PLEASANT DREAMS
After a little while Eleanor returned, went to the closet in her room
and hung two or three of her own frocks over her arm; then she went out
again and presently Mrs. Dallas came in alone carrying a pretty blue
serge suit over her arm.
“Cassy, dear,” she said, “will you try this on?”
Cassy shrank back a little, but Mrs. Dallas smiled and said, coaxingly:
“Please, dear,” and Cassy slipped her arms into the sleeves. “It is a
little large,” Mrs. Dallas decided, “but not so very much, and it will
take no time to alter it; I will have Martha do it at once. Eleanor
feels so badly about having spoiled your frock, and I know her mother
would wish that she should in some way make good the loss. Please don’t
mind taking this; it is one that Eleanor has almost outgrown, and it
is only a little long in the sleeves and skirt for you. I will have
Martha alter it before you go home, for we would both feel so badly to
have your best frock spoiled, and to-morrow being Sunday how could you
get another at such short notice?”
She spoke as if Cassy’s were much the better frock and the little girl
was grateful, though she said earnestly: “It is much nicer than mine,
Mrs. Dallas.”
“It ought to be. When a person has spoiled your best frock she ought to
supply you with a new one, quite new, and this is not, though it is not
worn.” So Cassy was furnished in this unexpected way with a frock which
was neither too short in the sleeves nor the skirt, and which was far
better than she ever dared hope for.
“I will send the other one home when it is thoroughly aired,” Mrs.
Dallas told her.
“You must remember that I am Miss Morning-Glory,” Eleanor told her as
they parted, “and I shall expect to see you every time I come to Uncle
Heath’s.” So Cassy went off with her clouds lifted and with the memory
of the very happiest day of her life.
“She is a queer little child,” Mrs. Dallas told her husband, “but she
is a little lady and her mother must be one. I am very much interested
in them.”
“So am I, Uncle Heath,” Eleanor said, “and I think it is a dreadful
shame that Cassy’s father died of that accident, and that they have
never had any money from the railroad people. Jerry says they ought to,
and that his mother was advised to—to—what is it they do to railroads
to get money?”
“You mean sue them?”
“Oh, yes, that’s it. I knew it was a girl’s name. They ought to have
done that, but Mrs. Law hadn’t the money to get a lawyer, and railroads
are hard to fight, Jerry says. I don’t see how anybody could fight a
railroad, but that is what he said.”
“Humph!” said Mr. Dallas, thoughtfully, “we must look into this.”
Although Mrs. Law looked a little grave when Cassy told of how she came
by this fine new frock, she agreed that it was perfectly right under
the circumstances to accept it. She listened to the account of the
day’s doings with much interest, and was well pleased that they should
have had such a good time.
“Eleanor looks just like Miss Morning-Glory,” Cassy whispered as her
mother tucked her in bed.
“Rock Hardy is the splendidest boy I ever saw,” Jerry confided to her,
and his mother gave him a kiss assuring him that no boy could be dearer
than hers no matter how splendid he was. Jerry had worked hard to earn
his holiday, and he had proudly poured his earnings, sixty cents, into
his mother’s lap when he came home from market that Saturday morning.
Both the children were very tired from the events of the day and they
fell asleep so soon and slept so soundly that they did not hear a tap
at the door and a voice inquiring for Mrs. Law, neither did they see
Mr. and Mrs. Dallas enter, nor hear the long conversation that followed.
They would have been surprised to hear their mother tell all the
details of their father’s accident, for she did not like to talk of
it, and they would have wondered to see Mr. Dallas from time to time,
jot down something in a little note-book. And Cassy did not know that
it was not Miss Morning-Glory who kissed her as she dreamed, but that
it was Mrs. Dallas who leaned over the bed to see the sleeping child
still holding a violet in her moist hand, a little limp violet now, but
still a sweet one. Nor did she know that Mrs. Dallas handed her mother
two cunning baskets as she left the room, and that Mr. Dallas set down
something in the corner of the room when he came in.
Yet she had pleasant dreams, and the first thing when she woke in the
morning she remembered that it was Easter Day, and then she sat up in
bed very wide awake. They would have eggs for breakfast, and they would
have biscuits; she smelled them baking.
She popped up out of bed and looked towards the window where the sun
came streaming in; then she gave a glad cry and her bare feet pattered
across the floor, for, standing by the side of her treasured geranium
and casting it quite in the shade, was a tall white lily, and on the
other side a pot of pansies. Cassy clasped her hands and stood on
tiptoe to reach the tall lily.
“Oh, angel lily, angel lily, where did you come from?” she cried.
“Why, daughter, don’t you know it is Easter Day?” said her mother,
watching her delight with a pleased smile.
“Yes, but we never, never had a lily before. Did father send it?”
Her mother’s eyes grew moist.
“Perhaps he did,” she answered, softly. Then after a silence, “Mrs.
Dallas brought it and the pansies last night, the lily for you and the
pansies for Jerry.”
“Oh, mother, and what did they bring you?”
Her mother’s eyes smiled. “Good news, dear, and hope. Hurry now and get
dressed. I hear Jerry stirring, and the biscuits are nearly done.”
Cassy made her toilet with great haste, her eyes wandering every minute
to the tall, stately lily.
What a wonderful Easter morning for her. She remembered that Eleanor
had said that John would send to the church the flowers which had
decorated the room where they had lunched. She wished that she had
asked if it was the same church to which she and her mother went, if
so, how pleasant it would be to see the flowers again.
“For,” thought Cassy, “I know those flowers; they are friends of mine,
and I’d like to see them there all standing around the chancel. Dear
angel lily, are you sorry you couldn’t go too?”
She nodded towards the white blossom and then went back to her room to
put on the frock which was now a reminder of her pleasant yesterday.
She viewed herself with much satisfaction in the little mirror over
the bureau, and then she went out to where her mother was setting the
breakfast on the table.
“Oh, mother, let us put the pansies on the table,” she said; “they are
so sunny-looking and they are smiling all over their faces. The lilies
are so solemn; they make me feel as I do in church, but the pansies
are funny like brownies.” She lifted the pot of pansies and set it in
the middle of the table, and then stood off to see the effect. “Jerry,
Jerry,” she called, “hurry up; you don’t know what there is to see out
here.”
This aroused Jerry’s curiosity and he made short work of being ready
for Cassy to show him the plants.
“Just think,” she said, “Mr. and Mrs. Dallas were here last night, and
we didn’t know it. Wasn’t it lovely of them to bring these to us? And,
oh, Jerry, if they go to our church we’ll see our flowers there; the
ones we had in the luncheon room yesterday.”
That did not appeal very strongly to Jerry, though he admired the
pansies and thought the lily a “dandy.” He was more concerned at the
prospect of breakfast and certainly was better pleased with something
that Mrs. Law produced from the chest.
“Rock and Eleanor sent them to you,” she told the children as she
handed each of them a little box.
Jerry had his open in a jiffy and gave a whistle of delight while Cassy
fumbled nervously at the string which tied hers. But it was opened at
last and disclosed a little nest holding three eggs, one of pink sugar,
one of chocolate, and one “a real righty egg” dyed purple and with the
name “Cassy” upon it. They had never had more than one egg apiece on
Easter and this rich supply was something delightful.
“Oh, mother, mother, what makes them all so lovely to us?” Cassy
cried. “I feel like singing. I’d like to be a canary bird.”
“Sho! I wouldn’t,” responded Jerry. “I’d rather be myself. I don’t want
to be shut up in a cage and live on bird-seed.” He had just finished
his sixth biscuit and it is not to be wondered at that he should
consider bird-seed rather insufficient for his appetite. Hot biscuits
were much more to his liking.
Cassy set off very proudly for Sunday-school, yet, curiously enough,
the imaginative little soul felt a little regretful that her old
carefully worn frock must stay at home, for Mrs. Dallas had brought it
back with her the evening before. It seemed treating it with scorn, and
before she went out she turned to the closet where it hung and touched
it lovingly.
“You are a dear good frock,” she whispered, “and I love you. I am proud
of my new one, but I don’t love it.” And then she left a crack of the
closet door open that her old plaid frock might be in view of the white
lily on the window-sill. She did not tell her mother of her feelings on
this subject. There were many things which little Miss Oddity said and
did which few persons would understand, and she was aware of it. Her
world of fancy was a very different one from that in which most persons
live.
She stood rapt and thoughtful before her lily till her brother should
be ready. She was wondering if it would be right to allow Miss
Morning-Glory to go to church with her, and then she decided that
it would be better that she should remain at home to keep the lily
company, for maybe the lily would be lonely in a strange place with no
acquaintances but the pansies and the geranium. However, she thought
Miss Morning-Glory might be permitted to walk to church with her, for
she had on a new frock, too, this morning; it was of purple and green,
and in her mind’s eye Cassy saw plainly the many floating ends of satin
ribbon which ornamented this invisible companion’s Easter gown.
When she reached the Sunday-school and had taken her seat, she looked
around to see if Rock and Eleanor were there, but they were not, though
in church she caught sight of Eleanor’s “angel curls” in a pew near
the front, and then she saw Mrs. Dallas, and by peeping around the big
pillar near them she could get a glimpse of Rock, so she knew that the
flowers that lifted their fair heads around the chancel were her flower
friends. She thought she could distinguish them from the stranger ones,
and she nodded gravely to them as she left the church.
In consequence of sitting on the other side of the church she had no
opportunity of speaking to Eleanor unless she should wait outside, and
this she asked to be allowed to do.
“I want to thank her,” she told her mother.
After a while she saw Eleanor coming along ahead of her aunt. She wore
a pretty new frock and a hat trimmed with wild flowers. She caught
sight of Cassy and smiled, and then went over to where she stood
waiting.
“I didn’t know you came here to church,” she said. “Wasn’t the music
lovely?”
“Yes, and the flowers were, too. I knew some of them,” Cassy added
gravely. “I want to thank you for that dear nest of eggs. I never had
so many before.”
“There weren’t very many,” Eleanor returned. “I am glad you liked them.
We dyed the purple ones ourselves, Rock and I, and Rock put the names
on them.”
“And the lily, the lovely lily,” said Cassy. “I never, never thought I
should have one of my very own.” She wanted to thank Mrs. Dallas for
it, but felt too shy to go up to her before all that crowd of people.
“Please tell Mrs. Dallas I think it is so beautiful, and I think when
she is an angel she will look like one of my lilies.”
Eleanor laughed.
“I will surely tell her,” she said. And when she repeated the message
Mrs. Dallas smiled, and then her eyes grew very moist.
“And to think that a little sweet soul like that must live in such
surroundings. But she shall not always, shall she, Heath?”
She laid her hand on her husband’s shoulder, and he made answer: “Not
if I can do anything to prevent it.”
HOW CASSY TRIED TO MAKE A FIRE