CHAPTER IV

COMPANY

The announcement that there was company did not prevent Bluebell from climbing the bars and giving Roxy a warm hug, but rather added strength to the embrace.

“You little darling, it’s been so long since I saw you! Ear-ly this morning sisser went away. Who’s come? Hope it isn’t somebody that’ll keep us from playing and having a good time.”

The tow-headed sister spread her nervous little hands and attempted description while trotting along.

“Lady with turls: nice, nice lady!”

“Is father home?”

“No.”

“Doesn’t Liza know who she is?”

“No. Liza say, ‘Take off your fings. Doctor be home pretty soon.’”

“Oh! It’s somebody to be doctored.”

“It’s tumnp’ny!” urged Rocco. “We goin’ to have plum p’serves for supper.”

This settled it. Liza was a discriminating housekeeper who did not regale calling patients with her best preserves. The doctor’s house was also his office where people came for medicines or treatment, and the Rocky Forkers were willing to make it a free hotel; but Liza was not.

Liza had been spinster mistress of the house for twenty-five years. Her mother died only the year before her cousin, Doctor Garde, and his orphans came, and the short, plump, merry, quick old maid had taken care of her mother for a long time. She liked taking care of people. It was really for the privilege of taking care of the children that she rented her premises to her cousin. He came with two babies, and a new medical diploma to build up a practice among the hills, and threw himself entirely into work, leaving Liza to bring up the children as she saw best. She was a woman with a wholesome soul, and they all got on comfortably. While she thought the doctor remarkable in his profession, and felt pride in his cases and cures, outside of that, being considerably his senior, she took the attitude of a protecting aunt.

To-night the children saw her standing in the back door, looking comely and important, her black hair sleeked down to her cheeks.

“M’lissy,” she exclaimed--for when Liza was anxious or grave, she called the child by her real name--“go into my room and put on your blue calico, and your white stockings and slippers. I’ll come and braid your hair.”

“Who’s come, Liza?”

“It’s some of your kin. Mind, now, don’t go through the sitting-room.”

Then Bluebell knew that the awful presence was there. She walked on tiptoe past the closed door, Rocco at her heels, and slipped up the staircase to that half nursery, half bedroom, which the children occupied with Liza. It contained some of their mother’s furniture: a mahogany chest of drawers, bulging in front; a stuffed rocking-chair in which Bluebell told the little sister stories; a crib, and a trundle-bed which was not pushed under Liza’s white-valanced and quilt-covered four-poster, but stood under a window that the cherry-boughs scraped. The room was whitewashed as fair as a lily, even to the hewed wood joists. Liza’s dresses hung on nails along the wall, and Bluebell’s hung beneath in a row which she could reach.

Her heelless slippers and fine open-work stockings came out of the chest of drawers; and she was soon struggling to hook the blue calico, but ineffectually, when Liza came up like a breeze, brushed and braided her hair in two short tails, tied the tails with yellow brocaded ribbon from her own ribbon-box, and looked her over approvingly.

“Now don’t forget your curchy,” she admonished. “Come here, Rocky: let me braid your hair, too, while I’m about it.”

Rocky demurred, but it was no use. Her lint locks were swiftly made into two tiny strands and also tied across with yellow ribbon, giving her an ancient and grotesque appearance. The children trod down-stairs a step at a time, hand in hand. Bluebell trembling with bashful self-consciousness. It choked her voice and made her dizzy when she entered the sitting-room, so that she stumbled on a strip of the home-woven carpet laid loose upon the floor. There were a few chairs, including one gilt-ornamented rocker, and a case of the doctor’s books, in the sitting-room; and nothing more; for the guest in white curls was on the porch looking up the amphitheatre of woods surrounding her.

She was certainly a great lady. Her dress of plum-colored poplin had a long pointed waist; she wore a broad embroidered collar turned over ribbon, and just as the children appeared, put a large, open-faced gold watch back into its pocket. Her hair was coiled on the top of her head and fastened with a shell comb, two full curls being left at each side of the forehead.

Bluebell felt overwhelmed when this lady turned her delicate face from the hills and reached two transparent hands toward the country children. Bluebell made her obeisance, and the lady seemed pleased with the conscientious gravity with which she did it.

“Don’t you know me?” said this lady, pressing a hand of each child.

“No, ma’am.”

“I am Miss Calder. Your father has told you about me? I became responsible for you when you were an infant, and you received my name, Melissa.”

Bluebell searched her memory painfully. She was very anxious to know her namesake, who seemed the daintiest woman alive; but having no recollection of the matter herself, she was forced to admit she did not know she had one.

“I s’pose father forgot to tell me,” she observed, bringing forward the best excuse she could think of for him.

“I dare say,” said Miss Calder. “He has not been the same man since your mother died.” The fair old lady began to tremble. She took a handkerchief out of the beaded reticule hanging to her arm, and, hugging Bluebell to her, cried for several minutes with an agitation which shook them both. Bluebell was much embarrassed. She felt that she ought to be very sorry, and heaved several deep sighs; but the pain in her nose, which Miss Calder was squeezing against the watch-case, kept her from fully giving herself up to grief, and it was probably just as well, as she had a whole lifetime in which to miss her mother.

The rose-leaf maiden lady dried her eyes, and sat down with the children, one on each side of her.

“Are you ’sponsible for Rocco, too?”

“No. I do not know who named her. Your parents were living in another place at that time, and your mother died soon after her birth. I have not seen you since you were a babe in arms. Your mother was a very lovely woman.”

“We’ve got a daguerreotype of her.”

“Indeed! will you let me see it?”

“Father will when he comes. He keeps it locked in his desk drawer. I took it to school one day to show to the scholars, ’cause Printhy Pancost said she knew my mother wasn’t pretty, and he said I mustn’t take it any more.”

The fair lady smiled slightly, and said again, “Indeed!” This appeared to be a polite word which she uttered without the least emotion, merely to indicate that she was listening.

“What do you study at school?”

“Reading and spelling. I’m in the Second Reader. We’ve read as far as the ‘Three Boys and the Three Cakes,’ and we’re spelling in ‘A-base.’ I could spell over to ‘In-com-pat-i-bil-i-ty,’ but the rest can’t. And there’s going to be a g’ography school, and I’ll ask father to send me.”

“Indeed. You are very smart in your studies, Melissa. Little Roxana doesn’t go to school?”

“No, ma’am.”

Here little Roxana, unwilling to be presented to company as totally unaccomplished, rubbed her long fingers over the lady’s watch-guard and asserted herself:

“I can sing at the foonerals!”

Bluebell felt disconcerted. She feared to shock the rose-leaf guardian; but Rocco took no notice of her signal to drop the subject.

“I can sing ‘Back any more,’ and ‘Cap in a father’s hand.’” To prove which the baby began at once and sang in a clear, bold voice:

“This is the way I long have sought, I neva’ turn back any more: And mourned a-tause I foun’ it not, I neva’ turn back any more: Away the holy proph-ups went, I neva’ turn back any more: The road ’t leads from bam-shum-ment, I neva’ turn back any more!”

“Why, indeed!” exclaimed Miss Calder. But, like a wound-up musical box, changing her tune, Rocco went on:

“There is a happy land, Far, far away: There saints and glory stand, Bright, bright as day. Caps in a father’s hand, Love cannot die.”

“I know ‘Jucy-crucy-fide-him,’ too.”

“She means ‘The Jews, they crucified Him,’” said Bluebell.

“I sing it to the white chicken’s fooneral, and the black chicken’s fooneral, and the speckled chicken’s fooneral.”

“You see,” said Bluebell, hot in the face, but constrained to answer the raised eyebrows of this lady who probably never pulled off shoes and stockings or rolled down a sandbank, or so much as looked at a dead chicken, when she was a little girl, “we got a little graveyard. And there were so many pretty little chicks died. And Liza lets us take the fire shovel. We dig a nice little hole and fence it all round with sticks in the bottom, and wrap the chicky up; then we ’tend like this porch was the church, and we sing and have a funeral like they did when Mary Jane Willey died--I just preach about what a good chicken it was,” stammered Bluebell; “and then we ’tend like we’re cryin’ and put it in our box that we pull with a string, and have a percession to the grave.” She became so interested in the description that she ended with some gusto.

Miss Calder put her handkerchief to her lips, shaking a little, and Bluebell felt afraid that she was going to cry again.

“Isn’t that an unhealthy kind of play?” she finally asked.

“Oh no, ma’am--the chickens is just as clean!”

“But your feelings are so disturbed.”

“We just _let on_ we feel bad. We got ten chickens buried, and headstones and footstones to ’em all. We enjoy ourselves so much!”

Miss Calderas smile now escaped from the handkerchief and ran up her delicate shrivelled face.

“I have something for you in my trunk which may amuse you in a different way.” So saying the lady rose and rustled into the sitting-room, where in one corner stood a small, round-lidded hair-trunk just as the driver from the station had left it. She opened this with a key from her reticule, while Bluebell and Roxana stood one at each end of it, their hands behind them and their pulses beating with expectation. A scent of lavender and rose-leaves came from under the cover. Miss Calder lifted musky robes of lawn, dazzling white embroidered garments, and her cap and bonnet-box out, before she came to certain packages which she methodically unwrapped.

Bluebell swallowed several times, and the little sister opened her mouth.

[Illustration: “HERE’S A WAX DOLL FOR YOU.”--_Page 47._]

The first thing which came to sight was a string of blue and white beads braided in a rope; that Miss Calder tied around Rocco’s honored neck. Then followed a rattle and whistle, also for Rocco, whom the good lady had evidently pictured to herself as yet an infant. But when two flat packages revealed themselves, “Tales from Catland” in red and gold and “Stories from Roman History” in black, flexible backs, Bluebell felt unspeakably rich. This was, after all, a comparative state. The superlative was reached when the last bundle of all came out of several newspapers and folds of tissue paper. There were some glimpses of pink gauze, the unmistakable presence of small gaitered feet, then the actual dawning of rosy face and flaxen hair.

“Here’s a wax doll for you,” said Miss Calder, making the presentation as if wax dolls were a common addition to every well-regulated little girl’s family. This was the first of that particular class of dolls the children had ever seen. Several cheap ladies with broken heads were lying about the house; for whenever the doctor made a journey he brought one of the children a doll and the other a book--the books being always histories, or solid sciences.

Bluebell, I must confess, was too much an outdoor child to be a tender mother of dolls. But this beautiful creature with real hair, woke rapture in her. Her breath came short when she thanked the new friend. The splendor of such a possession made her ashamed of her unmaternal care over the plainer dollies who had fallen one by one into Rocco’s untutored hands.

“What will you call her?”

“I think the prettiest name in the world is Georgiana,” said Bluebell, hesitating. If this darling must be called Melissa it seemed more than she could stand!

“That suits her very nicely,” agreed the fair maiden lady. Bluebell was emboldened to go up closer and make her lips into an expectant bud.

“You want to kiss me, do you?” said Miss Calder, smiling; so she inclined her cheek towards the bashful, eager little face, and Bluebell felt as if she had kissed a white hollyhock’s yielding petal.

“I have some pretty pieces to make Miss Georgiana more clothes. Do you know how to sew?”

“I can hem a little, but it sticks my finger.”

“Have you begun a sampler yet?”

“No, ma’am. But Liza’s going to start one for me. Teeny Banks has got one done, but she’s a young woman.”

A well-known, ringing neigh came from the lane which led through woods from the main road.

“That’s Ballie! Father’s at the bars. I’ll go and tell him you’re come.”

Father had flung himself out of the saddle, and the slender-legged, delicate Arabian mare followed him into her stable. Her chestnut coat had the richness of satin. She had one white stocking and a white face, pink, sensitive nostrils and an arching neck. She had been known to do marvels of speed, to breast swollen streams, to pick her way carefully around dangerous cliffs in the darkest night. She and her master moved together like one of the old sylvan Centaurs; but if Bluebell climbed her back, as she sometimes did, the Arabian stepped as gently as a nurse.

Accustomed to her father’s habits, Bluebell waited on the barn floor until he stabled the pretty creature. She still held Miss Georgiana carefully in her arms. He came out, unfastened his leggings, and hung them in their usual place. His face was square, serious, and sweet. His light hair hung below his high standing collar. He was a young man, scarcely thirty, and so lovable when he got into the arms of his children. Still, Bluebell had been taught not to address him by the diminutive of papa. His own bringing-up had been austere, inclining to plain, strong words like father, mother, children.

“See what I got!” cried his little girl.

Father lifted her up, doll and all, relaxing into a smile.

“Where did you get that?”

“Father, Miss Calder has come. And she brought Rocco some beads and me some books, and Rocco a whistle, and me a doll, and she’s got a gold watch and white curly hair! Oh, I’m so glad! And may I go to g’ography school to-night? There’s a man going to teach in the church.”

Father put her down and took her hand.

“When did she come?” he inquired as they walked towards the house.

“Before I got home from school. I guess a man brought her. And, father,” advised Bluebell, confidentially, “don’t say anything to her about mother, for if you do, she’ll burst out a-crying!”

He looked down at the auburn head with wistful eyes.

It occurred to her afterwards that grown people seemed to pay little attention to what children said; for when she came in with Rocco to supper, father was showing Miss Calder the daguerreotype, and she was crying in her web-like handkerchief.

Bluebell heard her say, “She was like a daughter to me.” The doctor sat with his head on his hand. But Bluebell was prevented from witnessing their meeting by Roxana’s singular behavior. This lint-locked damsel stood beside the house, her hands locked behind her. The whistle and rattle lay despised upon the earth, though her beads still hung beneath her sulking chin. Bluebell’s heart misgave her. But she tried persuasion.

“Darling, don’t you want to go and help sisser hunt up the old, _pretty_ dollies, and set ’em in a nice row?” Rocco’s whole body shook a negative.

“Would you like to _hold_ the wax dolly in your hands, and be _real_ careful?”

Rocco kicked backward with her heel to indicate her contempt for the wax dolly.

“O dear!” sighed Bluebell, who had been taught it was the duty of an elder sister to give up to the younger. “_Do_ you want to take my doll right out of my mouth, when it was a present, too, and pull her hair out and rub dirt on her face, and break her all to pieces?”

Roxana wriggled a very faint negative. But still it was evident that wax doll stood between her sister’s heart and hers.

“I don’t da’st to give her away to you,” pleaded Bluebell, safe on that point; still she looked ruefully at the fair Georgiana’s dissension-creating face.

“I don’t want the ole fing!” exclaimed Rocco, sticking her lip further out and scowling. She really did not know what was swelling in her tender little heart.

“Then, honey-dew,” argued Bluebell, whose affection would burst into pet names which she would not on any account have had her elders hear, “what you poutin’ for?”

She held the disturbing Georgiana aloft.

“Georgiana,” said the elder sister, “I got just one little Rockety-popperty, and I love her and hug her, and our mother’s dead, so we’re half-orphans. And we play together and have the best times! Buryin’ chickens and all.”

Rocco’s long fingers twisted nervously, and one full tear splashed on the toe she was scowling at.

“And now a good friend’s come, and brought you, and my little sister’s got mad! It makes me feel so bad I don’t want to play! You can just stay here under this tree. I’m goin’ off in the woods or some place. And our company will want to know what’s become of me, and folks will say, ‘she went off and lay down like the babes in the woods ’cause her sister didn’t love her any more!’”

Roxana uttered a mournful whoop. Her heart broke under its heavy weight, and the freshet washed over her face.

“_I_ ain’t mad, B’uebell,” she surrendered, piteously.

They flew and caught each other in a tight embrace, Bluebell stooping to the baby.

“I do love you any more!”

“You old darling!”

“Don’t go off to the woods!”

Rocco was such a delicious little sister in her melting moment, so wet-eyed, so tremulous in the breast, clinging with such loving arms, that the least pliable person could not resist her.

“No, I won’t go off to the woods, honey-dew,” vowed Bluebell.

“You can have my eggs in the rob--rob--robin’s nest,” hiccupped Rocco, who in the triumph of affection gave up all things.

“And you can be Georgiana’s mother, and I’ll be her grandmother! Then you’ll own her too, and I won’t be givin’ her away!” This flash of Bluebell’s genius fused the whole difficulty.

Rocco’s tears were carefully wiped off on the wrong side of her apron. A smile like the brightness after rain spread from her black eyelashes all over her face, a reflection of the smile Georgiana had been so steadily bestowing on her small maternal relative, her grandparent, the dark, weather-beaten house, the cherry-trees, and all animate and inanimate nature.