they found what looked like a little purple rose, the first hepatica,
blooming in the wind and frost and raw air. The brooks were breaking
their ice chains then, and racing away; and there was a sound of frogs
singing, like silver bells; and look! here was a robin, and there went
the flash of a blue-bird’s wing. The buds that had pushed off the
leaves last fall were swelling; the air was full of wings, full of
song; the rocks were white with saxifrage, the grass slopes were thick
with violets; and then came the rich pungent lilac scent every time
the old trees shook their purple plumes in the wind; and after that
the world looked as if it had spread its wings in the flowering of the
apple-orchards; then came the bramble-roses, and summer was warm on all
the hills.
“I don’t know how there can be anything more beautiful than summer in
this valley between the hills,” said Aunt Rose. “How I wish all the
children in the dark crowded city could have such air and sunshine!”
“Oh, Aunt Rose, I wish so too!” said Essie.
“Is it very dark and crowded there?” asked Ally.
“Ally,” said Aunt Rose, “once I saw a street so narrow that it was
hardly more than a gutter, and the quarreling women in the high old
rickety houses on either side could hit each other with their brooms.
And there were little starved-looking children there among those women.”
“Oh! couldn’t we take some of them up here to have some of our summer?”
asked Janet.
“Old Uncle wouldn’t like it,” said Jack.
“No, Old Uncle wouldn’t,” said Essie. “He thinks there’s plenty of
children here now.”
“I don’t know that,” said Aunt Rose, reflecting a little while. “Once
we had Fresh Air children here, a good while ago, and it didn’t disturb
him.”
“Perhaps, then, he wouldn’t mind,” said Essie.
The thought of the children in the city was such a sad one to them all
that Aunt Rose was sorry she had spoken of them. For there had been
some melancholy in the season any way for Essie and Ally, as Bobbo,
Ally’s cat, had disappeared; and Essie’s best doll, the one that always
went to bed with her, had lost her head in crossing a brook while her
little mother stopped on the stepping-stone to show her the picture of
herself in the pool just there.
It was in this melancholy time, when Essie and Ally were sitting in
the garret one rainy day, and Essie had been telling Ally her dreams
concerning the Children of the Hill—who were, to her imagination, not
little darlings who had been laid to rest up there, but a sort of
angel-people—that Aunt Susan had come up and had cried over the tiny
shirt she took from the old bureau-drawer and Ally had tried to comfort
her.
“Some day,” little Ally had said, when Aunt Susan had gone down, “some
day I am going up to find the Children of the Hill, and ask them to
give back Aunt Susan’s baby.”
And it was the very next morning but one that Ally was not to be
found—as you read in the beginning of the story—and the whole house and
place and Valley were in commotion, and no one knew where to find her.
XII.
THE FLIGHT ON A STREET-CAR.
IT was in this same lovely summer-time, far down in that dark, crowded
city of which Aunt Rose had told the Children of the Valley, that one
night a little girl, with a little baby in her arms, was standing in
the doorway of a house that looked ready to fall on her.
A trickle of dirty water ran down the middle of the cobble-stones in
front. The night was hot; men were asleep on their carts drawn up
beside the walls, women were asleep hanging half out of the windows
above for a breath of coolness, and other women had made some sort of
bed on the pavement for their sick babies, and had stretched themselves
on the hard stones beside them. The little girl’s home was in one room
far up near the top of the house, a room that had no window in it, and
out of it her mother had been carried to her grave the day before. The
dark, small, airless place had grown dreadful with stifling heat; and
she had taken the small baby brother in her arms, and crept down the
long flights of stairs. Almost every other step was missing, and rats
slipped along beside her.
It seemed heavenly to get down into the open air, foul and hot as that
sort of open air was. She stepped out on the cobble-stones, picking her
way through the gasping people there, no one noting her or caring about
her.
She had heard some of the women in the house say that she and the baby
were to be sent to an Institution. She did not know what that meant,
but felt in it something of a vague horror. It would be a dreadful fate
for her and for the little new baby. A resolve to run away from it had
filled her whole being. She had heard cruel stories of places where
poor children, like her, were sent—probably they were Institutions.
One of the more tender-hearted people who had been there that morning
had given her some silver pieces. She had clutched and hidden them, and
now she was wondering how far away they would take her.
She wandered on from one to another of the feebly-lighted lanes and
alleys, hushing the baby, giving it her finger to suck, shifting it
from shoulder to shoulder, and throwing back a swift glance of terror
now and again lest anyone followed; for her fears had grown so that it
seemed as if the whole alley, the whole city, were in a conspiracy to
send her to the terrible Institution.
At last, cautiously, stopping to look, to listen, slinking into
doorways if any came along, slipping far outside every knot of
roistering or quarreling men, so small and dark herself as to seem only
a part of the shadows, she came out upon the broader street that led
into a square. Down a cross-street she saw the lights of a street-car
flash along. It was going somewhere—away from this. She walked backward
to make sure no one watched while she got out one of her silver pieces,
then turned and ran swiftly, noiselessly.
A car, coming along at that moment, was stopping for someone to get
off; and she clambered up the steps in the instant, disposed herself
and the baby at one end of the seat, and held out her silver piece to
the conductor as if she rode in cars every day of her life, although
disturbed by his sharp glance.
The motion of the car was delightful. It soothed the baby off to sleep;
and the wind of its movement was so refreshing that she could have gone
to sleep herself. She passed the time wishing the car was never going
to stop, and hearing the wheels sing over and over to some tune of the
alleys: “She’ll never go back no more. She’ll never go back no more.”
She was in a happy land between dreaming and waking, when the car came
to a stop, and a rude voice called, “End er the line!”
It filled her with consternation for a moment. Far off a church bell
struck. It seemed an act of Providence that the car in waiting just
beyond was starting for somewhere farther on, and she ran again and
climbed aboard.
She had no idea where she was going; but it was into distance, away
from the city, on and on.
She crept out when by and by the car turned into its stable; and after
strolling on a bit farther, she lay down on a piece of grass and went
so sound asleep in the warm night that she did not even hear the baby
cry.
XIII.
SALLY’S VOYAGE.
IT was broad daylight when the little girl awoke, and saw a policeman
bending over her.
“Oh, yep!” she cried, springing up at once and adjusting the baby. “I’m
on me way to de country wid de kid. I’se got de stuff;” and she would
have showed him a piece of her silver if she had not feared he might
take it from her. The sight of the policeman gave her a great scare—it
seemed as though it were impossible to escape from the city bounds. But
after a kindly word and laugh he went another way; and she presently
saw a little shop where she bought some milk, and fed the baby with a
great deal of gurgling on his part and of endearment on hers, refilled
the bottle, and then took a look about her. There was water not far
away, and ships and steamboats, and a crowd of masts and funnels.
A bold idea struck her. She went down on one of the long wharves, still
shouldering the baby that had fallen asleep again, walked aboard the
boat where she saw the most commotion, and sat down behind a lot of
barrels. It was a freight steamer, and not twenty minutes afterward it
cast off and was out in the stream and plowing its way steadily out to
sea.
She knew that she could not escape discovery. But she did not believe
the men would throw her overboard, and she fancied that maybe they
would give her something to eat. Really she was not thinking much of
anything excepting that they must get away, get away from that dreadful
Institution. Poor little girl, who would have been so comfortable
with the clean clothes, good food, and kind treatment of the very
Institution from which she was running away, if she had only known it!
Suddenly the baby set up his tune. And then you may be sure there was
an uproar, and a throng of bearded faces over her, and a chorus of loud
voices round her. She was bidden out on the deck, and stood there in
the ragged gown that was her only garment, with her bare feet, looking
at the sailors with wild but fearless eyes, out of a tangle of hair,
and clutching the baby.
“Hushy, hushy, hushy,” she said to the whimpering little thing, as she
patted its back. “It’s Sally’s byby, it’s Sally’s byby. Dey sha’n’t nab
Sally’s byby!”
And the long and the short of it is that they didn’t try to “nab
Sally’s byby.” But they gave Sally a good breakfast, and a good dinner,
and a bunk that night to sleep in, and passed the baby round, and
altogether treated Sally like a princess. One of them gave her a large
silk handkerchief, several of them gave her silver dollars, and the
cook made the baby a little slip out of his own old shirt.
They did counsel among themselves, indeed, as to the possibility of
adopting her and the baby as mascots. Sally overheard them, and became
filled with new fright; for that meant going back and forth to the
city, and perhaps being found by some of the Institution’s agents.
To such an extent did this new fear go that, although she knew she was
leaving kind friends, the moment she could escape observation after
they were at the wharf in the distant port, Sally quietly slipped
ashore and made off.
XIV.
SALLY’S HILL JOURNEY.
SALLY had been a little Fresh Air child one year; and so, being very
bright and sharp with her eyes, and quite capable of putting two and
two together, she was not unfamiliar with the ways of getting about.
She soon found her way to the station, people gazing after her with her
baby on her shoulder. She felt so much more respectable than before the
cook of the steamer took out his big needle and thread in her behalf
that she did not mind the curious eyes as she skimmed along.
At the station she got some crackers, and some fresh milk for the baby,
in a dreadful hurry, lest this time it should be the sailors who would
be after her.
At the ticket-office, after answering many inquisitive questions, she
bought with her silver dollars a ticket that would take her a long way
on the train that was going farthest from the city she had left in the
first place.
But she was not without alarm, when, as she sat munching her crackers,
the train began to back and fill, ran a mile or so, and then stood
still a long while. She walked up and down in the aisle, looking out
of windows anxiously at every turn, over the broad water where boats
rocked pleasantly, and singing in a low voice to the restless baby on
her shoulder:
“Buy my pipers, pritty loidy,
I don’t darst go home, that’s true;
I won’t git no supper, loidy,
If ye don’t, and if I do.”
At last another train came along, some people hurried in, and then
Sally’s train went puffing and blowing on its way; and the joggle
jolted the baby to sleep, and by and by Sally too. She roused herself
to give the conductor her ticket—the man looking at her searchingly;
but when he came back to question her he found her asleep again.
It was a long, refreshing slumber that Sally had; and when at last the
little old conductor told her this was the place to which her ticket
took her, she skipped off the car, happy-hearted to think of all the
long distance that lay between her and the city and the ship. She
edged through the little throng always waiting at a station, who if
they thought at all about her thought she belonged to some poor French
Canadians, and hurried down the first road she saw. Then spying a
foot-path leading up a hill, among low bushes, to a wood, she was over
the fence in no time, and following it up and out of sight.
Then at last Sally breathed freely. She never thought of being afraid
in the green afternoon wood. She kept the half-visible path by a kind
of instinct.
On and on, and up and up, Sally went. Then down and down on the other
side, she made her way, sometimes in deep green gloom, and creeping
under heavy branches; sometimes where a shimmer of leaves let her see
a pale blue sky overhead. Once a young fawn looked at her through the
boughs and fled away in a fright that made her laugh—as if anything
need be afraid of her! Once a brood of little brown partridges scurried
away under foot like a parcel of dead leaves. Once she stooped to
smooth two little hairy things cuddled in a grassy hollow in the lee of
a big, warm rock, who evidently did not like it; and it was well for
Sally that their mother, who would not have liked it either, was off
foraging and rolling in a berry-patch—for they were bear’s cubs.
All the way along Sally was conscious of a delicious sort of air, a
scent of earth and flowers and spicy leaves that comforted her soul,
although burrs and boughs and twigs and pebbles discomfited her feet,
tough little feet though they were.
By and by the trees grew thin. She came out on a bright and open spot
where a spring bubbled up and ran away in a tiny brook. A wooden
trough, hollowed out of an old tree, stood beside the spring, half full
of water in which the sun had lain all day.
As she sat down, Sally dabbled her fingers in the trough. The water was
warm. In a moment she had off the baby’s poor little slip, and then
gave him the most refreshing bath the little creature had ever had in
his life. After it, she laid him down to kick and sprawl and crow and
gurgle on a bed of soft warm moss, while she washed her own face and
hands, and dipped her head in the spring, where the water made a glossy
curl of every lock of her hair.
This done, Sally took the bottle of milk out of the big silk
handkerchief, tasted it to find if it were still sweet, and proceeded
to give the baby his supper. She put the bottle afterwards in the edge
of the running water to keep cool, and then wrapped him over and over
in the soft handkerchief, having spread his little gown on a bush to
dry, and laid him down on the grass. She rambled about a little while,
picking and eating berries. Afterward she lay down beside him, putting
her arm over him. Tired out with her long tramp and all her cares and
fears, Sally slept till the baby woke her in the broad sunlight of the
next morning. She ran for the bottle in the brook; but alas the little
drop of milk was sour. She stayed long enough to wash the bottle; and
then, without stopping for any of the tempting berries, she took up her
march again.
The baby was crying lustily for his breakfast, when Sally saw the smoke
of a farmhouse and with some hesitation drew near it. A man, coming
from the barn, was just carrying in a foaming pail of milk.
“Oh, if youse’d gimme de full of de bottle!” cried Sally.
“What for?” said the man gruffly.
“For de byby,” answered Sally.
“Why don’t you have your own milk?” said the man. “There, hold your
dipper.”
But Sally hadn’t any dipper; and at that moment a thin, colorless woman
appeared at the door, a look of wonder and then another of pity and
sweetness sweeping over her face; and Sally and the baby were in the
kitchen directly afterward.
“Where’d you come f’m?” the woman asked Sally.
“Down below,” said Sally, who had no notion of telling.
“Whar’ you goin’?”
“Goin’ on.”
“Got any mother?” twisting one of Sally’s curls.
“Naw.”
“Nor father, either, I s’pose?”
“Naw.”
“My land! Wal, you hev somethin’ ter eat, an’ then I’ll see.” And Sally
had a breakfast that made her think of these people as one thinks of
those in kings’ palaces—only Sally had never heard of kings’ palaces.
While she was “topping off,” as the good woman called it, with pancakes
and maple-syrup, her new friend fed the baby, and then brought a basin
of warm water and soap with soft towels, and washed him carefully and
rubbed his back, while he stretched and kicked and laughed. She got a
little cotton nightgown that she had laid away in camphor, and put it
on him. “Oh!” she said, “he’s good enough to eat!” She took him out to
show him to her husband. “Father!” she said. “He’s jest the image of
our little John!”
“Can’t help it ef he is,” said the man, who evidently knew what she
wished. “We can’t afford ter be a-keepin’ of tramps. She said she was
goin’ on. You jes’ let her go on!”
The woman knew it was no use to say more. She came in with tears on
her face. But she had Sally make herself decent, and she gave her a
cotton gown that had once been pink and was now a rosy white. In it,
though it was a little too long, Sally looked quite quaint. It had
been the gown of the poor woman’s dear and only daughter, who had died
before the little John had died. And then this good, kind soul did up
Sally’s scratched and blistered feet in some ointment, with bandages,
and dressed them up in a pair of little old shoes she had always kept.
After that she put up a luncheon of fried bread and a piece of pie for
Sally, and filled the milk-bottle, and Sally shouldered the baby and
made off.
But turning for a look at the place where she had met so much kindness,
Sally saw the woman crying, and she went back.
“Youse ain’t no need ter feel bad,” she said, as she put her arms round
the kind friend’s neck. And then suddenly, in a great fear of she knew
not what, she scampered off as fast as her feet would let her. They
were very tired and lame little feet now.
XV.
THAT DAY WHEN ALLY WAS LOST.
THE morning had deepened into late forenoon before—going a little way,
and resting a little while, and going on again, and stopping a moment
to cry, and talking to the baby—Sally gave herself up to rest.
She had come to a place of velvet grass, a glen, that although shut in
with green hills, yet gave her a sense of being high in clear sweet
air. A stream trickled over some upper cliff in a thin waterfall that
gave a murmuring sound. And as the baby was fretting, Sally thought it
might be time for his second dinner; and almost before he had finished
it, braced by the mountain air and weary with her walk, she fell as
sound asleep as the baby did.
Sally opened her eyes an hour or two afterwards to behold, bending over
her, the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
It was a golden-haired child with big blue eyes shining out of a
flushed and smiling, wondering face.
Sally had heard somewhere, she did not know where, but very vaguely,
of such a place as Heaven, of such a thing as an angel. Now she lay
there on the soft warm grass, and looked up at the velvet blue sky,
and smelled the wind wandering by laden with the breath of the wild
sweet-brier, and remembered the wings of the low-darting birds, the
murmur of the waterfall, and she came to the instant conclusion that
this was Heaven, and that so her mother was not far off.
“Say! Be youse an angel?” she whispered.
“Oh, I’m Ally!” answered the little creature. “I’ve come to find you.
You’re one of the Children of the Hill, I suppose, and here’s the baby,
the very baby! Come with me quick! Aunt Susan wants the baby!”
“What!” cried Sally in alarm. “It ain’t Heaven den?”
“Why, no,” said Ally. “It’s Green Ridge. It’s the basin where we have
picnics.”
“Who’s Aunt Susan?”
“Why, she’s—she’s Aunt Susan at the house. She’s real sweet. And she
wants the baby.”
“Is it de ’Statution down there?’
“It’s the farm,—Old Uncle’s farm,” said Ally, “and Uncle Billy’s farm.”
“Oh, de farm-school!” cried Sally, sure now of evil mischance. “Well, I
ain’t goin’, and you can tell ’em so!”
“Oh, but I want you to! I live down there—I’m one of the Children of
the Valley. We have beautiful times. We learn lessons, a little while
mornings, and then we have beautiful times. We’re all learning to
swim, and we had fireworks the Fourth of July. And there’s Essie and
Janet and Jack and”—just then old Brindle went across a pasture down
below. “You aren’t afraid of cows, are you?”
“I ain’t afraid o’ nothin’,” said Sally defiantly.
“I’ve got a little cow of my own. Wouldn’t you like a little cow? I’ll
give you mine,” said Ally fervently. “And Essie has a cat, Erminie;
and she brings her kittens into the house for us to see. And there’s
beautiful dogs. And we take rides on a pony—Uncle Billy holds us on;
you shall have my turn. And we feed the hens—there’s a darling white
hen with fifteen chickens,” went on the little coaxer. “And we have
gardens and make flowers grow. Do the Children of the Hill make flowers
grow? Essie and Janet think they do.”
“Who’s de Childurn o’ de Hill?” asked Sally. “Youse sure it ain’t no
bloomin’ Statution down there?”
“I don’t know anything about a ’Statution. It’s Old Uncle’s farm.”
“Perhaps it’s a Fresh Air farm?” said Sally. “I know w’ot dat is. I was
to a Fresh Air farm once. You bet it was nice!”
“This is nice,” urged Ally. “’Tis a Fresh Air farm, I guess,” she said
triumphantly. “And Diane makes us such nice cakes, and gives us honey.
There’s lots of ’licious things down there.”
“Do youse play tag?” interrupted Sally.
“And goal, and ball, and Old Man’s Castle, and see-saw,
and—and—Essie’ll give you her other doll if you’ll come, and I’ll help
carry the baby down for you! Oh, isn’t he a dear! I love a baby—a
baby’s better than a doll. You brought him back on purpose to Aunt
Susan, didn’t you?”
And then Ally’s arms were thrown round Sally, and she was kissing the
poor little bewildered face.
“I guess I’ll come,” said Sally, struggling up. “I want to see dis Aunt
Susan.”
They hurried on for a long way, down hill all the time, round a
thicket, through a shivering birch wood, and taking turns carrying the
baby.
XVI.
AUNT SUSAN’S BABY.
WHEN Uncle Billy and Pincher came round a bend of the tangled path,
an hour or two later, cutting their way through the thicket here, and
lifting the low boughs there, they stopped short at the sight of the
lost Ally sitting on a log with Sally, whose feet could take her no
farther. Ally, whose rosy face was a picture of delight, sympathy, and
anxiety, was holding a tiny sleeping baby in her arms, and looking at
it with eyes of unbounded love.
Being made to understand the case, that this was one of the Children of
the Hill, only her feet were lame, who had brought Aunt Susan’s baby
back to her—Uncle Billy blew a blast on his megaphone to let the family
know Ally was all right.
Then he took Sally in his arms, while Pincher followed with the baby,
Ally keeping close behind. After a few intervals of rest, and much
talk by the way, the little company got down the hill and across the
valley, and at last reached the great farm piazza.
So it came to pass that when Old Uncle and the rest, having heard the
megaphone, came down from the wilds of Blue Top, there was Sally in
the hammock, tired and white through all her sunburn, but with a look
of infinite happiness on her face. For she had seen Essie run to meet
Ally and throw her arms about her in an ecstasy of joy at her safe
return, and Janet bringing her her little chair, and Will hurrying
with the dinner that had been saved for her, and dividing it in two
portions, one for herself and one for her. And Aunt Rose had wiped her
warm and dusty face with a wet sponge, drying it with a soft towel, and
kissing her when all was done. And Aunt Susan was sitting near her—very
white and still had Aunt Susan been after listening to Ally’s rapid
exclamations and explanations. For Aunt Susan had come out on the lawn
in wonder at the little girl Uncle Billy was bringing and the sight of
a tiny baby in Pincher’s arms, and Ally had run forward, all eagerness,
with the strangest words:
“Oh, Aunt Susan, I’ve got you back your baby! This little girl—she is
one of the Children of the Hill—she was bringing it home; and I met her
and told her about us all, and how you had wanted it and wanted it.”
When Old Uncle came up, Aunt Susan was holding the baby, who, none the
worse for his out-door life, was looking up at her as if the first
thing of which he had ever taken notice was the mother-love in her eyes.
But Aunt Rose had been down to meet Old Uncle.