Blue Robin, the Girl Pioneer Part 28

A week later Nathalie was flying out of the gate of the big gray house with something tightly clasped in her hand. It had been a week of hard work, for O dear, she had grown tired of talking, and then too, she had spent some little time in the library hunting up pioneer women. She had been overjoyed that morning when Mrs. Van Vorst, who had been secretly acquainted with the scheme of telling about these women founders of the nation presented her with a new book from a New York publisher that gave a number of interesting details about these dames of early times. She and Nita had spent the two hours that morning reading about the New Amsterdam vrouws. She laughed slyly as she hurried along to think how adroitly she had managed in such a short time to tell her pupil not only about the Pilgrim and Puritan dames, but other interesting historical events of those early days.

As the girl ran swiftly up on the porch and spied her mother reading a few feet away, she burst out with, "Oh, Mother, what do you think Mrs.

Van Vorst gave me for teach-talking, rather, to Nita for the week? And I'm to have the same every week. Oh, Mumsie, just guess!"

Mrs. Page's eyes smiled into Nathalie's joyous ones as she said, "I'm not a good guesser, I'm afraid, Daughter, but I'll venture-five dollars?"

"Five dollars!" repeated the girl disdainfully. "Oh, Mother, guess again, it's more than that," she added encouragingly.

"Well, I'll have to give it up," replied her mother after a short pause, with a regretful shake of her head. "I told you I was not a good guesser."

"Ten dollars!" burst from happy Nathalie. "Just think, a dollar an hour, two dollars a day, and ten dollars for the week! And, Mother, it's all to be put away for d.i.c.k!"

The night of the entertainment arrived, and promised to be a howling success, as Grace declared, who, with Nathalie, had been detailed to act as an usher. They had been kept pretty busy seating the guests, who had appeared in multicolored gowns, and gay flowered hats, with here and there a dress coat of masculine gender which gave quite an air of festivity to the occasion.

The program was opened by Lillie Bell. Attired in a very quaint colonial gown, she tripped along the platform, and with well-simulated blushes and much demureness of manner made an old-time curtsy. After being greeted with an ovation from her many friends, she bashfully sidled up to a rather puzzling-looking instrument on the platform, on which many eyes had been focussed ever since the raising of the curtain, and seated herself before it.

Upon this old-time spinet she played such ravis.h.i.+ng strains of melody that the hearts of her audience were captivated, and she was encored again and again. Louise Gaynor, a dear little colonial dame, now appeared, and in her tru-al-lee voice-as the girls often called it-sang some old English ballads, "Annie Laurie," "Robin Adair" and several of similar character, whose celebrity had grown with the years.

The second Stunt was the renowned race for the Forefathers' Rock, Kitty Corwin as Mary Chilton, and Fred Tyson as the slow-footed John Alden. A spinning contest followed, the fair spinners being colonial dames from Plymouth town, New Amsterdam, Boston, and Jamestown. The fair maiden of Plymouth, Priscilla, spun with such deftness and skill that she not only won the plaudits of those a.s.sembled, but the prize. As she gracefully bowed her acknowledgment to her friends' loud clapping, she backed hastily off the platform. Alas, she backed into John Alden, who at this opportune moment had appeared on the stage, with such terrific force that she almost bowled him over. John, however, to prove that he was not as slow as the name he had gained, adroitly caught the falling maiden in his arms and then led the blus.h.i.+ng damsel, Jessie Ford, forward as his captured prize.

Barbara Worth proved quite a heroine in her single-act comedy on Pioneer craft, the plucking of a live goose. Mistress Goose, however, not understanding her part of silent acquiescence, being a twentieth-century goose and not a pioneer one, mutinied, and as Barbara came to the end of the couplet,

"Twice a year deplumed may they be, In spryngen tyme and harvest tyme,"

she escaped from her captor's clutch and with a loud, "Quack! quack!" of disapproval flew across the stage.

Barbara, dumb with fright for fear the goose would fly down among the spectators, gave chase, and then ensued a regular "movie" as amid loud calls urging her on in the race, and protestations voiced by the goose in a clamorous quacking, she chased it about the platform. Just as Barbara was about to capture her prey she tripped on a rug and measured her five feet two on the floor. But Barbara was game, Fred Tyson declared to Nathalie as they watched her, and jumping to her feet she soon captured her featherless fowl, which, after being shown in its deplumed condition, was borne from the scene of its torments by the victor.

The curtain now rose on "The First American Wash Day," a little playlet representing the women of the Pilgrim colony, with arms bared to the elbows, rubbing and scrubbing in tubs of foamy soap-suds, was.h.i.+ng clothes, for the n.o.ble sires of our nation.

Nathalie gave a quick start and her eyes leaped wide open as she convulsively clutched Grace by the arm, and then she grew strangely still as she watched the actors on the stage. The scene was a distinctive one, as the children of the _Mayflower_ ran hither and thither gathering boughs, make-believe sweet-smelling juniper, to place under the tripod from which kettles of water were suspended over a small fire that simulated a cheery blaze.

As these pioneer mothers washed, and then wrung out their clothes, slas.h.i.+ng them about in true washer woman's fas.h.i.+on, some one in the rear of the stage recited in a loud, clear voice:

"There did the Pilgrim fathers With matchlock and ax well swung Keep guard o'er the smoking kettles That propped on the crotches hung.

For the earliest act of the heroes Whose fame has a world-wide sway, Was to fas.h.i.+on a crane for a kettle And order a was.h.i.+ng-day."

"Pioneer Mothers of America."

By Hand W. Green.

The applause of the spectators testified to the merit of the performance, and as the curtain dropped, Nathalie, whose eyes were as.h.i.+ne with a strange fire, hastened out into the hall. "Oh, it was mean of her! It is the same as stealing, she knew she had no right to use it!" were the thoughts that flashed at white heat through her brain, for the playlet that had just been enacted was the one she had lost in the library!

And the one who had pa.s.sed it off as her own, the one who had been the head performer, and who had recited the verses, was Edith Whiton!

On rushed Nathalie straight towards the dressing room, determined to tell Edith just what she thought of her, but the sight of a crowd of girls of which Edith was the central figure brought her to a standstill.

"Of course, Edith, we all recognized you!" "It was a clever Stunt."

"Well, you have shown you are a Pioneer, all right!" Many similar paeans of praise came to Nathalie's ears.

The girl stood still, inwardly raging with indignation, almost ready to cry with the strife between her outraged sense of right, and a commonplace little monitor who whispered, "It would be mean to accuse Edith of a sneaking act in the very midst of her glorification. And then, too," continued the whisperer, "you are not really sure that Edith has not some excuse to offer; there was no name on your paper." Nathalie swallowed hard, then her muscles relaxed, and the hard angry gleam disappeared from her eyes. Well, Edith might be mean and small, but she at least would be above her, she would say nothing!

With a certain pride that she had risen above doing what she would undoubtedly have regretted afterwards, Nathalie hurried into the dressing-room. A few minutes later as the curtain rose it displayed in its completed form the second idea that she had spent so much time in planning.

Around the hearthstone in a Dutch kitchen sat a _huys-moeder_, busily undressing her two little kinderkins while she sang the crooning nursery rhyme:[1]

"Trip attroup attronjes, De vaarken in de boojes, De koejes in de klaver, De paarden in de haver, De kalver in de lang gras, De eenjes in de water plas, So grootmyn klein poppetje was."

"_Colonial Days in Old New York._"

Earle.

Through a window in the back of the cozy kitchen a blanketed squaw was seen dandling her swaddled papoose in her arms, as she peered hungrily in at the glowing fire, and watched the _huys-moeder_ fill the warming pan with coals, thrust it between the sheets of the little trundle-bed, and then give her babies some mulled cider to drink.

The tiny figures in their _cosyntjes_, or nightcaps with long capes, had just crawled into bed when "tap-toes" sounded, and the honest mynheer and his good vrouw hastened to cover the still glowing embers with ashes for the fire of the morrow. The Dutch curfew had sounded, which meant that all good simple folk must hie to bed.

This fireside scene in old New York won its merited applause, and Nathalie, who had been the Dutch mother, Mrs. Morrow's kiddies, the kinderkins, and Fred Tyson, the mynheer, were called before the curtain to receive the plaudits of their friends.

As Nathalie was hurrying from the dressing-room, glad that she was through her long-antic.i.p.ated Stunt, and doubly glad that it had been a success, her name was called. She turned to see Helen, who, with an anxious face, was peering from the adjoining dressing room.

"Oh, has anything gone wrong?" demanded Nathalie hastening to the door.

"I should say!" exclaimed Helen with woebegone countenance, "I have left my gun at home, and I must have it. Oh, I can't imagine how I could have been so careless! Can't you get some one to go and get it for me? Tell them to hurry, for my scene goes on in ten minutes."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," sympathized Nathalie, "tell me where to find it, quick, and I'll get some one."

"It is in the hall just behind the rack! Do hurry, Nat, I'm just about wild!"

Nathalie darted away; but alas, she could not find any one who could go at that moment, every one had some important duty to perform just then and there. Even the Scouts, who were always so ready to help the girls, were missing. "Oh, it is too bad!" bemoaned the girl. Presently her eyes lighted and in another instant she had flown up the stairs, seized her long cloak in the dressing-room, and then sped down the steps into the garden, and out into the street.

Ten minutes, that meant she would have to run every step of the way to get that gun there in time. So with the lightness of a bird she darted down one street, up another, and then-her heart gave a great leap as she came to the long, lonely stretch of road skirting the cemetery of the old Presbyterian church. But on she flew, hardly daring to cast her eyes towards the tall tombstones that gleamed at her with ghostly whiteness from the ghoulish shadows cast by the waving branches of the trees above them.

No, she was not afraid of ghosts, but she suddenly remembered a story she had heard as a little child, of a young girl who had been waylaid and killed by a man in a cemetery one dark night. Fiddle! she was not going to be afraid of a mere story, so with a s.n.a.t.c.h of melody on her lips she kept bravely on and soon left behind her the marble records of the dead. It did not take but a minute to ring the bell, tell Helen's aunt what she wanted, then grab the gun and start off on her return journey.

Oh, she did hate to have to go by that old graveyard, she would take the other way around; but no, that would take twice the time and she must hurry! So nerving up her courage she ran on with the firm determination to play soldier, and level her musket if any one a.s.sailed her.

As she neared the cemetery her breath gave out, and instead of running by this danger post she had to walk every step. Determined not to look in the direction of these ghostly reminders of the past, she pushed resolutely on. She had almost reached the end of the long fence when the sudden snap of a twig, followed by a rustling noise caused her heart to pause in its beating. A scream escaped her quivering lips, for there in the bright radiance that fell like a silver veil over all objects she saw the figure of a man rise from one of the tombstones near the fence and come towards her!

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"From your throne on my knee, The pigs in the bean-patch see, The cows in the clover meet, The horses in the oat field eat.

The ducks in the water pa.s.s The calves scamper through the gra.s.s.

They love the baby on my knee And none there are as sweet as she."

CHAPTER XVII-LIBERTY BANNERS

Nathalie's eyes dilated with terror, and her heart pounded with such leaping beats that it almost choked her. She attempted to run, but alas, her limbs seemed tied with ropes, and then she remembered the gun!

Just an instant and she had raised it, and with trembling hands was pointing it at the enemy, who by this time had lightly vaulted the wooden fence and was coming towards her. Nathalie's hand was feeling for the trigger when, "Oh, don't shoot!" cried a voice in serio-comic tone, "I surrender!" Up went two hands in pretended subjugation.