exit from the old cemetery, the point where mourners were supposed to
turn for a last look at the gates which had just shut in the newly
buried friend; and this association, as well as the glimpse of tall
cemetery fence, topped with mournful evergreens which bounded the view,
did not tend to make the sad outlook any the less sad on that dismal
day. For it was only a fortnight since Delia and Hetty Willett, the
girls on the window-seat, had left within those gates the kind old
grandmother who for years had stood to them in the stead of father and
mother both.
"The Willetts," as the neighbors called them, using the collective
phrase always, were twins, and just eighteen years old. Bearing to each
other even a stronger personal likeness than twins customarily possess,
they were in other points curiously unlike. Delia was soft and clinging,
Hetty vigorous and self-reliant. Delia loved to be guided, Hetty to
guide; the former had few independent views and opinions, the latter was
brimful of ideas and fancies, plans and purposes; some crude, some
foolish, but all her own. Yet, oddly enough, it was Delia, very often,
who gave the casting vote in their decisions, for Hetty's love for her
slender twin was a sentiment so deep and intense that she often yielded
against her own better sense and judgment, simply for the pleasure of
yielding to what Delia wished. Delia in return adored her sister, waited
on her, petted, consoled, "exactly as if she were Hetty's wife," Aunt
Polly said, "and the worst was they suited each other so well that no
one else would ever suit either of them, and they were bound to die old
maids in consequence!"
But eighteen can laugh at such auguries, and there was no thought or
question of marriage in the minds of the sisters as they crouched that
afternoon close together on the old window-seat.
A very different question absorbed them, and a perplexing one; how they
were to live, namely, and to keep together while doing so, which meant
pretty much the same thing to them both. Grandmother's death had left
them with so very, very little. Her annuity died with her. There was
the old house, the plain, worn furniture to which they had been
accustomed all their lives, and about a hundred dollars a year! What
could they do with that?
"If one of us only happened to be clever," sighed Delia. "If I could
paint pictures, or you had a talent for writing, how easy it would be!"
"I don't know as to that," responded Hetty. "Seems to me I've heard of
people who did those things, and yet didn't find it so mighty easy to
get along. Somebody's got to buy the pictures after they're painted, you
know, and read the books, and pay for them." She spoke in an absent
tone, and her brow was knitted into the little frown which Delia knew
betokened that her twin was puzzling hard over something.
"Don't scowl, it'll spoil your forehead," she said, smoothing out the
objectionable frown with her fingers.
"Was I scowling? Well, never mind. I'm trying to think, Dely. You can't
paint and I can't write. The question is, What can we do?"
"That _is_ a question," said a voice at the door. It was Aunt Polly's
voice. She managed on most days to drop in and "give a look to them, the
lonely little creeturs," as she would have expressed it.
"You're consultin', I see," she said, taking in the situation at a
glance: the dismal room, the depressive and tearful cheeks of the two
girls, the lack of comfort and cheer. She twitched open the stove door
as she passed, threw in a stick of wood, twirled the damper, and gave a
brisk, rattling shake to the ashes,--all with a turn of her hand as it
were,--attentions to which the stove presently responded with a brisk
roar. "Well, it's time you did. I was planning to have a talk with you
before long, for you ought to settle to something. Pull the blind down,
Dely, and, Hetty, you light the lamp, and come to the fire, both of
you, and let's see what we can make of it. It's a tangled skein enough,
I don't deny it; but most skeins are that, and there's always a right
end somewhere, if the Lord'll give us sense enough to get hold of it and
keep on pulling out and winding up."
Presently the girls were seated close to Aunt Polly's rocking-chair. The
room looked more cheerful now with the lamplight and the yellow glow
from the stove, and both were conscious of a sense of hopefulness.
"Now--what _can_ you do?" demanded Aunt Polly, whirling round in her
chair so as to face them.
"We hadn't got so far as that when you came in," replied Hetty; "I
suppose we must do what other people do in the same circumstances."
"What's that?"
"Teach something, or sew, I suppose."
"Sewing's slow starvation, in my opinion, unless you've got a machine,
which you haven't, and not much better then. What do you know that you
can teach?"
"Not much," replied Hetty, humbly, while Delia added hesitatingly, "We
could teach children their letters, perhaps."
"I presume you could," responded Aunt Polly, dryly. "But, though you
mayn't know it, perhaps, there are about fifty women in this town can do
the same, and who mean to do it, what's more. And most of 'em have got
the start of you in one way or another, so what's your chance worth? No,
girls, sewing and teaching are played out. They are good things in their
way, but every woman who's got her living to earn thinks of them the
very first thing and of nothing else, and the market is always
overstocked. My advice to you is, to _think up something you can do
better than other people_--that's what gives folks a real chance! Now,
what is there?"
"There isn't anything I can do better than other people," cried the
dismayed Delia. "Nor Hetty either--except make gingerbread," she added,
with a faint little laugh. "Hetty beats everybody at that, grandmother
always said."
"Very well; make gingerbread then. That's your thing to do," said Aunt
Polly.
Hetty looked at her with incredulous eyes.
"You're not in earnest, are you?" she said.
"I am. In dead earnest."
"But, Aunt Polly, _gingerbread_! Such a little thing as that! Who ever
heard of a girl's doing such a thing?"
"All the better if they never did. A new trade has a double chance. As
for the 'little,' great things often come from small beginnings.
Fortunes have been made out of gingerbread before now, I'll be bound, or
if not that, out of something no bigger. No, Hetty, depend upon it, if
your gingerbread is _best_, folks will want it. And if your teaching or
sewing is only second best, they won't. It's the law of human nature,
and a very good law, too, though it cuts the wrong way sometimes, like
all laws."
"Aunt Polly, you're a genius!" cried Hetty, warmed into sudden glow by
this vigorous common sense. "I _can_ make good gingerbread, and it's
just as you say, neither of us know enough to teach well, and we are
both poor hands at sewing, and we should have a much better chance if we
tried to do what we can and not what we can't. Why shouldn't I make
gingerbread? Dely'd help me, and if folks liked our things and bought
them, we could live and keep together. We could make a kind of shop of
this room, couldn't we? What do you think?"
"'Tisn't a bad place for such a trade," said Aunt Polly, slowly,
measuring the room with her eyes. "Being on a corner is an advantage,
you see; and there's that double winder on the street gives a first-rate
chance to show what you've got to sell. I never did see no use in that
winder before. My father, he had it cut for a kind of a whim like, and
we all thought it was notional in him; but, as they say, keep a thing
long enough and a use'll turn up. It's a sort of a gain for you, too,
having the house so old-fashioned. Folks has a hankering for such
things, nowadays--the Lord knows why. I hear 'em going on about it when
I'm out tailorin', calling ugly things 'quaint,' and lovely, because
they're old. Hetty,"--with sudden inspiration,--"here's an idea for you,
be 'quaint'! Don't try for a shop, keep the room a room, and make it as
old-fashioned-looking as you can, and I'll bet a cookie that your
gingerbread'll be twice as popular with one set of folks, and if it's
first-rate gingerbread, the other set who don't care for old things will
like it just as well."
What a bracing thing is a word in season! Aunt Polly's little seed of
suggestion grew and spread like Jack's fabled bean-stalk.
"Your light biscuits always turn out well," said Delia.
"And my snaps. Grandmother liked them so much. And you're a good hand at
loaf bread, you know. Aunt Polly--I seem to smell a fortune in the air.
We will begin at once, just as soon as I can get a half-barrel of flour
and put an advertisement in the paper."
Hetty had a ready wit, and Aunt Polly's hint as to "quaintness" was not
lost upon her. The advertisement when it appeared the next day but one
ran thus:--
"After Monday next, the Old-Time Bakery, corner of Farewell and Martin
Streets, will be prepared to furnish, to order, fresh bread, buns,
biscuits, and grandmother's gingerbread, all home-made."
People smiled over the little notice, but the odd wording stuck in their
memories as odd things will, and more than one person went out of his
way during the next week to take a look into the wide, low window,
within which, on a broad, napkin-covered shelf, stood rows of biscuits,
light and white, buns, each glazed with shining umber-brown, and loaves
of gingerbread whose complexion and smell were enough to vouch for
their excellence. Acting on Aunt Polly's suggestion, Hetty had set forth
her wares on plates of the oldest and oddest pattern which could be
found in grandmother's closet. A queer, tall pitcher flanked them on
either side, and round the window-frame she had twined the long,
luxuriant shoots of a potted ivy. Altogether the effect was pretty, and
no one need be told that the pitchers had for years been consecrated to
the reception of yeast and corks, or that the plates had long since been
relegated to kitchen use as too shabby for better occasions.
"Hain't ye no white chany?" inquired their first customer, an old woman,
as she slowly counted out the pennies for half a dozen biscuit. "It
would kind of set your cakes off."
"We used what we had," replied Hetty, diplomatically. "But I hope your
biscuits'll taste just as good as if they came off a white plate."
This old woman, two others, and a little boy were the only customers
that first day.
"'Tisn't a bit a good beginning," declared Delia, pouring the money
received out of an old-fashioned china tea-caddy which Hetty had
unearthed in an up-stairs closet and brought down to serve as a till.
"Two dozen biscuits, that's twenty-four cents, a loaf of gingerbread,
and about half the buns. That's fifty-three cents in all. What did you
say the materials cost?"
"About seventy cents. But then we have our supper and breakfast out of
them, and nearly half the stock to sell at a reduced rate to-morrow. We
shan't lose anything, I reckon, but we shan't gain much either."
"Rome wasn't built all in a minute. You'll do yet," remarked Aunt Polly,
who had dropped in to hear the result of the first day's sales.
But two days--three--a week, went by, and still trade did not materially
improve, and it took all Aunt Polly's wise saws and hopeful auguries to
keep their spirits up. Each day showed the same record, no loss, but
almost no gain. Toward the end of the second week matters mended. Mrs.
Corliss, the wife of a wealthy manufacturer, having an errand in
Farewell Street, happened to pass the little window, and her
bric-a-brac-loving eyes were caught at once by its unusual appearance.
She stopped, studied the whole arrangement from the ivy wreath to the
old pitchers; a recollection of the droll little advertisement over
which she had laughed a few days previously, came over her. "I declare,
this is the very place," she said to herself; and opening the door she
entered, precisely as Hetty came from the kitchen through the opposite
door, a handkerchief tied over her shiny hair, a white apron with a
little ruffled waist protecting her print gown, her cheeks flushed rosy
pink with heat, and in her hands a tray full of crisp, delectably
smelling ginger-snaps.
"A real study--like a Flemish picture," Mrs. Corliss said afterward. She
fell in love at once with the quaint room, the pretty sisters, the old
china, stayed twenty minutes nibbling ginger-snaps and looking about
her, bought a dollar's worth of everything, "on trial," as she said, and
swept out, leaving a wake of rose-colored hope in the air--and Delia and
Hetty executing a wild waltz behind her back, for joy and gratulation.
"Luck has turned--I know, I feel it," declared Hetty.
Luck _had_ turned. Mrs. Corliss raved to everybody she knew about the
room, the twin-sisters, and the excellence of the gingerbread. It became
a fashion to go to Farewell Street for buns and biscuits. Hetty and
Delia had to work early and late to fill their orders, but what was that
"to sewing their fingers off for a bare living"? Hetty said; and toil
was sweetened now by a gradually increasing profit. At the end of the
first six months they had not only "lived and kept together," but had a
little sum laid by, which, as Aunt Polly advised, was treated as
"business capital," part of it being invested in the purchase of an
awning for the window and an extra stove to increase their baking
capacity. Very rarely were there any stale things left now to be sold
next day at half-price, the regular orders and chance custom consuming
all.
"We shall have to hire a boy to carry things round, I actually believe,"
declared Hetty. "Mrs. Malcomb and Mrs. Sayres both said that they would
order our bread regularly if we could send it home."
"I've been expecting that would be the next step," remarked Aunt Polly,
"and I guess I've got just the boy you want, in my eye. It's Widow
McCullen's lad--Sandy, as they call him. He's a good little chap, and
it'll be a real help to his mother to have him earning a trifle."
So Sandy McCullen was regularly engaged as "bread-boy," and business
grew brisker still.
"Aunt Polly, we've got to another notch," said Hetty, at the end of the
first year. "You don't happen to know of a girl, do you, who could help
us in the baking? Delia and I can't keep up with the orders. She gets so
tired every now and then that she can't sleep, and that worries me so
that I lie awake, too."
"That'll never answer; no, I don't know of any girl, but there's a nice
kind of an oldish woman, if she'll do, that I'd like to recommend.
Yes--I mean myself," she went on, chuckling at Hetty's amazed look.
"It's come to me more than once lately that it'd be sort of good and
restful to make a change, and not go on tailorin' forever, all the rest
of my days. I used to be a master hand at bread and pie-crust, too, when
I was your age, and I've a little saved up which can go with the
business if it's needed; and, if you girls say so, we'll just make a
kind of family firm of the thing. How does it strike you?"
"Oh, Aunt Polly, the very thing, only it seems too good to be true. Do
you really mean it? We did so hate the idea of a raw girl to whom we
should have to teach everything, and who would spoil half she made for
the first month, and I've fought it off as long as I could. Why, it will
be like having grandmother come back, to have you living with us.
There's the west room all ready. Dear me! How delightfully things seem
to turn out for us always!"
"That wasn't your view always, it seems to me," rejoined Aunt Polly. "A
year ago you was pretty down in the mouth, if I don't mistake.
Gingerbread is good for something, you see."
"The Old-Time Bakery" still goes on in Farewell Street, but it has grown
far beyond its original proportions. If you were to visit it to-day you
would find a room double the size of the former, and which has been made
by taking down a partition wall between the sitting-room and a spare
bedroom and throwing them into one. There are two windows on the street
now, one full of bread, biscuits, and buns, the other stored with
Hetty's now famous gingerbread, and with delicious-looking pumpkin-pies
and apple-tarts with old-fashioned flaky crust, which are Aunt Polly's
specialty and have added greatly to the reputation of the establishment.
Still it is not a shop. Hetty, with wary good taste, has scrupulously
preserved the "quaint" look which first gave character to the little
enterprise, and by judicious rummaging in neighbors' garrets has
acquired sundry old-time chairs, bottles, jugs, and platters, which help
in the effect. Everything is scrupulously clean and bright, as all
things must be where Aunt Polly supervises; but the brightest things in
the room are the faces of the twin sisters. They have tested and proved
their powers; they know now what they can do, and they taste the
happiness of success.
I tell their little story, in which is nothing remarkable or out of the
way, for the sake of other girls, who, perhaps, are sitting to-day with
folded hands and puzzling and wondering, just as Hetty and Delia did,
over what they are to do and how to set about it. I do not mean at all
that these girls should all make gingerbread--that indeed would be
"overstocking the market," as Aunt Polly would say, but only that they
should hearken to her word of wisdom, "find out what they can do _best_,
and do that," whatever it is, secure that good work, and hearty striving
will win some measure of success soon or late, even if its beginnings
are small and insignificant as a gingerbread loaf or a batch of
biscuit!
THE SECRET DOOR.
KNOWLE, in Kent, is an ancient manor-house. It stands knee-deep in rich
garden and pasture lands, with hay-fields and apple-orchards stretching
beyond, and solemn oak woods which whisper and shake their wise heads
when the wind blows, as though possessed of secrets which must not be
spoken.
Very much as it looks to-day, it looked two hundred and thirty years
ago, when Charles the First was king of England. That was the Charles
who had his head cut off, you may remember. Blue Christmas smokes curled
from the twisted chimneys in 1645, just as they will this year if the
world lasts so long as December. The same dinnery fragrance filled the
air, for good cheer smells pretty much alike in all ages and the world
over. A few changes there may be--thicker trees, beds of gay flowers
which were not known in that day; and where once the moat--a ditch-like
stream of green water covered with weeds and scum--ran round the walls,
is now a trimly cut border of verdant turf. But these changes are
improvements, and in all important respects the house keeps its old
look, undisturbed by modern times and ways.
In the same nursery where modern boys and girls eat, sleep, and learn
their A, B, C to-day, two children lived,--little Ralph Tresham and his
sister Henrietta. Quaint, old-fashioned creatures they would look to us
now; but, in spite of their formal dresses and speech, they were bright
and merry and happy as any children you can find among your
acquaintances. Ralph's name was pronounced "Rafe," and he always called
his sister "Hexie."
Christmas did not come to Knowle in its usual bright shape in 1645.
Gloom and sadness and anxiety overshadowed the house; and though the
little ones did not understand what the cause of the anxiety was, they
felt something wrong, and went about quietly whispering to each other in
corners, instead of whooping and laughing, as had been their wont. They
had eaten their Christmas beef, and toasted the king in a thimbleful of
wine, as usual, but their mother cried when they did so; and Joyce, the
old butler, had carried off the pudding with a face like a funeral. So
after dinner they crept away to the nursery, and there, by the window,
began a long whispering talk. Hexie had something very exciting to tell.
"Nurse thought I was asleep," she said, "but I wasn't quite; and when
they began to talk I woke up. That wasn't wrong, was it, Rafe? I
couldn't sleep when I couldn't, could I?"
"I suppose not; but you needn't have listened," said Rafe, whose notions
about honor were very strict.
"I did pull the pillow over my ear, but the words would get in," went on
Henrietta, piteously. "And it was so interesting. Did you know that
there were such creatures as Bogies, Rafe? Dorothy thinks we have got
one in our house, and that its hole is in the great gallery, because
once when she was there dusting the armor, she heard a queer noise in
the wall, and what else could it be? It eats a great deal, does the
Bogie. That's the reason nurse is sure we have got one. It ate all the
cold sheep's-head yesterday, and the day before half the big pasty. No
victual is safe in the larder, the Bogie has such a big appetite, nurse
says."
"I remember about the sheep's-head," said Rafe, meditatively. "Almost
all of it was left, and I looked to see it come in cold; but when I
asked, Joyce said there was none. Cold sheep's-head is very good. Do you
remember how much Humphrey used to like it?"
"I don't remember exactly, it is so long ago," replied Hexie. "How long
is it, brother?--since Humphrey went away, I mean. Won't he ever come
back?"
"I asked Winifred once, but she only said, 'God knew,' that nothing had
been heard of him since the battle when the king was taken. He might be
dead, or he might be escaped into foreign parts--and then she cried, oh,
so hard, Hexie! Poor Humphrey! I hope he isn't dead. But, about the
Bogie, how curious it must be to meet one! Oh, I say, let us go to the
gallery now, and listen if we can hear any strange noises there. Will
you?"
"Oh, Rafe! I'm afraid. I don't quite like--"
"But you can't be afraid if I'm there," said Rafe, valiantly; "besides,
I'll put on Humphrey's old sword which he left behind. Then if the Bogie
comes--we shall see!"
Rafe spoke like a conquering hero, Hexie thought; so, though she
trembled, she made no further objection, but stood by while he lifted
down the sword, helped to fasten its belt over his shoulder, and
followed along the passage which led to the gallery. The heavy sword
clattered and rattled as it dragged on the floor, and the sound was
echoed in a ghostly way, which renewed Hexie's fears.
"Rafe! Rafe! let us go back," she cried.
"Go back yourself if you are afraid," replied Ralph, stoutly; and as
going back alone through the dim passage seemed just then worse than
staying where she was, Hexie stayed with her valiant brother.
Very softly they unlatched the gallery door, and stole in. It was a
long, lofty apartment, panelled with cedar-wood, to which time had given
a beautiful light brown color. The ceiling, of the same wood, was
carved, here and there, with shields, coats of arms, and other devices.
There was little furniture: one tall cabinet, a few high-backed Dutch
chairs, and some portraits hanging on the walls. The sun, not yet quite
set, poured a stream of red light across the polished floor, leaving the
far corners and the empty spaces formidably dusk. The children had
seldom been in the gallery at this hour, and it looked to them almost
like a strange place, not at all as it did at noonday when they came to
jump up and down the slippery floor, and play hide-and-seek in the
comers which now seemed so dark and dismal.
Even Rafe felt the difference, and shivered in spite of his bold heart
and the big sword by his side. Timidly they went forward, hushing their
footsteps and peering furtively into the shadows. Suddenly Hexie stopped
with a little scream.
[Illustration: Close by the armor, half hidden by a curtain of heavy
tapestry, was an open door.--PAGE 142.]
Close to them stood a huge suit of armor, larger and taller than a man.
The empty eye-holes of the helmet glared out quite like real eyes, and
the whole figure was terrible enough to frighten any little girl. But it
was not at the armor that Hexie screamed; the iron man was an old friend
of the children's. Many a game of hide-and-seek had they played around,
and behind, and even inside him; for Humphrey had contrived a cunning
way by which the figure could be taken to pieces and put together again;
and more than once Rafe had been popped inside, and had lain shaking
with laughter while Hexie vainly searched for him through all the
gallery. This had not happened lately, for Rafe was hardly strong enough
to manage by himself the screws and hinges which opened the armor; but
he knew the iron man too well to scream at him, and so did Hexie. The
object which excited her terror was something different, and so strange
and surprising that it is no wonder she screamed.