and mother. So you needn't call me horrid!" answered Pierot, angrily.
Silence followed, broken only by Pierotte's sobs. The two old children
sat with their backs to each other, under different trees. By and by
Pierot's heart began to smite him.
"It was more my fault than hers," he thought; and, turning round a
little way, he said coaxingly, "Pierotte."
No answer. Pierotte only stuck out her shoulder a little and remained
silent.
"Don't look so cross," went on Pierot. "You can't think how horrid it
makes you--a woman of your age!"
"I'm not a woman of my age. Oh, how can you say such things?" sobbed
Pierotte. "I don't want to be grown-up. I want to be a little girl
again."
"You used to be always wishing you were big," remarked her now big
brother.
"Y--es, so I was; but I never meant all at once. I wanted to be big
enough to spin--and the--mother--was--going--to teach me," went on poor
Pierotte, crying bitterly, "and I wanted to be as big as Laura
Blaize--and--pretty--and some day have a sweetheart, as she
had--and--but what's the use--I've lost it all, and I'm grown up, and
old and ugly already, and the mother won't know me, and the father will
say, 'My little Pierotte--Coeur de St. Martin--impossible! get out, you
witch!'" Overcome by this dreadful picture, Pierotte hid her face and
cried louder than ever.
"I'll tell you what," said Pierot, after a pause, "don't let us go home
at all. We will just hide here in the woods for a year, and when
Midsummer's Day comes round, we'll hunt till we find the fairy house
again, and beg the fairy, on our knees, for another wish, and if she
says 'yes,' we'll wish at once to be little just as we were this
morning, and _then_ we'll go home directly."
"Poor mother; she will think we are dead!" sighed Pierotte.
"That's no worse than if she saw us like this. I'd be conscripted most
likely and sent off to fight, and me only twelve years old! And you'd
have a horrid time of it with the Blaize boys. Robert Blaize said you
were the prettiest girl in Balne aux Bois. I wonder what he'd say now!"
"Oh, yes, let us stay here," shuddered Pierotte. "I couldn't bear to see
the Blaize boys now. But then--it will be dark soon--shan't you be
frightened to stay in the woods all night?"
"Oh! a man like me isn't easily frightened," said Pierot, stoutly, but
his teeth chattered a little.
"It's so queer to hear you call yourself 'a man,'" remarked Pierotte.
"And it's just as queer to hear you call yourself a little girl,"
answered Pierot, with a glance at the antiquated face beside him.
"Dear, how my legs shake, and how stiff my knees are!" sighed Pierotte.
"Do grown-up people feel like that always?"
"I don't know," said Pierot, whose own legs lacked their old
springiness. "Would you like some cherries now, Pierotte? I can reach
them easily."
"Cherries! Those sour things? No, thank you. They would be sure to
disagree with me," returned Pierotte, pettishly.
"Times are changed," muttered Pierot; but he dared not speak aloud.
"Where shall we sleep?" asked Pierotte.
"Under the trees, so long as the summer lasts."
"Gracious! We shall both die of rheumatism."
"Rheumatism? What an idea for a child like you!"
"I wish I _were_ a child," said Pierotte, with a groan. "Here's a tree
with grass below it, and I'm getting tired and sleepy."
When the brother and sister woke it was broad sunlight again.
"One day gone of our year," said Pierot, trying to be cheerful.
It was hard work as time went on, and with all their constant walking
and wandering they never seemed to find their way out of the forest, or
of that particular part of it where their luckless adventure had
befallen them. Turn which way they would, the paths always appeared to
lead them round to the same spot; it was like bewitchment; they could
make nothing out of it. The dulness of their lives was varied only by an
occasional quarrel. Pierot would essay to climb a tree, and Pierotte,
grown sage and proper, would upbraid him for behaving so
foolishly,--"just like a boy,"--or he would catch her using the pool as
a mirror, and would tease her for caring so much for a plain old face
when there was nobody but himself to look. How the time went they had no
idea. It seemed always daylight, and yet weeks, if not months, must have
passed, they thought, and Pierot at last began to suspect the fairy of
having changed the regular course of the sun so as to cheat them out of
the proper time for finding her at home.
"It's just like her," he said. "She is making the days seem all alike,
so that we may not know when Midsummer comes. Pierotte, I'll tell you
what, we must be on the lookout, and search for the little house every
day, for if we forget just once, that will be the very time, depend upon
it."
So every day, and all day long, the two old children wandered to and fro
in search of the fairy cot. For a long time their quest was in vain;
but at last, one bright afternoon, just before sunset, as they were
about giving up the hunt for that day, the woods opened in the same
sudden way and revealed the garden, the hut, and--yes--at the window the
pointed cap, the sharp black eyes. It was the fairy herself; they had
found her at last.
For a moment they were too much bewildered to move; then side by side
they hurried into the garden without waiting for invitation.
"Well, my old gaffer, what can I do for you, or for you, dame?" asked
the fairy, benevolently.
"Oh, please, I am not a dame, he is not a gaffer," cried Pierotte,
imploringly. "I am little Pierotte"--and she bobbed a courtesy. "And
this is Pierot, my brother."
"Pierot and Pierotte! Wonderful!" said the fairy. "But, my dear
children, what has caused this change in your appearance? You have aged
remarkably since I saw you last."
"Indeed, we have," replied Pierot, with a grimace.
"Well, age is a very respectable thing. Some persons are always wishing
to be old," remarked the fairy, maliciously. "You find it much
pleasanter than being young, I dare say."
"Indeed, we don't," said Pierotte, wiping her eyes on her apron.
"No? Well, that is sad, but I _have_ heard people say the same before
you."
"Oh, please, please," cried Pierot and Pierotte, falling on their knees
before the window, "please, dear, kind fairy, forgive us. We don't like
to be grown-up at all. We want to be little and young again. Please,
dear fairy, turn us into children as we were before."
"What would be the use?" said the old woman. "You'd begin wanting to be
somebody else at once if you were turned back to what you were before."
"We won't, indeed we won't," pleaded the children, very humbly.
The fairy leaned out and gathered a rose.
"Very well," she said. "Here's another wish for you. See that it is a
wise one this time, for if you fail, it will be of no use to come to
me."
With these words, she shut the blinds suddenly, and lo! in one second,
house, garden, and all had vanished, and Pierot and Pierotte were in the
forest again.
There was no deliberation this time as to what the wish should be.
"I wish I was a little boy," shouted Pierot, holding the rose over his
head with a sort of ecstasy.
"And I wish I was a little girl, the same little girl exactly that I
used to be," chorused Pierotte.
The rose seemed to melt in air, so quickly did it wither and collapse.
And the brother and sister embraced and danced with joy, for each in the
other's face saw the fulfilment of their double wish.
"Oh, how young you look! Oh, how pretty you are! Oh, what happiness it
is not to be old any longer! The dear fairy! The kind fairy!" These were
the exclamations which the squirrels and the birds heard for the next
ten minutes, and the birds and the squirrels seemed to be amused, for
certain queer and unexplained little noises like laughs sounded from
under the leaves and behind the bushes.
"Let us go home at once to mother," cried Pierotte.
There was no difficulty about the paths now. After walking awhile,
Pierot began to recognize this turn and that. There was the huntsman's
oak and the Dropping Well; and there--yes, he was sure--lay the hazel
copse where the father had bidden them go for wood.
"I say," cried Pierotte, with a sudden bright thought, "we will wait and
bind one fagot for the mother's oven--the poor mother! Who has fetched
her wood all this time, do you suppose?"
Plenty of sticks lay on the ground ready for binding. The wood-choppers
had just left off their work, it would seem. Pierotte's basket was
filled, a fagot tied and lifted on to Pierot's shoulders, and through
the gathering twilight they hurried homeward. They were out of the wood
soon. There was the hut, with a curl of smoke rising from the chimney;
there was the mother standing at the door and looking toward the forest.
What _would_ she say when she saw them?
What she said astonished them very much.
"How long you have been!" were the words, but the tone was not one of
surprise.
"O mother, mother!" cried Pierotte, clinging to her arm, while Pierot
said, "We were afraid to come home because we looked so old, and we
feared you would not know us, but now we are young again."
"Old! young!" said the mother. "What does the lad mean! One does not age
so fast between sunrise and sunset as to be afraid to come home. Are you
dreaming, Pierot?"
"But we have been away a year," said Pierot, passing his hand before his
eyes as if trying to clear his ideas.
"A year! Prithee! And the sheets which I hung out at noon not fairly dry
yet. A year! And the goats thou drovest to pasture before breakfast not
in the shed yet! A year! Thou wouldst better not let the father hear
thee prate thus! What, crying, Pierotte! Here's a pretty to-do because,
forsooth, you are come in an hour late!"
An hour late! The children looked at each other in speechless amazement.
To this day the amazement continues. The mother still persists that they
were absent but a few hours. Where, then, were the weeks spent in the
wood, the gray hair, the wrinkles, the wanderings in search of the old
woman and her hut? Was all and each but a bit of enchantment, a trick of
the mirth-loving fairies? They could not tell, and neither can I.
Fairies are unaccountable folk, and their doings surpass our guessing,
who are but mortal, and stupid at that! One thing I know, that the two
children since that day have dropped their foolish habit of wishing, and
are well content to remain little Pierot and Pierotte till the time
comes for them to grow older, as it will only too soon.
BLUE AND PINK.
TWO valentines lay together in the pillar post-box. One was pink and one
was blue. Pink lay a-top, and they crackled to each other softly in the
paper-language, invented long since by Papyrus, the father of
Manuscript, and used by all written and printed sheets unto this day.
Listen hard, next time you visit the reading-room at the Public Library,
and you will hear the newspapers exchanging remarks across the table in
this language.
Said the pink valentine: "I am prettier than you, much prettier, Miss
Blue."
Blue was modester. "That may be true, my dear Miss Pink; still, some
folks like blue best, I think," she replied.
"I wonder they should," went on Pink, talking in prose now, for
valentines can speak in prose and in rhyme equally well. "You are such a
chilly color. Now _I_ warm people. They smile when they see me. I like
that. It is sweet to give pleasure."
"I like to give pleasure, too," said Blue, modestly. "And I hope I may,
for something beautiful is written inside me."
"What? oh! what?" cried Pink.
"I cannot say," sighed Blue. "How can one tell what is inside one? But I
know it is something sweet, because
She who sent me here
Is so very fair and dear."
Blue was running into rhyme again, as valentines will.
"I don't believe a word of it," said Pink, digging her sharp elbow into
Blue's smooth side. "Nothing is written inside me, and I'm glad of it. I
am too beautiful to be written on. In the middle of my page is a
picture, Cupid, with roses and doves. Oh, so fine! There is a border
too, wreaths of flowers, flowers of all colors, and a motto, 'Be mine.'
Be mine! What can be better than that? Have you got flowers and 'Be
mine' inside, you conceited thing? If not, say so, and be ashamed, as
you deserve to be."
Again the pink elbow dented Blue's smooth envelope.
But Blue only shook her head softly, and made no answer. Pink grew angry
at this. She caught Blue with her little teeth of mucilage and shook her
viciously.
"Speak," she said. "I hate your stuck-up, shut-up people. Speak!"
But Blue only smiled, and again shook her head.
Just then the pillar-post opened with a click. The postman had come. He
scooped up Pink, Blue, and all the other letters, and threw them into
his wallet. A fat yellow envelope of law-papers separated the two
valentines, and they had no further talk.
Half an hour later, Pink was left at the door of a grand house, almost
the finest in the town. Charles, the waiter, carried her into the
parlor, and Pink said to herself: "What a thing it is to have a mission.
My mission is to give pleasure!"
"A letter for you, Miss Eva," said Charles. He did not smile.
Well-behaved waiters never smile; besides, Charles did not like Eva.
"Where is your tray?" demanded Eva, crossly. "You are always forgetting
what mamma told you. Go and get it." But when she saw Pink in her
beautiful envelope, unmistakably a valentine, she decided not to wait.
"Never mind, this time," she said; "but don't let it happen again."
"Who's your letter from, Evy?" asked grandmamma.
"I haven't opened it yet, and I wish you wouldn't call me Evy; it sounds
so backwoodsy," replied Eva, who, for some mysterious reason, had waked
that morning very much out of temper.
"Eva!" said her father, sternly.
Eva had forgotten that papa was there. To hide her confusion, she opened
the pink envelope so hastily as to tear it all across.
"Oh dear!" she complained. "Everything goes wrong."
Then she unfolded the valentine. Pink, who had felt as if a sword were
thrust through her heart when her envelope was torn, brightened up.
"Now," she thought, "when she sees the flowers, Cupid, and doves, she
_will_ be pleased."
But it was not pleasure which shone on Eva's countenance.
"What's the matter?" asked papa, seeing her face swell and angry tears
filling her eyes.
"That horrid Jim Slack!" cried Eva. "He said he'd send me a valentine
just like Pauline's, and he hasn't. Hers was all birds and butterflies,
and had verses--"
"Yours seems pretty enough," said papa, consolingly.
"It's not pretty enough," responded Eva, passionately. "It's a stupid,
ugly thing. I hate it. I won't have it."
And, horrible to state, she flung Pink, actually flung her, into the
middle of the fire. There was time for but one crackling gasp; then the
yellow flame seized and devoured all--Cupid, doves, flowers! Another
second, they were gone. A black scroll edged with fiery sparkles reared
itself up in the midst of the glow; then an air-current seized it, it
rose, and the soul of Pink flew up the chimney.
Blue, meantime, was lying on the lap of a little girl of twelve, a mile
or more from this scene of tragedy. Two plump hands caressed her softly.
"Sister, may I read it to you just once more?" begged a coaxing voice.
"Yes, Pet, once more. That'll make five times, and they say there is
luck in odd numbers," said another voice, kind and gay.
So Pet read:--
"My dear is like a dewy rose
All in the early morn;
But never on her stem there grows
A single wounding thorn.
"My dear is like a violet shy,
Who hides her in the grass,
And holds a fragrant bud on high
To bless all men who pass.
"My dear is like a merry bird,
My dear is like a rill,
Like all sweet things or seen or heard,
Only she's sweeter still.
"And while she blooms beside my door,
Or sings beneath my sky,
My heart with happiness runs o'er,
Content and glad am I.
"So, sweetheart, read me as I run,
Smile on this simple rhyme,
And choose me out to be your one
And only VALENTINE."
"Isn't it lovely?" said Pet, her blue eyes dancing as she looked up.
"Yes, it's very nice," replied sister.
"I wish everybody in the world had such a nice valentine," went on Pet.
"How pleased they'd be! Do you suppose anybody has sent Lotty one? Only
that about the bird wouldn't be true, because Lotty's so sick, you know,
and always stays in bed."
"But Lotty sings," said sister. "She's always singing and cheerful, so
she's like a bird in that."
"Birdies with broken wings
Hide from each other;
But babies in trouble
Can run home to mother,"
hummed Pet, who knew the "St. Nicholas" jingles by heart. "But poor
Lotty hasn't any mamma to run to," she added softly.
"No; and that's a reason why it would be so specially nice to give her
the pleasure of a valentine like yours."
"I wish somebody had sent her one," said Pet, thoughtfully.
"I don't suppose there is another in the world just like yours," said
sister, smiling at Pet.
"Then she _can't_ have one. What a pity!"
"She might have this of yours," suggested sister.
"But--then--I shouldn't have any," cried Pet.
"Oh yes, you would, and I'll tell you how," said sister. "You've had all
the pleasure of getting it, and opening and reading it, already.
_That's_ yours to keep. Now, if I copy the verses for you on plain white
paper, you can read them over as often as you like, till by and by you
learn them by heart. When you have done that they will be yours for
always; and, meanwhile, Lotty will have the pleasure of getting the
valentine, opening, reading, learning, just as you have done--so you
will get a double pleasure instead of one. Don't you see?"
"That will be splendid," cried Pet, joyously. "Poor Lotty, how glad she
will be! And I shall have two pleasures instead of one, shan't I?"
"How nice," thought Blue, "to have given two pleasures already!"
Sister copied the verses, a fresh envelope was found, and Blue was sent
on her way. When she was carried upstairs to Lotty's room, she thought
it the pleasantest place she had ever seen. Sunshine was there--on the
wall, on the plants in the window, most of all in Lotty's face, as she
sat up in bed, knitting with red worsted and big needles. When Blue was
put into her hands, she laughed with astonishment.
"For me!" she cried. "Who could have sent it? How pretty it is--how
pretty! A great deal too pretty for me. Oh, what a kind, dear somebody
there is in the world!"
Everybody in the house was glad because Lotty was glad. Grandmamma came
in to hear the valentine; so did papa, and Jack, Lotty's big brother,
and Fred, her little one. Even the cook made up an excuse about the
pudding, and stole upstairs to hear the "fine verses which somebody had
sint to Miss Lotty. It's swate as roses she is, any day," said cook;
"and good luck to him for sinding it, whoiver he is."
By and by Lotty's tender heart began to busy itself with a new plan.
"Grandma," she said, "I'm thinking about little Mary Riley. She works so
hard, and she hardly ever has anything nice happen to her. Don't you
think I might send her my valentine--in a different envelope, you know,
with her name on it and all? She'd be so pleased."
"But I thought you liked it so much yourself, dear," replied grandmamma,
unwilling to have her darling spare one bit of brightness out of her
sick-room life.
"Oh, I do; that's the reason I want to give it away," said Lotty,
simply, and stroking Blue, who, had she known how, would gladly have
purred under the soft touch. "But I shall go on liking it all the same
if Mary has it, and she'll like it too. Don't you see, grandmamma? I've
copied the verses in my book, so that I can keep them."
Grandmamma consented. The new envelope was found, Mary's address was
written upon it, and away went happy Blue to give pleasure to a fresh
friend.
"This is best of all," she said to herself, as Mary laid aside her weary
sewing to read over and over again the wonderful verses, which seemed to
have dropped out of fairy-land. She almost cried with pleasure that they
should be sent to _her_.
"I wish I could buy a frame for 'em--a beautiful gold frame," she
whispered to herself.
Pink would have been vain had she heard this; but Blue glowed with a
purer feeling--the happiness of giving happiness.
Mary read the verses over a dozen times at least before putting them
aside; but she did put them aside, for she had work to finish, and
daylight was precious. The work was a birthday frock. When the last
stitch was set, she folded it carefully, put on cloak and bonnet, and
prepared to carry the frock home. Last of all, she dropped Blue into her
pocket. She did not like to leave it behind. Something might happen,
she thought.
It was quite a grand house to which the birthday frock went. In fact; it
was next door but one to the house in which Pink met with her melancholy
fate. The little girl who was to wear the frock was very glad to see
Mary, and her mamma came upstairs to pay for the work.
"Have you any change?" she said. "Come nearer to the fire. It is cold
to-night."
Mary was confused by this kindness. Her fingers trembled as she searched
for her porte-monnaie, which was at the bottom of her pocket, underneath
her handkerchief. She twitched out the handkerchief hastily, and with
it, alas! came Blue. They were close to the grate, and Blue was flung
into the fire. Mary gave a scream and made a snatch. It was too late!
Already the flames had seized it; her beloved valentine was gone,
vanished into ashes!
"Was it anything valuable?" asked the lady, as Mary gave a little sob.
"Oh, n-o--yes, ma'am; that is, it was verses. I never had any before.
And they were s-o beautiful!" replied poor Mary, half crying.
The lady gave her an extra dollar for the sewing, but this did not
console Mary.
Meantime the ghost of Blue flew up the chimney. Upon the roof hovered a
dim gray shade. It was the ghost of Pink, wind-blown for a little space.
"How sad life is!" sighed Pink's ghost--
"I was young, I was fair,
And now I'm in the air,
As ugly gray ashes as ever were."
"How sweet life is!" murmured the ghost of Blue--
"I've only lived a little while,
But I have made three people smile."
A chickadee who heard the two ghosts discoursing now flew down from the
roof-peak. He gathered Blue's ashes up into his beak, flew down into
the garden, and strewed them about the root of a rose-tree.
"In the spring you'll be a rose," he said.
Then he flew back, took up Pink's ashes, bore them into another garden,
and laid them in the midst of a bed of chickweed.
"Make that chickweed crop a little richer, if you can," he chirped. "All
the better for the dicky-birds if you do; and a good thing for you too,
to be of use for once in your life."
Then the chickadee flew away. Ghosts have to get accustomed to plain
speaking.
This was the end of Blue and Pink.
A FORTUNATE MISFORTUNE.
EMMY GALE was far from anticipating misfortunes or suspecting that she
was going to have any as she packed her trunk for the much-talked-of
visit to Elliott's Mills. The very putting of the things into the trays
was a pleasure, for it meant the satisfaction of a long-deferred wish.
To go to Elliott's Mills had been the desire of her heart ever since she
was a little girl of eight, and she was now fourteen; and she folded her
dresses and patted each collar and pair of stockings into place with a
glad feeling at her heart.
I must tell you about Elliott's Mills, or you will not understand why
Emmy was so pleased to go there. It was a very small village in the
western part of New York. To reach it you had to take, first a whole
day's journey by rail, and then a two-mile drive over a rather rough
road. When arrived there you found yourself in an ugly, unattractive
little wooden hamlet, set down among low hills and tracts of woodland.
This does not sound over-delightful, does it? But what made Elliott's
Mills so charming was that Aunt Emma lived there during the summer, and
the life that she and her family led had an inexpressible fascination
for all the young people in the connection.