THE PRIMA DONNA OF THE ATTIC
"AUNT MARIA, dare I go without sewing just this one Saturday?"
It was Saturday afternoon in early October. All the week-end work of the
farmhouse was done: the walks and porches scrubbed, the entire house
cleaned, the shelves in the cellar filled with pies and cakes. Maria
Metz stood by the wooden frame in which she had sewed Phoebe's latest
quilt and chalked lines and half-moons upon the calico, preliminary to
the actual work of quilting.
Phoebe's face was eloquent as her aunt turned and looked down.
"Why?" asked the woman calmly.
"Ach, because it's my birthday, eleven I am to-day. And pop's going to
bring me new hair-ribbons from Greenwald, pretty blue ones, I asked him
to bring, and nice and wide"--she opened her hands in imaginary
picturing of the width of the new ribbons--"but most of all," she
hastened to add as she saw an expression of displeasure on her aunt's
face, "I'd like to have a party all to myself. I thought that so long as
you're going to have women in to help you quilt, and that is like a
party, only you don't call it so, why I could have a party for me alone.
I'd like to play all afternoon instead of sewing first like I do still.
Dare I, I mean may I?"--in conscientious endeavor to speak as Miss Lee
was trying to teach her.
Maria Metz smiled at the little girl's idea of a party, and after a
moment's hesitation replied, "Ach, yes well, Phoebe, I don't care."
"In the garret, oh, dare I go in the garret and play?" she asked
excitedly.
"Yes, I guess. If you put everything away nice when you are done
playin'."
"I will."
She started off gleefully.
"And be careful of the steps. I'm always afraid you'll fall down when
you go up there, the steps are so narrow."
"Ach, I won't fall. I'll be careful. I'll play a while and then shall I
help to quilt?" she offered magnanimously in return for the privilege of
playing in the garret.
"No, I don't need you. But you can quilt nice, too. The last time you
took littler stitches than Lizzie from the Home, but she don't see so
good. But you needn't help to-day, for so many can't get round the frame
good. Phares's mom and David's mom and Lyddy and Granny Hogendobler and
Susan are comin', and that's enough for one quilt. You go play."
In a moment Phoebe was off, up the broad stairs to the second floor.
There she paused for breath--"Oh, it's like going to a castle somewhere
in a strange country, goin' to the garret! I'm always a little scared at
first, goin' to the garret."
With a laugh she turned into a small room, opened a latched door, closed
it securely behind her, and stood upon the lower step of the attic
stairs. She looked about a moment. Above her were the stained rafters of
the attic, where a dim light invested it with a strange, half fearful
interest.
"Ach, now, don't be a baby," she admonished herself. "Go right up the
stairs. You're a queen--no, I know!--You're a primer donner going up the
platform steps to sing!"
With that helpful delusion she started bravely up the stairs and never
paused until she reached the top step. She ran to a small window and
threw it wide open so that the October sunshine could stream in and make
the place less ghostly.
"Now it's fine up here," she cried. "And I dare--I may--talk to myself
all I want. Aunt Maria says it's simple to talk to yourself, but
goodness, when abody has no other boys or girls to talk to half the time
like I don't, what else can abody do but talk to your own self? Anyhow,
I'm up here now and dare talk out loud all I want. I'll hunt first for
robbers."
She ran about the big attic, peered behind every old trunk and box, even
inside an old yellow cupboard, though she knew it was filled with old
school-books and older hymn-books.
"Not a robber here, less he's back under the eaves."
She crept into the low nook under the slanting roof but found nothing
more exciting than a spider. "Huh, it's no fun hunting for robbers.
Guess I'll spin a while."
With quick variability she drew a low stool near an old spinning-wheel,
placed her foot on the slender treadle and twisted the golden flax in
imitation of the way Aunt Maria had once taught her.
"I'll weave a new dress for myself--oh, goody!" she cried, springing
from the stool. "Now I know what I'll do! I'll dress up in the old
clothes in that old trunk! That'll be the very best party I can have."
She skipped to a far corner of the attic, where a long, leather-covered
trunk stood among some boxes. In a moment the clasps were unfastened,
the lid raised, a protecting cloth lifted from the top and the contents
of the trunk exposed.
The child, kneeling before the trunk, clasped her hands and uttered an
ecstatic, "Oh, I'll be a primer donner now! I remember there used to be
a wonderful fine dress in here somewhere."
With childish feverishness, yet with tenderness and reverence for the
relics of a long dead past, she lifted the old garments from the trunk.
"The baby clothes my mom wore--my mother, Miss Lee always says, and I
like that name better, too. My, but they're little! Such tweeny, weeny
sleeves! I wonder how a baby ever got into anything so tiny. I bet she
was cunning--Miss Lee says babies are cunning. And here's the dress and
cap and a pair of white woolen stockings I wore. Aunt Maria told me so
the last time we cleaned house and I helped to carry all these things
down-stairs and hang them out in the air so they don't spoil here in the
trunk all locked up tight. I wish I could see how I looked when I wore
these things. I wonder if I was a nice baby--but, ach, all babies are
nice. I could squeeze every one I see, only when they're not clean I'd
want to wash 'em first. And here's my mom--mother's wedding dress, a
gray silk one. Ain't it too bad, now, it's going in holes! And this
satin jacket Aunt Maria said my grandpap wore at his wedding; it has a
silver buckle at the neck in front. And next comes the dress I like. It
was my mother's mother's, and it's awful old. But I think it's fine,
with the little pink rosebuds and the lace shawl round the neck and the
long skirt. That's the dress I must wear now to play I'm a primer
donner."
She held out the old-fashioned pink-sprigged muslin, yellowed with age,
yet possessing the charm of old, well-preserved garments. The short,
puffed sleeves, lace fichu and full, puffed skirt proclaimed it of a
bygone generation.
"It's pretty," the child exulted as she shook out the soft folds. "Guess
I can slip it on over my other dress, it's plenty big. It must button in
the front, for that's the way the lace shawl goes. Um--it's long"--she
looked down as she fastened the last little button. "Oh, I know! I'll
tuck it up in the front and leave the long back for a trail! How's that,
I wonder."
She unearthed an old mirror, hung it on a nail in the wall and surveyed
herself in the glass.
"Um, I don't look so bad--but my hair ain't right. I don't know how
primer donners wear their hair, but I know they don't wear it in two
plaits like mine."
She pulled the narrow brown ribbons from her braids, opened the braids
and shook her head vigorously until her curls tumbled about her head and
over her shoulders. Then she knotted the two ribbons together and bound
them across her hair in a fillet, tying them in a bow under her flowing
curls.
"Now, I guess it's as good as I can fix it. I wish Miss Lee could see me
now. I wish most of all my mom--mother could see me. Mebbe she'd say,
'Precious child,' like they say in stories, and then I'd say back,
'Mother dear, mother dear'"--she lingered over the words--"'Mother
dear.' But mebbe she is saying that to me right now, seeing it's my
birthday. I'll make believe so, anyhow."
She was silent for a moment, a puzzled expression on her face.
"I just don't see," she spoke aloud suddenly, "I don't see why I
shouldn't make believe I have a mother, just adopt one like people do
children sometimes. Aunt Maria says it's a risk to adopt some one's
child, but I don't see that it would be a risk to adopt a mother. Let me
see now--of all the women I know, who do I want to adopt? Not Mary
Warner's mom--she's stylish and wears nice dresses, but I don't think
I'd like her to keep. Not Granny Hogendobler, though she's nice and I
like her a lot, a whole lot, and I wish her Nason would come back, but I
don't see how I could take her for my mother; she's too old and she
don't wear a white cap and my mother did, so I must take one that does.
I don't want Phares's mom, either. Now, David's mom I like--yes, I like
her. Most everybody calls her Aunty Bab and I'm just goin' to ask her
if I dare call her Mother Bab! Mother Bab--I like that vonderful much!
And I like her. When we go over to her house she's so nice and talks to
me kind and the last time I was there she kissed me and said what pretty
hair I got. Yes, I want David's mom for mine. I guess he won't care. He
always gives me apples and chestnuts and things and he shows me birds'
nests and I think he'll leave me have his mom, so long as he can have
her too. I'll ask him once when I see him. I wonder who's goin' on the
road to Greenwald."
She gathered up her long skirt and stepped grandly across the bare floor
of the attic. As she stood by the window a boyish whistle floated up to
her. She leaned over the narrow sill and peered through the evergreen
trees at the road.
"That's David now, I bet! Sounds like his whistle. Oo-oo, David," she
called as the boy came swinging down the road.
"Hello, Phoebe. Where you at?"
He turned in at the gate and looked around.
"Whew," he whistled as he glanced up and saw her at the little window of
the attic. "What you doing up there?"
"Playin' primer donner. I just look something grand. Wait, I'll come
down."
"Sure, come on down and let me see you. I'm going to hang around a
while. Mom's here quilting, ain't she?"
"Sh!" Phoebe raised a warning finger, then placed her hands to her mouth
to shut the sound of her voice from the people in the gray house. "You
sneak round to the kitchen door, to the back one, so they can't hear
you, and I'll come down. Aunt Maria mightn't like my hair and dress, and
I don't want to make her cross on my birthday. Be careful, don't make no
noise."
"Ha," laughed the boy. "Bet you're sneaking things, you little rascal."
Phoebe lifted her finger, shook her head, then smiled and turned from
the window. She tiptoed down the dark attic stairs, then down the narrow
back stairs to the kitchen and slipped quietly to the little porch at
the very rear of the house.
"Gee whiz!" exclaimed David. "You're a swell in that dress!"
"Ain't I--I mean am I--ach, David, it's hard sometimes to talk like Miss
Lee says we should."
"Where'd you get the dress, Phoebe?"
"Up in the garret. Aunt Maria said I dare go up and play 'cause it's my
birthday."
"Hold on, that's just what I came for, to pull your ears."
"No you don't," she said crossly. "No you don't, David Eby, pull my
ears." She clapped a hand upon each ear.
"Then I'll pull a curl," he said and suited the action to the word. He
took one of the long light curls and pulled it gently, yet with a
brusque show of savagery and strength--"One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and one to make you grow. Now who
says I can't celebrate your birthday!"
"You're mean, awful mean, David Eby!" She tossed her head in anger. But
a moment later she relented as she saw him smile. "Ach," she said in
friendly tone, "I don't care if you pull my curls. It didn't hurt
anyhow. You can't do it again for a whole year. But don't you think I
look like a primer donner, David?"
"Oh, say it right! How can you expect to ever be what you can't
pronounce? It's pri-ma-don-na."
"Pri-ma-don-na," she repeated, shaking her curls at every syllable. "Do
I look like a prima donna?"
"Yes, all but your face."
"My face--why"--she faltered--"what's wrong with my face? Ain't it
pretty enough to be a prima donna?"
"Funny kid," he laughed. "Your face is good enough for a prima donna,
but to be a real prima donna you must fix it up with cold cream, paint
and powder."
"Powder!" she echoed in amazement. "Not the kind you put in guns?"
"Gee, no! It's white stuff--looks like flour; mebbe it is flour fixed up
with perfume. Mary Warner had some at school last week and showed some
of the girls at recess how to put it on. I was behind a tree and saw
them but they didn't see me."
"I thought some of the girls looked pale--so that was what made them
look so white! But how do you know all about fixing up to be a prima
donna? Where did you learn?" She looked at him admiringly, justly
appreciating his superior knowledge.
"Oh, when I had the mumps last winter I used to read the papers every
day, clean through. There was a column called the 'Hints to Beauty'
column, and sometimes I read it just for fun, it was so funny. It told
about fixing up the face and mentioned a famous singer and some other
people who always looked beautiful because they knew how to fix their
faces to keep looking young. But I wouldn't like to see any one I like
fix their faces like it said, for all that stuff----"
"But do you think all prima donnas put such things on their faces?" she
interrupted him.
"Guess so."
"What was it, Davie?"
"Cold cream, paint, powder--here, where are you going?" he asked as she
started for the door.
"I'll be out in a minute; you wait here for me."
"Cold cream, paint, powder," she repeated as she closed the door and
left David outside. "Cream's all in the cellar." She took a pewter
tablespoon from a drawer, opened a latched door in the kitchen and went
noiselessly down the steps to the cellar. There she lifted the lid from
a large earthen jar, dipped a spoonful of thick cream from the jar, and
began to rub it on her cheeks.
"That's _cold_ cream, anyhow," she said to herself. "It certainly is
cold. Ach, I don't like the feel of it on my face; it's too sticky and
wet." But she rubbed valiantly until the spoonful was used and her face
glowed.
"Now paint, red paint--I don't dare use the kind you put on houses, for
that's too hard to get off; let's see--I guess red-beet juice will do."
She stooped to the cool, earthen floor, lifted the cover from a crock of
pickled beets, dipped the spoon into the juice and began to rub the
colored liquid upon her glowing cheeks.
"If I only had a looking-glass, then I could see just where to put it
on. But I don't dare to carry the juice up the steps, for if I spilled
some just after Aunt Maria has them scrubbed for Sunday she'd be cross."
She applied the red juice by guesswork, with the inevitable result that
her ears, chin, and nose were stained as deeply as her cheeks.
"Now the powder, then I'm through."
She tiptoed up to the kitchen again, took a handful of flour from the
bin and rubbed it upon her face.
"Ugh, um," she sputtered, as some of the flour flew into her eyes and
nostrils. "I guess that was too thick!" Then she knelt on a chair and
looked into the small mirror that hung in the kitchen. She exclaimed in
horror and disappointment at the vision that met her gaze.
"Why, I don't like that! I look awful! I'll rub off some of the flour. I
have blotches all over my face. Do all prima donnas look this way, I
wonder. But David knows, I guess. I'll ask him if I did it right."
She grabbed one end of the kitchen towel and disposed of some of the
superfluous flour, then, still doubtful of her appearance, opened the
door to the porch where the boy waited for her.
"Do I look----" she began, but David burst into hilarious laughter.
"Oh, oh," he held his sides and laughed. "Oh, your face----"
"Don't you laugh at me, David Eby! Don't you dare laugh!"
She was deeply hurt at his unseemly behavior, but the deluge was only
beginning! The sound of David's laughter and Phoebe's raised voice
reached the front room where the quilting party was in progress.
"Sounds like somebody on the back porch," said Aunt Maria. "Guess I
better go and see. With so many tramps around always abody can't be too
careful."
The sight that met Maria Metz's eyes as she opened the back door left
her speechless. Phoebe turned and the two looked at each other in
silence for a few long moments.
"Don't scold her," David said, sobered by the sudden appearance of the
woman and frightened for Phoebe--Aunt Maria could be stern, he knew.
"Don't scold her. I told her to do it."
"You did not, David; don't you tell lies for me! You just told me how to
do it and I went and done it myself. I'm playing prima donna, Aunt
Maria," she explained, though she knew it was a futile attempt at
justification. "I'm playing I'm a big singer, so I had to fix up in this
dress and put my hair down this way and fix my face."
"Great singer--march in here!" The woman had fully regained her voice.
"It's a bad girl you are! To think of your making such a monkey of
yourself when I leave you go up in the garret to play! This ends playing
in the garret. Next Saturday you sew! Ach, yes, you just come in," she
commanded, for Phoebe hung back as they entered the house. "You come
right in here and let all the women see how nice you play when I leave
you go up in the garret instead of make you sew. This here's the tramp I
found," she announced as she led her into the room where the women sat
around the quilting frame and quilted.
"What!" several of them exclaimed as they turned from their sewing and
looked at the child. Granny Hogendobler and David Eby's mother, however,
smiled.
"What's on your face?" asked one woman sternly.
Phoebe hung her head, abashed.
"That's how nice she plays when I leave her go up on the garret and have
a nice time instead of making her sew like she always has to Saturdays,"
Aunt Maria said in sharp tones which told the child all too plainly of
the displeasure she had caused.
"I didn't mean," Phoebe looked up contritely, "I didn't mean to be bad
and make you cross. I was just playing I was a big singer and I put cold
cream and paint and powder on my face----"
"Cream!"
"Paint!"
"Powder!"
The shrill staccato words of the women set the child trembling.
"But--but," she faltered, "it'll all wash off." She gave a convincing
nod of her head and rubbed a hand ruefully across the grotesquely
decorated cheek. "It's just cream and red-beet juice and flour."
"Did I ever!" exclaimed the mother of Phares Eby.
"I-to-goodness!" laughed Granny Hogendobler.
"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," quoted one of the other women.
"Come here, Phoebe," said the mother of David Eby, and that woman, a
thin, alert little person with tender, kindly eyes, drew the unhappy
little girl to her. "You poor, precious child," she said, "it's a shame
for us all to sit here and look at you as if we wanted to eat you.
You've just been playing, haven't you?" She turned to the other women.
"Why, Maria, Susan, I remember just as well as if it were only yesterday
how we used to rub our cheeks with rough mullein leaves to make them red
for Love Feast, don't you remember?"
Aunt Maria's cheeks grew pink. "Ach, Barbara, mebbe we did that when we
were young and foolish, but we didn't act like this."
"Not much different, I guess," said Phoebe's champion with a smile.
"Only we forget it now. Phoebe is just like we were once and she'll get
over it like we did. Let her play; she'll soon be too old to want to
play or to know how. She ain't a bad child, just full of life and likes
to do things other people don't think of doing."
"She, surely does," said Aunt Maria curtly, ill pleased by the woman's
words. "Where that child gets all her notions from I'd like to know.
It's something new every day."
"She'll be all right when she gets older," said David's mother.
"Be sure, yes," agreed Granny Hogendobler; "it don't do to be too
strict."
"Mebbe so," said the other women, with various shades of understanding
in their words.
Phoebe looked gratefully into the face of Granny Hogendobler, then she
turned to David's mother and spoke to her as though there were no others
present in the room.
"You know, don't you, how little girls like to play? You called me
precious child just like she would----"
"She would," repeated Aunt Maria. "What do you mean?"
"I mean my mother," she explained and turned again to her champion. "I
was just thinking this after on the garret that I'd like you for my
mother, to adopt you for it like people do with children when they have
none and want some. I hear lots of people call you Aunty Bab--dare I
call you Mother Bab?"
The woman laid a hand on the child's tumbled hair. Her voice trembled as
she answered, "Yes, Phoebe, you can call me Mother Bab. I have no little
girl so you may fill that place. Now ask Aunt Maria if you should wash
your face and get fixed right again."
"Shall I, Aunt Maria?"
"Yes. Go get cleaned up. Fold all them clothes right and put 'em in the
trunk and put your hair in two plaits again. If you're big enough to do
such dumb things you're big enough to comb your hair." And Aunt Maria,
peeved and hurt at the child's behavior, went back to her quilting while
Phoebe hurried from the room alone.
The child scrubbed the three layers of decoration from her face, trudged
up the stairs to the attic, took off the rose-sprigged gown and folded
it away--a disconsolate, disillusioned prima donna.
When the attic was once more restored to its orderliness she closed the
window and went down-stairs to wrestle with her curls. They were
tangled, but ordinarily she would have been able to braid them into some
semblance of neatness, but the trying experience of the past moments,
the joy of gaining an adopted mother, set her fingers bungling.
"Ach, I can't, I just can't make two braids!" she said at length, ready
to burst into tears.
Then she remembered David. "Mebbe he's on the porch yet. I'll go see
once."
With the narrow brown ribbons streaming from her hand and a hair-brush
tucked under one arm she ran down the stairs. She found David, for once
a gloomy figure, on the back porch, just where she had left him.
"David," she said softly, "will you help me?"
"Why"--his face brightened as he looked at her--"you ain't"--he started
to say "crying"--"you ain't mad at me for getting you into trouble with
Aunt Maria?"
"Ach, no. And I ain't never going to be mad at you now for I just
adopted your mom for my mom--mother. She's going to be my Mother Bab;
she said so."
"What?"
He knitted his forehead in a puzzled frown. Phoebe explained how kind
his mother had been, how she understood what little girls like to do,
how she had promised to be Mother Bab.
"You don't care, Davie, you ain't jealous?" she ended anxiously.
"Sure not," he assured her; "I think it's kinda nice, for she thinks
you're a dandy. But did they haul you over the coals in there?"
"Yes, a little, all but Granny Hogendobler and your mom--Mother Bab, I
mean. Isn't it funny to get a mother when you didn't have one for so
long?"
"Guess so."
"But, David, will you help me? I can't fix my hair and Aunt Maria is so
mad at me she said I can just fix it myself. The plaits won't come right
at all. Will you help me, please?" She asserted her femininity by adding
new sweetness to her voice as she asked the uncommon favor.
"Why"--he hesitated, then looked about to see if any one were near to
witness what he was about to do--"I don't know if I can. I never braided
hair, but I guess I can."
"Be sure you can, David. You braid it just like we braid the daisy stems
and the dandelion stems in the fields. You're so handy with them, you
can do most anything, I guess."
Spurred by her appreciation of his ability he took the brush and began
to brush the tangled hair as she sat on the porch at his feet.
"Gee," he exclaimed as the hair sprang into curls when the brush left
it, "your hair's just like gold!"
"And it's curly," she added proudly.
"Sure is. Wouldn't Phares look if he saw it! I told him your hair is
prettier than Mary Warner's and he said I was silly to talk about girls'
hair."
"I don't want him to see it this way," she said, "for he'd say it's a
sin to have curly, pretty hair, even if God made it grow that way! He's
awful queer! I wouldn't want him for my adopted brother."
"Guess he'd keep you hopping," laughed David.
"Guess I'd keep him hopping, too," retorted Phoebe, at which the boy
laughed.
"Now what do I do?" he asked when all the hair was untangled.
"Part it in the middle and make two plaits."
"Um-uh."
The boy's clumsy fingers fumbled long with the parting; several times
the braids twisted and had to be undone, but after a struggle he was
able to announce, "There now, you're fixed! Now you're Phoebe Metz, no
more prima donna!"
"Thanks, David, for helping me. I feel much better around the
head--guess curls would be a nuisance after all."