bit of good. I have made the same four regularly for the last two years.
I’ve written them out in red ink on a slip of paper, and kept them in my
Bible;—and nobody seems to find me any nicer!”
“Perhaps they were not the right kind,” hazarded Geof. “A good deal
depends upon what one resolves, I suppose.”
“The idea!” flashed Ernie. “I guess you did not make any better;—say my
prayers, wash my teeth, love God, and the Boarders, so there!”
“Too general,” criticised Haze. “You ought to do those things whether
you resolve them or not,—and it wouldn’t be especially annoying even if
you didn’t. It is my opinion that no man is competent to make his own
resolutions. He doesn’t know where he most needs reform. If one’s family
made them for one, now, and one was pledged in advance——”
“All right,” agreed Geof. “Let’s try it. I resolve, old chap, that you
hold up your head when you walk, and quit peering through your glasses
like a Reuben at a County fair.”
“And take only one butter-ball at dinner,” seconded Ernie.
“And brush your coat every morning. If one isn’t handsome, one can at
least be neat,” I cried.
“I’ll see myself hanged,” retorted Hazard, angrily, “before I resolve
one of those things! They are childish, as well as insulting. If this
meeting is going to degenerate into a travesty, I withdraw.” And he
stalked haughtily from the room.
“Silly chap!” chuckled Geof. “What did he get mad at?”
“Haze must be very conceited, if he can’t stand a little friendly
criticism,” agreed Ernie. “Shall we take Elizabeth next?”
“No,” I amended hastily. “I have just thought of such a good one for
you, Ernie dear. Don’t wear stockings with Jacob’s ladders running up
the leg. It isn’t ladylike, and you have plenty of time to darn them.”
“And stop worrying about the shape of your nose,” added Geof. “You can’t
change it, you know.”
“I don’t worry,” snapped Ernie, untruthfully. “You are a pig, Geoffrey
Graham! And I resolve that you learn to dance, so there!”
“Shan’t do it,” said Geof, with whom dancing is still a sore subject.
“And if you are going to call names, I think it is about time for me to
go home.”
“Good-night,” consented Ernie, readily.
“Good-night,” returned Geof. And he picked up his cap, and left.
“Dear me!” I remarked as the first horn sounded, and the bells began to
chime their welcome to the New Year;—“what made everybody so cross
to-night? I am the only person who did not get mad.”
“You are the only person who did not have a resolution made for you,”
replied Ernie. “Here is one,—and you can just see how you like it! Stop
being so everlastingly ready to preach, Elizabeth. I know you call it
‘sympathy,’ but it bores people.”
“Oh, Ernie!” I gasped. “Do you really mean that?”
“Well, perhaps not entirely,” admitted Ernie, with a swift return to
normal lovableness. “But there is some truth in it, dear. One likes to
be blue at times, and feel that it isn’t noticed. Come along to bed. I’m
sorry I let Geof go without saying ‘Happy New Year,’ and I’m sorry we
forgot to eat the Italian chestnuts he brought. After all, the old way
of making resolutions was best.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “and pleasanter, by far!”
Then we kissed one another, and laughed, and crept down the attic stairs
hand in hand;—for it isn’t often that Ernie and I come near a quarrel,
and the New Year was in. I wonder what it will bring us? Oh, I do want
to be good,—resolutions apart,—not “preachy,” of course,—just stronger,
and more contented and happy in our lot.
Monday, January 5.
Ernie wore her new dress to school this morning. She has been working
hard on it ever since Christmas time, and the result is really very
creditable.
“The girls will never believe I made it myself, Elizabeth,” she
remarked, standing proudly before the mirror while I buttoned her up the
back. “It actually _fits_, and look at these box-pleats! Could anything
be more stylish! Don’t you think I’m clever, honey? now, _don’t_ you?”
Indeed, Ernie’s spirits rose to such bubbling point,—what with the
openly expressed admiration of the girls, and her own inward conviction
of merit,—that she found it impossible to keep them corked up during
school hours, and so got into trouble, poor child!
Under the circumstances it is doubly hard. For ever since September,
when a “Visiting Board,” as Ernie persists in calling him, was so
impressed with the intelligent answers he obtained to his questions in
the Sixth Grammar Grade of School No. 47 that he was moved to offer five
dollars’ worth of books to be awarded as a prize at the end of the term
to the pupil whose general average in attendance, conduct, and
scholarship should be highest, her record has been impeccable.
“I simply must come out ahead,” she has declared, over and over again.
“It is too good a chance to miss. Five dollars’ worth of books,
Elizabeth! Think of it! And if I should get ’em, I’ll choose the kind
that will be appropriate to every age and gender, and then I’ll put ’em
away, and give them as birthday presents to the family during the year.
Isn’t that a scheme?”
So, spurred on by this proud ambition, Ernie has done wonderfully:—even
succeeding in subduing her mercurial temperament to such a degree that
“there is not a betther gur-rul in all the school than me an’ me hated
rival, Lulu Jennings,” as she was moved to confess last Saturday night.
This aforesaid rival is a “creature,” according to Ernie and her chum,
Mary Hobart. She has shifty little eyes, a thin, blond pigtail, and “_no
shape_ to her legs, at all.” Also, she smells of cheap perfume. Yet
these imperfections might be forgiven her, if only she were what the
girls call “straight.”
“I’ve seen her myself,” says downright Mary, “with an open Geography hid
under a handkerchief in her lap during recitation. She tattles, too, and
I believe she’d copy off her own grandmother, if only she got the
chance.”
Naturally such sins are not easily forgiven; and there is a decided
opinion among the girls that at all hazards Lulu Jennings must be
prevented from winning the prize. Feeling runs high on the subject.
“She’s smarter than all the rest of us put together in some ways,” they
admit. “You can never foresee what trick she is going to play next. But
you are clever, too, Ernie, in a way we like better. So keep up the good
fight!”
“All right,” promised Ernie, with a weary little sigh. “I don’t mind the
studying so much; but I must confess I’m tired of being a plaster
saint!”
And, alas! to-day, which was composition day, the poor little plaster
saint fell! It happened in this wise. The subject assigned the Sixth
Grade was Benjamin Franklin. Ernie, who takes naturally to writing,
finished her essay as usual before any of the other girls; and then,
just for the fun of the thing, and as an outlet, I suppose, to the
general ebullition of vivacity caused by her new frock, she started in
to write a second theme, in verse this time, making it as nonsensical
and ridiculous as ever she could.
As soon as finished, she passed the lines to Mary Hobart, her seatmate,
who began to read and giggle at the same moment,—till finally she was so
overcome by mirth that she was obliged to put her head into her desk,
and pretend to look for a slate pencil.
Lulu Jennings, who sits directly across the aisle from Mary, observed
these demonstrations. “What’s the matter?” she whispered.
And Mary thoughtlessly passed her Ernie’s effusion;—proud, I suppose, to
prove to the enemy how clever her chum really was.
Lulu cast one quick glance down the lines. Then, taking up a pencil, she
scrawled the query along the margin,—“Why don’t you ask to read it
aloud?” And handed the paper back to Ernie.
“I will, if you like,” returned Ernie with a chuckle; supposing, of
course, that the suggestion was only part of the fun.
“All right, I dare you to,” whispered Lulu.
Quick as a flash Ernie was out of her seat. She has never been known to
take a dare, yet; and Lulu counted upon this weakness, we feel sure.
“May I read my composition, Miss Horton?” asked Ernie. There was nothing
unusual in the request, since any girl who considers her theme
extra-good is accorded this privilege.
Miss Horton looked up from the exercises she was correcting.
“Certainly, if you think it will interest us, Ernestine,” she said.
Mary Hobart pulled at Ernie’s skirt, shook her head, and motioned
imperiously to the first composition which still lay upon the desk.
But Lulu’s little eyes flashed the mean message,—“I knew you would not
dare!”
And, without a moment’s hesitation, Ernie in a clear, serious voice
began to read:
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
Benjamin Franklin was, when a boy,
His mother’s delight, and his grandmother’s joy;
He would chase after lightning wherever he spied it,
Because he declared that he wanted to ride it.
His hair was quite straight, but his nose he could curl,
And so people thought him “a dear little girl!”
There was a general shout from the class, while Miss Horton rapped
sharply on the desk with her ruler:—
“Silence!” she commanded. “Proceed with your composition, Ernestine.”
And Ernie, with a rosy and rather abashed countenance, was about to
begin the second stanza when the door opened and Miss O’Connell, the
principal, entered the room. Miss O’Connell is a very imposing person,
and endowed with a rather high temper. All the girls are afraid of her.
She stood for a moment looking majestically about.
“What was the cause of the outburst of disorder I heard just now?” she
finally asked Miss Horton.
“Ernestine Graham is reading her composition on Benjamin Franklin,”
answered Miss Horton, really anxious to shield Ernie, it would seem.
“There was something in it that struck the girls as funny.”
“So I should judge,” answered Miss O’Connell. “It might be well for me
to hear the rest of the composition myself. You may proceed, Ernestine.”
Poor Ernie! her knees were literally clapping together with horror
beneath the elegant box-pleats of her new plaid skirt. The thought of
her cherished record assailed her. She turned a piteous, sickly smile
upon Miss O’Connell, who met it with a glance of adamant. Evidently no
quarter was to be expected from that direction. So, steadying her voice
as well as she could, Ernie began to read again. This time you might
have heard a pin drop:—
Benjamin’s father, a terrible man,
Kept in the closet a worn rattan;
When Ben or his brothers did what was wrong,
Their father would chant them this horrible song:—
“Run, run, to my closet as quick as you can,
And bring me my rat-te-tee, tat-te-tee, tan!
And with it I’ll rat-te-tee, tat-tee-tan you,
Until with your eyeses you crieses, boo-hoo!”
Ernie gasped for breath.
“Is that all?” asked the inexorable Miss O’Connell.
“No, ma’am,” answered Ernie, plaintively; and spurred on by the
recklessness of despair, she began the last stanza:—
So Ben and his brothers they grew very good,
They never stole nothing, not even their food!
But lived upon pickles, and peanuts, and paint,
And when asked, “Are you hungry?” replied, “No, we ain’t;
But we’ll take, if you’ll give it, a wee bite of soap!”
And now they’re all dead, and in heaven, I hope.
With a final, hysterical giggle, Ernie dropped back into her seat.
Miss O’Connell stood looking at her.
“What possessed you,” she asked at last, “to write such a composition as
that? Have you no respect for your teacher? have you no respect for your
school? have you no respect for _me_? Miss Horton, you may mark
Ernestine a failure in her conduct and her English, too. She will remain
after school, and rewrite her composition along _more conservative_
lines. The class may now proceed with its studies.” And Miss O’Connell
swept from the room.
Well, Ernie had had her little joke. Poor child! it was all she could do
to blink back the mortified tears as she felt Mary Hobart’s sympathetic
hand in hers, and divined instinctively that the thoughts of every girl
in the room were busy with her shattered record.
“I am sorry, Ernestine,” said Miss Horton not unkindly, as she took up
her pencil and opened the portentous covers of the Conduct Book. “Do you
really think it was worth while?”
Lulu Jennings snickered; but quickly recovered herself with a prim
pursing of the lips. Apparently, she was the one person in the room to
experience any touch of satisfaction in the public downfall of “the
plaster saint.” Which speaks pretty well for Ernie’s popularity, it
seems to me.
“The mean _sneak_!” declared Mary Hobart indignantly, some half-hour
later, to the little group of sympathisers who lingered in the
schoolyard till Ernie should be released. “It was all a plot! And to
think that I should have helped to lead Ernie into it! Well, I’m more
determined than ever that she shall win the prize. We mustn’t let her
feel too discouraged, girls! we mustn’t! The poor, silly darling!”
And now, lest you mistake me for a wizard, I will confess that Mary came
home with Ernie after school. The two girls talked the excitement over
as they set the table for dinner, while I stood in the kitchen doorway
and listened, potato-knife in hand, till I felt quite as if I had
witnessed it all myself,—and so I have set it down here, though it is
hard to snatch time on a Monday.
Tuesday, January 6.
Oh, dear! I am tired to-night. I have been ironing all day,—and I’m only
seventeen.
[Illustration: I stood in the kitchen doorway and listened]
Sunday, January 11.
You haven’t any idea how poor we are. It is half funny and half
terrible,—trying to keep house for a family of six people on seven
dollars a week! Just at first it did not seem impossible. There was a
false impetus, so to speak; coal in the cellar, coffee, oatmeal, flour,
etc., in the kitchen cupboard. For a while we were even able to keep up
a semblance of our usual table, and Miss Brown did not seem to suspect.
But she must find out soon. Will she leave us when she knows? What shall
we do, if she does? Each meal is a crisis. I grow quite white and shaky
before sounding the bell.
Mother still refuses to draw anything from the bank, and we can’t borrow
of Uncle George, either; because he was so hateful after the Hancocks
left, and said things about father that it will be hard to forgive. If
we had Haze’s salary, we might advertise the rooms more often;—but, as
things stand, it is impossible, on account of that dreadful dollar.
Why did he have to lose so much money,—dear Haze,—when he had made such
sacrifices to earn something, just for us? Why did Mrs. Hudson have to
go, and the Hancocks, too? Oh, I do try to be brave; but to-night I feel
rebellious,—and worried! I don’t dare go to bed, though Ernie has been
asleep this last half-hour. I wish I were more like her,—hopeful and
full of expedients.
“The one thing that will do this family any good,” she remarked the
other morning, as she stood in the dining-room window waiting for the
postman to come down the block,—“is a legacy. I have given up all hope
of the Dump-Cart Contract. It simply can’t be found. But why shouldn’t a
rich relation, of whom we’ve never heard, die and leave us his wealth?
Such things have been known to happen.”
And now, absurdly, we are all expecting it! Even mother starts at the
sound of the familiar whistle, and some one of us rushes breathless to
the door to glower through the letters that are handed in. Heaven knows
why!—for we haven’t any rich relation except Uncle George. I suppose it
just shows how desperate we are.
Saturday is pay-day, and we younger ones have acquired the habit of
gulping our breakfast on that particular morning, and leaving the table
as expeditiously as possible; so as to give Miss Brown, who is very
delicate where money matters are concerned, an early opportunity to
settle.
“Will she do it? will she say she is going to leave?” we whisper
anxiously to one another, as we hang over the basement banisters. And
Haze can’t make up his mind to go downtown till he knows.
Yesterday morning we had a dreadful fright. Miss Brown came down a
little late. Her expression was troubled, almost severe. When she put
her pocket handkerchief into her lap, we made sure that her purse was
not concealed, as usual, among the folds.
“May I be excused, mother dear?” piped Ernie,—though she had only just
begun her oaten-meal. “I want to go up to the nursery and sit with
Robin.”
Haze and I followed as quickly as we could, and then the waiting began.
It seemed as if mother and Miss Brown would never be done. We could hear
their voices in low, earnest discussion.
“Gosh!” exclaimed Hazard. “The game is up.”
But it wasn’t. Miss Brown had had facial neuralgia during the night. She
was asking mother for remedies. She could not make up her mind whether
it would be wise to put off the shopping trip that she had planned. Her
purse was with her as usual. Saved again!
And the funny thing is, once we get those seven dollars, we feel quite
rich for a few hours, mother and I.—
“What shall we have for to-morrow morning’s breakfast?” one asks the
other magnificently. “I notice that grape-fruit are selling two for
twenty-five cents.”
“Scallops would make a nice change,” comes the cheerful reply.
“Grape-fruit, scallops, and corn-muffins!”
Not that we ever commit ourselves to any such extravagance; but the
little flight is exhilarating, and the final compromise on oranges and
fish-cakes not too abrupt. It is true,—we are fed from day to day like
the sparrows. If we can only wait and have patience, I suppose things
will come out right in the end. And I said that I wanted to be good this
year. Well, I believe I could be on ten dollars more a week.
Friday, January 16.
This afternoon a lady called to look at rooms.
She had a little girl with her, perhaps a couple of years older than
Robin. She said that she had been recommended to us,—by Mrs. Hudson!
Ernie let them in, and galloped upstairs to tell mother. You can imagine
our excitement.
“Hush!” whispered Ernie, as she and I crouched behind the half-closed
nursery door, listening with all our ears. “She told me the location was
what she wanted. Oh, Elizabeth! Elizabeth!”
At that moment the lady swept on her way downstairs.
“The terms seem reasonable enough,” we heard her observe, “and the room
is sunny and pleasant. I should want a comfortable cot placed in it for
Lilian,”—the little girl. “You have children of your own, Mrs. Graham?”
Then, stopping in the lower hall,—
“Is that an invalid chair?” she asked, abruptly.
“Yes,” returned mother. “It belongs to my little son;—he is not at all
well this winter.”
“And his trouble?” There was no hint of sympathy in the question.
“Hip complaint,” replied mother. “Robin has not been strong since he was
a baby.”
“In that case, I am sorry, but it will be impossible to engage the
room,” came the unexpected reply. “Lilian is a very sensitive
child,—and, naturally, my first consideration. I make it a rule to
shield her from every depressing influence. Let me see,—there are three
other places on our list. If we hurry, we can make time to visit them
this afternoon. Good-day, Mrs. Graham.” The door closed sharply on our
prospective boarders.
And this on a Friday,—the bluest day in the week!
Mother’s face was quite white and stern as she came upstairs.
“If you will get dinner, Elizabeth, I’ll stay with Robin,” she said. And
she took Bobsie in her arms, and carried him tenderly to the big rocker
in the window, while Ernie and I crept, mouse-like, from the room.
“One might have known she was a friend of Mrs. Hudson,” remarked Ernie,
vindictively, as we reached the foot of the basement stairs. “Depressing
influence, indeed! I’d like to depress her precious Lilian for her!”
“Oh, Ernie,” I sighed. “It would have meant fifteen dollars more each
week!”
We were to have beefsteak for dinner. Mother had gone around earlier in
the afternoon to a cheap little butcher shop (we can’t afford our old
tradesmen any longer), and bought two pounds,—spending our last forty
cents. There were four potatoes in the oven, a few beans on the top of
the stove,—but no bread.
“Mother shan’t be disturbed,” I cried. “I’ll run around to the baker’s,
myself, and get a loaf. I’ll say that I left my purse at home (which
will be perfectly true, and, under the circumstances, eminently
sensible!) and that they can charge it. Keep an eye on the steak, Ernie,
and the fire. I’ve just put on a couple of sticks of wood.”
“All right,” answered Ernie, from where she sat on the table, dejectedly
swinging her legs and muttering over an open Geography. “I’ll watch it.”
Yet when I returned from my errand some few moments later it was to find
the kitchen full of smoke. In the middle of the floor pranced Ernie,
frantically blowing upon a smutty and spluttering gridiron, while the
red flames leapt hungrily through the open top of the stove.
“What have you _done_?” I cried, snatching the gridiron from Ernie’s
blackened fingers. “That steak is burned to a cinder! It’s Friday night.
There isn’t any more money. Do you realise what this means?”
“Oh dear! oh dear! I was bounding the British Isles!” wailed Ernie. “And
the fire didn’t come up,—till all of a sudden everything began to blaze!
Of course, I realise, Elizabeth. Can’t we scrape it, or something?”
“No,” I answered, transferring the hopelessly charred bit of steak to
the big blue platter. “It is burned quite through,—and to-morrow is
Saturday. How can we expect Miss Brown to keep on paying seven dollars a
week,—once she finds out that we are unable to feed her?”
“Then chop off my head and boil it for her old dinner,” sobbed Ernie,
entirely overcome by this last, unlooked-for disaster, for which she
could not but hold herself responsible. “Nobody’d miss it,—about the
house, I mean,—and they used to eat such things once,—in the British
Isles!”
“What is the matter?” asked mother, entering the kitchen at this moment
with Robin’s tray, and looking from one tragic-faced daughter to the
other. “Has anything new happened?”
“The steak is burned,” I explained, briefly. “There are only beans and
four potatoes left for dinner.”
“Chop off my head,” reiterated poor little Ernie. “I deserve it. I was
bounding the British Isles,—and forgot to watch. I wish, I _wish_ that
I’d never been born!”
And then it was that mother “rose,” buoyantly, unexpectedly, as she can
always be depended upon doing, if only the situation is desperate
enough.
“Never mind, darlings,” she cried, with an airy little laugh. “Why,—it’s
nothing but a beefsteak, after all. We’ll buy another!”
“_Another!_” I gasped, as if mother were contemplating the purchase of a
diamond tiara.
“_Another!_” wondered Ernie.
“Certainly,” returned mother, quite as though it were the most natural
thing in the world she was proposing. “And some pickles, because Miss
Brown enjoys them,—and perhaps some chocolate creams!”
“But, mother,” I remonstrated. “It’s Friday night! We have spent our
last penny. You surely are not going to borrow of Uncle George,—after
the things he’s said!”
“No,” denied mother, succinctly. “There can be no compromise on that
score. On the contrary, we’ll reap a little belated benefit from one of
dear father’s follies.”
And she led the way to the library (Ernie and I following in a state of
stunned but admiring bewilderment), and selected a large, handsomely
bound volume from the lowest shelf of the old mahogany bookcase:—
“It is _Picturesque Europe_,” mother explained. “And your father paid
six dollars for it, because the agent was a young widow with pathetic
blue eyes, who assured him it would be of invaluable assistance in
broadening Hazard’s mind. Haze was two years old at the time, and nobody
has read it since;—but it is going to be of some use, at last, and help
us to another dinner!”
So she and Ernie hustled into their things, and hurried around the block
to the little second-hand bookshop where father used to snoop in happy
by-gone days;—and when they returned Ernie was quite beaming and rosy
again; for they brought three pounds of steak with them, instead of two,
as well as a jar of pickles, and a pound of chocolate creams,—which last
was nothing more nor less than a blatant extravagance, and put us all
into uproarious spirits for the rest of the evening. And though Mrs.
Hudson’s friend was certainly _horrid_, and it is hard to be so poor
that the singeing of a beefsteak threatens dire calamity,—just think how
splendid it is to have such a wonder of a mother!
Yes, Haze and I are agreed, there are compensations in every lot.
Wednesday, January 21.