MORE PREPARATIONS.
Thee was nothing that vain little Ruby enjoyed more than a sense of
importance, and so she was quite happy for the next few days. All her
little friends looked upon her with wonder when they heard that she was
going away to boarding-school, and Ruby's announcement to them that she
was going to take a trunk added to the importance of the occasion quite
as much as she had hoped it would.
There was only a week in which to make all preparations for her going,
so you can imagine that they were very busy days. Miss Abigail Hart,
the dressmaker who made every one's clothes, when they were not made by
people themselves, came to the house every day, and sewed all day long,
and Aunt Emma helped her most of the time. If it had not been for the
thoughts of the trunk, Ruby would have found some of these days very
tiresome. She had to be always ready in case Miss Hart should want to
try on any of her dresses, so she could not go very far away from the
house, and she found Miss Hart's dressmaking very different from her
mother's dressmaking.
Miss Abigail Hart was tall and thin, and as Ruby and many other little
girls said, had quite forgotten all about the time when she was a
little girl; so when she went to houses to sew, the children usually
tried to keep out of her way as much as possible. Her hands were very
cold, whether it was summer or winter, and she never liked it if any
one whom she was fitting jumped about when her cold fingers touched
one's neck. She wore long scissors, tied by a ribbon to her waist, and
these scissors were always cold; and it was not at all a pleasant
operation to have the waist of a dress fitted, and have Miss Abigail's
cold fingers, and her still colder scissors creeping about one's neck.
"If you don't keep still it will not be my fault if you get a cut,"
Miss Abigail would say, and I am not sure but that some of the little
girls were afraid that their very heads might be snipped off by a slip
of those shining blades, if they wriggled about when the necks of their
dresses were being trimmed down.
Miss Abigail was very slow, so it took a long time to go through this
operation, and the worst part of it was that one fitting never was
sufficient. At least twice, and sometimes three times she would repeat
it, and there were plenty of Ruby's friends who had said that not for
all the new dresses in the world would they want to have Miss Abigail
fit them. They would rather have but one dress and have that dress
made by their mothers, if they had to choose between that and those
cold fingers and sharp scissors.
It was very pleasant to go to the store with Aunt Emma, and help choose
the pretty calicoes and delaines which were to be made into dresses and
help fill the little trunk. Ruby never felt more important than when
she was perched upon the high stool before the counter and had four new
dresses at once. She fancied that the store-keeper was more respectful
in his tone than he usually was when he addressed little girls, and
that he was much impressed by the fact that Aunt Emma let her select
the pattern herself instead of choosing for her.
The calicoes were very pretty. One was covered with little rosebuds
upon a cream-tinted ground, and the other had little dark-blue moons
upon a light-blue ground. The delaines were brown and blue; and then
besides these dresses, Ruby's best cashmere was to be let down, and
have the sleeves lengthened, so that it would still be nice for a best
dress.
Ruby had never had so many new dresses all at once in her life before,
and she felt very important when her papa brought them home in the
buggy, and they were all spread out before Miss Abigail.
Miss Abigail looked at them very wisely, with her head a little upon
one side. She rubbed them between her fingers, wondered whether they
would wash well, and finally looked at Ruby, and said,--
"I trust you are a very thankful little girl for all the mercies you
have. So you know that there are some poor little children who have
but rags to wear?"
"Yes 'm," said Ruby, meekly.
"Then don't you think you ought to appreciate all the blessings that
have been bestowed upon you?"
"Yes 'm," Ruby replied again.
"Then you must try to be an obedient, gentle child, and do as you are
bid in everything."
"Yes 'm," said Ruby, wishing in the bottom of her heart that the
dresses were all made.
She had never had very much to do with Miss Abigail herself, although
she had often seen her, and two or three times she had spent a day at
the house, helping Mrs. Harper make one of her own dresses. Upon those
occasions, however, Ruby had spent the day with Ruthy, and so she had
only been with Miss Abigail a little while in the morning, and had not
had much to say to her.
"If Miss Abigail was my mamma, I would not stay in the same house with
her," Ruby said to herself. "I guess that is why she has n't any
little girls,--because she don't know how to make them happy. I don't
want to be told all the time about being good, I guess."
But Ruby had to listen to a great many lectures, whether she liked them
or not, in the next few days. Miss Abigail came and stayed with them
for all the rest of the week, and as she believed in little girls being
made useful, Ruby had to spend a good deal of time in picking out
bastings, and doing other little things for Miss Abigail.
"Oh, dear, I have n't done one single thing since I can remember," Ruby
said, impatiently, to Ruthy one day when her little friend came over to
see her; "I have n't done one single thing but pick out bastings and
have Miss Abigail telling me how good I ought to be 'cause I have so
many new dresses. I do wish she was all done and had gone away."
"But then you will go away, too, you know," Ruthy suggested.
"I wish I would n't; I wish I was going to stay here for a week after
she went," Ruby answered. "I think Aunt Emma might stop her, I do so."
"How do you mean?" asked Ruthy.
"Well, I know what I would do," said Ruby. "I would say to her this
way--" and Ruby held her head very high, and tried to look exceedingly
dignified--"I should say, 'Miss Abigail, if you will please tend to
making Ruby's dresses, I will tend to her behavior.'"
Ruthy looked rather shocked.
"I am afraid that would make Miss Abigail feel dreadfully bad, to have
your auntie say such a thing," she said. "I think Miss Abigail is real
nice, I truly do. She saves pretty pieces of calico for my patch-work,
and once she gave me a sash for my doll; don't you remember it?--that
blue one, with a little rose bud in the middle."
"Well, I don't like her," and Ruby shook her shoulders. "And I don't
think it's nice in you to like her, when she makes me perfectly
miserable. How would you like it if every time you wanted to do
anything you heard her calling you, and had to go in and be fitted and
fitted. She holds pins in her mouth, too, a whole row of them, and
mamma never lets me do that, so Miss Abigail ought not to, and I just
think I will tell her so. She has a whole row of them, just as long as
her mouth is wide, and they bristle straight out when she talks. Just
suppose she should drop some down my neck when she is talking. They
would stick in to me, and hurt me like everything before I could get
them out. I guess I would n't like that, would I? And if you had to
stand just hours and hours, and have her cold fingers poking around
your neck, and those great sharp scissors going snip, snip all around
your neck, just where they would cut great pieces out if you dared
move, I don't believe you would like that yourself, Ruthy Warren, even
if she did give you things for your doll."
"No, I don't s'pose I would like it any better than you do," assented
Ruthy, who was determined not to quarrel with her little friend, when
they were so soon to be separated.
"Ruby, Miss Abigail wants you," called Aunt Emma.
Ruby made a wry face.
"There she is again," she exclaimed. "It's just the way the whole
livelong time. I think if she knew how to make dresses, she ought not
to have to fit so much. If I fitted my doll so often when I made her a
dress, I guess her head would fall off. It would get shaky anyway,
with so much fussing. Wait till I come back, Ruthy, and then we will
play."
Miss Abigail was waiting to fit Ruby's blue delaine, and it looked so
pretty that Ruby forgot how unwilling she had been to come in and have
it fitted.
She showed her pleasure in it so plainly that good Miss Abigail was
afraid that the little girl was in danger of becoming vain, and thought
it best to warn her against this state of mind.
"I am afraid it is n't the best thing for you, Ruby Warren, to have so
many new clothes all at once," she said, with the row of pins waving up
and down, as she spoke through her teeth, which she did not open when
she spoke, lest the pins should fall out. "If any one thinks more of
clothes than they should, then dress is a snare and a temptation to
them, and I am much afraid that that is what it is going to be to you.
Better for you to have only one dress to your back than to put clothes
in the wrong place in your mind, and let them make you vain and
conceited. What are clothes, anyway? There is n't any thing to be so
proud of in them. Now this nice wool delaine was once growing on a
sheep's back. Do you suppose that sheep was vain because it was
covered with wool? No, it never thought anything about it. And so you
see that you ought n't to be proud of it either."
"I think new dresses are very nice," said Ruby, speaking cautiously,
lest she should inadvertently turn her head, and the sharp points of
the scissors should run into her neck.
Miss Abigail felt that she must say still more, for it was evident that
Ruby was putting too much value upon her dress.
"But it is n't new," she said.
"Oh, Miss Abigail, it truly is," exclaimed Ruby, forgetting herself and
turning her head so suddenly that if the scissors had been in the right
place, the points would surely have run into her. Fortunately, Miss
Abigail had stopped to see how the neck looked, and her scissors were
hanging by her side for a moment. "Why, of course, it is new. I went
with Aunt Emma to the store, and helped buy it my very own self, so I
know it is brand-new. Why, I should think you could tell it is new, it
is so pretty and bright, and there is n't one single teenty tonty
wrinkle in it."
"Yes, it is new to you," Miss Abigail answered solemnly. "But when you
think about the matter, Ruby Harper, you know that the sheep wore it
first, and you only have it second-hand, as you might say. Now, I
should think a little girl was very silly that thought herself better
than any one else, and let her thoughts rest on her clothes because she
wore a sheep's old suit of wool made up in a little different way.
Shall I tell you some verses that my mother made me learn when I was a
little girl, because I was proud of a new pelisse?"
"Yes 'm," said Ruby, meekly, taking a great deal of pleasure in the
thought that when Miss Abigail was a little girl she had been naughty
sometimes, and had had to learn verses as a punishment.
"'How proud we are, how fond to show
Our clothes, and call them rich and new,
When the poor sheep and silk-worm wore
That very clothing long before.
"'The tulip and the butterfly
Appear in gayer coats than I;
Let me be dressed fine as I will,
Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still.'"
"I don't think worms look nicer than I do," said Ruby, not very
politely, when Miss Abigail had finished. "And I am very sorry for
you, Miss Abigail, if you had to learn such ugly verses. If you had
had a mamma like mine you would have had a better time, I think."
Miss Abigail looked severely over her brass-bowed spectacles at Ruby,
almost too shocked to speak for a moment.
"I am sure, I don't know what your mother would say, Ruby Harper, if
she heard you talking that way. I am sure she would think that you
were no credit to her bringing-up. You have a good mother, one of the
best mothers that ever lived, and your father is such a good man, too,
that I am sure I don't see where you get your pert ways from. I was a
happy child, because I was, in the main, a good child, and no one ever
had a better mother than mine; and I have tried to follow the way in
which I was brought up, if I do say it myself. Those were counted to
be very pretty verses when I was a child, and I don't know but they
were better than to-day. At any rate, in my day, children were taught
to have a little respect for their elders, and there are very few that
do that now. There were some other verses that I was going to tell a
good deal of the nonsense that children learn you, but if that is your
opinion of those I did tell you, there is no use in my taking so much
trouble."
Miss Abigail looked sorrowful as well as vexed, and Ruby wished that
she had not told her what she thought of the verses.
"I suppose she thinks they are nice," she said to herself; "and mamma
would be sorry if she thought I had been rude to Miss Abigail."
Ruby was going away from her mother so soon that her conscience was
more tender than usual, and she did not want to do what she knew her
mother would not like.
"Please tell me the other verses, Miss Abigail," she said. "I did not
know you liked those other verses, or I would not have called them
ugly."
"I am glad you did not mean to be a rude child," said Miss Abigail,
pleased by Ruby's apology. "Your mother takes so much pains with you
that it would be a pity for you not to be a good child. Yes, I will
tell you the others, and while I am repeating them you can sit down
upon this little ottoman, and pick out the bastings in this sleeve."
While Ruby pulled the basting-thread out, and wound it on a spool as
Miss Abigail had taught her, half wishing that she had not said
anything about the other verses, since she might now have been out at
play with Ruthy, Miss Abigail repeated some more of the verses she had
learned when she, too, was a little girl like Ruby:--
"'Come, come, Mister Peacock, you must not be proud,
Although you can boast such a train;
For many a bird, far more highly endowed,
Is not half so conceited nor vain.
Let me tell you, gay bird, that a suit of fine clothes
Is a sorry distinction at most,
And seldom much valued, excepting by those
Who only such graces can boast.
The nightingale certainly wears a plain coat,
But she cheers and delights with her song;
While you, though so vain, cannot utter a note,
To please by the use of your tongue.
The hawk cannot boast of a plumage so gay,
But piercing and clear is her eye;
And while you are strutting about all the day,
She gallantly soars in the sky.
The dove may be clad in a plainer attire,
But she is not selfish and cold;
And her love and affection more pleasure impart
Than all your fine purple and gold.
So you see, Mister Peacock, you must not be proud,
Although you can boast such a train;
For many a bird is more highly endowed,
And not half so conceited and vain.'"
"I think I like that ever so much better," said Ruby, jumping up as
Miss Abigail finished, and handing back the sleeve, from which she had
pulled all the basting-threads.
"Now can I go over to Ruthy's, Miss Abigail? Aunt Emma told me that I
must ask you before I went away anywhere, for fear you would want me."
"No, I shall not want you any more until nearly tea-time," Miss Abigail
answered, as she scrutinized the sleeve to see whether Ruby had left
any bastings in it. "Now remember what I have told you, Ruby, child,
about setting your heart upon your fine clothes. Clothes do not make
people, and if you are not a well-behaved child, polite and respectful
to your betters, it will not make any difference to any one how well
you may be dressed."
"Yes 'm," Ruby answered, as she ran away to find Ruthy, thinking that
little girls in Miss Abigail's time must have been very different from
the little girls she knew, and wondering whether Miss Abigail looked as
tall and thin when she was a little girl as she did now, and whether
she used to be just as proper and precise.
It was so funny to think of Miss Abigail as a little girl that Ruby
laughed aloud at the thought, as she looked for her little friend. She
was quite sure of one thing: if she had been a little girl when Miss
Abigail was a little girl, she would not have chosen her for a friend.
Ruthy was the only little girl in all the world that she could wish to
have always for a friend, for who else would be always willing to give
up her own way, and yield so patiently to impetuous little Ruby in
everything.