WHAT'S IN A DRESS?
Of course Elliott never could have done it without the Gordons.
Elliott and Harriet made the crab-apple juice into jelly, Mrs. Gordon
sent in bread and cookies, and both mother and daughter stood behind
the girl with their skill and experience, ready to be called on at a
moment's notice.
"Just send for us any time you get into trouble or want help about
something," said Mrs. Gordon over the telephone. "One of us will come
right up. Most likely it will be Harriet. I'm so cumbersome, I can't
get about as I'd like to. Large bodies move slowly, you know."
Other people besides the Gordons sent in things to eat. Elliott
thought she had never known such a stream of generosity as set toward
the white house at the end of the road--intelligent generosity, too.
There seemed a definite plan and some consultation behind it. Mr.
Blair brought a roast of beef already cooked, from Mrs. Blair, and
hoped for both of them that there would soon be good news of the boy.
The Blisses sent in pies enough for two days and asked Elliott to let
them know when she was ready for more. People she knew and people she
didn't know brought rolls and cookies and doughnuts and gelatines and
even roast chickens, and asked, with real anxiety in their voices, for
the latest news from Camp Devens.
They didn't bring their offerings all at once; they brought them
continuously and steadily and with truly remarkable appropriateness.
Just when Elliott was thinking that she must begin to cook, something
was sure to rattle up to the door in a wagon, or roll up in an
automobile, or travel on foot in a basket. It was the extreme
timeliness of the gifts that proved the guiding intelligence behind
them.
"They couldn't all happen so," was Henry's conclusion. "Now, could
they? Gee! and I've thought some of those folks were pokes!"
"So have I," said Elliott, feeling very much ashamed of her hasty
judgments.
"You never know till you get into trouble how good people are," was
Father Bob's verdict.
Gertrude fingered a doughnut ruefully. "I want it, but I'm almost
ashamed to eat it. I've thought such horrid things of that old Mrs.
Gadsby that made 'em."
"They're good," said Tom. "Mrs. Gadsby knows how to make doughnuts, if
she _has_ got a tongue in her head! Say, but I'd as soon have thought
old Allen would send us doughnuts as the Gadsby."
"Mr. Allen brought us a tongue this morning," Elliott remarked; "said
his housekeeper boiled it; hoped it wasn't too tough to eat. You
couldn't 'git nothin' good, these days!'"
"_Enoch_ Allen?" demanded Henry; "the old fellow that lives at the
foot of the hill? Go tell that to the marines!"
"I don't know where he lives," said Elliott, "but he certainly said
his name was Enoch Allen."
Bruce chuckled. "Mother Jess's chickens have come home to roost, all
right."
"What did she ever do for Enoch Allen?" asked Tom.
"Oh, don't you remember," cried Gertrude, "the time his old dog died?
Mother found the dog one day, dying in the woods. I was along and she
sent me to call Mr. Allen, while she stayed with the dog. I was just a
little girl and kind of scared, but Mother said Mr. Allen wasn't
anybody to be afraid of; he was just a lonely old man. I heard him
tell her it wasn't every woman would have stayed with his dog. It was
dead when he got there."
But even with competent advisers within call and all the aids that
came in the shape of "Mother Jess's chickens," and with the best
family in the world all eagerness to be helpful and to "carry
on" during Laura and Mother Jess's absence, Elliott found that
housekeeping wasn't half so simple as it looked.
Life still had its moments and she was in the midst of one of the
worst of them now. If you have ever stood in a kitchen where little
gray kittens of dust rollicked under the chairs and all the dinner
kettles and pans were piled on the table, unscraped and unwashed, and
you saw ahead of you more things that you had planned to do than you
could possibly get through before supper, and one girl was crying in
the attic and another was crying in the china-closet, and your own
heart was in your boots, you know how Elliott Cameron felt at this
minute. Everything had gone wrong, since the time she got up half an
hour late in the morning; but the most wrong thing of all was the
letter from Laura.
It had come just as they were finishing dinner, for the postman was
late. Father Bob had cut it open, while every one looked eager and
hopeful. Mother Jess had written the day before that the doctors
thought Sidney was better; there had been a telegram to that effect,
too. Father Bob read Laura's letter quite through before he opened his
lips. It wasn't a long letter. Then he said: "The boy's not so well,
to-day.--Bruce, we must finish the ensilage. Come out as soon as
you're through, boys. Tom, I want you to get in the tomatoes before
night. We're due for a freeze, unless signs fail." Not another word
about Sidney. And he went right out of the room.
"What does she say?" whispered Gertrude, dropping her fork so that
it rattled against her plate. Gertrude was always dropping things,
but this time she didn't flush, as she usually did, at her own
awkwardness.
Elliott picked up the letter Father Bob had left beside her plate. She
dreaded to unfold the single sheet, but what else could she do, with
all those pairs of anxious eyes fixed on her? She steadied her voice
and read slowly and without a trace of expression:
"Sidney had a bad time in the night, but is resting more easily
this morning. Mother never leaves him. Every one is so good to us
here. His officers seem to think a lot of Sid. So do the men of
his company, as far as we have seen them. I don't know what to
write you, Father. The doctor says, 'While there's life there's
hope, and that our coming is the only thing that has saved Sid so
far. He says that he has seen the sickest of boys pull through
with their mothers here. We will telegraph when there is any
change. Love to all of you, dear ones, and tell Elliott I shall
never forget what she has done for me.
"LAURA"
The room was very still for a minute. Elliott kept her eyes on the
letter, to hide the tears that filled them. Sidney was going to die;
she knew it.
Slowly, silently, one after another, they all got up from the table.
The boys filed out into the kitchen, washed their hands at the sink,
and still without a word went about their work. Gertrude and Priscilla
began mechanically to clear the table. A plate crashed to the floor
from Gertrude's hands and shattered to fragments. She stared at the
pieces stupidly, as though wondering how they had come there, took a
step in the direction of the dust-pan, and, suddenly bursting into
tears, turned and ran out of the room. Elliott could hear her feet
pounding up-stairs, on, on, till they reached the attic. A door
slammed and all was quiet.
Down in the kitchen Elliott and Priscilla faced each other. Great
round drops were running down Priscilla's cheeks, but she looked up at
Elliott trustfully. And then Elliott failed her. She knew herself that
she was failing. But it seemed as though she just couldn't keep from
crying. "Oh, dear!" she sighed. "Oh, dear, isn't everything just
_awful_!" Then she did cry.
And over Priscilla's sober little face--Elliott wasn't so blinded by
her tears that she failed to see it--came the queerest expression of
stupefaction and woe and utter forlornness. It was after that that
Elliott heard Priscilla sobbing in the china-closet.
Her first impulse was to go to the closet and pull the child out. Her
second was to let her stay. "She may as well have her cry out,"
thought the girl, unhappily. "_I_ couldn't do anything to comfort
her!"--which shows how very, very, very miserable Elliott was,
herself.
The world was topsyturvy and would never get right again.
Instead of going for Priscilla she went for a dust-pan and brush and
collected the fragments of broken china. Then she began to pile up the
dishes, but, after a few futile movements, sat down in a chair and
cried again. It didn't seem worth while to do anything else. So now
there were three girls crying all at once in that house and every one
of them in a different place. When at last Elliott did look in the
closet Priscilla wasn't there.
The appearance of that usually spotless kitchen had a queer effect on
Elliott. She saw so many things needing to be done at once that she
didn't do any of them. She simply stood and stared hopelessly at the
wreck of comfort and cleanliness and good cheer.
"Hello!" said Bruce at the door. "Want an extra hand for an hour?"
"I thought you were cutting ensilage," said Elliott. It was good to
see Bruce; the courage in his voice lifted her spirits in spite of
her.
"I've left a substitute." The boy glanced into the stove and started
for the wood-box.
"Oh, dear! I forgot that fire. Has it gone out?"
"Not quite. I'll have it going again in a jiff."
He came back with a broom in his hands.
"Let me do that," said the girl.
"Oh, all right." He relinquished the broom and brought out the
dish-pan. "Hi-yi, Stan, lend a hand here!"
The boy in the doorway gave one glance at Elliott's tear-stained face
and came quietly into the room. "Sure," he said, picking up a
dish-cloth and gingerly reaching for a tumbler. "Which end do you take
'em by, top or bottom?"
Stannard wiping dishes, and with Bruce Fearing! The sight was so
strange that Elliott's broom stopped moving. The two boys at the
dish-pan chaffed each other good-naturedly; their jokes might have
seemed a little forced, had you examined them carefully, but the
effect was normal and cheering. Now and then they threw a word to the
girl and the pile of clean dishes grew under their hands.
Elliott's broom began to move again. Something warm stirred at her
heart. She felt sober and humble and ashamed and--yes, happy--all at
once. How nice boys were when they were nice!
Then she remembered something.
"Oh, Stan, wasn't it to-day you were going home?"
"Nix," Stannard replied. "Guess I'll stay on a bit. School hasn't
begun. I want to go nutting before I hit the trail for home."
It was a different-looking kitchen the boys left half an hour later
and a different-looking girl.
Bruce lingered a minute behind Stannard. "We haven't had any
telegram," he said. "Remember that. And as for things in here, I
wouldn't let 'em bother me, if I were you! You can't do everything,
you know. Keep cool, feed us the stuff folks send in, and let some
things slide."
"Mother Jess doesn't let things slide."
"Mother Jess has been at it a good many years, but I'll bet she would
now and then if things got too thick and she couldn't keep both
ends up. There's more to Mother Jess's job than what they call
housekeeping."
"Oh, yes," sighed Elliott, "I know that. But just what do you mean,
Bruce, that I could do?"
He hesitated a minute. "Well, call it morale. That suggests the
thing."
Elliott thought hard for a minute after the door closed on Bruce.
Perhaps, after all, seeing that the family had three meals a day and
lived in a decently clean house and slept warm at night, necessary as
such oversight was, wasn't the most imperative business in hand.
Somehow or other those things weren't at all what came into her mind
when she thought of Aunt Jessica--no, indeed, though Aunt Jessica made
such perfectly delicious things to eat. What came into her mind was
far different--like the way Aunt Jessica had sat on Elliott's bed and
kissed her, that homesick first night; Aunt Jessica's face at
meal-time, with Uncle Bob across the table and all her boys and girls
filling the space between; Aunt Jessica comforting Priscilla when the
child had met with some mishap. Priscilla seldom cried when she hurt
herself; "Mother kisses the place and makes it well." The words linked
themselves with Bruce's in Elliott's thought. Was that what he had
meant by morale? She couldn't have put into words what she understood
just then. For a minute a door in her brain seemed to swing open and
she saw straight into the heart of things. Then it clicked together
and left her saying, "I guess I fell down on that part of my job,
Mother Jess."
Elliott hung up her apron and mounted the stairs. She didn't stop with
the second floor and her own little room, but kept right on to the
attic. There was a door at the head of the attic stairs. Elliott
pushed it open. On a broken-backed horsehair sofa Gertrude lay, face
down, her nose buried in a faded pillow. In a wabbly rocker, at
imminent risk of a breakdown, Priscilla jerked back and forth.
Gertrude's hair was tousled and Priscilla's face was tear-stained and
swollen.
"Don't you think," Elliott suggested, "it is time we girls washed our
faces and made ourselves pretty?"
"I left you all the dishes to do." Gertrude's voice was muffled by the
pillow. "I--I just couldn't help it."
"That's all right. They're done now. I didn't do them, either. Let's
go down-stairs and wash up."
"I don't want to be pretty," Priscilla objected, continuing to rock.
Gertrude neither moved nor spoke again.
What should Elliott do? She remembered Bruce.
"We haven't had any telegram, you know," she said. Nobody spoke.
"Well, then, we were three little geese, weren't we? Not having had a
telegram means a lot just now." Priscilla stopped rocking.
"I'm going to believe Sidney will get well," Elliott continued. It was
hard work to talk to such unresponsive ears, but she kept right on.
"And now I am going down-stairs to put on one of my prettiest dresses,
so as to look cheerful for supper. You may try whether you can get
into that blue dress of mine you like so much, Trudy. I'm going to let
Priscilla wear my coral beads."
"The pink ones?" asked Priscilla.
"The pink ones. They will be just a match for your pink dress."
"I don't feel like dressing up," said Gertrude.
Elliott felt like clapping her hands. She had roused Trudy to speech.
"Then wear something of your own," she said stanchly. "It doesn't
matter what we wear, so long as we look nice."
Mercurial Priscilla was already feeling the new note in the air.
Elliott wouldn't talk so, would she, if Sidney really were not going
to get well? And yet there was Gertrude, who didn't seem to feel
cheered up a bit. Pris's little heart was torn.
Elliott tried one last argument. "I think Mother Jess would like to
have us do it for Father Bob and the boys' sake--to help keep up their
courage."
Priscilla bounced out of the rocker. "Will it help keep up their
courage for us to wear our pretty clothes?"
"I had a notion it might."
"Let's do it, Trudy. I--I think I feel better already."
Gertrude sat up on the horsehair sofa. "Maybe Mother would like us
to."
"I'm sure she'd like us to keep on hoping," said Elliott earnestly.
"And it doesn't matter what we do, so long as we do something to show
that's the way we've made up our minds to feel. If you can think of
any better way to show it than by dressing up, Trudy--"
"No," said Gertrude. "But I think I'll wear my own clothes to-day,
Elliott. Thank you, just the same. Some day, if Sid--I mean some day
I'll love to try on your blue dress, if you will let me."
Three girls, as pretty and chic and trim as nature and the contents of
their closets could make them, sat down to supper that night. It was
not a jolly meal, but the girls set the pace, and every one did his
best to be cheerful and brave.
Half-way through supper Stannard laid down his fork to ask a question.
"What's happened to your hair, Trudy?"
"Elliott did it for me. Do you like it?"
Stannard nodded. "Good work!"
Father Bob, his attention aroused, inspected the three with new
interest in his sober eyes. He said nothing then, but after supper his
hand fell on Elliott's shoulder approvingly.
"Well done, little girl! That's the right way. Face the music with
your chin up."
Elliott felt exactly as though some one had stiffened her spine. The
least little doubt had been creeping into her mind lest what she had
done had been heartless. Father Bob's words put that qualm at rest.
And, of course, good news would come from Sidney in the morning.
But courage has a way of ebbing in spite of one. It was dark and very
cold when a forlorn little figure appeared beside Elliott's bed.
"I can't go to sleep. Trudy's asleep. I can hear her. I think I am
going to cry again."
Elliott sat up. What should she do? What would Aunt Jessica do?
"Come in here and cry on me."
Priscilla climbed in between the sheets and Elliott put both arms
around the little girl. Priscilla snuggled close.
"I tried to think--the way you said, but I can't. _Is_ Sidney--"
sniffle--"going to die--" sniffle--"like Ted Gordon?"
"No," said Elliott, who a minute ago had been afraid of the very same
thing. "No, I am perfectly positive he is going to get well."
Just saying the words seemed to help, somehow.
Priscilla snuggled closer. "You're awful comforting. A person gets
scared at night."
"A person does, indeed."
"Not so much when you've got company," said Priscilla.
The warmth of the little body in her arms struck through to Elliott's
own shivering heart. "Not half so much when you've got company," she
acknowledged.