Witch Winnie Part 4

"Girls," she said, "did you ever hear anything so absurd! We are going to recite our Botany to the princess."

"You don't mean it!"

"Honest! She lives in that funny old house across the square, that Winnie always pretends to think is haunted. We are to parade over there three days in the week. Madame says it's a great opportunity, for she is really quite eminent; writes for scientific journals, has traveled in all sorts of foreign countries, and _has moved in court circles_."

"I told you so!" exclaimed Adelaide, triumphantly. "I always said she was a true-blue princess."

"I don't know that you have quite proved it yet," replied Emma Jane Anton, coolly, "but Madame did say that we would have an opportunity of learning much more from her than mere botany--etiquette, I presume--for she went on to hint that she had been brought up in a different school of manners from that of our own day and country, that we would find her peculiar in some ways, and that she trusted to our native courtesy to humor her little foibles, and a hundred more things of the same sort, winding up with that stock expression which she always uses when she has talked a subject to shreds and tatters--'A word to the wise is sufficient.'"

"I wish I had heard her," said Witch Winnie; "I don't consider this subject talked to tatters, by any means. I propose that this Botany cla.s.s const.i.tute itself a committee of investigation to clear up the mystery in regard to the history of the princess. We are supposed to be devoted to the study of nature, but I consider _human_ nature a deal the more interesting. It will almost pay for having to mind one's _p_'s and _q_'s. I wonder what she would say if she caught me sliding down her palace bal.u.s.ters! We'll all have to practice curtseying--one step to the side, then two back. Oh! I'm ever so sorry I knocked over that stand.

Was the vase a keepsake or anything? I'll buy you another. No, I can't, for I've spent all my allowance for this month. Well, you may have that _bonbonniere_ of mine you liked so much." The vase was a treasure, but no one could be vexed with Witch Winnie, and I forgave her, of course, and would none of the _bonbonniere_.

Our first glimpse at the house in which the princess lived was as appetizing to our imaginations as the little lady herself. It had been built as a church-school, and straggled around the church, shaping itself to the exterior angles of that edifice, and in so doing gained a number of queerly shaped rooms, some long and narrow, and others with irregular corners, but all bright with southern sunshine. The princess rented only the upper floor and the front room in the bas.e.m.e.nt. The rest of the house had been let to other parties, but was now vacant. How strange and lonely it must seem, we thought, to go up and down those long staircases, and peep into the uninhabited rooms! Rather eerie at night. "I wouldn't live that way for the world," shivered Milly. "I should be afraid of robbers."

"Burglars don't usually choose an unoccupied house for their operations," Emma Jane remarked, sententiously.

Later, when we were better acquainted with the princess, Milly asked her if she was never timid. She acknowledged that she was, but a.s.sured us that rats _were one great comfort_.

"What do you mean?" Milly asked.

"Whenevaire," said the princess (in the quaint broken English which we always found so fascinating, English which had only the foreignness of p.r.o.nunciation and idiom, and which Adelaide insisted was rarely so maltreated as to be really _broken_, but was only a little dislocated)--"whenevaire I hear one cautious sawing noise which shall be as if ze burglaire to file ze lock, I say to myself, 'Ah, ha! Monsieur Rat have invited to himself some companie in ze pantry of ze butler.'

When zere come one _tappage_ on ze _escalier_, as zo some one make haste to depart ze house, I turn myself upon my bed and make to myself explanation--Rats! When ze footsteps mysterious steal so softly down ze hall, and make pause justly at my door, then I reach for ze great cane of my fazzer, which I keep at all times by ze canopy of my bed, and I pound on ze floor--boom, boom, Monsieur Rat _scelerat_, and it is thus I make my rea.s.surance."

The princess received us in what had been the bas.e.m.e.nt dining-room, which she called her laboratory. The entire south side was one broad window of small diamond-shaped panes. Forming a sill to this window was a row of low, wide cases for the reception of herbaria, and the room had a peculiar herby smell, a mixture of sweet-fern and faint aromatic herbs.

The cushions which converted the tops of these cases into seats were stuffed with dried beech-leaves.

The princess quoted Latin to us for her preference for the fine springy upholstery which beech-leaves give. _Silva domus, cubilia frondes._ ("The wood a house, the foliage a couch.")

The other furniture in the room was a long table placed in front of the book-case divan, a table covered with piles of MS. books, a press for specimens, two microscopes, and a great blue china bowl containing p.u.s.s.y-willows in water--our specimens for the day's study. High book-cases, whose contents could only be guessed at, for the gla.s.s doors were lined with curiously shirred green silk, were ranged against the wall opposite, and at one end of the room stood a monumental German stove in white porcelain; at the other was Miss Prillwitz's chair, a high-backed Gothic affair, which had once served as an episcopal _sedilium_, but had been removed on the occasion of a new furnishing of the church.

It formed a stately background for the little figure. I often found myself making sketches of her on the sheets of soft paper between which we pressed our flowers, instead of listening to the lecture. I liked to imagine how she would look in a great ruff, not of Cynthia Vaughn's mosquito net, but of real _point de Venise_.

And yet her talks were very interesting; she was a true lover of nature, and made us love her. She regretted that she could not take us into the deep woods, but she opened our eyes to the wealth of country suggestiveness which we could find in the city. She introduced us personally to the scanty two dozen or so of trees in the little park, and from the intimate acquaintance formed with each of these, our appet.i.tes were whetted for vast wildernesses of forest primeval.

She opened to us the beauty which there lies in the simple branching of the trees in their winter nudity, the tracery of the limbs and twigs cut clearly against a yellow sunset, or picked out with snow; how the elms gave graceful wine-gla.s.s and Greek-vase outlines; the snakily mottled sycamore undulated its great arms like a boa-constrictor reaching out for prey; the birch, "the lady of the woods," displayed her white satin dress; the gnarled hemlocks wrestled upward, each sharp angle a defiance to the winter storms with which they had striven in heroic combat, the bent knees clutching the rocks, while the aged arms writhed and tossed in the grasp of the fiends of the air. She showed us the beautiful parabolic curve of the willows, a bouquet of rockets; the military bearing of a row of Lombardy poplars standing, in their perfect alignment, like tall grenadiers drawn up in a hollow square. Before the first tender blurring of the leaf-buds we knew our trees, and loved them for their almost human qualities.

Miss Sartoris had taught me, the preceding summer, to look for the decorative beauty to be found in common roadside weeds, and we had made sketches together of dock, elecampane, tansy, thistles, and milkweed. I had one rich, rare day with her in a swamp, when I ruined a pair of stockings, and made the discovery that a skunk-cabbage was as beautiful in its curves as a calla. I brought these sketches to the princess, and she congratulated me on the possession of my country home with its gold-mines of beauty all around.

"You are one heiress, my dear," she said, "to ze vast wealths which you have only to learn how you s'all enjoy. Only t'ink of ze sousands of poor city people who haf never had ze felicity to see a swamp!"

I grew to appreciate the country, and to feel that I was richer than I had thought.

Milly found a branch of study which was not above the measure of her intellect. She soon mastered the long names, and learned to think, and teachers in other departments noted an improvement. There was need for this, for the Hornets long kept up a tradition that at one of the history examinations Milly had been asked, "What is the Salic Law?" and had replied, confidently--"That no woman or _descendant of a woman_, can ever reign in France."

CHAPTER IV.

COURT LIFE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Drawing of Mrs. Grogan.}]

Mrs. Grogan, the baby-farmer of Rickett's Court, could hardly have been described as a court lady, and yet she was a very typical specimen of the women of this locality. But before introducing the reader to the society of Rickett's Court, I must first explain how it was that we came to make its acquaintance.

As the time approached for the concert of which I have spoken, Adelaide was reminded of her determination to have a "violin dress" made by Madame Celeste. Adelaide played the violin, as we thought, divinely; she was at least the best performer at Madame's. "The violin is the violet," I said, quoting from "Charles Auchester." "You must have a violet-colored gown."

"A very delicate shade of china crepe will do," Adelaide replied, "made up with a darker tint, and the sleeves must be puffed like that dress the princess wore to the tableaux."

"Adelaide, dear," murmured Milly, "you ought to wear angel sleeves to show your lovely arms."

"And have them flop about like a ship's pennant in a lively breeze, during that bit of rapid bowing? That would be too grotesque."

"Puff them to the elbow," I suggested, "and then have a fall of soft lace that will float back and give the turn of your wrist as you whip the strings."

"See here, Adelaide," remarked Witch Winnie, "if you want something really fine, get that Mrs. Halsey to design it for you."

"You don't suppose that I would hire a dress for the concert at a costumer's?"

"I didn't say that; you could have it made wherever you pleased, but get Mrs. Halsey's ideas on the subject; they are really remarkable."

Adelaide considered the subject and acted upon it, but, greatly to my relief, she refused to do so without explaining the entire affair to Madame.

"I'll not stand in the way of your having a nice gown," said Witch Winnie. "Come, Tib, let's confess."

I was overjoyed, and Madame, though duly shocked, was not severe. She even allowed Witch Winnie to take Adelaide to see Mrs. Halsey, stipulating only that she should be chaperoned by one of the teachers.

Adelaide chose Miss Sartoris, at my suggestion, both because we liked her, and from my feeling that her artistic instinct might be of service.

The girls were disappointed to find that Mrs. Halsey was no longer at the costumer's. He had "pounced" her, he said, because she was "too much of a lady for de peesness." Fortunately he could give the girls her address--No. 1, sixth floor, Rickett's Court.

It was a very disagreeable part of town. Miss Sartoris looked doubtful as they approached it, and was on the point of getting into the carriage again as they alighted, but Witch Winnie had already darted through a long dark hall which led to the court in the centre of the block, and there was nothing for it but to follow.

Evil smells nearly choked them as they ran the gauntlet of that hall, and they were no better off on emerging upon the sloppy court. The s.p.a.ce overhead, between the buildings, was laced with an intricate network of clothes-lines filled with garments. Adelaide said she realized now where all upper New York had its laundry work done, for this was evidently not the wash of the court people. From their appearance it was only fair to conjecture that they were so busy doing other people's washing that they never had time for their own. The dirty water seemed to be thrown from the windows into the court, where it stood in puddles or feebly trickled into the sewer, from which emanated nauseous and deadly gases. Sickly children were dabbling in these puddles.

"It makes me think of Hood's 'Lost Heir,'" said Miss Sartoris--

"The court, Where he was better off than all the other young boys, With two bricks, an old shoe, nine oyster sh.e.l.ls, and a dead kitten by way of toys."

They mounted a ricketty staircase grimed with dirt. Smells of new degrees and varieties of loathsomeness a.s.saulted them at every landing.

The Italian rag-pickers in the bas.e.m.e.nt were sorting their filthy wares, while a little girl was concocting for them the garlic stew over a charcoal brazier. The mingled fumes came thick from the open door. Mrs.

Grogan on the first floor had paused in her washing to take a pull at a villainous pipe. She came to the door still smoking, and carrying in her arms an almost skeleton baby, who sucked at a dirty rag containing a crust dipped in gin. Winnie obtained one glimpse of the interior of Mrs.

Grogan's domicile, and drew back quite pale. "Adelaide," she said, "the room literally _swarmed_ with babies; that woman cannot have so many all of the same age." Inquiry of Mrs. Halsey enlightened them. Mrs. Grogan was a "baby-farmer," and boarded these children, making a good income thereby, as their mothers were servants in good families. On the next floor a family of eight were working in a hall-bedroom, at rolling cigars. The large rooms were occupied by some Chinese. Mrs. Halsey thought that they used them as an opium den. Past more doors, up three more pairs of stairs, and they paused at No. 1. They knocked several times, but they could not make themselves heard above the buzz and whirr of a sewing-machine. Finally Winnie opened the door, and there sat Mrs.

Halsey bent over the machine, while the floor was piled with dainty underclothing neatly tucked.

She sprang up, evidently pleased to see Winnie again, and motioned her callers to the only seats which the room afforded--a chair, a trunk, and a stool.

Winnie apologized for the interruption, and explained her errand. "But perhaps you are too busy to design this dress," Adelaide said; "I see you have plenty of work."