The north-west wind, driving feathery flakes of snow before it, heaps
up gray masses of cloud over the sunny afternoon, and then, as if bent
on subduing what cheeriness remains among the shadows it has brought,
howls dismally down the chimneys, moans at the casements dismally. The
Lieutenant throws himself down on the lounge, and draws a long sigh. Kate
slips quietly out of the room, catches up her shawl and hat from the rack
in the hall, and her brother, hearing her go down the steps into the
street, wonders where she is bound for, and why she didn’t say something
about it, and then falls back into his gloomy reverie.
“It may be ‘sweet for one’s country to die’; but to live on, a shattered,
helpless wreck”—and, at the thought, he gripes the curving frame of the
lounge with his one hand, and his firm-set lips quiver; when, suddenly,
without the faintest footfall to indicate the approach of any one, two
little arms creep about his neck, and between silvery peals of laughter
a shower of kisses falls over forehead and sightless eyes, on either
cheek, on nose, mouth and chin. “There!” cries a childish, laughing
voice, “I surpized you, didn’t I? Ha, ha, ha!”
“Ha, ha!” echoes the Lieutenant, coming directly from a horizontal to a
sitting posture, his arm around the wee mite, “so you did ‘surpize’ me,
midget. And where did you come from? Did you drop out of the sky?”
“Out of the sky!” repeats the little maiden, with a great deal of scorn
and emphasis. “Why, I comed right from our house! Katy comed after me,
and we went round to the back door, so you wouldn’t hear, and then Katy
took off my shoes, and I comed up on tiptoe in my stocking-feet. Ha, ha!
I surpized you, didn’t I? I’m go’n to ’gin!” and away she rushes across
the room and back against him, pell-mell, arms about his neck, and kisses
raining all over his face. “There! how do you like it?” and the room
rings with her musical laughter—in which the Lieutenant once more joins,
with—
“My dear young lady, I must confess that I haven’t the least objection to
the proceeding.”
“Young—_la_-day!” is the slow and scornful rejoinder; “young _la_-dy!
Why, I’m a little girl!”
“Why, so she is, just a mere baby.”
“A _ba_-by! (the italics are to mark the emphasis) I’m four-years-old
big! _I_’m no _ba_-by! Willie’s the baby. He’s got a new tooth! That
makes three—six—five! He’s got five teeth!”
“You don’t say! And what is this Edith has in her hands—a doll?”
“Yes, it’s my dolly.”
“What curly hair she has. And this ruffled affair—is it an apron?”
“An _a_-pron! It’s an over-skirt!”
“Oh, I beg pardon! an ‘over-skirt,’ is it? So she’s a fashionable doll.
What might be her name?”
“Guess.”
“Keturah?”
“No.”
“Jerusha?”
“No.”
“Mary Ann, Sacharissa, Sophia, Clarissa, Joan, Melissa, Eloise,
Elizabeth, Jane—”
“No-o-o-o-o!”
“Victoria, Eugenia, Augusta, Paulina, Virginia, Aurelia, Geraldine,
Mollie—”
“Yes! Mollie! that’s what it is; but none of your other old—elephants.
There, you’re laughing! You knowed what it was all the time; you was only
pertendin’. You’ve seen my dolly before.”
“Where’s Katy?”
“She stayed down-stairs to pop some corn for me and you.”
“Shall we go down and see her do it?”
“Yes.”
“Very well.” And the Lieutenant, rising, manages to shift little dot up
to his shoulder. “There, now, you’re a feather on top of a barn-door.”
“You’re _not_ a barn-door!”
“What am I, then?”
“You’re my brave captain boy.” (That was in a whisper.)
“Shall I tell you what _you_ are? You’re my little angel.” And, holding
her carefully, he goes down the stairs, feeling his way, now and then,
with the remnant of an arm in his dangling right sleeve.
“I’m almost through,” cries Kate, from the kitchen, her face all
aglow with the heat. And Edith, from her lofty perch, watches the few
yellow kernels that are nearly lost sight of in the bottom of the wire
corn-popper, after a shake or two over the hot coals, suddenly—“Snap,
snap, snap!” and look! it is full to the brim with something white and
savory, which, seasoned with salt and the least bit of butter, she deals
out (with great fairness and impartiality) to herself and her “captain
boy,” after they have gone up-stairs again. By and by a thought strikes
her.
“Katy, my doll hasn’t got any apron.”
“Why, so she hasn’t. We’ll have to make her one, won’t we?” And a box of
ribbons and laces and pieces of silk is produced from somewhere, and the
two sit down on the floor near the Lieutenant’s chair, talking all the
time and planning out this wonderful apron.
“Now which of all these colors does Edie like best?” asks Kate.
“Well, I think the red’s the nicest.”
So an apron (with pockets, observe!) is soon manufactured out of a bit
of a broad scarlet sash, and braided, too, with white silk braid; and
straightway on it goes, in feverish haste (one is anxious to study the
effect, you know), over the stylish (but serene) Mademoiselle’s black
satin gown. (The effect isn’t bad.)
After due admiration from Edith, some other diversion is in order, and a
book of engravings is brought for inspection. As the leaves are turned
for her she glances for an instant at one picture after another, giving
the word to proceed; but they finally come to something over which she
pores a long while—so long that Kate is passing to the next without
waiting for the “Go on” from little Miss, when the latter immediately
takes the book into her own hands, returns to this picture, and continues
to gaze at it. “What does it mean?” at length she asks.
“Had I better tell her?” Kate, in an under-tone, questions of her
brother. “It’s Gustave Doré’s ‘The Deluge’—people and wild beasts
huddled together upon a rock rising out of the waste of water, and the
great, lashing waves reaching up for them greedily, like wide-mouthed
monsters. Odd, isn’t it, that she should notice it so, among so many more
attractive prints? She wouldn’t be likely to comprehend if I were to
explain, would she? Good, there goes the tea-bell!” And Kate closes the
book, glad of an excuse to escape telling the story of the flood to this
blithesome little being, whom, she has a dim notion, it might give bad
dreams.
Seated at the supper-table, and elevated to the common level by aid
of three sofa-cushions, Edith for a few moments bestows particular
attentions upon a sauce-plate of canned peaches, to the utter disregard
of more substantial food. After which she sits back in her chair, and,
inclining her head toward her hostess, whispers—
“Some of the cake, if you please.”
“But you haven’t eaten your bread and butter yet; eat that first, and
then you shall have some cake.”
“I want it now,” responds the small person, with much firmness, and is
directly supplied with the desired article—a measure which might meet
with protest if Edith’s mamma were present. No, it wouldn’t, either,
come to think of it, for Edith’s mamma knows what are Kate’s ideas
concerning sweetmeats. Has she not, on a similar occasion, heard her
express herself after this manner?—
“If unfeeling people _will persist_ in denying dainties to the wee folks,
they may just keep the stuff out of sight. Set it right where the poor
little things can watch it with wistful eyes, and then pass it around
to the favored few, but for them—‘No, _you_ can’t have any. It isn’t
healthy for you!’ If grown-up people can’t deny themselves such things,
they haven’t any right to expect the children to. To require children to
show more strength of character than they have themselves!—oh, it’s a
downright shame! And then, leaving open the places where the forbidden
fruit is kept, and when the midgets climb up the closet-shelves and take
a bite, on the sly, finding fault with them! Leading them into temptation
(and isn’t that what responsible people even _pray_ to be delivered
from?) and then, when the poor little things fall into the very trap
they have set, finding fault with them, and lecturing them, and all that
nonsense! Oh, it’s a cruel shame!”
The speaker, you see, is the children’s zealous advocate; and, little
people, if ever there is anything you especially covet, or if ever you
get into trouble, just go to her. She will plead your cause with burning
cheeks, and flashing eyes, and such withering eloquence that the stern
household judges will not fail to relent.
But it is after dark, and the snow is falling heavily, and mamma will
want her little Edith home. So Kate sets forth with her small charge,
well wrapped and protected from the cold—although they have but a few
steps to go, as Edith lives in the next house.