THE
BLISSYLVANIA POST-OFFICE.
BY
MARION AMES TAGGART.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO:
BENZIGER BROTHERS,
PUBLISHERS OF BENZIGER'S MAGAZINE
Copyright, 1897, by Benziger Brothers.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. How it Began, 5
II. The Honorary Member, 18
III. A Narrow Escape, 32
IV. The Mysterious Tenant, 46
V. The Invasion of the Amazons, 57
VI. Further Acquaintance, 69
VII. A New Member, 82
VIII. Margery's Plan, 96
IX. One Honorary Member to the Other Honorary
Member, 104
X. A Picnic, 118
XI. A Wedding, 132
XII. The End of the Year and of the Post-Office,143
THE BLISSYLVANIA POST-OFFICE.
CHAPTER I.
HOW IT BEGAN.
IT was wonderful that any one could have a bright idea on
such a dark day. It had rained in torrents all of the night before and
throughout the forenoon, and now that the rain had ceased, the sodden
earth sent up clouds of steaming dampness to mingle with the thick fog
descending, and they blended together like two gray ghosts of pleasant
weather. The lilacs drooped in discouragement, and a draggle-tailed
robin sat with hanging wings on the fence, uttering an occasional
chirp of protest in such vehement disgust that every time he made the
remark it tilted him forward, and agitated him to the tip of his tail.
A slender boy lay on the hearth-rug in the light of the fire kindled
to dry the dampness, the warmth of which was grateful, although it
was almost June. He was recklessly pulling a stitch that was broken in
the knee of his stocking all the way down to the ankle, and the gloomy
expression of his face indicated a melancholy pleasure in the knowledge
that he had no business to do this.
Tommy Traddles, the striped cat, sat before a plump little girl on the
floor, whose sunny face no amount of bad weather could cloud, watching
the hearth-brush in her hand, which she occasionally whisked to and fro
for his amusement, and making uncatlike cooings in his throat if she
forgot him for too long. Jack Hildreth, the boy on the rug, said he was
a cat with a canary-bird attachment.
On the edge of a chair opposite the cheery little girl on the floor sat
a long-limbed, dark-eyed girl, holding her gypsy face in her hands, her
elbows on her knees, listlessly watching Amy Tracy and the cat. They
were spending the afternoon with Margaret Gresham, Jack's cousin, who
was kept in the house by a cold, and whose tiny figure was curled up
in a big leather chair near the fire, and her pale face and big, eager
gray eyes looked out from its brown depths in sharp contrast.
"I'm going to ask St. Anthony to find the sun," announced the
gypsy-like girl suddenly. She spoke through her closed teeth, not
taking the trouble to remove her hands from her face.
"Not a bad idea, Trix," said Jack, laughing.
But their hostess looked shocked. "Why, Beatrice Lane, you shouldn't
say that, it isn't right," she protested.
"Well, I'm sure it seems lost enough," retorted Trix.
"Nothing's lost when you know where it is," said Jack.
"I don't know where the sun is, except that it's somewhere in the sky,"
said Trix.
"It's just about there," said Jack, sitting up to point out of the
window, and becoming more cheerful in the chance to show off to the
girls. "It's sliding right down to the zenith."
"Horizon, Jack," interrupted Margery, laughing.
"Well, horizon, then; it doesn't matter," Jack said, annoyed. "It's
getting ready to slip down to China, and it's more than ninety-five
millions of miles away."
"Good boy!" said Trix mockingly. "How much he knows! I don't care about
the sun anyway, it's too late for it to shine to-day; but if I don't
find something to do I'll eat that cat up, Amy."
Amy cried out in pretended fear, and gathered Tommy Traddles to her
heart, but he remonstrated vigorously, and struggling free sat down in
precisely the same spot, wrapping his tail around him, and looking as
if he had never been disturbed.
"I was thinking," began Margery slowly, "of something nice."
"Charlotte Russe?" asked Jack, knowing Margery's weakness.
"Cats?" suggested Amy, alluding to another.
"Sister Aloysia?" inquired Beatrice, for Margery was devoted to her
teacher, and, in school phrase, "had a favorite nun."
"It's something nice for us to do," replied Margery, with much dignity,
"and it would not be for a day, but for always, and if you make fun of
me I'll not tell you."
"All right, Margery, we won't, and do tell quick," said Trix.
"I wasn't really making fun of you, and I'm dying to hear," said Amy.
"Tell ahead, Margery; hurry up," added Jack.
Thus urged, Margery sat up, putting down her feet, upon which she had
been sitting, and smoothing her skirt to do honor to what she had to
reveal.
"I was thinking," she began, "that we might form a club, we four."
"Like the A. G. L.?" asked Amy.
They had banded themselves into an Anti-Gum League, and wore its badge,
designed and made by Jack, which consisted of a piece of gum stuck on
a bent pin on the centre of a wooden disk, and preceded by the word
"No," in large red letters, which of course made the badge read: "No
Gum." The only trouble was that the gum frequently fell off, and had to
be renewed, and it required chewing in order to mould it soft enough
for the pin to enter. The duty of preparing the gum for the badges was
unanimously appointed to Jack, and honor forbade his chewing longer
than the flavor lasted, which was an agreeable circumstance, and one
that made him entertain secret doubts as to his being a worthy member
of the league.
"No, not like the A. G. L.," said Margery, replying to Amy's question.
"The A. G. L. has a noble end, for chewing gum is a bad habit; but this
would be more of a club, and only be for fun, though I think it would
improve us."
"Oh, what is it anyway?" cried Trix impatiently.
"There's a big tree down in the orchard," said Margery, "and it's
hollow. I thought we might each take a character, and use that name for
our letters, and Jack could fix up a box with partitions in it, and we
could put it in the hollow tree, and we'd have----"
"A post-office!" cried Trix, jumping up in great excitement, her dark
eyes snapping. "Margery, it's a great idea."
"Hurrah for Margery!" cried Jack.
"It's splendid. Oh, Margery, you are so clever!" cried Amy, scrambling
up rapidly, to Tommy Traddles' great disgust.
"When you do think, Margery, you think," said Trix, pulling Margery out
of her chair. "Come on," and holding Margery's slender little hands
in her strong brown ones, she pranced around the room in a triumphal
dance, followed by both the others, while Tommy Traddles retreated
under the sofa, whence he peered out at the performance with dilated
eyes.
He withdrew his head quickly as the four children fell breathless and
laughing on the sofa to discuss and mature Margery's brilliant plan.
"What did you mean about names?" asked Jack. "You may write poetry,
Margery, but you sometimes get mixed in talking prose."
"I mean this," began Margery. "Let's each take some character or name,
and let's write to each other by these names instead of our own; it
would be more fun. I'd like to be Mary Queen of Scots."
"Oh, I'll be Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert!" cried Jack, who in his
twelfth year was beginning to taste the joy Sir Walter has to give
an imaginative child, and revelled in constantly repeated reading of
"Ivanhoe."
"I'll be Anthony Wayne, because I'd love to ride down the steps,"
said Trix enthusiastically; "or Lafayette, or Light Horse Harry, or
Napoleon."
"O Trix, you can't be a man," expostulated Margery.
"Yes, I can. I'd like to know why you can't make believe the whole
thing just as well as part of it. I'm as much like a man as you're
like Mary Queen of Scots, or Jack is like Sir Whatever-his-name."
"Oh, but----" began Margery, with the anxious line appearing between
her eyes that always came there when she was worried.
"Now I think that it would be a bother to take any of these
characters," said Amy, the peacemaker. "You know, all the letters would
have to fit the parts, or they'd be silly, and I never could keep up
writing _thee_ and _thou_, and _wot ye_, instead of do you know, and
all that kind of words. You'd have to write the way Shakespeare did,
and I can't."
"Can't you? That's queer," remarked Margery, and the rest shouted.
"No, I can't," Amy continued, quite unconscious of a joke. "I'd like to
be the good Lady Godiva myself, who saved her people from starving, but
I couldn't keep it up."
"Couldn't you?" asked the others, and laughed again.
"No, I couldn't," reiterated Amy, who was the practical little woman of
the party. "I say we just take names, and not characters."
"Well," assented Margery reluctantly, "I'll be the Lady Griselda of
the Castle of the Lonely Lake."
"My goodness, Margery; no wonder you write poetry!" exclaimed Beatrice.
"I'll be----" but she got no farther.
"Now, Trix, please, _please_ don't be a boy," cried Margery.
"Well, I think it's mean; I've wanted to be a boy all my life, and you
won't even let me play one," grumbled Trix. "But I'll be a daring,
splendid girl, then. Couldn't we take a name out of a book?"
"Yes; don't you think so, Amy?"
"I don't see why not," said Amy.
"Then I'll be Catharine Seyton, who barred the door with her arm when
the mean Lady of Lochleven tried to break through into the queen's
chamber. I heard my brothers reading about it," cried Trix.
"It's in 'The Abbot,' by Scott," said Jack, glad to show his
acquaintance with literature, which Trix evidently considered grown up.
"I'll take Sir Harry Hotspur," he added.
"Isn't that history?" asked Margery doubtfully.
"No, not exactly," replied Jack. "It's Shakespeare, too; I'll take only
his part." Which, though not very clear, was satisfactory.
"I'm going to be Mrs. Peace Plenty, a philanthropist," announced Amy,
convulsing the rest.
"P. P. P.," gasped Margery, emerging from a sofa pillow with her
usually pale face crimson. "O Amy, you _are_ so funny, and you never
just seem to mean to be."
"Well, it's not so funny as that," said Amy, laughing good-naturedly.
"What is a philanthropist, Jack?" asked Trix. "How did you know, Amy?"
"It's a charitable person," said Jack.
"It's a person who loves human beings," said Amy at the same time. "I
know, because papa said if I didn't mind my p's and q's I'd grow up to
be one, and get on committees; so I asked him what it was, and when he
told me I didn't think it would be so bad to be one."
"Well, now we have settled the names. Do you think you could make the
box, Jack?" asked Margery.
"Of course I can," said Jack, looking with loving condescension at
the anxiously puckered brow of his little cousin, who, though a year
younger than he, was cleverer, yet made such mistakes as this question
implied; probably because she was only a girl.
"I'll make four divisions in it, and maybe I'll paint it."
"And make a drop-box, and nail it outside the tree for us to drop
letters in with a slit in the top," said Trix.
"Just as you like, Trix," remarked Jack solemnly. "I for one don't mean
to write letters with slits in the top. I'll make a slit in the top of
the box, though, if you like."
"Don't be a goose, Jack," replied Trix, with dignity. "You know I meant
that."
"We ought to have a name for our club," said Amy.
"Yes; I've been thinking of that underneath all the time we were
talking," said Margery.
Jack stooped down and peeped under the sofa.
"I don't see how you could have thought _underneath_, Margery," he
said; "I see only Tommy Traddles there."
"Now, Jack, don't be funny," said Margery, "and look out for smartness.
You know aunty says you are troubled with smartness sometimes. I meant
that underneath all we were saying I kept thinking of our name."
"Would Post-Office Club do?" asked Amy.
"I know; call it the Happy Thought Club," cried Trix, "because it was
a lovely thing for Margery to think of, and when we were half dead for
something to do, too. And we can have it a secret from all the other
girls and boys, and if we had the letters P. O. on our badge they'd
know right off what they stood for. We'll have a badge, won't we?" she
added.
"Let's vote on the name," said Margery. "All in favor of calling it the
Happy Thought Club please signify it by saying aye."
Four voices instantly chorused "Aye."
"Contrary, no," said Margery, and paused. Deep silence reigned, and the
clock on the mantelpiece struck once.
"I propose we have for a badge a blue ribbon, and get mamma to paint an
envelope on it, with the initials of the club over it. Would that be
nice?" asked Margery.
"Lovely; and now I must go, because that was half-past five that
struck," said Trix, jumping up.
"So must I," echoed Amy.
They hastily bundled themselves into their waterproofs, and Amy was
stamping her foot into her right rubber, when she paused with the
other rubber suspended in the air, on the way to her left foot.
"Why, there's Miss Isabel; we never thought of her!" she cried.
"Sure enough." "That's so." "Oh, our dear Miss Isabel," cried Trix and
Jack and Margery together.
"You'll have to make five divisions in the box, Jack," said Margery
decidedly, "for she's got to be an honorary member."