A SHORT MORNING
Aunt Abigail was gone, Eleanor was gone. The room was quite empty except
for the bright sunshine pouring in through the small-paned windows.
Elizabeth Ann stretched and yawned and looked about her. What funny
wall-paper it was—so old-fashioned looking! The picture was of a blue
river and a brown mill, with green willow-trees over it, and a man with
sacks on his horse’s back stood in front of the mill. This picture was
repeated a great many times, all over the paper; and in the corner,
where it hadn’t come out even, they had had to cut it right down the
middle of the horse. It was very curious-looking. She stared at it a
long time, waiting for somebody to tell her when to get up. At home Aunt
Frances always told her, and helped her get dressed. But here nobody
came. She discovered that the heat came from a hole in the floor near
the bed, which opened down into the room below. From it came a warm
breath of baking bread and a muffled thump once in a while.
The sun rose higher and higher, and Elizabeth Ann grew hungrier and
hungrier. Finally it occurred to her that it was not absolutely
necessary to have somebody tell her to get up. She reached for her
clothes and began to dress. When she had finished she went out into the
hall, and with a return of her aggrieved, abandoned feeling (you must
remember that her stomach was very empty) she began to try to find her
way downstairs. She soon found the steps, went down them one at a time,
and pushed open the door at the foot. Cousin Ann, the brown-haired one,
was ironing near the stove. She nodded and smiled as the child came into
the room, and said, “Well, you must feel rested!”
“Oh, I haven’t been asleep!” explained Elizabeth Ann. “I was waiting for
somebody to tell me to get up.”
“Oh,” said Cousin Ann, opening her black eyes a little. “WERE you?” She
said no more than this, but Elizabeth Ann decided hastily that she would
not add, as she had been about to, that she was also waiting for
somebody to help her dress and do her hair. As a matter of fact, she had
greatly enjoyed doing her own hair—the first time she had ever tried
it. It had never occurred to Aunt Frances that her little baby-girl had
grown-up enough to be her own hairdresser, nor had it occurred to
Elizabeth Ann that this might be possible. But as she struggled with the
snarls she had had a sudden wild idea of doing it a different way from
the pretty fashion Aunt Frances always followed. Elizabeth Ann had
always secretly envied a girl in her class whose hair was all tied back
from her face, with one big knot in her ribbon at the back of her neck.
It looked so grown-up. And this morning she had done hers that way,
turning her neck till it ached, so that she could see the coveted tight
effect at the back. And still—aren’t little girls queer?—although she
had enjoyed doing her own hair, she was very much inclined to feel hurt
because Cousin Ann had not come to do it for her.
[Illustration: She had greatly enjoyed doing her own hair.]
Cousin Ann set her iron down with the soft thump which Elizabeth Ann had
heard upstairs. She began folding a napkin, and said: “Now reach
yourself a bowl off the shelf yonder. The oatmeal’s in that kettle on
the stove and the milk is in the blue pitcher. If you want a piece of
bread and butter, here’s a new loaf just out of the oven, and the
butter’s in that brown crock.”
Elizabeth Ann followed these instructions and sat down before this
quickly assembled breakfast in a very much surprised silence. At home it
took the girl more than half an hour to get breakfast and set the table,
and then she had to wait on them besides. She began to pour the milk out
of the pitcher and stopped suddenly. “Oh, I’m afraid I’ve taken more
than my share!” she said apologetically.
Cousin Ann looked up from her rapidly moving iron, and said, in an
astonished voice: “Your share? What do you mean?”
“My share of the quart,” explained Elizabeth Ann. At home they bought a
quart of milk and a cup of cream every day, and they were all very
conscientious about not taking more than their due share.
“Good land, child, take all the MILK you want!” said Cousin Ann, as
though she found something shocking in what the little girl had just
said. Elizabeth Ann thought to herself that she spoke as though milk ran
out of a faucet, like water.
She was very fond of milk, and she made a very good breakfast as she sat
looking about the low-ceilinged room. It was unlike any room she had
ever seen.
It was, of course, the kitchen, and yet it didn’t seem possible that the
same word could be applied to that room and the small, dark cubby-hole
which had been Grace’s asthmatical kingdom. This room was very long and
narrow, and all along one side were windows with white, ruffled curtains
drawn back at the sides, and with small, shining panes of glass, through
which the sun poured a golden flood of light on a long shelf of potted
plants that took the place of a window-sill. The shelf was covered with
shining white oil-cloth, the pots were of clean reddish brown, the
sturdy, stocky plants of bright green with clear red-and-white flowers.
Elizabeth Ann’s eyes wandered all over the kitchen from the low, white
ceiling to the clean, bare wooden floor, but they always came back to
those sunny windows. Once, back in the big brick school-building, as she
had sat drooping her thin shoulders over her desk, some sort of a
procession had gone by with a brass band playing a lively air. For some
queer reason, every time she now glanced at that sheet of sunlight and
the bright flowers she had a little of the same thrill which had
straightened her back and gone up and down her spine while the band was
playing. Possibly Aunt Frances was right, after all, and Elizabeth Ann
WAS a very impressionable child. I wonder, by the way, if anybody ever
saw a child who wasn’t.
At one end, the end where Cousin Ann was ironing, stood the kitchen
stove, gleaming black, with a tea-kettle humming away on it, a big
hot-water boiler near it, and a large kitchen cabinet with lots of
drawers and shelves and hooks and things. Beyond that, in the middle of
the room, was the table where they had had supper last night, and at
which the little girl now sat eating her very late breakfast; and beyond
that, at the other end of the room, was another table with an old
dark-red cashmere shawl on it for a cover. A large lamp stood in the
middle of this, a bookcase near it, two or three rocking-chairs around
it, and back of it, against the wall, was a wide sofa covered with
bright cretonne, with three bright pillows. Something big and black and
woolly was lying on this sofa, snoring loudly. As Cousin Ann saw the
little girl’s fearful glance alight on this she explained: “That’s Shep,
our old dog. Doesn’t he make an awful noise! Mother says, when she
happens to be alone here in the evening, it’s real company to hear Shep
snore—as good as having a man in the house.”
Although this did not seem at all a sensible remark to Elizabeth Ann,
who thought soberly to herself that she didn’t see why snoring made a
dog as good as a man, still she was acute enough (for she was really
quite an intelligent little girl) to feel that it belonged in the same
class of remarks as one or two others she had noted as “queer” in the
talk at Putney Farm last night. This variety of talk was entirely new to
her, nobody in Aunt Harriet’s conscientious household ever making
anything but plain statements of fact. It was one of the “queer Putney
ways” which Aunt Harriet had forgotten to mention. It is possible that
Aunt Harriet had never noticed it.
When Elizabeth Ann finished her breakfast, Cousin Ann made three
suggestions, using exactly the same accent for them all. She said:
“Wouldn’t you better wash your dishes up now before they get sticky? And
don’t you want one of those red apples from the dish on the side table?
And then maybe you’d like to look around the house so’s to know where
you are.” Elizabeth Ann had never washed a dish in all her life, and she
had always thought that nobody but poor, ignorant people, who couldn’t
afford to hire girls, did such things. And yet (it was odd) she did not
feel like saying this to Cousin Ann, who stood there so straight in her
gingham dress and apron, with her clear, bright eyes and red cheeks.
Besides this feeling, Elizabeth Ann was overcome with embarrassment at
the idea of undertaking a new task in that casual way. How in the world
DID you wash dishes? She stood rooted to the spot, irresolute, horribly
shy, and looking, though she did not know it, very clouded and sullen.
Cousin Ann said briskly, holding an iron up to her cheek to see if it
was hot enough: “Just take them over to the sink there and hold them
under the hot-water faucet. They’ll be clean in no time. The dish-towels
are those hanging on the rack over the stove.”
Elizabeth Ann moved promptly over to the sink, as though Cousin Ann’s
words had shoved her there, and before she knew it, her saucer, cup, and
spoon were clean and she was wiping them on a dry checked towel. “The
spoon goes in the side-table drawer with the other silver, and the
saucer and cup in those shelves there behind the glass doors where the
china belongs,” continued Cousin Ann, thumping hard with her iron on a
napkin and not looking up at all, “and don’t forget your apple as you go
out. Those Northern Spies are just getting to be good about now. When
they first come off the tree in October you could shoot them through an
oak plank.”
Now Elizabeth Ann knew that this was a foolish thing to say, since of
course an apple never could go through a board; but something that had
always been sound asleep in her brain woke up a little, little bit and
opened one eye. For it occurred dimly to Elizabeth Ann that this was a
rather funny way of saying that Northern Spies were very hard when you
first pick them in the autumn. She had to figure it out for herself very
slowly, because it was a new idea to her, and she was half-way through
her tour of inspection of the house before there glimmered on her lips,
in a faint smile, the first recognition of humor in all her life. She
felt a momentary impulse to call down to Cousin Ann that she saw the
point, but before she had taken a single step toward the head of the
stairs she had decided not to do this. Cousin Ann, with her bright, dark
eyes, and her straight back, and her long arms, and her way of speaking
as though it never occurred to her that you wouldn’t do just as she
said—Elizabeth Ann was not very sure that she liked Cousin Ann, and she
was very sure that she was afraid of her.
So she went on, walking from one room to another, industriously eating
the red apple, the biggest she had ever seen. It was the best, too, with
its crisp, white flesh and the delicious, sour-sweet juice which made
Elizabeth Ann feel with each mouthful like hurrying to take another. She
did not think much more of the other rooms in the house than she had of
the kitchen. There were no draped “throws” over anything; there were no
lace curtains at the windows, just dotted Swiss like the kitchen; all
the ceilings were very low; the furniture was all of dark wood and very
old-looking; what few rugs there were were of bright-colored rags; the
mirrors were queer and old, with funny old pictures at the top; there
wasn’t a brass bed in any of the bedrooms, just old wooden ones with
posts, and curtains round the tops; and there was not a single plush
portiere in the parlor, whereas at Aunt Harriet’s there had been two
sets for that one room.
She was relieved at the absence of a piano and secretly rejoiced that
she would not need to practice. In her heart she had not liked her music
lessons at all, but she had never dreamed of not accepting them from
Aunt Frances as she accepted everything else. Also she had liked to hear
Aunt Frances boast about how much better she could play than other
children of her age.
She was downstairs by this time, and, opening a door out of the parlor,
found herself back in the kitchen, the long line of sunny windows and
the bright flowers giving her that quick little thrill again. Cousin Ann
looked up from her ironing, nodded, and said: “All through? You’d better
come in and get warmed up. Those rooms get awfully cold these January
days. Winters we mostly use this room so’s to get the good of the
kitchen stove.” She added after a moment, during which Elizabeth Ann
stood by the stove, warming her hands: “There’s one place you haven’t
seen yet—the milk-room. Mother’s down there now, churning. That’s the
door—the middle one.”
Elizabeth Ann had been wondering and wondering where in the world Aunt
Abigail was. So she stepped quickly to the door, and went dawn the cold
dark stairs she found there. At the bottom was a door, locked
apparently, for she could find no fastening. She heard steps inside, the
door was briskly cast open, and she almost fell into the arms of Aunt
Abigail, who caught her as she stumbled forward, saying: “Well, I’ve
been expectin’ you down here for a long time. I never saw a little girl
yet who didn’t like to watch butter-making. Don’t you love to run the
butter-worker over it? I do, myself, for all I’m seventy-two!”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Elizabeth Ann. “I don’t know what
you make butter out of. We always bought ours.”
“Well, FOR GOODNESS’ SAKES!” said Aunt Abigail. She turned and called
across the room, “Henry, did you ever! Here’s Betsy saying she don’t
know what we make butter out of! She actually never saw anybody making
butter!”
Uncle Henry was sitting down, near the window, turning the handle to a
small barrel swung between two uprights. He stopped for a moment and
considered Aunt Abigail’s remark with the same serious attention he had
given to Elizabeth Ann’s discovery about left and right. Then he began
to turn the churn over and over again and said, peaceably: “Well,
Mother, you never saw anybody laying asphalt pavement, I’ll warrant you!
And I suppose Betsy knows all about that.”
Elizabeth Ann’s spirits rose. She felt very superior indeed. “Oh, yes,”
she assured them, “I know ALL about that! Didn’t you ever see anybody
doing that? Why, I’ve seen them HUNDREDS of times! Every day as we went
to school they were doing over the whole pavement for blocks along
there.”
Aunt Abigail and Uncle Henry looked at her with interest, and Aunt
Abigail said: “Well, now, think of that! Tell us all about it!”
“Why, there’s a big black sort of wagon,” began Elizabeth Ann, “and they
run it up and down and pour out the black stuff on the road. And that’s
all there is to it.” She stopped, rather abruptly, looking uneasy. Uncle
Henry inquired: “Now there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. How
do they keep that stuff from hardening on them? How do they keep it
hot?”
The little girl looked blank. “Why, a fire, I suppose,” she faltered,
searching her memory desperately and finding there only a dim
recollection of a red glow somewhere connected with the familiar scene
at which she had so often looked with unseeing eyes.
“Of course a fire,” agreed Uncle Henry. “But what do they burn in it,
coke or coal or wood or charcoal? And how do they get any draft to keep
it going?”
Elizabeth Ann shook her head. “I never noticed,” she said.
Aunt Abigail asked her now, “What do they do to the road before they
pour it on?”
“Do?” said Elizabeth Ann. “I didn’t know they did anything.”
“Well, they can’t pour it right on a dirt road, can they?” asked Aunt
Abigail. “Don’t they put down cracked stone or something?”
Elizabeth Ann looked down at her toes. “I never noticed,” she said.
“I wonder how long it takes for it to harden?” said Uncle Henry.
“I never noticed,” said Elizabeth Ann, in a small voice.
Uncle Henry said, “Oh!” and stopped asking questions. Aunt Abigail
turned away and put a stick of wood in the stove. Elizabeth Ann did not
feel very superior now, and when Aunt Abigail said, “Now the butter’s
beginning to come. Don’t you want to watch and see everything I do, so’s
you can answer if anybody asks you how butter is made?” Elizabeth Ann
understood perfectly what was in Aunt’s Abigail’s mind, and gave to the
process of butter-making a more alert and aroused attention than she had
ever before given to anything. It was so interesting, too, that in no
time she forgot why she was watching, and was absorbed in the
fascinations of the dairy for their own sake.
She looked in the churn as Aunt Abigail unscrewed the top, and saw the
thick, sour cream separating into buttermilk and tiny golden particles.
“It’s gathering,” said Aunt Abigail, screwing the lid back on.
“Father’ll churn it a little more till it really comes. And you and I
will scald the wooden butter things and get everything ready. You’d
better take that apron there to keep your dress clean.”
Wouldn’t Aunt Frances have been astonished if she could have looked in
on Elizabeth Ann that very first morning of her stay at the hateful
Putney Farm and have seen her wrapped in a gingham apron, her face
bright with interest, trotting here and there in the stone-floored
milk-room! She was allowed the excitement of pulling out the plug from
the bottom of the churn, and dodged back hastily to escape the gush of
buttermilk spouting into the pail held by Aunt Abigail. And she poured
the water in to wash the butter, and screwed on the top herself, and,
again all herself (for Uncle Henry had gone off as soon as the butter
had “come”), swung the barrel back and forth six or seven times to swish
the water all through the particles of butter. She even helped Aunt
Abigail scoop out the great yellow lumps—her imagination had never
conceived of so much butter in all the world! Then Aunt Abigail let her
run the curiously shaped wooden butter-worker back and forth over the
butter, squeezing out the water, and then pile it up again with her
wooden paddle into a mound of gold. She weighed out the salt needed on
the scales, and was very much surprised to find that there really is
such a thing as an ounce. She had never met it before outside the pages
of her arithmetic book and she didn’t know it lived anywhere else.
After the salt was worked in she watched Aunt Abigail’s deft, wrinkled
old hands make pats and rolls. It looked like the greatest fun, and too
easy for anything; and when Aunt Abigail asked her if she wouldn’t like
to make up the last half-pound into a pat for dinner, she took up the
wooden paddle confidently. And then she got one of the surprises that
Putney Farm seemed to have for her. She discovered that her hands didn’t
seem to belong to her at all, that her fingers were all thumbs, that she
didn’t seem to know in the least beforehand how hard a stroke she was
going to give nor which way her fingers were going to go. It was, as a
matter of fact, the first time Elizabeth Ann had tried to do anything
with her hands except to write and figure and play on the piano, and
naturally she wasn’t very well acquainted with them. She stopped in
dismay, looking at the shapeless, battered heap of butter before her and
holding out her hands as though they were not part of her.
Aunt Abigail laughed, took up the paddle, and after three or four passes
the butter was a smooth, yellow ball. “Well, that brings it all back to
me!” she said “when _I_ was a little girl, when my grandmother first
let me try to make a pat. I was about five years old—my! what a mess I
made of it! And I remember? doesn’t it seem funny—that SHE laughed and
said her Great-aunt Elmira had taught her how to handle butter right
here in this very milk-room. Let’s see, Grandmother was born the year
the Declaration of Independence was signed. That’s quite a while ago,
isn’t it? But butter hasn’t changed much, I guess, nor little girls
either.”
Elizabeth Ann listened to this statement with a very queer, startled
expression on her face, as though she hadn’t understood the words. Now
for a moment she stood staring up in Aunt Abigail’s face, and yet not
seeing her at all, because she was thinking so hard. She was thinking!
“Why! There were real people living when the Declaration of Independence
was signed—real people, not just history people—old women teaching
little girls how to do things—right in this very room, on this very
floor—and the Declaration of Independence just signed!”
To tell the honest truth, although she had passed a very good
examination in the little book on American history they had studied in
school, Elizabeth Ann had never to that moment had any notion that there
ever had been really and truly any Declaration of Independence at all.
It had been like the ounce, living exclusively inside her schoolbooks
for little girls to be examined about. And now here Aunt Abigail,
talking about a butter-pat, had brought it to life!
Of course all this only lasted a moment, because it was such a new idea!
She soon lost track of what she was thinking of; she rubbed her eyes as
though she were coming out of a dream, she thought, confusedly: “What
did butter have to do with the Declaration of Independence? Nothing, of
course! It couldn’t!” and the whole impression seemed to pass out of her
mind. But it was an impression which was to come again and again during
the next few months.