Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know Part 36

Jack fell on his knees with his face in his mother's lap, though he had not thought a moment before of doing any such thing. Jessie hung over him, frantically hugging him. Mr. Jarvis, vainly trying to join this group, could only lay his hands on Jack's head and say in a broken voice: "My son! My son!" while Betty performed a war dance around the party, wildly brandishing a basting spoon in one hand and wiping her streaming eyes on the dishcloth which she held in the other.

It was long before a word could be spoken, and the dinner was totally ruined, as Betty declared with tears (though they were not for sorrow), before any one could calm down enough to eat.

Then the reaction set in, and justice was done to the dinner, while talk went on in a stream. Jack did not tell his adventures; he only said that he had come from the city, where he had made arrangements for a situation with Uncle John--at which Jessie's eyes sparkled. His looks, even after a week of comfort and hope, spoke for his sufferings.

There is little more to tell. Jack Jarvis at seventeen was a different boy from the Jack who at sixteen started out to seek his fortune. You may be sure that Jessie had her music lessons after all, and that a new Winnie with a fine young brood at her heels stalked about the Jarvis grounds the next spring.

WHO ATE THE DOLLY'S DINNER?[29]

BY ISABEL GORDON CURTIS.

A good story for the Big Sister to read to the little boys and girls.

"Why can't dollies have a Thanksgiving dinner as well as real folks?"

asked Polly Pine.

[Footnote 29: From "For the Children's Hour," Milton Bradley Company.]

"I don't know why," said mamma, laughing; "go and dress them in their best clothes, get the dolls' house swept and dusted and the table ready. Then I'll fix their dinner before we go downstairs."

"Oh, how nice!" said Polly Pine.

The doll house stood in the nursery. It was very big and very beautiful. It was painted red; it had tall chimneys, and a fine front door with R. Bliss on a bra.s.s plate. There were lace curtains at the windows, and two steps led up to the cunning little piazza. Polly Pine swept the rooms with her tiny broom and dusted them. Then she set the table in the dining-room with the very best dishes and the finest silver. She set a teeny vase in the middle of the table, with two violets in it, and she put dolly table napkins at each place.

When the house was all nice and clean she dressed Lavinia in her pink muslin, and Dora Jane in her gray velvet, and Hannah Welch in her yellow silk; then she seated them around the table, each one in her own chair. Polly was just telling them about company manners, how they must not eat with their knives, or leave their teaspoons in their cups when they drank their tea, when the door opened and in came mamma with a real dolls' Thanksgiving dinner.

There was a chicken bone to put on the platter before Hannah Welch, for Hannah always did the carving. There were cunning little dishes of mashed potato and cranberry sauce, and some celery in a tiny tumbler, and the smallest squash pie baked in a patty pan. Polly Pine just hopped up and down with delight when she saw it. She set everything on the table; then she ran away to put on her nicest muslin frock with the pink ribbons, and she went downstairs to her own dinner.

There were gentlemen there for dinner--gentlemen Polly was very fond of--and she had a nice time visiting with one of them. He could change his table napkin into a white rabbit, and she forgot all about the dolls' Thanksgiving dinner until it was dessert-time, and the nuts and raisins came in.

Then Polly remembered, and she jumped down from her chair and asked mamma if she might go upstairs and see if the dolls had eaten their dinner. When mamma told about the doll house Thanksgiving, all the family wanted to go, too, to find out if the dolls had enjoyed their dinner.

The front door of the doll house was open, and there sat the dolls just as their little mistress had left them--only they had eaten nearly all the dinner! Everything was gone except the potato and the cranberry sauce. The chicken leg was picked bare, the bread was nibbled, and the little pie was eaten all around.

"Well, this is funny," said papa.

Just then they heard a funny, scratching noise in the doll house, and a little gray mouse jumped out from under the table. He ran out the front door of the doll house, and over the piazza, and down the steps before you could say "Jack Robinson." In a minute he was gone--n.o.body knew where. There was another tiny mouse in the doll house under the parlour sofa, and a third one under Lavinia's bed, with a poor, frightened gray tail sticking out. They all got away safe. Papa would not allow mamma to go for the cat. He said:

"Why can't a poor little mouse have a Thanksgiving dinner as well as we?"

AN OLD-FASHIONED THANKSGIVING[30]

BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.

A long story about a family of hardy New England pioneers in Revolutionary days. It will be most enjoyed by the older children.

"Pile in, Hannah. Get right down 'long o' the clock, so's to kinder sh.o.r.e it up. I'll fix in them pillers t'other side on't, and you can set back ag'inst the bed. Good-bye, folks! Gee up! Bright. Gee! I tell ye, Buck."

[Footnote 30: Adapted from "Huckleberries," Houghton, Mifflin Co.]

"Good-bye!" nodded Hannah, from the depths of the old calash which granny had given her for a riding-hood, and her rosy face sparkled under the green shadow like a blossom under a burdock leaf.

This was their wedding journey. Thirty long miles to be travelled, at the slow pace of an oxcart, where to-day a railroad spins by, and a log hut in the dim distance.

But Hannah did not cry about it. There was a momentary choking, perhaps, in her throat, as she caught a last view of granny's mob cap and her father's rough face, with the red head of her small stepbrother between them, grouped in the doorway. Her mother had died long ago, and there was another in her place now, and a swarm of children. Hannah was going to her own home, to a much easier life, and going with John. Why should she cry?

Besides, Hannah was the merriest little woman in the country. She had a laugh always lying ready in a convenient dimple.

She never knew what "blues" meant, except to dye stocking yarn. She was sunny as a dandelion and gay as a bobolink. Her sweet good nature never failed through the long day's journey, and when night came she made a pot of tea at the campfire, roasted a row of apples, and broiled a partridge John shot by the wayside, with as much enjoyment as if this was the merriest picnic excursion, and not a solitary camp in the forest, long miles away from any human dwelling, and by no means sure of safety from some lingering savage, some beast of harmful nature, or at least a visit from a shambling black bear, for bears were plentiful enough in that region.

But none of these things worried Hannah. She ate her supper with hearty appet.i.te, said her prayers with John, and curled down on the featherbed in the cart, while John heaped on more wood, and, shouldering his musket, went to lengthen the ropes that tethered his oxen, and then mounted guard over the camp. Hannah watched his fine, grave face, as the flickering light illuminated it, for a few minutes, and then slept tranquilly till dawn. And by sunset next day the little party drew up at the door of the log hut they called home.

It looked very pretty to Hannah. She had the fairy gift, that is so rare among mortals, of seeing beauty in its faintest expression; and the young gra.s.s about the rough stone doorstep, the crimson cones on the great larch tree behind it, the sunlit panes of the west window, the laugh and sparkle of the brook that ran through the clearing, the blue eyes of the squirrel caps that blossomed shyly and daintily beside the stumps of new-felled trees--all these she saw and delighted in. And when the door was open, the old clock set up, the bed laid on the standing bedplace, and the three chairs and table ranged against the wall, she began her house-wifery directly, singing as she went.

Before John had put his oxen in the small barn, sheltered the cart and the tools in it, and shaken down hay into the manger, Hannah had made a fire, hung on the kettle, spread up her bed with homespun sheets and blankets and a wonderful cover of white-and-red chintz, set the table with a loaf of bread, a square of yellow b.u.t.ter, a bowl of maple sugar, and a plate of cheese; and even released the c.o.c.k and the hen from their uneasy prison in a splint basket, and was feeding them in the little woodshed when John came in.

His face lit up, as he entered, with that joyful sense of home so instinctive in every true man and woman. He rubbed his hard hands together, and catching Hannah as she came in at the shed door, bestowed upon her a resounding kiss.

"You're the most of a little woman I ever see, Hannah, I swan to man."

Hannah laughed like a swarm of spring blackbirds.

"I declare, John, you do beat all! Ain't it real pleasant here? Seems to me I never saw things so handy."

Oh, Hannah, what if your prophetic soul could have foreseen the conveniences of this hundred years after! Yet the shelves, the pegs, the cupboard in the corner, the broad shelf above the fire, the great pine chest under the window, and the clumsy settle, all wrought out of pine board by John's patient and skilful fingers, filled all her needs; and what can modern conveniences do more?

So they ate their supper at home for the first time, happy as new-nested birds, and far more grateful.

John had built a sawmill on the brook a little way from the house, and already owned a flourishing trade, for the settlement about the lake from which Nepa.s.set Brook sprung was quite large, and till John Perkins went there the lumber had been all drawn fifteen miles off, to Litchfield, and his mill was only three miles from Nepash village.

Hard work and hard fare lay before them both, but they were not daunted by the prospect....

By and by a cradle entered the door, and a baby was laid in it....

One baby is well enough in a log cabin, with one room for all the purposes of life; but when next year brought two more, a pair of stout boys, then John began to saw lumber for his own use. A bedroom was built on the east side of the house, and a rough stairway into the loft--more room perhaps than was needed; but John was called in Nepash "a dre'dful forecastin' man," and he took warning from the twins. And timely warning it proved, for as the years slipped by, one after another, they left their arrows in his quiver till ten children bloomed about the hearth. The old cabin had disappeared entirely. A good-sized frame house of one story, with a high-pitched roof, stood in its stead, and a slab fence kept roving animals out of the yard and saved the apple trees from the teeth of stray cows and horses.

Poor enough they were still. The loom in the garret always had its web ready, the great wheel by the other window sung its busy song year in and year out. Dolly was her mother's right hand now; and the twins, Ralph and Reuben, could fire the musket and chop wood. Sylvy, the fourth child, was the odd one. All the rest were st.u.r.dy, rosy, laughing girls and boys; but Sylvy had been a pining baby, and grew up into a slender, elegant creature, with clear gray eyes, limpid as water, but bright as stars, and fringed with long golden lashes the colour of her beautiful hair--locks that were coiled in fold on fold at the back of her fine head, like wreaths of undyed silk, so pale was their yellow l.u.s.tre. She bloomed among the crowd of red-cheeked, dark-haired lads and la.s.ses, stately and incongruous as a June lily in a bed of tulips. But Sylvy did not stay at home. The parson's lady at Litchfield came to Nepash one Sunday, with her husband, and seeing Sylvy in the square corner pew with the rest, was mightily struck by her lovely face, and offered to take her home with her the next week, for the better advantages of schooling. Hannah could not have spared Dolly; but Sylvia was a dreamy, unpractical child, and though all the dearer for being the solitary lamb of the flock by virtue of her essential difference from the rest, still, for that very reason, it became easier to let her go. Parson Everett was childless, and in two years' time both he and his wife adored the gentle, graceful girl; and she loved them dearly. They could not part with her, and at last adopted her formally as their daughter, with the unwilling consent of John and Hannah. Yet they knew it was greatly "for Sylvy's betterment," as they phrased it; so at last they let her go.

But when Dolly was a st.u.r.dy young woman of twenty-five the war-trumpet blew, and John and the twins heard it effectually. There was a sudden leaving of the plow in the furrow. The planting was set aside for the children to finish, the old musket rubbed up, and with set lips and resolute eyes the three men walked away one May morning to join the Nepash company. Hannah kept up her smiling courage through it all. If her heart gave way, n.o.body knew it but G.o.d and John. The boys she encouraged and inspired, and the children were shamed out of their childish tears by mother's bright face and cheery talk.

Then she set them all to work. There was corn to plant, wheat to sow, potatoes to set; flax and wool to spin and weave, for clothes would be needed for all, both absent and stay-at-homes. There was no father to superintend the outdoor work; so Hannah took the field, and marshalled her forces on Nepa.s.set Brook much as the commander-in-chief was doing on a larger scale elsewhere. Eben, the biggest boy, and Joey, who came next him, were to do all the planting; Diana and Sam took on themselves the care of the potato patch, the fowls, and the cow; Dolly must spin and weave when mother left either the wheel or loom to attend to the general ordering of the forces; while Obed and Betty, the younglings of the flock, were detailed to weed, pick vegetables (such few as were raised in the small garden), gather berries, herbs, nuts, hunt the straying turkeys' nests, and make themselves generally useful. At evening all the girls sewed; the boys mended their shoes, having learned so much from a travelling cobbler; and the mother taught them all her small stock of schooling would allow. At least, they each knew how to read, and most of them to write, after a very uncertain fashion. As to spelling, n.o.body knew how to spell in those days.... But they did know the four simple rules of arithmetic, and could say the epigrammatic rhymes of the old New England Primer and the sibyllic formulas of the a.s.sembly's Catechism as glibly as the child of to-day repeats "The House That Jack Built."