PRUDY PARLIN.
Isa Harrington's surprise was great when she saw all her artful plans
overthrown, and Grace and Cassy the same "cup and saucer" as ever.
"O, Gracie," said she, "you don't love Isa any more, now Cassy has
come home."
Grace drew coldly away. "You tried to turn me against my best friend,
Isa."
"O, Gracie, I never! I only told what I heard, and Lucy Lane was the
one that said it. You may ask her."
Lucy was as harmless a fly as ever got caught in a spider's web. Isa
thought she could manage her finely. So the moment she had done
talking with Grace, she made Lucy tease Miss Allen to let them both go
into the recitation-room to study their lessons.
"We'll promise, solemnly, we won't say a word only grammar," said Isa,
earnestly. "Can't you trust us?"
The teacher hesitated, looked at timid little Lucy, and said, "Yes.
But if you break your word, girls, remember, 'tis the last time you'll
ever go in there to study."
Isa had no intention of keeping her word. She wanted to have Lucy to
herself for the purpose of "managing" her.
For a while the girls studied in silence, their heads close together,
and covered by a shawl.
"O, Lucy," said Isa, suddenly, "I've a compliment for you."
Lucy put her finger on her lip.
"Dear me, Lucy, didn't I speak good grammar? That's all the promise
_I_ made--that I wouldn't say anything but _grammar_, and I won't,
unless I make a mistake. A certain person said you had lovely hair.
Got a compliment for me?"
"Why, yes," said Lucy, innocently; "I heard a lady say you might be a
right good little girl perhaps, but you're rather homely."
Isa bit her lip.
"It was Cassy Hallock that told yours, Lucy. By the way, did you ever
hear her say Gracie's hair is fire-red?"
"Why, Isa, no, indeed!"
"Didn't? Why, that's nothing to the way she's slandered her; and Grace
her best friend, too."
Lucy was horrified.
"Do you remember when you, and I, and Cassy staid, ever so long ago,
to scrub our desks? Well, don't you know how Cassy spoke of Mrs.
Clifford's oyster party?"
"Yes, I do. She said Grace appeared like a lady."
"There, Lucy Lane, is that the way you hear? Didn't understand it, did
you, any more than a baby? She was hinting that Grace talked like old
folks--very pert and bold."
"O, was she?"
"Of course she was, Lucy. Can't you see through a mill-stone, child? I
wouldn't want any one to hint about me the way Cassy does about
Grace."
"Nor I wouldn't, either," echoed Lucy.
"Didn't you think, Lucy, by what Cassy said, that her ma wanted to
break up the friendship? You told me at the time that you thought so,
now certainly."
"O, what a story!" Lucy spoke very loud in her surprise.
"Very well," said Isa, adjusting the shawl, "you've forgotten,
perhaps. Your memory is about as long as my little finger, Lucy. But
no matter; I know what Cassy meant if you didn't. Reckon I've got eyes
in my head."
"Well, I knew what she meant, too, I suppose, at the time of it," said
soft-voiced Lucy, anxious to prove that she had eyes in her head, and
could see through a mill-stone. Foolish fly! When a cunning spider
said, "Will you walk into my parlor?" Lucy always walked right in.
"I hate Cassy Hallock," cried Isa, unconsciously raising her voice
very high: "I just hate her. She's no business to make believe friends
with Gracie. Let's you and I put a stop to it."
"Hush, Isa; don't speak so loud."
"I didn't mean to. Peek out, Lucy, and see if the door is shut."
Lucy pushed the shawl to one side and peeped out. Terror-stricken, she
drew back again, glad to hide her head. The door was wide open, and
the school so still you might have heard a pin drop! Not a word had
been lost. There stood Miss Allen by the desk, her finger up to hush
the faintest noise. Having opened the door and found the girls
talking, she decided to let the whole school know it.
Isa was in an agony of unavailing remorse. Not only had she lost her
teacher's respect, but she had forever ruined her cause with Grace.
She longed for the earth to open and hide her shame; but as the earth
refused to take her in, the best she could do was, to steal home, her
proud head bent low and concealed under her sun-bonnet. It was a
bitter punishment; but Miss Allen, who had long understood her crooked
conduct, was sure she deserved it.
She was discharged from the R. S. S. Angry and mortified, and not
knowing of any better way to annoy the girls, she told their secrets
to the wide world. Grace had never dreamed of this.
"What are we to do with that little black cow?" said Robert to Grace.
"She always wants to be somewhere else. She's a regular tornado at
tearing down fences. What say to her joining a secret society?"
Grace was helping train a prairie-rose.
"Don't know what you mean, Robin."
"Just what I say. These strong-minded cows ought to form a
Mutual-Improvement, Cows' Rights Society. I've thought of a good
name," added Robert, with a twinkle in his eye: "Princesses of the
Crooked Horn."
"Now, Robin, what do you mean? Tell, this minute," cried Grace,
dropping her ball of twine, and blushing.
The boy whistled.
"Tell me, Robin, have you heard something?"
"I've heard something, yes."
"What have you heard?"
"Shan't tell. Reckon _you've_ heard of the Ruby Seal!"
"That'll do, Robin," said Grace, suddenly looking down to watch an ant
with threadlike limbs dragging off a cold shoulder of fly.
"See here, Gracie: what cute hands girls are to keep secrets!"
"Don't want to hear another word, Robin."
"Cassy," said Grace, a little later, "what'll we do about the R. S.
S.? Isa's been and spread it all over town!"
"You don't believe it, do you? Why that makes me think what Johnny
said to-day. He's sorry I'm such a broken-hearted old maid at this
time of life. Now I know what he meant."
"But what'll we do about our R. S. S.? I'm so mortified!"
"Let it die: who cares?"
"O, Cassy, I care. Don't let's give up at trifles."
"Then turn it into a Soldiers' Aid." Grace clapped her hands and
waltzed across the street.
"So we will, Cassy; so we truly will! That's so very respectable!"
"We'll marry, too, if they're going to make such a fuss," suggested
Cassy.
"I won't--unless I please. I'll never be married to keep people from
laughing, Cassy Hallock."
Here Grace set her little foot firmly upon a toad, which she mistook
for solid ground.
"Cassy," continued she, after a little scream, "let's work for those
darling old soldiers in the hospital. What have we been thinking
about? Don't you let on! After a little, you know, when school stops,
Cassy! O, can we wait that long?"
Meanwhile, we must attend to a new arrival. Uncle Edward Parlin
dropped in suddenly, as good and smiling as ever, and with him little
Prudy, blushing like a rose, but so dusty that she almost made you
sneeze. But where was Susy? It seemed that Mrs. Parlin had not had
time to prepare both the children for such a hasty journey.
Horace shouted like a young Indian. Grace clapped her hands, and
laughed in every note of the scale up to the second octave and back
again.
Prudy threw her arms about Mrs. Clifford's neck.
"O, aunt Ria," she whispered, "bimeby I shall cry."
"Aren't you well, darling?"
"Yes'm; but I feel as if I wasn't _going_ to feel well."
It had been a hard journey for the poor little thing. She was soon
nicely bathed and put in a comfortable bed, where, for about at
minute, she lay wondering at the mosquito-bar, and then forgot all her
trials in sleep. Next morning, Horace asked what she had dreamed.
"O," said Prudy, much refreshed, "I slept so fast I never heard my
dreams. There, aunt Ria, you know Mrs. Mason, that gave Susy the bird?
She's dead: I thought you'd be glad to hear that!"
"I didn't know the lady," said Mrs. Clifford, smiling; "yet I am not
glad she is dead."
Prudy was constantly espying wonders. Her fear of pigs was extreme,
and the whole Ohio valley seemed to her one vast pig-pen without any
fence. The creatures had such long noses, too! From a safe distance,
Prudy liked to watch them cracking nuts. She thought they could not
have picked out the meats better if they had been gifted with fingers.
She wandered with Grace and Cassy about the beautiful garden and
green-house in a maze of delight. She might have been too happy if the
mosquitos had not laid plans to devour her. Grace bathed the poor
child in camphor. "It hurts," said Prudy, the quiet bears rolling down
her cheeks; "but Gracie bathes me for my good, and I won't cry. O,
aunt Ria, when I'm naughty, and you want to punish me, you can just
put me to bed, and let the skeeters bite me."
Owing to the savage conduct of these bloodthirsty creatures, there was
no trace left of Prudy's beauty, except what Horace called her
"killing little curls." Grace was disappointed, for she had hoped to
exhibit her charming cousin to great advantage.
However, the mosquito-hills disappeared from her face in time, and
then Prudy was quite "a lioness," as Horace said. The princesses
admitted her to their social meetings. All they did now was, to state
that they had read the required amount of Scripture, had told no wrong
stories, and used no language which they regarded as unladylike. For
the present, they met and played games, intending during holidays to
begin work for the soldiers in earnest.
When Prudy visited the school, she sat with every one of the
Princesses in turn, and liked them all but the discarded member of the
society, Isa Harrington.
In private, she told Grace that Isa looked "like the woman that killed
the man," meaning Lady Macbeth, whose face she had often seen in a
picture.
"Don't you like me, darling?" said Isa, offering her a handful of
peppermints.
"O, yes, I like you," said the child, accepting the sugar-plums, "but
I don't like the _spirit_ of you."
"What does that mean, you funny thing?"
"I don't know, but that's the way they talk."
Prudy loved Mahla Linck at once. She said she had had just such a
lameness her own self, and knew how it felt. "Ah, little dear," said
Mahla, laying her wasted cheek close to Prudy's, "but you can walk now
without a crutch, and I never can."
"O, Mahla, yes, you can _never_; you can when you grow an angel."
The Princesses liked to escort Prudy through the streets, and hear her
exclamations of surprise. She told them the "Yankees wouldn't 'buze
their horses so;" for it seemed to her rather unkind to braid their
tails like heads of hair, and tie them up in knots; though Grace
assured her this was done to keep them from trailing in the dust. The
mules were another curiosity. Prudy was also amazed at the "loads of
oxen" driven by men who sat in the carts, and "drove 'em and whipped
'em same as if they was horses." "Yankees," she said, "walked with the
oxen, and talked into their ears."
She informed the girls that the Hoosier sky was very odd-looking.
"It's Quaker color," she said; "but the sky to Portland is as blue as
a robin's egg, 'cept when it fogs."
She described feathery snow-storms, "frost-bitten" windows, and the
nice fishing in "Quoddy Bay;" told her listeners that eastern people
"_shave_" their grass in summer, and when it is dry it's good to jump
on.
For the short time Prudy staid in Indiana her sunny face was a
pleasure to everybody.
"Why, aunt Ria," said she, "do you think I'm good, though? Well, I'm
ever'n ever so much better away from home."