MORE ABOUT ANNIS.
All this time Persis had been having sundry confidences with Annis, who
in her quiet way was happier than she had ever been in her life, and
her devotion to Persis grew as her cause for gratitude became more and
more evident to her.
“Mamma and I have such a good time making plans,” she said to Persis.
“We are going to have a cunning little house all our own, and, Persis,
I hope you will help me to make my room cosey and pretty. We want to
have a little garden if we can get a house with ground enough around
it.”
“Then you will have to come over in our neighborhood,” returned Persis,
well pleased, “for all the houses over our way have little garden
plots. Let’s go house-hunting ourselves, this very afternoon. I believe
I know just the house for you—it is so ugly.”
Annis looked shocked, and Persis laughed merrily. “That sounded
funny, didn’t it? but, of course, you couldn’t see inside my mind,”
she explained. “It is just this way: the house is very cosey and
convenient inside, but outside it looks blank and uninteresting.
Still, I’ve often thought what a pretty place it could be made; at
least, Basil called my attention to it once when we were out on our
wheels. You know he is going to be an architect, and his eyes are
always wandering over buildings. He said that if the house were painted
another color, and had a porch around it, with a better-looking
approach to the door-way, it would be so much more attractive that it
would be snapped up in a minute. There is a lovely place for a garden
in front, and quite a piece of ground in the rear, but the house is a
hideous color, and has been idle a long time, for no one will take it
as it stands, and the owner will do nothing to it. I think it could be
bought at a very low price.”
Annis was listening attentively. “Let us go right away,” she exclaimed,
when Persis concluded. And they set off, forthwith, getting the keys of
the house and exploring it from garret to cellar with Basil, who joined
them at Persis’s suggestion.
“It is just the place,” Annis decided. “I know mamma will think so.
There is such a lovely view of the west, and it is so near you all,
Persis. Oh, I’d so much rather have a house like this, to contrive and
plan for, than a spick and span, nippy little affair, all gingerbread
work outside and fussiness inside.”
Basil looked approval. “That’s what I think,” he said. “When I plan
houses I don’t intend to build a whole row with Japanese roofs and
Moorish windows and colonial porches. That’s the kind of hodge-podge
you see nowadays. I wouldn’t live in such a house if I owned a whole
block.”
“This is where Basil waxes eloquent. Start him off on the subject
of inartistic modern buildings, and you will hear him at his best,”
informed Persis, roguishly.
Nevertheless, the judgment of the prospective architect did prove of
such value that when Mrs. Brown had been made to see the possibilities
of the little house, she felt that the moderate price at which it
was to be obtained secured her a great bargain, since it left her a
margin for repairs and alterations, making the entire outlay fall below
what she had determined she could afford. In consequence, within a
reasonable time the dingy unattractive dwelling was transformed into a
most homelike abode, in which the Holmes family, with Porter and Basil
added, took almost as much interest as the Browns themselves.
“Oh, Persis,” said Annis, one Saturday afternoon, when Mrs. Brown’s
boarding-house was a thing of the past, “you don’t know what a relief
it is to have a home all to ourselves, and how delightful it is to have
real, sure enough relations only two blocks away. Isn’t it funny for me
to call your grandma Aunt Persis, and your mamma Cousin Mary?”
“They like it,” returned Persis, comfortably settling herself among the
cushions on Annis’s window-seat.
“Audrey Vane has been over twice to see me,” informed Annis. “Her
brother is quite a chum of Basil Phillips, Audrey told me.”
“Yes, he is,” returned Persis, shortly, looking a trifle vexed.
“Audrey is as sweet as honey to me,” Annis went on, a little gleam of
merriment coming into her eyes. “She has invited me to luncheon, and,
oh, Persis, it is so absurd to see the reverential tone she uses in
speaking of the ancestors. Nice old persons they were, no doubt, but
probably they had as many faults as the rest of the world, and I’m sure
the knowledge of them hasn’t changed me in the least; yet you would
suppose they had in some way invested me with new virtues. I really
believe Audrey thinks so, she is so extra attentive.”
Persis was looking somewhat cross, the truth being that she was a
trifle jealous of Annis, and felt that these overtures of Audrey’s
rather encroached upon her rights as a friend, and she very soon took
her departure with a certain stiffness which Annis could not understand.
“Persis looks like a thunder cloud,” declared Lisa. “What’s wrong,
Tommy?”
“Nothing that need concern you,” snapped back Persis.
“Well, you needn’t take my head off on account of my sisterly
solicitude,” replied Lisa. “It is something about your precious Annis,
I have no doubt.” And she returned to her embroidery.
Lisa had long since condescendingly accepted Annis, but she could not
refrain from little flings at Persis’s devotion to her new cousin,
knowing it was the surest way to nettle her. Therefore this last remark
did not add to Persis’s peace of mind, and she was about to pass
through grandma’s room to her “snuggery” with scarcely a word to the
dear old lady.
Grandma, however, was used to the uncertain moods of youth, and, seeing
the irritated look upon Persis’s face, she called her over to the
window to look at a favorite plant just ready to blossom. “See, Persis,
four more buds, I didn’t discover them till this morning.” Persis could
not refuse the invitation, but it was accepted with rather a dour face.
“Where is my girl’s sunshine?” asked grandma, pleasantly.
“Oh, I’m disgusted—just disgusted!”
“With what?”
“Oh, I don’t know—people, girls; they are so hateful!”
Grandma laughed. “Is Persis Holmes upon the list?”
Persis had to smile. “No doubt I am hateful sometimes. Grandma, what
are you to do with yourself when you feel jealous and all stirred up
over a trifle?”
“You are to go to your grandmother and tell her all about it, and then
she will dive into her scrap-bag of experience and see if she can find
a bit with which to mend your ragged temper.”
“She generally does find a patch,” returned Persis, the frown beginning
to smooth out. “Well, I’ll ’fess. It’s just this way. You know I was
the first one to take up Annis.”
“Very praiseworthy of you.”
“Now, don’t mock me, grandma, right at the beginning. I hate to have to
give in at the very outset.”
“I know you do.”
“Oh, dear, that is a second hit! Well, I will be humility itself and
say: Since I was the first whom Annis favored with her regard. Will
that do?”
“No. You can say: Since Annis and I mutually discovered that we were
congenial spirits.”
Persis looked a little rueful. “Then that takes the point out of what I
was going to say.”
“Perhaps there was no point there.”
Persis looked up. “Grandma, you are a witch. I believe you had a Salem
ancestor, didn’t you?”
Grandma laughed. “Who is mocking now? Go on, naughty girl.”
“Then I’ll put it in my own disagreeable way, with all my I’s in very
black italics. Well, _I_ have always felt that _I_ was Annis’s special
friend, and here Audrey Vane is getting awfully intimate with her, and
_I_ don’t like it a bit.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Such a very satisfactory reason.”
“Then it’s because—because Audrey was so hateful at first, and it makes
me mad to see her so honeyfied now.”
“Audrey did not show a fine spirit, I admit; but would you have her
continue to show ill-feeling to Annis?”
“No-o.”
“Then, when she is doing her best to make up for past slights, isn’t
that rather commendable?”
“I suppose so.”
“Would you rather that Audrey should treat Annis badly?”
“No—at least—oh, grandma, I suppose I have a horrid disposition, but I
do believe I would almost rather she would be hateful, so I could have
an excuse for keeping Annis all to myself. Just see into what a Valley
of Humiliation you are driving me.”
“My darling, I think the fact that you have confessed it will make
it much easier for you to run past the lions in your path. Now let
us get at the real, honest truth. Annis is a dear, forgiving little
girl. She is magnanimous enough to accept the advances the girls are
making, so she will win herself hosts of friends of whom you are surely
not selfish enough to wish to deprive her. There is not the slightest
evidence that she loves you any the less, and she would have very
narrow quarters in her heart if there were not room for others besides
yourself. You have your two sisters, your mother and father, and your
old granny to love you, and yet you do not want Annis to win the
affection of any one but her mother and yourself.”
“Oh, grandma, not quite that. I want all my family to love her.”
“Yes; I admit I am describing your rags as being in a shabbier state
than they are. It isn’t as bad as that; but you see what I mean.”
“Yes, I do, and I wish I were not so exacting.”
“Girls usually are more so than boys. Let me dive into that mental
scrap-bag for an experience to point the moral. Let me see. I was a
little older than you when I estranged my best girl friend because I
was too exacting. She had gone on a visit to a young relative, and I
demanded a letter every week from her. So when one, two, three weeks
passed and no letter came I felt much aggrieved. I heard indirectly of
her good times, and fancied the girl cousin whom she was visiting had
taken my place. When my friend returned home I did not go near her,
and when after a few days she came to see me I sent word that I wished
to be excused to callers. So time went on till the situation became
awkward, and I did not know how to meet Alice. Later on I heard that
she had written the first week and the letter miscarried; so, receiving
no reply, she did not write again at once, and later a sprained wrist
prevented. But it was too late to explain my coldness upon the excuse
of such a trifle, and she never felt the same. I remember my brother,
to whom I took my woes, gave me a piece of advice on the subject.
‘Never gauge a friendship by letters, first, because there may be a
fault in the mail; secondly, because we are apt to invest written
words with meanings not intended.’ My brother, I remember, told me,
too, that he had a friend to whom he wrote once a year, and probably
no friendship was ever closer than his and Henry Vaughan’s. Now, is my
lecture long enough?”
Persis looked up, smiling. “It is so nice to think that you were once a
silly girl,” she said. “It encourages me very much.”
Grandma laughed. “What are you going to do about Annis?” she asked.
Persis jumped up. “I am going there right away.”
“Do,” urged Mrs. Estabrook; “and tell her we want her mother and
herself to come to tea to-morrow evening.”
“Oh, grandma, that’s good of you to give me a message. I left in a
huff, and I know Annis is mourning over it. The message makes a nice
excuse to go back without hurting my dignity.” And Persis was out of
the room like a flash, and in half an hour she and Annis were building
air-castles with all the fervor imaginable.
“We’ll always work together,” Annis declared, “for you know, Persis, I
don’t want to marry and leave mamma, so we can do something fine. We
might teach in the same college, or we might edit a paper together.”
“I shall not marry, either,” responded Persis. “Lisa and Mellicent will
be sure to,—they are so pretty,—and I shall want to give the family a
change of experience. I think I would like the editing best. You see
papa represents the college professor sufficiently, and I’d like to be
something quite different. Let us decide to be editors. What kind of a
paper shall it be,—purely literary, or just general?”
“We might begin with a juvenile magazine; that would be nice,” replied
Annis, whose limitations rather daunted her when something “purely
literary” was considered.
“Well,” returned Persis, “that might do, only I’d like something rather
more ambitious.”
“But we’ll have to know such a lot to edit a grown-up paper.”
“Oh, we’d not need to do it till we were prepared. We’ll study for a
journalistic career. I think it will be fine for you to be literary
editor and for me to be managing editor.”
“I can imagine how fierce you’d look when any one came in with a
complaint,” laughed Annis. “Won’t it be funny to know all about
printers’ devils and forms and proofs and all those things?”
“Where shall we start it?” said Persis, as if it were a matter to be
determined at once. “Shall we have our office here?”
“Oh, I’m afraid we shouldn’t succeed where there are so many papers. We
might go to some new Western town,” returned Annis.
“Then we’d have to have those ridiculous items like, ‘Mr. Canada
Halifax was in town yesterday buying a new plough. Canada has raised a
pair of side whiskers, and they are vastly becoming.’”
“Or, ‘Mrs. Alaska Sitka is visiting her friend, Mrs. Siberia Behring,’”
added Annis. “‘She wears a new gown, which she purchased last year
from our honored townsman, Mr. Woolly De Beige.’” The girls both went
off into a fit of laughter at their nonsense. “That reminds me,” said
Annis, “of a man in a little village where we were once. Mamma was
buying stockings, which this shopkeeper never by any accident called
anything but ‘hose,’ and once he said, ‘These are not quite so nice as
some others I have, madam. Now, this,’ opening another box, ‘is a much
better ho.’”
Persis laughed merrily. “Of course, ho ought to be the singular of
hose,” she said. “Prue is always making funny mistakes. She calls
hucksters ‘hucksens,’ and the garbage-box the ‘goblidge-box.’ She told
me the other day that all the new houses ought to have ‘fire-skates’
on them, so ‘folks could git out of ’em easy; they build ’em so tall
nowadays.’ And she told me her church was so crowded last Sunday that
even the ‘islands’ were full. We try to tease her, but she never will
admit but that she knows just as much as any one, and she always has an
answer ready. Lisa asked her the other day what she thought of a war
with England. ‘Humph!’ she said. ‘I reckon we could stand it.’ ‘I’m not
so sure,’ said Lisa. ‘We might manage very well on land; but what about
our water forces?’ ‘They ain’t no trouble ’bout that,’ said Prue; ‘we
got all the water we kin use. You ought just to see the way it flies
out o’ the spigot.’”
“What are you two girls so merry over?” asked Mrs. Brown, putting her
head in at the door, attracted by the peals of laughter.
“Oh, we’re just telling funny things. Persis was telling about old
black Prue.” And Annis repeated the story.
“You are such a comfort to me, Persis,” Mrs. Brown said. “I don’t know
what my little girl would do without you. You have waked her up and
are making another girl of her. She used to be such a little mouse.”
And Persis felt a remorseful twinge as she remembered her late jealous
feelings.
“I shall never, never be so exacting again,” she said to herself as
she took her way home. But as it takes more than one stroke to fell a
well-grown tree, so it takes more than one effort to overthrow a fault.
[Illustration: Decoration]