Полная версияThe Staying Guest
“Well, you see, aunty, there was nothing else to do. If he’d got that letter he would have come, and I don’t want him to come, so I tore it up. Don’t write another.”
“I won’t,” said Miss Priscilla, in an ominous voice, and snapping her teeth together with a click.
But half an hour later the Primrose Hall carriage went down toward the village, and inside of it sat a very determined-looking old lady.
She went to Mr. Marks’s office and asked him to get his wagon and follow her home at once, and bring back the young miss and her luggage.
“That firebrand as I saw at your house this morning?” exclaimed the old countryman. “Wal, I guess she won’t be so easy brung.”
He chuckled to himself as he drove along the road behind Miss Priscilla Flint; and when they reached the farm-house, he waited decorously for further orders.
Then the hunt began. For Ladybird was nowhere to be found. Miss Priscilla called in vain. Then Miss Dorinda called. Then they went up and looked in the room which Ladybird had appropriated as her own.
Her three trunks stood there wide open and empty. Their contents were all around: on the bed, on the bureaus, on the chairs, and many of them on the floor. But no trace of the missing child.
Then Miss Priscilla called the servants.
“The little girl is hiding somewhere,” she explained, “and she must be found.”
“Yes, ’m,” Bridget said; and she began systematically to search the house from attic to cellar.
Matthew shook his old head doubtfully.
“I’m thinkin’ yez’ll niver find her,” he said. “She was a spookish piece, an’ the likes of her flies up chimbleys an’ out of windies an’ niver appears ag’in.”
Martha, much mystified, stared helplessly around the room, and in doing so noticed a bit of paper pinned to the pin-cushion.
She handed it to Miss Priscilla, who read:
Aunty, Aunty, Do not look for me;Until you send that man away, I’ll stay just where I be.“Oh,” groaned Miss Priscilla, “what can I do? We must find her!”
Miss Dorinda felt pretty sure, in her secret heart, that they wouldn’t find Ladybird until that strange being was ready to be found; but she continued looking about in her placid way, which did no good nor harm.
After an hour’s search, the case did seem hopeless, and Mr. Marks declared he couldn’t wait any longer; so Miss Priscilla reluctantly let him go away.
Two more hours passed; and then it was five o’clock, and still no sign from the missing child.
Although they hadn’t confessed it to each other, the Flint ladies were both a little scared.
Finally Miss Dorinda said:
“You don’t think she’d do anything rash, do you, sister?”
“From the little I’ve seen of her,” replied Miss Priscilla, “I should say that what she does is never anything but rash. However, I don’t think she has drowned herself in the brook, or jumped down the well, if that’s what you mean.”
That was what Miss Dorinda had meant, and somehow she was not very much reassured by her sister’s word.
They sat silent for a while; then Miss Dorinda, with a sudden impulse of determination such as she had never known in all her life, and, indeed, never experienced again, said:
“Priscilla, I think you are doing wrong; and you needn’t look at me like that. For once, I’m going to say what I think! This child has been sent to us, and in your secret heart you know it is our duty to keep her and do for her. The Bible says that those who neglect their own families are worse than infidels, and we have no right to turn away our kin. Your dislike of visitors has nothing to do with the matter. The child is not a visitor, as she says herself. And it makes no difference what kind of a child she is: she is our sister’s daughter, and we are bound by every law of humanity and decency to give her a home. If father were alive, do you suppose he would turn his orphan grandchild from his door? No; he would do his duty by his own: he would be just, if he could not be generous; and he would accept a responsibility that was rightly thrust upon him.”
Miss Priscilla looked at her sister in utter amazement. Dorinda had never spoken like this before, and it seemed as if the spirit of old Josiah Flint was manifesting itself in his daughter.
But if Miss Dorinda had acted in an unusual manner, Miss Priscilla proceeded to behave no less strangely.
At the close of her sister’s speech, she suddenly burst into tears; and the times in her life when Miss Priscilla Flint had cried were very few indeed.
Then the younger sister was frightened at what she had done, and tried to pacify the weeping lady.
“I know you’re right, Dorinda,” said Miss Priscilla, between her sobs; “I – I knew it all along, – and I suppose we shall have to keep her. Father would have wished it so, – and – and I wouldn’t mind it so much if she wouldn’t – wouldn’t leave the doors open.”
CHAPTER VI
UP A TREE
While the aunts were deciding upon Ladybird’s future, old Matthew was wandering down the garden path toward the orchard.
“She bates the Dutch, that child,” he said to himself. “Now I’ll wager me dinner that she’s hidin’ under a cabbage-leaf, or in some burrd’s nest.”
But if so, Ladybird made no sign, and old Matthew tramped up and down the orchard, peering anxiously about while the shadows deepened.
At last, as he stood beneath an old gnarled apple-tree, he heard what seemed to be a far-away crooning sort of song.
“Bird, bird,Ladybird;They called and called,But she never stirred.”“Arrah, miss! an’ are ye up there? Come down, ye rascally baby. Yer aunts is afther huntin’ high an’ low for ye. Do ye hear?”
“I hear and I hear, and I don’t heed,” came back the answering voice.
“Ye must heed,” said old Matthew, earnestly. “Yer aunts is clean daft. Come down, little lady, come down now.”
“Nixy,” said Ladybird, saucily. “You know very well, Matthew, that if I come down my aunts will send me away, and I won’t be sent away.”
“But ye can’t stay up in the tree forever, miss.”
“Well, I can stay for the present. I don’t think it’s going to rain to-night, do you, Matthew?”
“The saints presarve us, miss, how ye do talk! And are ye going to stay up there all night, now?”
“Of course I am; I’ve got to sleep somewhere. And say, Matthew, I’m awful hungry.”
“Are ye that, miss? Well, thin, come down to yer supper.”
“Nay, nay,” said Ladybird, laughing merrily; “but do you, O good Matthew, go to Bridget and beg for me a bit of supper.”
“Oh, miss, what dratted foolishness!”
“Foolish nothing! I am a captive princess; you are my henchman. Do you hear, Matthew? – henchman.”
“What’s that, miss?”
“Oh, well, it only means that you must do just as I tell you, because you love me.”
“Yes, miss.”
“So go to Bridget and ask her to put up some supper in a basket, and bring it out here to me.”
“And thin will ye come down and get it, miss?”
“Go at once, Matthew! Henchmen do as they’re told without question.”
“Yes, miss”; and half dazed, the old man shuffled away, followed by a ringing peal of Ladybird’s laughter.
He soon shuffled back again, bringing a fair-sized basket well filled with good things.
“Hello, henchman!” called Ladybird, “you’re mighty spry. What did you tell my aunt?”
“Nothing, miss,” said Matthew; “sure, ye gave me no message.”
“Good Matthew,” said Ladybird, approvingly. “It seems to me we shall be great friends, you and I. And now for my supper.”
“But I can’t climb up with it to ye,” said Matthew.
“Small need,” said Ladybird, who was already uncoiling a long bit of string.
Tying a bunch of twigs to the end of it, she carefully let the string down through the branches of the old apple-tree.
“Tie the basket on, Matthew,” she called, and the old man, mumbling, “It’s as much as me place is worth,” tied the basket firmly to the string and started it on its ascending course.
After safely passing several dangerous obstacles in the way of knots and twigs, the savory basket-load reached Ladybird, and she gleefully examined the contents.
“It seems to me,” she said reflectively, “that Bridget is a duck – a big fat duck.”
“She is that, miss,” said Matthew, agreeably.
The conversation flagged then, for Ladybird was busily engaged; and Matthew was bewildered, and quite uncertain what course to pursue. He could not see the child, though between the thickly leaved branches he could catch glimpses of her red frock at the very top of the tree.
Presently he heard her voice again.
“Matthew, there’s no use of your staying there; you’ll get rheumatism. You may go now. I shall stay here. There is no message for my aunts. Good night.”
“Oh, miss, don’t be foolish now; come down; let me take ye to the house.”
“Good night, Matthew.”
“Miss, yer aunts is that worrited!”
“Good night, Matthew.”
“Well, miss,” with a sigh of resignation, “it does be awful cold here after dark. Sha’n’t I bring ye a blanket jist?”
“Good night, Matthew.”
Baffled, the old man went back to the house. His emotions were rioting within him; his sense of duty was dulled. He well knew he ought to tell the Flint ladies where the child was; and yet she had said there was no message, and somehow the little witch’s word seemed like an iron law.
But when he reached the farm-house and found the Misses Flint pale with real anxiety concerning their niece, he felt intuitively that their feelings had changed, and so he said:
“Well, yes, ma’am; I do know where she is.”
“Oh, Matthew, where?” cried Miss Priscilla, mistaking the cause of his hesitation; and Miss Dorinda said faintly:
“Is she down the well?”
“Down the well!” exclaimed Matthew. “No, indeed, ma’am; she’s up a tree. She’s up in the tiptopmost branch of the old Bell-flower apple-tree, and she won’t come down. She says she’s going to stay there all night, ma’am.”
“Stay there all night!” cried Miss Priscilla. “How ridiculous! She must come down at once.”
“Perhaps we can coax her down with something to eat,” said Miss Dorinda.
“Perhaps, ma’am,” said Matthew, his eyes twinkling.
“Bring us our things, Martha,” said Miss Priscilla, with a dogged, do-or-die air, “and then Matthew can show us where our niece is, and we will bring her back.”
“If yez do, she’ll come home holding the ribbons,” thought Matthew to himself, as he respectfully waited his mistresses’ pleasure.
Martha brought to each of the Flint ladies a long black cloak, a wool crocheted cloud, and black worsted gloves; for without such sufficient protection the sisters never went out after dusk.
“And I think rubbers, Martha,” said Miss Priscilla, anxiously scanning the sky.
“Oh, sister, the grass is as dry as a bone,” said Miss Dorinda.
“No signs of rain, ma’am,” said Matthew.
“Rubbers, Martha,” said Miss Priscilla.
Martha obediently brought four large rubber overshoes, and in a few moments the two aunts were following old Matthew in search of their wayward and erratic niece.
The party paused under the apple-tree which Matthew had designated. But though the old ladies peered anxiously up into the tree, they could see nothing but leaves.
“Lavinia,” called Miss Priscilla, in a calm, dignified voice.
No answer.
“Lavinia,” she called again, and still no sound came from the apple-tree.
Then Miss Priscilla Flint, moved by the exigencies of the occasion, made what was perhaps the greatest effort of her long and uneventful life.
“Ladybird,” she called, more graciously; and a little voice piped down from the tree-top:
“What is it, aunty?”
Like the larger proportion of human nature, Miss Priscilla, having gained her point, returned to her former mental attitude.
“Child,” she said sternly, “come down at once from that tree!”
“Why?” said Ladybird.
“Because I tell you to,” said Miss Priscilla.
“Why?” said Ladybird.
“Because I wish you to,” said Miss Priscilla, with a shade more of gentleness in her tone.
“Why?” said Ladybird, with two shades more of gentleness in hers.
“Tell her she’s going to stay with us,” whispered Miss Dorinda; “tell her we want her to.”
But such was the perversity of Miss Priscilla’s nature that a suggestion from her sister to do the thing she wanted to do most, made her do just the reverse.
“You are to come down,” she said, again addressing the top of the tree, “because I command you to do so. You are a naughty girl!”
“Am I a naughty girl?” called back Ladybird; “then I’ll stay up here and be naughty. It will make you less trouble than if I’m naughty down there.”
“Tell her, sister,” urged Miss Dorinda.
“Tell her yourself,” said Miss Priscilla, shortly.
Dorinda needed no second bidding.
“Ladybird,” she cried gladly, “come down, dearie. You are going to stay with us. So come down and be a good girl.”
“Of course I’m going to stay with you;I told you, and I told you true,”chanted Ladybird, in her crooning, musical voice.
“Then come down at once,” said Miss Priscilla, whose patience was nearly exhausted.
“Why?” said Ladybird, gently, but aggravatingly.
“Because I want you,” said Miss Priscilla Flint, with a sudden burst of whole-hearted welcome. “Because I want you to live with us and be our little girl, – my little girl.”
“All right, aunty dear, I’ll come right straight smack down!” and Ladybird, gathering up her basket of fragments, began to scramble rapidly down through the gnarled branches of the old apple-tree.
CHAPTER VII
CIVIL WAR
Miss Priscilla Flint was a lady who never did anything by halves or any other fractions.
Once having accepted the fact that Ladybird was to remain at Primrose Hall, Miss Priscilla began to lay plans as to how her small niece should live and move and have her being.
Details were the delight of Miss Priscilla Flint’s heart, and she prepared to attend to the details of Ladybird’s life with a great and large gusto; but in her planning she reckoned without her niece, who proved a not unimportant factor in the case.
Although Miss Flint’s indomitable will could unflinchingly face battle, murder, and sudden death, the will of her young relative was of the sort that jumped right over such obstacles and came down smiling on the other side.
One of the first of these Greek tugs of war was in reference to Ladybird’s dog.
“Of course, Lavinia,” Miss Priscilla said, “you must see that it will be impossible for you to keep that beast here.”
There was no reply from Ladybird, who sat with a happy, beaming countenance, swaying back and forth in a tiny, old-fashioned rocker, with her blinking terrier closely clasped in her arms.
Miss Priscilla had effectually learned that to get any answer from her niece she must call her Ladybird. But the good lady compromised by using the more dignified title when making a statement which required no answer.
“I say you cannot keep that dog here. What are you going to do about it – Ladybird?”
Ladybird smiled at her aunt in a bewitching way.
“I don’t know, aunty,” she said. “Where could I keep him?”
“You can’t keep him at all, Lavinia. You know both your Aunt Dorinda and I detest dogs, and so you must either sell him or give him away.”
Ladybird gazed at her aunt with great, serious eyes.
“I won’t sell him,” she said slowly; “but I will give him away.”
“That’s a good girl,” said her aunt, approvingly. “And will you do it to-day?”
“Yes; right away,” said Ladybird, rising, with Cloppy still cuddled in her arms.
“Ah!” said Miss Priscilla, uncertain how to account for such docility. “And to whom will you give him?”
“To you,” cried Ladybird, and depositing the moppy mass in her aunt’s lap, she ran laughing from the room.
Miss Priscilla rang a furious peal on the bell, and when Ladybird, who was dancing through the hall, saw Martha appear and answer to the summons, she sauntered leisurely into the room behind the rustling maid.
“Martha,” said Miss Priscilla, pointing to the dog, which she had slid from her lap to the floor, “take that animal and dispose of it somehow. You may give it away or sell it, or take it to the pound; but never let me see it in or near this house again.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Martha, picking up Cloppy, while Ladybird burst into a peal of ringing laughter.
“Such a funny aunty!” she cried, dancing over to Miss Flint, and putting one little thin arm round the old lady’s neck. “Martha, of course aunty is only joking. Please put Cloppy in his basket in my room; I’m sure he wants a nap.”
“Yes, miss,” said Martha, glancing furtively at Miss Priscilla.
But whether it was the touch of the child’s tiny fingers on her old cheek, or whether her will bowed perforce to a superior one, Miss Priscilla’s face expressed no contrary orders.
Martha left the room, and Ladybird, dreamily curling a wisp of her aunt’s hair over her forefinger, remarked:
“That lemon-pie yesterday was so good, aunty, can’t we have another to-day?”
“Yes, child, of course, if you want it. Run and ask Bridget to make one, and then come back here; for I want to talk to you about some new clothes.”
“Geranium blossom!” said Ladybird to herself, as she walked slowly along the hall. She always manufactured her own expletives.
“Now I shall have a high old time! It seems to me that Aunt Priscilla won’t have the same ideas about clothes that I do; and the trick is to change her opinions.”
Without having formed any definite plans, but with a sublime determination to conquer in the fray, Ladybird came back and sat down demurely in a small chair facing her aunt.
“Your clothes, Lavinia,” Miss Priscilla began, “are shocking, and quite unfit for you to wear.”
“Do you think so?” said Ladybird, with the air of polite interest which her aunts had learned to regard as ominous. “Now I think they’re real pretty. They were made for me in Bombay. I picked out the stuffs myself.”
“I should think you did,” said Miss Priscilla; “and they’re hideous. Now that white dress with the huge round red spots is something awful, and you shall never wear it again.”
“Oh, I guess I will, aunty,” said Ladybird, cheerfully; “that’s my very favoritest dress of all, and I wouldn’t let you send that to the heathen for anything.”
“It’s far more suitable for a Fiji cannibal than for a Christian child. Your clothes are all too gaudy in coloring, Lavinia, and they must be discarded. I shall buy you some neat, quiet patterns in soft grays and browns, which will be much more suitable for a refined little gentlewoman.”
“Aunty,” cried Ladybird, springing up, her black elf-locks flying about her thin little face, and her long arms waving, while her whole body quivered with excitement, “do I look like a refined little gentlewoman?”
“You do not,” said Miss Priscilla Flint, staring critically at her niece; “but I shall do all in my power to make you look like one.”
Ladybird leaned her head on one hand and gazed thoughtfully at her aunt. After a few moments’ pause, she said reflectively:
“Well, that black-and-yellow striped frock of mine is really a fright; and the red-and-green plaid isn’t much better: it’s such a ’normous plaid; but” – and Ladybird shook her forefinger decisively at her aunt – “it seems to me I shall keep that white dress with the great big red spots. And so we’ll consider that matter settled.”
“It is settled,” said Miss Flint, rising, “but not in the way you seem to think. You shall never wear that dress again, Lavinia. Now the Dorcas Circle meets here this afternoon, and I wish you to do me credit. Wear that new brown dress I had made for you, and do not dare to appear before my guests in those red spots.”
“Aunty,” said Ladybird, and the little forefinger was again wagged at the old lady, not threateningly, but as a token of final decision, “if I don’t wear those red spots to the Dorcas meeting, you’ll have to wear them yourself.”
“Whatever nonsense are you talking, child?” inquired Miss Priscilla, whose thoughts were already busy with the supper for the Dorcas Circle.
“’Tisn’t nonsense, aunty; it’s plain, ungarnished truth.”
“Well, wear your brown dress, Lavinia,” said Miss Priscilla, as she started for the kitchen in the interests of the elaborate feast demanded by the august and self-respecting Dorcas Circle.
Ladybird, with a peculiar nod of her head that betokened a completed plan of action, went up-stairs to her room.
“It seems to me,” she said to herself, “that I just must do it.”
She took the red-spotted dress down from its hook and threw it on the bed. Then she knelt beside it, and burying her little face in its soft folds, she burst into furious tears.
“I do love it so,” she sobbed, “it’s so bright and gay and comforting: and I think Aunt Priscilla is mean. Hominy hornets, but she’s mean! I wouldn’t treat a little girl so. I wouldn’t make her wear old mud-colored frocks when she loves red, red, RED! And these red spots are so beautiful! But since I can’t wear them, Aunt Priscilla shall.”
Stamping her feet as she rose, and angrily brushing the tears from her eyes, Ladybird took her sharp little scissors and carefully cut out a score or more of the large disks from the condemned dress. She grew more cheerful as she did this, and her merry smiles came back, though they alternated with an expression of angry sadness.
Gathering up the red scraps, she went to her Aunt Priscilla’s room. Spread out in stately grandeur on the bed lay the black silk dress that was as much a part of the Dorcas meeting as the lady who wore it.
Taking the paste-pot from her aunt’s writing-table, Ladybird proceeded to paste the bits of red fabric at intervals over the black silk skirt and bodice. She worked diligently and rapidly, and after a few moments surveyed the effect with great satisfaction.
“Now,” she said to herself, as she replaced the paste-pot, “I think it would be wise for me to go out to spend the day.”
Slipping on the despised brown frock, a mild and amiable-looking Ladybird walked through the kitchen, humming a little tune.
“I’m going out, aunties,” she said, “and I won’t be back until late this afternoon.”
The Flint ladies were not surprised at this, for Ladybird often spent a whole day out in the fields and orchards.
“Take something to eat before you go,” said Miss Dorinda; “here are some fresh seed-cakes.”
Ladybird accepted half a dozen, and Miss Priscilla, looking approvingly at the brown frock, said:
“Be back by four. The Dorcas ladies will be here, you know.”
“Yes, aunty,” said Ladybird, “and I hope they’ll think the red spots are becoming to you.”
“What does she mean?” asked Miss Dorinda, as Ladybird disappeared down the garden path.
“Who can ever tell what her nonsense means?” said Miss Priscilla, feeling rather irritated at having carried her point regarding the brown frock.
But the brown frock arrayed a very gay and mischievous Ladybird, who danced along through the sunshine, singing:
“It was best to leave you thus, dear —Best for you and best for me.”CHAPTER VIII
STELLA RUSSELL
With no other intent than to put as great a distance as possible between herself and Primrose Hall, Ladybird wandered on through the last of the Flint orchards, and found herself confronted by a rail fence, over which she promptly climbed. She crossed a small brook, two fields, and another orchard, when from one of the trees she heard a pleasant, young voice say:
“Hello, little girl!”
Although, as a rule, not many creatures, except birds, are looked for in trees, yet Ladybird’s mind was of the type which accepts without question, and looking up, she called back, “Hello!” though she could see of the person addressed only some pink muslin and a small swinging slipper.
“What do you want?” said the voice again, and a pretty, smiling face appeared above the pink muslin.
“I don’t want anything,” said Ladybird; “I’m just taking a walk.”
“Oh, well, if you’ve walked from Primrose Hall ’way over here, you must be tired. Won’t you come up here and sit by me?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Ladybird; and she easily swung herself up the crooked old boughs of the apple-tree, and seated herself facing her hostess, who proved to be a very charming young woman indeed.