There was a pattering footfall on the piazza, and Miss Ellen Harding
went to look out. She saw a little figure standing there, among the
rosebuds,--not one of the neighbors’ children, but a bonny little
lassie, with curls of spun gold, and great, fearless brown eyes, and
cheeks and lips as bright as the red roses on the climbing rosebush
beside her.
A little morsel, not more than five years old, she was; with a white
dress, and a broad scarlet sash, and a hat which she swung in her
fingers by its scarlet strings. She looked so bright and vivid, and she
was such an unexpected vision in that place, that it almost seemed as
if one of the poppies in the yard beyond had turned into a little girl,
and come up the steps.
“Did you want me?” Miss Harding asked, going up to the tiny blossom of
a creature.
“No, if you please.”
“My father, then, Dr. Harding,--were you sent for him?”
The child surveyed her, as if in gentle surprise at so much curiosity.
“No,” she answered, after a moment. “I am Rosebud; and I don’t want
anybody. Jane told me to come here, and she would follow presently.”
She said the words with a singular correctness and propriety, as if
they were a lesson which she had been taught.
“And who is Jane?” Miss Harding asked.
Evidently the process of training had gone no further. The child looked
puzzled and uncomfortable.
“Jane?” she answered hesitatingly. “Why, she is Jane.”
“Not your mamma?”
“No,--just Jane.”
“And what did Jane want here?”
“She told me to come, and she would follow presently,” said the child,
saying her little lesson over again.
Evidently there was nothing more to be got out of her; but Miss Harding
coaxed her to come into the cool parlor, and wait for Jane; and gave
her some strawberries and cream in a gayly painted china saucer, that
all children liked. Rosebud was no exception to the rest. When she had
finished her berries, she tapped on the saucer with her spoon.
“I will have it for mine, while I stay,--may I?” she said. “Not to take
away, but just to call, you know.”
“Surely,” said Miss Harding, more puzzled than ever. Had the sprite,
then, come to stay? Were there, by chance, fairies after all,--and
was this some changeling from out their ranks? She tried to entertain
her small guest; and she found her quite accessible to the charms
of pictures, and contented for an hour with a box of red and white
chessmen. Towards night her curiosity got the better of her courtesy;
and, looking from the window, she inquired,--
“I wonder where your Jane can be?”
“Presently; Jane said presently,” answered the child, with quiet
composure, and returned to the chessmen.
Miss Harding heard her father drive into the yard, and slipped out
to speak to him. She told her story, and the doctor gave a low, soft
whistle. It was a way he had when any thing surprised him.
“It looks to me,” said he, “as if Jane, whoever she may be, intended to
make us a present of Miss Rosebud. Well, we must make the small person
comfortable to-night, and to-morrow we will see what to do with her.”
The small person was easily made comfortable. She ate plenty of
bread-and-milk for her supper, and more strawberries; and when it was
over, she went round and stood beside the doctor.
“I think you are a dood man,” she said, with the quaint gravity which
characterized all her utterances. “I should like to sit with you.”
The doctor lifted her to his knee, and she laid her little golden head
against his coat. There was a soft place under that coat, as many a
sick and poor person in the town knew very well. I think the little
golden head hit the soft place. He stroked the shining curls very
tenderly. Then he asked,--
“What makes you think I’m a ‘dood’ man, Pussy-cat?”
“My name is not Pussy-cat,--I am Rosebud,” she replied gravely; “and I
think you are dood because you look so, out of your eyes.”
The little morsel spoke most of her words with singular clearness and
propriety. It was only when a “g” came in that she substituted a “d”
for it, and went on her way rejoicing.
As the doctor held her, the soft place under his coat grew very soft
indeed. A little girl had been his last legacy from his dying wife; and
she had grown to be about as large as Rosebud, and then had gone home
to her mother. It almost seemed to him as if she had come back again;
and it was her head beneath which his heart was beating. He beckoned to
his daughter.
“Have you some of Aggie’s things?” he asked. “This child must be made
comfortable, and she ought to go to bed soon.”
“No,” the child said; “I’m doing to sit here till the moon comes. That
means ‘do to bed.’”
“Yes, I have them,” Miss Harding answered.
She had loved Aggie so well, that it seemed half sacrilege to put
her dead sister’s garments on this stranger child; and half it was a
pleasure that again she had a little girl to dress and cuddle. She went
out of the room. Soon she came running back, and called her father.
“O, come here! I found this in the hall. It is a great basket full of
all sorts of clothes, and it is marked ‘For Rosebud.’ See,--here is
every thing a child needs.”
The doctor had set the little girl down, but she was still clinging to
his hand.
“I think,” he said, “that Jane has been here, and that she does not
mean to take away our Rosebud.”