"She's vain," grandmother went on, severely. "Suppose she should grow up
a poppet!"
I carried that awful name out with me as I climbed upon the gate, and
stared out, bashfully, at the street. I was afraid to think how
beautiful I might be.
The grocer's boy came by, my own particular grocer's boy. Stricken with
sudden admiration for my charms he put down his basket, and expressed
his sentiments.
"Say, you are a daisy!" he said.
"Go away, Jakie," I answered, with embarrassment. "I haven't time to
play with you now. Go away! I'm busy."
He was quite crushed by my new haughtiness, and lingered about, thinking
that I would relent, but all my smiles and flowers were waiting for that
bent figure which I loved so well.
An hour slipped by, but still the major did not come. My crown grew
heavy on my head, and the flowers wilted in my hot hands. The lady from
over the way came to ask me questions. She had on her ugliest hair, and
there were tears in her eyes.
"What are you doing, Rhoda?" she asked, with an anxious look.
Then she seemed to divine.
"You are not watching for the major!" she exclaimed.
"Yes," I answered, wearily.
"Doesn't your mother know, child?" she cried. "But, then, he never told
any one. They found that there must be an operation, and he was not
strong. There was no one whom he loved there at the end. He died, as he
lived, all alone. Oh, poor old man! Poor old man! Let me go by, child!
Let me go by!"
She thrust herself in the little gate, wheeling me back against the
fence, and went up the path to our house.
Then, in hardly a moment, Norah came out and led me in, and proceeded to
take off all my pretty things and put on a common dress, quite an old
one, with a darn on the sleeve.
"I don't want that dress, Norah," I protested. "I want my white dress. I
want to see my major. I want to be his little flower girl."
I went in where my mother sat with the lady from over the way, and
explained the situation through my tears. Mother was very tender with
me. Somehow I felt that she herself was sorry about something, for she
dropped a tear on the wilted roses which I still held in my hand.
Together we went out into the garden. Together we gathered all the
flowers that there were--the big ones and the little ones--and formed
them into a great bunch. It was for the major. I danced with sheer
delight, knowing only too well how the kind face would light up when he
saw all the flowers which he had admired so often made a present to him.
I added buttercups, and dandelions, and bits of feathery grass, while
mother watched me, with a sad smile, and said never a word.
The lady from over the way cried very hard on our front steps, but
afterwards she dried her eyes and took my flowers to the major.
He did not come the next day or the next, though I watched at the gate,
and then something strange happened. I was told not to go into the
garden.
"Not this morning, Rhoda," my mother said. "Grandma and I are going out,
and you must stay in the house. When we come back you may go out."
She dressed herself very quietly that day, all in dark things, and she
and grandmother did not look joyful, as they always did when they went
out together.
"I'd like to go, too," I said, wistfully.
Then Norah coaxed me.
"Ah, stay and play with your Norah," she cried. "Sure you'll not be
after leaving your Norah alone in this big house!"
I always liked to play with Norah, when her work was done and she had
time to be sociable. That day we played blindman's buff together--she,
and I and the twins. Norah was always the blind man, and she was the
longest time catching us, and when she did she could never tell who it
might be. She would guess quite impossible people,--the grocer's boy,
and the lady from over the way, and her own very mother in Ireland,--and
she never once, by any chance, thought that it was Rhoda or little Dick
or Trixie.
"Sure, you're too big to be Trixie!" she cried, when we told her who it
was.
That day, when the blind man was out of breath, and his feet were sore
from walking hundreds of miles, I climbed up on the window-sill and
watched the people going along the street. There were a great many of
them, much more than usual. Suddenly there was the sound of a fife and
drum in the distance, and a long line of carriages came into sight, and
one was filled with beautiful flowers, and one was draped with a torn
old flag.
"Come quick, Norah!" I cried, eagerly. "It's a procession!"
"It's the old major's funeral," Norah said, coming with the twins in her
arms to look over my shoulder.
I had known, somehow, that it was the major's, for everything nice
belonged to him. I was so proud to think that my major should have all
that big procession, with the lovely flowers and the music in front. I
looked for him in every carriage, that I might wave as he went by. He
was not there, but other people were,--my mother and my grandmother, and
the lady from over the way, and men with gold braid on their coats come
to grace the major's procession.
"Is it all his, Norah?" I asked.
"Sure, dear."
"I am so glad," I cried. "Oh, I'm so glad!"
I clapped my hands in my delight, and was quite angry with Norah when
she dragged me, hurriedly, away from the window.
That night my mother took me in her lap, and told me that the old major
had gone to heaven. I had heard of heaven before. It was where I came
from, and the twins, away back in the early days. Heaven was a nice
place, and now, as the major's home, it acquired a new charm. But there
was one drawback.
"Shan't I ever see him again, mother?" I asked.
"Never again, Rhoda."
"But, mother, it's a children's place," I urged, anxiously. "And the
major is old, quite old. He won't like it there, mother."
"The major has gone to heaven to be a little child again," my mother
said, with a sob.
Then she put a blue velvet box in my hand. Inside there was the littlest
watch in the world, and on the back of the watch there was a star in
blue stones. It was the last thing which the old major bought before he
went to heaven.