Hildegarde's Holiday Part 2

"Oh, indeed we shall, Cousin Wealthy!" cried Hildegarde. "It is delight enough just to breathe this delicious air and look at the river."

They were sitting on the piazza, from which the lawn sloped down to a great hedge of Norway fir, just beyond which flowed the broad blue stream of the Kennebec.

"How about the river, Cousin Wealthy?" asked Hildegarde, timidly. "I thought I saw a boat-house through the trees. Could we go out to row?"

Miss Wealthy seemed a little flurried by the question. "My dear," she said, and hesitated,--"my dear, have you--do your parents allow you to go on the water? Can you swim?"

"Oh, yes," said Hildegarde, "I can swim very well, Cousin Wealthy,--at least, Papa says I can; and I can row and paddle and sail."

"Oh, not sail!" cried Miss Wealthy, with an odd little catch in her breath,--"not sail, my dear! I could not--I could not think of that for a moment. But there is a row-boat," she added, after a pause,--"a boat which Jeremiah uses. If Jeremiah thinks she is perfectly safe, you can go out, if you feel quite sure your parents would wish it."

"Oh, I am very sure," said Hildegarde; "for I asked Papa, almost the last thing before we left. Thank you, Cousin Wealthy, so much! We will be rather quiet this morning, for Rose does not feel very strong; but this afternoon perhaps we will try the boat. Isn't there something I can do for you, Cousin Wealthy? Can't I help Martha? I can do all kinds of work,--can't I, Rose?--and I love it!"

But Martha had a young girl in the kitchen, Miss Wealthy said, whom she was training to help her; and she herself had letters to write and accounts to settle. So the two girls sauntered off slowly, arm in arm; Rose leaning on her friend, whose strong young frame seemed able to support them both.

The garden was a very pleasant place, with rhubarb and sunflowers, sweet peas and mignonette, planted here and there among the rows of vegetables, just as Jeremiah's fancy suggested. Miss Wealthy's own flower-beds, trim and gay with geraniums, pansies, and heliotrope, were under the dining-room windows; but somehow the girls liked Jeremiah's garden best. Hildegarde pulled some sweet peas, and stuck the winged blossoms in Rose's fair hair, giving a fly-away look to her smooth locks. Then she began to sniff inquiringly. "Southernwood!" she said,--"I smell southernwood somewhere, Rose. Where is it?"

"Yonder," said Rose, pointing to a feathery bush not far off.

"Oh! and there is lavender too, Hilda! Do you suppose we may pick some?

I do like to have a sprig of lavender in my belt."

At this moment Jeremiah appeared, wheeling a load of turf. He was "long and lank and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand," and Hildegarde mentally christened him the Ancient Mariner on the spot; but he smiled sadly and said, "_Good_-mornin'," and seemed pleased when the girls praised his garden. "Ee-yus!" he said, with placid melancholy. "I've seen wuss places. Minglin' the blooms with the truck and herbs was my idee, as you may say,--'livens up one, and sobers down the other. _She_ laughs at me, but she don't keer, s'long as she has all she wants. Cut ye some mignonette? That's very favoryte with me,--very favoryte."

He cut a great bunch of mignonette; and Rose, proffering her request for lavender, received a nosegay as big as she could hold in both hands.

"The roses is just comin' on," he said. "Over behind them beans they are. A sight o' roses there'll be in another week. Coreopsis is pooty, too; that's down the other side of the corn. Curus garding, folks thinks; but, there, it's my idee, and she don't keer."

Much amused, the girls thanked the melancholy prophet, and wandered away into the orchard, to find the seat that Miss Wealthy had told them of.

"Oh, what a lovely, lovely orchard!" cried Hildegarde, in delight; and indeed it was a pretty place. The apple-trees were old, and curiously gnarled and twisted, bending this way and that, as apple-trees will. The short, fine gra.s.s was like emerald; there were no flowers at all, only green and brown, with the sunlight flickering through the branches overhead. They found the seat, which was curiously wedged into the double trunk of the very patriarch of apple-trees.

"Do look at him!" cried Hildegarde. "He is like a giant with the rheumatism. Suppose we call him Blunderbore. What does twist them so, Rose? Look! there is one with a trunk almost horizontal."

"I don't know," said Rose, slowly. "Another item for the ignorance list, Hilda. It is growing appallingly long. I really _don't_ know why they twist so. In the forest they grow much taller than in orchards, and go straight up. Farmer Hartley has seen one seventy feet high, he says."

"Let us call it vegetable rheumatism!" said Hildegarde. "How _is_ your poor back this morning, ma'am?" She addressed an ancient tree with respectful sympathy; indeed, it did look like an aged dame bent almost double. "Have you ever tried Pond's Extract? I think I must really buy a gallon or so for you. And as long as you must bend over, you will not mind if I take a little walk along your suffering spine, and sit on your arm, will you?"

She walked up the tree, and seated herself on a branch which was crooked like a friendly arm, making a very comfortable seat. "She's a dear old lady, Rose!" she cried. "Doesn't mind a bit, but thinks it rather does her good,--like _ma.s.sage_, you know. What do you suppose her name is?"

"Dame Crump would do, wouldn't it?" replied Rose, looking critically at the venerable dame.

"Of course! and that ferocious old person brandis.h.i.+ng three arms over yonder must be Croquemitaine,--

"'Croquemitaine! Croquemitaine!

Ne dinerai pas 'vec toi!'

I think they are rather a savage set,--don't you, Rosy?--all except my dear Dame Crump here."

"I _know_ they are," said Rose, in a low voice. "Hus.h.!.+ the three witches are just behind you, Hilda. Their skinny arms are outstretched to clasp you! Fly, and save yourself from the caldron!"

"Avaunt!" cried Hilda, springing lightly from Dame Crump's sheltering arm. "Ye secret, black, and midnight hags, what is 't ye do?"

"A deed without a name!" muttered Rose, in sepulchral tones.

"I think it is, indeed!" cried Hildegarde, laughing. "Poor old gouty things! they can only claw the air, like Grandfather Smallweed, and cannot take a single step to clutch me."

"Just like me, as I was a year ago," said Rose, smiling.

"Rose! how can you?" cried Hildegarde, indignantly; "as if you had not always been a white rosebush."

"On wheels!" said Rose. "I often think of my dear old chair, and wonder if it misses me. Hildegarde dear!"

"My lamb!" replied Hildegarde, sitting down by her friend and giving her a little hug.

"I wish you could know how wonderful it all is! I wish--no, I don't wish you could be lame even for half an hour; but I wish you could just _dream_ that you were lame, and then wake up and find everything right again. Having always walked, you cannot know the wonder of it. To think that I can stand up--so! and walk--so! actually one foot before the other, just like other people. Oh! and I used to wonder how they did it.

I don't now understand how 'four-leggers,' as Bubble calls them, move so many things without getting mixed up."

"Dear Rose! you are happy, aren't you?" exclaimed Hildegarde, with delight.

"Happy!" echoed Rose, her sweet face glowing like her own name-flower.

"But I was always happy, you know, dear. Now it is happiness, with fairyland thrown in. I am some wonderful creature, walking through miracles; a kind of--Who was the fairy-knight you were telling me about?"

"Lohengrin?" said Hildegarde. "No, you are more like Una, in the 'Faerie Queene.' In fact, I think you _are_ Una."

"And then," continued Rose, "there is another thing! At least, there are a thousand other things, but one that I was thinking of specially just now, when you named the trees. That was only play to you; but, Hilda, it used to be almost quite real for me,--that sort of thing. Sitting there as I used, day after day, year after year, mostly alone,--for mother and Bubble were always at work, you know,--you cannot imagine how real all the garden-people, as I called them, were to me. Why, my Eglantine--I never told you about Eglantine, Hilda!"

"No, heartless thing! you never did," said Hildegarde; "and you may tell me this instant. A pretty friend you are, keeping things from me in that way!"

"She was a fair maiden," said Rose. "She stood against the wall, just by my window. She was very lovely and graceful, with long, slender arms.

Some people called her a sweetbrier-bush. She was my most intimate friend, and was always peeping in at the window and calling me to come out. When I came and sat close beside her in my chair, she would bend over me, and tell me all about her love-affairs, which gave her a great deal of trouble."

"Poor thing!" said Hildegarde, sympathetically.

"She had two lovers," continued Rose, dreamily, talking half to herself.

"One was Sir Scraggo de Cedar, a tall knight in rusty armor, who stood very near her, and loved her to distraction. But she cared nothing for him, and had given her heart to the South Wind,--the most fickle and tormenting lover you can imagine. Sometimes he was perfectly charming, and wooed her in the most enchanting manner, murmuring soft things in her ear, and kissing and caressing her, till I almost fell in love with him myself. Then he would leave her alone,--oh! for days and days,--till she drooped, poor thing! and was perfectly miserable. And then perhaps he would come again in a fury, and shake and beat her in the most frightful manner, tearing her hair out, and sometimes flinging her right into the arms of poor Sir Scraggo, who quivered with emotion, but never took advantage of the situation. I used to be _very_ sorry for Sir Scraggo."

"What a shame!" cried Hildegarde, warmly. "Couldn't you make her care for the poor dear?"

"Oh, no!" said Rose. "She was very self-willed, that gentle Eglantine, in spite of her soft, pretty ways. There was no moving her. She turned her back as nearly as she could on Sir Scraggo, and bent farther and farther toward the south, stretching her arms out as if imploring her heartless lover to stay with her. I fastened her back to the wall once with strips of list, for she was spoiling her figure by stooping so much; but she looked so utterly miserable that I took them off again.

Dear Eglantine! I wonder if she misses me."

"I think she was rather a minx, do you know?" said Hildegarde. "I prefer Sir Scraggo myself."

"Well," replied Rose, "one respected Sir Scraggo very much indeed; but he was _not_ beautiful, and all the De Cedars are pretty stiff and formal. Then you must remember he was older than Eglantine and I,--ever and ever so much older."

"That does make a difference," said Hildegarde. "Who were some other of your garden people, you funniest Rose?"

"There was Old Moneybags!" replied Rose. "How I did detest that old man!