Honey-Sweet Part 21

Firefly turned at last from the highway to a plantation road and stopped at a log cabin. It was a neat, whitewashed little house, with rows of zinnias and marigolds on each side of a walk leading from the road. Over the door, hung a madeira vine covered with little spikes of fragrant white blossoms. Charity, in a blue-and-white checked cotton gown, with a bandanna around her head, was working in her garden beside the house.

"Don't speak to her, Cousin Dorcas," whispered Anne. "Let me s'prise her." She jumped lightly out of the buggy and ran to Aunt Charity.

"Boo!" she said.

Charity dropped her hoe with a scream. "Lawd 'a' mercy!" she exclaimed, backing toward the cabin. "My child's ghost in de broad daylight!"

Anne laughed till tears ran down her cheeks. "There!" she said, pinching Charity's fat arm. "Does that feel like a ghost, Aunt Charity?"

Charity seized Anne in her arms and jumped up and down, exclaiming, "My child in de flesh and blood! my child in de flesh and blood!" At last she recovered herself enough to "mind her manners" and help Miss Dorcas out of the buggy.

"You all ain' gwine away a step till you eat a snack," she insisted. "I got a chicken in dyar I done kilt to take to church to-morrow. Ain't I glad it's ready for my baby child! And I'll mix some hoecakes and bake some sweet taters and gi' you a pitcher o' cool sweet milk. My precious baby, you set right dyar in de do'. I can't take my eyes off you any more'n if dee was glued to you."

A table was set under the great oak and Charity, beaming with joy, waited on her guests. "Richard ain't gwi' forgive hisself for goin' to mill to-day," she said. "Dunno huccome he went, anyway. He could 'a' put it off till Monday. But if you gwi' be at de old place till Chewsday, me an' him will sho hobble up to see you."

As the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, Miss Dorcas and Anne started on their homeward journey. Miss Dorcas clucked and jerked the lines, and Firefly ambled homeward, now jog-trotting along the road, now pausing to nibble gra.s.s on the wayside.

CHAPTER XXIV

All too soon for Anne, came the day that was to take her to the city.

Generous Mrs. Collins insisted on slipping into Miss Dorcas's trunk a liberal supply of Lizzie's clothes, and she gave Anne one of Lizzie's best frocks to travel in and a muslin hat that flopped over her face.

Disguised in these, she was to be smuggled away on a night train to prevent her being discovered and taken back to the asylum. They were the more concerned about the matter because Mr. Collins heard at the blacksmith shop new inquiries about the lost child. Miss Dorcas charged Charity and Richard, who trudged the long eight miles to visit their "precious baby child," not to mention having seen Anne. Richard brought on his shoulder a great bag full of things "for Ma.r.s.e Will Watkins's child"--apples, popcorn, potatoes. For days Mrs. Collins had been baking cakes and pies and selecting sweetmeats, preserves, and pickles from her store. The supplies were so liberal that after a barrel was packed and repacked and re-repacked there were almost as many things left out as were put in. Mrs. Collins wanted to put them in another barrel, but Miss Dorcas said that the supply already packed would more than fill her tiny pantry.

Mrs. Collins consoled herself as best she could. "Christmas is coming,"

she said; "it's slow but it's on the way. And when it do get here, I'll send you a barrel packed to show you what a barrel can hold."

The morning after Anne's regretful farewell to her old home and her new friends, found her eagerly examining her cousin's small apartment in Georgetown. The house was a red-brick mansion built for the residence of an early Secretary of the Navy, and now made over into cheap flats. The stately, old-fashioned place was surrounded by small shops and cheap, dingy houses. "It makes me think," Miss Dorcas said with a sigh, "how Jefferson would look to-day in a Democratic party meeting or Hamilton among modern Republican politicians."

Anne didn't know who Hamilton was but she thought Jefferson, whose picture hung in the sitting-room, looked as if he might have lived here.

It was a place still full of charm. In the rear of the mansion was an old-fashioned flower garden with box-bordered gravel walks dividing the formal beds and leading here to a stone seat, there to a broken fountain. In the centre of the garden, was a sun-dial which a century before told the shining hours; now, its days went in shadow under the crowding trees,--a coffee-tree from Arabia, a mulberry from Spain, and other relics of the wanderings of the long-ago secretary. Anne felt like a bird in a nest as she sat on the roomy, white-columned porch overlooking the garden, catching glimpses through a leafy screen of the broad Potomac and the wooded hills of Virginia.

"Ah! when the leaves fall it is beautiful, beautiful," said her cousin; but Anne was sure that it could never be more beautiful than now, in the green-gold glory of a late summer afternoon.

After a few idle days, Anne was enrolled in the city free school. Miss Dorcas mourned over the fact that she was unable to send her small cousin to a select private school, and urged her to study hard, behave well, and, above all, never to have anything to do with 'the common herd' of other children. Anne obeyed the last command very unwillingly.

It would be dreadful to be "contaminated,"--which she supposed to mean infected with a bad kind of measles,--as Cousin Dorcas said she would be if she played with her grade-mates; but it was hard to sit primly alone instead of joining the recess games.

At first some of the children tried to make friends with her but, being met coolly, they left her to lonely dignity.

"It's goot," wonderingly explained Albert Naumann, a st.u.r.dy, blond little German, when she refused a bite of the crimson-cheeked winesap apple that he offered.

"Why not?" asked merry-faced Peggy Callahan, when Anne declined her dare to a foot-race. "You're not sick, are you?"

"No, indeed!" answered Anne.

"Oh! you look sorter like I feel when I've a pain in my stomach," said Peggy, running off in reply to a playmate's call.

Anne looked after her longingly. Peggy was a bright, merry, friendly child with whom she would have liked to play, but for being sure Cousin Dorcas would object. Peggy was certainly one of the 'common herd'--her clothes ragged or patched and her person rather dingy.

Anne was lonely.

"It's worse than being all by myself," she reflected soberly, "to see the other children's good times and be out of them all."

She consoled herself as best she could with Honey-Sweet, disagreeing stoutly with Miss Dorcas who thought that she was too large a girl to play with dolls.

"Honey-Sweet isn't just a doll--not like those in shops," Anne explained. "Dear Mrs. Patterson made her. And she's been everywhere with me. And, Cousin Dorcas, she really is useful. I study all my lessons with her. That's how I learn them so good--making believe I'm teaching them to Honey-Sweet. And she helps me keep still. You know you do like me to be quiet, Cousin Dorcas."

"Yes. I don't want to seem severe, but I cannot bear a noise. I am so worn out when I come from the office. It seems each day my head aches worse than it did the day before." Miss Dorcas sighed. "And if it isn't a downright ache when I come home, it begins to pound as soon as I look at this book--" she eyed the account-book open before her--"I hoped you could have some new shoes this month. Those are downright shabby. But there isn't any money for them. I don't see how I am going to pay the gas bill unless we stop eating. It costs so much to live!"

"Perhaps Miss Santa Claus will give us something," suggested Anne.

"Perhaps so," answered Miss Dorcas, absently, poising her pencil above a column of figures in her account-book.

'Miss Santa Claus' was the name that Anne had given to a gentlewoman in the apartment below. Anne had a smiling acquaintance with her and was deeply interested in glimpses of her visitors. Miss Santa Claus's real name was Margery Hartman. Her fair hair was growing silvery, but her cheeks were pink and soft with lingering girlhood and the spirit of eternal youth looked from her clear blue eyes. She was the district agent of the a.s.sociated Charities, and worked untiringly with kind heart and clear head to aid and uplift the poor around her.

One September afternoon, Anne, running up-stairs, b.u.mped against the Charities lady.

"Oh! I beg your pardon, Miss Santa Claus," she exclaimed.

The lady laughed. "That's a new name for me," she said.

Anne reddened. "It just slipped out. I don't know your other-folks'

name. And I call you Miss Santa Claus to myself because you are always giving people things. I don't mean to listen," she explained, "but I can't help hearing them ask you for coal and shoes and grocery orders."

"You are my little neighbor on the floor above, aren't you?" asked the lady.

Anne a.s.sented.

"It's a nice name you've given me--very much nicer than my own real name which happens to be Margery Hartman. I know your name. I heard Albert Naumann call you Anne Lewis."

"You gave Albert shoes to wear to school," said Anne.

"Yes. That is my business--to give things to people who need them. Kind people provide money for me to help the poor. Isn't that good of them?"

"It's very good," said Anne, earnestly. "Do you give them--shoes, I mean--to all the children that need them?"

"Not all." Miss Hartman smiled and then she sighed. "I wish I could."

CHAPTER XXV

The new acquaintance soon ripened into friendship. Miss Hartman grew very fond of the quaint, affectionate child and Anne said Miss Hartman was "nice as a book." She would tell story after story about the children she met in her Charity work and then she would sit at the piano and sing old songs in a sweet, clear voice of the quality that reaches the heart.