Meadow Grass: Tales of New England Life Part 3

"I declare!" she called, delightedly. "I was 'most afraid you'd forgot to come! Well, Claribel, if you 'ain't grown! They'll have to put a brick on your head, or you'll be taller'n grandma."

Claribel submitted to be kissed, and they entered the large, cool sitting-room, where they took off their things.

"You make yourself at home, Jane," said Lucindy, fluttering about, in pleasant excitement. "I ain't goin' to pay you a mite of attention till I see Claribel fixed. Now, Claribel, remember! you can go anywheres you're a mind to. And you can touch anything there is. You won't find a thing a little girl can hurt. Here, you come here where I be, and look across the entry. See that big lamp on the table? Well, if you unhook them danglin' things and peek through 'em, you'll find the brightest colors! My, how pretty they be! I've been lookin' through 'em this mornin'. I used to creep in and do it when I was little," she continued, in an aside to Mrs. Wilson. "Once I lost one." A strange look settled on her face; she was recalling a bitter experience.

"There!" she said, releasing Claribel with a little hug, "now run along! If you look on the lower shelf of the what-not, you'll see some sh.e.l.ls and coral I put there for just such a little girl."

Claribel walked soberly away to her playing.

"Don't you hurt nothin'!" called Mrs. Wilson; and Claribel responded properly,--

"No, 'm."

"There!" said Lucindy, watching the precise little back across the hall, "Now le's talk a mite about vanity. You reach me that green box behind your chair. Here's the best flowers Miss West had for what I wanted. Here's my bunnit, too. You see what you think."

She set the untrimmed bonnet on her curls, and laid first a bunch of bright chrysanthemums against it, and then some strange lavender roses.

The roses turned her complexion to an ivory whiteness, and her anxious, intent expression combined strangely with that undesirable effect.

"My soul, Lucindy!" cried Mrs. Wilson, startled into a more robust frankness than usual, "you do look like the Old Nick!"

A shade came over Miss Lucindy's honest face. It seemed, for a moment, as if she were going to cry.

"Don't you like 'em, Jane?" she asked, appealingly. "Won't neither of 'em do?"

Mrs. Wilson was not incapable of compunction, but she felt also the demands of the family honor.

"Well, Lucindy," she began, soothingly, "now 'tain't any use, is it, for us to say we ain't gettin' on in years? We be! You 're my age, an'--Why, look at Claribel in there! What should you say, if you see me settin' out to meetin' with red flowers on my bunnit? I should be nothin' but a laughin'-stock!"

Lucindy laid the flowers back in their box, with as much tenderness as if they held the living fragrance of a dream.

"Well!" she said, wistfully. Then she tried to smile.

"Here!" interposed Mrs. Wilson, not over-pleased with the part she felt called upon to play, "you give me your bunnit. Don't I see your old sheaf o'wheat in the box? Let me pin it on for you. There, now, don't that look more suitable?"

By the time she had laid it on, in conventional flatness, and held it up for inspection, every trace of rebellion had apparently been banished from Lucindy's mind.

"Here," said the victim of social rigor, "you hand me the box, and I'll set it away."

They had a cosey, old-fashioned chat, touching upon nothing in the least revolutionary, and Mrs. Wilson was glad to think Lucindy had forgotten all about the side-saddle. This last incident of the bonnet, she reflected, showed how much real influence she had over Lucindy. She must take care to exert it kindly but seriously now that the old Judge was gone.

"You goin' to keep your same help?" she asked, continuing the conversation.

"Oh, yes! I wouldn't part with Ann Toby for a good deal. She's goin' to have her younger sister come to live with us now. We shall be a pa.s.sel o' women, sha'n't we?"

"I guess it's well for you Ann Toby's what she is, or she'd cheat you out o' your eye-teeth!"

"Well," answered Lucindy, easily, "I ain't goin' to worry about my eye-teeth. If I be cheated out of 'em, I guess I can get a new set."

At five o'clock, they had some cookies, ostensibly for Claribel, since Mrs. Wilson could not stay to tea; and then, when the little maid had taken hers out to the front steps, Lucindy broached a daring plan, that moment conceived.

"Say, Jane," she whispered, with great pretence of secrecy, "what do you think just come into my head? Do you s'pose Mattie would be put out, if I should give Claribel a hat?"

"Mercy sakes, no! all in the family so! But what set you out on that?

She's got a good last year's one now, an' the ribbin's all pressed out an' turned, complete."

"I'll tell you," Said Lucindy, leaning nearer, and speaking as if she feared the very corners might hear. "You know I never was allowed to wear bright colors. And to this day, I see the hats the other girls had, blue on 'em, and pink. And if I could stand by and let a little girl pick out a hat for herself, without a word said to stop her, 'twould be real agreeable to me." Lucindy was shrewd enough to express herself somewhat moderately. She knew by experience how plainly Jane considered it a duty to discourage any overmastering emotion. But Jane Wilson was, at the same instant, feeling very keenly that Lucindy, faded and old as she was, needed to be indulged in all her riotous fancies. She repressed the temptation, however, at its birth.

"Why, I dunno's there's anything in the way of it," she said, soberly.

"Then, if you must go, I'll walk right along now. Claribel and I'll go down to Miss West's, and see what she's got. Nothin''s to be gained by waitin'!"

When they walked out through the hall together, Lucindy cast a quick and eager glance into the parlor. She almost hoped Claribel had unhooked the gla.s.s prisms from the lamp, and left them scattered on the floor, or that she had broken the precious sh.e.l.ls, more than half a century old. She wanted to put her arms round her, and say fondly, "Never mind!" But the room was in perfect order, and little Claribel waited for them, conscious of a propriety unstained by guilt.

"Lucindy," said Mrs. Wilson, who also had used her eyes, "where's your father's canes? They al'ays stood right here in this corner."

Lucindy flushed.

"Jane," she whispered, "don't you tell, but I--I buried 'em! I felt somehow as if I couldn't--do the things I wanted to, if they set there just the same."

Jane could only look at her in silence.

"Well," she said, at length, "it takes all kinds o' people to make a world!"

That, at least, was non-committal.

She left the shoppers at her own gate, and they walked on together.

Lucindy was the more excited of the two.

"Now, Claribel," she was saying, "you remember you can choose any hat you see, and have it trimmed just the way you like. What color do you set by most?"

"I don't know," said Claribel. "Blue, I guess."

"Well, there's a hat there all trimmed with it. I see it this mornin'.

Real bright, pretty blue! I believe there was some little noddin'

yellow flowers on it, too. But mind you don't take it unless you like it."

Miss West's shop occupied the front room of her house, a small yellow one on a side street. The upper part of the door was of gla.s.s, and it rang a bell as it opened. Lucindy had had very few occasions for going there, and she entered with some importance. The bell clanged; and Miss West, a portly woman, came in from the back room, whisking off her ap.r.o.n in haste.

"Oh, that you, Miss Lucindy?" she called. "I've just been fryin' some riz doughnuts. Well, how'd the flowers suit?"

"I haven't quite made up my mind," said Lucindy, trying to speak with the dignity befitting her quest. "I just come in with little Claribel here. She's goin' to have a new hat, and her grandma said she might come down with me to pick it out. You've got some all trimmed, I believe?"

Miss West opened a drawer in an old-fashioned bureau.

"Yes," she said, "I've got two my niece trimmed for me before she went to make her visit to Sudleigh. One's blue. I guess you've seen that.

Then there's a nice white one. The 'Weekly' says white's all the go, this year."

She took out two little hats, and balanced them on either hand. The blue one was strongly accented. The ribbon was very broad and very bright, and its nodding cowslips gleamed in cheerful yellow.

"Ain't that a beauty?" whispered Lucindy close to the little girl's ear. "But there! Don't you have it unless you'd rather. There's lots of other colors, you know; pink, and all sorts.".