CHAPTER XXIV

MISS MELISSA DROPS A FEW HINTS

When Bluebell waked in the morning she heard the cherry-tree whispering in her ear, and saw Liza’s dresses hanging on the opposite wall. But the windows were misplaced, and everything swam after she got her eyes open, until the change in her habitation occurred to her. Then the Rocky Fork receded and this new home came forward with half-painful reality.

Before the child was dressed a tap at the door announced Aunt Melissa. Aunt Melissa came in, looking delicate in a white trailing wrapper, and kissed her namesake good-morning. Then she unpacked the trunk, putting everything in its place, and pushed the small inconvenient thing outside the door for Archibald to carry up garret.

She left out Bluebell’s best calico dress, and the little girl put it on, feeling that a perpetual but very serious holiday had come. That dress was good enough to wear to Sunday-school at the Rocky Fork. Tildy and Teeny’s best dotted robes did not look any better. She liked it much better than her white. That white was such an unlucky dress. When she had it on she felt so extremely dressed that it distracted her attention from all the pleasant things in life. The first time she wore it she felt her importance expanding to the horizon all around; Tildy and Teeny in their dotted calicoes were mere maids of honor on her royal progress to church. But a man came along the deep-rutted road in his farm-wagon, and as Bluebell stepped out of his way, the wheel sank with a chug into a hole filled with mud preserved especially for bespattering the proud. Bluebell was splashed from head to foot; even her open-work stockings shared the eruption. The saddest part of such a humiliation is, that nobody in the least shares the heartbreak of it.

Teeny said she was sorry, but there was no time to stop to scrape the mud off. It would dry as they went along. Her manner plainly implied that in the case of very little girls like Bluebell, it made no difference at all if they looked like frights at church.

“You better run back home,” said Tildy, holding her parasol-handle across her shoulder, much as a woodman carries an axe, though the sun was making her wrinkle her freckled nose frightfully. Tildy considered that she knew the proper poise for parasols, and if the sun did not accommodate himself to that, it was his fault and not hers. Bluebell stood crying.

“You better run back home,” said Tildy again, patronizingly.

“Won’t you go back with me?” begged the victim.

But Tildy remembered her stiff-necked and conscious demeanor at the outset. Besides, _she_ was not spattered, and she wanted to go to meeting. She declined going back. Doctor Garde’s little girl was smitten with consternation that her own familiar friend refused to share her affliction. She went crying alone through the pine lane. And though the white dress came immediately to the wash-tub, still that recollection clung to it like a stain, and she liked the blue calico much better. It “dressed her up,” but raised no wall of separation between her and her fellow-mortals. It simply relieved her of all anxiety about the appearance of Bluebell Garde, and left her the free use of her muscles. The blue dress had a broad belt and a very short skirt, a low neck and short puffed sleeves. Miss Melissa made it more ornamental by a fine mull ruffle around the neck.

“Shall I put on my black-silk apron too?” inquired Bluebell, as she stood to be hooked up, full of desire to bring herself up to her surroundings.

“I don’t think I should,” said Miss Melissa gently. Her hands were very soft and cool. She unfastened the pig-tails of auburn hair. “I have some pieces of old blue silk which I think we can turn into a very pretty bodice that you will like to wear better than an apron. Libbie Biggar has a pink silk bodice which is very becoming. I notice there is very good velvet on the apron. With some lace I have, it will make you lovely bretelles.”

Bluebell’s head swam. If she could be spoiled by clothes, Miss Melissa was in a fair way to spoil her. A seamstress was to come that very day to fit the child out, and Miss Melissa looked forward with gentle excitement to this dressing of a living doll. Blue silk bodices and bretelles! But with that ready acceptance of beautiful things as a right which characterizes all children, and grown people too, until their fairy-faith is broken by accumulated loads of care, this little girl was able in a few moments to contemplate her prospects with serenity.

“But what are bretelles, Auntie?”

“Ornamental straps or ladders which little girls wear over light dresses.”

With a happy sigh. Bluebell gave up the black-silk apron; it occurred to her to regret she had not worn it more. We do not realize that our good things in this world are all transitory, and to be enjoyed promptly, each in its season.

They went down-stairs to breakfast. The table was laid as exquisitely as the night before; in fact, the best things about the house seemed to be used every day, without any reference to company.

“I am going to give you”--here Aunt Melissa paused in pouring coffee to adjust something about the service, and Bluebell waited with a bit of buttered roll poised half-way to her mouth--“a little party, in a few days, to introduce you to your little associates.”

“Me?” said Bluebell, stretching up her thin neck and opening her eyes quite wide.

“Yes, my dear.”

“I never had a party! The little girl that came in last evening, Miss Libbie Biggar, said she’d had lots of ’em. I don’t know any more about havin’ parties than about playin’ music.”

“You may begin your music soon. The seminary vacation lasts some weeks yet. I noticed they had the seminary lighted up last evening for trustees’ reception. But you need not wait until school opens, Melissa, my dear.”

Miss Calder lifted a bit of steak very delicately with her fork: the forks were sterling silver, and very different from those to which this little girl had been accustomed.

“You are forgetting to eat with your fork, my dear.”

Bluebell crimsoned. “Why, Liza always told me to eat with my knife!”

“But that is not the custom in good--here. I mention it,” said Miss Melissa delicately, “because your little associates would probably notice it; and besides, you want to form your manners, don’t you, my dear?”

Bluebell was so anxious to form her manners that she longed for a fairy wand to change herself into just what she ought to be. With native diffidence, however, she concealed this intense desire for perfection, and merely nodded her blushing face, saying, “Yes, ma’am.”

“I notice that you are very observing. If you watch others and do as they do, your manners may be formed easily. And Melissa, my dear,”--again Auntie paused, and altered the arrangement of something on the table with her sensitive hands--“when little boys or girls are introduced to you--”

“O my! do they introduce little boys in Sharon?”

“Why, certainly; little gentlemen and ladies should be presented to each other as such. I was suggesting, when you are introduced to any one in fact, it has become the fashion to bow instead of to curtsy.”

Bluebell wondered if she could do anything so boyish. But remembering Miss Libbie Biggar’s model bow, her mind was fired with emulation.