CHAPTER XXIII
A DUCK AMONG SWANS
After tea was over they went into the back parlor; and here Bluebell noticed for the first time a large, shining object standing on carved and claw-footed legs. The top was partially covered by an embroidered cloth. But Miss Libbie Biggar was perfectly familiar with it. She tried to move the front of it, and Miss Melissa finally opened a folding lid for her, disclosing a long row of brilliant black and white ivory keys.
“Do you play on the piano?” inquired Miss Libbie politely, turning to her new acquaintance.
“Melissa is going to take lessons at once,” replied Miss Calder for her.
This, then, was a py-anna! Oh, wonderful instrument! While yet voiceless, it threw its glamour over Doctor Garde’s little girl. She at once resolved to master its harmonies. Some stray poetic instinct, of which she was half-ashamed, made her love the irregular tinkle of a cow-bell among the hills, the echoing ring of a blacksmith’s hammer; and she had often followed a bird, called at the Rocky Fork a “medder-lark,” with her head upturned and her breast thrilling, till her unguided feet perhaps betrayed her to the run or some mud-hole.
Miss Libbie climbed upon the music-stool, ready without invitation to make a display of what she had superficially learned. But from the instant her fingers touched the key-board, one listener sat rapt almost beyond expression. The richness of the instrument was wonderful to Bluebell. Its harmonies, which the young performer could not even hint at, yet suggested themselves to the silent child. Miss Libbie’s hands, and the dimple each finger showed at its root when lifted to strike a note, seemed most admirable. Oh, to be so accomplished! The performer played some little march, and such various exercises as she could remember. While she played, Bluebell was struggling with a dumb sense of having been defrauded thus far in her life. She ought not to be so behind that little girl. What had gone wrong? Was it her own fault? How could she learn music at the Rocky Fork? Still, she was conscious of grief and shame, and many other unreasonable sensations.
“What pieces do you like best?” inquired Miss Libbie in a general way, wishing to be agreeable to this queer little girl.
“Oh, I like them all so much!” exclaimed Bluebell. Then a sob followed her voice. She ran to Miss Melissa, and was folded to that lady’s shoulder. This spontaneous action helped the sore little heart, and she was able to stop her crying before it became a freshet.
“O dear!” said Libbie, turning around on the music-stool, “what’s the matter? Have _I_ done anything?”
“Everything is strange to her,” murmured Miss Melissa; “she has never been away from her father before. She must go right to bed, and she will feel better in the morning.”
Bluebell tried to smile over her shoulder at the caller.
“I think it’s the music makes me cry!”
[Illustration: THE PERFORMER PLAYED SOME LITTLE MARCH.--_Page 253._]
Libbie descended from the music-stool, evidently not flattered.
“Because I like it so much!” stammered Doctor Gardens little girl, ashamed of the confession thus wrung from her.
Miss Melissa patted the auburn head.
“Indeed! Well, you shall have all the music you want, my dear, and before you get through you may cry in another key over some difficult exercise.”
Bluebell was marched up-stairs, overstrung and humiliated by her _début_ into her new home. Libbie chose to follow, though her grandmother’s domestic had been sent in to call her home.
Miss Calder perhaps had a little speech ready as she opened the door of the room Bluebell was to occupy. But she merely said with a tremor, “Your mother often occupied this room, Melissa.”
And again the child felt that invisible presence which seemed to open such great vistas to her. The room itself was so sumptuous she dreaded damaging it.
Libbie gravely perched herself upon a chair, and watched while Miss Melissa laid out a nightgown from Bluebell’s trunk which stood near the closet door waiting unpacking.
Doctor Garde’s little girl undressed herself with tremulous hands and crept humbly into the unadorned cotton gown Liza had made. Then she said her prayers, and Aunt Melissa tucked her under the cover, and reached up to turn off the gas.
“Are you coming down now, Libbie? Your grandmamma wants you.”
“Yes’m, in a minute.”
The little girl in bed thought, “She doesn’t mind very well, anyhow;” and this was the first debit she found for Miss Libbie Biggar.
“Well, don’t keep Melissa awake long to-night,” said Miss Calder. She left the gas burning and hastened down-stairs, for the knocker made a mighty clang on the front door, and she knew some neighbor had come to welcome her back.
Miss Biggar sat up and looked at Doctor Garde’s little girl, evidently interested in her. Bluebell turned her bashful face down on the pillow.
“Are you going to cry again?” inquired Miss Biggar. “Do you cry all the time?”
“I ain’t crying,” responded Bluebell, showing her face with some asperity.
“Your nose looks all swelled on the end. Why don’t you have your hair shingled?”
“I don’t know how,” replied Bluebell, bewildered.
“Why, just go to a barber, and he’ll shingle it. Grandma let me have mine done if I’d have my tooth pulled out so another could grow in. How old are you?”
“Goin’ on nine.”
Miss Libbie considered.
“What makes you say ‘goin’ on’?”
Bluebell might have replied that it was the custom of the country where she came from. But she could not explain her provincialisms.
“I don’t know.”
“_Is_ your name Melissa?” inquired Libbie, with a compassionate emphasis.
“Yes, it’s Melissa Garde; but they always call me Bluebell.”
“_Well._ That’s a _great_ deal better than Melissa. I wouldn’t be called Melissa!”
“What’s your name?”
“Elizabeth Biggar. I live with my grandma. My papa and mamma are both dead.”
“My mother’s dead.”
“Have you got all her rings and jewelry?”
“No-o,” replied Bluebell. “I don’t believe she had any.”
Libbie gave the speaker a long, compassionate stare. Then she turned to contemplating her own case.
“_Oh!_ I have the _loveliest_ things, and a gold watch in a satin case, and diamond ear-rings; but I have to wait till I’m eighteen years old before I can wear them, grandma says. Once we had a children’s party and I wore my blue silk dress, and grandma let me put on the _handsomest_ locket! I wish I would hurry and be eighteen.”
“That’s very old, isn’t it?” said Bluebell.
“Yes. I’ll be a young lady then.”
Doctor Garde’s little girl cast her eyes on the wall, and wondered if she would ever be a young lady. Teeny Banks was only a young woman. She could discern the difference, but her convictions were very strong that she could never become such an ornamental being as Miss Libbie Biggar. So, leaving this perplexity, she turned back for information.
“What do they do at a party?”
Miss Libbie stared again.
“Who?”
“Why, the children.”
“Why, don’t you know?”
Bluebell shook her head. She had “stayed all night” at Tildy’s, marched, and spoken pieces at school, but her experience never comprehended a party.
“Well, didn’t you ever go to a party?”
Doctor Garde’s blushing little girl acknowledged her shortcoming.
“O my! Why, where did you use to live?”
“At the Rocky Fork.”
“And didn’t the children have birthday or Christmas parties there?”
Another shake of the auburn head.
“Well, that is the queerest thing!”
“But what do the children do at a party?”
“Why, they do just like grown people at their parties,” replied Miss Biggar satisfactorily; and Bluebell sat up in bed and thought it over.
“Only,” explained the young lady, “they go in the afternoon instead of evening. When my cousin came from Newark”--thrice happy Miss Libbie to have a cousin who lived in a city!--“to visit me, I had a lovely party, about twenty girls and ’most as many boys, and we had ice-cream at supper.”
“What’s that?”
Libbie rose from her chair, walked to the bedside, and seriously looked over her interlocutor.
“Vanilla ice-cream. Didn’t you ever eat any?”
Doctor Garde’s little girl felt that she was about to be routed with great slaughter. She had alighted upon a new world where the customs of the people were all strange to her, and it behooved her, she had at last the tact to perceive, to be more circumspect than to betray her ignorance so openly.
She changed the subject, and also her companion’s attitude from the offensive to the defensive.
“Do you go to school?”
“Yes, I go to the seminary.”
“I’m going there too. What do you study?”
“Music and Mental ’Rithmetic; and we print, and I’m going to take drawing lessons.”
“And what do you read in?”
“The First Reader.”
“Ho!” ejaculated Bluebell; and a shade of uneasiness came over Miss Libbie’s face.
“What do _you_ read in?” she inquired.
“I can read in ’most anything,” replied Doctor Garde’s little girl. “I’m in the _Second_ Reader, pretty near to the Third. How far have you got in spelling?”
Libbie looked mystified.
“Can you spell in-com-pre-hen-si-bil-i-ty?”
“I don’t want to.”
“I can spell all the big words in the spelling-book.”
This educated creature began to assume a formidable aspect in the eyes of Miss Biggar.
A rap on the door heralded Maria’s head.
“Miss Libbie,” said she, “your grandma says for you to come right home this minute. She’s got something nice for you, and it won’t keep.”
“I’m coming now. I know what it is. It’s ice-cream. You say I’m coming, Maria.”
Maria withdrew her head.
“I live in the very next house,” continued Libbie to Bluebell. “You must come and see me.”
“I will,” promised Bluebell.
“I’ll bring some of the girls to call on you.”
Bluebell did not know what to reply to this formidable proposal, so she said nothing.
Libbie’s hand was on the door-knob; she had said good-night and received a response, but came running back with a most charming, childish impulse. She climbed on the bed and dabbed a quick soft kiss on Bluebell’s lips. The door banged after her, and her slipper-heels clattered like a goat’s feet on the padded stairway.
“She’s a nice little girl, and she just reads in the First Reader, after all,” thought Bluebell, dozing off, and not comprehending that this was a beginning in her life of finding wonderful images and proving them to be human.