A WEEK-END
Blue Bonnet came down to breakfast Monday morning a trifle uncertain as
to whether the day was to be pleasant or profitable to her. She had a
very clear conviction that it could not be both. In her experience
profitable things were stupid--invariably!
It was raining--a condition of weather Miss Clyde hailed with delight.
"Just the very day to go through the linen closet," she said to Blue
Bonnet as they rose from the table. "I think we will begin there this
morning."
Blue Bonnet looked out at the lowering clouds and followed her aunt
meekly. She, too, was glad that it was raining; otherwise she should
have longed to be galloping over the country roads on Chula.
Mrs. Clyde's linen closet was a joy to behold; a room of itself, light
and airy, with the smoothest of cedar shelves and deep cavernous drawers
for blankets and down comforts.
Blue Bonnet had been in the room occasionally, when she had been sent
for sheets for an unexpected guest. She had brought away the refreshing
odor of sweet lavender in her nostrils, and a vision of the neatly piled
linen before her eyes.
To-day she watched her aunt as she opened drawers, took the white covers
from blankets and comforts, inspected sheets and patch-work quilts with
an eye to necessary darning.
What a dreadful waste of time to have cut up all those little patches
and have sewn them together, Blue Bonnet thought, as her aunt folded a
quilt and returned it to its particular place on the shelf. She felt
sure that Aunt Lucinda could have bought much prettier quilts with less
bother.
"It seems almost like a sanctuary, here," she said at last, leaning
against the window and watching the proceedings with interest. "It's so
beautifully clean, and I adore that lavender smell. Where does it come
from?"
Miss Clyde reached under a sheet and brought forth a small bag made of
white tarlatan filled with dried flowers and leaves.
Blue Bonnet buried her nose in it.
"Oh, I love it," she said. "I must get some and send it to Benita.
Benita is very particular about our beds. She says my mother was."
"She could not have been a Clyde and escaped that, my dear. It is a
passion with all of us--linen and fine china."
Blue Bonnet nodded brightly.
"When I have a home I shall have a linen closet just like this," she
said, glancing about admiringly.
"Then you cannot begin too soon to learn how to take care of it. Few
things require closer supervision than a linen closet, in any home. You
must learn to mend; not ordinary mending, but fine darning."
Miss Clyde cast her eye over a pile of sheets. She opened one and handed
it to Blue Bonnet, directing her attention to a rent which had been
skillfully repaired in one corner.
Blue Bonnet noted the stitches of gossamer fineness with absorbed
interest. Then she folded the sheet carefully and handed it back with a
sigh.
"I never could do it, Aunt Lucinda. Never, in a thousand years. I know I
couldn't. I hate sewing."
"Then I fear you could never have a linen closet like this, Blue Bonnet.
Mending represents but a small part of the detail and system necessary
to good housekeeping."
"But, maybe, perhaps I could hire some one. Couldn't I, don't you
think?"
"You certainly could not instruct servants if you did not know how to
work, yourself. That would be quite impossible. Could your teachers have
imparted their knowledge to you if they, themselves, had not been
students?"
The argument seemed plausible. Blue Bonnet's sigh deepened.
"I shall employ a trained housekeeper," she said, as if that settled the
question.
"Then you will miss the joy that comes through laboring with your own
hands--the joy of accomplishment, Blue Bonnet. I hope you will change
your mind."
Miss Clyde took a careful survey of a shelf where sheets were piled, and
from it she filled her mending basket.
"Delia has overlooked these in my absence," she said, almost
apologetically. "Linen should always be mended carefully before it is
put away."
She straightened the window blinds to a correct line, closed all drawers
carefully, and ushering Blue Bonnet into the hall, locked the door
behind them.
In the sitting-room the rain beat furiously at the window-panes, a cold
east wind rattled the casements, but a glowing fire in the grate offset
the gloom.
Miss Clyde drew a chair up to the fire and took a piece from the basket.
"Bring up a small chair, Blue Bonnet. One without arms will be best."
Blue Bonnet drew the chair up slowly.
Miss Clyde found her thimble and selected a proper needle.
"Go up and get your work-basket, Blue Bonnet."
When Blue Bonnet came down with her basket her aunt was holding a sheet
up to the light.
"It is growing thin in places," she said, laying it on Blue Bonnet's
knee, "but a few stitches will preserve it for some time yet."
The next hour was one not soon to be forgotten by Blue Bonnet. Threads
knotted at the most impossible places; stitches were too long, sometimes
too short. Her hands grew hot and sticky. At the end of an hour her
cheeks were flushed and her head ached.
Miss Clyde took the work from the tired and clumsy fingers and smoothed
the hair back from the warm brow.
"I think you have done very well for the first time, Blue Bonnet. Next
time it will come easier. You would better rest now, and perhaps
Grandmother will read to us until lunch time."
"Yes," Mrs. Clyde said, "I will indeed. What shall it be, Blue Bonnet?"
Blue Bonnet thought a minute, then she clapped her hands softly.
"I know, Grandmother. Thoreau! I read something of his this summer on
the ranch, and I liked it."
Mrs. Clyde went into the library, coming back presently with Robert
Louis Stevenson's "Men and Books."
"Perhaps you would like to know something of Thoreau's life, Blue
Bonnet. Mr. Stevenson gives a fair glimpse of him. At least he does not
spare his eccentricities. We view him from all quarters."
The lunch bell rang long before Blue Bonnet thought it time.
"Mark the place, Grandmother," she said, as they went into the
dining-room. "I want to hear it all. I don't think I should have liked
Thoreau personally, but there certainly is a nice streak in him--the way
he loved animals and nature--isn't there?"
About four o'clock in the afternoon the clouds began to break, and Blue
Bonnet in stout shoes and raincoat started off with Solomon for a run.
Her grandmother and aunt watched her as she turned her steps in the
direction of the schoolhouse.
"Blue Bonnet is a gregarious soul," Miss Clyde said, turning away from
the window. "She loves companionship. She likes to move in flocks."
"Most girls do, Lucinda. I often wondered how her mother ever endured
the loneliness of a Texas ranch, with her disposition. She seemed to
find room in her heart for all the world. But it is not a bad trait,"
Mrs. Clyde added. "It is a part of the impulsive temperament."
The next few days passed much as Monday had, except that the duties, not
to become too irksome, were varied. There was a morning in the kitchen,
when Blue Bonnet was instructed into the mysteries of breadmaking and
the preparing of vegetables.
It was on this particular morning that Mrs. Clyde, going to the kitchen
door to speak with Katie, found Blue Bonnet, apron covered, standing
before the immaculate white sink, her hands encased in rubber gloves,
with a potato, which she was endeavoring to peel, poised on the extreme
end of a fork.
For the first time in nearly twenty years of service, Katie permitted
herself the familiarity of a wink in her mistress's direction, and Mrs.
Clyde slipped away noiselessly, wearing a very broad smile.
But, if the mornings were tiresome, the afternoons more than
compensated. There were long rides on Chula; afternoons when Blue Bonnet
came in looking as rosy as one of the late peonies in her grandmother's
garden.
"Grandmother!" she would call, dashing up the side drive and halting
Chula at the door. "Grandmother, come and look at us!"
Mrs. Clyde would hasten to the door to find Blue Bonnet decked from hat
brim to stirrups with trailing vines in gorgeous hues, goldenrod and
chrysanthemums tied in huge bunches to her saddle.
Nor was Chula neglected. Often she sported a flaming wreath--her mane
bunches of flowers.
"Take all the flowers in," Blue Bonnet would call to Delia. "This week
will see the very last of them. The man at the Dalton farm says there is
sure to be frost most any night."
When the mail came on Saturday morning there was a pleasant diversion.
Miss Clyde sorted the letters and handed a pamphlet to Blue Bonnet. It
proved to be a catalogue of Miss North's school, and interested Blue
Bonnet greatly. She seated herself in her favorite chair in the
sitting-room and turned the pages eagerly.
"Oh, Aunt Lucinda, it's quite expensive, isn't it? A thousand two
hundred dollars a year; and that doesn't include--let's see--'use of
piano, seat in church, laundry, doctor's bills, music lessons, fencing
and riding'--but then I wouldn't have to have all the extras. I could
cut out the fencing and riding, of course, and the seat in church--"
"Elizabeth!"
Blue Bonnet turned quickly. It was the first time she had heard her
baptismal name in months.
"I beg your pardon, Aunt Lucinda. I didn't think. Please excuse me."
"Certainly, Blue Bonnet. But remember that it is very bad taste to be
irreverent."
Blue Bonnet brought the catalogue over to Miss Clyde, and together they
looked through it.
"It seems just the place for you, Blue Bonnet," Miss Clyde said. "The
location on Commonwealth Avenue is ideal. It is within walking distance
of most of the places where you will want to go. This is a great
advantage."
Blue Bonnet curled herself up comfortably in the deep chair and looked
out through the window dreamily. Slowly a smile wreathed her lips.
"Aunt Lucinda," she said after a moment, "do you know what I'd just love
to do? I've been thinking of how much more I have than most girls, and I
wish I could pass some of the good things along. Now, there's Carita
Judson. Wouldn't she just adore a year in Boston? Why couldn't I ask her
to go with me to Miss North's? There's that great big room I'm to have
with a bath, and all those advantages--" Blue Bonnet paused.
Miss Clyde was silent for a moment. Blue Bonnet's impulses bewildered
her sometimes, they were so stupendous.
Blue Bonnet was insistent.
"There's all that money coming to me that my father left," she went on,
"and Uncle Cliff says that some day there will be more--from him. What
ever am I going to do with it? Carita Judson has an awfully poor sort of
a time, Aunt Lucinda, awfully poor. She mothers all those small children
in the family--"
"I daresay for that very reason she could not well be spared."
Miss Clyde was more than half in sympathy with Blue Bonnet's idea; she
knew through her mother of Carita's fine father, of the girl's
sweetness and refinement in spite of her restricted means and
surroundings, but she did not wish to encourage Blue Bonnet in what
seemed an impossibility.
Blue Bonnet jumped up from her chair.
"I'm going to write to Uncle Cliff about it this very minute," she said,
moving toward the door. "I know he'll think it is a perfectly splendid
idea."
"Would it not be better to wait until we have visited the school?" her
aunt inquired tactfully. "There might not be room for Carita. The number
of pupils is limited, you know. Suppose you wait until Uncle Cliff comes
at Christmas. You could consult him then. It would be very unwise to get
Carita's hopes up and then disappoint her."
Blue Bonnet had not thought of this.
"But I shall ask him the minute he comes," she assured her aunt as she
left the room, taking the catalogue with her. "Just the very minute! I
know what he'll say, too, Aunt Lucinda. He'll say that happiness is the
best interest one can get out of an investment. I've heard him, no end
of times!"
The week ended delightfully for Blue Bonnet.
"It's a sort of reward of merit for working so hard all these mornings,"
she said, as her grandmother granted permission to follow out a plan of
Amanda Parker's.
Amanda's aunt had the second time invited the We Are Sevens for a
week-end at the farm.
The girls were to take the street car as far as it would carry them--to
be met at that point by a hay wagon.
Blue Bonnet was in high glee. A natural lover of the country, visions of
a glorious time rose before her eyes.
She appeared at the corner drug store, where the girls were to take the
interurban, a few minutes late. Aunt Lucinda had so many instructions at
the last moment that she had been delayed.
The girls were all gathered, looking anxiously down the street. When
Blue Bonnet appeared in the snowiest of white sweaters and
tam-o'-shanter, as jaunty and blooming as if she were out for an
afternoon walk, they immediately protested.
"For ever more, why didn't you wear your old clothes, Blue Bonnet?"
Kitty Clark inquired. "That sweater will be pot black before you go a
mile, and you'll be as freckled as a turkey egg without some shade for
your face."
"The sweater will wash, thank you, that's why I wore it, and I'm not the
freckly kind."
The shot was unintentional, but Kitty colored to the roots of her red
gold hair.
"You are fortunate," she said. "I am."
"That's the penalty you pay for having such a peach of a complexion,"
Blue Bonnet retorted, and the breach was healed.
At the end of the car line the hay-rack was waiting. The girls climbed
on.
"Wait," Blue Bonnet shouted, jumping off quickly, "I almost forgot I
want a picture of you."
While she adjusted the camera, the girls struck fantastic poses, Debby
perching herself airily on the end gate of the wagon.
There was a warning cry from the girls, which the staid and sober farm
horses misinterpreted. Off they started at a mad gallop, leaving the
bewildered Debby a crumpled heap in the roadway.
She was on her feet before Blue Bonnet reached her, laughing and crying
in a breath.
"How stupid," she panted. "I might have known that gate would fly open.
I guess I'm not hurt any."
Blue Bonnet felt Debby's arms and limbs and made her stretch herself.
Then they fell in each other's arms and laughed until they were weak and
hysterical.
"It's a good thing the roads are a bit soft," Blue Bonnet assured her,
when she could get her breath. "You're something of a sight with all
that mud on you, but it broke your fall."
"Praise be!" Debby murmured, struggling to remove some of the dirt that
insisted upon clinging to her skirts. "I'll take mud to a broken limb,
any day."
The rest of the journey was made in safety. Once the wagon halted for
Sarah Blake to change her seat. Sitting just over the wheel was not
altogether desirable. Sarah's stomach rebelled. The whiteness of her
lips spoke louder than words. Blue Bonnet changed places with her
cheerfully, keeping strangely silent after the first half mile.
"What makes Blue Bonnet so still?" Kitty inquired, surprised.
"Take this seat and find out, Little Miss Why," Blue Bonnet retorted
with an effort. "Maybe you haven't as much regard for your tongue as I
have. I want to keep mine whole."
The low, rambling farmhouse surrounded by green hills and ancient oaks,
with cattle grazing peacefully on the gentle slopes, and the farm dog
yelping frantically at the big gates, gave Blue Bonnet the worst pang of
homesickness she had felt since she left the ranch.
Wreaths of blue smoke curled upward lazily from the kitchen chimney, and
from the dooryard came the most tantalizing odors of chicken frying,
coffee boiling, and fresh doughnuts.
Blue Bonnet jumped from the wagon and filled her lungs with the
delicious fragrance.
"Girls," she cried, "just smell! It's chicken and coffee and--"
"Doughnuts," Amanda finished with rapture. "Wait until you taste them!
Aunt Priscilla is a wonder at cooking. She has the best things you ever
ate in your life."
Aunt Priscilla appeared in the doorway at that moment, a wholesome
sweet-faced woman of middle age, and took the girls in to the spare
bedroom to lay off their things and wash before supper.
Blue Bonnet took off her cap and sweater and laid them lightly on the
high feather bed with its wonderful patch-work quilt--the "rising sun"
pattern running riot through it.
"It's so clean I hate to muss it up with my things," she said, casting
about for a chair.
"I speak for this bed," Kitty said, depositing her things carelessly. "I
slept in it the last time we came. It's as good as a toboggan. You keep
going down and down and--"
"We're going to draw for it," Amanda announced from the wash-stand where
she was wrestling with Debby's mud. "It will hold four; the other three
girls will have to go in the next room."
"Why couldn't we bring the other bed in here--I mean the springs and
mattress?" Debby suggested. "Do you think your aunt would care, Amanda?"
Amanda volunteered to ask.
Blue Bonnet took her turn at the wash basin and then wandered into the
parlor. She looked about wonderingly. Family portraits done in crayon
adorned the walls. A queer little piano, short half an octave, occupied
one corner of the room, a marble-topped table, the other. A plush
photograph album, a Bible and a copy of Pilgrim's Progress lay on the
table. The carpet was green, bold with red roses; roses so vivid in
coloring that they seemed to vie with the scarlet geraniums that filled
the south window to overflowing.
But over it all a spirit of peace and contentment rested--a homey
atmosphere, unmistakable and refreshing. Blue Bonnet gazed through the
one unobstructed window of the little room wistfully. Twilight was
closing in. Somewhere out in the field a cow bell tinkled, and a boy's
voice called to the cattle. How familiar it all was.
Amanda's voice broke the stillness.
"Why, Blue Bonnet Ashe," she said, coming in the room followed by her
aunt with a lamp, "what are you doing in here all alone? You look as if
you had seen a ghost. Come right out in the kitchen. Aunt Priscilla has
supper all on the table."
And such a supper as it was!
The chicken, and there seemed an endless amount, was piled high on an
old blue platter that Blue Bonnet fancied her grandmother would have
paid almost any price for. Fluffy potatoes, flakey biscuits, golden
cream and butter, preserves in variety--everything from a farmhouse
larder that could tempt the appetite and gratify the taste.
"I feel as if I never could eat another mouthful as long as I live,"
Blue Bonnet declared as she rose from the table.
"That's just the way I used to feel last summer on the ranch after one
of old Gertrudis' meals," Kitty said.
Amanda's aunt suggested a run down the lane.
Down the lane they ran, laughing and calling; old Shep, stirred from his
usual calm, barking and bounding at their heels.
It was too dark for a walk, so the girls soon retraced their steps,
settling themselves in the parlor for a visit with the family before
going to bed.
"Do any of you play?" inquired Amanda's aunt, looking toward the odd
little piano.
"Blue Bonnet does," Kitty announced promptly. "Come, 'little Tommy
Tucker must sing for his supper.'"
Blue Bonnet went over to the piano. Kitty's remark served as a reminder.
She was glad to repay Amanda's aunt for some of her kindness.
The piano was sadly out of tune, but it is doubtful if Amanda's
relatives would have enjoyed a symphony concert as much as Blue Bonnet's
simple ballads--the familiar little airs which she gave unsparingly.
After she had quite exhausted her stock, there were clamors for
repetition, until Blue Bonnet felt that she had wiped out the debt of
the entire "We Are Sevens."
Amanda's aunt was found to be quite reasonable about transferring the
bed from the back room. Amanda and the small son of the household
undertook its removal, Kitty giving orders.
"Anybody would think you were going to sleep in it, Kitty, you're so
particular," Amanda objected. "Get busy and help some."
"I spoke for the big bed," Kitty reminded.
"Yes, and it was selfish of you. We're going to draw for the big bed. I
told you that before."
There was a shout of laughter a minute later when Kitty pulled the short
slip for the bed on the floor.
Sarah Blake offered to change with her, but the others objected.
"You're an obliging dear, Sarah," Kitty said appreciatively, "but I will
stay where I'm put. I don't want to take your place."
Later in the night Sarah wished that she had. She wondered as she shrank
to the edge of the bed and tried to make herself as small as possible,
if three persons to a bed on the floor, wouldn't have been preferable to
the rail which fell to her lot.
It was long past midnight when the last joke was told, the last giggle
suppressed. The fun might have gone on indefinitely if, from somewhere
in the house, Amanda's uncle's boot hadn't fallen ominously, and
Amanda's aunt cleared her throat audibly.
Morning found them up with the larks. There was a stroll down the shady
lane before breakfast, and afterward, when the dishes were cleared away
and the bedrooms restored to proper order, Amanda's uncle insisted upon
piling them all in the big farm wagon and taking them to church.
"It seems to me that it is so much easier to be good--that is, to be
religious, in the country," Blue Bonnet said as they neared the
meeting-house, and the bell in the small tower rang out slowly. "There's
something comes over you when you hear the bell calling, and see the
people gathering--"
"'A sort of holy and calm delight,'"
Kitty quoted.
Blue Bonnet nodded.
"I reckon so--that's as near as you can come to it. There are feelings
there aren't any words for, you know, Kitty--kind of indescribable."
The sight of seven pretty, attractive girls--city girls--in one pew,
occasioned some comment in church; otherwise there was scarcely a ripple
to disturb the calm that rested upon the congregation.
"Unless some one will kindly volunteer to play the organ to-day," the
minister said, rising in the pulpit, "we shall have to sing without
music. Our organist is sick."
Blue Bonnet glanced about her. No one seemed inclined to offer services.
There was a silence of several seconds. The minister waited. Then
Amanda's aunt leaned over and whispered something in Blue Bonnet's ear.
Blue Bonnet rose instantly and went to the organ.
She was a little nervous. She knew that organs differed somewhat from
pianos, and she wasn't familiar with them, but it never occurred to her
to hesitate when she seemed to be needed. She found the hymn and started
out bravely. Sometimes the music weakened a little when Blue Bonnet,
absorbed in the notes, forgot to use the pedals, but, on the whole, it
was not bad, and the minister's hearty handshake and radiant smile after
the service more than compensated for any embarrassment she had
suffered.
"It has been perfectly glorious," Blue Bonnet declared to Amanda's aunt
as they parted with her at daybreak Monday morning. "We've just loved
every minute of our visit here, and would you mind--all of you--I want
the whole family--standing out there by the big gate while I get a
picture of you? I couldn't possibly forget you after the perfectly
lovely time you've given us, but I'd like the picture to show to
Grandmother and Aunt Lucinda."
"Oh, Blue Bonnet," Kitty complained, "haven't you enough pictures yet?
You've been taking them for a year--and more!"
Blue Bonnet quite ignored the remark as she proceeded to line up
Amanda's aunt and her family. She got several snaps, and as she put away
her kodak she promised to remember the group with pictures--a promise
fulfilled, much to the delight of the farm people, later.