LIFE IN THE BIRDS' NEST.
Polly settled down in the Birds' Nest under the protecting wing of Mrs.
Bird, and a very soft and unaccustomed sort of shelter it was.
A room had been refurnished expressly for the welcome guest, and as
Mrs. Bird pushed her gently in alone, the night of her arrival, she
said, "This is the Pilgrim Chamber, Polly. It will speak our wishes
for us."
It was not the room in which Polly had been ill for so many weeks; for
Mrs. Bird knew the power of associations, and was unwilling to leave
any reminder of those painful days to sadden the girl's new life.
As Polly looked about her, she was almost awed by the dazzling
whiteness. The room was white enough for an angel, she thought. The
straw matting was almost concealed by a mammoth rug made of white
Japanese goatskins sewed together; the paint was like snow, and the
furniture had all been painted white, save for the delicate silver
lines that relieved it. There were soft, full curtains of white
bunting fringed with something that looked like thistle-down, and the
bedstead had an overhanging canopy of the same. An open fire burned in
the little grate, and a big white and silver rattan chair was drawn
cosily before it. There was a girlish dressing-table with its oval
mirror draped in dotted muslin; a dainty writing-desk with everything
convenient upon it; and in one corner was a low bookcase of white
satinwood. On the top of this case lay a card, "With the best wishes
of John Bird," and along the front of the upper shelf were painted the
words: "Come, tell us a story!" Below this there was a rich array of
good things. The Grimms, Laboulaye, and Hans Christian Andersen were
all there. Mrs. Ewing's "Jackanapes" and Charles Kingsley's
"Water-Babies" jostled the "Seven Little Sisters" series; Hawthorne's
"Wonder-Book" lay close to Lamb's "Tales from Shakespeare;" and
Whittier's "Child-Life in Prose and Poetry" stood between Mary Howitt's
"Children's Year" and Robert Louis Stevenson's "Child's Garden of
Verses."
Polly sat upon the floor before the bookcase and gloated over her new
treasures, each of which bore her name on the fly-leaf.
As her eye rose to the vase of snowy pampas plumes and the pictured
Madonna and Child above the bookcase, it wandered still higher until it
met a silver motto painted on a blue frieze that finished the top of
the walls where they met the ceiling.
Polly walked slowly round the room, studying the illuminated letters:
"_And they laid the Pilgrim in an upper chamber, and the name of the
chamber was Peace_."
This brought the ready tears to Polly's eyes. "God seems to give me
everything but what I want most," she thought; "but since He gives me
so much, I must not question any more: I must not choose; I must
believe that He wants me to be happy, after all, and I must begin and
try to be good again."
She did try to be good. She came down to breakfast the next morning,
announcing to Mrs. Bird, with her grateful morning kiss, that she meant
to "live up to" her room. "But it's going to be difficult," she
confessed. "I shall not dare to have a naughty thought in it; it seems
as if it would be written somewhere on the whiteness!"
"You can come and be naughty in my bachelor den, Polly," said Mr. Bird,
smiling. "Mrs. Bird does n't waste any girlish frills and poetic
decorations and mystical friezes on her poor brother-in-law! He is
done up in muddy browns, as befits his age and sex."
Polly insisted on beginning her work the very next afternoon; but she
had strength only for three appointments a week, and Mrs. Bird looked
doubtfully after her as she walked away from the house with a languid
gait utterly unlike her old buoyant step.
Edgar often came in the evenings, as did Tom and Blanche Mills, and
Milly Foster; but though Polly was cheerful and composed, she seldom
broke into her old flights of nonsense.
On other nights, when they were alone, she prepared for her hours of
story-telling, and in this she was wonderfully helped by Mr. Bird's
suggestions and advice; for he was a student of literature in many
languages, and delighted in bringing his treasures before so teachable
a pupil.
"She has a sort of genius that astonishes me," said he one morning, as
he chatted with Mrs. Bird over the breakfast-table.
Polly had excused herself, and stood at the farther library window,
gazing up the street vaguely and absently, as if she saw something
beyond the hills and the bay. Mrs. Bird's heart sank a little as she
looked at the slender figure in the black dress. There were no dimples
about the sad mouth, and was it the dress, or was she not very white
these latter days?--so white that her hair encircled her face with
absolute glory, and startled one with its color.
"It is a curious kind of gift," continued Mr. Bird, glancing at his
morning' papers. "She takes a long tale of Hans Andersen's, for
instance, and after an hour or two, when she has his idea fully in
mind, she shows me how she proposes to tell it to the younger children
at the Orphan Asylum. She clasps her hands over her knees, bends
forward toward the firelight, and tells the story with such simplicity
and earnestness that I am always glad she is looking the other way and
cannot see the tears in my eyes. I cried like a school-girl last night
over 'The Ugly Duckling.' She has natural dramatic instinct, a great
deal of facial expression, power of imitation, and an almost unerring
taste in the choice of words, which is unusual in a girl so young and
one who has been so imperfectly trained. I give her an old legend or
some fragment of folk-lore, and straight-way she dishes it up for me as
if it had been bone of her bone and marrow of her marrow; she knows
just what to leave out and what to put in, somehow. You had one of
your happy inspirations about that girl, Margaret,--she is a born
story-teller. She ought to wander about the country with a lute under
her arm. Is the Olivers' house insured?"
"Good gracious, Jack! you have a kangaroo sort of mind! How did you
leap to that subject? I'm sure I don't know, but what difference does
it make, anyway?"
"A good deal of difference," he answered nervously, looking into the
library (yes, Polly had gone out); "because the house, the furniture,
and the stable were burned to the ground last night,--so the morning
paper says."
Mrs. Bird rose and closed the doors. "That does seem too dreadful to
be true," she said. "The poor child's one bit of property, her only
stand-by in case of need! Oh, it can't be burned; and, if it is, it
must be insured. I 'm afraid a second blow would break her down
completely just now, when she has not recovered from the first."
Mr. Bird went out and telegraphed to Dr. George Edgerton;--
Is Oliver house burned? What was the amount of insurance, if any?
Answer.
JOHN BIRD.
At four o'clock the reply came:--
House and outbuildings burned. No insurance. Have written
particulars. Nothing but piano and family portraits saved.
GEORGE EDGERTON.
In an hour another message, marked "Collect," followed the first one:--
House burned last night. Defective flue. No carelessness on part of
servants or family. Piano, portraits, ice-cream freezer, and
wash-boiler saved by superhuman efforts of husband. Have you any
instructions? Have taken to my bed. Accept love and sympathy.
CLEMENTINE CHADWICK GEEENWOOD.
So it was true. The buildings were burned, and there was no insurance.
I know you will say there never is, in stories where the heroine's
courage is to be tested, even if the narrator has to burn down the
whole township to do it satisfactorily. But to this objection I can
make only this answer: First, that this house really did burn down;
secondly, that there really was no insurance; and thirdly, if this
combination of circumstances did not sometimes happen in real life, it
would never occur to a story-teller to introduce it as a test for
heroes and heroines.
"Well," said Mrs. Bird despairingly, "Polly must be told. Now, will
you do it, or shall I? Of course you want me to do it! Men never have
any courage about these things, nor any tact either."
At this moment the subject of conversation walked into the room, hat
and coat on, and an unwonted color in her cheeks. Edgar Noble followed
behind. Polly removed her hat and coat leisurely, sat down on a
hassock on the hearth rug, and ruffled her hair with the old familiar
gesture, almost forgotten these latter days.
Mrs. Bird looked warningly at the tell-tale yellow telegrams in Mr.
Bird's lap, and strove to catch his eye and indicate to his dull
masculine intelligence the necessity of hiding them until they could
devise a plan of breaking the sad news.
Mrs. Bird's glance and Mr. Bird's entire obliviousness were too much
for Polly's gravity. To their astonishment she burst into a peal of
laughter.
"'My lodging is on the cold, cold ground,
And hard, very hard is my fare!'"
she sang, to the tune of "Believe me, if all those endearing young
charms." "So you know all about it, too?"
"How did you hear it?" gasped Mrs. Bird.
"I bought the evening paper to see if that lost child at the asylum had
been found. Edgar jumped on the car, and seemed determined that I
should not read the paper until I reached home. He was very kind, but
slightly bungling in his attentions. I knew then that something was
wrong, but just what was beyond my imagination, unless Jack Howard had
been expelled from Harvard, or Bell Winship had been lost at sea on the
way home; so I persisted in reading, and at last I found the fatal
item. I don't know whether Edgar expected me to faint at sight! I 'm
not one of the fainting sort!"
"I 'm relieved that you can take it so calmly. I have been shivering
with dread all day, and Jack and I have been quarreling as to which
should break it to you."
"Break it to me!" echoed Polly, in superb disdain. "My dear Fairy
Godmother, you must think me a weak sort of person! As if the burning
down of one patrimonial estate could shatter my nerves! What is a
passing home or so? Let it burn, by all means, if it likes. 'He that
is down need fear no fall.'"
"It is your only property," said Mr. Bird, trying to present the other
side of the case properly, "and it was not insured."
"What of that?" she asked briskly. "Am I not housed and fed like a
princess at the present moment? Have I not two hundred and fifty
dollars in the bank, and am I not earning twenty-five dollars a month
with absolute regularity? Avaunt, cold Fear!"
"How was it that the house was not insured?" asked Mr. Bird.
"I 'm sure I don't know. It was insured once upon a time, if I
remember right; when it got uninsured, I can't tell. How do things get
uninsured, Mr. Bird?"
"The insurance lapses, of course, if the premium is n't regularly paid."
"Oh, that would account for it!" said Polly easily. "There were
quantities of things that were n't paid regularly, though they were
always paid in course of time. You ought to have asked me if we were
insured, Edgar,--you were the boy of the house,--insurance is n't a
girl's department. Let me see the telegrams, please."
They all laughed heartily over Mrs. Greenwood's characteristic message.
"Think of 'husband' bearing that aged ice-cream freezer and that leaky
boiler to a place of safety!" exclaimed Polly. "'All that was left of
them, left of six hundred!' Well, my family portraits, piano, freezer,
and boiler will furnish a humble cot very nicely in my future spinster
days. By the way, the land did n't burn up, I suppose, and that must
be good for something, is n't it?"
"Rather," answered Edgar; "a corner lot on the best street in town,
four blocks from the new hotel site! It's worth eighteen hundred or
two thousand dollars, at least."
"Then why do you worry about me, good people? I 'm not a heroine. If
I were sitting on the curbstone without a roof to my head, and did n't
know where I should get my dinner, I should cry! But I smell my
dinner" (here she sniffed pleasurably), "and I think it 's chicken!
You see, it's so difficult for me to realize that I 'm a pauper, living
here, a pampered darling in the halls of wealth, with such a large
income rolling up daily that I shall be a prey to fortune-hunters by
the time I am twenty! Pshaw! don't worry about me! This is just the
sort of diet I have been accustomed to from my infancy! I rather enjoy
it!"
Whereupon Edgar recited an impromptu nonsense verse:--
"There 's a queer little maiden named Polly,
Who always knows when to be jolly.
When ruined by fire
Her spirits rise higher.
This most inconsistent Miss Polly."