"THIS is Lily-Ann, Rhoda," my mother said, in an introductory tone. "She
is to be your little nurse, and play with you. Do you know many nice
games, Lily-Ann?"
From the shelter of my mother's chair I stared at the new-comer. I
almost thought at first that it might be a little girl, until I noticed
the shining folds of white apron. Lily-Ann was all white apron, down to
the tops of her large, patched shoes. She was fourteen years old,
perhaps, with the dignity of forty. She had a wide, smiling face, and
appeared to be very agreeable in manner, so when she put out her hand I
slipped mine cordially into it.
"I can play at wild beasts, and puss-in-the-corner, and 'ride a cock
horse to Banbury Cross,'" she told my mother over my head. "I am
experienced. I have helped to raise three children, ma'am."
She looked so small as she ended in this impressive fashion that my
mother laughed, and my grandmother gleamed responsively through her
glasses.
"It must be only quiet games, mind," my mother said. "You mustn't teach
Miss Rhoda to be noisy."
Lily-Ann promised to observe this caution faithfully, and I suppose she
thought that they were only quiet games which we played that morning. We
had all three,--Banbury Cross, then puss-in-the-corner, and, finally,
wild beasts. Lily-Ann crawled under the bed and roared at me, now like a
tiger, now plaintively, like a big pussy cat, and again with a deeper
note that carried menace in its tone.
"That's a lion," she explained, in between great volumes of sound.
"Lions eat people all up. So do wolves. Now I'm a wolf. Hear me crunch
their bones!"
There was a horrible snarl under the bed, and something white and
shining made a snatch at my foot, and then retreated, to return the next
moment in a panting rush, much too real to be pleasant.
"Oh, please, Lily-Ann, I don't want to play wild beasts any more!" I
exclaimed, half afraid; but only half afraid, for she was very obedient
to my whims, and, when I cried loud enough, came out in a crushed state
to be a little girl again.
At first I liked Lily-Ann. She was so companionable, and then she knew
such quantities of strange things. For instance, it was she who showed
me how to make my hair curl. It could be done by eating crusts! There
had always been a great deal of trouble about my crusts. I would never
eat them, not even after I had been reminded of all the poor children in
the world who had not a crust apiece to stay their hunger on, and whom
it seemed that I should benefit in some marvelous way by eating mine.
"They can have these," I replied, generously, to such appeals to my
feelings. "I'll save them for them every day."
That, however, was before Lily-Ann came, and I learned that a crusty
diet was warranted to make the hair curl. To think that little Rhoda
Harcourt might have curly hair! What a nice thing that would be! Of
course it meant months of work, but Lily-Ann, whose hair twisted from
the roots, must surely know. Under her encouragement I ate all my own
crusts, and begged so earnestly for more at the table that I became a
wonder to the family.
"Is the curl coming, Lily-Ann?" I would ask, eagerly, in the mornings
when she stood over me, comb in hand.
"It's coming more and more every day," she asserted, to my great
satisfaction.
"Ouch! How you do hurt, Lily-Ann!"
"That's because it's so curly. See that long, beautiful one. I can't
hardly get my comb through!"
I sighed blissfully with my eyes full of tears, and wondered when my
mother would notice the change in her little girl, for, indeed,
something must have happened to my hair, judging from the jerks.
It was Lily-Ann again who taught me how to catch sparrows by throwing
salt on their tails. I ran about very hot and eager all one morning, and
ended by feeling rather foolish, for not a bird would be caught, though
I crept persistently on their track, always sure that the next time I
should be successful. Still, I did not bear any grudge against Lily-Ann.
It was not her fault that I was unfortunate, and then, too, she was very
sympathetic.
"Why, my cousin caught one only yesterday!" she cried, in astonishment.
"But then she is older than you are. And so smart! She turned a
horsehair into a snake once. Did you ever do that, ma'am?"
"No," I answered, doubtfully; and immediately added, with growing
enthusiasm, "oh, I should so like to do that!"
The end of it was that a faint suspicion which had crept upon me after
the sparrow episode was quenched in the zeal with which I set myself to
the awful task of raising snakes by the wholesale. There was always a
touch of dread in the eagerness with which I visited the snake
incubator,--a rusty pan half-filled with water, and hidden in a secret
space behind the lilac bush. Little by little the horror of the
situation so overcame me that I hurriedly weeded the horsehairs out; but
the six that remained were the finest and longest which I could find,
destined, I could easily expect from their size, to become
boa-constrictors.
I believed everything that Lily-Ann told me. Up to that time there had
never been occasion for me to question any one's truth, nor had there
been anything of which to be afraid. Now I learned of a new world that
lay about me,--the Land of the Dark,--in which familiar furniture played
wild pranks, and shadows came to have a very terrible meaning.
"After you go to bed at night," Lily-Ann said, impressively, holding up
a fat forefinger, "there are Things that come out and run all about the
floor! Under the chairs and under the bed they creep around. Especially
under the bed. If you should let your hand hang down, a Thing would take
it and shake it!"
I peered at her from out the shelter of the bed-clothes, for I was in
bed when this was first related, and she was sitting by me until I
should go to sleep.
"I shall never do that, Lily-Ann," I said, faintly, gluing my arms
closer to my sides.
"You might in your sleep," she returned, with grim significance.
"And that ain't all," she went on, after a short but terrible pause.
"There's a Bear in the garret. He wants something."
"What does he want?" I asked, fearfully, determined to know the worst at
once.
"He wants a bad child. He's hungry!"
Now I was bad, as I had just reason to know. Lily-Ann used to examine my
record every night, and she was the greatest one that I have ever seen
for pointing out flaws in character.
"I don't think I've been _very_ bad to-day, Lily-Ann," I said,
trembling.
"You took your little brother's ball," she answered, shortly.
"But I gave it back to him!" I cried, aghast.
"You slapped your little sister."
"But she slapped me, too!" I pleaded.
"Not until after you slapped her. And you are six years old."
That was one of the unkindest things about Lily-Ann; she was always
trying to make me live up to my station. And it was so hard to be good,
and hardest of all to be good enough for my great age. That night,
however, I made a compact with her.
"Dear Lily-Ann," I said, piteously, "if I go right to sleep by myself,
so you can get your supper, will you chase away the Things and tell the
Bear that there is no bad child in this house?"
I was not prone to criticise my elders and betters; but somehow I had
remarked that Lily-Ann was fond of her supper.
She went away without much urging, and I lay there miserably in the
dark. It seemed to me that there was a stir all through the quiet room,
and out in the hall the garret door creaked in a new manner. The dark
was so much blacker than it had ever been before, and even when I went
down head and all under the covers I could hear the Things pattering
about the floor, and the Bear rattling at the knob. Many a night after
that I huddled myself up into a heap, afraid to sleep lest my hands
should unclasp and slip out of bed, afraid to move lest the Bear on the
prowl for bad children should pounce on me and eat me up, sins and all.
I used to pretend to sleep very loudly and heavily that he might think
me a good child. Still, I felt that it must be hard to deceive a Bear,
and that sooner or later he would make an end of me. As for the Things,
I never had any hope of getting the better of them. All through the long
nights they slipped and slid about, or stood waiting at the edge of the
bed to shake hands, with a friendliness that was truly awful.
Even in my greatest fear, however, I never betrayed Lily-Ann. I was too
much in her power to dare to tell tales about her. I used to marvel when
the family commented on her faithfulness, or devised schemes for
improving the home from which she had come. Many large bundles went out
of our house, and I often heard my mother speaking in a sympathetic
fashion of the little girl whose childhood was passed in the service of
others.
"Poor Lily-Ann, she's never had any childhood of her own," she would
say, regretfully.
Out in the kitchen, too, I had heard our Norah exchanging confidences on
the subject with her cousin, who came in sometimes, when there was
company, to help with the work.
"I give her all the cold things to take home every night," Norah
confided. "The praties and bits of mate; just anything. They are that
starving that they are not particular. Every smithereen of clothes that
she has the mistress gave her, and the old lady has been open-handed,
too. There's many a ten-dollar bill finds its way to that house."
The cousin sniffed.
"The rest of us have to work for our own," she said. "Faith, it's fine
to be reckless sometimes."
"But I'm not trusting her," Norah continued, darkly. "She tells lies.
And she's cross to my child!"
"Who is your child, Norah?" I asked, with sudden eagerness, pressing up
close to her gingham apron.
Norah lifted me upon her capacious lap and patted my back.
"And it's herself that wants to know," she cried, with a rallying laugh.
"See that now! Ain't she growing a big girl, Bridget? See the praties in
her cheeks! Sure, she's purty enough to be Irish."
"But who is your child, Norah?" I persisted, jealously; and it was only
when a burst of laughter broke from the two women that I understood, and
hid my face in the concealing folds of the gingham apron.
I was very good to Lily-Ann after this time. Not that I had ever been
bad to her before; but now I began to join in the work of charity. I
made her a present of the little gold locket which my grandmother
Lawrence gave me on my last birthday, and of my second-best pair of
shoes, which had been red once, and still retained a delightful color. I
wanted to give her my Sunday cloak, also, but she reminded me that there
were other Sundays yet to come. She did take my bank with its one
jingling gold coin in it. Unfortunately, all the money of less value had
been pried out long ago to buy candy, but I told Lily-Ann how sorry I
was that the little red house was not filled to the chimney with
pennies. I promised that I would give her all my money in the future to
take home to her family, so that they might never be hungry again.
Lily-Ann heard me in silence. She did not thank me with her lips, but
when the Things grew too rampant at night she would reprove them
sometimes in a stern manner.
"Go away!" she would cry, stamping her foot energetically. "Rhoda is a
good child."
The Things and the Bear all grunted with the same voice as they
retreated in discontent to their lairs; but I was not critical. It was
enough for me that they went, if only for a time. Always I remembered
that Lily-Ann could summon them at will, and her importance grew greater
day by day.
There were hours, however, when I escaped into the safety of my mother's
room. I was not too small to understand the delights of that cheerful
room,--the glittering objects on the dressing-table, the deep bureau
drawers filled with wonders much too dainty for a child to touch. There
were keepsakes, also, mementos of my mother's childhood and youth; prize
books in foreign tongues, won at school and laid away in tissue paper;
bits of costly lace, and many little worthless, well-beloved
possessions. In the closet there was a box on an upper shelf. Quite an
ordinary box it was on the outside, made of pasteboard and tied with
bands of yellow ribbon which had once been white. My mother lifted the
cover one day, and showed me what was inside. It was the most wonderful
thing, and it had come off her wedding-cake. There was a white platform
surrounded with a wreath of white roses and leaves, and in the center of
the platform there stood under a wreathed arch two little dolls, arm in
arm.
"They are going to be married," my mother said. "They came off the top
of my cake when I was married."
"Oh, isn't it too sweet for anything!" I cried, in an ecstasy. "But,
mother, why does the lady doll wear a veil?"
"All brides do. You shall, too, some day."
"Shall I?" I questioned, doubtfully. "But, mother, dear, suppose I
should grow up, and never get married, won't you give me these little
dolls to play with?"
"If that should happen I suppose I must," my mother said, with a laugh,
and tied the box up tightly again, and put it back on the upper shelf.
I dreamed about that box. I talked of it to Lily-Ann, and described the
enchanting veil at great length; and I even condescended to tell the
twins about the dolls that mother had. Once, with great pain from the
acute rasping of my knees, I climbed up the closet shelves, and peeked
in a loose corner of the box. Then I came down again, perfectly
satisfied, for the dolls were still there, and if I escaped marriage
they were to be my own. I determined that I would never marry. It would
be at too great a cost.
Soon after this there came a day when everything seemed to go wrong.
Lily-Ann was very cross, while my mother looked sad and even frightened.
She went up and down stairs many times. She watched me furtively, and
asked whispered questions of Lily-Ann. I wondered what Lily-Ann could
possibly be telling her. I knew that it was not about me, for I had been
very good that afternoon. To be sure, I had pulled the cat's tail; but
she and I had kissed each other affectionately afterwards, and were
friends again. Nor was Lily-Ann apt to reveal my misdeeds. She liked to
judge me herself in that dread hour when the dark brought repentance.
Still, as the questions went on and on, I was sure that I heard my name,
not once but many times, now from Lily-Ann, and now from my mother, with
a gasp of dismay.
Then my mother took me in her arms and kissed me, and rocked me as if I
were a baby again, and in the middle of it all made me a little
confidence.
"Rhoda, mother always meant to give you those little dolls," she said.
"Oh, did you, mother!" I cried, eagerly.
"But giving is different from taking. Do you know what it means to steal
a thing, Rhoda?"