CHAPTER IV.

THE LITTLE MADAM.

"How is the Little Madam?" Dolly had heard Skipper Joe ask of Mrs. Park one day when they were at the Marchant House.

"She's as well and happy as usual," was the reply.

"Jest the same here, I s'pose," he continued, touching his forehead significantly.

"Just the same."

"Well, it's queer--queer," said Skipper Joe, meditatively. "Don't never sense nothin' o' what's happened. It's queer--dum queer."

So when Dolly heard one morning a buzzing as though a swarm of honey-bees had taken possession of the dancing-hall, and opening the door and peeping in saw a little woman spinning off in the south-east corner who looked exactly like a picture, just as though she might have stepped that moment out of Grimm's fairy tales, she knew at once, by a sort of intuition, that this was the Little Madam.

This small woman was exceedingly small, short as well as slight; her skin was dark, a clear, soft dark, and she had black, velvety eyes, with long eyelashes, and small hands and feet, smaller than Dolly's. She wore over her black hair a kind of mantle of white muslin, which framed her face like a nun's coif, and was crossed upon her bosom. Her scanty gown was white, too, a peculiarity which specially struck Dolly in a latitude where white was reserved for church-going and other state occasions.

She was stepping briskly back and forth by the side of her spinning-wheel, drawing out the long thread, and then with the reverse motion of her wheel winding it upon the spindle back and forth, like a true fairy godmother. The sunbeams fell athwart the wheel and the reel and the tiny tripping figure, and it all did really look so much like a picture that might dissolve any moment, like the mirage of the Marshfield marshes, that Dolly did not venture to speak lest it might vanish. The little woman seemed busy with happy thoughts, for she smiled to herself as she crooned a song, the air of which was sweet, but the words were foreign.

Altogether, Dolly's curiosity was deeply excited; and as she softly closed the door and ran down-stairs to find Ned, the first words she said to him were,

"Who is that little woman in the hall?"

"The Little Madam," replied Ned, just as Dolly expected, and pegging away on the kite he was making.

"And who is the Little Madam?" queried Dolly; "and how did she come--on a broom, or in a pumpkin-shell coach with mice for horses?"

"Halloo! what's up?" exclaimed Ned, looking up.

"I wish you'd tell _who_ the Little Madam is, and _where_ she came from, and all about her. I never knew a thing about her till this minute, and where have you kept her hid?"

"Hid!" ejaculated Ned, bewildered. "Why, she lives on Hemlock Island."

"And _where_, for pity's sake, is Hemlock Island? Oh, Ned, Ned! I'm dying with curiosity to know all about her, and do put up that old kite and tell me--a good long yarn, like one of Skipper Joe's."

Ned laughed good-naturedly. "I can spin my yarn and work on my kite too, Dolly; and I do suppose she looks queer to you. But I'm used to her, you know. I've known her almost ever since I've known anybody. But there isn't much of a story. Only Skipper Joe picked her up at sea somewhere, drifting round in an old boat or something, an' brought her to mother; an' she's sort o' crazy--don't know who she is herself, nor where she lived, nor what happened to her, nor anything. She likes to be by herself, so father lets her live in his old house on Hemlock Island; and she's learned to spin, and spins for folks, an' knits, an' winters she lives here."

"Not much of a story, Ned! I should think so, indeed! Why, she might be a princess, a real princess. Picked up drifting in a boat--oh, it's splendid! Say, Ned," said Dolly, coaxingly, "take me down to Hemlock Island, will you?"

"All right," replied Ned.

The Little Madam did not dine with the family that day. Her dinner, such as she liked--a potato salad, a glass of milk, and a custard--was taken up to her by Thankful herself, who remarked as she walked off with the tray, "She's a poor loony cretur', one o' them folks mentioned in Scriptur', I reckon--them that's hungry, 'n sick, 'n in prison." Thankful never waited upon people whom she considered able to wait upon themselves, and seemed to consider an apology necessary for so doing.

The early morning of the next day saw Dolly and Ned on their way to Hemlock Island. There was a third person with them--I think we may call him a person. The stage which brought Dolly's trunks from Boston brought him also. He was walking along by Dolly's side, with Dolly's hand upon his tawny head and a look of supreme content in his intelligent eyes. This third person was a magnificent St. Bernard, Dolly's playmate in her cradle and her faithful friend and servitor ever since. He had fished her out of the frog-pond on the Common in her later babyhood, into which she had fallen while Nora her nurse was just a-speakin' with her friend, a neighboring coachman, and he had badly bitten an old woman who attempted to kidnap her once upon a time when she had wandered off down Joy Street.

The road to Hemlock Island was a true by-way, a serpentine lane which ran part of the way between high grassy banks overrun with wild vines and flowering herbs like an English lane, and part of the way was shaded by trees of hickory and pine. Why called Hemlock Island is a mystery, unless it was because no hemlocks grew there; neither was it an island: it was a promontory making out into Wintuxet Lake, and it had a fine growth of wood, with extensive pasturage, where large herds of cattle and flocks of sheep grazed through the summer.

Around the enclosure wherein stood the Little Madam's dwelling a hundred cattle were placidly feeding that day. The lane came to an end in the Little Madam's front yard. The house was small, consisting of one room, besides a bedroom and lean-to, and it was a perfect bower of a nest, being entirely overgrown with woodbine, with the exception of the windows and door, even to the chimney-top, from which a long streamer waved like a ship's pennant. Morning-glories blossomed out from the woodbine, and the Little Madam's love of flowers betrayed itself in a perfect burst of bloom on either side of the path leading from the gate to the door.

The Little Madam was not the first exile, if exile she may be called, who had found shelter in this quiet spot. To the west of her dwelling, in the pasture, was an old well, around which the "Bouncing Bets," or more politely speaking, the "French Pinks," ran riot, and hard by a slight depression in the turf indicated the spot where once stood the dwelling of an exiled family from Acadie. The family had planted a garden there, and the place was and is known to this day as "the French Garden." Perhaps Longfellow's Evangeline found a brief resting-place here--who knows?

As Dolly and Ned entered the wide-open door, a voice, a soft muffled voice, said, "How do! how do! Shake hands!" and immediately the owner of the voice, an imperial white Australian cockatoo, erected his canary-colored crest, opened wide his wings, and uttered a loud, hoarse cry.

"He doesn't like Gaston--he's afraid of him, Dolly," said Ned.

"Gaston, go out and lie down," said Dolly; and with an indignant look at the cockatoo as the cause of his expulsion, Gaston walked out with true canine dignity, and lay down on the door-step in the sun.

"What a lovely, queer-looking place!" said Dolly, looking around. The cockatoo had subsided, and from his perch was bowing graciously, holding out his claw and saying, "Shake hands, shake hands."

Ned took his claw, when again he shrieked, elevating his crest and opening wide his wings. "He's showing off, now; he wants you to admire him," said Ned.

"Pretty cockatoo! pretty cockatoo!" laughed Dolly, and thereat he sprang upon her wrist and bestowed a kiss, a true sibilant kiss, upon her pouting lips, and before she could remonstrate he was back upon his perch, chuckling audibly, and saying, "Pretty cockatoo! pretty cockatoo! Kiss me, kiss me!"

His second scream had brought in the Little Madam, somewhat flushed and breathless, from her beehives.

"Ah, it is you, my good Ned, is it?" she said. "I feared the bad boy. Bad boy tease my pretty cockatoo." She held out her hand and the bird sprang upon it, making soft, cooing sounds the while, and caressing her with his beak and wings.

"Skipper Joe brought it to her, Dolly," said Ned.

"Yes, Skipper Joe; he my good friend," said the Little Madam. She did not talk much, but looked smilingly from Ned to Dolly, and brought out a plate of pink-cheeked peaches and purple grapes for them. She had a bewildered, seeking look in her beautiful eyes, as though she might be seeking for that lost life of hers, and Dolly became so absorbed watching her as she sat with crossed hands, now smiling, now falling into a reverie, that she quite forgot the peach she was eating. But Ned, to whom the Little Madam was a more familiar object, ate the fruit with boyish appetite, and emptied the plate.

The room, which was an unusually large room,--as well it might be, being the only one--had the same dainty characteristics as its mistress. The Little Madam herself and the cockatoo gave to it a foreign air. Boxes of sweet-scented flowers bloomed in the windows, which drew the bees that buzzed in and out, and about the Little Madam familiarly, lighting on her nun's coif. An immense gray, basket-like fungus, which the Little Madam must have found in some of her wood rambles, was nailed against the wall and filled with wild vines, which grew thriftily in this apparently congenial atmosphere.

There seemed to be a secret understanding between this little lady and what we human beings are pleased to call the dumb creation--the birds, the insects, the beasts. But are they really _dumb_? Does not each kind have a language which we in our ignorance cannot understand? Did not Gaston speak when he roused from his sleep, walked up to the Little Madam, and put his big tawny head under her little brown hand? This was as plain as human speech. It said, "I trust you," and so Dolly interpreted it.

"See Ned!" she exclaimed, "Gaston never takes to strangers--he hates to have them touch him; and there he is asking the Little Madam to pat him."

For days Dolly could not get the thought of her out of her mind.

"She isn't really crazy, is she, Auntie?" she asked one day, returning again to the exhaustless topic.

"No," was Mrs. Park's reply. "She has simply forgotten everything up to a certain time."

"And what do you suppose made her, Auntie? Ned says Skipper Joe found her drifting in a boat."

"Yes; a ship on which Skipper Joe was first mate picked her up somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Of course they could find out nothing by her, because she remembers nothing. That was ten years ago. She has learned to speak English tolerably well, and she never speaks anything else, though she sings foreign songs which Skipper Joe says are Portuguese. Skipper Joe brought her here to me. She is fond of being out-of-doors, and used to wander off in summer-time, till your Uncle Harry fitted up the old house for her. She seems very happy there."

"But, Auntie, it must be very lonely down there," continued Dolly. "Isn't she ever afraid?"

"She is not like others, you must remember, Dolly; she does not know what fear is. Though lately I have seen some signs of it, and I am a little troubled about some things of which, if I tell you, Dolly, you must not speak."

"Oh no, indeed!" said Dolly, rapturously, charmed, as most of us are, at the prospect of a secret being imparted to our keeping.

"I suppose," continued Mrs. Park, "she is, or rather was, a Catholic, and some ignorant people here have found it out and profess to look upon her with horror. And some troublesome boys, who only want an excuse for doing so, have been teasing her lately. That was what she meant by 'bad boy.' We could stop the boys teasing her if it were not for some older people who ought to know better."

"Oh, what a shame!" exclaimed Dolly, indignantly. "What a mean, mean thing to tease such a helpless little woman!"

"My dear Dolly," replied Mrs. Park, with that wisdom we gain by experience, "that is the very reason they tease her, because she is helpless. Cowards do not dare to touch those who are able to defend themselves," and Dolly was silent for some moments.

"Well, she has some good friends any way," she said at last--"you and Uncle and Skipper Joe and Thankful."

"And Thankful is a host in herself," replied Mrs. Park, smiling; "and you must watch over her too, Dolly. Go and see her often; she seems to have taken a great liking to you and Gaston."

And Dolly was proud of the trust reposed in her.