The next morning, after Anne insisted that she could not possibly eat
any more corn-cakes or biscuits or toast or fried apples or chicken or
ham or potato-cakes or molasses or honey, Mrs. Collins picked her up and
put her in a rocking-chair by the south window.
"Now, you set thar and rest," she commanded, "till Lizzie does up her
work and has time to play with you. You Lizzie! Hurry and wash them
dishes and sweep this floor and dust my room and then take the little
old lady's breakfast to her. It's in the stove, keeping warm."
"Let me help Lizzie," begged Anne. "I know how to sweep and dust and
wash dishes. We had to do those things--turn about, you know--at the
'Home.'"
"You set right still," repeated Mrs. Collins, "and let some meat grow on
yo' po' little bones. I know how they treat you at them 'sylums, making
you work day in, day out. Oh, it's a dog's life!"
"But, Mrs. Collins, they were good to me, and kind as could be. I didn't
have to work so hard. I just did the things that Lizzie does."
"Uh! Lizzie!" was the response, "that's diff'rent. She's at home. She
works when I tell her--if she chooses," Mrs. Collins concluded with a
chuckle, for Lizzie had dropped her broom and was sitting in the middle
of the floor pulling Honey-Sweet's shoes and stockings off and on.
Anne went outdoors presently to look around the dear old place. 'Lewis
Hall,' a roomy frame-house built before the Revolution, was on a hill
which sloped gently toward the corn-fields and meadows that bordered the
lazy river beyond which rose the bluffs of Buckingham. Back of the
house, a level space was laid out in a formal garden. The boxwood,
brought from England when that was the mother country, met across the
turf walks. Long-neglected flowers--damask and cabbage roses, zinnias,
cock's-comb, hollyhocks--grew half-wild, making masses of glowing color.
Along the walks, where there had paced, a hundred years before, stately
Lewis ladies in brocade and stately Lewis gentlemen in velvet coats, now
tripped an orphan girl, a stranger in her father's home. But she was a
very happy little maid as she roamed about the spacious old garden on
that sunshiny summer day, gathering hollyhocks and zinnias for ladies to
occupy her playhouse in the gnarled roots of an old oak-tree.
When Lizzie came out to play, she and Anne wandered away to the fields.
There was a dear little baby brook--how well Anne remembered it!--that
started from a spring on the hillside, trickled among the under-brush,
loitered through the meadow, and emptied into a larger stream that fed
the river.
"Let's take off our shoes and stockings," said Anne, tripping joyfully
along, "and wade to the creek. You've been there? Part of the way is
sandy. Your feet crunch down in the nice cool sand. Part of the way
there are rocks--flat, mossy ones. They're so pretty--and slippery! It's
fun not knowing when you are going to fall down."
"There's bamboo-vines," objected Lizzie. "Mother'll whip me if I tear my
dress."
"Oh, we'll stoop down and crawl under the vines." Anne was ready of
resource. "And we'll dry our dresses in the sun before we go home. Oh,
Lizzie! Look at all the little fishes! Let's catch them! Do don't let
them get by. Aren't they slippery! Tell you what let's play. Let's be
Jamestown settlers and catch fish to keep us from starving. We'll have
our settlement here by the brook--the river James, we'll play it is."
"How do you play that? I never heard tell of Jamestown settlers," said
Lizzie.
"A big girl like you never heard about Jamestown settlers!" exclaimed
Anne; then, fearing her surprise at such ignorance would hurt Lizzie's
feelings, she tried to smooth it over. "It really isn't s'prising that
you never heard 'bout them, Lizzie. Mother always said this was such a
quiet place that you never heard any news here. I'll tell you all 'bout
them while we build our huts."
While Anne told the story of John Smith and played she was the brave
captain directing his band, they dragged brushwood together and erected
cabins. Stones were piled to make fireplaces on which to cook the fish
they were going to catch and the corn they were going to buy from the
Indians.
"You be the Indians, Lizzie," suggested Anne. "Paint your face with
pokeberries and stick feathers in your hair. They're heap nicer to look
at, but I want to be the Englishmen and talk like Captain John Smith.
All you have to say is 'ugh! ugh!'"
The morning slipped by so quickly that they could hardly believe their
ears when they heard the farm bell ringing for noon. After dinner, Jake
and Peter went by the settlement, on their way to the tobacco-field, to
help build Powhatan's rock chimney. The boys made bows and arrows and
became so interested in playing Indian that Mr. Collins came for them.
He scolded them roundly and said that no boy who didn't work in the
tobacco-field would get any supper at his house that night.
"I'm the play Captain Smith," laughed Anne, looking up at the
rough-speaking, soft-hearted man; "but you talk like the real captain.
'I give this for a law,' he said, 'that he who will not work shall not
eat.'"
Mrs. Collins said that night that the girls must not play Jamestown
settlers any more. They might get ill or hurt or snake-bit; and who
ever heard of such a game for little girls? they ought to stay in the
house and keep their faces white and their frocks clean and play dolls.
Anne and Lizzie, however, teased next day until she relented and even
waddled down the hill to see their settlement.
"I told them chillen they shouldn't put thar foots in that ma'sh on the
branch, gettin' wet and draggled and catchin' colds and chills," she
explained to her husband. "But they begged so hard I told 'em to go on
and have a good time. Maybe it won't hurt 'em. They're good-mindin'
gals. And I never did believe in encouragin' chillen to disobey you by
tellin' 'em they shouldn't do things you see thar heads set on doin'.
Don't be so hard on the boys, Peter, for stoppin' awhile to play. If the
Lord hadn't 'a' meant for chillen to have play-time, He'd 'a' made 'em
workin' age to begin with."
The Jamestown colony, like the great undertaking after which it was
patterned, had many ups and downs,--flourishing when Jake and Peter
could steal off to be Indians and new settlers, and then being neglected
and almost deserted. Anne and Lizzie found the most beautiful place to
play keeping house. On the hillside, there were two great rocks, full of
the most delightful nooks and crevices. One of these rocks was Anne's
home, the other was Lizzie's. In the moss-carpeted rooms, lived daisy
ladies, with brown-eyed Susans for maids. They made visits and gave
dinner parties, having bark tables set with acorn-cups and bits of
broken glass and china. They had leaf boats to go a-pleasuring on the
spring brook where they had wonderful adventures.
Rainy days put an end to outdoor delights, but they only gave more time
for indoor games with their neglected dolls.
After breakfast one rainy morning, Lizzie asked her mother for some
scraps--she didn't want any except pretty ones--to make dresses for
Honey-Sweet and Nancy Jane. Mrs. Collins replied that she had no idea of
wasting her good bed-quilt and carpet-rag pieces on such foolishness as
doll dresses. But when ten minutes later the girls went back to repeat
their request, they found Mrs. Collins rummaging a bureau drawer. Thence
she produced two generous pieces of pretty dimity,--Honey-Sweet's was
buff with little rose sprigs and Nancy Jane's had daisies on a pale-blue
ground.
While Lizzie was busy making doll dresses, Anne got a book with pictures
in it and gave forth a story with a readiness that amazed Mrs. Collins.
"Ain't you a good reader!" she exclaimed. "You read so fast I can't
understand half you say."
"I'm not reading all that," honesty compelled Anne to confess, as she
beamed with pleasure at Mrs. Collins's praise. "I read when the words
are short, and when they're long and the print's solid, I make it up out
of my head to fit the pictures."
"Ah! you come of high-learnt folks," said Mrs. Collins, admiringly.
"Now, my Jake and Peter, they can't read nothing but what's in the book
and that a heap of trouble to 'em. And Lizzie here, she's wore out two
first readers and don't hardly know her letters yet."
Lizzie soon tired of sewing and she and Anne pattered off through the
halls to the bareness and strangeness of which Anne could not get used.
Where, she wondered, were the people in tarnished gilt frames--slim
smiling ladies and stately gentlemen with stocks and wigs--that used to
be there? The two girls played lady and come-to-see in the bare
up-stairs rooms awhile. Then Anne said, "Lizzie, I'm going up the little
ladder into the attic and walk around the chimneys."
"Don't! It's dark up there," shuddered Lizzie.
"Dark as midnight," agreed Anne; "heavy dark. You can feel it. It's the
only place I used to be afraid of. I have to make myself go there."
"Why?" asked Lizzie.
"I--don't just know--but I do. You wait here." She came back a little
later, dusty, cobwebby, flushed. "I knew there wasn't anything there--in
the dark more'n the light," she said. "I know it, and still I just have
to make myself not be scared. Whew! It's hot up there. Lizzie, let's go
in the parlor. I've not been in there yet."
"No," objected Lizzie. "The little old lady's in there--or in the room
back of it. Them's her rooms."
"The little old lady? who is she?" inquired Anne.
"She's the one I take breakfast and dinner and supper to. She comes here
in the summer and she sits in there and rocks and reads."
"Doesn't she ever go out?" Anne wanted to know.
"Oh, yes! she walks in the yard or garden every day. You just ain't
happened to see her. We've played away from the house so much."
"What kind of looking lady is she?" asked Anne.
"Oh, she's just a lady. Ma says she's mighty hotty. What's hotty, Anne?"
inquired Lizzie.
Haughty was a new word to Anne. But she hated to say "I don't know," and
besides words made to her pictures--queer ones sometimes--of their
meaning. "It means she warms up quick," she asserted. "Tell me about
her, Lizzie. How does she look?"
"She ain't so very tall and she's slim as a bean-pole," said Lizzie.
"Her hair's gray and her skin is white and wrinkly. And she wears long
black dresses. That's all I know."
"I want to see her. Let's sit at the head of the steps and watch for her
to come out," suggested Anne.
They sat there what seemed a long time but as the little old lady did
not appear, they finally ran off to play with Honey-Sweet and Nancy
Jane.
While they were thus engaged, Mr. Collins came from the mill. He shook
his dripping hat, and hung up the stiff yellow rain-coat that he called
a 'slicker.'
"I come by the station, wife," he announced. "And what you think? Thar's
a gre't big sign up, 'Lost child.'"
"Sho! Whose child's lost?" inquired Mrs. Collins.
"It's Anne," was the reply. "The printed paper give her name and age and
all. And it tells anybody that's found her or got news of her to let
them 'sylum folks know."
"As if anybody with a heart in their body would do that!" commented Mrs.
Collins. "I bound you let folks know she was here. If you jest had sense
enough to keep yo' mouth shet, Peter Collins! That long tongue of yours
goin' to be the ruin of you yet."
"I ain't unparted my lips," asserted her husband.
"Now ain't that jest like a man?" Mrs. Collins demanded of the clock.
"'Stead of trying to throw folks off the track, saying something like
'What on earth's a lost child doing here?' or 'Nobody'd 'spect a lost
child to come to my house!'"
"I wish you'd been thar, Lizbeth," said her admiring husband. "You'd
fixed it up. Well, anyhow, I ain't said a word, so don't nobody know
nothin' from me. All she's got to do is to lay low till this hub-bub's
over."
In that out-of-the-way place there seemed little danger of Anne's being
discovered. Mrs. Collins, however, made elaborate plans for her
concealment.
"Anne," she said, "would you mind me callin' you my niece Polly?"
Anne looked at her in questioning surprise.
"If so be people from the 'sylum was to look for you, you wouldn't want
to go back thar, would you?"
"Oh, no! I'd much rather stay here," answered Anne.
"Bless your heart! and so you shall," exclaimed Mrs. Collins. "I'll trim
your hair and part it on the side and call you my niece Polly. And can't
nobody find out who you are and drag you back to that 'sylum. You shall
stay here forever."
"Goody, goody!" cried Anne. Then she said thoughtfully, "I do wish I had
some of my things from there. It doesn't matter so much about my
clothes. Lizzie's are most small enough and I s'pose I'll grow to fit
them. But I do wish Honey-Sweet had her dresses, 'spressly her spotted
silk and her blue muslin. And there are some other things. Uncle Carey
said they were my mother's and I don't want Miss Farlow to keep them
always."
"When you are grown up, you can go and get them," suggested Mrs.
Collins.
"Oh, so I will," said Anne. "And please, may Lizzie go with me?"