GOING VISITING.
ONE day after Posy was quite well, she sat by the roadside near the
house, moulding doll’s furniture out of clay. A little soft chair about
as big as a grasshopper stood drying on a board, and she was now making
a sofa, and embroidering the sides with a pin.
“Look,” said Pollio, “see who’s coming!”
It was dear Mr. Littlefield on horseback, stopping every now and then
to pick a fly off his sleek horse. The children could not hear him; but
he was saying to the horse,—
“There now, keep thy temper, good beast: I won’t let the flies bite
thee.”
But he was too kind to kill the flies; and what do you suppose he did
with them? Dropped them tenderly into his coat-pocket!
Before he reached Judge Pitcher’s the three children rushed out to meet
him.
“Good-morning, Edward, and Napoleon and Josephine,” said he, as they
alighted on him like a flock of birds. “Is thy mother well, and about
the house? There now, I must hurry and let out my prisoners.”
The children followed him into the stable, where he opened his
coat-pockets, and out jumped a handful of dizzy, crazy flies.
“I’ve kept them in jail, where they couldn’t do any mischief,” laughed
the Quaker; “but now they can get an honest living in your stable, and
not trouble anybody.”
Little Pollio and Posy laughed aloud at this, and, seizing their
tender-hearted old friend by the arms, led him into the house through
the kitchen. Eliza looked up very pleasantly, for she knew Friend
Littlefield and liked him; but she was in the act of doing something
which made him unhappy. Some flies had settled on the table to sip a
few drops of molasses, and she was pouncing down on them with a wet
towel.
“Eliza, Eliza,” said he sorrowfully, “those are God’s creatures.
Consider! _Thee_ can’t make a fly!”
“And I’m sure I shouldn’t want to,” said Eliza, with another dash of
the towel. “I’m sorry you feel so, sir; but I’ve no notion of being
turned out of the house by an army of flies.”
Mr. Littlefield sighed, and Pollio drew him along to the parlor. There
were no flies there; and the room was so beautiful with pictures and
flowers, that the good man smiled, and forgot Eliza’s cruelty. He took
Posy on his knee, and talked to her mother about the dreadful accident
to the steamboat, and thanked God again and again that the little girl
was saved.
“How did thee feel when the boat blew up, Napoleon?”
“I thought I was a _gone man_,” replied Pollio; “and, I tell you, I
tried hard to keep the children still.”
This was so droll, that everybody laughed. By and by the Quaker told
Mrs. Pitcher he had come to Rosewood to take home a new “chaise,” and
he had just happened to think that this would be a good time for the
twins to pay him a visit. He could take them as well as not, and his
wife Liddy was sure to be glad to see them.
Pollio began to turn a somerset, but caught himself by the hair, and
changed it into a dance. Posy was quite as eager, but did not dance
with any thing but her eyes.
“Wait a moment,” said their mamma. “Mr. Littlefield is very kind to
give this invitation; but the truth is, my poor little Posy has nothing
fit to wear. The cow has eaten up her two best dresses.”
The Quaker looked surprised, as well he might. He knew that toads eat
their own clothes, but he had never heard that any animals eat little
girls’ dresses.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Pitcher, “our new cow strayed into the clothes-yard
last Monday, and chewed up some of the fine clothes lying in a tub. We
would not have bought such a strange cow if we had known her habits.”
“O mamma!” pleaded Posy in a whisper. “Don’t you s’pose the lady would
’scuse it? My other dresses are not _very_ homely,—not so homely as
Hop-clover’s.”
“Hop-clover!” exclaimed Pollio aloud. “Why, when the cow has chewed
Posy’s things all up, they look better’n Hop-clover’s. Hop-clover’s
things are _all_ rags.”
“Is Hop-clover the cow?” asked the Quaker.
“Oh, no, sir! It’s a little girl. And that isn’t her name, either. Her
name is—What is her name, mamma?”
“Lucinda Outhouse.”
“Oh, yes! I knew ’twas a shed, or some kind of a barn. Her name’s
Lucy-vindy Outhouse.”
“Outhouse, Outhouse!” exclaimed the Quaker. “I never knew but one man
of that name; and he married a good friend of mine,—Lucinda Fearing.
But they went to Ohio. This can’t be Lucinda’s child.”
“Why, perhaps it is. We will send for Hop-clover, and you shall talk
with her,” said Mrs. Pitcher, looking very much interested.
“How glad I _should_ be if it is Lucinda’s child! Liddy and I thought
so much of Lucinda!”
“She’s lame. Posy used to call her a _hypocrite_,” said Teddy.
Whereupon Posy blushed, and hid behind her mother.
“Poor little girl! So she is lame? I’m sorry,” said the kind Quaker,
looking sober, though he had never heard of Hop-clover before. He
seemed to forget that he had invited company; and, without waiting to
hear whether they could go or not, he kept on asking questions about
the lame girl.
When he heard her mother was dead, he sighed, and said, “Poor
thing, poor thing!” And, when he heard she lived alone with a bad
step-father, he wiped his spectacles, as if this touched him far more
than Eliza’s killing flies.
“Did thee say I could see the child?”
“Pollio!” said his mother.
Pollio was always ready to run for his hat, but just now he was lost
in surprise. _Were_ he and Posy to be cheated out of their visit? He
started at once, however, to go after “Lucy-vindy.”
You never saw a worse looking house than the one she lived in. The
windows were half glass, half rags: outside stood a tub, a rake
with one or two stumpy teeth, an old mop, and a battered tin pail.
Hop-clover was seated on the doorstep, mending the skirt of her dress
with some blue cotton yarn drawn through a darning-needle. She had
never been taught to sew, and was wearing her brass thimble on the
wrong finger. Pollio did not know that; but he thought it was funny
to use such a monstrous needle, and jerk so hard to get it through the
calico.
“What you doing?” said he, leaning over to watch her.
“Oh! the holes are awful: I want to pucker ’em up a little,” replied
Hop-clover, pulling with such a jerk that she scratched Pollio’s face.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” said she. But it was a mercy she had not put out
his eyes.
“Poh! it don’t hurt much: it isn’t as bad as a butcher-knife,” said he,
spreading the blood over his cheek, as he rubbed the scratch with his
finger. “But, Hop-clover, I want you to go to my house: there’s a man
wants to see you.”
“Wants to see _me_!”
Hop-clover’s eyes were big with wonder.
“Yes. Come, hurry; for Posy and I are going to ride in his chaise,—I
guess; and I never saw a chaise.”
“Well, wait, till I put on my good dress.”
“Oh, come along! Your dresses are all just alike.”
“Why, Pollio! I’ve got a pink one that’s most whole.”
And she hopped joyfully into the house to put it on. I suppose it _had_
been pink when Edith Pitcher owned it; but Hop-clover had let it lie on
the grass so many days and nights, that it was faded and spotted and
streaked. Poor child! When people gave her any thing, she did not know
how to take care of it.
Pollio thought she was a long while getting ready. He stood on the
doorstone whistling, while she scrubbed her face and neck, and smoothed
her hair with a comb which had about nine teeth in it. By the time she
came out he was cross; but she did not know it. She was thinking how
nice it was that somebody “wanted her,” somebody had “sent” for her.
The Quaker kissed her when he saw her. Perhaps she was cleaner and
prettier than he had expected; for he kept saying, “Thee looks like a
good little girl, a nice little girl. So thee has no mother? How long
has she been dead?”
Hop-clover did not know; but Mrs. Pitcher said two years. She did not
live very long after the family came to Rosewood.
“Where did thee move from when thee came here, my child?”
“We moved from Ohio.”
“This _must_ be Lucinda Fearing’s child,” said Mr. Littlefield, rising
and sitting down again. “Does thee remember how thy mother looked, my
dear?”
“She had black curls. Oh, I remember her _so_ well! She used to say
thee and thou to me sometimes, just as you do.”
“Ah! that was _our_ Lucinda! I’m so glad I have found her little
girl!” said the Quaker, walking about the room, then stooping to kiss
Hop-clover again.
“How would thee like to ride with me to my house this afternoon for a
visit?”
Hop-clover looked at the carpet as if a star had fallen out of the sky
at her feet. She never once thought of her gown; though it had stains
and grease-spots, and a hole under each arm. She forgot her leaky
shoes, and her coarse old shawl. What did she care about her clothes if
for once in her life she could take a ride out of town!
She threw back her hat with such a look of delight, that Nunky drew a
hasty picture of her, as he stood in the door with sketch-book and
pencil in his hand. Everybody was glad for Hop-clover—I mean everybody
but the twins.
“I tell you it’s mean,” said the injured Pollio to his injured sister,
as they stole out of the room, and stood in the front-hall, with their
arms around each other’s waists, “asking _her_ to go instead of us!”
“So I think! If the cow did eat up my white dresses, how did _he_ know
I wasn’t a-going to go in my blue dress that the cow _didn’t_ eat!”
“That’s so, Posy! And how’d he know _I_ wouldn’t go? Mamma never said
‘no’ about _that_; for the cow didn’t eat up _my_ clothes, ’cept my
handkerjiff with ships in the corner.”
The good Quaker would have been quite surprised if he had overheard
these remarks, for he had no idea of leaving his little pets behind.
What he called his “chaise” was a large, handsome carriage with two
seats; and, when the children were snuggled into it that afternoon,
Pollio declared there was room enough for three more and the dog.
The serene old Quaker chirruped to his serene old horse, while the
children shouted “Good-by, everybody!” and jumped up and down to try
the new velvet cushions. And then the gay little party drove off.
Hop-clover wore Edith’s outgrown blue cambric dress, tucked up and
taken in, and Posy’s second-best hat, and looked as respectable as any
child in town.
“I’m so glad I’m lame!” thought she; “for that’s what makes everybody
love me.”
Was it? Then why didn’t people love Jake Flint, a lying, stealing
little boy in Rosewood, who was as lame twice over as Hop-clover?