A Bookful of Girls

“Not such a bad idea,” Olivia admitted unguardedly.

“There you are! The mere mention of a new scheme is enough to set you agog!”

But this was not their first fencing match, and Olivia had learned to parry.

“I thought you believed in people being open-minded,” she ventured demurely.

“And so I do; but not so open-minded that for every new idea that comes in an old one goes out.”

“Oh, the sun-dial hasn’t got away yet,” she laughed, springing to her feet and going over to the court-end of the garden, where she placed herself in the exact centre of the converging rose-beds.

“There!” she cried; “don’t you see how my white gown lights up the whole place? It’s just the high light that it needs.”

And so it was: a fact of which no one was better aware than the professor. As he, too, rose and sauntered toward the house he could not deny that Olivia’s ideas were usually good. The only trouble was that she had too many of them; and here was the kernel of truth that gave substance to his whimsical argument. The beauty of the garden was not lost upon him, nor yet the skill and industry of the young gardener. But more important than either was the advantage to the girl’s health. Olivia was sound as a nut; of course she was! There could be no doubt of that. But – so had her mother seemed, until that fatal winter ten years ago. He did not fear for Olivia; why should he? Only – well, this out-of-door life was a capital thing for anybody. No, he could not have her tire of her garden.

At the foot of the veranda steps Dr. Page paused and glanced again at his daughter. She had left the rose-beds and was already intent upon her work, pulling seeds from the hollyhocks over yonder. She made a pretty picture in her white gown, standing shoulder-high among the brown stalks, her slender fingers deftly gleaning from such as showed no rust. The child was really very persistent about her gardening; she had fairly earned an indulgence. Perhaps, after all, she might be trusted. He moved a few steps toward her.

“Olivia,” he said, – and the first word betrayed his relenting, – “Olivia, your sun-dial scheme is not such a bad idea. I should rather like that white-petticoat effect myself. Supposing we say that if between now and next June you don’t think of anything you want more, we’ll have it.”

“Oh, you blessèd angel! What could I want more?”

“Time will show,” the blessèd angel replied, retracing his steps toward the house – unaided by angelic wings!

“Yes,” Olivia called confidently. “It’s the sun-dial that time will show, and afterward – why, the sun-dial will show the time!” – and although he made no sign, she knew there were little puckers of amused approval about her father’s mouth.

As if she could ever want anything more than a sun-dial! she thought, while she passed along the borders, harvesting her little crop. She had finished with the hollyhocks, and now she was bending over a bed of withered columbines. And there were the foxglove seeds still clinging. Really, it was almost impossible to keep up. How brilliant the salvia was to-day, and what a brave second blossoming that was of the delphinium, its knightly spurs, metallic blue, gleaming in the sun!

“No,” she declared to herself, “there will never be anything so much worth while as the garden. Why, of course there won’t; because Nature is the best thing in the world – the very best.”

“Plase, ma’am, will ye gimme a bowkay?”

Olivia turned, startled by a voice so near at hand, for she had heard no footfall on the thick turf. There, in the centre of the grass-grown space, stood two comical little midgets, their smutty yet cherubic faces blooming brightly above garments highly coloured and earthy, too, as the autumn garden-beds.

“Dear me!” Olivia laughed, “how things do sprout in a garden! Did you come right up out of the ground?”

“Plase, ma’am, a bowkay! Me mudder’s sick an’ me fader’s goned away.”

The speaker, a boy of five, stood holding by the hand something in the way of a sister, about two sizes smaller. At Olivia’s little joke, which they did not in the least understand, they had both grinned sympathetically, showing rows of diminutive teeth as white and even as snow-berries.

“Bless your little hearts, of course you shall have a bouquet! Come and choose one,” – and taking a hand of each Olivia led them slowly along the brilliant borders.

They were a bit shy at first, but they soon picked up their courage, and Patsy fell to accumulating a mass of incongruous blossoms whose colours fought each other tooth and nail. Little Biddy, more modest, as beseemed her inferior rank in the scale of being, fixed her heart upon a single flame-flower which absolutely refused to reconcile itself with the ingenuous pink of her calico frock.

“How long has your mother been ill?” Olivia asked of the boy, who by this time was quite hidden behind a perfect forest of asters and larkspur and lobelia cardinalis.

“Me mudder’s always sick. She coughs an’ coughs, and den she lays on de bed long whiles.”

“And she likes flowers?”

“Yes, ma’am; me an’ Biddy picked a bowkay outen a ashba’l oncet, an’ me mudder sticked it in a tumbler an’ loved it. Come, Biddy, make de lady a bow!” Upon which the small Chesterfield stood off a few steps and gave an absurd little bob of a bow which Biddy gravely endeavoured to imitate.

“I think I’ll go with you,” said Olivia, open-minded as ever to a new interest; and hand in hand and chattering amicably, the three moved across the turf and down the long gravel walk to the dusty street. Surprising how short the distance was between the sweet seclusion of the old tennis-court and the squalid quarter where these little human blossoms grew!

Olivia was thinking of that as she stood on the veranda an hour later, looking down upon the flowery kingdom to which all her interest and ambition had been pledged. Yes, it was lovely, lovely in the long afternoon light, and it would have been lovelier still with the gleaming marble she had dreamed of. She really tried to keep her mind upon it, to forget the little drama over there in the stuffy tenement. But no; she was too good a gardener for that. Was not a whole family broken and wilting for lack of means to transplant it?

The doctor had ordered Mrs. O’Trannon to Colorado, and Mike had dropped his work as “finisher” – whatever that might be – and had gone out to prepare the way for the others to follow. He had found no chance to work at his trade, but he had got a job on a ranch, where the pay was small, but the living good. A fine place it would be for the invalid and the children, when once he could get together the money to send for them. But meanwhile here they were, and the winter coming on.

As Olivia stood looking down upon her beloved garden, she could not seem to see anything but brown stalks and dead blossoms. All that lavish colour looked fictitious and transitory; she had somehow lost faith in it.

Mrs. O’Trannon had been pleased with the flowers; she had grown up on a farm, she said. Sure she never’d ha’ got sick at all if she’d ha’ stayed where she belonged. But then, where would Mike have been, and the babies? And where would Mike be, and the babies, Olivia thought with a pang, – where would they be if the mother wilted and died? She turned, suddenly, and passed in at the glass doors and on to her father’s study.

At sight of the kind, quizzical face lifted at her entrance, Olivia winced a bit. About an hour and a half it must be, since he said it, and he had given her a year! As if that made any difference! she told herself, with a little defiant movement of the chin, as she crossed the room and seated herself at the opposite side of the big writing-table where she could face the music handsomely.

“Well, Olivia; changed your mind yet?” the professor inquired, struck, perhaps, by the resolution of her aspect.

“Yes,” she answered, in an impressive tone, “I’ve thought of something I should prefer to a sun-dial.”

Dr. Page took off his glasses and laid them upon his open book. He did not really imagine that she was serious – such a turn-about-face was too precipitate even for Olivia; but it pleased him to meet her on her own ground.

“And what is it this time? A sixty-inch telescope? Or a diamond tiara?”

“Well, no. Those are things I had not thought of – before! It’s a kind of gardening project – a little matter of transplanting.”

“Will it cost a hundred and fifty dollars?”

“About that, I should think, to do it properly and comfortably. And – it can’t wait till June. It’s the kind of transplanting that has to be done in the autumn.”

Then, dropping the little fiction, and resting her chin upon her folded hands, the better to transfix her father’s mocking countenance, – “Papa,” she said, “there’s a poor family down at the Corners, – our neighbours, you know, – and the mother is dying for want of transplanting, just like the beautiful hydrangea – you remember? – that I didn’t understand about till it was too late. I never knew what too late meant, till I saw that splendid great bush lying stone-dead on the ground when we came home from the Adirondacks last year. A great healthy hydrangea dying just for lack of the right kind of soil! And now, here is this good human woman, that might live out her life and bring up her little family, and be happy and useful for years to come. Such a nice woman she must be to name her babies Patsy and Biddy, when she might have called them Algernon and Celestina, you know, and just spoiled it all! – and such a nice, kind husband to take care of her on a big ranch where there’s good air, and lots to eat, and plenty of work and not too much, and – why Papa! they might have a garden out there! who knows? What a thing that would be for the prairie! A real New England garden!”

“With a sun-dial?” the professor interposed.

For an instant Olivia’s face fell, but only for an instant.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, with a very convincing seriousness, “that perhaps a sun-dial is not so important, after all. At any rate it’s not so important as the mother of a family; now, is it, Papa?”

“That depends upon the point of view,” the professor opined. “As a high light among the rose-bushes I should be constrained to give my vote for the sun-dial.”

Olivia sprang to her feet.

“That means that you are coming straight over with me to see Mrs. O’Trannon,” she cried, “and that you are going to have the whole family packed off to Colorado quicker’n a wink! Come along, please! There’s plenty of time before dinner!”

“It’s just another of Nature’s miracles!” Olivia observed, as she and her father stood one morning in late October watching the workmen pack the sods about the beautiful pedestal, now securely planted upon its base of cement and broken stone. “It always makes me think of the wonderful things that came up in those tin cracker-boxes you used to make such fun of. There really doesn’t seem to be any place too unlikely for Nature to set things going in.”

The marble was but roughly hewn, in lines that held the suggestion of an hourglass. The top only was smoothly finished, while here and there on the curving sides the hint of a leaf, a blossom, a trailing vine, came and went with the point of view, like cloud-pictures or the pencillings of Jack Frost. It was as if a ’prentice-hand had tried to express the soul of an artist, too self-distrustful to work more boldly.

“Funny, how things come into your head,” Olivia went on. “Do you know, Papa, that day when I was helping Mrs. O’Trannon with her preposterous packing and suddenly came upon this miracle hidden away under an old bedquilt, the only thing I could think of was the way my first pentstemons came out, ‘white with purple spots,’ exactly as I had chosen them by the seed-catalogue. And to think that she had bought it for a dollar of that poor stone-cutter’s widow that was moving out – bought it to make pastry on because the top was smooth and cold! And then had never had time to make but one pie in the three years! I wish you could have heard her tell about it. ‘Faith, it cost me a dollar, me one pie did, an’ Mike says it’s lucky it was that I didn’t make a dozen whin they come so high! Silly b’y, that Mike!’ O Papa, isn’t it heavenly that they’re together again?”

“So you think there is nothing Nature can’t do?” Dr. Page mused, with apparent irrelevance. “How about the sun-dial itself?”

“Oh, Nature will attend to that, too.”

“She will, will she? And in what particular tin cracker-box should you look for it to come up?”

“It wouldn’t be polite to say,” Olivia declared, looking with unmistakable significance straight into her father’s face.

“Saucebox!” he chuckled.

And when, in early June, the brass disk of the sun-dial had begun its record of happy hours, and still Olivia toiled with unabated zeal at her garden, the rose of health blooming ever brighter in her face, a great sense of satisfaction and approval took possession of her father’s mind. But he only remarked, in a casual manner, as they sat together on the white bench one fragrant sunset hour:

“After all, I’m not sure but Nature’s biggest miracle has been performed in the saucebox.”

And Olivia, smiling softly, answered: “I told you, you know, that there isn’t any place too unlikely for Nature to set things going in!”

Bagging a Grandfather

BAGGING A GRANDFATHER

“I’ll warrant that ’he, she, or it’ will come! Di usually bags her game!”

The speaker, Mr. Thomas Crosby, must have had implicit faith in his daughter’s prowess to venture such a confident assertion as that, for he was quite in the dark as to who “he, she, or it” might be.

It was a cozy November evening, when open fires and friendly drop-lights are in order, and the three grown-folks of the family were enjoying these luxuries. Mr. Crosby was supposed to be reading his paper, but he had a sociable way of letting fall an occasional item of interest, or of letting fall the paper itself, at the first hint of interest in the remarks of his wife and daughter.

Only within a very short time had there been three grown-folks in the family, unless, indeed, we count Rollo, the Gordon setter, who had attained his majority years ago. Di, who was but just turned sixteen, really did not like to remember how very recently she had been sent to bed at eight o’clock!

Could Mr. Crosby have guessed the scheme which was occupying the active brain of the young person engaged in embroidering harmless bachelor’s buttons upon a linen centrepiece, he would have been very much astonished, – whether pleasurably or otherwise, events alone must show. And since events had been taken in hand by Di the revelation was not likely to be long delayed.

The incident which had elicited her father’s declaration of confidence was a request on Di’s part to be allowed the privilege of inviting a guest of her own choosing to the Thanksgiving dinner. The family party was to be materially reduced this year, for Mrs. Crosby’s mother and sister, their only available relatives, were at that moment sojourning in Rome, where, if they were sufficiently mindful of current maxims to do as the Romans do, they were very unlikely to meet with any satisfactory combination of turkey and plum-pudding. It was with that fact in view, that Di felt a fair degree of assurance in preferring her request. They all liked each other, of course, better than they liked anybody else, but, really, one must do something a little out of the common on Thanksgiving day.

“Certainly,” Di’s mother had agreed; “you shall invite any one you choose. I have been wishing we could think of some one to ask, but people all have their own family parties on Thanksgiving day. Is it to be one of your girl friends?”

“That is my secret,” Di had replied, sedately; “but, whoever it is, he, she, or it is a very important personage, and will have to be treated with great consideration!”

“And how is that very unimportant personage, Di Crosby, going to get hold of so great a dignitary?” Mrs. Crosby had laughingly inquired. At which juncture Mr. Crosby had expressed his belief that Di would bag her game.

That the prospective dinner should be incomplete was all the harder, considering the fact that the Crosbys were, by good rights, the possessors of that most desired ornament of such an occasion, – a bona fide grandfather. Not only was old Mr. Crosby living, and in excellent health, but his residence was not above a dozen blocks removed from his son’s house. And yet no grandfather had ever graced their Thanksgiving feast.

Family quarrels are an unpleasant subject at the best, and since Di herself had never learned the precise cause of the long estrangement between father and son, in which the old gentleman had decreed that his son’s wife and children should share, it is hardly worth while to recount it here. Suffice it to say, that it was a very old quarrel indeed, older than Di herself, and one to which Mr. and Mrs. Crosby never alluded.

It was six years ago, when Di, the eldest of the children, was ten years of age, that she had come home from school one day, breathless with excitement.

“Mamma!” she cried, bursting into the room where her mother was changing the baby’s frock: “Mamma! Have I got a grandfather?”

Mrs. Crosby glanced furtively at the round eyes of the baby, and took the precaution of smothering him in billows of white lawn before replying, rather softly: “Yes, dear; Papa’s father is living. Why do you ask?”

“I saw him to-day.”

“You saw him? Where?”

“On the street.”

“How did you know it was he?”

“Sallie Watson asked me why I didn’t bow to my grandfather.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said: ‘Never you mind!’ And then I ran home all the way, as tight as ever I could run! Mamma, why don’t we ever see him?”

The baby’s head was just emerging from temporary eclipse, and Mrs. Crosby’s voice dropped still lower, as she answered:

“Because, dear, he doesn’t wish it.”

There was something so gently conclusive in this answer that little Di was silenced. Yet the look in her mother’s face had not escaped her; a wistful, hurt look, such as the child had never seen there before. And in her own mind Di asked many questions.

What did it all mean? How did it happen that her grandfather did not wish it? Why was he so different from other girls’ grandfathers? There must be something very wrong somewhere, but where was it? Since it could not possibly be with her father or mother, it must be that her grandfather was himself at fault.

The object of Di’s perplexities, Mr. Horatio Crosby, lived all alone in a very good house, and was in the habit of driving about in a very pretty victoria; people bowed to him, people who were friends of Di’s father and mother, and must therefore be creditable acquaintances. All this she soon discovered, for, having once come to know her grandfather by sight, she seemed to be constantly crossing his path.

Little by little, as she grew older, Di picked up certain stray bits of information, but she never tried to piece them together. She felt that she would a little rather not know any more. A quarrel there had certainly been, some time in the dark ages before she was born, and the old man had proved himself obstinate and implacable. Friendly overtures had been made from time to time, but he had set his face against all such advances, and now, for many, many years, – as many as three or four, little Di had gathered, – the friendly overtures had ceased.

One gets used to things, and Di got used to having a grandfather who did not know her by sight. She was sure he did not know her, because once, when she was twelve years old, he had stopped her on the street to tell her that she had dropped her pocket-handkerchief. It had been very polite of the old gentleman, and she had been glad not to lose her handkerchief. Yet, as she thanked him, she gave him one searching look, and she told herself that he had a very cross expression, as well as a very harsh voice.

This uncomplimentary verdict was largely due to the fact that, at this period, Di had quite made up her mind that her grandfather was a hateful, unreasonable old despot, and that it served him right never to come to the family parties, nor to have any Christmas presents, nor to have seen the baby, which Mamma said was the prettiest of all her babies, and which Di considered the most enchanting object on the face of the earth.

But again many years had passed, – four, in this instance, – and there came a time, only a few weeks previous to the opening of our story, when Di found herself constrained to modify her view of her grandfather.

It happened that she had gone with her drawing teacher, Miss Downs, to an exhibition of paintings. Among the pictures was a very striking one entitled Le Grandpère. It represented an old French peasant, just stopping off work for the day, with a flock of grandchildren clinging about his knees. Miss Downs called Di’s attention to the wonderful reach of upland meadow, and the exquisite effect of the sunset light on the face of the old man; but, to Di, the meadow and the sunset light were unimportant accessories to the central idea. It was the grandfather himself that commanded all her attention, – the look of blissful indulgence on the old man’s face; his attitude of protecting affection towards one young girl in particular, on whose head the toil-stained hand rested.

“Yes,” she said, after several minutes of rapt contemplation: “Yes; the sunset is very nice, and the fields; but, oh, the old man is such a darling!”

As she spoke she turned to see how her teacher took her remark, and found herself face to face, not with Miss Downs, but with her own grandfather! She gave a little gasp of surprise, which he appeared not to notice.

“So you think him a darling, do you?” he asked, and somehow his voice did not sound quite as harsh as it had done four years ago.

Miss Downs had passed on, and there was no one standing near them, no one at all in the gallery who shared Di’s knowledge of the strange situation. She felt sure that the old man had no suspicion of her identity.

“Yes, I do,” she answered boldly.

“What makes a darling of him?” the old gentleman inquired.

Di felt that this was her opportunity, and that she was letting it slip. But she could not help herself, and she only answered rather lamely:

“Oh, nothing, except that he is such a good grandfather!” Upon which she beat a hasty retreat, and fled to the protection of Miss Downs, whom she found in an adjoining room.

It was perhaps twenty minutes later that Di and her teacher passed the picture again, and, behold, there was the old gentleman standing, lost in thought, exactly on the spot where she had left him. He did not seem to be looking at the picture, but Di felt certain that he was thinking of it. And, suddenly, it passed through her mind like a flash that he was sorry.

“Yes; he’s sorry,” she said to herself. “He’s sorry, and he doesn’t know how to say so!”

The more she thought of it in the days that followed, – and she seemed to be thinking pretty much all the time of the old man and the look on his face as he stood before the picture, – the more convinced she became that he was sorry and did not know how to say so.

“And he ought not to have to say so,” she told herself. “He’s an old, old man, and he ought not to have to say that he is sorry.”

The old, old man – aged sixty-five – might have taken exception to that part of her proposition touching his extreme antiquity, but we may be pretty sure that he would have cordially endorsed her opinion that the dignity of his years forbade his saying that he was sorry.

In those days Di used to walk often past her grandfather’s house. It was a very big house for a single occupant. Even the stout footman, whom she had once seen at the door, did not seem stout enough, nor numerous enough to relieve the big house of its vacancy. There were heavy woollen draperies in the parlor windows, but not a hint of the pretty white muslin which a woman would have had up in no time. Once she passed the house just at dusk, after the lights were lighted. Through the long windows she looked into the empty room. Not so much as a cat or a dog was awaiting the master. In the swift glance with which she swept the interior she noted that the fireplace was boarded in. That seemed to Di indescribably dreary. Perhaps her grandfather did not sit here; perhaps he had a library somewhere, like their own. But, no; there was the portly footman entering with the evening paper, which he laid upon the table before coming to close the shutters.