It was a very great misfortune, and it must have been a sad affliction
to the friends of the two children, for both were once pretty and
charming.
It came about in this way.
Little Winnie Tennyson--she wasn't the daughter of Mr. Alfred Tennyson,
the poet-laureate of England, but _was_ as sweet as any one of that
gentleman's poems--had been to the city; and she had brought home so
many wondrous improvements that her two little bosom friends, Lu Medway
and Kathie Dysart, were almost struck dumb to behold and to hear what
Winnie said and what Winnie had.
For one thing, there were some wooden blocks, all fluted and grooved,
and Winnie could heat these blocks in the oven, and wet her hair, and
lay it between them, and O! how satin-smooth the waves would
be,--hair-pin-crimps and braid-crimps were nothing to this new and
scientific way.
Winnie also made it a matter of pride to display her overskirts. These
were arranged with ever so many tapes on the inside, and would readily
tie up into the most ravishing bunches and puffs--how Lu and Kathie,
wee-est mites of women though they were, did envy Winnie her tapes!
Their mammas didn't know how to loop a dress--witness their little
skirts pinned back into what Kathie called a "wopse."
She also had brought some tiny parlor skates, and, withal, many airs and
graces which her two young-lady aunties had taught her, among others a
funny little new accent on some of her words,--the word "pretty" in
particular. And, last of all, she had been taught to dance!
"And I can show _you_," Winnie said, eagerly, "'cause it goes by
'steps,' and uncle says I take them as pr-i-tty as Cousin Lily."
Now, in Connaut, little girls don't dance--not _nice_ little girls, nor
nice big girls either, for that matter.
The dimpled mouths opened in astonishment. "That is wicked, Winnie
Ten'son, don't you know?"
"O, but 'tisn't," said Winnie. "My aunties dance, and their mamma, my
grandmamma, was at the party once."
"We shall tell our mothers," said Lu. "I'll bet you've come home a
proud, wicked girl, and you want us to be as bad as you are."
[Illustration: "Winnie already had her class before her."]
Now Winnie was only six years old, about the same age as her virtuous
friends, and she didn't look very wicked. She had pink cheeks, and blue
eyes, and dimples. She stood gazing at her accusers, first at one and
then at the other.
"Luie," said Kathie, gravely, "we mustn't call Winnie wicked till we ask
our mothers if she is."
"No, I don't think I would," said Mrs. Tennyson, looking up from her
sewing, her cheek flushing at the sight of tears in her little Winnie's
gentle eyes.
On the way home, they chanced to see their own minister walking along.
Lu stopped short. "Kathie," said she, "I know it's awful wicked now, or
else we never should have met the minister right here. I'm just going to
tell him about Winnie."
She went up to him, Kathie following shyly.
"Mr. Goodhue, Winnie Ten'son is a nawful wicked girl!"
"She _is!_" said Mr. Goodhue, stopping, and looking down into the little
eager face.
"Yes, sir, she is. She wants us to dance!"
"She _does!_"
"Yes, sir, she does. She wanted us to learn the steps, right down in her
garden this afternoon. Would you dance, Mr. Goodhue?"
"Would I? Perhaps I might, were I as little and spry as you, and Winnie
would teach me steps, and it was down in the garden."
The little girls looked up into his face searchingly. He walked on
laughing, and they went on homeward, to ask further advice.
At home, too, everyone seemed to think it a matter for smiles, and
laughed at the two tender little consciences.
So they both ran back after dinner to Mrs. Tennyson's. But on the way
Kathie said, "They let us, the minister and ev'ry body, but if it is
wicked _ever_, how isn't it wicked _now_?"
"I s'pose 'cause we're children," Lu said wisely.
The logical trouble thus laid, they tripped on.
They were dressed in sweet pink, and their sun-bonnets were as fresh and
crisp as only the sun-bonnets of dear little country school-girls ever
can be. It was a most merry summer day; all nature moving gladsomely to
the full music of life. The leaves were fluttering to each other, the
grasses sweeping up and down, the bobolinks hopping by the meadow path.
Their friend Winnie came out to meet them, looking rather astonished.
"We're going to learn," shouted Lu, "get on your bonnet."
"But you wasn't good to me to-day," said Winnie, thoughtfully.
"We didn't da'st to be," said Kathie, "till we'd asked somebody that
knew."
Mrs. Tennyson was half of the mind to call her little daughter in; yet
she felt it a pity to be less sweet and forgiving than the child.
Winnie already had her class before her. "Now you must do just as I do.
You must hold your dress back so,--not grab it, but hold it back nice,
and you must bend forward so, and you must point your slippers so,--not
stand flat."
Very graceful the little dancing-teacher looked, tip-toeing here,
gliding there, twinkling through a series of pretty steps down the long
garden walk.
But the pupils! Do the best she might, sturdy little Kathie couldn't
manage her dress. She grasped it tightly in either fat little fist.
"Mother Bunch!" Lu giggled behind her back.
Kathie's face got very red over that. It was well enough to be
"Dumpling,"--everybody loves a dumpling; but "Mother Bunch!" So she
bounced and shuffled a little longer, and then she said she was going
home.
But Miss Lu wasn't ready. She greatly liked the new fun, the hopping and
whirling to Winnie's steady "One, two, _three!_ One, two, _three!_"
There was a grown-up, affected smirk on her delicate little face, at
which Mrs. Tennyson laughed every time she looked out. I think Lu would
have hopped and minced up and down the walk until night, if Winnie's
mother hadn't told them it was time to go.
"I don't like her old steps," said Kathie. They were sitting on a daisy
bank near Mr. Medway's.
"Well, I do," said Lu. "And you would, too, if you wasn't so chunked.
You just bounced up and down."
Kathie burst out crying. "I'll bet dancing steps _is_ wicked, for you
never was so mean before in your life, so! And you didn't dance near so
pretty as Winnie, and you needn't think you ever will, for you _never_
will!"
"Oh! I won't, won't I?" said Lu, teasingly.
"No, you won't. I won't be wicked and say you are nice, for you're
horrid."
"_You_'re wicked this minute, Kathie Dysart, for _you_'re mad."
And as she laughed a naughty laugh, and as Kathie glared back at her,
then it was that that which happened began to happen. Lu's delicate,
rosy mouth commenced drawing up at the corners in an ugly fashion, and
her nose commenced drawing down, while her dimpled chin thrust itself
out in a taunting manner; but the horror of it was that she couldn't
straighten her lips, nor could she draw in her chin when she tried.
"You _dis'gree'ble_ thing!" shrieked Kathie, looking at her and feeling
dreadfully, her eyebrows knotting up like two little squirming snakes.
"If I'm a Mother Bunch, you're a bean-pole, and you'll be an ugly old
witch some day, and you'll dry up and you'll blow away."
By this time the two little pink starched sun-bonnets fairly stood on
end at each other.
"Kathie Dysart, I'll tell your Sunday-school teacher, see if I don't."
"Tell her what? you old, _old_, OLD thing!"
[Illustration: "They grew older and uglier each moment."]
Kathie Dysart loved her Sunday-school teacher, and now she _was_ in a
rage. She couldn't begin to scowl as fiercely as she felt; her cheeks
sunk in, her lips drew down, her nose grew sharp and long in the effort.
And, all at once, as the children say, her face "froze" so. Oh! it was
perfectly horrid, that which happened to the two little dears, it was
indeed. They could not possibly look away from each other, and they grew
older and uglier each moment! Why, their very sun-bonnets--those fresh
little pink sun-bonnets--shriveled into old women's caps, and even in
the hearts of the poor little old crones the hardening process was going
on, a fierce fire of hate scorching the last central drop of dew, until
nothing would ever, ever grow and bloom again.
It was all over with Lu and Kathie forever and ever.
All this was long ago, of course--indeed, it happened "once upon a
time." It would be difficult now to verify each point in the account. On
the contrary, I suppose it just possible that there may be a mistake as
to the transformation of the children's clothes--the change of the
sun-bonnets into caps, for instance.
But, as a whole, I see no reason to doubt the story. Often, and quite
recently, too, I have seen little faces in danger of a similar
transformation.
Where anger, envy, spite, and some others of the ill-tempers, gain
control of the nerves and muscles of the human countenance, they pull
and twitch and knot and tie these nerves and muscles, until it is almost
impossible to recognize the face.
Sometimes this change has passed off in a minute; but at other times it
has lasted for hours, and there is _always_ danger that the face will
fail to recover its pleasantness wholly, that traces will remain, like
wrinkles in a ribbon that has been tied, and that, at last, the
transformation will be final and fatal, and the fair child become and
remain "a horrid old witch."
Of one thing we all are certain--that the most gossiping and malicious
person now living was once a fair and innocent child; so who shall say
that this which I have related did _not_ happen to Lu and Kathie?