"Ain't this a night?"
"Oh yes!--ain't it a night!"
Sally tickled and poked her affectionately; and she tried to tickle
Sally, and laughed till she was almost hysterical, and never
remembered who she was, or thought of anything outside this little
room, but was filled with a sense of the crazy deliciousness of the
moment.
At last, weak with laughter, she disentangled herself from the still
panting and laughing Sally on the floor, and insisted on returning
to the business of the distribution. She felt in the mood to be very
funny. She jerked herself up and down and all about in a senseless sort
of way.
"Here, Sally, now stop laughing and let's finish. It was your turn.
You'd best take that one; she looks more as if she might be a little
girl of yours, her cheeks are so red--red as a great big cabbage!" This
remark seemed to Tibbie so inexpressibly humorous that she laughed
again till she nearly cried.
"Well, it's sure none of 'em has legs to make 'em look like children
of yours," retorted Sally; and that seemed a greater joke still. With
a foal's action, Tibbie flung out the thin black legs with the awkward
boots at the ends of them, and dropped to the floor squirming and
laughing. Sally caught her suddenly again, and cast herself backward
with her as before, in a gale of mirth.
There they were frolicking, when the peal of a bell rang brightly
across their giggles.
Sally sat up instantly, and all in Mrs. Darling's house was for a long
moment still as the very grave, for Sally had instinctively clapped her
hand over Jetty's ready muzzle.
"Murder!" whispered Sally, solemnly, at last.
"What is it?" breathed Tibbie in her ear.
"Was it the front door or the back door?" asked Sally.
"I dun'no', Sally."
Sally had picked herself up, and was stroking down her things.
Tibbie stood beside her, looking up in her face, her own a trifle pale.
Sally's irresolution lasted only a second. She cast an eye on the
dolls, saw that they were very nearly as she had found them, and turned
down the light. She looked about Mrs. Darling's room to see that all
was as usual, and turned down the lights there too, after glancing at
the clock.
"It ain't late," she murmured. "It ain't a bit later than I supposed.
It can't be her! It might be Mrs. Bonnet, though, getting home before
Catherine, who's got the key. I shouldn't want her to catch you here
for the whole world. Look here, Tibbie. You stand in here till I find
out who it is, and if it's Mrs. Bonnet, you'll have to stay hidden till
I find a good chance to come and smuggle you down."
Tibbie waited in the farthest corner of the hall closet, holding her
breath, conscious of nothing at first but excitement and fear of she
did not know quite what. After a little, the thought drifted across her
fervent hope for present safety, that though she got well out of this
scrape, she would probably never see those radiant dollies again, her
own half or Sally's.
She heard a whiffling and scratching at the closet door. Here was
Jetty, dear Jetty, whose actions would surely betray her to Mrs. Bonnet
when she came that way. Tibbie whispered: "Go right away, Jetty.
There's no one in this closet; go right away!" and pressed backward to
the wall, among the water-proofs, feeling like a little criminal with
the police on her track.
"Tibbie!" came Sally's voice from the foot of the stairs: it sounded
perfectly calm, and pleasant with a sort of company pleasantness.
"It's all right. It's just a friend dropped in for a moment. You can
go in again and play a little longer. Turn up the light carefully. But
remember what I told you."
Tibbie instantly forgot all her fears. She came out and picked up
Jetty; she kissed him, explaining why she had told him to go away. The
doggie seemed to bear no malice.
Tibbie tiptoed into the doll-room, and established herself on her knees
before the dolls, happier than before, with a profounder happiness, in
a stiller, almost devotional mood. It was so different being alone with
them, having them quite to herself, to play with in her own way. She
took up the bride with a reverent hand, and after long contemplating
her, very seriously, tenderly kissed her. Then, touching them as if
they had been snow-flakes almost, she moved the impressive little
persons about, until her fifty were on one side and Sally's on the
other.
"I can't play they're a family," she reflected; "they are too many
all the same age, and all girls. I will play they are a hundred girls
in an orphan asylum--a very rich orphan asylum--and that I am the
superintendent. To-morrow I am going to give each a beautiful doll
for a Christmas present. This little girl's name is Rosa. That one
is Nelly. That one is Katy. That one is Sue." She named every one,
passing through the list of such names as Golden-locks, Cherrylips,
Diamondeyes, to end with such invented ones as Kirry, Mirry, Dirry,
Birry. They seemed so much completer with names. Tibbie would say,
"Miss Snowdrop!" And Miss Snowdrop, with Tibbie's assistance, would
rise, answering, "Yes, ma'am." "Spell knot." "N--O--T!" "Not at all,
my dear. Sit down again, my dear. Miss Lily; stand up, miss, and see if
you can do any better this morning."
Suddenly, after having taken the asylum through a day's exercises,
Tibbie tired of being the superintendent. She craved a relation more
intimate, more affectionate, with the dollies. She did not believe a
superintendent would have kissed and fondled them as she longed to do.
She selected a dozen or so, to play they were her children. She gave
them their supper; she washed them and made them say their prayers. She
told them it was bedtime, and she would now rock them to sleep. She
turned down the light, to make all very real, and drawing out a low
rocking-chair that seemed made for her purpose, seated herself in it
with two dolls on each arm, the rest made as comfortable as possible
on her lap; for not one of them, after being included in the family,
could, of course, be left out of the rocking. She rocked gently, now
hushing, now singing "Bye-low-low-baby," her maternal heart swollen
very large. In time, one of the daughters became fractious and
restless; she had to have medicine, and the rocking for her sake had
to become almost violent. Nothing would soothe her but that the chair
should rock backward and forward to the very tip ends of its rockers.
This had its good effect at last; all the dolls were fast asleep, and
the mother, her duty done, composed herself to take a well-earned rest
too. This thought was no doubt suggested to Tibbie by the fact that she
was really getting sleepy. It was long past her bedtime.
She was not far from napping when she became aware of Sally saying:
"Lively, Tibbie! Miss Catherine has got back. We must be packing off
home. I declare I lost sight of the time. There's just no one like a
fireman to be entertaining, I declare. Mrs. Bonnet won't be long coming
now."
She turned up the light, and saw the dolls so disarranged.
Tibbie was rubbing her eyes.
"Law!" said Sally, a little blankly. "Do you suppose we can get them to
look as they did? I hope t' Heaven she didn't know which went next to
which. Do you remember, Tibbie, where each belonged?"
"Yes. The bride went here. The rose-buds here. The purple and gray
here. I can put them all back, every one."
"Oh, we're all right!" said Sally, cheerfully again. "No one'll ever
know in the world they've been disturbed."
She had drawn off to get the general effect, and compare it with the
earlier image in her brain, when she made a dive for one of the dolls,
the last one, that the sleepy Tibbie had handed her up off the floor.
"Tibbie!" she said, in a ghastly whisper, "look at its head!"
Something had happened to it, certainly. Its pink-and-white face was
pushed in; it looked very much as if a chair-rocker had gone over it.
Tibbie looked at it, not understanding at all.
"Oh, Tibbie!" groaned Sally, "now what'll we do!"
"I didn't do it," said Tibbie, lifting a pale face with perfectly
truthful eyes. "I was just as careful! She was one of my daughters; I
had her in my lap rocking her to sleep with the others; she must have
slipped off my lap--there were too many for one lap, I guess--but I
didn't step on her. Sure, Sally--sure as I live, I didn't step on her!"
"Oh, law! You must have rocked on her. Oh, Tibbie, what'll I do!"
She picked up the doll to examine it, but saw at once that the little
face could not be made right again.
Tibbie watched her without a word; her voice seemed to have sunk far
below reach.
Sally moved the dolls about tentatively, so that ninety-nine should
cover the same space as a hundred. Certainly at first glance the
one she held would never be missed. "But what's the good?" she
said, throwing it down. "They'll count them, and there'll be the
mischief of a fuss. Oh, Tibbie"--and she had reached the end of her
good-nature--"why did I ever think of bringing you here? Now look
at all the trouble you've brought on me, when I thought you'd be so
careful! And I told you and told you till I was hoarse. And here
you've ruined all!"
Tibbie's eyes could not bear to meet Sally's. She stood with her hands
behind her, speechless and motionless, in the middle of the floor.
"I declare I don't know what to do!" Sally exclaimed, dropping her arms
and sitting down before the wreck. "I wish I'd never seen 'em! I wish
there'd never been any Christmas! Oh, it's a great job, this! Tibbie,
you've done for me this time!"
At this moment Miss Catherine came in to hurry them.
"She's broken one of them!" blurted out Sally.
"You don't mean it!"
"Yes, she has!"
"Let me see it. Oh, you wicked child! She's smashed its face right in!
Now who ever heard of such naughtiness?"
Tibbie twisted about ever so little, to get her back turned towards the
two.
"She didn't do it out of naughtiness at all, Miss Catherine. She's as
good a child as ever lived!" At that Tibbie's shoulders gave a little
convulsive heave. "It was an accident entirely. But that's just as bad
for me. I suppose I shall have to say it was me did it."
"And then they'll say what was I doing while the kitchen help was
poking about in the Mrs.'s chamber. No; you don't get me into trouble,
Sally Bean! You'd much better say how it was--how that you asked me if
you just might bring a little girl to look, and I said you might, out
of pure good-nature, being Christmas is rightly for children, and I've
a softness for them. And while we was both in the kitchen, she slipped
away from us and came here and done it before we knew. And the child
herself will say that it was so. You'll be packed off dead sure out of
this place if you let on you meddled with them yourself. She won't have
her things meddled with--There goes the bell. There comes that old cat
Bonnet."
She hurried off to open.
"What's the matter?" said Mrs. Bonnet, elevating her eyebrows as she
appeared at the door and looked into the room she had expected to find
dark and still. She held a paper bag; she spoke with an impediment and
a breath of peppermint. Her cheek-bones and the end of her nose were
brilliant pink with the cold. "What child is that?"
Miss Catherine was behind Mrs. Bonnet. "It happened this way, Mrs.
Bonnet," she began, and told the story with a little tactful adaptation
to the intelligence of her audience, ending, "And now, Mrs. Bonnet,
what's to be done?"
"Oh, you wicked little brat!" said Mrs. Bonnet. "I just want to get
hold of you and shake you!"
She made a snatch at Tibbie, who instinctively got beyond her clutch,
and turning scared eyes towards Sally, said, just audibly, "I want to
go home; I want to go home."
"It don't seem possible," said Mrs. Bonnet, bitterly, "that I can't run
out a minute just to do an errand for Mrs. Darling herself--to get a
spool of feather-stitching silk--but things like this has to happen.
Catherine, I thought you, at least, was a responsible person, and here
you has to go and--"
"Mrs. Bonnet," Catherine interrupted, "you just let that alone! Don't
you try none of that with me! I went out of an errand every bit as much
as you did. I went out to make sure the ice-cream would be sent in good
season for Christmas dinner, I did. Now I don't get dragged into this
mess one bit more than you do!"
Mrs. Bonnet looked at her with a poison-green eye. She seemed to be
repressing what was a trifle difficult to keep the upper hand of.
"Well," she exclaimed at last, "Mrs. Darling will be here in a
minute, and then we shall all see what we shall see. Lord, ain't that
woman been cross to-day, and fussy! 'Tain't as if she was like other
people--a little bit sensible, and could take some little few things
into consideration, and remember we are all human flesh and blood.
Not much! She don't consider nothing, nor nobody, nor feelings, nor
circumstances! She just makes things fly! Things has to go her way,
every time!"
"I want to go home," cried Tibbie, pathetically, and looked towards
Sally now with a trembling face.
"No, you sha'n't go home," said Bonnet, uglily. "You shall stay right
here and take the blame you deserve, after spoiling the face of that
handsome doll. What do you mean by it, you little brat, you little
gutter imp?"
"You let her alone, Mrs. Bonnet," said Sally, with a boldness that had
never before characterized her relations with that lady. "Don't you
talk to her like that! Any one can see she's as sorry as sorry can be
for what she's done, and all the trouble she's got us into--"
"And what does that help, I'd like to know? The doll is broke, ain't
it? And some one of us is going to catch it, however things go. You're
a lucky girl, I say, if you don't lose your place. Some one of us is
going to, I can easy foretell."
"I ain't going to lose my place," said Miss Catherine, firmly; and
with a lifted chin was leaving to lay off her things, when the cook's
nice copper-saucepan face was pushed a little inside the door.
"What's the matter?" she asked, cheerily, and stepped in. Her
high-colored shawl was pinned on her breast with a big brooch; her
bonnet-strings were nearly lost in her fat chin. "What's it all about?
Whose nice little girl is this?"
Gradually she got the whole story, and going straight to Tibbie lifted
her miserable little face, saying: "Don't you feel bad one bit,
darlin'! It was all an accident, and it's no good crying over spilt
milk. And if Mrs. Darling gets mad at you, she ain't the real lady I
take her for. Why, I gave my Clary a new doll to-night, and it's ready
for a new head this minute. And did I stop to rear and tear about it?
Not a bit of it. Why, bless you, she didn't go for to do it! What child
smashes a doll a purpose? You're a pretty set, the whole gang of you,
to pitch into a mite like this!"
Tibbie by this time was freely weeping, and Sally and the cook
together were trying to comfort and silence her.
"I've a great mind to stay here myself and stand up for her, yer pack
of old maids, the lot of yer!" said the cook, looking hard at Mrs.
Bonnet, who had reappeared without her hat and coat.
"You will oblige me, Mrs. MacGrath, by doing nothing of the sort,"
said Mrs. Bonnet. "We've no need to have a whole scene from the drama.
You've no business on this floor anyhow, and I must insist on your
keeping yourself in your own quarters."
"And I'll take my own time, yer born Britisher," said Mrs. MacGrath.
Then putting her arm around Tibbie: "Well, Tibbie dear, you can be
sure of this: however bad this seems, it'll soon be over. And if Mrs.
Darling does scold, it'll soon be over too. It'll all be looking
different to you in the morning. However things goes, you'll soon be
forgetting all about it. And to-morrow is Christmas Day, that our own
dear Lord was born on, and I'll bake you a little cake and send it to
you by Sally."
"But Sally's going to be sent away," sobbed Tibbie.
"So she might be, but I feel it in my little toe that she ain't going
to be."
"Well, and if I am, I am, and there an end," said Sally, bravely. "But
I don't see why she can't take the price of the doll out of my wages
and let me stay."
"I think you'll find," said Mrs. Bonnet, "that it ain't most
particularly the cost of the doll gets you into trouble--There she
comes this minute!"
The door-bell had rung. Profound silence reigned above, while all
listened. Tibbie stopped crying.
"Good-night," came Mrs. Darling's sweet voice, presently, floating up
from the foot of the stairs.
"Good-night," came the Rev. Dorel Goodhue's.
There was a rustle of silken skirts.
"Oh, Cousin Cynthia!"
"Yes?"
"At ten, did you say--or half past?"
"I said ten--_or_ half past. Good-night."
More rustling of skirts; then,
"Oh, Cousin Dorel--"
"Yes?" from the foot of the stairs.
"It doesn't matter--what we spoke about, you know, unless perfectly
convenient."
"Oh, but it will be convenient, perfectly. Good-night. Sleep well."
"You too. Pleasant dreams. Good-night."
"Good-night."
The rustling drew nearer, and Mrs. Darling stood in the doorway,
looking with a sort of absent-minded astonishment at the assemblage in
her room.
The violets were quite dead on her white bosom; her hair was beginning
to come loose, and stood out in golden wisps about her flushed face.
She looked very sweet and soft and shiny-eyed and pleasant altogether.
"What is it?" she asked; and as Jetty was evoluting and clamoring about
her feet she picked him up and kissed him like a mother. "Has anything
happened? What is everybody doing up here? Whose little girl is this
sitting up so late? They used to tell me I should never grow, my dear,
if I sat up so late--"
"This is what it is, ma'am," began Mrs. Bonnet; and she told her
arrangement of the story, uttering her words as a mowing-machine cuts
weeds.
Mrs. Darling abstractedly took the rocking-chair; as she listened, the
pleasant, happy look forsook her face.
"Oh, cut it short!" she interrupted, sharply. "What you have to tell is
that the child there has broken one of the dolls, isn't it?"
There was an assenting mutter from Mrs. Bonnet.
"And you've kept her here, when she ought to have been in bed these
hours, to bear the first beauty of my displeasure--"
Mrs. Darling had said so much in a hard voice, with an appearance of
cold anger; here her voice suddenly died, and she burst out crying
like a vexed, injured child. "I _declare_ it is too bad!" she sobbed,
quite reckless of making a spectacle of herself, while all looked on
and listened in consternation--"I declare it is too bad! It's no use!
It doesn't matter _what_ I do--it is always the same! It is _always_
taken for granted I will conduct myself like a beast. Who can wonder,
after that, if I do? Here I find them, pale as sheets, the five of
them, shaking in their boots because a forlorn little child has broken
a miserable doll. And _what_ is it supposed I shall do about it? Didn't
I dress the hundred of them for children, and little poor children
too? And I must have known they would get broken, of course. _Why_
did I dress them? _What_ did I spend months dressing them for? Solely
for _show_, they think--not for any charity, any kindness, any love
of children, or anything in the _world_ but to make an effect on an
occasion, I suppose--to make myself a merit with the parson, perhaps!"
Here her crying seemed to become less of anger and nervousness, and
more of sorrow; one would have thought her heart-broken. "Oh, it is too
bad! One would imagine I never said a decent thing, or did a kind act,
to any one. And Heaven knows it is not for lack of trying to change.
But no one sees the difference! I am treated like a vixen and a terror.
All the people about me hate and fear and deceive me! A proof of it
to-night! Oh, the _lesson_! Oh, I wasn't _meant_ for this! I wasn't
meant for it! When I remember last Sunday's sermon, and how straight to
my heart it went--oh, I am a fool to cry! Come here to me, dear child.
What is your name? What? A little louder! What did you say? Tibbie!
Oh, what a nice, funny name!" Mrs. Darling smiled through her tears,
pathetically hiccoughing and sighing while she spoke. "_You_ didn't
think I was going to scold you, did you, dear? Of _course_ not! It was
an accident; I understand all about it. I used to break my dolls' heads
frequently, I remember very well--"
Mrs. Darling had put her arm endearingly around Tibbie, and tried to
make the child's head easy on her shoulder. But poor Tibbie's muscles
could not relax; her stiff little face rested uncomfortably, without
pressing, upon its warm alabaster prop. "Let us see, dear, now, what
we can do to make us both feel happier. I dressed all those dolls for
little children I am not acquainted with at all. Which of them should
you like the very best? Which should you like for your very own?"
Tibbie could neither make herself move nor speak; but the tail of her
eye travelled towards the dolls.
"The bride!" Sally took the liberty of saying, beaming as she came to
Tibbie's aid.
"The bride? Which one is that? That one? Of course!" Mrs. Darling
reached for the resplendent favorite and placed her in Tibbie's hands.
"There, my dear."
Tibbie took the doll loosely, without breath of thanks; but while Mrs.
Darling reviewed the dolls, her hand went out involuntarily towards the
broken one. Mrs. Darling saw it. "Of course," she said--"of course, you
would want that poor dollie to nurse back to health. Now, dear, isn't
there _one more_ you would like?"
At this Tibbie's confusion seemed likely to overwhelm and swamp her.
"I'll choose one for you," said Mrs. Darling, "and you shall call her
Cynthia, after me. How would you like that? Suppose we say this one,
with the forget-me-nots? She looks a little like me, doesn't she, with
her hair parted in the middle? Her frock is made of a piece of one of
my own, and that blue is my favorite color. There, Tibbie, now you have
two whole dollies and part of another. You must run right home to bed.
A Merry Christmas to you, dear child. I am very happy to have made your
acquaintance."
The exuberant Sally talked like a clock gone mad all the way home
through the clear wintry night; and since she felt inclined to
conversation, it was well she could keep one up alone, for Tibbie, who
trotted beside her, holding fast her dolls, did not utter a single
word.