"I wish I lived in the city, and had a best friend," said Hazel
Ripwinkley to Diana, as they sat together on the long, red, sloping
kitchen roof under the arches of the willow-tree, hemming towels for
their afternoon "stent." They did this because their mother sat on
the shed roof under the fir, when she was a child, and had told them
of it. Imagination is so much greater than fact, that these
children, who had now all that little Frank Shiere had dreamed of
with the tar smell and the gravel stones and the one tree,--who
might run free in the wide woods and up the breezy hillsides,--liked
best of all to get out on the kitchen roof and play "old times," and
go back into their mother's dream.
"I wish I lived in a block of houses, and could see across the
corner into my best friend's room when she got up in the morning!"
"And could have that party!" said Diana.
"Think of the clean, smooth streets, with red sidewalks, and people
living all along, door after door! I like things set in rows, and
people having places, like the desks at school. Why, you've got to
go way round Sand Hill to get to Elizabeth Ann Dorridon's. I should
like to go up steps, and ring bells!"
"I don't know," said Diana, slowly. "I think birds that build little
nests about anywhere in the cunning, separate places, in the woods,
or among the bushes, have the best time."
"Birds, Dine! It ain't birds, it's people! What has that to do with
it?"
"I mean I think nests are better than martin-boxes."
"Let's go in and get her to tell us that story. She's in the round
room."
The round room was a half ellipse, running in against the curve of
the staircase. It was a bit of a place, with the window at one end,
and the bow at the other. It had been Doctor Ripwinkley's office,
and Mrs. Ripwinkley sat there with her work on summer afternoons.
The door opened out, close at the front, upon a great flat stone in
an angle, where was also entrance into the hall by the house-door,
at the right hand. The door of the office stood open, and across the
stone one could look down, between a range of lilac bushes and the
parlor windows, through a green door-yard into the street.
"Now, Mother Frank, tell us about the party!"
They called her "Mother Frank" when they wished to be particularly
coaxing. They had taken up their father's name for her, with their
own prefix, when they were very little ones, before he went away and
left nobody to call her Frank, every day, any more.
"That same little old story? Won't you ever be tired of it,--you
great girls?" asked the mother; for she had told it to them ever
since they were six and eight years old.
"Yes! No, never!" said the children.
For how _should_ they outgrow it? It was a sunny little bit out of
their mother's own child-life. We shall go back to smaller things,
one day, maybe, and find them yet more beautiful. It is the _going_
back, together.
"The same old way?"
"Yes; the very same old way."
"We had little open-work straw hats and muslin pelisses,--your Aunt
Laura and I,"--began Mrs. Ripwinkley, as she had begun all those
scores of times before. "Mother put them on for us,--she dressed us
just alike, always,--and told us to take each other's hands, and go
up Brier and down Hickory streets, and stop at all the houses that
she named, and that we knew; and we were to give her love and
compliments, and ask the mothers in each house,--Mrs. Dayton, and
Mrs. Holridge (she lived up the long steps), and Mrs. Waldow, and
the rest of them, to let Caroline and Grace and Fanny and Susan, and
the rest of _them_, come at four o'clock, to spend the afternoon and
take tea, if it was convenient."
"O, mother!" said Hazel, "you didn't say that when you _asked_
people, you know."
"O, no!" said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "That was when we went to stop a
little while ourselves, without being asked. Well, it was to please
to let them come. And all the ladies were at home, because it was
only ten o'clock; and they all sent their love and compliments, and
they were much obliged, and the little girls would be very happy.
"It was a warm June day; up Brier Street was a steep walk; down
Hickory we were glad to keep on the shady side, and thought it was
nice that Mrs. Bemys and Mrs. Waldow lived there. The strings of our
hats were very moist and clinging when we got home, and Laura had a
blue mark under her chin from the green ribbon.
"Mother was in her room, in her white dimity morning gown, with
little bows up the front, the ends trimmed with cambric edging. She
took off our hats and our pelisses,--the tight little sleeves came
off wrong side out,--sponged our faces with cool water, and brushed
out Laura's curls. That was the only difference between us. I
hadn't any curls, and my hair had to be kept cropped. Then she went
to her upper bureau drawer and took out two little paper boxes.
"'Something has come for Blanche and Clorinda, since you have been
gone,' she said, smiling. 'I suppose you have been shopping?' We
took the paper boxes, laughing back at her with a happy
understanding. We were used to these little plays of mother's, and
she couldn't really surprise us with her kindnesses. We went and sat
down in the window-seat, and opened them as deliberately and in as
grown-up a way as we could. Inside them were two little lace
pelerines lined with rose-colored silk. The boxes had a faint smell
of musk. The things were so much better for coming in boxes! Mother
knew that.
"Well, we dressed our dolls, and it was a great long sunshiny
forenoon. Mother and Luclarion had done something in the kitchen,
and there was a smell of sweet baking in the house. Every now and
then we sniffed, and looked at each other, and at mother, and
laughed. After dinner we had on our white French calicoes with blue
sprigs, and mother said she should take a little nap, and we might
go into the parlor and be ready for our company. She always let us
receive our own company ourselves at first. And exactly at four
o'clock the door-bell rang, and they began to come.
"Caroline and Fanny Dayton had on white cambric dresses, and green
kid slippers. That was being very much dressed, indeed. Lucy Waldow
wore a pink lawn, and Grace Holridge a buff French print. Susan
Bemys said her little sister couldn't come because they couldn't
find her best shoes. Her mother thought she had thrown them out of
the window.
"When they all got there we began to play 'Lady Fair;' and we had
just got all the 'lady fairs,' one after another, into our ring, and
were dancing and singing up and down and round and round, when the
door opened and mother walked in.
"We always thought our mother was the prettiest of any of the girls'
mothers. She had such bright shining hair, and she put it up with
shell combs into such little curly puffs. And she never seemed fussy
or old, but she came in among us with such a beautiful, smiling way,
as if she knew beforehand that it was all right, and there was no
danger of any mischief, or that we shouldn't behave well, but she
only wanted to see the good time. That day she had on a white muslin
dress with little purple flowers on it, and a bow of purple ribbon
right in the side of her hair. She had a little piece of fine work
in her hand, and after she had spoken to all the little girls and
asked them how their mothers were, she went and sat down in one of
the front windows, and made little scollops and eyelets. I remember
her long ivory stiletto, with a loop of green ribbon through the
head of it, and the sharp, tiny, big-bowed scissors that lay in her
lap, and the bright, tapering silver thimble on her finger.
"Pretty soon the door opened again, softly; a tray appeared, with
Hannah behind it. On the tray were little glass saucers with
confectionery in them; old-fashioned confectionery,--gibraltars, and
colored caraways, and cockles with mottoes. We were in the middle of
'So says the Grand Mufti,' and Grace Holridge was the Grand Mufti.
Hannah went up to her first, as she stood there alone, and Grace
took a saucer and held it up before the row of us, and said, '_Thus_
says the Grand Mufti!' and then she bit a red gibraltar, and
everybody laughed. She did it so quickly and so prettily, putting
it right into the play. It was good of her not to say, '_So_ says
the Grand Mufti.' At least we thought so then, though Susan Bemys
said it would have been funnier.
"We had a great many plays in those days, and it took a long
afternoon to get through with them. We had not begun to wonder what
we should do next, when tea time came, and we went down into the
basement room. It wasn't tea, though; it was milk in little clear,
pink mugs, some that mother only had out for our parties, and cold
water in crimped-edge glasses, and little biscuits, and
sponge-cakes, and small round pound-cakes frosted. These were what
had smelt so good in the morning.
"We stood round the table; there was not room for all of us to sit,
and mother helped us, and Hannah passed things round. Susan Bemys
took cake three times, and Lucy Waldow opened her eyes wide, and
Fanny Dayton touched me softly under the table.
"After tea mother played and sung some little songs to us; and then
she played the 'Fisher's Hornpipe' and 'Money Musk,' and we danced a
little contra-dance. The girls did not all know cotillons, and some
of them had not begun to go to dancing-school. Father came home and
had his tea after we had done ours, and then he came up into the
parlor and watched us dancing. Mr. Dayton came in, too. At about
half past eight some of the other fathers called, and some of the
mothers sent their girls, and everybody was fetched away. It was
nine o'clock when Laura and I went to bed, and we couldn't go to
sleep until after the clock struck ten, for thinking and saying what
a beautiful time we had had, and anticipating how the girls would
talk it all over next day at school. That," said Mrs. Ripwinkley,
when she had finished, "was the kind of a party we used to have in
Boston when I was a little girl. I don't know what the little girls
have now."
"Boston!" said Luclarion, catching the last words as she came in,
with her pink cape bonnet on, from the Homesworth variety and
finding store, and post-office. "You'll talk them children off to
Boston, finally, Mrs. Ripwinkley! Nothing ever tugs so at one end,
but there's something tugging at the other; and there's never a hint
nor a hearing to anybody, that something more doesn't turn up
concerning it. Here's a letter, Mrs. Ripwinkley!"
Mrs. Ripwinkley took it with some surprise. It was not her sister's
handwriting nor Mr. Ledwith's, on the cover; and she rarely had a
letter from them that was posted in Boston, now. They had been
living at a place out of town for several years. Mrs. Ledwith knew
better than to give her letters to her husband for posting. They got
lost in his big wallet, and stayed there till they grew old.
Who should write to Mrs. Ripwinkley, after all these years, from
Boston?
She looked up at Luclarion, and smiled. "It didn't take a Solomon,"
said she, pointing to the postmark.
"No, nor yet a black smooch, with only four letters plain, on an
invelup. 'Taint that, it's the drift of things. Those girls have got
Boston in their minds as hard and fast as they've got heaven; and I
mistrust mightily they'll get there first somehow!"
The girls were out of hearing, as she said this; they had got their
story, and gone back to their red roof and their willow tree.
"Why, Luclarion!" exclaimed Mrs. Ripwinkley, as she drew out and
unfolded the letter sheet. "It's from Uncle Titus Oldways."
"Then he ain't dead," remarked Luclarion, and went away into the
kitchen.
"MY DEAR FRANCES,--I am seventy-eight years old. It is time I
got acquainted with some of my relations. I've had other work
to do in the world heretofore (at least I thought I had), and
so, I believe, have they. But I have a wish now to get you and
your sister to come and live nearer to me, that we may find out
whether we really are anything to each other or not. It seems
natural, I suppose, that we might be; but kinship doesn't all
run in the veins.
"I do not ask you to do this with reference to any possible
intentions of mine that might concern you after my death; my
wish is to do what is right by you, in return for your
consenting to my pleasure in the matter, while I am alive. It
will cost you more to live in Boston than where you do now, and
I have no business to expect you to break up and come to a new
home unless I can make it an object to you in some way. You can
do some things for your children here that you could not do in
Homesworth. I will give you two thousand dollars a year to live
on, and secure the same to you if I die. I have a house here in
Aspen Street, not far from where I live myself, which I will
give to either of you that it may suit. That you can settle
between you when you come. It is rather a large house, and Mrs.
Ledwith's family is larger, I think, than yours. The estate is
worth ten thousand dollars, and I will give the same sum to the
one who prefers, to put into a house elsewhere. I wish you to
reckon this as all you are ever to expect from me, except the
regard I am willing to believe I may come to have for you. I
shall look to hear from you by the end of the week.
"I remain, yours truly,
"TITUS OLDWAYS."
"Luclarion!" cried Mrs. Ripwinkley, with excitement, "come here and
help me think!"
"Only four days to make my mind up in," she said again, when
Luclarion had read the letter through.
Luclarion folded it and gave it back.
"It won't take God four days to think," she answered quietly; "and
you can ask _Him_ in four minutes. You and I can talk afterwards."
And Luclarion got up and went away a second time into the kitchen.
That night, after Diana and Hazel were gone to bed, their mother and
Luclarion Grapp had some last words about it, sitting by the
white-scoured kitchen table, where Luclarion had just done mixing
bread and covered it away for rising. Mrs. Ripwinkley was apt to
come out and talk things over at this time of the kneading. She
could get more from Luclarion then than at any other opportunity.
Perhaps that was because Miss Grapp could not walk off from the
bread-trough; or it might be that there was some sympathy between
the mixing of her flour and yeast into a sweet and lively
perfection, and the bringing of her mental leaven wholesomely to
bear.
"It looks as if it were meant, Luclarion," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, at
last. "And just think what it will be for the children."
"I guess it's meant fast enough," replied Luclarion. "But as for
what it will be for the children,--why, that's according to what you
all make of it. And that's the stump."
Luclarion Grapp was fifty-four years old; but her views of life were
precisely the same that they had been at twenty-eight.