Nine Little Goslings Part 7

I'll never meddle with the things in the chest any more. There are mice in there, hundreds of 'em; they'll run all over me; they'll eat me up.

Oh, _don't_ make me go in there again!"

"Why, it's my little Mell!" cried the amazed Captain. "s.h.i.+ver my timbers! what does this mean?" He lifted Mell into his arms and looked sternly at his wife.

"She's been a _very_ naughty girl," said Mrs. Davis, trying to speak boldly. "So naughty that I had to shut her up. Stop crying so, Mell. I forgive you now. I hope you'll never be so bad again."

"Oh, may I come out?" sobbed Mell, clinging to her father's neck. "You said I must stay a week, but I couldn't do that, the mice would kill me.

Mice are so awful!" She shuddered with horror as she spoke.

"This ain't a pleasant welcome for a man just in from sea," remarked Captain Davis.

Mrs. Davis explained and tried to smooth the matter over, but the Captain continued very sober all that evening. Mell thought it was because he was angry with her, but her step-mother knew very well that she also was in disgrace. The truth was that the Captain was thinking what to do. He was not a man of many words, but he felt that affairs at home must go very wrong when he was away, and that such a state of things was bad for his wife, and very bad for Mell.

So in a day or two he went off to Cape Cod, "to see his old mother," as he said, in reality to consult her as to what should be done. When he came back, he asked Mell how she would like to go and live with Grandmother and be her little girl.

"Will she shut me up in closets?" asked Mell apprehensively.

"No, she'll be very kind to you if you are a good girl. Grandma's an old lady now. She wants a handy child about the house to help, and sort of pet and make much of."

"I--guess--I'll--like--it," said Mell slowly. "It's a good way from here, isn't it?"

"Yes,--a good way."

Mell nodded her head in a satisfied manner. "_She'll_ not often come there," she thought. "She" meant Mrs. Davis.

Mrs. Davis was unusually pleasant for the few remaining days which Mell spent at home. I do not think she had ever meant to treat Mell unkindly, but she had a hot temper, and the care of five unruly children is a good deal for one woman to undertake, without counting in a little step-daughter with a head stuffed with fairy stories. She washed and ironed, mended and packed for Mell as kindly as possible, and did not say one cross word, not even when her husband brought the coral necklace from the big chest and gave it to Mell for her very own. "The child had a right to her mother's necklace," he said. All was peaceful and serene, and when Mell said good-by she surprised herself by feeling quite sorry to go, and kissed Gabella Sarah's small face with tears in her eyes.

Grandmother was just such a dear old woman as one reads about in books.

Her cheeks were all criss-crossed with little wrinkles, which made her look as if she were always smiling. Her forehead was smooth, her eyes kind and blue. She was small, thin, and wiry. Her laugh was as fresh as a young woman's. Mell loved her at once, and was sure that she should be happy to live with her and be her little girl.

"Why, Bethuel, you've brought me a real good helper," said Grandmother, as Mell ran to and fro, setting the tea-table, cutting bread, and learning where things were kept. "I shall sit like a lady and do nothing but rock in my cheer now that I've got Mell." Mell heard the kind words, and sprang about more busily than ever. It was a new thing to be praised.

Before Captain Davis went next day he walked over to Barnstable, and came back with a parcel in his hand. The parcel was for Mell. It contained the Fairy Tales,--all new and complete, bound in beautiful red covers.

"You shall read them aloud to me in the evenings," said Grandmother.

That night, if anybody had peeped through the window of Grandmother's little house he would have seen a pleasant sight. The kitchen was all in order; the lamp burned clear; Grandmother sat in her rocking-chair with a smile on her kind old face, while Mell, at her feet on a little stool, opened the Fairy Tales, and prepared to read. "Once upon a time there lived a beautiful Princess," she began;--then a sudden sense of the delightfulness of all this overcame her. She dropped the book into her lap, clasped her hands tight, and said, half to herself, half to Grandmother, "_Isn't_ it nice?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

MISTRESS MARY.

IT was the first of May; but May was in an April mood,--half cloudy, half s.h.i.+ny,--and belied her name. Sprinkles of silvery rain dotted the way-side dust; flashes of sun caught the drops as they fell, and turned each into a tiny mirror fit for fairy faces. The trees were raining too, showers of willow-catkins and cherry-bud calyxes, which fell noiselessly and strewed the ground. The children kicked the soft brown drifts aside with their feet as they walked along.

The doors of the Methodist meeting-house at Valley Hill stood open, and crowds of men and women and children were going into them. It was not Sunday which called the people together: it was the annual Conference meeting; and all the country round was there to hear the reports and learn where the ministers were to be sent for the next two years.

Methodist clergymen, you know, are not "called" by the people of the parish, as other clergymen are. They go where the church sends them, and every second year they are all changed to other parishes. This, it is thought, keeps the people and pastors fresh and interested in each other. But I don't know. Human beings, as well as vegetables, have a trick of putting down roots; and even a cabbage or a potato would resent such transplanting, and would refuse to thrive.

Sometimes, when a parish has become attached to its minister, it will plead to have him stay longer. Now and then this request is granted; but, as a rule, the minister has to go. And it is a hard rule for his wife and children, who have to go too.

The Valley Hill people "thought a heap" of their minister, Mr. Forcythe, and had begged hard that he might stay with them for another term.

Everybody belonging to the church had come to the meeting feeling anxious, and yet pretty certain that the answer would be favorable. All over the building, people were whispering about the matter, and heads were nodding and bowing. The bonnets on these heads were curiously alike. Mrs. Perry, the village milliner, never had more than one pattern hat. "That is what is worn," she said; and n.o.body disputed the fact, which saved Mrs. Perry trouble. The Valley Hill people liked it just as well, and didn't mind the lack of variety. This year Mrs. Perry had announced yellow to be the fas.h.i.+on, so nine out of ten of the hats present were trimmed with yellow ribbon crossed in just the same way over a yellow straw crown; and the church looked like a bed of sisterly tulips nodding and bowing in the wind.

Bishop Judson was the person to read the announcements. He was a nice old man, kind at heart, though formal in manner, and anxious eyes were fixed on him as he got up with a paper in his hand. That important little paper held comfort or discomfort for ever so many people. Every one bent forward to listen. It was so still all over the church that you might have heard a pin drop. The Bishop began with a little speech about the virtues of patience and contentment, and how important it was that everybody should be quite satisfied whatever happened to them. Then he opened the paper.

"Brother Johnson, Middlebury," he read. Middlebury was a favorite parish, so Brother Johnson looked pleased, and Sister Johnson was congratulated by the friends who sat near her. "Brother Woodward, Little Falls; Brother Ashe, Plunxet; Brother Allen, Claxton Corners." And so on. Some faces grew bright, some sad, as the reading proceeded. At last "Brother Forcythe, Redding; Brother Martin, Valley Hill," was announced.

A quiver of disappointment went over the church, and a little girl sitting in the gallery began to cry.

"My dear, my dear," whispered her mother, much distressed at her sobs and gulps. People looked up from below; but Mary could not stop. She took her mother's handkerchief and held it tight over her mouth; but the sobs would come. Her heart was half-broken at the idea of leaving Valley Hill and going to that horrid Redding, where n.o.body wanted to go.

Old Mrs. Clapp, from behind, reached over and gave her a bunch of fennel. But the fennel only made Mary cry harder. In Redding, she was sure, would be no kind Mrs. Clapp, no "meeting-house seed;" and her sobs grew thicker at the thought.

"I observe that your little daughter seems to be distressed," said Bishop Judson, as Mrs. Forcythe led the sobbing Mary down from the gallery at the end of service. "Children of her age form strong attachments to places, I am aware. But it is well to break them before they become unduly strong. Here we have no continuing city, you know."

"Yes," said poor Mrs. Forcythe, with a meek sigh. She had been married fourteen years, and this was her seventh move.

"Redding--hum--is a desirable place in some respects," went on the Bishop. "There is a great work to do there,--a great work. It requires a man of Brother Forcythe's energy to meet it. Mistress Mary here will doubtless find consolation in the thought that her father's sphere of usefulness is--h'm--enlarged."

"But we shan't have any garden," faltered Mary, "Tilly Brooks, who was there before, says it isn't a bit nice. She never saw a flower all the time she was there, she said. I'd just planted my bed in the garden here. Mrs. Clapp gave me six pansies, and it was going to be so pretty.

Now I've got to--leave--'em." Her voice died away into sobs.

"Tut, tut!" said the Bishop. "The customs of a church cannot be set aside to accommodate a child's flower-bed. You'll find other things to please you in Redding, Mistress Mary. Come, come, dry your eyes. Your father's daughter should not set an example like this."

"No, sir," gulped Mary, mortified at this reproof from the Bishop, who was an important person, and much looked up to. She did her best to stop crying, but it was hard work. When they reached home, the sight of the pansies perking their yellow and purple faces up to meet her, renewed her grief. There was her mignonette seed not yet sprouted. If she had known that they were going away, she would not have planted any. There, worst of all, was the corner where she had planned such a nice surprise for her mother,--"A. F." in green parsley letters. A. F. stood for Anne Forcythe. Now, mother would never see the letters or know any thing about it. Oh dear, oh dear!

Mrs. Forcythe's own disappointment was great, for they had all made sure that they should stay. But, like a true mother, she put her share of the grief aside, and thought only of comforting Mary.

"Don't feel so badly, dear," she said. "Recollect, you'll have Papa still, and me and Frank and little Peter. We'll manage to be happy somehow. Redding isn't half so disagreeable as you think."

"Yes, it is. Tilly said so. I was going to have radishes and a rose-bush," replied Mary tearfully. "There's a robin just building in the elm-tree now. There won't be any trees in Redding; only horrid hard cobble-stones."

"We must hope for the best," said Mrs. Forcythe, who did not enjoy the idea of the cobble-stones any more than Mary did.

"Only ten days more at Valley Hill," was the first thought that came into Mary's mind the next morning. She went downstairs cross and out of spirits. Her mother was laying sheets and table-cloths in a trunk. The books were gone from the little book-shelf; every thing had already begun to look unsettled and uncomfortable.

"I shall depend on you to take care of little Peter," said Mrs.

Forcythe. "We shall all have to work hard if we are to get off next Monday week."

Mary gave an impatient shrug with her shoulders. She loved little Peter, but it seemed an injury just then to have to take care of him. All the time that her mother was sorting, counting, and arranging where things should go, she sat in the window sullen and unhappy, looking out at the pansy-bed. Peter grew tired of a companion who did nothing to amuse him, and began to sprawl and scramble upstairs.

"O baby, come back!" cried Mary, and, I am sorry to say, gave him a shake. Peter cried, and that brought poor weary Mrs. Forcythe downstairs.

"Can't you manage to make him happy?" she said. Mary only pouted.

All that day and the next and the next it was the same. Mrs. Forcythe was busy every moment. There were a thousand things to do, another thousand to remember. People kept coming in to say good-by. Peter wandered out on the door-steps when Mary's back was turned, took cold, and was threatened with croup. Mrs. Forcythe was half sick herself from worry and fatigue. And all this time Mary, instead of helping, was one of her mother's chief anxieties. She fretted and complained continually.

Every thing went wrong. Each article put into the boxes cost her a flood of tears. Each friend who dropped in, renewed the sense of loss. She scarcely noticed her mother's pale face at all. All the brightness and busy-ness in her was changed for selfish lamentations, and still the burden of her complaint was, "I shan't have any flowers in Redding. My garden, oh, my garden."