Honey-Sweet Part 19

"That po' thing ain't goin' to be drug back to no 'sylum," pursued his wife. "She shall stay here long as she's a mind to--till her folks come for her--or till she gets grown--or something. And she shall have all she wants to eat, sho as my name's Lizabeth Collins. I've heard tell of them 'sylums. They say the chillen don't have nothin' to eat or wear but what folks give 'em. Think of them with their po' little empty stomachs settin' waitin' for somebody to think to send 'em dinner! I'm goin' to make a jar full of gingercakes fust thing in the mornin' and put it on the pantry shelf where that child can he'p herself.--Anne, uh!

Anne!--She's 'sleep. I jest wondering if she'd rather have gingercakes or tea-cakes dusted with sugar and cinnamon. Peter Collins! I tell you, you got to work and pervide for yo' chillen. I couldn't rest in my grave if I thought one of them'd ever have to go to a 'sylum. I see you last week give a knife to that Hawley boy.--What if he was name for you?--I don't keer if it didn't cost but ten cent. You'll land in the po' house and yo' chillen in 'sylums if you throw away yo' money on tother folks' chillens.--Peter, fust thing in the morning you catch me a chicken to fry for that po' child's breakfast. And remind me--to git out--a jar of honey," she concluded drowsily.

CHAPTER XXII

The next morning, after Anne insisted that she could not possibly eat any more corn-cakes or biscuits or toast or fried apples or chicken or ham or potato-cakes or mola.s.ses or honey, Mrs. Collins picked her up and put her in a rocking-chair by the south window.

"Now, you set thar and rest," she commanded, "till Lizzie does up her work and has time to play with you. You Lizzie! Hurry and wash them dishes and sweep this floor and dust my room and then take the little old lady's breakfast to her. It's in the stove, keeping warm."

"Let me help Lizzie," begged Anne. "I know how to sweep and dust and wash dishes. We had to do those things--turn about, you know--at the 'Home.'"

"You set right still," repeated Mrs. Collins, "and let some meat grow on yo' po' little bones. I know how they treat you at them 'sylums, making you work day in, day out. Oh, it's a dog's life!"

"But, Mrs. Collins, they were good to me, and kind as could be. I didn't have to work so hard. I just did the things that Lizzie does."

"Uh! Lizzie!" was the response, "that's diff'rent. She's at home. She works when I tell her--if she chooses," Mrs. Collins concluded with a chuckle, for Lizzie had dropped her broom and was sitting in the middle of the floor pulling Honey-Sweet's shoes and stockings off and on.

Anne went outdoors presently to look around the dear old place. 'Lewis Hall,' a roomy frame-house built before the Revolution, was on a hill which sloped gently toward the corn-fields and meadows that bordered the lazy river beyond which rose the bluffs of Buckingham. Back of the house, a level s.p.a.ce was laid out in a formal garden. The boxwood, brought from England when that was the mother country, met across the turf walks. Long-neglected flowers--damask and cabbage roses, zinnias, c.o.c.k's-comb, hollyhocks--grew half-wild, making ma.s.ses of glowing color.

Along the walks, where there had paced, a hundred years before, stately Lewis ladies in brocade and stately Lewis gentlemen in velvet coats, now tripped an orphan girl, a stranger in her father's home. But she was a very happy little maid as she roamed about the s.p.a.cious old garden on that sunshiny summer day, gathering hollyhocks and zinnias for ladies to occupy her playhouse in the gnarled roots of an old oak-tree.

When Lizzie came out to play, she and Anne wandered away to the fields.

There was a dear little baby brook--how well Anne remembered it!--that started from a spring on the hillside, trickled among the under-brush, loitered through the meadow, and emptied into a larger stream that fed the river.

"Let's take off our shoes and stockings," said Anne, tripping joyfully along, "and wade to the creek. You've been there? Part of the way is sandy. Your feet crunch down in the nice cool sand. Part of the way there are rocks--flat, mossy ones. They're so pretty--and slippery! It's fun not knowing when you are going to fall down."

"There's bamboo-vines," objected Lizzie. "Mother'll whip me if I tear my dress."

"Oh, we'll stoop down and crawl under the vines." Anne was ready of resource. "And we'll dry our dresses in the sun before we go home. Oh, Lizzie! Look at all the little fishes! Let's catch them! Do don't let them get by. Aren't they slippery! Tell you what let's play. Let's be Jamestown settlers and catch fish to keep us from starving. We'll have our settlement here by the brook--the river James, we'll play it is."

"How do you play that? I never heard tell of Jamestown settlers," said Lizzie.

"A big girl like you never heard about Jamestown settlers!" exclaimed Anne; then, fearing her surprise at such ignorance would hurt Lizzie's feelings, she tried to smooth it over. "It really isn't s'prising that you never heard 'bout them, Lizzie. Mother always said this was such a quiet place that you never heard any news here. I'll tell you all 'bout them while we build our huts."

While Anne told the story of John Smith and played she was the brave captain directing his band, they dragged brushwood together and erected cabins. Stones were piled to make fireplaces on which to cook the fish they were going to catch and the corn they were going to buy from the Indians.

"You be the Indians, Lizzie," suggested Anne. "Paint your face with pokeberries and stick feathers in your hair. They're heap nicer to look at, but I want to be the Englishmen and talk like Captain John Smith.

All you have to say is 'ugh! ugh!'"

The morning slipped by so quickly that they could hardly believe their ears when they heard the farm bell ringing for noon. After dinner, Jake and Peter went by the settlement, on their way to the tobacco-field, to help build Powhatan's rock chimney. The boys made bows and arrows and became so interested in playing Indian that Mr. Collins came for them.

He scolded them roundly and said that no boy who didn't work in the tobacco-field would get any supper at his house that night.

"I'm the play Captain Smith," laughed Anne, looking up at the rough-speaking, soft-hearted man; "but you talk like the real captain.

'I give this for a law,' he said, 'that he who will not work shall not eat.'"

Mrs. Collins said that night that the girls must not play Jamestown settlers any more. They might get ill or hurt or snake-bit; and who ever heard of such a game for little girls? they ought to stay in the house and keep their faces white and their frocks clean and play dolls.

Anne and Lizzie, however, teased next day until she relented and even waddled down the hill to see their settlement.

"I told them chillen they shouldn't put thar foots in that ma'sh on the branch, gettin' wet and draggled and catchin' colds and chills," she explained to her husband. "But they begged so hard I told 'em to go on and have a good time. Maybe it won't hurt 'em. They're good-mindin'

gals. And I never did believe in encouragin' chillen to disobey you by tellin' 'em they shouldn't do things you see thar heads set on doin'.

Don't be so hard on the boys, Peter, for stoppin' awhile to play. If the Lord hadn't 'a' meant for chillen to have play-time, He'd 'a' made 'em workin' age to begin with."

The Jamestown colony, like the great undertaking after which it was patterned, had many ups and downs,--flourishing when Jake and Peter could steal off to be Indians and new settlers, and then being neglected and almost deserted. Anne and Lizzie found the most beautiful place to play keeping house. On the hillside, there were two great rocks, full of the most delightful nooks and crevices. One of these rocks was Anne's home, the other was Lizzie's. In the moss-carpeted rooms, lived daisy ladies, with brown-eyed Susans for maids. They made visits and gave dinner parties, having bark tables set with acorn-cups and bits of broken gla.s.s and china. They had leaf boats to go a-pleasuring on the spring brook where they had wonderful adventures.

Rainy days put an end to outdoor delights, but they only gave more time for indoor games with their neglected dolls.

After breakfast one rainy morning, Lizzie asked her mother for some sc.r.a.ps--she didn't want any except pretty ones--to make dresses for Honey-Sweet and Nancy Jane. Mrs. Collins replied that she had no idea of wasting her good bed-quilt and carpet-rag pieces on such foolishness as doll dresses. But when ten minutes later the girls went back to repeat their request, they found Mrs. Collins rummaging a bureau drawer. Thence she produced two generous pieces of pretty dimity,--Honey-Sweet's was buff with little rose sprigs and Nancy Jane's had daisies on a pale-blue ground.

While Lizzie was busy making doll dresses, Anne got a book with pictures in it and gave forth a story with a readiness that amazed Mrs. Collins.

"Ain't you a good reader!" she exclaimed. "You read so fast I can't understand half you say."

"I'm not reading all that," honesty compelled Anne to confess, as she beamed with pleasure at Mrs. Collins's praise. "I read when the words are short, and when they're long and the print's solid, I make it up out of my head to fit the pictures."

"Ah! you come of high-learnt folks," said Mrs. Collins, admiringly.

"Now, my Jake and Peter, they can't read nothing but what's in the book and that a heap of trouble to 'em. And Lizzie here, she's wore out two first readers and don't hardly know her letters yet."

Lizzie soon tired of sewing and she and Anne pattered off through the halls to the bareness and strangeness of which Anne could not get used.

Where, she wondered, were the people in tarnished gilt frames--slim smiling ladies and stately gentlemen with stocks and wigs--that used to be there? The two girls played lady and come-to-see in the bare up-stairs rooms awhile. Then Anne said, "Lizzie, I'm going up the little ladder into the attic and walk around the chimneys."

"Don't! It's dark up there," shuddered Lizzie.

"Dark as midnight," agreed Anne; "heavy dark. You can feel it. It's the only place I used to be afraid of. I have to make myself go there."

"Why?" asked Lizzie.

"I--don't just know--but I do. You wait here." She came back a little later, dusty, cobwebby, flushed. "I knew there wasn't anything there--in the dark more'n the light," she said. "I know it, and still I just have to make myself not be scared. Whew! It's hot up there. Lizzie, let's go in the parlor. I've not been in there yet."

"No," objected Lizzie. "The little old lady's in there--or in the room back of it. Them's her rooms."

"The little old lady? who is she?" inquired Anne.

"She's the one I take breakfast and dinner and supper to. She comes here in the summer and she sits in there and rocks and reads."

"Doesn't she ever go out?" Anne wanted to know.

"Oh, yes! she walks in the yard or garden every day. You just ain't happened to see her. We've played away from the house so much."

"What kind of looking lady is she?" asked Anne.

"Oh, she's just a lady. Ma says she's mighty hotty. What's hotty, Anne?"

inquired Lizzie.

Haughty was a new word to Anne. But she hated to say "I don't know," and besides words made to her pictures--queer ones sometimes--of their meaning. "It means she warms up quick," she a.s.serted. "Tell me about her, Lizzie. How does she look?"

"She ain't so very tall and she's slim as a bean-pole," said Lizzie.