's a bodkin. Put them right 
 back where you took them from ! " 
 
 " Never saw a circus parade ! Oh, 
 grandmother ! " half under his breath, as if the 
 neglect in her education must not be spoken of 
 too loudly. " Then it 's all the more reason you
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 155 
 
 should see this," he exclaimed, dropping the wax 
 and the scissors and the bodkin. "Why, it's 
 the biggest circus in the whole world ! And it 's 
 the biggest parade in America. It's the great 
 Biblical and Scrip-tural show " 
 
 "Is it, truly? A real holy show? Now, if 
 you '11 kindly pick up the things you dropped " 
 
 "Yes, I will I will. But I wish you could 
 see that parade. Why, there's a troop of 
 elephants " 
 
 " A troop of elephants ! I should want to run 
 the first thing, and I could n't. So, you see, it 's 
 just as well as it is." 
 
 " Oh, no, indeed, they 're tame as cats. They 
 let you ride on their backs " 
 
 " I should look pretty, riding on their backs ! " 
 
 "But, grandmother somehow you seem " 
 
 "Very disappointing. Well, my poor, dear 
 little man, it 's a shame ! If a boy can't have 
 sympathy from his grandmother, what is she 
 good for ? Yes, I should like to see the parade," 
 drawing him to her, kissing his chubby browu 
 fist, and smoothing back the rebellious locks 
 from Billy's honest brow. " And as that is im- 
 possible, you tell me all about it."
 
 156 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 "Well," said Billy, squaring himself for the 
 effort, " Johnny Carey saw it over in Sunderland, 
 and he says it's over a mile long, almost. 
 And after the elephants there 's a lot of camels 
 with red saddle-cloths, and they look patient 
 that's their necks and they look cross that's 
 their faces and they have door-mats, sort of, on 
 their shoulders, and an Arab riding every one, a 
 real Arab, grandmother, with his long pipe in his 
 mouth. And there 's a girl driving forty horses 
 - yes, there is, Johnny says so ! My ! And 
 there's a team with a pair of lions chained by 
 the feet, and standing by each lion is another 
 girL Should n't you think they 'd be afraid ? 
 I should n't. But they 're girls, you know. I'd 
 like to do And then," said Billy, catching him- 
 self in season, " there 's ladies and gentlemen on 
 horseback ; and there 's the great gold chariots 
 with brass bands in them ; and there 's cages and 
 cages of animals, all locked up, except the polar 
 bear, and he 's sitting on a block of ice, and the 
 , men turn buckets of water over him when they 
 come to a hydrant he's homesick, too. And 
 there 's the the proprietor, they call him the
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 157 
 
 master of it all, in a buggy. And it's a great 
 deal, you know, just to see him " 
 
 "I should like to see him," admitted grand- 
 mother. 
 
 " Oh, I thought you would ! " said Billy. " And 
 there 's a lot of Shetland ponies, the teentiest 
 tauntiest little things, with the little boy and 
 girl each riding one of them, and everybody cries 
 out at that, you know, and cheers them I 'd like 
 to be And there 's the donkeys," said Billy, 
 catching himself again, " and the trick mules and 
 the clowns, and the oh, I forgot the best of all! 
 There 's a whole regiment I guess of soldiers 
 riding in red coats, with little flags on the tips of 
 their spears the Boston lancers 
 
 " Oh, no, not in a circus ! Not in that sort of 
 a circus." 
 
 "Well, then, the Cadets." 
 
 " Oh, no, it can't be ! " 
 
 " Why not ? J ' 
 
 " Why not, indeed," said grandmother. 
 
 " Well, then, maybe it 's zouaves. But at any 
 rate, grandmother, they're soldiers, they truly 
 are, real live men who 've been in war "
 
 158 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " Fine work for them now, then." 
 
 " Yes, is n't it ? " said the innocent Billy. " And, 
 grandmother, don't you think I might stay out of 
 school, just this morning ? " 
 
 "And is that what it all means ? Oh, Billy ! " 
 said grandmother. " Well, then, you dear rogue, 
 yes, you may. Eun along ! I '11 make it right 
 with your father." 
 
 " Grandmother," said Billy, getting her head in 
 his arms and hugging it to the ruin of her cap, 
 " you are the dearest dear ! You 're a great deal 
 better than Johnny Carey's grandmother. She 's 
 awful strict with Johnny. She makes him learn 
 a verse of a Psalm every time he turns 'round. 
 She made him go to bed without his supper the 
 night he ran away to Sunderland, and they had 
 raspberry jam that night, too. I 'm glad you 're 
 my grandmother. You 're the best grandmother 
 I ever had. So ! " And having finished hugging 
 her, and having finished, too, the difficult task of 
 setting her work-basket to rights, Billy went to 
 the pretty balcony, with its flowers, and stepped 
 out, and craned his neck up and down the street 
 to ascertain if by any chance one sitting there
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 159 
 
 could see the great parade as it passed out of 
 Capitol Street into the square. 
 
 "It makes a fellow feel mean," said Billy, 
 " to go off and have a good time and leave you 
 here." 
 
 " My dear little Billy," said grandmother, " I 
 am having a good time in thinking of your 
 having a good time." 
 
 "And you never saw one, either," repeated 
 Billy, like the buzzing of an inextinguishable 
 fly. "I say, it's too bad! And you don't 
 know how splendid the chariots are and the 
 music and the clown oh, he is so funny 
 sometimes he gets real mad with the boys 
 If the parade was going to pass through this 
 street " 
 
 " Pass through this street ! Why, of course 
 not. It is n't even a street ! " 
 
 Billy looked up and down. No, it was n't even 
 a street. It was a sort of green court or close. 
 But it had an avenue for carriages in the middle 
 of its velvet turf that led through a broad gate- 
 way into the great square of the library build- 
 ings and out to the street beyond. Only elegant
 
 160 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 carriages now and then rolled along the avenue. 
 Even the grocers' carts with their daring and 
 dexterous Jehus drove up through back alleys 
 to the houses. This was the abode of aristo- 
 cratic stillness and narrow seclusion. No ; no 
 parades ever passed this way. It was n't even 
 a street. 
 
 " Grandmother," said Billy, " you promise me 
 to have your chair wheeled out into this balcony, 
 and be sitting here at eleven o'clock, and then, 
 at any rate, perhaps you '11 hear the music." 
 
 " Oh, it would n't be worth while," said his 
 grandmother. "It would only be an aggra- 
 vation." 
 
 " Then you do wish you could see it ! I knew, 
 I knew you did ! " trying to walk around her 
 chair on his hands now. 
 
 " Billy ! Billy ! You '11 get the blood in your 
 head ! " 
 
 " Well, you promise me," as he came up smil- 
 ing and very red. " I '11 feel a great deal easier, 
 grandmother, if I think at any rate you can hear 
 the music. You know they '11 likely play ' Boom- 
 de-ay.' Gimme a nickel, grandmother. Oh, I
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 161 
 
 say, I wish all the fellows had such a grand- 
 mother as you ! " 
 
 There was a twinkle, a strange delighted 
 twinkle, in Billy's eye as he went out singing 
 the last chaste verselet that had caught his 
 ready ear, with its burden concerning a bicycle 
 built for two. But once outside the house silence 
 took the place of song, and Billy was running, 
 almost as fast as the bicycle could go, to the Belt 
 line of cars, which would carry him outside the 
 town. 
 
 It was a resolute urchin that, a half-hour later, 
 was knocked about from one employd to another 
 in that busy universe of the circus-field, which 
 seemed to him the great world itself, where the 
 gayly caparisoned horses were pawing, and the ele- 
 phants were stepping ponderously to the front, 
 an urchin that would not take no for an answer, 
 and who, at the sight of the kneeling and grunt- 
 ing camels and the strange Arabs mounting 
 them, all at once made a dart from the clutches 
 of the last man who had caught him by the 
 collar to kick him out, and landed in the pres- 
 ence of the Great Man himself, 
 n
 
 162 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " he cried, panting, almost breathless, 
 climbing up the steps of the victoria. " I want 
 to tell you about my grandmother ! " 
 
 "My dear child," said the Proprietor of the 
 Greatest Show on Earth, "I have no time to 
 hear about your grandmother." 
 
 "But you must," cried Billy. "You must 
 hear ! She 's my grandmother. She 's " 
 
 "Now, my little lad, get right down from 
 there ! The horses might start and break your 
 neck" 
 
 " I will just as soon " 
 
 " Now ! Don't you see I 'm very busy ? Don't 
 you see the Greatest Show on Earth is just start- 
 ing ? Here, Charley, take this boy away ! " 
 
 But before Charley or any one else could inter- 
 'fere, Billy had climbed into the victoria itself. 
 " Now I sha'n't fall," said he. 
 
 " What sort of a persistent little rascal are 
 you ? " exclaimed the proprietor. 
 
 "Oh, give the kid a chance," said Charley, 
 while Billy stared, too intent to wonder whether 
 the familiarity were profanity, or whether this 
 was a bigger man than the Proprietor.
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. J63 
 
 "Well, now," said the smooth, kind voice of 
 the burly gentleman on the seat, "tell me in 
 three words what it is you want?" 
 
 "I want the show the Greatest Show on 
 Earth " said Billy, with quick perspicacity. 
 
 " That 's right, my boy." 
 
 " To pass by my grandmother's window." 
 
 " Is she on the route ? " 
 
 " No. Well, no, she is n't. Not not quite, 
 you know. She 's about a mile only just 
 a mile away. In Library Close. And she can't 
 come here. She can't get out of her chair, you 
 know. And she can't see it pass," his words 
 coming like a torrent, and his eyes as big as the 
 lens in the white ostrich's eye. " And she never 
 saw a parade in her life truly just think ! " 
 
 " You don't mean so ? " said the gentleman. 
 
 "In this enlightened age," said Charley, as he 
 gave his long whip a flourish that brought the 
 snapper under his thumb. 
 
 " And she 's awful good," Billy's voice rushed 
 on. "She's the best grandmother there ever 
 was. Say 1 Did n't you ever have a grand- 
 mother I Then you know how it is yourself!
 
 164 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 And I 'd give 'most anything to have her see the 
 parade only I don't suppose I 've got anything 
 you want," with harrowing melancholy for half 
 a moment. "At any rate," in a quick inspira- 
 tion, " I 'd do some work for you ! I 'd help fix 
 the tents, I 'd feed the animals Say ! It must 
 be great fun travelling with them. Ain't it? 
 Just like folks in the Bible, when Isaac's people 
 went for Eebecca ! A boy could pass the pea- 
 nuts But my grandmother," remembering 
 himself, " she has to sit in her chair all day, and 
 she only sees the things that come to her, and 
 I 'd like to have her see the parade first-rate, and 
 you look as if you would, too " 
 
 "Tut, tut, tut!" said the Proprietor. "It's 
 out of the question. Here, Charley, take the 
 little fellow " 
 
 " I know it 's a great deal to ask," cried Billy, 
 quickly slipping to the other side of the victoria, 
 out of Charley's reach. " And that 's why I ask 
 it. You like to do a great deal. And you give 
 pleasure to lots of people. But there won't be 
 one of them take so much pleasure in this parade 
 as my grandmother would. For she knows all
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 165 
 
 about camels and elephants and the Bible and 
 soldiers and wild beasts and you. She said she 
 would like to see you. Don't you think you 
 could go a mile out of your way for once, 
 to give my poor old grandmother such a chance ? 
 I should feel so mean to go to the circus and 
 think of her at home, and I do so want her to 
 see all she can of it it's so hard to sit there 
 in her chair all day, and I've heard my father 
 say she 's sat up more nights with sick folks 
 than she ever was in bed, and she always has a 
 peppermint for a fellow, and I made her promise 
 to have her chair wheeled out in the balcony at 
 eleven o'clock, but I did n't tell her I was going 
 to ask you, for fear she might be disappointed, 
 though I knew you would if you could, but just 
 to hear the music, and she promised, and oh, 
 would n't she be surprised ! Perhaps," Billy 
 bubbled on, "you didn't always do the square 
 thing by your grandmother, and now you 've got 
 a chance to make it up to her " 
 
 " Oh, here, here, here ! " cried the Proprietor, 
 breaking the spell of Billy's glittering eye. " Let 
 us stop this flood of eloquence or the afternoon
 
 166 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 performance will be late. He 's a whole show and 
 the posters himself a new feature. What's 
 your name, boy ? Billy McKilly ? Well, Billy 
 McKilly, sit right down here by me! Every- 
 thing ready, Charley ? The word given ? Go 
 ahead, then ! " And when the procession moved 
 down the road and wound its way into Capitol 
 Street, there sat Billy with the Proprietor, his 
 blue eyes beaming out of his brown face with 
 every expression of awe, amazement, and joy, 
 leading the whole business. 
 
 Proud moment ! Proud Billy ! Oh, proud, 
 glad Billy ! Proud little boys along the way who 
 knew Billy, and knew him for one of themselves, 
 Billy at that eminence, that dizzy pitch of great- 
 ness ! They hurrahed for the Proprietor, they 
 hurrahed for the Greatest Show on Earth, they 
 hurrahed for Billy. Billy could hardly contain 
 himself for bliss. It is true at moments he 
 longed to stand up and look behind him ; that 
 now and then he doubted if he would not rather 
 be one of the hurrahing boys on the sidewalk 
 that could see the parade. But to be the head 
 of the procession, beside the great Proprietor,
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 167 
 
 leading the parade that was compensation for 
 all loss. Suddenly he cried out to his compan- 
 ion : " That 's the street ! That 's it ! That leads 
 right into the Close and through the Library 
 grounds, and it's all asphalt if you only, only 
 would turn up that way ! " 
 
 "Turn up that way, Charley," said the Pro- 
 prietor. And the victoria turned up toward 
 Library Close, and all the great elephants came 
 trampling after ; and the Arabs on their camels 
 turned up, too ; and the lady with the lions, and 
 the clowns, and the little Shetlands Billy did 
 stand up. It was no use. He fairly danced with 
 delight. "Oh!" he cried. "You are a good 
 man ! I think my grandmother would like to 
 kiss you ! " 
 
 And what did all the fine secluded people of 
 the Close think, when through the wide-open 
 gates poured a rabble of little boys, of rude men 
 smoking pipes, of women carrying their babies, 
 of idle girls with their soiled finery, chewing gum 
 and chaffing their young men, a rabble of all 
 sorts and conditions, the dust of an army rising 
 with them, and the carriage drawn by eight
 
 168 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 matched, matchless horses, holding a bland old 
 gentleman and an excited little boy, followed by 
 the grand parade of the Greatest Show on Earth ? 
 Far too fine to go to the circus themselves, was 
 it possible that the circus had come to them, 
 that the great Orient itself, the islands of the 
 sea, and all the kingdoms of the world were 
 rendering tribute to the Close ? 
 
 " There she is ! There she is ! " suddenly cried 
 the little boy, pointing with both hands at a 
 flowery balcony where sat a pale, fair old lady, 
 with her maid behind her, her face like a flower 
 among the flowers wondering, smiling, a little 
 frightened, and all at once surveying Billy with 
 amazement. " Oh, grandmother ! " shrieked 
 Billy. "You said you would like to see him, 
 and here he is ! " 
 
 The Proprietor stood up in the carriage, turned 
 and lifted his hat, and bowed. The pale and fair 
 old lady gazed bewilderedly, but bowed in return ; 
 and then she smiled and bowed again. The 
 maid bowed, too. And then whisper it please, 
 on account of the Close people what less could 
 grandmother do than break off a bit of the clove-
 
 BILLY AND HIS GRANDMOTHER. 169 
 
 gillyflower and give it to the maid, who tossed it 
 down ! The Proprietor caught it and put it in 
 his button-hole, and lifted his hat in stately fash- 
 ion once more. " And, grandmother," Billy was 
 crying, " I want you to look ! He 's brought it 
 around on purpose for you to see. It's the 
 Greatest Show on Earth ! They 're real soldiers 
 they 're Uhlans ! That 's a real girl driving 
 the forty horses. You just look at the ele- 
 phants ! That near one has killed ten men ! 
 And you ought to have heard the camels when 
 the Arabs got on them. They truly are Arabs, 
 they live in the oasises of the desert in tents he 
 says so. And don't you be afraid of that lion, 
 grandmother dear ! I ain't. He has n't a tooth 
 in his head, and " 
 
 And the victoria passed on, and the elephants 
 went trampling a cloud of dust about their 
 majesty, and a band burst forth anew in a blare 
 of a glorious tune, and Billy McKilly was out 
 of hearing. But I heard that the people of 
 Library Close went to the circus that afternoon 
 in a body.
 
 REMADE.
 
 REMADE. 
 
 TT was really to old Dr. Derwent that Hester 
 -*- owed one of her best friends, although she 
 never saw the doctor. 
 
 He had been called once to a case, far up 
 among the hills, a long day's journey, or a night's, 
 rather, and having finished all that there was 
 to do he was refreshing himself by a stroll 
 through the domain of the little mountain vil- 
 lage, and letting the cool winds, that had in them 
 a breath of the snow left in the crannies of the 
 hills, blow out of his mind and heart the memory 
 of the suffering he had lately witnessed, when 
 he came, unobserved by them, upon a group 
 of children playing on the threshing-floor of an 
 open barn, with such singing and chirruping of 
 gay young voices as if a whole choir of birds 
 had been let loose at once.
 
 174 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 The doctor watched these blithe little crea- 
 tures for a long while, too tired just then to join 
 them, as he would have liked to do, and attract- 
 ing no attention from them. But at last the 
 object to which his glances most frequently 
 returned was a little girl sitting apart in a corner 
 by herself, and playing, all alone, with an ab- 
 straction and concentration worthy of better dolls. 
 For hers were made of the clumps of grass turned 
 backward from their roots, which roots, with 
 their fibres combed out by a pin, served for well- 
 wigged heads. The little maid had dressed these 
 model dolls out in various green array; one of 
 them had a little pink mushroom secured to her 
 for an umbrella; and she was just pinning a 
 maple-leaf shawlwise upon another, when the 
 doctor addressed her, and asked her name. 
 
 "May Eoberts, sir," she answered him, still 
 adjusting the troublesome maple-leaf, and with- 
 out pausing to glance up. 
 
 " Oh, May, is it you ? " said the doctor, in a 
 way he had of beginning a new acquaintance 
 with a child as if it were an old one, in order 
 that he might amuse himself somewhat by
 
 REMADE. 175 
 
 watching the children puzzled thus into a fancy 
 that they ought to have remembered him. 
 
 " Yes, sir," she answered, looking up this time 
 so that he observed, with a sudden start for 
 he had only seen before a pretty pink and white 
 cheek, shaded by chestnut curls that her large 
 brown eyes were badly crossed, and her mouth 
 was disfigured, in spite of its little teeth, as 
 white and even as grains of rice, by a hare-lip. 
 " Yes, sir ; but " with hesitation "I 'm afraid 
 I don't know who you are." 
 
 "Never mind that," said the doctor, sitting 
 down on a stump opposite her ; " I 'm the friend 
 of all little children, and that 's enough, is n't it ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," said May again, and after a second 
 glance, returning to her dolls. 
 
 " And is this your family ? " asked the doctor, 
 taking up the lady with the pink parasol. " Quite 
 ingenious, I declare." 
 
 " Yes, sir, if you please," said the monosyllabic 
 little damsel, again. 
 
 " And how is it that you had rather play with 
 them than be romping with the other children 
 in the barn there ? "
 
 176 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 The child moved a little uncomfortably, and 
 parted her lips as if she would repeat her stereo- 
 typed reply, but found it inapplicable, and said 
 nothing; only the curls drooped a little lower 
 as the head was bent above the doll, and, looking 
 at her still intently, the doctor, with some sur- 
 prise, thought he saw a bright drop like a tear 
 fall on the green maple-leaf, and glitter there as 
 morning-dew would glitter. 
 
 The doctor was a kind-hearted man in the 
 main, but was not peculiarly sensitive to the 
 sight of pain; he knew that pain was not 
 altogether evil, but often a blessing in disguise. 
 Sometimes he pleased himself, through long habit 
 perhaps, with probing other people's emotions. 
 
 " I should think," said he, then, " it would be 
 far pleasanter to hunt the slipper there on the 
 threshing-floor than to sit here and dress dolls 
 out of roots of grass." 
 
 "No," said the child, moving uneasily again, 
 but looking up at last quite as if she had made 
 up her mind to change the conversation in spite 
 of her timidity, and drawing a quick breath 
 while she added : " I play they are fairies, sir,
 
 EEMADE. 177 
 
 the little green people that live down in the 
 ground, and make the juices that feed the fruit 
 and flowers, and come up by moonlight and 
 dance in the shadow. I Ve never seen them, but 
 Jack Spar has this many a time; and I leave 
 them under the tree here every sunset, and they 
 tell me what they did after the moon shone ; I 
 play they do, you know. And I tell them I am 
 sure they danced all night, they are so wilted 
 and tired and faded out in the morning, you see. 
 And once it rained in the night, and then I made 
 believe that one of them had really been back in 
 the ground, and got caught on the way up, 
 because she had taken root again and was grow- 
 ing just as if nothing had happened " 
 
 How long she would have run on with these 
 disclosures the doctor did not know, but fortu- 
 nately he saw through her innocent art as she 
 prattled, and showed that he was not to be di- 
 verted, for, in truth, he fancied that he saw here 
 a sore spot that needed medicining, needed it 
 badly, since it was so sore it might not be 
 touched. 
 
 "But you can't play at fairies all the time," 
 12
 
 178 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 said he, interrupting her. " What else do you do 
 up here in the hills, pray ? " 
 
 " Oh, I learn my lessons," said she, carelessly, 
 " and I can read and write and cipher now ; and 
 I hunt the eggs and find the nests the hens steal 
 away down in the meadows when we don't want 
 them to set. And mother says she could n't do 
 without me, though " Here she paused, but 
 added instantly : " And I know how to milk, and 
 I find the flowers, the jacks-in-the-pulpit, and 
 lady's-slipper, and the two little bells, and " 
 
 "Ah," said the doctor, suddenly, and looking 
 at the other children, "here are gay doings in 
 the barn. Come, let us run along and join them. 
 You will leave off growing, my little lass, sitting 
 here so long." 
 
 "I had rather not," answered the troubled 
 child, though at the same time casting a wistful 
 glance toward the place, unless the doctor was 
 mistaken in the direction of the glance. 
 
 " Why so ? " said he, merrily. " They are hav- 
 ing fine fun. See that rosy-cheeked chap his 
 head is as curly as a basket of grapes that just 
 kissed the pink-pinafored little woman. Ah, it's
 
 REMADE. 179 
 
 worth while now to be a boy and play hunt-the- 
 slipper. Come, run along with me, and get your 
 share." 
 
 "I will go with you, sir. But Lawrence 
 would n't kiss me, you know." 
 
 " Lawrence ? That is his name ? A handsome 
 fellow." 
 
 " Yes, sir. Lawrence Bell." 
 
 " Not kiss you ? And why not, pray ? " 
 
 " Oh, because I look two ways for a Sunday, 
 and have three lips for kissing!" cried out the 
 child, vehemently, using the terms she had heard 
 for her deformities, able to bear no more, and 
 bursting into tears. 
 
 " My dear child," said the doctor, then, reach- 
 ing forward, and drawing her up between his 
 knees, " is that what troubles you ? " 
 
 But the child's sobs choked her, and he waited 
 a moment for her to quiet herself. 
 
 " Do you really care about these trifles ? " he 
 asked then, as her trouble subsided a little. 
 
 "About about " 
 
 " Your eyes and your lips ? " 
 
 "Do I care?" she suddenly exclaimed, as
 
 180 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 tragically as though she had worn the cothurnus 
 for years, or had been born with it. "Do I 
 care ? " swallowing all her sobs. " Oh, I would 
 die to-morrow, if I could be like Agnes there 
 
 in the pink tier only for to-day ! " 
 
 " My dear little girl, there is no need of dying, 
 for, as to being what you wish, there is nothing 
 easier " 
 
 " Oh, no, no, no ! I was born so ! Unless they 
 
 make me over again it can't be ! oh, it can't 
 be ! " And then fresh tears. 
 
 " And why do you care ? " asked the doctor. 
 
 " Why ? " surprise stopping the sobs, to think 
 any one could ask her such a thing! "Why? 
 Because it makes a monster of me Lawrence 
 says so like the little pink pig that had his 
 ears on one side ! " And she was crying like a 
 shower again. 
 
 " Lawrence is n't so good-looking as I thought 
 he was," said the doctor. 
 
 "Oh, yes, he is," said little May. "But it 
 was when the little pig first came ; and some- 
 how it said itself because it was true that 
 about being a monster ! "
 
 REMADE. 181 
 
 " And is that so very bad ? " 
 
 " Oh, it is dreadful ! " she cried, letting out all 
 her soul to this inquisitor. " No one wants you ; 
 no one has you round; no one thinks it's any 
 matter how you go ; they put you last when sew- 
 ing-circle comes; they say things that hurt! I 
 don't believe God himself can like to look at 
 you!" 
 
 "That is very wicked, May. God loves to 
 look at all His creatures that are good." 
 
 "But a monster is not good! He wouldn't 
 ever have pronounced a monster good the way he 
 did Adam and Eve in Genesis." 
 
 "It is wrong that you should have been 
 allowed to look on this thing so, my child. 
 Can you imagine that a mete accident of the 
 body " 
 
 " Accident ? But God made me 
 
 " Well, May," said the doctor then, seeing that 
 it was impossible to treat so deeply rooted a 
 trouble in the nature of this imaginative and 
 sensitive child as if it were only a mere surface- 
 weed, " I can prove to you that it is nothing but 
 an accident, by undoing it."
 
 182 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Un " 
 
 " Undoing it. Just as you do a piece of pool 
 sewing work. How should you like that? To 
 have your eyes made straight, and your lip joined 
 together. It can be done and done so that 
 one would never know you till you spoke." 
 
 " Lik.e Agnes ? " exclaimed the child, catching 
 her breath, and turning with the tears still cours- 
 ing one another down her face. "Two great 
 brown eyes looking right before her? And a 
 mouth Oh, it could n't be ! " 
 
 " Two great brown eyes looking straight before 
 you, and a mouth not quite like Agnes's mouth, 
 to be sure, because there will always be a scar 
 there, but that will not matter much in compari- 
 son. And it will be a very good mouth." 
 
 The child grew white as death, and fell to 
 trembling as she had to crying just before. " Oh, 
 it couldn't be," she gasped; "you're only telling 
 me a fairy-story now, I know; I know it 
 couldn't!" And the next moment the blood 
 flushed up her face again with the wild glimpse 
 of hope, bathing forehead and temple, and she 
 sprang forward with her arms around the doc-
 
 REMADE. 183 
 
 tor's neck, and her wet and burning face hid- 
 den under his ear. "Oh, perhaps you are one 
 of the angels that came to visit Abraham 
 in his tent," she whispered. "Oh, you must 
 be one, you must, if you can make me over 
 again I " 
 
 " No, indeed," said the doctor, laughing a little 
 then, and seeing how real all her Sunday-school 
 instructions were to the child. And taking her 
 on his knee, he rested her head on his shoulder, 
 smoothing her hair with his hand, and quieting 
 her excitement as best he might. " No, indeed," 
 said he, "only Dr. Derwent, of Derwentwater, 
 whose business such things as these operations 
 are. If I had the proper instruments with 
 me, and could delay any longer from my sick 
 people at home, I would do the work to-day. 
 But I have n't. And so we must wait a little 
 while, and see what can be done." 
 
 " Oh, I would n't mind that waiting a little 
 while if it could really just be done at all," 
 said the child, still shaken with the reactionary 
 sobs that came every now and then in spite of 
 her efforts.
 
 184 HESTEK STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 " But there is something else you may mind, 
 I ought to tell you. Are you afraid of pain ? " 
 
 " Pain ? I don't know like that when they 
 say the things that " 
 
 " Hurt ? No, the other sort of pain." 
 
 "Like the toothache and the growing-pain. 
 Oh, no; I don't believe I am." 
 
 " That 's good, then, so far. For there is pain 
 to be borne when we are made over again. So I 
 warn you to make up your mind for it. Not 
 very bad pain, but still more than one bears 
 easily." 
 
 " Oh, I will not mind it, sir, at all. I will 
 hold just as still !" 
 
 " That is a good child. Now we '11 keep this 
 for a secret between us. And the next time the 
 drovers, or any one else, go down from here to 
 Derwent water, do you make up a little bundle, 
 and come along with them. They '11 give you 
 a seat. And here, on this card, is the number 
 of the house where I live, so that you sha'n't 
 forget, and if you show it to any one you will be 
 led there at once, and there I will keep you for 
 a few weeks, till everything is over, and all well
 
 REMADE, 185 
 
 again, and send you back, when a good chance 
 comes, so changed that your own mother 
 would n't know you ! What do you think of that ? 
 Now I must go. Good-by." And if Lawrence 
 would n't kiss her, the doctor did, and then set 
 her down on the old vine-covered stump, pal- 
 pitating with pleasure. And when the flush of 
 it was over, she sat there looking at the silver 
 horns of the mountains melting away into the 
 azure sky above, and across the paradise of green 
 valleys at her feet, seeing all the beauty under a 
 perfect aureole of glory, as if the world had been 
 made over again so as to be ready for her when 
 she came back remade from Derwentwater. 
 
 It seemed, in fact, from that hour, another 
 world to the child, the child no longer to be 
 pitied, but full of a gladness hitherto unknown 
 to her, full of the happy expectation of a miracle. 
 Up in the gorge between the mountains the mist 
 was rolling in a scarlet flame, sunset pouring 
 bodily through the rift as she had never seen 
 it do before ; down in the intervale there were 
 rainbows lying in the grass, it must be for 
 the first time, she said to herself ; the birds were
 
 186 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 singing their vespers with a music that her ear 
 had never caught till now. As she still sat there 
 on the stump, long after the other children had all 
 gone to their homes, the sky seemed to open 
 over her, one by one the stars came out, the soft 
 evening wind came cool as the breath of great 
 invisible blossoms ; and wrought up to such a 
 pitch of exaltation was the child, that now she 
 half fancied, so strangely vast and beautiful did 
 the advancing evening seem, that the end of all 
 things was at hand, and that that change was 
 the one meant by the angel in disguise who had 
 called himself Dr. Derwent, of Derwentwater. 
 But when the moon rose, and she saw the placid 
 cattle all browsing quietly beneath her, and 
 heard her mother call her from the door, she 
 rose and went in, brought back to actual life, 
 and persuaded that the doctor was no vision 
 and that Derwentwater was no chimera. 
 
 It was the next morning that May was seen 
 to be very busily employed with Jack Spar, the 
 weather-beaten old sailor, who, having grown 
 weary of ploughing the wave, had wandered up the 
 hills, and taken to ploughing the sod under Mr.
 
 KEMADE. 187 
 
 Roberts's direction, and the anchors, crosses, stars 
 and stripes tattooed upon whose breast and arms 
 had been unfailing sources of delight and wonder 
 to all the children far and near. Upon inquiry, 
 it was found that Jack had concocted a prepa- 
 ration of the juice of herbs which he thought 
 would answer all necessary purposes, and had 
 indoctrinated little May into the art of decorat- 
 ing herself like a Fiji princess, and that May, 
 who had stoutly refused to submit to the exer- 
 cise at Jack's own longing hands, had very neatly 
 and indelibly printed around her wrist the letters 
 of her name, having, with quite remarkable fore- 
 sight, left room for the addition of any short 
 surname, such as Lawrence's surname was, for 
 instance, in case it should ever be desirable to 
 put one there. 
 
 " May ! " cried her exasperated mother. " What 
 do you mean, you naughty child ? What was 
 the need of making yourself more of a fright? 
 Do you know that you have disfigured yourself 
 for the rest of your days ? But there, what 
 odds does it make ? " she cried, after her quick 
 angry fashion, as she remembered the disfigure-
 
 188 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 ment already existing in the child, and pushing 
 her away from her. But with the next thought, 
 as her way was, she had caught her back again 
 impulsively, and was kissing the poor eyes and 
 mouth, while still murmuring her reproaches 
 over the wrist. 
 
 "Oh, I don't mind that," cried May, freeing 
 herself and facing her mother, "I don't mind 
 that at all. But I 'm going away to be made 
 over again, and I marked my wrist so that you 
 would be sure to know me, for I am, I am really, 
 going to be made over, so that my own mother 
 would n't know me ! " And the child danced 
 away, singing some tirra-lirra like a bird, and as 
 she had never been seen or heard to do since 
 she came to the knowledge of her misfortunes ; 
 and her mother, altogether ignorant of the mean- 
 ing of her words, watched in a new-born and 
 superstitious fear, lest she might truly be going 
 away to be made over into something not of this 
 earth. Still the cross-eyed and hare-lipped little 
 May was not of so heavenly a type of childhood 
 that her mother had any need of fear in her 
 regard; she was only a stout-hearted, eager little
 
 REMADE. 189 
 
 body, who meant certainly to conquer her por- 
 tion of the world to her own uses. 
 
 It was almost a month after his brief run into 
 the mountains, and in the midst of all his other 
 and multiplied cares, the doctor had nearly forgot- 
 ten the little patient whom he had found there, 
 when one bright morning a load of shingles 
 stopped before his gate, and, after a long and 
 laborious study of the card in her hand, and a 
 comparison of it with the sign upon his door- 
 post, and with that upon the street-corner, a 
 small, sun-bonneted lass clambered down the 
 side of the great team, and pulled the doctor's 
 bell, and, happening to open the door himself, 
 he recognized and welcomed the sad and staid 
 little mountain-maid, who looked, as she had in- 
 formed him once, both ways for a Sunday. But 
 sad she was no longer; her face, on the contrary, 
 was radiant with expectant happiness, if not 
 with beauty. She took it for granted that, of 
 course, the doctor remembered all about her, and 
 she forgot for a time to open her lips, while her 
 glance ran up and down his office, her eye rest- 
 ing with particular attention upon a case of shin-
 
 190 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 ing instruments that happened to be open there. 
 But she never paused to look about her when 
 he led her up to take a luncheon, did not give 
 a glance at fresco or picture or mirror or statue, 
 never noticed that her clumsy little shoe sank 
 in the depth of the velvet pile upon the floor 
 as it did in the moss on the mountain hillside 
 at home, nor heeded the lace curtains like the 
 film of hoar frost that every morning overlay the 
 intervale ; and, with only a vague and general 
 idea of a palace in her mind, she seated herself 
 on the satin damask of a chair as carelessly as 
 if it had been the old vine-covered stump where, 
 when she first glanced up, she saw the doctor 
 sitting on that eventful day. She had only 
 thought and observation for a single thing ; what 
 were pictures and palaces to her just then ? " If 
 you could, as well as not, I should like to be 
 made over, sir, to-day," she said at last. And 
 in such a state of excitement was she, that the 
 doctor thought it best, upon the whole, to make 
 no more delay, and conducted her down to his 
 office again, and called his wife, rather than his 
 assistant, to be present. And it was impossible
 
 REMADE. 191 
 
 for Dr. Derwent to give any stronger evidence 
 of his interest in a case than that. 
 
 " Now," said he, when he had placed the child 
 as he wished her to remain, "you must not be 
 frightened if I bind you, for " 
 
 " No, sir," she answered firmly ; " there is no 
 need. I will keep still without. I will ! " 
 
 " But if you should start or move you might 
 do an injury that never could be remedied. And 
 it takes a great strength of will ; I don't know 
 how much you may have ; and I am responsible 
 to your parents, you know ; so you had better let 
 me secure " 
 
 "No, no! I must, I must be loose, be free! 
 Please don't, please. I will not stir oh, cer- 
 tainly I will not stir ! " she cried, half under her 
 breath. 
 
 And at that the strong-minded, strong-souled 
 lady who was the doctor's helpmeet flashed a 
 glance toward her husband, signifiying that she 
 would take the child and hold her firmly. 
 
 " Very well," said the doctor. And the lady 
 lifted the child on her lap, and laid her head 
 upon her breast, and put her hand upon the
 
 192 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 cheek, and held it there, and kissed her, and the 
 doctor lifted his glittering little scissors, and in 
 an instant it was over, and the eyes had been 
 made straight, and were bandaged into the sooth- 
 ing dark. 
 
 " That is over ! " said he, cheerily, while the 
 child cried out with glad amazement. "Now, 
 not any more to-day," and she was put away to 
 sleep in a bed that seemed like a cloud to her, and 
 was tended there, she half believed, by angels. 
 
 Then, after a few mornings, the doctor stole 
 softly into the room, before the child had waked 
 from her sweet night's sleep, with a vial and 
 a sponge in his hand, and the ever-blessed ether 
 swiftly drowsing all her sense, he cut and clipped, 
 and sewed and plastered, and the lip was whole 
 again. " Now, I expect you to obey me, mind ! 
 And you must not answer me, nor speak one 
 word," said the doctor then, when presently 
 she came to herself ; and he slipped the bandage 
 from her eyes, and left them bare in the soft 
 dimness of the room that had just been obscured 
 for them. "And now I will tell you, because 
 you don't know," said he, " that there is nothing
 
 REMADE. 193 
 
 more for you to do, except to take your gruel 
 and soup through this tube, and get well as fast 
 as you can. The eyes are done, and the lip is 
 doing you didn't know that and as soon as 
 the stitches heal, and the sight adjusts itself so 
 that you can see as well at the new angle as you 
 did at the old so that you don't see two things 
 where there is only one, I mean why, then 
 you will have been made over!" And not 
 dreaming of disobeying him, the child only 
 clasped her hands, and gazed up at him as if she 
 were giving thanks and adoration to a living 
 saint, with a look that would have recompensed 
 any man like him for a thousand times the 
 effort, and she sank into peaceful and delicious 
 rest again with the look still like a glory on 
 her face. 
 
 But at home in the mountains there was no 
 such tranquillity as there was in the doctor's 
 quiet house. May had been missed on the first 
 day of her departure, which she had taken 
 rather suddenly on hailing a team of shingles 
 and finding it was destined for Derwentwater 
 May had been missed, and was nowhere to be 
 
 13
 
 194 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 found. In vain the house and farm and field 
 and grove were ransacked for her; May was 
 lost, the place was in alarm, the great horn was 
 sounded, and the neighbors summoned to hunt 
 the hill. May was lost she had always had 
 a habit of wandering into the lonely spots, the 
 other children teased her so; she might even 
 now be fallen from some steep, and be lying 
 among the jagged rocks at the foot of the preci- 
 pices, or she might have stumbled across some 
 wild beast's path, for there were both panthers 
 and black bears in the hills, and have been rent 
 asunder before she was so much as missed upon 
 the farm. Every one thought of children at 
 home, and trembled for her. Every one began to 
 remember the poor thing's few gifts and graces. 
 Every one forgot her naughty tempers and little 
 imperfections. Sisters and brothers and playfel- 
 lows, all together, recollected the cruel word or 
 the taunting speech that had been so easy for 
 them to utter and so piercing to her to hear. And 
 it was only as Lawrence threw himself, in a 
 flood of repentant tears, upon the ground, that he 
 espied a bit of paper there, slipped from forgetful
 
 REMADE. 195 
 
 old Jack Spar's pocket, Jack having gone up the 
 mountain to guide a traveller, and the boy ran 
 with it to May's mother in a joyful haste that 
 made wings out of his feet, and was cried over for 
 his pains till he felt too damp to be comfortable. 
 
 A little printed note the bit of paper was, 
 daubed with one or two unavoidable blots which 
 had been smeared off with the finger, but quite 
 well-spelled, and meritoriously brief, assuring 
 them that she hadn't told them for fear they 
 would prevent it, but she had gone to be 
 made over. And nowise displeased, on the 
 whole, by the enforced holiday and subsequent 
 junketing, the neighbors retired, after much feast- 
 ing and a little subdued frolicking on the great 
 threshing-floor ; and with that note all whom it 
 concerned were obliged to rest contented till the 
 farmers who had carried their shingles down for 
 sale in Derwentwater came back and reported 
 the passenger their team had had. 
 
 May was safe then, the Eobertses found ; 
 though still they had need to be anxious about 
 her, so young a thing in a great, strange town. 
 And by and by a letter from the doctor came to
 
 196 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 reassure them, the doctor not having allowed 
 himself to be in a hurry with his letter, thinking 
 that people who made a child's deformity such 
 a burden to her, or who suffered it to be made 
 so by others, would meet with no injury from 
 the experience of a bit of suspense themselves. 
 And as soon thereafter as he could accomplish 
 it, which was not however under a month's 
 time, Mr. Eoberts reached the point of being 
 about to start to fetch the little wanderer home. 
 This had been a prodigious conception on his 
 part, and a still more prodigious thing to carry 
 into execution, for there was the mowing- 
 meadow to attend to, and the hay to be spread 
 again on the mountain-meadow, and there was 
 the whitewashing, and Brindle and Cherry and 
 Whiteface had their young calves, and then the 
 horse was lame, and there were a pair of steers 
 to buy, and the sheep to be sheared, and some 
 money to be gotten from somewhere, and it 
 might have taken infinitely less time and talk 
 and worriment to create a world than it did to 
 bring Mr. Eoberts to this moment in which he 
 had just taken his seat in the wagon and was
 
 REMADE. 197 
 
 receiving the last of a universe of messages, 
 which he would have been more than mortal to 
 remember, and which he was painfully conscious 
 were going in at one ear and out at the other, 
 faring no better than the petitions to take care 
 of himself, and to tie up his throat as soon 
 as he came to salt water, and not to sit in a 
 draught, and to remember his white pocket-hand- 
 kerchief when a peddler's cart, with its bells 
 ringing gayly, drove up the road, stopped a 
 minute, set down a little girl, and went on, and 
 the little girl came capering in at the open gate, 
 swinging her green sunbonnet, like a thing pos- 
 sessed, and climbed, without a word, into the 
 wagon, seizing Mr. Koberts by the head and 
 hugging him a hundred times, and stopping to 
 look at him, and beginning again, and then 
 crying out rapturously : " Oh, I don't believe you 
 know me! The doctor said my own mother 
 wouldn't know me, but he did n't say anything 
 about my father! It's me! And if you don't 
 believe it there's my name on my wrist ! " 
 
 " As I live, it 's our May ! " cried her father. 
 "May! Little May here, stop a minute, let 
 me see ! Lovely ! "
 
 198 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 " Look at me ! " she cried proudly, standing 
 back as they all made a rush for the wagon. 
 " Look at me eyes straight before me I 
 looked at them in the glass myself. And they 're 
 two great brown beautiful eyes, the doctor said 
 so. And my mouth only two lips now " 
 
 " Like a Cupid's bow ! " said her father, snatch- 
 ing her up and kissing them. 
 
 But though May came by herself, Mr. Roberts 
 went to Derwentwater all the same, and was so 
 pleased with his visit that he has gone there 
 once a year ever since ; the fact that the doctor 
 would take no money for his work making the 
 visit a necessity, in order, as he tells his wife 
 in explanation of the annual excursion with the 
 big box of geese and turkeys, that they may pay 
 their debt at last, if not by fair means, then by 
 fouL And it was the doctor that told Mr. Rob- 
 erts so good a girl as May ought to be sent to 
 the best school in the world. And that is how 
 she went to St. Marks and became one of 
 Hester's friends, and although younger than 
 Hester, yet so ambitious a scholar as sometimes 
 to be Hester's despair.
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA 
 MEYER'S.
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 
 
 FT was lonely for Hester in the long vacation. 
 
 * She amused herself sewing on the gallery, 
 watering her flowers, making sweetmeats over 
 a spirit-lamp with poor Madame Cherdidi, who 
 seldom went away either. And taken down to 
 the kitchen by Miss Marks to toss up desserts 
 and make tea-cakes, she was becoming quite a 
 mistress of the useful arts. 
 
 But although Miss Marks sometimes went 
 away with Hester on little journeys, just now 
 Hester was alone with madame and the servants. 
 And she grew tired of sewing, tired of rowing 
 round the cove, tired of her books, almost tired of 
 writing to her dear father far off in the South Seas 
 tired, anyway, of writing to Bella Brook, hav- 
 ing her usual lovely summer at Mrs. Tenterden's. 
 The only excitement of her days was walking to
 
 202 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 the post-office for her letters. And she spent 
 herself in longing to see her father, to put her 
 hand in Miss Marks's, to have a good confidential 
 hour with Marcia. 
 
 She was sitting on the high stone steps in the 
 garden one morning, her guitar across her knee, 
 a streamer of the yet-blossoming sweetbrier 
 reaching down to garland her dark hair, a bird 
 overhead bubbling forth a fearless song as if 
 Hester were only a part of the garden wall. 
 Very forlorn indeed a moment before, all at 
 once she felt as if something had happened, 
 as if she had had a dream. For there stood 
 Marcia in the path, the sun shining straight 
 through her hazel eyes and on her leonine 
 locks. 
 
 " Oh, you dear little graven image ! " she cried. 
 "You look as if you hadn't a friend in the 
 world ! You 're awfully homesick and awfully 
 lonesome, and wish you were tumbling with 
 the brown babies in the surf of Pango Bay ! 
 Don't you, now ? " 
 
 " Oh, Marcia 1 " cried Hester. " Is it really 
 you?"
 
 203 
 
 " Aiid no less " said Marcia. " Come off your 
 perch." 
 
 " Oh, Marcia, you said you would n't talk any 
 more slang ! " 
 
 "Slang? When you really are perched up 
 there ? Well, then, condescend, dark daugh- 
 ter of the South Sea, to come down " 
 
 But the dark daughter was already down, and 
 had both her arms round Marcia's neck. 
 
 " WTiat do you think ? " cried Marcia, return- 
 ing the rapturous embraces. " I always told you 
 St. Marks was an angel ! She and mamma have 
 arranged that you 're to spend next month with 
 me at home." 
 
 " Oh, Marcia ! Oh, Marcia dear ! " 
 
 " Truly. And Miss Persis has come down 
 with me to fetch you back. And to-morrow's the 
 Fourth, you know. And papa has promised us a 
 stack of fireworks oh, lots of them ! blue-fire 
 and flower-pots and set pieces, the flag, and 
 Washington. I like the fireworks, but it's an 
 awful day altogether, for John and Bert and 
 Helen and Agnes are so patriotic it makes you 
 wish there was n't any country."
 
 204 HESTEK STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 " Was n't any country ? " 
 
 " That was what I said, Miss Prim. But as 
 you have so many " 
 
 "I have only one country, Marcia! And I 
 hate the other flags flying down there over the 
 bay at home ! And when I see ours, like a 
 beautiful cloud in the sun, blowing so soft and 
 slow over the water, I love it ! Oh, I love it ! " 
 
 " Great applause ! Well, it is n't the Fourth 
 yet, Mr. Speaker I mean Miss. And you run 
 along now, and throw some gowns into your 
 trunk, and ask the madame to get in and tread 
 them down, if you can't." 
 
 " Oh, Marcia," said Hester, laughing, " I really 
 will be quick ! " 
 
 " I don't suppose the most precise little packer 
 under the sun can be quick. But the train goes 
 back in two hours. And I 've the greatest sur- 
 prise for you! Now I'm going to take Miss 
 Persis round the place, and introduce her to dear 
 old Cherdidi, and let her see how much worse off 
 she could be than teaching the little Meyers." 
 
 " Oh, she could n't ! " said Hester, fervently. 
 
 "It is such engaging frankness that endears
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 205 
 
 Miss Hester Stanley to her schoolmates," said 
 Marcia, kissing her. "The little Meyers don't 
 mind." 
 
 " I know they don't," said Hester, laughing too. 
 
 "I mean, don't care. Come, hurry up, now 
 you Ve hurried down." 
 
 And Hester hurried. Not so much for the 
 sake of the Fourth and its fireworks, for to be 
 with Marcia and Eafe was festival enough for 
 her. And presently they were off. And at the 
 end of the long railway ride there was Charlotte 
 Risley, with all the Meyer children at least 
 almost all in a hay-cart trimmed with green 
 boughs. And when Hester saw them, although 
 she knew that John was a dreadful example for 
 Bert, and that Charlotte was sometimes a terror 
 at school, she felt her heart warm, as if loneli- 
 ness and vacancy had never been, and she had 
 always had this dear little rabble about her. 
 
 " I 'm so glad to see you, Hester," whispered 
 Helen, slipping her hand in hers when they were 
 on the hay in the bottom of the cart. "Eosy 
 says you're her friend. But " 
 
 "Oh, I am every one's friend," said Hester,
 
 206 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 smiling, with her great dark eyes full of happi- 
 ness. 
 
 "It is so good of you to come, Hester dear," 
 Rosy leaned over to say. 
 
 " As if I could help it ! " cried Hester, gleefully. 
 
 " John has got lots of torpedoes for you to fire, 
 Hester," cried Agnes. 
 
 " And cannon-crackers," echoed Mahel. 
 
 " You need n't tell all you know," said John. 
 
 " And I 've got some Roman candles for you, 
 Hester," said Bert. 
 
 "So'vel," said Tot. 
 
 "You can't fire a Roman candle," exclaimed 
 Georgie. 
 
 " I can, too. I can fire anything." 
 
 "Now look out, or I'll fire you out of the 
 cart ! " cried John, dropping the pin-wheel he 
 was fastening on the bush in the corner of the 
 cart, to go off with a splutter. 
 
 " Oh, you have fired us out ! " cried Marcia. 
 "Stop, James! Stop! Whoa, I say!" 
 
 And the children sprang out in a terror lest 
 the hay should blaze. 
 
 " It was n't lighted," said John, loftily.
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 207 
 
 "John, you were forbidden to bring any of 
 those things along," said Miss Persis. "You are 
 not to be trusted with children in muslin frocks. 
 There; now you may get in again. All but 
 John. He may walk home." 
 
 " Then I will walk, too," said Bert. 
 
 " And I," said Georgie, not to be outdone by 
 the bigger boys. 
 
 "So shall I," said Agnes, who was Georgie's 
 guardian angel. 
 
 " Then I shall, too," said Mabel 
 
 " Perhaps we all had better walk," said Marcia, 
 after the way the Meyers had of hanging together 
 in the face of the enemy. 
 
 " I sha'n't," said Charlotte Risley ; "and I don't 
 believe Hester will." 
 
 " It 's a pity," said John, " if people can't do as 
 they please on the Fourth of July ! " 
 
 " It is n't the Fourth yet," said Rosy. 
 
 "The Fourth of July is Independence day, 
 and John Adams said the way to keep it was 
 with gunpowder and noise." 
 
 " I wish John Adams had never been born ! " 
 cried Marcia.
 
 208 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 "Marcia," said Miss Persis, "I thought you 
 were going to help me. Get into the cart im- 
 mediately now all but John." 
 
 And soon Mr. John was left trudging behind 
 in the sun and dust, while silence and melan- 
 choly filled the hay-cart. 
 
 By the time they reached the old red house, 
 and the baby Hester had toddled out to meet her 
 little godmother Hester, who could n't kiss her 
 enough, good humor was restored. Mrs. Meyer 
 asked Miss Persis if they were all there, and Mr. 
 Meyer asked if she had not better count them, 
 and Eafe came rolling himself along in his 
 wheel-chair. That was the great surprise for 
 Hester, since the last time she had seen him was 
 up at Old Benbow, when he could help himself 
 but very little, and had to be lifted from arm to 
 arm. She could hardly think of a greater joy 
 than this; for that Eafe should be well again 
 was one of Hester's fondest dreams. But there 
 was not much time for dreaming now. 
 
 "Charlotte is going to have a party," said 
 Marcia. " It seems to me you ought to run 
 home now, Charlotte dear. You 're the hostess.
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 209 
 
 All the Meyer children are invited over to Char- 
 lotte's. And they have to go and wash their 
 faces first, you know." 
 
 This was necessary. For Charlotte's aunt was 
 so particular, you may remember, that she could 
 not keep Charlotte herself at home, but had to 
 send her away to school. From which you can 
 imagine that in dreary vacations it was gayety 
 for Charlotte to go over to the Meyers' and misery 
 for the Meyers to go over to Charlotte's, where 
 the great family portraits all along the hall half 
 frightened them, where the shining floors were 
 so slippery that they hardly kept their balance, 
 and where they had to sit in a stiff row and hold 
 their tea-plates carefully, and say " Yes, 'm " and 
 " No, 'm " for Miss Kisley, who was thought to 
 be old-fashioned, was very particular about the 
 " 'm." They usually had a reaction after one of 
 Charlotte's tea-parties. 
 
 Meanwhile, with John's fatal facility for get- 
 ting into mischief, he found companions on the 
 way, and did not reach home till the children 
 were trooping up the green from the party. 
 And then, seeing his father late about every- 
 u
 
 210 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 thing just opening and assorting the box of 
 fireworks that the expressman had left a little 
 while since on the front piazza, he slipped 
 through the side door, that he might whip up- 
 stairs and be in bed before his absence should be 
 noted. But those glad voices were too much for 
 the little scamp. He would have his feu de joie, 
 after all. He rushed for one of the serpent 
 rockets from his store, and lighted and sent it 
 writhing and hissing down the green to greet 
 the home-comers. And crying out and skipping 
 here and there, to his delight, to escape the 
 twisting, flashing thing, they looked up and saw 
 John's face in the light grinning like a gargoyle. 
 But in a second that face was transfixed with 
 horror. For there was a wild cry, a crack and 
 crash and roar and splutter, and blinding flashes 
 filled his eyes, and shrill screams rent his ears. 
 He heard his father's voice and James's in the 
 midst of the uproar that seemed to go on unin- 
 terruptedly, while the air was thick with the 
 bursting of Roman candles, the whizzing of 
 rockets going all ways at once, the whirring 
 of wheels, the detonation of cannon-crackers,
 
 THE FOUETH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 211 
 
 dark with volumes of smoke through which 
 went up flakes of flame, and foul with the smell 
 of burned gunpowder. He realized in an instant 
 that some spark from his wicked little serpent 
 rocket had flashed into the heap of combustihles 
 and reached a grain of gunpowder and all was 
 done. To-morrow night's fireworks had gone off 
 in one big blaze and roar and it was fortunate 
 if that was all. 
 
 James had the hose attached to the hydrant, 
 and was flooding the piazza. The explosions were 
 over although Mr. Meyer was having an ex- 
 plosion of his own. The fireworks were gone. 
 All the pleasure the children and the neighbors 
 had been expecting had vanished in three minutes. 
 John felt as if there were no heart in his body, 
 it sank so not altogether from fear, but with 
 real disappointment for the other children. " Oh, 
 why can't I be good, like Eafe ! " he sighed to 
 himself. And he crept into bed, after his father 
 had made him a visit, sore and sorry, and wished 
 there had never been a pin-wheel made. 
 
 " There," said Marcia, when Hester was in the 
 little bed opposite her own, " that 's a very fair
 
 212 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 beginning for our sort of Fourth of July. It 
 does n't always go off quite so fine at the start. 
 Mamma's been made ill, and John has had a 
 whipping, and the little children are too nervous 
 to sleep. Was n't Eafe beautiful, trying to quiet 
 them when his own nerves were all on edge so ? 
 Now, if we can get forty winks before pandemo- 
 nium sets in, we may have strength for to-mor- 
 row. I don't know what is going to become of 
 John " 
 
 But Hester was asleep while she was talking. 
 
 The town clocks had been answering one 
 another with three strokes of their silver tongues 
 when Hester was waked from the dream of an 
 Indian war-whoop by sounds as blood-curdling 
 long blasts of fish-horns under the windows, 
 and reports of revolvers. It was the boys 
 John's boys who had come to call him out, it 
 having been in the programme that he was to 
 escape by way of the roof of the shed and meet 
 them ; and as he had not done so, they had come 
 to demand his surrender from the superior 
 powers. 
 
 "You speak to them, Hester," said Marcia.
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 213 
 
 "They all know me, and they won't mind a 
 word I say. They'll only hoot the louder. 
 And they '11 kill mamma if they stay." 
 
 Hester slipped on her little dressing-gown and 
 went to the open window. She felt very angry, 
 and the late-rising moon shone full in her face, 
 which was very pale, and kindled her great black 
 eyes, so that she fairly struck the surprised 
 urchins with a sort of awe. 
 
 " John's mother is very ill," she said. " If you 
 don't want to be murderers, you will go away." 
 And the poor little fellows, terrified at the 
 thought, made a rush across the green, and were 
 gone, to fire their guns and burn their crackers 
 under other innocent windows. 
 
 But John had gone with them. Twice that 
 night Hester had to repeat this performance 
 with parcels of strange boys who came along. 
 And she felt as if she had not been asleep at all 
 when, just at the pink of dawn, the town bells 
 began to ring, and somewhere, not very far off, 
 they were giving a salute of great guns. The 
 reports of the little guns and the crackling of 
 crackers were all about them, and Hester found
 
 214 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 herself waiting feverishly for the next one ; and 
 she fell off into troubled and disordered dreams, 
 and was just talking with a fire-cracker that 
 stood up and offered her a hand that was so 
 warm she dropped it, and opened her eyes 
 wider, to find the sun shining full across her 
 face. 
 
 " It 's Fourth of July ! " said Marcia. 
 
 " Oh, you need n't tell me ! " sighed Hester, 
 stopping her ears with her hands at the noise of 
 a roar from Bert because John would not give 
 him the torpedoes and things he couldn't use 
 himself for John had come home wounded in 
 both hands from his dark foray, and was in bed 
 for the day at least. 
 
 " It 's always the way," said Mr. Meyer, at 
 breakfast. " If you anticipate a pleasure unlaw- 
 fully, you spoil it. If John had let his pin- 
 wheels alone yesterday, we should have had our 
 fireworks." 
 
 " We did," said Georgie. 
 
 " We should have had them in quite a different 
 manner, and without making your mother ilL 
 Poor John ! It 's lucky it 's his fingers ; that '11
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 215 
 
 keep him at home, and be the means of saving 
 his eyes, perhaps." 
 
 " And it 's too bad," said Helen. It's Hester's 
 first Fourth of July." 
 
 " Her first gunpowder Fourth, you mean," said 
 Marcia. 
 
 " It seems to me as if I had done nothing but 
 smell smoke ever since last night," said Miss 
 Persis. 
 
 " Why, how do they keep the Fourth down on 
 your islands, Hester ? " 
 
 "They don't keep it," said Marcia. "And if 
 they did, they could n't do anything so silly and 
 barbarous as we do, with our crackers and things. 
 And we have to get them from Eastern barba- 
 rians, anyway." 
 
 " That 's just because you 're a girl ! " said 
 Bert. 
 
 " I Ve got lots of torpedoes," said Tot, defiantly, 
 " and I mean to fire them." 
 
 " Well, you 're only a boy," said Marcia, exas- 
 peratingly. " It does n't matter what a boy does 
 till he drinks his milk without spilling it. For 
 my part, I wish there wasn't any such day!
 
 216 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 The ice-cream at dinner's the only good thing 
 about it. Seems to me, I 'm smelling smoke all 
 the time too, Miss Persis. I suppose it's the 
 powder." 
 
 " Oh, Marcia !" cried Hester. "If there wasn't 
 any Fourth of July, you 'd be no better off, per- 
 haps, than one of the island women down there 
 swimming inside the reefs. You would n't know 
 any more. You 'd be worshipping an idol ! Or 
 you 'd have your feet squeezed all out of shape, 
 like the Chinese women, so that you could only 
 get along the way a baby does." And she 
 stopped to kiss the baby Hester, lest this should 
 have hurt her feelings. "You'd be working in 
 the fields, harnessed with a dog, maybe." 
 
 " Oh dear, dear, don't tell me any more. Take 
 care, Mabel! There you go all over my clean 
 gown ! " 
 
 " Well, Hester," said Mr. Meyer, when it was 
 quiet again, "if you kept the Fourth as you 
 chose, what would you do ? Another cup, Miss 
 Persis, please." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ! " said Hester. 
 
 " Well, fancy."
 
 THE FOUKTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 217 
 
 " I think yes I would have the great 
 guns off on the hill and echoing out at sea." 
 
 " And so would 1 1 " came a chorus. 
 
 "And the bells, you know. They sound so 
 glad." 
 
 " Oh, bells always do," said Marcia. 
 
 "But why more glad to-day than any other 
 day?" 
 
 " Oh," said Hester, " because they say, ' Come 
 here, come over here, all you poor people. Here 
 are fields and food and friends.' " 
 
 " And they say, ' Be glad, you people who are 
 here now, that you were born free and have the 
 chance to make yourselves all that human beings 
 may,' " said Miss Persis. 
 
 " And they say, ' Be good little boys, so that 
 you can grow to be Presidents,' " cried Bert. 
 
 "They say, 'Down with Kings! down with 
 thrones ! We rang when they drove tyrants over 
 the sea the way St. Patrick drove the snakes out 
 of Ireland,' " said Marcia. 
 
 "They say, 'Fire your crackers! fire your 
 crackers!'" cried Georgie, leaving his oatmeal, 
 and runniog to the window to throw out the
 
 218 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 torpedo that was in the way of burning a hole 
 in his pocket. 
 
 " They don't say, ' Ask Miss Persis to excuse 
 you first/ " said Marcia, witheringly. " Oh, I do 
 hate the smell of gunpowder so!" 
 
 " I don't," said Bert. " And don't you forget 
 it!" 
 
 " And after the bells, Hester ? " asked Mr. 
 Meyer. 
 
 " We might go up to Rafe's sitting-room, and 
 have him read the Declaration ; and then have 
 you tell us about the day they signed it, sir. 
 And we would sing the songs." 
 
 " We would sing this," cried Marcia, running 
 into the next room, where there was a piano, 
 all the children joining her as she sang the " Flag 
 Song " to the tune of " Yankee Doodle " : 
 
 Out upon the four winds blow, 
 
 Tell the world your story; 
 Thrice in heart's blood dipped before 
 
 They called your name Old Glory ! 
 Stream, Old Glory, bear your stars 
 
 High among the seven ; 
 Stream a watch-fire on the dark, 
 
 And make a sign in heaven !
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 219 
 
 Mighty harvests gild your plains, 
 
 Mighty rivers bear them, 
 Everywhere you fly you bid 
 
 All the hungry share them; 
 Blooms the wilderness for you, 
 
 Plenty follows after, 
 Underneath your shadow go 
 
 Peace and love and laughter. 
 
 When from sky to sky you float, 
 
 Far in wide savannas, 
 Vast horizons lost in light 
 
 Answer with hosannas. 
 Symbol of unmeasured power, 
 
 Blessed promise sealing, 
 All your hills are hills of God, 
 
 And all your founts are healing! 
 
 Still to those the wronged of earth 
 
 Sanctuary render ; 
 For hope and home and heaven they see 
 
 Within your sacred splendor! 
 Stream, Old Glory, bear your stars 
 
 High among the seven ; 
 Stream a watch-fire on the dark, 
 
 And make a sign in heaven ! 
 
 "And then," continued Hester, as they came 
 back, " Miss Persis says she would have things 
 in the town-hall, plays where the children have 
 parts " 
 
 " Or tableaux," said Miss Persis, " of scenes in 
 
 history."
 
 220 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " And bands of music in the square, and all 
 the people out walking," said Helen. 
 
 " And ice-cream free ! " cried Bert. 
 
 " And lemonade ! " cried Agnes. 
 
 " And a great dinner in a tent, or else all go off 
 on some picnic or sail," said Marcia. 
 
 " And come back for fireworks at night," said 
 Hester. 
 
 "And come back for fireworks at night," said 
 Helen. 
 
 " And not a speck of gunpowder anywhere 
 else," said Marcia. 
 
 " I would n't give a cent for such a Fourth as 
 that ! " cried Bert. 
 
 "We shouldn't have as good as that if we 
 moved down to the Texas ranch where you want 
 to go so, Bert," said his father. 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " cried Marcia arid Helen together. 
 
 " Oh, we may have to. Letters, Bridget ? " 
 as the maid brought in the mail. " One for you, 
 Marcia ; Miss Persis ; here 's a Eound Table epis- 
 tle for Lady Kosy ; one of the Shut-Ins for Kafe. 
 H'm, h'm, h'm they'll keep. What were we 
 saying ? "
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 221 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " cried Marcia, waving her letter. 
 " It 's from Bella Brook ! And Mrs. Tenterden 
 is coming down the coast this afternoon in her 
 little steam-yacht to take us all to see the fire- 
 works along the shore this evening ! She let 
 Bella choose what to do, and Bella chose this. 
 Oh, is n't she a starter ! We 're all invited. Too 
 bad about John though I don't know. I won- 
 der if I Ve a clean cambric ? Helen, you must 
 wear your white lawn " 
 
 "On a yacht? I shall wear my dark blue 
 flannel." 
 
 " Well, your too, too solid flesh will melt then." 
 
 This was joy enough for the day. The younger 
 ones promised their best behavior and obedience 
 to Marcia and Charlotte and Hester and their 
 father ; it was well understood that although 
 John must stay at home with his mother and 
 the baby and Miss Persis, it would take all of 
 these to keep company manners among the little 
 Meyers. " And they have n't any other man- 
 ners, you know," said Marcia. 
 
 Hester proposed to stay at home and amuse 
 John, but no one would listen to that, which
 
 222 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 John thought very unfeeling. And after spend- 
 ing the morning watching for the little yacht 
 which was not due till three or four in the after- 
 noon, at last they saw it float in over the bar 
 like a bubble. Then while they waited im- 
 patiently, Mrs. Tenterden had to come up with 
 Bella to call on Miss Eisley, whom she knew 
 and go into ecstasies over the old house, and the 
 old heirlooms, and the shining old furniture, and 
 the grim old portraits that were Miss Risley's 
 pride and care. 
 
 But at last they were off, the little Swan put- 
 ting her nose down through this wave and 
 skimming over the top of that, so that it was 
 impossible for the Meyer children to restrain the 
 manifestation of their delight, which was very 
 agreeable to Mrs. Tenterden, although Charlotte 
 and Marcia made her feel that they were digni- 
 fied enough for all the rest. Then Hester, with 
 her South Sea Island remembrances, was an 
 object of interest to Mrs. Tenterden, who was 
 always on the outlook for something novel. And 
 so the time sped. And the afternoon changed 
 into a sunset that the sea reflected and doubled,
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 223 
 
 till they seemed to be in the middle of a 
 gorgeous shell. And then the purple twilight 
 came, and the evening star trembled like a fall- 
 ing drop of gold and looked at her shadow in a 
 long broken line of light upon the waves ; and 
 suddenly a yellow sun seemed to burst in the 
 top of the sky and shed a shower of emerald and 
 sapphire and ruby stars ; and the dark sea re- 
 peated them. And then all the western sky was 
 a shifting glory of long curving flights and rib- 
 bons of fire, and dances of shooting stars, and 
 clusters of jewels paling to sparks, and all 
 painted again in a tangle of lustres upon the sea, 
 which had begun to be a little rough as the 
 Swan headed down the shore for home. And 
 Mrs. Tenterden said it was so charming to have 
 all this without the noise and confusion of the 
 land ; and the young gentlemen were initiating 
 Mr. Meyer into the mysteries of yachting, quite 
 heedless that Mr. Meyer had sailed yachts before 
 they were born ; and the children were absorbed 
 in the multitude of breaking splendors, and 
 Hester and the other girls were in a hushed 
 rapture of enjoyment. And so they came into
 
 224 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 the bay a great good fortune that no one was 
 uncomfortable. 
 
 For the wind was coming up, and it was not 
 such smooth sailing as before. As they neared 
 the bar of the river, ifc was quite exciting sailing. 
 It was very exciting sailing to Mr. Meyer, who 
 stood up on the bow and watched sharply what 
 Mrs. Tenterden had said was some set piece of fire- 
 works on the horizon a steady glare that grew 
 larger and redder as they drew nearer, and did 
 not burn out, as such fires do, but now and again 
 streamed up with volumes of illumined smoke. 
 
 " It is some conflagration," said Mrs. Tenterden 
 then. " Do you suppose it is a meeting-house ? 
 A barn full of hay ? Dear me, I hope it is not 
 any one's house and home ! I am almost sure 
 it is, though. Can you make it out, Mr. Meyer ? " 
 And she handed him the glass. 
 
 Mr. Meyer gave a long and steady look. He 
 saw a mass of wallowing flame ; he saw the lofty 
 elm-trees illuminated till they looked like foun- 
 tains of fiery sparks ; and it seemed to him that 
 if the Swan did not go faster he should have to 
 swim ashore himself. For the tide was running
 
 THE FOURTH AT MARCIA MEYER'S. 225 
 
 strongly over the bar, and the wind met it with 
 a great cross-sea, and the little Swan, on the top 
 of a wave, made a plunge, and dipped her beak 
 into a sea that ran to swamp her, and rose and 
 shook as if she were tossing off the foam, and 
 rolled from side to side, and diving, with her 
 screw out of the water, wriggled like a worm on 
 a pin, as Marcia said ; and up she rose, and down 
 she plunged, and slipped over into still water. 
 And in five minutes more she had left her guests 
 ashore, and was on her way back between the 
 harbor lights. 
 
 There was a great turmoil at the landing. 
 Fire-bells were still ringing, and cries and shouts 
 still rending the air. But Miss Kisley was on the 
 spot. "Oh, Mr. Meyer!" she cried. "They're 
 all over at my house ! And all in bed ! Every 
 one ! And most of the furniture is saved ! It 
 was a spark from those fireworks last night that 
 caught under the piazza and crept along the 
 sills, smouldering all day. Miss Persis kept say- 
 ing she smelt smoke. But they 're all safe," she 
 said, with the last remnant of breath. " No one 
 is hurt at all." 
 
 15
 
 226 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " Thank God for that ! " said Mr. Meyer. 
 
 " And you must all stay with me," said Miss 
 Eisley, rising to heights of sacrifice, " till you 
 can rebuild the place." 
 
 "You can't rebuild a homestead," said Mr. 
 Meyer. " You are very good, Miss Eisley. We 
 shall be glad to stay till we find some spot for 
 the rest of the warm weather. But this settles 
 it. We shall go to Texas; and you will have 
 to come down to the ranch for a return of your 
 hospitality," he said-; while Marcia rushed on 
 like a tempest to find her mother and John and 
 the baby, leaving Hester and Eafe to quiet the 
 sobs of the rest as they clustered, half bewildered, 
 round Eafe's chair. 
 
 The little Meyers slept late the next morn- 
 ing ; and dressing them in what came first, and 
 impressing the fact that Miss Eisley's goodness 
 must be met with goodness, Marcia sent them 
 all over to play in the ruins. 
 
 "You see, it 's just as I say, Hester," said she. 
 " It 's no better than a Gunpowder Plot the way 
 we keep Fourth of July. Sometimes we burn 
 up a city, and sometimes only a house. Oh, the
 
 THE FOURTH AT, MARCIA MEYER'S. 227 
 
 dear old house ! " cried Marcia, the tears running 
 over her face. "You'll never come to us an- 
 other Fourth of July, Hester." 
 
 " Not in the same dear old house, Marcia," said 
 Hester. " But it is n't the house, you know ; it 's 
 the people in the house. And I should love you 
 and come to see you just the same if you lived 
 in a tent." 
 
 "Oh, Hester! That's just the greatest! 
 What do you think ? Of all the strange things 
 in this strange world ! Papa has hired a couple 
 of big tents, and he 's going to pitch them over 
 in the garden, and we 're going to live in them 
 there till he looks about him, and makes 
 up his mind what he really will do. Poor 
 papa ! " 
 
 " Oh, Marcia, how lovely ! how really lovely ! 
 And do you believe I can stay, too ? Are you 
 sure I won't be in the way ? It will be just one 
 long picnic ! " said Hester. 
 
 "Well, I suppose it will be," said Marcia. 
 "Gypsy fires and all that. It's well to have 
 something good, anyway, out of our Fourth. 
 There come Charlotte, and Eafe with the baby
 
 228 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 in his chair. I ought to be taking care of that 
 child." 
 
 " I ought to be," said Hester, " when I 'm her 
 fairy godmother." 
 
 " They 're going to set the stakes for the tents," 
 cried Rafe. "And the baby is going to strike 
 the first blow." 
 
 "Oh!" said Charlotte. "Just think of me 
 living in that house with all those portraits, and 
 you living in a tent all summer ! You must ask 
 me to visit you!" 
 
 "Angels have always visited people who live 
 in tents," said Rafe.
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE.
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 
 
 T TESTEE had more opportunity for visiting 
 * A than many of the girls at Waterways; 
 for her home being on the other side of the 
 world, she could not easily return there either 
 in the long or short vacations; and several of 
 Miss Marks's friends were very glad to have 
 her whenever she could come to them. 
 
 After being at Old Benbow, and being received 
 with favor by Grandmother Maurice, she some- 
 times went up to town for a holiday with Mar- 
 nie, welcomed by the children with hugs and 
 with treats, and introduced by them to all their 
 objects of pleasure. And in the winter-time 
 in town the object that gave them most pleasure 
 was Little Eosalie. 
 
 It was a young "play-acting girl," as the 
 children's nurse called her. Her name, on the
 
 232 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 v 
 advertising bills posted up at every street corner, 
 
 was " LITTLE KOSALIE ; " and the great delight 
 of the children was to be allowed to go to a 
 matine'e on a Saturday when they could hear 
 and see her. It made no difference to them 
 who else was on the stage. Irving himself or 
 Booth, Patti or Nilsson, might have figured there ; 
 to the children they would have been merely as 
 aids to "Little Rosalie." There was no play to 
 speak of till she appeared ; or if there were, it 
 was only because it led up to her appearance ; 
 and when she vanished, it was all flat and un- 
 profitable till she came on again. 
 
 When they went home, they used to talk over 
 the afternoon's experience untiringly, by the nur- 
 sery firelight and even after they were in their 
 beds. But the subject of their talk was never the 
 mystery and excitement of the play, the charm 
 of the scenery with its lovely landscapes and 
 splendid drawing-rooms, the beauty of the lead- 
 ing lady, the sweetness of the music, the drollery 
 of clown or comic man it was always and 
 only Little Rosalie. And Hester was presently 
 as much interested as any one of the rest.
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 233 
 
 Sometimes Little Eosalie was one character 
 in the play, and sometimes she was another. 
 Once she was a moonlight fairy, in a little white 
 silk gown whose long folds fell about her feet ; 
 her soft hair was loose on her shoulders, a star 
 gleamed on her forehead, and another star tipped 
 the lily's stem she held for a wand; with her 
 eyes uplifted, and a white light on her face, she 
 sang, and the children thought a little angel 
 from heaven would sing and look in just that 
 way. And then a rosy light shone on her and 
 made her lovely and luminous ; again this 
 changed to a pale-blue light, while a mist gath- 
 ered about her and she seemed to grow dimmer 
 and dimmer, singing more and more faintly, and 
 now s be was gone ! The children knew noth- 
 ing of the way in which folds of lace, drawn one 
 after another between her and themselves, had 
 caused her to disappear; all seemed to be due 
 to Kosalie's own powers and perfections. And 
 when, in another scene, she came dancing on in 
 short, gauzy skirts, with two butterfly-wings of 
 peacock-feathers upon her shoulders, and, spring- 
 ing upon a cloud, went sailing up out of sight
 
 234 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 as the play ended with soft music, they always 
 found it difficult thoroughly to believe that she 
 was not a fairy indeed ; and the next time they 
 were taken to see her, they felt some misgivings 
 as to whether she really would -be there. And 
 when she did appear, but as a poor little street- 
 girl selling trifles from her basket, then it seemed 
 as if she had been a poor little street-girl all her 
 life, and as if her fairy existence were all a dream 
 of their own. 
 
 What they would have said at first, if they 
 could have known that Little Rosalie acted the 
 part of a street-girl selling trifles for her mother 
 and the rest at home in so lifelike a manner 
 because Eosalie was in truth and reality working 
 for her own mother and the others at home, I 
 do not know. They never thought of her as liv- 
 ing a life apart from that at the theatre. It 
 never occurred to them to ask what became of 
 her in the times when she was not tripping and 
 dancing hither and thither in the midst of 
 colored lights and enchantments ; whether she 
 was packed up and put away with the stage 
 properties, or whether she lived perpetually in
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 235 
 
 the light and atmosphere in which they saw her 
 play her mimic part. But there was no lady in 
 all the land, nor in all the story-books, nor in all 
 dear Mamie's histories, nor in all the tales that 
 Aunt Nan had to tell, who was one tithe as in- 
 teresting to them as Little Rosalie. And when 
 they put a penny aside for their church money 
 and their missionary money, they were very apt 
 to put two pennies aside for the ticket that was 
 to be an " open sesame " to Little Rosalie's do- 
 main ; and even their own savings were not 
 enough, but had to be helped out by Uncle 
 John or Aunt Nan, for there were so many 
 of them that they usually had found it best 
 when they went to the theatre to take a box, 
 and that required quite a sum of money. And 
 they always had the indulgence when Hester 
 came ; and it was the only thing that reconciled 
 them to her going away because then she 
 could come again ! 
 
 But it was not so very often, after all, that 
 this indulgence was permitted them. Not half 
 a dozen times a year were they allowed so great 
 a treat ; but once for themselves and with their
 
 236 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 own money ; and once because it was Christmas 
 week ; and once because some lady came with a 
 young daughter of her own to be entertained ; 
 and once when their cousins came up from the 
 country, and oh, how they wished they had 
 cousins to come up from the country every week ! 
 
 "No," said mamma. "When you have been 
 having hard lessons, when Mamie has been 
 struggling with her ' compound proportion ' " 
 
 "'The rule of three perplexes me, and frac- 
 tions drive me mad,'" sang Larry, half under 
 his breath. 
 
 " and Larry laboring over his Natural 
 Philosophy, and Kosy has mastered her diffi- 
 culties, and Joe and all have been doing 
 their best, then I think an excursion into 
 Fairyland does you no harm, and I let you go 
 and see Little Rosalie. But if you went as often 
 as you wish to go, why, it would be like a 
 dinner that is all dessert ! And that, you know, 
 would never do." 
 
 " I suppose not, mamma," said Marnie, a little 
 sorrowfully. 
 
 "Going to see Little Rosalie," said Larry,
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 237 
 
 "isn't like going to the theatre generally 
 It 's " 
 
 " It 's just because we love her so," said Marnie. 
 " And wish to see her," added Joe. 
 " And I really think she knows us now," said 
 Marnie. " I should have liked so much to throw 
 her my bunch of violets, if I had dared, the very 
 last time we were there." 
 
 " Why did n't you tell me ? " said Larry. " I'd 
 have thrown them for you." 
 
 " Because I knew you would, I suppose," an- 
 swered Marnie. "And I didn't know whether 
 it would do, you know." 
 
 "That's just like a girl ! " said Larry. 
 " You don't expect me to be like anything else, 
 do you ? " said Marnie, with her sweet roguish 
 smile. 
 
 " Mamma," said little Kate, returning to the 
 subject, " is she weally alive, or do they only 
 wind her up and make her go ? " 
 
 "I don't believe she's alive just as we are," 
 said Marnie. " She has those lovely wings, you 
 know." 
 
 "She doesn't have them all the time," said
 
 238 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Joe. " She does n't have them when she 's kneel- 
 ing by her dying mother, or selling the things in 
 the street." 
 
 " Oh, then" said Rosy, " she 's acting ! And 
 the wings are probably folded up under her 
 ragged gown." 
 
 " But I should think they 'd show just a little 
 bit" 
 
 " Well, they don't Oh, should n't you like to 
 know her, Mamie, and talk with her once ! " 
 
 But Marnie was busy just then in comforting 
 little Kate, who had hit her head against some 
 corner. 
 
 " The idea ! " said Grandmother Maurice, who 
 was there for two or three days. " I should cer- 
 tainly be afraid, Margaret, that, being so fas- 
 cinated by her, they might some time become 
 acquainted with this child-actor." 
 
 "And what if they should?" said their 
 mother. "I am acquainted with her." 
 
 " You, mamma, you ? " came a chorus. " Oh, 
 mamma, you can't mean so ! how did it hap- 
 pen ? tell us all about it, please ! " 
 
 " Is she a truly person ? " asked little Kate.
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 239 
 
 "Does she live in the theatre?" asked 
 Joe. 
 
 " Has she a mother, or anybody ? " asked 
 Mamie. 
 
 " Yes, she is a ' truly ' person," answered their 
 mother. " She lives on a street around the cor- 
 ner a little way from the theatre. She has a 
 mother, a very sick mother, and an old grand- 
 mother, and a number of brothers and sisters. 
 And she takes care of all of them." 
 
 " Takes care ? " asked Mamie, drawing her 
 puzzled brows together. 
 
 " Yes, actually takes care. In the first place, 
 there is no money for the family but that which 
 she herself earns. Out of her salary she pays 
 the rent of their rooms, buys their coal, and all 
 their food, their clothes, their medicines, and 
 everything else they have. Of course, they do 
 not have a great deal. And, more than that, 
 this lovely little fairy creature, who seems to you 
 a being of wings and colors, of light, music, and 
 grace, of dancing, and of miraculous fairy-powers, 
 rises in the morning, and makes the fire, and 
 dresses the children, the two youngest are
 
 240 HESTEK STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 twins, and they all are younger than she her- 
 self, too young yet to do any work worth men- 
 tioning. Then she prepares the breakfast, and 
 makes her mother comfortable, helps her poor 
 old grandmother, and arranges the rooms. Some 
 of the smaller ones help her in that. And then 
 she goes to rehearsal; that is, to the empty 
 theatre, where they practise portions of the even- 
 ing work, with nobody to look on or applaud." 
 
 " Oh, how I should like to be there ! " cried 
 Marnie. " I mean, if all the rest of us could be." 
 
 " It would n't attract you in the least," said 
 Grandmother Maurice. "All that part of the 
 house where the audience sits is dark; black 
 cambric covers the seats, and keeps the dust 
 from the velvet and gilding; and on the stage 
 the scenes are not set, so you see only odd 
 pieces of painted boards and ropes and pulleys ; 
 while carpenters and their men are running 
 about without their coats. The players are in 
 their every-day clothes, and rattle over their 
 parts, going through only the necessary motions, 
 or trying certain of the mechanical effects, the 
 things that are done by machinery, you know,
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 241 
 
 such as riding away on clouds, or sailing upon a 
 river, and so on. Oh, they are not at all interest- 
 ing, rehearsals," said grandmother. " You make 
 the thing altogether too attractive, Margaret." 
 
 "Well, then, rehearsal over," resumed their 
 mother, with a smile, " our Little Rosalie goes 
 to market, and comes home, gets dinner, and 
 clears it away. And if she has a new part to 
 learn, she sits down to study it ; and the study 
 is severe, for she has to learn by heart every 
 word she is to say, every gesture she is to make, 
 and every step she is to take. She has to prac- 
 tise her dances, sometimes for hours, and her 
 songs, too. Oh, she works every day for many 
 hours harder than you ever worked any hour 
 in your lives. She has also to make and mend 
 for the others, although the old grandmother 
 gives some little help; and, when night comes, 
 the twins and the three other children put them- 
 selves to bed, while off she goes with her basket 
 of costumes on her arm. Nobody thinks of 
 troubling her, for all the policemen and people 
 about there know her and are on the lookout to 
 see her safely on her way. 
 
 16
 
 242 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " When the play is over, she comes 'out of the 
 stage-door into the night. It is often snowy and 
 slippery or dark and muddy from a heavy rain, 
 with not a star to be seen, the long reflections 
 of the street lamps shining on the wet pave- 
 ments. Sometimes she has a little supper with 
 her grandmother before she creeps into bed, tired 
 out ; but often she goes to bed hungry. 
 
 " I suppose she may be able to play her fairy 
 and childish parts for some years yet ; for poor 
 food and not enough of it, late hours and littla 
 sleep, and her hard life, altogether, will perhaps 
 have the effect of making her grow very slowly, 
 and it is probable she will always be rather 
 undersized. But her beautiful voice ought to be 
 carefully trained." 
 
 " Oh, mamma ! " cried Marnie, with tears in 
 her sweet eyes, " I think it is so cruel. If she 
 could only come and live with us ! " 
 
 " And what would become then of her mother 
 and grandmother, of her sisters and brothers ? 
 They have nobody but Rosalie to do anything 
 for them, and would have to go to the almshouse 
 or die of starvation if it were not for her 
 earnings."
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 243 
 
 " Oh, I forgot ! " 
 
 "Papa could take care of them!" exclaimed 
 Joe. 
 
 "Do you think papa could take care of an- 
 other family of eight persons, and educate and 
 bring up the younger ones " 
 
 "I suppose you think he is made of goldl" 
 cried Larry. 
 
 " There are people worse off than these," re- 
 sumed mamma ; " people who have n't even any 
 Rosalie to earn money for them. And such 
 people need all the time and money that papa 
 and I have to spare." 
 
 "But it all seems so strange," said Marnie, 
 "that I can't get quite used to it. She lives 
 around the corner there, in some rooms, and 
 cooks and sweeps and sews, and has a mother 
 and brothers and sisters, as we do?" 
 
 " Yes ; and I suppose her mother's heart aches 
 to have poor Little Eosalie doing so much; no 
 doubt she often grieves over it. I 've no doubt, 
 too, that she may feel a sort of terror, dreading 
 what would become of the other children if any- 
 thing happened to Rosalie. So, too, all the
 
 244 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 children look upon Eosalie as the one who gives 
 them everything they have ; as their protector 
 in short, their guardian-angel. When you saw 
 her in that singing-play hovering over the 
 children asleep in the wood, with the great rosy 
 wings arching up above her head and pointing 
 down below her feet, you did n't dream that she 
 really was a guardian-angel to so many, did 
 you?" 
 
 "Oh, mamma," cried Mamie, with tears in 
 her eyes, " and I am of no use at all ! " and she 
 could n't see a word of Eosy's exercise, which she 
 had been looking over for her sister when the 
 talk began, because of those tears. 
 
 " I think," said Hester, timidly, " I don't like it 
 quite so well to know about her really, though. 
 Larry said once that when the play was over she 
 was changed into a footlight and somebody 
 turned her off, and when it was lighted again, 
 she stepped out. But " 
 
 " Oh, but Marnie said that could n't be," cried 
 Larry, " it was the night Joe cut his hand and 
 Marnie made him forget the pain by talking about 
 Rosalie, and she said that, perhaps, when the
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 245 
 
 lights were put out, Rosalie went down through 
 one of the trap-doors and into a narrow passage 
 that ran far away under all the city and was 
 lighted by a moon at the very farthest end, a 
 moon setting in the sea, for the passage comes 
 out in a cave on the sea-coast ; and that the cave 
 was all lined, on top and sides, with bell-tones ; 
 and every time that the light of the little break- 
 ing waves glanced up and struck them, all the 
 bell-tones were set ringing, and it was Little 
 Kosalie's work to polish off the bell-tones and 
 tune them and make them ring just right, and 
 when this was done those tones were what made 
 all the music in the world." 
 
 "I didn't believe it," said Joe. "How do her 
 bell-tones make mamma's voice sing, I 'd like to 
 know?" 
 
 "How does the sunlight make this fire shine?" 
 asked Larry, loftily. 
 
 "Go along with your conundrums! You 
 think, just because you're in Philosophy, that 
 nobody else knows anything ! " 
 
 "I said 'perhaps,' Joe," said Mamie, gently. 
 "It was all only 'maybe,' you know."
 
 246 HESTER STANLEY'S FEIENDS. 
 
 " Well, I 'm sure Eosalie makes just as much 
 music in the world in the way she does as she 
 could in that way," said Larry. 
 
 " Can't we go and see her at her real home, 
 mamma, or have her come to see us ? " asked 
 Mamie, wistfully. 
 
 " There it is, Margaret ! Just as I told you ! " 
 said Grandmother Maurice. 
 
 "I am afraid it would do her no good, my 
 dear. It is no kindness to make her discontented 
 with her own home. And ours is very different." 
 
 " At any rate," said Eosy, " you said we might 
 go to see her when Hester came." 
 
 " So I did, if you had money enough between 
 you for a box." 
 
 " It is ten dollars for a box," exclaimed grand- 
 mother. 
 
 " But there are so many of us that it is cheaper 
 to have a box, and in some respects it is more 
 convenient." 
 
 "I don't like a box half so well," said Joe. 
 " There 's always somebody that does n't see any- 
 thing." 
 
 " Well, it is never you, Joe ! " said grandmother.
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 247 
 
 Joe colored up so that it was certain he would 
 have answered back and spoiled everything, if 
 Hester's hand had not stolen gently to his arm ; 
 still he must say something sharp. 
 
 " Rosy does n't care," he remarked, " if I do 
 have the best seat for seeing, so long as she 'B in 
 the front of the box where people can see her 
 long curls." 
 
 " Oh, I should think you 'd be ashamed, Joe ! " 
 cried Rosy. " I never wished anybody but Rosa- 
 lie to see them." 
 
 "And we all wish Rosalie to like us," said 
 Marnie. 
 
 "Rosalie's too busy for that sort of thing!" 
 said Larry, with great contempt. 
 
 "I don't know that she is," said Mamie. 
 "Once I I never told anybody but once, 
 when she was so very near our box, you know, I 
 really did throw her a little lace bag full of 
 chocolates, those lovely chocolates that Uncle 
 John gives us. And she caught it, and looked 
 over and laughed, and actually slipped one into 
 her mouth " 
 
 " Then they weally do eat chocolates in Fairy-
 
 248 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 land," murmured little Kate, as she climbed into 
 Mamie's lap, for as yet she had by no means set- 
 tled everything clearly in her head. 
 
 " Well," said Larry, presently, looking up from 
 the heavy calculations that he had been making 
 with a pencil on his wristbands, "we can't go 
 yet, unless grandmother 'chips in' " And 
 to everybody's amazement grandmother did 
 "chip in" a bright two-dollar-and-a-half gold 
 piece on the spot. 
 
 " That squares it ! " said Larry. " We could 
 have borrowed some of our church-money, and 
 let that wait, but Mamie said it wouldn't do. 
 Now nurse and grandmother and mamma are 
 three, and all the rest of us are how many? 
 No matter ; we can all squeeze in, I guess. And 
 I say, Mamie," and here Larry's voice softened 
 to a whisper, " have you any more of the choco- 
 lates ? " 
 
 That night, in their little beds in the big bed- 
 room, most of the children, as usual, could hardly 
 close their eyes for joy over the expected outing. 
 
 " Say, Marnie, are you asleep ? " whispered 
 Hester.
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 249 
 
 " Of course not," answered Marnie. " How do 
 you suppose I can sleep, when I 'm going over iu 
 my mind the music that Rosalie 's going to sing 
 and dance to, next Saturday ? " 
 
 " Oh, what is it like, Marnie ? " 
 
 " Yes, what is it like, Marnie ? " 
 
 "Well, it begins like a wind in the woods, 
 every little leaf whispers like a flute, and then 
 they all bend with the wind that comes sighing 
 along, and that wind is an oboe ; you know the 
 oboe. And it goes sighing along out of sight. 
 And far, far, far off, the violins are humming, all 
 in a confusion, and the sound of them grows 
 slower and more distinct, and you hear it, and it 
 is rain. And then come long, heavy chords from 
 the violoncellos, that mean clouds. And, suddenly, 
 the tone of a great, strong violin goes spurting 
 into the rain and cloud, and comes leaping and 
 dancing down, and that is the brook ; and then 
 the brass things the horns, you know, and the 
 cymbals and those make everything all sun- 
 shine, and the violins soften down, and you hear 
 harp-tones, oh, in such a soft, bright, lovely 
 air! And that is Eosalie, the Spirit of the
 
 250 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 Brook, coming on. And she is all in palest folds 
 of gauze, palest blue and palest green, like great 
 sheets of ice ; she is sparkling with jewels, and 
 her eyes and smile sparkle, too, and oh, Hester, 
 how beautiful it is for anybody to do all the 
 good that Rosalie does in the world ! Oh, if I 
 could only be of use to people " 
 
 " Oh, you are, Mamie dear, you are of the 
 greatest use to me ! I don't know what I should 
 do without you ! " exclaimed her little bed- 
 fellow, clasping Mamie in her arms, and able 
 to speak her heart fully because it was dark. 
 "You see to my work, and you make up our 
 quarrels, and you get your mamma to let us do 
 things, and and " 
 
 "But, you see, if I died, to-morrow, say, 
 you would all get along as well without me in a 
 little while. I'm not really necessary to any- 
 body. And she is really necessary just to keep 
 ever so many people alive, and to bring them up 
 and help them on in the world. And then, 
 think to how many people she gives pleasure; 
 and how many children just count the days, the 
 way we do, before they go to see ' Little Rosalie.'
 
 LITTLE KOSALIE. 251 
 
 How perfectly lovely it must be to give people 
 pleasure, like that ! Oh, if I could but be as use- 
 ful in the world as she is " 
 
 And there Mamie stopped her confidences, 
 for the faintly murmured assents showed that 
 Hester would soon be sound asleep in spite of 
 herself. 
 
 What a merry party it was, that set out for 
 the "Old Prospero" that frosty Saturday after- 
 noon ! Something detained the mother at home ; 
 but Aunt Nan went in her place, and there were 
 nurse and Grandmother Maurice and The door- 
 keeper laughed to see the rest of them ; he did n't 
 pretend to count them, and so why should I ? It 
 is no affair of anybody but the door-keeper, how 
 many went into that box ; nor that nurse had a 
 luncheon for little Kate; nor was it even his 
 affair that Larry and Joe did a good deal of 
 pushing and shoving before finding the seats 
 they wished; nor that Joe hung over the red 
 velvet cushion in front, to see whether, if he fell, 
 his head would alight on the bass-drum or the 
 snare-drum in the orchestra, while grandmother 
 clutched at his heels and very nearly made him
 
 252 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 fall ; nor that Mamie, as usual, was crowded into 
 the very front corner next the stage, where, if 
 Joe had fallen, it would not have hurt him ; and 
 where she could see less of the play than any of 
 the others; where, had she chosen, she could 
 have climbed over and at a single step have 
 mingled in the scene ; and where she could see 
 so much of the ropes, and ladders, and coils of 
 hose, and pieces of scenery, and everything going 
 on in the wings, that it destroyed a good part of 
 the illusion. 
 
 Mamie laughed, though, she couldn't help 
 it, when Aunt Nan, after settling herself, took 
 a phial of water from her muff. 
 
 " There ! " said Aunt Nan. " I never go to the 
 theatre without it. For you know if there 
 should he a fire, and one were in danger of suffo- 
 cating from the smoke, only let the handkerchief 
 be wet in cold water and held over the mouth 
 and nose, and one can breathe through that and 
 keep alive a great while longer " 
 
 " Nonsense, Nan ! " said grandmother. " What 
 do you want to frighten the children for ? As if 
 there were one atom of danger in such a well-
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 253 
 
 regulated place as this, with all these doors, and 
 with firemen behind the scenes ! " 
 
 " There is always danger, Mrs. Maurice, in the 
 best of them," said Aunt Nan, severely. " And 
 even if the firemen should put out the fire, the 
 fright, the crazy panic, that would be caused, 
 would do as much harm as the fire ; for there 
 would be a rush and a jam, and people would be 
 thrown down and trodden and squeezed and suf- 
 focated to death. I was in a theatre once," she 
 continued, as the children listened open-mouthed, 
 " when there was an alarm of fire, and everybody 
 started up, and some screamed, and some fainted, 
 and great heavy men in the front rows went 
 walking right over the backs of the seats oh, 
 we got out alive ! But I declare I don't see 
 how! There are the Clingstone children, 
 little dears, do you see them, Mamie?" 
 
 But as Marnie heard Aunt Nan, her eyes grew 
 bigger and bigger, far too big to see anything 
 so near as the Clingstone children ; so big that 
 she could see only the daily danger in which 
 Little Eosalie lived ; and the terrible thought of 
 it all prevented any pleasure she might have
 
 254 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 taken in the strange and lovely opening scenes. 
 But after a while, and when Little Eosalie had 
 come on the scene, Mamie forgot that trouble in 
 her present delight. 
 
 " Ain't you glad you corned, Marnie ? " whis- 
 pered little Kate; and, taking Mamie's answer 
 for granted, added, with a sigh of contentment, 
 " So 'm I ! " 
 
 But Marnie did not hear her she was so rapt 
 in seeing a huge blossom open and let Eosalie out, 
 to the sound of soft music, all her fays following 
 from other unfolding flowers. She leaned far 
 from the box in her forgetful gazing ; and soon it 
 seemed as though Eosalie, whirling very near in 
 her pirouette, gave them a smile of recognition, 
 and then none of the children had either eyes or 
 thoughts for anything but this floating, flashing 
 sylph, swift as a flame and beautiful as a flower. 
 
 " Oh, I wish Lucia was here ! " thought Marnie. 
 
 At that moment a child down in the audience 
 cried about something, and diverted from the stage, 
 for half a thought, the glances of the occupants 
 of the boxes, and of the rest of the audience as 
 well, the glances of all but Marnie. In that
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 255 
 
 brief moment her eye beheld a dreadful sight seen 
 by but one other person in front of the stage. 
 
 Some one on the stage, however, had seen it 
 had uttered something, not in the part, to the 
 one nearest, and the next instant down rolled the 
 drop-scene and hid the stage from view. 
 
 But not a moment too soon. For a spark had 
 shot out and fallen on some inflammable sub- 
 stance, and one little flame had sprung up and 
 another had followed it, racing and chasing up- 
 wards till a hundred tiny tongues of fire, like 
 little demons, were flying up the inner drapery 
 and far aloft. At the same instant some one in 
 the back of the audience shouted, " Fire ! " 
 
 It is a terrible sound in a crowded building. 
 It makes the heart stop beating for a second. It 
 made Aunt Nan's heart stop beating for that 
 second, and then she began to cry in spite of 
 grandmother's calm voice, and to huddle the 
 
 D 
 
 children together to rush for the door. But it 
 came upon Mamie in that moment that if every- 
 body rushed to the door at once, nobody could 
 get there. Those in front, she saw at once, 
 would be crowded on and knocked down by
 
 256 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 others piling upon them, and all buried under 
 one another, stifled and killed, so that fire 
 itself could do no more. As the thought, light- 
 ning-swift, ran through her mind, she saw people 
 rising excitedly in the front, and she knew there 
 would be a panic the next moment, a rush, a jam, 
 and fearful trouble. Oh, why was there nobody 
 to prevent it ? If papa were but there ! Oh, 
 thank Heaven, thank Heaven, he was not, if 
 there was no escape ! Could nobody hinder ? If 
 she herself were only of some use 1 And these 
 countless children here, whose mothers would be 
 broken-hearted; and the mothers who would 
 never see their homes again, homes that would 
 be desolate ! This was all realized in two breaths. 
 And in a third breath the drop-scene was pulled 
 aside a trifle, some of the orchestra took up the 
 music that had stopped for only a few beats, and 
 out bounded Little Eosalie with her long scarf 
 and basket, spinning and pirouetting half-way 
 across the stage, and pausing in the middle of the 
 prettiest attitude of the "Great Bonbon Act," 
 while out of the charming basket on her arm she 
 caught and whirled hundreds of bonbons as far
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 257 
 
 as her hand could throw them among the babies 
 in the audience. It was done in far less time 
 than it takes me to tell of it. But as one of 
 these very bonbons fell into the box, the thought 
 rushed into Mamie's mind that the stage people 
 were afraid of the panic and the crush, and so 
 had sent Little Eosalie out with the bonbons, to 
 dance as if nothing were the matter, hoping thus 
 to distract the attention of at least enough of the 
 audience to prevent the sudden attempt of so 
 many to get out at once, whereby a number 
 would certainly be killed in the panic, by 
 making them think it must be a false alarm if 
 the play could still go on and this child dance so 
 composedly, and that in the mean time they 
 themselves were trying to put out the fire. 
 
 For Marnie herself had seen the fire. And 
 she knew it was actually in there, spurting and 
 spouting and climbing higher and higher; and 
 she could hear, from where she was, the breath- 
 less movements of those behind the curtain who 
 were trying to smother it. 
 
 But something else rushed over Marnie, too, 
 for thought is wondrous quick and full. It 
 
 17
 
 258 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 was that if Little Eosalie stayed there another 
 moment she would herself be burned alive, and 
 then what would become of the mother and the 
 grandmother and the twins, and all the rest who 
 had nobody but Rosalie in the whole wide world ! 
 And before Marnie fairly knew what she was 
 doing, and while poor Aunt Nan was still cluck- 
 ing and calling to the family, she sprang up and 
 from the box, it was but a single step, and 
 had run across the stage, before all the bewildered 
 people, and had clasped Little Eosalie, crying 
 quickly and softly, as she dropped her arms, 
 " Oh, run, run, Little Eosalie, run ! Save your- 
 self ! For I really saw the fire ! And," as Eosalie 
 did not run, " what will they do at home without 
 you, if you are killed here ? And there are so 
 many of us at home that nobody will miss me 
 very much ! I will stay instead of you ! " 
 
 Poor Marnie ! As if her staying would have 
 been of the least use ! But she never thought of 
 that. She only thought that if some child must 
 stay there it would better be she than Eosalie. 
 And even while she pleaded, up went the great 
 drop-scene, rolling to the top, and out nocked all
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 259 
 
 the players of the scene, and a few of the orches- 
 tra, who had not at first had courage to remain, 
 slipped back and swelled the music; and a 
 motley throng surrounded Eosalie and Marnie, 
 and whirled them back and out of sight, and 
 from the front there came a perfect storm of 
 clapping hands that was almost terrific. And 
 then a group of the strangest looking people were 
 caressing Marnie, and Little Eosalie herself was 
 hanging on her neck one moment, and somebody 
 took her by the hand, she was now pretty 
 thoroughly frightened, and had a vague idea 
 that she was to be carried out to the " sea-cave," 
 after all, and led her round by some back way 
 to the box again. Here Aunt Nan was just 
 resuming her seat and smoothing her ruffled 
 feathers, but was still quite determined to go out 
 and take the children with her, as soon as this 
 could be done without attracting too much atten- 
 tion. The children were quite as determined not 
 to go ; and, indeed, their pleadings finally carried 
 
 the day. 
 
 But that night Mamie's father came into the 
 room where she lay in her little bed much too
 
 260 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 excited to sleep. "It was one of the bravest 
 things I ever heard of, Little Rosalie's act," 
 said he. "Such a child as that must not be 
 wasted. And a subscription is to be taken up 
 that will bring a sufficient sum to complete her 
 education in whatever way is thought best." 
 
 "Oh, you don't mean so, papa !" came a chorus 
 from all the beds. " Oh, how glad I am ! And 
 to take care of all her folks at home, too, 
 papa ! " 
 
 " But as for you, my little darling," continued 
 her father to Mamie, "how could you possibly 
 think you were of so little use at home as to be 
 willing to break our hearts by risking the loss of 
 your life ? What if I had come home to-night 
 and found no Mamie to meet me ? " And Mar- 
 nie started up and threw her arms about her 
 father, touched to the heart by her sudden feel- 
 ing of what his grief might have been. " I want 
 you never to forget, little daughter," he went on 
 in a husky voice, "that you are of great and 
 important use in the family. Does not your 
 mother rely on you as her first aid ? Are you 
 not my little comforter ? How are all these
 
 LITTLE ROSALIE. 261 
 
 children to grow up without the example and the 
 care of their eldest sister ? Our duties all begin 
 at home. Heroic actions are great and admirable, 
 but there are other actions just as admirable. 
 Among these are the daily acts of duty done, 
 with which you make life pleasant and easy for 
 your mother and me, for Larry, for little Kate, 
 and for all of us. When I remember that 
 I never saw my Mamie out of temper in my 
 life " 
 
 "Nor heard her speak rudely to any one," 
 interrupted the listening Hester. 
 
 " Nor knew of her telling anything but the 
 truth," cried Larry from the other room. 
 
 " Nor heard her say ' I can't,' when you ask 
 her to tie your ribbons, or to do your sum, or 
 to find your needle," added Kosy. 
 
 " Nor knew her to do anything but to try to 
 make everybody about her happy, and keep her 
 own sweet soul white in the eyes of heaven," 
 continued her father. " When I remember this 
 of Marnie, I think all this daily service is of as 
 much worth as the one heroic deed that risks 
 life to save the lives of others."
 
 262 HESTER STANLEY'S FKIENDS. 
 
 " I don't" said Joe. " I think it 's splendid to 
 save folks' lives. I 'm not going to do anything 
 else, when I grow up. Are you, Larry ? Only, 
 I wish I 'd thought before Marnie did, and had 
 begun by trying to save Little Eosalie ! "
 
 AT OLD BENBOW.
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 
 
 winter had set in with such a soft snow- 
 fall, and Old Benbow looked so fine with 
 the ermine mantling his great forests, and there 
 was such a crystal crispness of frozen surface, 
 that Grandmother Maurice felt that she must 
 have the children up in the hills for Christmas. 
 
 " You shall have a sleigh-ride on the lake," she 
 wrote, "and Larry shall build a snow statue, 
 if he can. And you shall toast chestnuts, and 
 hear strange stories of the mountain doings. 
 And what you will like better, perhaps yes, you 
 shall have a toboggan slide ; there won't be such 
 another in the country ! But you shall have no 
 Christmas presents. We will see if it isn't 
 possible to keep Christmas joyously without de- 
 grading it by mercenary and self-seeking gifts." 
 
 It did seem a shame, grandmother argued to 
 herself, to let such possibilities for a toboggan
 
 266 HESTEK STANLEY'S FEIENDS. 
 
 slide as the dry torrent bed afforded go to 
 waste. 
 
 When a thaw and a landslide from the oppo- 
 site mountain nearly filled the bed of the torrent, 
 till next spring's freshets should wash the way 
 clear again, she only turned her attention to the 
 half-mile long slope to the lake, below the house 
 on the other side, where a giant fir-tree, once 
 blasted by lightning, stood in the middle of the 
 way. 
 
 " I will have Thomas and John cut that old 
 tree down," said grandmother, looking down into 
 its distant top, where once a pair of eagles had 
 built their nest of rude sticks. "Yes," said 
 grandmother, " I meant to let that tree stand 
 and have some trumpet-flowers grow over it. 
 But, there, it 's too far off to see the blossoms, 
 and I must have it out of the way or they will 
 dash themselves to pieces against it. Thomas ! " 
 
 But Thomas had gone up the mountain for a 
 load of back-logs ; and so grandmother sat down 
 and wrote her letter ; and then there came another 
 snow-storm, turning to rain and freezing; and 
 there were the mince-pies to make, and the cran-
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 267 
 
 berry tarts, and the big pudding, to be brought 
 in wrapped in blue flames, and suddenly there 
 was a confusion of gayest, sweetest outcry, and 
 there were the children. And not only the chil- 
 dren, but there were Marcia Meyer, with her 
 cheeks so red that you saw plainly her hair was 
 not really red at all ; and Bella Brook, wrapped 
 to the nose in the lovely furs that Mrs. Tenter- 
 den had given her ; and Hester Stanley, with 
 her great black eyes glowing with wonder at the 
 mountain sights ; and a pale frail-looking lad in 
 his father's arms, at whom Grandmother Maurice 
 stared half aghast. 
 
 For when Marnie had read the letter which 
 her mother had sent to Waterways Marnie 
 had gone to school at St. Mark's, as she also 
 soon learned to call it nothing would content 
 her but permission to bring Hester and Marcia 
 and Bella, too. And then Hester whispered to 
 her the unpleasantness of Marcia's leaving Rafe, 
 and it all ended, after a half-dozen purse-deplet- 
 ing telegrams for permitting and for arranging, 
 by Mr. Meyer and Danby taking Rafe in their 
 arms and depositing him in the parlor car and
 
 268 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 going with him all the way to Old Benbow, and 
 by Mr. Meyer taking the return train as soon as 
 he saw his boy safely at rest. " For," Marcia 
 had said, " Eafe never has any pleasures, and the 
 mountain air may be the very thing for him, 
 oxygenate his blood, don't you know, and set him 
 on his pins again." 
 
 The next day he was no worse for the journey, 
 and was wheeled out into the big parlor for 
 Grandmother Maurice had had a bed brought 
 down into the music-room for him and felt, 
 as he looked through the long windows, as if 
 he were in a world of white dreams. Dreams 
 or not, it was very fortunate he was there, for if 
 Eafe had not come to Old Benbow, it is indeed 
 quite possible that the rest of them would never 
 have gone away from it. 
 
 Grandmother Maurice, to tell the truth, would 
 much rather have had her own little brood all 
 by themselves. But she realized that they were 
 the happier for being able to show the delights 
 of the old eyrie to the invalid boy, to the irre- 
 pressible Marcia, to Bella, whose prairie home 
 was so far away, and to Hester, the little South
 
 AT OLD BEN BOW. 269 
 
 Sea islander, who had now seen several winters 
 of snow, but to whom the other children felt it 
 must be forever new, as so indeed it was, and 
 she acquiesced with a very good grace for 
 Grandmother Maurice. 
 
 " I wish Lucia was here," said Joe. 
 
 "Well," said Grandmother Maurice, "you 
 know it wouldn't agree with her here." 
 
 "I don't believe she can slide on those old 
 palace marbles anything like the way she could 
 on that toboggan slide, when it 's finished. It 's 
 like glass now down there." 
 
 " Perhaps you don't know who Lucia is," said 
 Eose, with her little old-fashioned politeness, to 
 Hester. 
 
 " She is our sister," said Joe. 
 
 " And she 's an Italian princessa, or contessa, 
 or something of the sort," said Rose. 
 
 " You seem to think that it 's a fine thing to 
 be a princessa or contessa, as you call it," ex- 
 claimed grandmother. "How often have I told 
 you that Italy is full of them, asking for 
 
 coppers ! " 
 
 Yes, grandmother," said Joe. "I know all
 
 270 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 about it, and how it's ever so much better to 
 be sovereigns and all that over here; but that 
 does n't hinder the fact about Lucia, you know, 
 grandmother." 
 
 " Joe," said grandmother, " you 're just as im- 
 pertinent now as you were two or three years 
 ago." 
 
 " No, grandmother dear, I 'm improved ; Eose 
 says so, and when Rose says so there 's no dis- 
 puting it." 
 
 "Mamie told me all about Lucia," said 
 Hester, hurriedly. " And I told Eafe. And he 
 corresponds with her. He is one of the Shut- 
 ins, you know." 
 
 " She says she is half an American child now, 
 and her mother lets her do as the American 
 children do," said Mamie. 
 
 " Dear me, dear me ! " said grandmother. 
 
 " And I had a letter from her yesterday," said 
 Rafe. " Guess what she was doing ! Do you 
 want to hear ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course we do ! " 
 
 " Certainly," said grandmother. 
 
 " ' Yesterday the air was so soft and clear and
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 271 
 
 blue,' read Eafe, unfolding the letter, " ' that we 
 could see the old Greek ruins far up the moun- 
 tain terraces across the valley, and the snow 
 was on the hills behind them. And mamma said 
 we would ride over and lunch there, for the 
 ladies and the Monsignore had never been there. 
 And I rode my little white donkey, with Beddu 
 leading him and so many boughs were bud- 
 ding, and so many birds were singing, and so 
 soft a wind was blowing, and so blue was the 
 sky shining, that it seemed like our spring at 
 home I mean up on the side of Old Benbow.' " 
 
 "Yes," said grandmother, "yes." And she 
 listened more graciously. 
 
 " ' Only,' " Kafe continued reading, " ' it grew 
 very warm, and we met one of the mountain men, 
 and Beddu said he had the evil-eye, and he knew 
 we never should arrive. But we did ; and while 
 we were lunching I bent down a bough of the 
 wild orange-tree, and stripped the blossoms off 
 with my right hand, and with the left hand I 
 could have reached the wine-bottles in the snow- 
 drift on the other side. And oh, it was so cool 
 and sweet and high and far up there ! It seemed
 
 272 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 as if I might see over the side of the earth to 
 my dear people there.' " 
 
 " She 's homesick," said Joe. " You see, she 's 
 downright homesick." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said grandmother. 
 
 " No, indeed, she is n't," said Mamie. " She 's 
 perfectly happy. She has a father and mother 
 as almost as good as ours. They 're not very 
 rich, but they have beautiful things, and she has 
 everything." 
 
 " Yes," said Joe. " When they want a statue, 
 they just go out in the garden and dig it up." 
 
 "Eafe can tell you what they did dig up," 
 said Marcia. And at the word he showed them 
 a little gold coin on his watch-chain, a coin 
 much battered and worn and covered with 
 strange characters. 
 
 " It 's a coin the Saracens left there hundreds 
 and hundreds of years ago," he said. " And she 
 sent it to me for my Christmas." 
 
 " It 's exactly like Lucia to be the only one to 
 break my rule of no Christmas presents this 
 year." 
 
 " She did n't know the rule," said Joe, stoutly,
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 273 
 
 " and I guess she 'd like to be keeping Christmas 
 the way we do. She 'd like to be over here fast 
 enough, and going tobogganing with us." 
 
 " I meant to have that slide quite ready before 
 you came." 
 
 " Oh, it 's ready enough," said Larry. 
 
 " No, indeed ! And I want you all to under- 
 stand that you are not to attempt it till that 
 huge old tree is cut down. It stands directly 
 in the way, and I can't have you dashing out 
 your brains against it." 
 
 " As if we did n't know enough to steer clear 
 of it ! At our age ! " cried Joe. 
 
 " Well, it was very stupid of me to put it off. 
 It 's who stops in the house of by-and-by, again, 
 you know, arrives at the house of never." 
 
 " When it 's done it will be fine. You never 
 went tobogganing, Hester. Oh, it's just like 
 riding on the tail of a comet ! " 
 
 " Yes. And the slide is so directly underneath 
 that I can see if any mischief happens to the 
 comet. John and Thomas shall go to work on 
 that tree and get it down as soon as may be." 
 
 " Grandmother," said Joe, " you are a trump ! " 
 
 18
 
 274 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " I suppose you think that is a respectful way 
 of speaking to your old grandmother," she re- 
 plied, laughing, and smoothing the hair that 
 Joe's embrace had disordered. 
 
 " You are not an old grandmother," cried 
 Larry, indignantly. " You are one of us ! " 
 
 " It 's very nice to have a grandmother," said 
 Hester, timidly. 
 
 " Bless your dear heart ! " And Hester had a 
 warm place in Grandmother Maurice's affections 
 after that. 
 
 "Well," she said presently, "Lucia needn't 
 think she is the only one to have picnics at 
 Christmas-time. If we have n't the orange 
 boughs, we have the snow-drifts, and we '11 make 
 the most of them to-day, for no one knows about 
 to-morrow. It does look a little dubious, to be 
 sure," said grandmother, going to the window. 
 " There 's a shroud on Mistletop, that always 
 means more snow. But I don't believe it will 
 amount to anything before midnight. Where 's 
 the almanac ? What time does the tide turn 
 down on the coast ? " And they all hung round 
 her while she studied the cabalistic signs.
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 275 
 
 "About this time," said Joe, "expect a 
 sleigh-ride across the lake to the blue cave and 
 the old mill. That 's what it sa^rs. I '11 go and 
 tell Thomas to put the horses into the big sleigh 
 by half -past one, sha'n't I, grandmother ? " and 
 he straightway disappeared. 
 
 " And I '11 tell Maria to have the dinner ear- 
 lier," said grandmother. 
 
 " Well, then, how many of you are there ? " she 
 said when she came back. 
 
 " Oh, we can all pile in," said Marcia. 
 
 " How are we to arrange that, Eafe ? " 
 
 "If Larry sits on the back seat with you, 
 ma'am, and Eose and little Kate between you, 
 then Hester and Mamie and Bella in the middle 
 seat, and Joe and Marcia and Thomas in the 
 front." 
 
 " Let me see. Are there any more ? " 
 
 " Why, Kafe, are n't you going ? " 
 
 " Are n't you going, Kafe ? " 
 
 " Oh, it will spoil all the fun if you don't go, 
 
 Eafe ! " 
 
 " You 11 be so lonesome, Eafe." 
 
 I ? Oh no. It 's plenty for me to see you
 
 276 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 off and see you home again. No, indeed. I 
 promised papa to take no risks. And Danby 
 will stay with me, you know." 
 
 " But you can be all wrapped up." 
 
 " I could n't sit up long enough, and you 'd 
 have to come home before you wanted to, and 
 that would trouble me. And then you forget," 
 said Eafe, with his rare smile, " that I 'm one of 
 the Shut-ins, and used to it, you know." 
 
 " No one can be used to going without pleas- 
 ure," cried Joe. 
 
 " I don't go without. It 's a great pleasure to 
 me just to be here, and lie and look out on these 
 hills." 
 
 "Eafe," whispered Hester, kneeling on the 
 hassock by the lounge, " I don't really care about 
 going. Can't I stay with you ? " 
 
 " No, indeed," said Rafe. " I should n't enjoy 
 it one bit. I am going to write a long letter. 
 And then I shall read a little, and then I 
 shall watch for you to come. It will be great 
 fun to see you far off down there on the lake, 
 and coming nearer and nearer and higher and 
 higher. First you will be ants, and then you
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 277 
 
 will be birds, and then you will be people. And 
 then I shall hear the bells, and then the voices, 
 and you will all tumble in rosy and cold, and we 
 shall have a big fire, and I shall hear all about it" 
 
 " I say, Kafe," said Joe, " I never shall be as 
 good as you are, but I'll stay at home with 
 you." 
 
 " No, you won't, then," said Rafe. 
 
 And here dinner was announced. 
 
 " Well," said grandmother, as soon as they had 
 finished the happy noisy feast, " there 's no time 
 to lose if we 're to be back before dark. ' The 
 dark comes early down to-night.' Maria will 
 have the hot- water bottles and the hot soap- 
 stones. You want your leggings and mufflers 
 and all your wraps. Rafe ! you shall have these 
 books of autographs to turn over. I don't let 
 every one touch them. Come, are you all 
 ready ? " and with a great deal of confusion and 
 exclamation and commiseration and regretting, 
 and running back for last words to Rafe, the 
 big sleigh was off at last. 
 
 Rafe lifted himself on his elbows as he lay on 
 the lounge, and watched them winding away
 
 278 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 down the hill, appearing and disappearing, till 
 at last, no bigger than a wasp to his unaccus- 
 tomed sight, they dashed out upon the broad 
 frozen lake. Then he wished it were blue sky 
 and sunshine, and made Danby put some light 
 wood on the fire-dogs, and look out to see which 
 way the wind was blowing, and felt all right 
 when he found that it was blowing south, south 
 with only a little east in it. And then he spread 
 his tablet and wrote a letter to Lucia, and real- 
 ized that the smell of the spicy green which 
 Maria and John and Jane were hanging up began 
 to make it really seem like Christmas Eve. And 
 at last he opened the big book of autographs 
 that it had been one of Grandmother Maurice's 
 long winter-day amusements to set in order, and 
 the first thing he saw was a page of the manu- 
 script of Sir Walter Scott. And then, as he laid 
 his hand on the leaf where the Wizard of the 
 North had laid his hand before him, up sprang 
 the oaks of Sherwood Forest ; and bold Kobin 
 Hood blew his horn ; and the Black Knight rode 
 along with the chance sunbeam glancing on his 
 armor; and Allan-a-Dale's tune rang through
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 279 
 
 the recesses of the wood, while Wamba, the son 
 of Witless, trolled the refrain ; and this great 
 laugh, it was the voice of Friar Tuck. 
 
 Full of his pleasant thoughts, Eafe absently 
 turned two or three leaves, and in an instant 
 almost a thousand years had fled for was he 
 not with Jules Verne beneath the sea ? " Oh, 
 this is like magic ! " said Eafe, gleefully ; for 
 the leaves fluttered between his fingers and fell 
 open on a page where lay a note written by 
 Herschel when he was at the Cape of Good Hope 
 measuring the stars in the southern heavens, and 
 straightway Eafe was off like a witch on a 
 broomstick through black midnight air among 
 stars and moons and meteors. " Oh ! " cried 
 Eafe, aloud, "how much better this is the 
 writing they really wrote, with some of their 
 own lives in it than just the miserable names 
 people send for your collection, with some of the 
 annoyance you give in them ! I wonder if there 
 is one of Washington's here?" For Grand- 
 mother Maurice's collection was on a scale that 
 would have allowed him to expect to find the 
 script of King Solomon, if there had been such
 
 280 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 a thing to find. It was while Kafe hung over 
 the quaint and precise handwriting of the Father 
 of our Country, and felt himself proudly crossing 
 the Delaware amidst blocks of ice making way 
 for him, that he found himself wondering why 
 the ink had faded so, and all at once became 
 aware that the light was dim ; that there was 
 a strange hustling and bustling in the air ; that 
 it was really snowing ; that indeed it must have 
 begun to snow large soft flakes some time since ; 
 and that the wind was rising, rising, and blow- 
 ing round the gables, blowing from moment to 
 moment more and more, as if it blew from the 
 regions of perpetual storm. 
 
 And there were Grandmother Maurice and the 
 children out in it ! And he had been so ab- 
 sorbed he had not noticed how late it was grow- 
 ing. And he really felt for a little as if he were 
 somehow to blame. For Rafe was usually 
 attending so carefully to every one's welfare, 
 that having forgotten all the world in his own 
 pleasure for an hour or two seemed to him a 
 great piece of selfishness ; and all the more when 
 he saw that Jane and Danby were looking out
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 281 
 
 anxiously, that Maria had bound up her face 
 for the toothache, which she always did when 
 she was anxious, Mamie had once told him ; 
 and that John had gone down the mountain a 
 little way to see if he could spy the sleigh on 
 the lake. 
 
 But the gale of driving snow made it impos- 
 sible to see ten yards ahead, and the atmosphere 
 was already almost like twilight, and John la- 
 bored back breathlessly. 
 
 " I don't know how it is they '11 be getting up 
 this hill," he gasped. 
 
 " Does it often storm so here ? " called Rafe, as 
 John and a gust of wind and snow together burst 
 in at the side door. 
 
 " When it do be blowing a southeaster," said 
 John. 
 
 " Oh, sorra me ! " cried Jane. " Sure, if you 'd 
 tould me I was bringing the childer up here till 
 their deaths " 
 
 " Hould yer blathering tongue ! " cried John. 
 
 And while their concern found vent in sharp 
 words, Rafe waited, all but holding his breath, 
 his lounge rolled into the bay-window, with the
 
 282 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 servants clustering behind him, while the swift 
 mountain storm grew wilder and wilder, and the 
 air darker and darker, all their hearts beating so 
 that each felt the other could hear. 
 
 " They do be losing their way, so they do," said 
 John, at last. " I 'd a-known they wud, wid that 
 bye Thomas a-driving. If the missis 'd a-taken 
 me, I'd not have gone a step, so I wouldn't. 
 But ye 'd as sune move the rock o' Cashel as the 
 missis when she 's fixed." 
 
 "Do you suppose they have really lost their 
 way ? " whispered Eafe, terror-struck. " How 
 dark it is getting ! " 
 
 " It looks so," said Danby. 
 
 " And the little children they 11 be so fright- 
 ened and Hester and oh, my own dear sister 
 Marcia is there ! " and they all strained their eyes 
 through the gloom. 
 
 " Oh, Danby ! Oh, John ! Is n't there anything 
 we can do ? " cried Eafe again, in a little while, 
 when it had grown quite dark, and their own 
 breathless silence made the storm roaring over- 
 head seem roaring all the louder. " It 's terrible 
 to be staying here doing nothing. Can't we put
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 283 
 
 lamps in all the windows that they may see 
 where the house is, and head this way?" 
 
 " It 'ud take more than lamps in the windows 
 to light this murk," said John. " It 'ud take a 
 bonfire big as the Dedannans -kindled on the hill 
 of Knockruish, by the same token, and that 
 would n't do it." 
 
 "A bonfire !" cried Rafe. "Oh, Danby ! Oh, 
 John ! We can have it ! You can get down 
 there to the big tree, can't you ? You can try ! 
 It 's hollow it 's dead and dry and full of pitch 
 it will burn like touchwood ! " 
 
 Meanwhile Grandmother Maurice and the chil- 
 dren had wound down the mountain-side and 
 dashed out upon the lake, whose hard shield rang 
 under the horses' feet, with great jingling of bells, 
 and much crying and calling and laughing, Mar- 
 nie busy showing the various sights of cliff and 
 scaur, and telling their old Indian legends to 
 Bella and Marcia and Hester, helped by Joe, the 
 little children singing their kindergarten songs, 
 and Larry silently watching the leaden shadows 
 among the white hills, and looking for gods and 
 monsters in their great outlines.
 
 284 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 "Now you can give them their head," said 
 grandmother to Thomas; and the horses fairly 
 flew across the lake, and grandmother enjoyed 
 the swift motion and the exhilarating flight as 
 much as any of them. The horses themselves 
 appeared to enjoy it most of all, arching their 
 necks, and flinging out their feet, and only with 
 difficulty answering the rein when, at grand- 
 mother's quick exclamation, Thomas pulled them 
 in. 
 
 " I declare," she said ; " I do believe Is n't 
 it snowing ? " 
 
 " Oh, never mind, grandmother ! " cried Joe. 
 " What if it is ? Just a couple of flakes." 
 
 " Maybe it is only a flurry," said grandmother. 
 
 "It's the way of the bad ones, mum," said 
 Thomas, touching his bear-skin with the whip- 
 handle. 
 
 "But I must show Hester the cave, grand- 
 mother," said Joe. 
 
 " And the mill-wheel," urged Mamie. 
 
 " Yes, grandmother," said Larry. " Just let us 
 look at the blue light in the cave, and see if it 
 is n't as blue as the grotto Lucia wrote about."
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 285 
 
 "It's bluer," said grandmother. And they 
 drove straight over to the other side of the lake, 
 and in among great water-worn rocks at the foot 
 of the spur where the shrunken stream had left 
 ice-blocks that made the translucent roof of a 
 sort of dim twilighted cave, in whose farther end 
 the frozen drippings formed a stalagmite in the 
 shape of a throne. 
 
 "It makes every winter and it melts every 
 summer," said Mamie. "But we might have 
 known there would n't be any blue light when 
 the sun wasn't shining." 
 
 " It takes sunlight to make blue shadows out 
 of snow," said Larry. 
 
 "But there's the echo still," said Mamie. 
 And she began to sing, " Angels ever bright and 
 fair," and presently another voice, and another, 
 a dozen far sweet reedy voices, were warbling it 
 after her. But suddenly she stopped, and waited 
 while the echoes went on, one warbling after 
 another, till far and far and faint away they too 
 stopped as suddenly. " The echo 's so dull, there 
 must be something the matter with the air," she 
 said.
 
 286 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " A lot of snow in it, miss," said Thomas. 
 
 " We we really don't you think we 'd 
 better turn ? Grandmother, don't let Joe get 
 out." For Joe was preparing to climb the throne 
 and make a speech. 
 
 " Joe," called his grandmother, " if you get out 
 we shall go and leave you." 
 
 " Then I won't get out," said Joe. 
 
 " There 's a squall coming, and the horses will 
 have all they can do to make their way back." 
 
 " Echo ! " cried Mamie. " Say, shall we go 
 home ? " 
 
 " Home," called all the echoes. " Home, home, 
 home ! " 
 
 "It does seem too bad to leave them here, 
 does n't it ? " said Marcia. " The white fairy 
 things." 
 
 " And you won't see the mill-wheel all loaded 
 with ice, like a great ghost," said Larry. 
 
 "Now you may turn, Thomas," said grand- 
 mother. "There's plenty of room. There we 
 are. Let them have their way, and see what 
 time they'll make." And back they went; the 
 wind, which they had hardly noticed when it
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 287 
 
 was behind them, blowing now in their faces, 
 and a thick cloud of damp snow blinding and 
 bewildering them. 
 
 " And here I am," thought Grandmother Maur- 
 ice, " with a parcel of other people's children ! " 
 
 Grandmother Maurice seldom talked much 
 when she was worried. She saw that the horses 
 were making all the speed they could. But she 
 was very still. 
 
 " Dear, dear ! " thought grandmother, soon 
 again. "As if I weren't old enough to know 
 better ! " 
 
 Joe began to whistle " Moneymusk," and Mar- 
 cia joined, and presently Larry made a third. 
 
 "Oh, don't!" cried Mamie. "It makes me 
 feel as if something were going to happen when 
 you whistle to keep your courage up." And they 
 left off, as she did, because the wind whisked the 
 sound off their lips. " Grandmother ! " screamed 
 Marnie, "we can't see either shore! Are you 
 sure you 're going right, Thomas ? " 
 
 " No, miss, I ain't sure of nothing," was what 
 Thomas seemed to say, as the wind snatched the 
 words.
 
 288 HESTER STANLEY'S FEIENDS. 
 
 And at that, Bella, who had been thinking 
 how warm and cheerful they all were round 
 Mrs. Tenterden's fireside, where she might have 
 been, with the soft red lights and the fragrant 
 flowers, began to cry. 
 
 " Before I'd be a baby, Bella ! " Marcia tried to 
 say. 
 
 But Hester drew her arm round Bella. " You 
 lay your head on my shoulder," she said, with 
 her mouth on Bella's ear. " God is with us just 
 as much as if we were on shore." And they 
 bent their heads down together in a gust of wind 
 that almost took their breath away. 
 
 " How could I have been such a fool ? " groaned 
 grandmother. " When I saw the storm coming, 
 too!" 
 
 " Good experience for us, grandmother," shouted 
 Joe, leaning back towards her. "I guess the 
 horses know the way. Thomas doesn't." 
 
 " Thomas ! " 
 
 " No, mum," said Thomas, turning round in his 
 seat so that she could hear his voice, for the wind 
 shrieked now between the hills and from cliff to 
 cliff. " No, mum. And I 'm mistook or we 've
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 289 
 
 been round the lake once and again wot with 
 the snow thickening and the sudding dusk. 
 And there 's an air-hole, there certingly is ; and 
 I I don't know wot we '11 do ! " 
 
 "I do," said grandmother. "You come here, 
 and I '11 take the reins myself. There, that gust 
 has passed, there '11 be a little pause in the storm. 
 It seems as if I had driven long enough round 
 here to know my way by instinct. I 'm sure the 
 horses ought to." 
 
 "The hosses is 'most beat out, mum," said 
 Thomas. " I '11 buckle on their blankets and 
 lead them a bit You stay quiet, mum, begging 
 parding. It's no use letting the cold into the 
 sleigh." 
 
 "If it wasn't getting as dark as a beggar's 
 pocket, we should find our bearings." 
 
 " And the wind 's that shifty and beastly, you 
 can't tell where you be by it." And talking and 
 grumbling to himself, as grandmother talked and 
 grumbled to herself, for no one could hear either 
 of them, Thomas led the horses on a little way. 
 
 " Oh, how quickly it grew dark !" cried Mamie, 
 in the lull. 
 
 19
 
 290 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 " That 's just the way it does at home, down m 
 the islands," said Hester. "It's daylight; and 
 all at once it's dark but such beautiful soft 
 dark, with two or three great stars and the 
 flower-breaths." 
 
 "Yes, tell us about it now," said Marcia, 
 mockingly. " It seems so commonplace and safe 
 and pleasant to hear about out here lost on the 
 lake in a storm." 
 
 " Why, Marcia," said Mamie, " we 're not lost. 
 Grandmother '11 get us safely home again." 
 
 " I don't know about that," said grandmother. 
 " If there were anything under the canopy to go 
 by, anything we could relate to anything else 
 a light anywhere to follow up why, then, we 
 might get somewhere. It seems to be dangerous 
 to stir, now I think of that air-hole. I don't 
 know but we may have to stay here all night." 
 And at that little Kate lifted up her voice and 
 wept. 
 
 "Hush, hush!" said Larry. The gale had 
 sighed down to a long lull before breaking out 
 again, for even storms sometimes seem to weary 
 of their own violence. " If any one said, ' Let 's
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 291 
 
 go down to the lake and camp out,' you'd think 
 it great sport." 
 
 "But we'd have a tent of hemlock boughs, 
 then," said Joe, "and a fire, and " 
 
 "Oh, I'm so cold, grandmother," whimpered 
 Rose. 
 
 " I think it would be rather fun to stay here 
 all night," said Joe. 
 
 " And be frozen stiff by morning," said Larry. 
 
 " Oh, grandmother ! " roared little Kate, " I 'm 
 afraid I'm afraid!" 
 
 " Oh, it 's so dark ! " cried Eose. " I thought 
 it was white out in a snow-storm. Oh, grand- 
 mother, how dark it is ! How quick it got dark ! 
 Oh, Larry, do you do you think the world 
 is coming to an end ? " 
 
 "It's a pretty sort of Christmas Eve we're 
 having," said Mamie. " And you 're all company ! 
 And grandmother was going to take us round 
 the mountain to the village it's only a mile 
 that way to ring the new chimes she has 
 given to the church there." 
 
 " There 11 be no bell-ringing for us to-night," 
 said grandmother. " If some one had the sense
 
 292 HESTER STANLEY'S FEIENDS. 
 
 to ring them now, we might tell where we are. 
 I wonder it does n't occur to John." 
 
 And then Marnie burst into tears. 
 
 " I declare," said Marcia, " if it was n't for Joe 
 and me, what a melancholy party we should be ! 
 I rather like it now." 
 
 "It's nothing to like," growled grandmother. 
 " Come ! Can't the horses go on now ? " 
 
 " Go on where, mum ? It 's no sort of use to 
 try," said Thomas; "the wind's beginning to 
 sing again." 
 
 "Then you get back to your seat again and 
 tuck in the robes, and we '11 wait on Providence. 
 They say Providence takes care of children and 
 fools. And I'm sure here's a chance. There 
 never was a bigger fool than I ! And these deli- 
 cate little creatures, and that South Sea Island 
 child, and my own darlings." 
 
 "Grandmother," said Larry, "it isn't your 
 fault. We should n't have given you any peace 
 if you hadn't come." 
 
 "What if what if the wolves " said 
 little Kate, with chattering teeth. 
 
 "There isn't one within a hundred miles of
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 293 
 
 us," said grandmother, very decidedly. But 
 there was an ominous silence in that sleigh, for 
 the stoutest heart stood still. 
 
 The wind blew up a long stream again. A 
 hundred voices seemed shrieking with it. It 
 pressed against them like a great shoulder. The 
 thick snow was blinding ; the darkness impene- 
 trable and suffocating. 
 
 " I ought to be put in leading strings," said 
 grandmother. "Well, Thomas," she exclaimed 
 then, making him hear as well as she could, " we 
 can't see one another, we can't hear one another. 
 Turn the horses away from the wind, and we '11 
 pile the rugs up round the children till the moon 
 rises. She rises before midnight, and will be 
 some help." 
 
 "If we ain't all dead first," muttered Thomas. 
 
 " It must be past five by this." 
 
 "Then," said Hester, "if we're going to bed 
 out here in the storm, we had better say our 
 prayers." 
 
 " Look ! " cried Marcia, suddenly. " What is 
 
 that?" 
 
 " What ? " " Where ? " " Which way ? " came
 
 294 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 a chorus of replies, rising shrilly over the 
 storm. 
 
 " There ! Directly before us," she screamed. 
 " Up in the air far off. Oh ! oh ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " exclaimed Grandmother Maurice ; 
 " it 's that very Providence. The shining of a 
 flaming fire by night." 
 
 For there, blazing up to the sky, was a pillar, 
 a tower of flame, throwing light far round itself 
 through the tempest, every snow-flake of which 
 looked like a spark of fire in its illumination, a 
 sort of splendid bonfire that the wind fanned 
 into double glory. And, as if sketched upon the 
 sky, there stood out above and behind it the 
 Maurice homestead itself on its hillside, and 
 among its snow-filled gardens the house, the 
 bright light reflected from every window. 
 
 Never anything looked so beautiful to all 
 those eager, half-blinded eyes as that far-away 
 phantom of a house gleaming through a haze 
 of storm in the light of the great burning tree. 
 
 Thomas did not wait for a second glance, but 
 shook the reins and the whip, and the horses 
 reared and plunged and went at a run ; and in
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 295 
 
 ten minutes they were away up on the mountain 
 road, shaking off showers of bell-notes as they 
 went slipping along the old familiar way at last 
 
 "It's Eafe!" cried Marcia. "I might have 
 known he'd find out a way to help." 
 
 " And he 's cleared the toboggan slide for us," 
 answered Joe. " When that tree 's done burning, 
 there won't be a bump left." 
 
 And then, all silent and half breathless, they 
 held their heads down away from the wind while 
 the horses dashed up and along. And just as 
 they stopped at the longed-for door there came 
 faintly, sweetly, on the long sough of the wind 
 the tune of the new chimes from the village 
 round the mountain, perhaps reflected from the 
 storm-cloud, the ghost, the dream of a tune ring- 
 ing in the Christmas Eve. 
 
 " Well, grandmother," said the undaunted Joe, 
 as they trooped round the great hall fire that 
 John and Danby had heaped, " you see we have 
 our Christmas presents, after all." 
 
 " How is that ? " asked grandmother, quickly. 
 
 " Our lives ! our lives ! " cried Joe. 
 
 " Well, then, if God has given you your lives
 
 296 HESTER STANLEY'S FRIENDS. 
 
 over again for a Christmas present, it befits you 
 to use them as if it were always Christmas Eve." 
 " Oh ! " said Hester, " I really will." 
 " I think you will," said grandmother. " We '11 
 have supper now if the fright has n't demoralized 
 Maria. What were you frightened about, Maria ? 
 Didn't you suppose the horses knew the way 
 home ? Did you think anything could happen 
 when I was along ? You were right. It was 
 a dark moment for me out there in the storm 
 with a parcel of other people's children. My 
 lad," said Grandmother Maurice, going over to 
 Rafe's lounge, which Danby had built up with 
 cushions, and where Marcia was hugging him 
 hysterically " my lad," said grandmother, tak- 
 ing his thin face between her hands and kissing 
 it, " you have learned that sometimes those who 
 seem to be shut away from any work are those 
 that do the most. We shouldn't be here to- 
 night but for you ! I think," said grandmother, 
 turning to th others, " as long as we have had 
 our Christmas-tree and the most magnificent 
 Christmas-tree I ever saw that now we will 
 have a little service of song after supper. The
 
 AT OLD BENBOW. 297 
 
 house smells like a church, anyway, in all this 
 balsam-fir and hemlock. And I don't know 
 what that voice like a flute was given to you for, 
 Mamie, if it was n't to sing to-night, and every 
 night, 'Praise God from whom all blessings 
 flow ! ' " 
 
 " I hope there 's something nice for supper," 
 said Joe.
 
 New Books for the Young 
 
 MORGAN'S MEN 
 
 A thrilling Revolutionary story by JOHN PRESTON TRUE, author of 
 ' Scouting for Washington," " The Iron Star," etc. Illustrated, 
 1 2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL 
 
 A capital boys' and girls' story, by EDITH ROBINSON. Illustrated, 
 I 2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 BRENDA'S SUMMER AT ROCKLEY 
 
 By HELEN LEAH REED, author of " Brenda, her School and her 
 Club." Illustrated, I zmo, $ 1 . 20 net. 
 
 AS THE GOOSE FLIES 
 
 Written and illustrated by KATHARINE PYLE, author of "The 
 Christmas Angel." I2mo, 1.20 net. 
 
 HIGH SCHOOL DAYS IN HARBORTOWN 
 
 By LILY F. WESSELHOEFT, author of " Doris and Her Dog 
 Rodney . ' ' Illustrated, 1 2mo, $ i . 2 o net. 
 
 FOUR ON A FARM 
 
 By MARY P. WELLS SMITH, author of " The Jolly Good Times 
 Stories," "The Young Puritan Stories," etc. Illustrated, limo, 
 $1.20 net. 
 
 HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE 
 A Christmas Romance of 1492. By MARY CAROLINE HYDE. Il- 
 lustrated, I 2mo, 80 cents net. 
 THE STORY OF A LITTLE POET 
 An original child's story by SOPHIE CRAMP TAYLOR. ted, 
 
 1 2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 THE MAGIC KEY 
 
 A fairy story of the modern kind, by ELIZABETH S. 1 
 
 lustrated, I 2mo, $1.00 net. ^^^^^^^^ 
 
 LITTLE BROWN, fcf COMPANY, Publishers 
 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
 
 New Books for Young People 
 
 NATHALIE'S CHUM. By ANNA CHAPIN RAY. Author of 
 "Teddy: Her Book," etc. Illustrated, I2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 ON GUARD! AGAINST TARLETON AND TORY. By JOHN 
 
 PRESTON TRUE, author of "Morgan's Men," etc. Illustrated, izmo, 
 $1.10 net. 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF TORQUA. By CHARLES F. HOLDER. 
 
 Illustrated, I2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 BRENDA'S COUSIN AT RADCLIFFE. By HELEN LEAH 
 REED, author of " Brenda : Her School and Her Club." Illustrated, 
 I2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 POLLY'S SECRET. A Story of the Kennebec. By HARRIET 
 A. NASH. Illustrated by Harry C. Edwards. i2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 IN THE GREEN FOREST. Written and illustrated by KATHA- 
 RINE PYLE, author of " As the Goose Flies," etc. Crown 8vo, #1.50 net. 
 
 JACK AND HIS ISLAND. By LUCY M. THRUSTON, author of 
 " A Girl of Virginia," etc. Illustrated, I2mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 CATHARINE'S PROXY. A Story of Schoolgirl Life. By 
 MYRA SAWYER HAMLIN, author of "Nan at Camp Chicopee," etc. 
 
 Illustrated, I2mo, $1.50. 
 
 FOXY THE FAITHFUL. By LILY F. WESSELHOEFT, author of 
 " Sparrow the Tramp," etc. Illustrated, 121110, $1.20 net. 
 
 GRANDMA'S GIRLS. By HELEN MORRIS. Illustrated, i2mo, 
 $1.20 net. 
 
 THE PRINCESS KALLISTO AND OTHER TALES OF 
 THE FAIRIES. By WILLIAM DANA ORCUTT. Illustrated, 410, 
 $2.00 net. 
 
 A DORNFIELD SUMMER. By MARY M. HALEY. Illustrated, 
 1 2 mo, $1.20 net. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 
 
 Publishers, 254WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
 
 Louisa M. Alcott's Writings 
 
 THE LITTLE WOMEN SERIES. 
 
 Little Women ; or Meg, Jo, Beth, 
 and Amy. Illustrated. i6mo.$i.5o. 
 
 Little Men. Life at Plumfield 
 with Jo's Boys. Illustrated. 
 i6mo. $1.50. 
 
 Jo's Boys and How They Turned 
 Out. A Sequel to " Little Men." 
 Portrait of Author. i6mo. $1.50. 
 
 An Old-Fashioned Girl. Illus- 
 trated. i6mo. $1.50. 
 
 Eight Cousins; or, The Aunt- 
 Hill. Illustrated. i6mo. $1.50. 
 
 Rose in Bloom. A Sequel to 
 "Eight Cousins." Illustrated. 
 i6mo. $1.50. 
 
 Under the Lilacs. Illustrated. 
 i6mo. $1.50. 
 
 Jack and Jill. A Village Story. 
 Illustrated. i6mo. $1.50. 
 
 The above eight volumes, uniformly bound in cloth, gilt, in box, $12.00. 
 
 NEW ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF LITTLE WOMEN 
 
 SERIES. 
 Little Men. With 15 full-page illustrations by Reginald B. Birch. 
 
 Crown 8vo. $2.00. 
 Little Women. With 15 full-page illustrations by Alice Barber 
 
 Stephens. Crown 8vo. $2.00. 
 An Old-Fashioned Girl. With 12 full-page pictures by Jessie Willcox 
 
 Smith. Crown 8vo. $2.00. 
 
 Other 'volumes in preparation. 
 
 THE SPINNING-WHEEL SERIES. 
 Spinning- Wheel Stories. I Proverb Stories. 
 
 Silver Pitchers. I A Garland for Girls. 
 
 4vols. i6mo. Each, $1.25. In box, $5.00. 
 
 AUNT JO'S SCRAP-BAG. 
 
 My Boys. 
 
 Shawl-Straps. 
 
 Cupid and Chow-Chow. 
 
 6 vols. i6mo. 
 
 My Girls. 
 
 Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore. 
 An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiv- 
 ing. 
 Illustrated. Each, $1.00. In box, $6.00. 
 
 LULU'S LIBRARY. 
 
 Three volumes. Each, $1.00. The set uniformly bound in cloth, gilt, 
 in box, $3.00. 
 NOVELS, ETC. Uniform -with "Little Women Series" 
 
 Hospital Sketches. 
 
 Work. 
 
 Comic Tragedies. 
 
 6 vols. 
 
 Moods. 
 
 A Modern Mephistopheles. 
 
 Life of Louisa May Alcott. 
 
 i6mo. Each, $1.50. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 
 
 Publishers, 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
 
 The Boys* and Girls 7 Bookshelf 
 
 A SERIES of Illustrated twelvemo volumes by Popular 
 Authors, attractively bound in cloth, extra, embracing Stories 
 by LOUISA M. ALCOTT, SUSAN COOLIDGE, MRS. EWING, LAURA 
 RICHARDS, MARY P. WELLS SMITH, LOUISE CHANDLER MOUL- 
 TON, ROBERT Louis STEVENSON, LILY F. WESSELHOEFT, A. G. 
 PLYMPTON, HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD, JEAN INGELOW, 
 and other writers. Each One Dollar. 
 
 LIST OF VOLUMES 
 
 x. My Boys. By LOUISA M. 
 
 ALCOTT. 
 
 a. Mopsa the Fairy. By JEAN 
 
 INGELOW. 
 
 3. A Guernsey Lily. By SUSAN 
 COOLIDGE. 
 
 4. Nan at Camp Chicopee. By 
 MYRA SAWYER HAM LIN. 
 
 5. Double Play. By DR. WIL- 
 LIAM EVERETT. 
 
 6. Hester Stanley at St. 
 Mark's. By HARRIET PRESCOTT 
 SPOFFORD. 
 
 7. A Little American Girl in 
 India. By HARRIET A. CHEEVER. 
 
 8. Jan of the Windmill. By 
 JULIANA H. EWING. 
 
 g. The Resolute Mr. Pansy. 
 By PROF. JOHN TROWBRIDGE. 
 10. A Flower of the Wilder- 
 ness. By A. G. PLYMPTON. 
 xi. The Island Impossible. By 
 HARRIET MORGAN. 
 
 12. Sparrow the Tramp. By 
 LILY F. WESSELHOEFT. 
 
 13. The Drifting Island. By 
 WALTER WENTWORTH. 
 
 14. Mice at Play. By NEIL 
 FOREST. 
 
 15. Among the Lindens. By 
 EVELYN RAYMOND. 
 
 16. The Joyous Story of Toto. 
 By LAURA RICHARDS. 
 
 17. Bed-Time Stories. By 
 LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON. 
 
 18. With Fife and Drum at 
 Louisbourg. By J. M. OXLEY. 
 
 19. The Boys and Girls of 
 Brantham. By EVELYN RAY- 
 MOND. 
 
 20. Hope Benham. By NORA 
 PERRY. 
 
 21. 'Twixt You and Me. By 
 GRACE LE BARON. - 
 
 22. Scouting for Washington. 
 By JOHN PRESTON TRUE. 
 
 23. Jolly Good Times. By 
 MARY P. WELLS SMITH. 
 
 24. Treasure Island. By ROB- 
 ERT Louis STEVENSON. 
 
 25. Their Canoe Trip. By 
 MARY P. WELLS SMITH. 
 
 26. Six to Sixteen. By JULI- 
 ANA H. EWING. 
 
 27. Hester Stanley's Friends. 
 By HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD. 
 
 28. Castle Blair. By FLORA 
 SHAW. 
 
 29. The Secret of the Black 
 Butte. By WILLIAM SHATTUCK. 
 
 30. Stories Told to a Child. 
 By JEAN INGELOW. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 
 
 Publishers, 254 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-Series 444
 
 3 1158 01127 3751 
 
 A 000046896 7