THE HONORARY MEMBER.
THE Miss Isabel for whom a fifth box in the post-office would
be necessary lived in a charming old house, which had been built
when Washington was a little boy. It had a large, old-time garden,
deliciously fragrant of box, syringas, and spicy border pinks, which
the children thought the utmost perfection of all that a garden should
be, and wherein it was their delight to wander. Miss Isabel was the
youngest and only surviving member of a merry band of brothers and
sisters, and she seemed too small to live alone in the great house,
with its big, empty rooms filled with the saddest and only real
ghosts--the memory of those who had occupied them, the echo of feet
which had ceased to walk the earth, and voices silenced by the green
grass pressing on the lips that death had sealed; and had she been
other than Miss Isabel she would have been melancholy; but being Miss
Isabel she was as sunny as the day was long. Her gentle life was too
full of care for others' sorrows to find time to think of her own,
and she was too loving a little soul to ever lack love. The children
worshipped her; she was their playmate, counsellor, and ideal. They
had the vaguest ideas as to her age, supposing that she must be pretty
old, in spite of the fact of her playing with them almost like one of
themselves, for they could not remember her other than she was then;
but one does not have to live long in order to be always grown up in
the memory of little persons of eleven years and less, and in truth
Miss Isabel was still young.
The children understood that at some time in her life Miss Isabel had
not expected to live alone in the big homestead, but had looked forward
to a newer home of her own, and that at the last moment something had
happened to prevent her marriage.
Their elders said Miss Isabel had had "a disappointment," and the
children, especially Margery, looked at her with pitying wonder,
speculating on how it felt to have such a disappointment that it was
spoken of as if written with a big D, and feeling, judging from their
own sensations when something failed to which they were looking
forward, that it must be very dreadful.
It cleared off warm and beautiful after the rain, and in the afternoon
the flowers and grass looked a week farther advanced than before the
storm, and the discouraged robin darted at the worms in the soft
earth with jubilant chirps, and retired to the elm to sing and swing
in ecstasy. As soon as school was over the children started for Miss
Isabel's. She met them on the broad door-stone, looking, in her soft
pink muslin, like an apple-blossom that had drifted there.
"Oh, how pretty you are!" cried Trix, giving her an enthusiastic and
damaging hug, to Margery's mute amazement. It was a perpetual wonder to
her how the others could fondle Miss Isabel so recklessly. If Margery
threw her arms around her or kissed her, it was when she had her all
to herself, and though she laid deep schemes to walk near her, and sit
where she could see her, and often stroked her gown softly on the sly,
she never flew to her as Trix and Amy did. She was sometimes afraid
that Miss Isabel would think that the others loved her more than she,
but she need not have feared; Miss Isabel understood Margery.
"We've come to tell you the nicest thing." "We've made you an honorary
member." "Margery's thought of something fine." "We're going to have a
club," began all four at once.
"Dear me!" cried Miss Isabel, laughing; "I shall never be able to
listen to four at one time. Even a quadruped couldn't do that, you
know, because he has four legs, but not four ears."
"Jack, you tell," said Trix generously, feeling it proper to resign the
glory to the man of the party.
"Well, you know, Miss Isabel," Jack said willingly, "it's Margery's
scheme, and we thought it so good we're going to call it the Happy
Thought Club. We're going to have a post-office in Uncle Gresham's
orchard."
"With five boxes, one for you," put in Amy, who had been hopping about
wildly, first on one foot and then on the other, longing to speak.
"Yes, and we're each going to take a name and write letters to one
another, and have a badge, and--and--oh, everything," concluded Jack,
waving his hands, as if to include the universe.
"And you're to be in it, you're to be in it!" cried Trix and Amy,
hugging Miss Isabel at the same time.
"Of course she's in it; it wouldn't be much if she weren't," said Jack.
"What do you think of it; you haven't said a word?" asked Margery
anxiously.
"But that was owing to circumstances over which I have no control,"
laughed Miss Isabel. "Here are you chattering like four of the
blackbirds baked in the pie, with the other twenty flown away, and how
could I say anything? I think it is a splendumphant plan, and that is a
portmanteau word, such as Humpty Dumpty taught Alice in Looking-Glass
Land, and it means splendid and triumphant. I am deeply sensible of the
honor you do me, ladies and gentleman, in inviting me to join the club,
and I accept with joy and gratitude." And Miss Isabel took her pink
skirts in each hand, and dropped them a real dancing-school courtesy.
"Might one ask what names you have chosen?" she said.
"We were going to be people in history," said Margery. "I was going
to be Mary Queen of Scots, and Trix wanted to be Anthony Wayne, or
Lafayette, or Napoleon, or something else."
"Light Horse Harry," said Trix.
"Yes; but Amy thought it would be a bother to keep up historical ways
of talking--I mean old-fashioned ways--so we decided to take a name,
and not a character; so now Jack is Sir Harry Hotspur, and Trix is
Catharine Seyton, and I am the Lady Griselda of the Castle of the
Lonely Lake, and Amy is Mrs. Peace Plenty, a philanthropist."
"Well done, Amy!" cried Miss Isabel, laughing heartily. "All but yours
are just the names that I might have guessed they would have taken, and
yet yours is, perhaps, the most suitable of all."
"What will you take, Miss Isabel?" asked Jack.
"Why, I can't answer such an important question without thought," said
Miss Isabel. "Can you suggest a name?"
"I never could think of a name nice enough for you," said Amy lovingly.
"I think it ought to be something like Good Fairy," said Trix, "only
that sounds silly."
The color had been mounting to Margery's dark hair, and Jack said:
"Margery's thought of something. Let's have it, Peggy."
"I was thinking of Miss Isabel's name after I went to bed last night,"
the little girl said slowly. "I knew what it ought to mean, but you
couldn't make it sound like a name in English, so I asked papa this
morning if you could have any words for it in any other language that
would sound like a name, and he told me some. And I think," she said,
very low, "if Miss Isabel will, it would be nice for her to be Lady
Alma Cara."
Miss Isabel gave Margery such a look that her eyes filled with happy
tears.
"I would never have dared take such a lovely name," Miss Isabel said,
"but if my dear little Margery will give me it, I shall be proud to
have it."
"What does it mean?" asked Trix.
"I think Dearest Darling is about what it would be in English," said
Miss Isabel.
"That's you." "That's just the name." "Indeed, you are our dearest
darling," said Jack and Trix and Amy. But Margery said nothing, feeling
all warm and cosey inside, for she had named Miss Isabel, and her
loving look had thanked her better than words.
"Now, how about a postmark?" asked Miss Isabel.
"We never thought of that," said the children.
"Well, it seems to me that since we have all taken names, it would
be nice to play that our post-office was in some town with a pretty
title, and not postmark our letters with the real name of the town like
ordinary letters," said Miss Isabel.
"But how can we postmark at all?" asked Jack.
"If you don't mind, I will have a stamp made," said Miss Isabel, "and
the postmaster or postmistress can have an ink pad, and stamp each
envelope, like the real office."
"Oh, isn't that fine," "Oh, you blessed, little Miss Isabel!" "Didn't I
say she ought to be called the good fairy?" "You always think of _such_
things," chorused her visitors.
"Then that's settled," continued Miss Isabel. "Now, what shall we call
our town? If this is the Happy Thought Club, wouldn't it be a good idea
to call the place also something that meant happiness?"
"Joyberg," remarked Margery thoughtfully.
"That wouldn't do; sounds like June bug," said Jack decidedly.
"Happiness Centre," suggested Amy.
"That is good, but a trifle long, Amy," said Miss Isabel.
"How would Bliss-sylvania do?" asked Jack. "It's like Pennsylvania, you
know, and would mean _bliss_ and _woods_, and that would be saying that
we had fun in the tree in the orchard."
"I don't know," began Miss Isabel doubtfully, but was overwhelmed by a
chorus of applause from the three little girls, whom the name struck
favorably.
"But how could we get on with so many s's in the middle?" asked Amy;
"there are three right together."
"We could easily drop one, if that is the only drawback," said Miss
Isabel, "and write it B-l-i-s-s-y-l-v-a-n-i-a. That is often done in
spelling, and is called elision of a letter."
"It is lovely," cried all the little girls. "Jack, how did you come to
think of it?"
Jack tried to look modest.
"Oh, I don't know," he said. "It just popped into my head."
"Like all great thoughts," added Miss Isabel. "We will make you mayor
of Blissylvania, Jack. How about postage-stamps, girls and boy?"
"Oh, must we have stamps?" they asked.
"Why, certainly not, if you would rather not; but I thought it would be
more fun," said Miss Isabel. "I could paint some--say, a dozen for each
of us, and then they need not be cancelled, except with a pencil-mark
that would easily rub off, so they would last a long time."
"It would be much nicer, but you ought not to bother, Miss Isabel,"
said Amy.
"It is no trouble; I'll do them in the evening, and if Jack makes
the box, and you all do lots of things, I ought to do something.
An honorary member must be an honorable member," said Miss Isabel,
smiling. "May I ask you to go into the arbor in the garden while I ask
Mary to make some lemonade and bring it to us with cake, that we may
eat and drink to the health of the Happy Thought Club of Blissylvania?"
The children passed through the great hall, and out the door opposite
the front one, which admitted them to the beloved garden. On the way
they decided for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth time, at least, that
their Miss Isabel was the _dearest thing_, and that there was no one on
earth quite like her.
This decision had hardly been arrived at when she rejoined them.
"When shall we begin?" she asked, bending her head under the wistaria
vine drooping above the entrance to the arbor.
"I'm going to make the box to-night, and we thought we'd get the thing
up and everything ready to-morrow," answered Jack.
"Yes, and begin Monday," added Margery. "You see this is Friday, and we
shall have all day Saturday to get ready, and Sunday is a nice day to
write letters, for we all go to children's Mass at nine, you know, and
can write all day."
"Stopping to eat, I hope," laughed Miss Isabel.
"We are going to give you box number one, because--oh, because you are
_you_, and an honorary member," said Jack. "And Margery's to have two,
because she thought of the plan----"
"And you'll have to have three, because you named the town, Jack,"
interrupted Margery.
"And Trix and Amy will have four and five," resumed Jack.
But Miss Isabel, foreseeing possible danger, interposed.
"I wouldn't have any rewards of that kind," she said. "I'd have
Blissylvania a real republic, with every one equal, and draw lots for
numbers."
"So would I," echoed Margery heartily. "I don't want to be first
because I thought of the plan."
"I'd like to do something to celebrate the club," cried Trix, balancing
on one foot on the seat of the arbor. "I'd like to do something queer."
As she spoke the board, which was loose at one end, flew up and sent
Trix flying first upward, and then into a collapsed heap under the seat.
"You've done it!" shouted Jack, in ecstasy--"you've done the queer
thing!"
"O Trix, are you hurt?" cried the other two girls anxiously.
Trix's eyes were on a level with her knees, for she had fallen through,
doubled up like a jack-knife.
"I fell down," she remarked, vainly trying to extricate herself.
"I thought I heard something drop!" cried Jack, rolling over in spasms
of laughter, while Miss Isabel, laughing, too, at Beatrice's funny
appearance and remark, helped get her up.
"I think we'd better go home," said Amy. "When Trix gets crazy there's
no telling what will happen."
"It has happened," remarked Jack, looking down whence Trix had emerged.
"O jolly me!"--Jack's favorite and appropriate exclamation--"O jolly
me, Trix, you killed a mud worm. I knew you didn't like them, but you
needn't have sat on him so hard."
"O Jack, I didn't! O Jack, where?" cried Trix, running to look. "Oh,
yes, I did! Oh, please look and see if there's any of him on me!" she
cried, spinning round and round wildly, in a vain effort to see the
back of her own dress. "Oh, the dreadful thing!"
"See here, Trix," said Jack, "I thought you wanted to be a boy. No boy
would make a row about such a little thing as sitting on a mud worm."
Trix disdained to answer.
"We ought to go, it's getting late," she said instead. "Good-night,
Miss Isabel."
"Good-night, dears; good-night all of you," said Miss Isabel, kissing
each happy face twice over, except Jack's, who stood for the dignity of
his sex, and was not kissed, even by Miss Isabel--that is, unless no
one were looking. "You shall have the post-mark and ink-pad to-morrow
afternoon, and I am very grateful to you for letting me join you."
"Grateful! Pooh!" cried Jack, voicing the sentiments of them all. "We
couldn't get on without you."