Abbie Farwell Brown

“ I don’t ever mean to hunt. But if things come—all right.”
“I wish you’d let me have the fun of hunting in the library all I want, just once,” said John wistfully.
Mary hesitated. She did not want anybody to rummage among her books. But she hated to be “stingy,” and she felt as if she were really having more than her share of fun out of Aunt Nan’s legacy, in spite of John’s two thousand dollars. So she said generously, without letting John see how great an effort it was: “All right, Johnny. To-morrow is Saturday, and I’ll give you free leave to hunt all you want to in my library. ”

“ Mary held the envelope somewhat dubiously. It was not quite pleasant to be receiving letters from a person no longer living in this world. She glanced up at the portrait over the mantel as she cut the end of the envelope with Aunt Nan’s desk shears, and it seemed to her that the eyes under the prim gray curls gleamed at her knowingly. ”

“ They can do you no good, except in one way. So my girl will be able to go to college, after all, as well as my boy. I am so glad!”
“Thanks to Aunt Nan—and to Shakespeare,” said Mary, patting the volume of “Hamlet” lovingly. “If Shakespeare hadn’t given the clue I might not have found the gems for ever and ever so long.”
“You might never have found them, Mary!” cried John. “Ginger! how awful! They might have stayed here all your life; or some old bookseller might have got them when you began to fill up with new books in place of these old ones.” ”

“ Twisting himself out into the porch, John pushed a dirty thumb against the bell-button of the Corliss home. Instantly sounded the same monotonous response,—“Not at home— Not at home— Not at home.”
“I say! Isn’t it great!” shouted John, cutting a caper delightedly. “Aunt Nan must have had that fixed so as to scare away callers. Wasn’t she cute?”
Mary blushed for her brother, and for the reputation of the house. “It wasn’t cute!” she said hastily. “We shall have to get that bell changed. We aren’t like that, really,” she explained to her visitor. “We love to see people. ”

“ I want to celebrate not only our good luck, but the way we got it. I want to have a Shakespeare party.”
“Oh, yes! Let’s have a party!” crowed John. “A dress-up party, Mary?”
“Yes, a dress-up party. Everybody must be a Shakespeare character.”
“I think that is a very nice idea,” said Mrs. Corliss. “Next month comes Shakespeare’s birthday, the twenty-third of April, which is also Saint George’s day. I think it would be lovely to have a party and show our Crowfield friends that Aunt Nan’s house is going to be hospitable and jolly from this time on.” ”

“ They were talking about their first day in Crowfield, about the visit of Katy Summers, and the funny things that had happened to their first caller; and they were all laughing merrily over Mary’s description of how Katy had looked when she went riding out toward the door in the inhospitable chair. Dr. Corliss had just reached out his hand for the sugar. Suddenly the table center began slowly to revolve, and the sugar bowl retreated from his hand as if by magic. ”

“ Mary tiptoed after him, in great excitement. Caliban went directly to the big armchair beside the desk, sniffed a moment at the cushion, then jumped up and curled himself down for a nap, giving a great sigh of contentment. From that moment he accepted partnership with Mary in the room and all its contents.
“Well, I never!” cried Mrs. Corliss, who had followed softly. “The cat is certainly at home. I wonder how he ever happened to go away? I suppose we shall never know.”
And they never did. They made inquiries of the neighbors. But nobody could tell them anything definite about Aunt Nan’s cat. ”

“ Tired and disgusted at last, they gave up the search.
“I think that’s a pretty poor joke!” said John. “A key without anything to fit it to is about as silly as can be!”
“Aunt Nan made some silly jokes in other parts of the house,” said Mary. “But she hasn’t done so in the library. I don’t believe she meant to tease me. Let’s go and tell Father. Perhaps he will know what it means.” And forthwith they tripped to the Doctor’s study, with the key and the lantern and the marked copy of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” to puzzle the Philosopher. ”

“ Here is a little keyhole! I believe we’ve found the clue to your key that was in the lantern. Have you got the key here? Quick, Mary!”
Mary was shaking the box very gently. “Something rattles!” she said. “What do you suppose it is?”
“Oh, do be careful. Maybe it is something breakable. Hurry and find out what it is!” begged John in the greatest excitement.
Mary always wore the puzzling key about her neck, on the green silk cord which had come with it. She now pulled it out, and they carried the “Gems from Shakespeare” over to the table, so that they might see better under the lamp. ”

“ When they had brought all this old stuff together in the middle of the attic floor, Mrs. Corliss looked about and smiled through a face-veil of dusty cobwebs.
“Well, John!” she said, “I believe my part of the legacy is not to be laughed at, either. We don’t want to keep these old things, for they have no history for us and they are not beautiful in themselves—the only two excuses I see for cherishing useless old things. Luckily [81] there are plenty of people who think differently. ”

“ Some of the pearls were set with diamonds, and some with emeralds and sapphires and rubies; some were made up into rosebuds with pink coral like that of the necklace which Mary had found in the bust of Shakespeare. It was a wonderful collection.
“Well!” cried Dr. Corliss, the first one of the [96] family to get his breath,—“well, Mary! So you have Aunt Nan’s jewels, after all. She did not sell them for the benefit of her hospital, as I believed. She wanted them to go with her beloved library. ”

“ That’s the way everybody ought to know poetry, I think. Why, even Caliban likes to hear me read poetry. See, here he comes to listen.”
Sure enough, at the sound of Mary’s voice Caliban had come running into the library with a little purr. He looked very handsome and fluffy these days. Waving his tail majestically, he jumped up into Mary’s lap and sat on her knee blinking his green eyes at Katy as if to say, “Now you are going to hear something fine!”
“I believe John is right,” said Katy. “He does look like a witch-cat. He’s too knowing by half! ”

“ Corliss wonderingly. “The pearls are far too splendid for our Mary ever to wear. I should hate to see her flaunting them, Owen.”
“So should I!” said Dr. Corliss fervently. “They are grand enough for a princess to wear at a court ball. What do you say, Mary?”
“Oh, they are very beautiful,” said Mary, “but I don’t want to wear them, any more than Aunt Nan did. Father, do you think it would be right to sell them? I’d like so much to have the money to help us all—and perhaps there would be enough so that I could go to college, too.” ”

“ Griggs had left the house with his kit of tools, a queer thing happened. They were sitting about the round dining-table, the center of which, as they had noticed from the first, seemed to be a separate inlaid circle of wood. In the middle of this Mary had set a pretty vase of flowers—nasturtiums, mignonette, marigolds, and yellow poppies, the last lingerers in their garden. ”

“ She was always playing tricks on somebody, or making up a game about what she happened to be doing. We must expect surprises and mysteries about the house as we come to live here. It wouldn’t be Aunt Nan’s house without them.—Hello!”
John had sat down on a little three-legged stool in the corner; and suddenly he went bump! on the floor. The legs of the stool had spread as if of their own accord and let him down.
“That was one of Aunt Nan’s jokes, I remember!” laughed Dr. Corliss. “Oh, yes! I got caught myself once in the same way when I was a boy.”
“Tell about it, Father,” said Mary. ”

“ The fairies put the kettle in the middle of the room, and the four magicians waved their wands over it, and moved slowly about it singing,—
“Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire, burn, and cauldron, bubble!”
When the spell was finished, the smoke died away, and the Witch stooped over and ladled something out, which she threw into the fireplace. “Now, come, everybody!” she cried in a cracked voice, “and dip pot-luck out of the magic kettle.” ”

“ Here’s a funny book to find in an old lady’s library!” cried John. “It’s our old friend ‘Master Skylark,’ one of the nicest books I know. But how do you suppose a children’s book came to be here, Mary? Daddy says for years Aunt Nan never allowed any children in the house.”
“I wonder!” said Mary. “And here’s another child’s book, right here on the desk. I [30] noticed it the first time I came in here, but I never opened it before. ‘Shakespeare the Boy’ is the name of it. I wonder if it is interesting? I like Shakespeare. ”

“ No more fun than looking up things in a dictionary.”
“Well, it is fun,” returned Mary. “I think I must be something like Aunt Nan. She loved quotations. Just look at this row of ‘Gems from the Poets.’ They’re full of quotations, Katy. I’m going to read them all, some time.”
“Goodness!” cried Katy. “What an idea! I think poetry is stupid stuff, sing-song and silly.”
“So Daddy thinks,” said Mary. “But it [38] isn’t, really. It is full of the most interesting stories and legends and beautiful things. This library bores Daddy almost to death, because all the books on these two walls are poetry. ”

“ And running into the house she returned with a saucer of milk and a bit of meat, which she set down close to the house. “Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!” she called, in a tone of invitation.
“Miaou!” cried the forlorn cat again. But he did not come forth from his hiding-place.
“I shall have to go away, and give him a chance to eat when I am not by,” thought Mary. And this she did. From her chamber window she could just manage to watch the hole under the ell. After a long time she was rewarded by seeing the cat’s head emerge from the hole. ”

“ But now, I remember, I have heard strange noises in the cellar once or twice.”
“I have, often,” said Mary, “under my library.”
“Maybe it is a witch-cat!” suggested Dr. Corliss, pretending to look frightened. “You people are all so fond of poetry and ravens and [52] mystery and magics—you attract strange doings, you see. Maybe Aunt Nan had a witch-cat who helped her play tricks on the ever-to-be-surprised world.”
“Daddy!” cried John, “there’s no such thing as a witch-cat, is there, truly?” ”

“ But I am glad we have some things of our own to bring and make it seem more like a truly home. Otherwise I should feel, as Mary says, as if we were living in a kind of museum.”
“We can change it as much as we like, by and by,” her husband reassured her.
“What a funny old lady Great-Aunt Nan must have been, Daddy!” said John, who had been examining a hooked rug representing a blue [5] cat chasing a green mouse. “Did she make this, do you think?”
“Oh, yes,” said Dr. Corliss. “I remember seeing her working at it. She hooked all these rugs. ”

“ Meanwhile, though there was very little money coming in, it was steadily going out; as money has a way of doing.
The best thing the family could do at present was to save as much as possible by going without servants and dainties and fine clothes—just [35] as people have to do in war-time; and by doing things themselves, instead of having things done for them. Mrs. Corliss was a clever manager. She had learned how to cook and sew and do all kinds of things with her deft fingers; and Mary was a good assistant and pupil, while John did everything that a little boy could do to help. ”

“ THE PARTY FROM Aunt Nan’s pearls Mary kept out a brooch for her mother and two bar-pins for herself and Katy Summers, just alike. The rest of the “Gems from Shakespeare” she entrusted to Mr. Wilde, the family lawyer, who undertook to sell them for her in the city.
It was an exciting day for Mary when he told her the result of his mission.
“My dear,” said he, with a twinkle in his wise old eyes, “those Shakespeare ‘Gems’ of yours made the eyes of the jewelers pop out of their heads. You won’t have any trouble in going to college when the time comes ”

“ Inside the hollow leathern shell which pretended to be a book was a box; a green wooden box, with brass trimmings. Mary lifted the cover of this with a rapidly beating heart. And what do you think she found?
First of all she found a sheet of paper, at the top of which was written “Gems from Shakespeare.” Below it followed a list of quotations from Shakespeare, of a character that made [95] them all very much excited; you will readily guess why. These are the quotations:—
“The little casket bring me hither.—More jewels yet!” ”

“ And the children said, “I didn’t know Shakespeare was so funny, did you?”
Then Ariel and Titania, Prospero, and the Witch made a magic—they were a mighty quartet, you see. John suggested that they were really the “Biggest Four.” They waved their wands and lifted their hands, and Caliban helped with a mighty “Wow!” Then in came Puck and the other fairies bearing a huge iron kettle, with a ladle sticking out of the top. From the kettle rose a cloud of smoke and a sweet smell that made Caliban sneeze. ”

“ Dr. Corliss looked at these things critically; then he followed them back to the library and glanced about the walls.
[47] “Well, Father?” asked Mary at last. “What do you think it means?”
The Doctor hummed and hawed. “Why, I think it means that Aunt Nan was playing a joke on you this time, Mary!” he said, laughing. “It would be just like her, you know. You can’t hope to be the only one to escape her humors. Besides, this key doesn’t look to me like a real key to anything. You mustn’t expect too much, my girl, nor get excited over this legacy of yours, or I shall be sorry you have it. ”

“ His long-eared head-piece soon grew so hot to wear that Billy took it off and hung it over his arm, which rather spoiled the illusion, but was much more comfortable.
Then there was Charlie Connors, a very fat boy, who dressed as Falstaff, with a fierce mustache and impressive rubber boots, a plumed hat, belt full of pistols, and a sword. ”