CHAPTER XXVI

MISS BIGGAR’S POSSESSIONS

Every afternoon the knocker clanged on Miss Calder’s door, calls for her _protégée_ being plentifully sprinkled among the visits of older ladies to her. Doctor Garde’s little girl enjoyed driving out to make calls with Aunt Melissa. In a town the size of Sharon, in those days, calling on your intimate neighbor with state and ceremony was a moral duty. The afternoons dreamed. Slow embroidering and careful hand-sewing were enlivened by rapid talk. It was delightful to be roused from a drowsy state by a pageant of friends in great bravery whose manners accorded with their clothes. The people of southern cities will have their _Mardi gras_ mummery in spite of fever and famine: so, at that period, the ladies of large villages found their principal diversion in careful toilets and stately calling.

But the best thing after all at Aunt Melissa’s was the library. Bluebell was overwhelmed by her riches in that. Her own _Cat Book_ paled by the side of _One Thousand Fairy Tales_ and the _Arabian Nights_. There were books of travels, and piles of _Graham’s Magazine_, _Sandford and Merton_, Abbott’s _Rollo Books_, _Robinson Crusoe_, whole shelves of poets, immense cyclopædia volumes, and even a few gilt annuals, books of beauty, etc. Walter Scott and Irving inhabited one long shelf with Cooper. O world of books, what a great world thou art, and how large a part of many people’s lives is projected into thee!

Miss Melissa herself was a gentle student. She felt her early relish revived by the fervor with which this child seized on the library. She directed Bluebell occasionally, but let her forage at will.

Doctor Garde’s little girl calculated that this feast of books would last until she was quite old--almost twelve, in fact.

One pictured tome, called Shakspeare, hard to lift from the shelf, and very queer and hard to understand in some parts, had yet a fascination. She was delighted to find this the source from which came some of the best _Fourth Reader_ pieces: Shylock at the trial; Prince Arthur and Hubert. She toiled carefully through both plays, and would not for anything have confessed to a grown person that she felt real sorry for poor old Shylock, though he was bad. It seemed so naughty of his daughter to carry off the ring he prized,--the one he had from his wife Leah,--and so dreadful for him to lose all his prop:--prop, Bluebell considered, must be short for property. But Portia and the caskets were great fun, and Antonio a man almost as lovely as her own father. She devoutly wished Hubert had taken Arthur away off into the country,--to some place like the Rocky Fork,--and had never told the king he still lived. Wasn’t it nice the old bad king got so scared at those moons! He was as bad as the uncle in _Babes of the Wood_.

But the very loveliest of everything was Midsummer Night’s Dream. What could be cuter than Puck, or more delicate than Titania! With a natural instinct for pronouncing, the little girl got nearly all the names right, though she branded Theseus as The-ze-us, unconscious of the Greek diphthong’s shortness, and never in her life could she alter the charmed sound.

_Plutarch’s Lives_ was delicious in spots, but rather tough. Shakspeare, on the other hand, was never, never tough. She missed old and deep meanings intended for adult senses. Titania’s infatuation with the weaver was so funny that she chuckled heartily. But the finer aroma of the plays was never missed once.

There were some copies of Dickens on the shelves too; but she happened on them late, for Dickens did not appear an attractive name.

Libbie Biggar came flying in and found Bluebell with her head supported by her hands and a fat volume propped open on the table.

“Come on!” exclaimed the shingled young lady; “Miss Calder said you might go to my house and stay the afternoon.”

Doctor Garde’s little girl looked up, absent and half distressed.

“Sit down and take off your hat,” she murmured, with a glimmer of polite solicitude.

“I sha’n’t stop a minute. What are you reading?”

“Oh, it is the nicest story! Oh, his mother was so sweet, and Mr. Murdstone was so mean, and so was Miss Murdstone. But I could hug Peggotty: she’s as good as Liza was. And I almost wish Davy would go away off and visit his funny old aunt that flattened her nose against the window.”

“Well, come on. I don’t care anything about that. You’re always reading. Orpha Rose says you went and huddled down in a corner with a book when she had you to her house to tea.”

“It was Undine,” pleaded Doctor Garde’s little girl, turning red. “I did want to know so badly what became of her.”

“I don’t think it’s nice to be reading all the time.”

That settled it. Libbie Biggar, who had been carefully brought up from birth, ought to know what was nice. Still, Doctor Garde’s little girl felt her individuality too strong for her in spots. She inwardly decided that it was nice, too!

“But I don’t read all the time. I began Davy last week, and I’ve only read a little piece, about little Em’ly and the boat-house and all, and where Mr. Murdstone whipped him, and Davy bit him--oh, good!”

“Well, if you’re coming to my house to play little dinner, come on. I don’t see any fun in just reading and reading and reading.”

Miss Biggar spoke with a tang of injury; and with a similar tang on her part, Bluebell marked her place in Davy and hid the book lest somebody else might appropriate it. To be hauled by the ears all the way from a distant country called England, to play even such a fine play, was sudden. But there was no appeal. Doctor Garde’s little girl must always be under the dictation of some companion. She followed Libbie as obediently as if the latter were Tildy, and the stage of action the Rocky Fork. How far she would bear dictation the dictator never knew until he experimented and her swift and complete rebellion apprised him. But, after all, what little girl would not for the time prefer Libbie Biggar’s playroom to all the libraries collected since and including that of Ptolemy Philadelphus?

It looked like a toy-shop. There were animals standing on wheels to be drawn by a string; animals which nodded their heads quite like life; cats that mewed, dogs that barked; rabbits and squirrels sitting up in plaster-of-Paris immobility; a whole Noah’s Ark with a cargo of wooden survivors--Mrs. Noah, Mrs. Ham, and Mesdames Shem and Japhet in red or blue or yellow or green dresses of bright paint, and Noah to the life, looking so like the rest of his family that you could only distinguish him by his broader hat. As for dolls, Georgiana, who had come in Bluebell’s arms, sat down in despair and felt nobody at all! There was a baby doll in a cradle, with real bald head and fat hands, wearing a long dress and baby cap. A very much dressed mother-doll sat by it in one chair of a satin and mahogany parlor-set. A negro doll dressed in bright calico leaned against the head of the cradle to signify that she was the most faithful of nurses. Various insignificant dolls with mashed _papier-maché_ faces lounged about in faded finery, or sprawled staring at the ceiling as if counting flies. A wax lady as large as Libbie could handle--so immense in fact that she wore a little girl’s shoes, and sat in an arm-chair.

Oh, Georgiana! when thy doting relative felt that mighty doll’s floss and saw her walk across the floor, and heard her cry “mamma!” instead of the inarticulate noise which was all thou couldst make in thy chest, didst thou not slide down and roll up thine eyes and decide that life was not, after all, worth living!

But what were the dolls beside the cooking furniture of that magic room! In those days every little girl had not a complete toy household at her command. Conveniences for cooking dolls’ meals were rare, and many a doll sat down to a cracker on triangles of broken dishes, and thought herself well served.

But under the black mantel on the brick hearth of Libbie Biggar’s playroom stood the completest little iron stove, with Liliputian lids, pots, pans, skillets, oven, tea-kettle. It was not to be looked at, but cooked with. In the left-hand corner by the fireplace was a cupboard, bearing a tea-set, and not the kind which will barely fit your finger with thimbles of cups, but large enough to eat with. And a round table was drawn cosily near it; a table just large enough to spread above little girls’ laps when they sat up to it on low chairs.

What a kingdom to come into! They set about kindling a fire in the stove with sticks prepared for that purpose, and very soon the little monster was roaring away, the pipe sending up small clouds to the chimney, the tea-kettle blowing out steam, and coals of actual fire grinning between the steel bars!

Mrs. Biggar, the floss-haired grandmamma, came in, smiled indulgently at their zest, and exhorted them not to set themselves on fire. She was going out, and if they wanted anything they might get it from the kitchen. After she was gone, the domestic, probably set to watch the fire, looked in once or twice, and left some goody each time.