The Little Colonel's Holidays Part 6

"It nearly broke the old grandmother's heart. She sat up all night, and Molly says she remembers that time like a dreadful dream. Half the time the old woman was rocking Dot in her arms, crying over her, and half the time she was walking the floor.

"Molly says that now, when she shuts her eyes at night, she can hear her saying, over and over, 'Oh, my Jimmy! My Jimmy! To think that my only child should come to this! Oh, my Jimmy! The baby boy that was my sunshine, how can it be that _you've_ become the sorrow of my life!'

Then she'd walk up and down the room as if she were crazy, calling out, 'But it's the drink that did it! It's the drink, and a curse be on everything that helps to bring it into the world.'

"Molly says that she looked so terrible, with her white hair streaming over her shoulders, and her eyes staring, that she hid her face in the bedclothes. But she couldn't shut out the words. She shouted them so loud that the family in the next room couldn't sleep, and knocked on the wall for her to stop. But she only went on walking and wringing her hands and calling, 'A curse on all who buy and all who brew! A curse on every distiller! On every saloon-keeper! On every man who has so much as a finger in this business of death! May all the shame and the sin and the sorrow they have sown in other homes be reaped a hundredfold in their own!'

"I suppose it made such a strong impression on Molly, hearing her grandmother take on so terribly, that she remembered every word, and will as long as she lives. She said the rain poured that night till it leaked down on the bed, and she and Dot had to snuggle up together at the foot, to keep dry. Her grandmother walked the floor till daylight.

The neighbours complained of her, and said that her troubles had unsettled her mind, and that she would have to be sent some place to be taken care of. All she could talk about was the drink that had ruined her Jimmy, and the awful things she prayed would happen to anybody who had anything to do with making or selling whiskey.

"She couldn't work any longer, and they were almost starving. One day she was taken to the almshouse, and the family in the next room took care of Molly and Dot until arrangements could be made to send them to an orphan asylum. It was hard to get them into one, you know, because their father was living.

"They stayed several weeks with those people, and Molly helped take care of the baby, for she was a big girl, eleven years old, then. Dot was seven, but so little and starved that she looked scarcely half that old.

She couldn't do much to help, but they sent her on errands sometimes.

"One day she went to the meat-shop around the corner, and _she never came back_. Molly hunted in all the alleys and courtyards for her, until some one brought her a message from her father, that he had taken Dot away to another town. He didn't care what became of Molly, he said. She had been saucy to him, but no orphan asylum should have his baby. He'd hide her where she wouldn't be found in a hurry.

"Molly says she would have liked it at the asylum if Dot could have been with her, but because she couldn't it made her hate everything and everybody in the world. There was a big distillery in sight of her window. She could see the roof the first thing in the morning, when she opened her eyes, and the last thing at night. Many a time before she got out of bed she'd think of her grandmother's words and repeat them just like it was her prayers. She'd think 'It's drink that put me here, and it's what separated me from Dot,' and then she'd say, 'A curse on those who sell, and those who make it, and on every hand that helps to bring it into the world! Amen.'"

"How dreadful!" exclaimed the Little Colonel, with a shudder. "She is as bad as a heathen."

"But you can't wonder at it," said Betty. "We would have felt the same way in her place. Suppose it was your Papa Jack that had been made a drunkard, and that he'd begin to be mean to you, and make so much trouble that G.o.dmother would die, and you'd have to leave the House Beautiful and be sent to an asylum, and all on account of the saloons.

Wouldn't _you_ hate them and everything that helped keep them going?"

Lloyd only shivered at the thought, without answering. It was not possible for her to suppose such a horrible thing about her beloved father, but she felt the justice of Betty's view.

"While she was at the asylum," continued Betty, "some one sent a pile of old magazines, and among them she found the picture that we saw. She says that it looks exactly like Dot, and that is the way she used to stand and cry sometimes when she was cold and hungry, and there wasn't anything in the house to eat. It makes her perfectly miserable whenever she looks at it, but it is so much like Dot that she can't bear to give it up. Now you see why she didn't like us. It didn't seem fair to her that we should have so much to make us happy, when she has so little.

She has had a hard enough time to spoil anybody's disposition, I think."

Lloyd was in tears by this time, and reaching across the table for the letter she had written about the Barley-bright witch, she began tearing it into pieces.

"Oh, if I'd only known," she said, "I never would have written those things about her. I'll write another one this afternoon, and tell Joyce all about her. Is she still crying in there, Betty?"

"No, she stopped before I left. I told her we would all try to find her little sister, and that I was sure G.o.dmother could do it, even if everybody else failed. But she didn't seem to think that there was much hope."

"Did you tell her about Fairchance?" asked Lloyd, "or Joyce's finding Jules's great-aunt Desire, that time she went to the Little Sisters of the Poor?"

"No," said Betty.

"Then let me tell her," cried the Little Colonel, starting up eagerly.

She ran on into Molly's room, while thoughtful Betty slipped down-stairs to offer her services in Molly's place, that she might listen undisturbed to Lloyd's tale of comfort,--all about Jonesy and his brother, and the bear, who had found a fair chance to begin life again, in the home that the two little knights built for them, in their efforts to "right the wrong and follow the king." All about old great-aunt Desire, who had been found in a pauper's home and brought back to her own again, through the Gate of the Giant Scissors, on Christmas Day in the morning.

"It is too good to be true," sighed Molly, when Lloyd had finished. "It might happen to some people, but it's too good to happen to me. It sounds like something out of a story-book."

"Most of the things in story-books had to happen first before they were written about," answered the Little Colonel. "You've got so many friends now that surely some of them will be able to do something to find her."

Presently Molly looked up, saying, in a hesitating way, "Several people have been good to me before, but I never thought about them doing it because they were my _friends_. I thought they treated me kindly just because they pitied me, and that made me cross."

Lloyd was turning the little ring that Eugenia had given her around on her finger, and something in the touch of the little lover's knot of gold recalled all that she had resolved about the "Road of the Loving Heart." It was the ring that made her say, gently, "You mustn't think that about Betty and me. We'll be your really truly friends just as we are Joyce's and Eugenia's."

Then to Molly's great surprise the Little Colonel's pretty face leaned over hers an instant, and she felt a quick kiss on her forehead. She lay there a moment longer without speaking, and then sat up, a bright smile flashing across her tear-swollen face. "Somehow the whole world seems different," she cried. "It seems so queer to think I've really got _friends_ like other people."

There was a warm glow in the Little Colonel's heart when she went back to Betty's room. The consciousness that she had carried comfort and sunshine into another's life brightened the rainy day until it no longer seemed dark and dreary. That comfortable consciousness was still with her in the afternoon, when she sat down to write another letter to Joyce,--a letter, not filled this time with her own mishaps and misfortunes, but so full of sympathy for Molly's troubles that no one who read it could fail to be touched and interested.

CHAPTER VII.

A FEAST OF SAILS.

NOW ring your merriest tune, ye silver bells of the magic caldron. 'Tis a birthday feast that awakes your chiming, so make your key-note joy.

And now if the little princes and princesses will thrust their curious fingers into the steam as the water bubbles again, it will take them far away from the Cuckoo's Nest. They will see the village of Plainsville, Kansas, and the little brown house where the Ware family lived.

The day that the Little Colonel's letter reached Joyce was Holland's tenth birthday. One would not have dreamed that there was a party of ten boys in the parlour that bright September afternoon, for the shutters were closed, and every blind tightly drawn. Jack had darkened the room to give them a magic lantern exhibition, while Joyce was spreading the table under an apple-tree in the side yard. Mary, her funny little braids with their big bows of blue ribbon continually bobbing over her shoulders, was helping to carry out the curious dishes from the house that had taken all morning to prepare.

There was never much money to spend in entertainments in the little brown house, but birthdays never pa.s.sed unheeded. Love can always find some way to keep the red-letter days of its calendar. Joyce and her mother had planned a novel supper for Holland and his friends, thinking it would make a merry feast for them to laugh over now, and a pleasant memory by and by, when three score years had been added to his ten.

Looking back on the day when somebody cared that it was his birthday, and celebrated it with loving forethought, would kindle a glow in his heart, no matter how old and white-haired he might live to be.

The little mother could not take much time from her sewing, but she suggested and helped with the verses, and came out when the table was nearly ready, to add a few finishing touches.

A Feast of Sails, Joyce called it, saying that, if Cinderella's G.o.dmother could change a pumpkin into a gilded coach, there was no reason why they should not transform an ordinary luncheon into a fleet of boats, for a boy whose greatest ambition was to be a naval officer, and who was always talking about the sea.

These were the invitations, printed in Jack's best style, and decorated by Joyce with a little water-colour sketch of a ship in full sail:

Please come, hale and hearty, To Holland Ware's party, September, the twenty-first day, And partake in a bunch Of a queer birthday lunch, And afterward join in a play.

The things which we'll eat Will be boats, sour and sweet, With maybe an entree of whales.

Will you please to arrive Awhile before five, The hour that this boat-luncheon sails.

The invitations aroused great interest among all Holland's friends, and every boy was at the gate long before the appointed hour, curious to see the "boats sour and sweet" that could be eaten. But even Holland did not know what was in store for them. Joyce had driven him out of the kitchen while she was preparing the surprise, and would not begin to set the table until Jack had marshalled every boy into the dark parlour and begun his magic lantern show. The baby was with them, a baby no longer, he stoutly declared, as he had that day been promoted from kilts to his first pair of trousers, and he insisted on being called henceforth by his own name, Norman.

As he and Jack were to be added to the party of ten, the table was set for twelve. It was a gay sight when everything was ready. From the mirror lake in the middle, on which a dozen toy swans were afloat, arose a lighthouse made of doughnuts. It was surmounted by a little lantern from which floated a tiny flag. At one end of the table a huge watermelon cut lengthwise, and furnished with masts and sails of red crepe paper, looked like a brig just launched. At the other end rose the great white island of the birthday cake, with its ten red candles. All down the sides of the table was a flutter of yellow and green and white and blue sails, for at each plate was a little fleet sporting the colours of the rainbow.

It had been an interesting task to make the dressed eggs into canoes, to cut the cheese into square rafts, and hollow out the long cuc.u.mber pickles into skiffs, fitting sails or pennons to each broomstraw mast.

It had been still more interesting to change a bag of big fat raisins into turtles, by poking five cloves and a bit of stem into each one for the head, legs, and tail.

Joyce took an artistic pleasure in arranging the orange boats around the table. She had made them by cutting an orange in two, and putting a stick of peppermint candy in each half for a mast, and they had a foreign, Chinese look with their queer sails, flaming with little red-ink dragons. Jack had drawn them. Here and there, over the sea of white tablecloth, she had scattered candy fish and the raisin turtles.

At the last moment there were potato chips to be heated, and islands of sandwiches and jelly to distribute, and the can of sardines to open.

Mary had insisted on having the sardines to personate whales, and she herself served one to each guest on a little sh.e.l.l-shaped plate belonging to her set of doll dishes. It had taken so long to prepare all these boats, that Joyce had had no time to decorate the menu cards as she had planned, but Jack had cut them in the shape of an anchor, and stuck a fish-hook through each one for a souvenir. This was what was printed on them:

MENU.

An egg Canoe A Skiff of pickle A Cheese Raft too. Your taste to tickle.

Turtles galore, Entree of Whales Found alongsh.o.r.e. (A la sardine tails).

Chips in a pile, and A Sandwich Island.

The Brig _Watermelon_ An orange boat last With sails all a-swellin'. With a candy mast.