Anna Fuller

“ The fine old sea-dog stood like a man to be shot at; and as Blythe faced him, 10 kodak in hand, the breeze playing pranks with her hair and blowing her golf-cape straight back from her shoulders, it was all so exhilarating that before she knew it she had turned her little camera upon the supposed Hugh Dalton himself, who made an absurd grimace and told her to “let her go!” ”

“ Grey’s reckoning.
As they looked across the great sea the horizon seemed to have receded to an incalculable distance, and the airs that came to them across that broad expanse, unsullied by the faintest trace of man or his 16 works, were purer than are often vouchsafed to mortals. Blythe felt her heart grow big with the sense of space and purity, and this wonderful swift passage through the upper air. ”

“ DeWitt and Mr. Grey approached, to tell them that everything was in readiness for them to land, Blythe turned, with the light of the sunrise in her face, and said, under her breath, so that only her mother could hear:
“O Mumsey! How beautiful the world is, with you and me right in the very middle of it!” ”

“ It was pretty to see the little Signorina revive under the favouring influences of prosperity; and indeed the soft airs of the southern seas were never sweeter nor more caressing than those which came to console our voyagers for their short-lived storm.
Life was full of interest and excitement for the little girl. The heavy lassitude of her steerage days had fallen from her, and already that first morning a delicate glow of returning vigour touched the little cheek. ”

“ The check was a very plain one on thin yellow paper, not in the least what she had looked for from a great publishing-house; but the amount inscribed in the upper left-hand corner of the modest slip of paper seemed to her worthy the proudest traditions of the Gay Head itself. The check was for sixty dollars.
As Madge gradually assured herself that she was awake, the first sensation that took shape in her mind was the very ridiculous one of regret that the mahogany table should have been deprived of its legitimate share in this great event. ”

“ To Uncle Seth’s speechless astonishment she flung her arms around his big neck, and, with some thing very like a sob, she cried:
“Oh, Uncle Seth, I never loved you half enough!”
Uncle Seth bore it very well, all things considered. He got pretty red in the face, but happily a full grizzly beard kept the secret of his blushes.
“Why, Polly!” he said, pounding away on her shoulder in an attempt to be consolatory; “you’ve always ben a good girl; not a mite of trouble, not a mite!” ”

“ Eleanor insisted.
“Of course I shall, as long as there is a 92 picture-paper left in the country; though the postage does cost an awful lot!”
The sun had set, and a tinge of rosy colour was spreading across the northern sky behind the chimneys. The girls stood silent for a moment, watching the colour deepen, while a wistful look came into Eleanor’s face.
“After all, Madge,” she said; “it must be nice to have somebody think for you, even when he doesn’t think the way you want him to.” ”

“ Polly, meanwhile, stepped swiftly on her way. She was thinking of Dan. He at least was a natural student and had always led his class. She was not only fond of Dan, but proud of him, too. He was a handsome boy, with those clear, dark eyes of his in which a less partial observer than Polly might have read the promise of fine things. 144
“Yes,” Polly said to herself, as she sped along the road that glittering winter’s day: “Dan isn’t just an ordinary boy. He’s an unusual boy. Why, the world couldn’t afford to lose Dan!” ”

“ If faith can move mountains, it is perhaps no wonder that the implicit and energetic faith of which Blythe Halliday was possessed proved equal to the removal of a small child from one quarter to another of the big ship. The three persons concerned in bringing about the change were easily won over; for Mrs. Halliday was quite of Blythe’s mind in the matter, Mr. Grey had little difficulty in bringing the Captain to their point of view, while, as for Giuditta, she hailed the event as the first step in the transformation of her small Signorina into the little “great lady” she was born to be. ”

“ Halliday had declared, on one of the first universally unbecoming days of the voyage, that it was a mystery how all the agreeable people got to Europe, since so few of them were ever to be discovered on an ocean steamer! Whereas Blythe, for her part, had never dreamed that there were so many interesting persons in the world as were to be discovered among their fellow-voyagers. ”

“ In the first place, her Student series was proving to be quite as much of a Noah’s Dove as the first set of sketches which had so signally failed to find a permanent roosting-place in an inhospitable world. Only yesterday the familiar parcel had made its appearance on the front-entry table, that table which, for a year past, she had never come in sight of without a quicker beating of the heart. If she ever did have a bit of success, she often reflected, that piece of ancestral mahogany was likely to be the first to know of it. ”

“ In the next few days Madge found her thoughts much occupied with speculations regarding her mysterious visitor; everything about him, his name, his errand, both the matter and the manner of his speech, roused and piqued her curiosity. It was clear that he knew a great deal about art. And yet, if he were an artist, she would certainly be familiar with his name. Whatever his calling, he was sure to be distinguished. Those judicial eyes would be severe with any work more pretentious than that of a mere student ”

“ As Olivia stood looking down upon her beloved garden, she could not seem to see anything but brown stalks and dead blossoms. All that lavish colour looked fictitious and transitory; she had somehow lost faith in it.
Mrs. O’Trannon had been pleased with the flowers; she had grown up on a farm, she said. Sure she never’d ha’ got sick at all if she’d ha’ stayed where she belonged. But then, where would Mike have been, and the babies? And where would Mike be, and the babies, Olivia thought with a pang,—where would they be if the mother wilted and died? ”

“ Dan, who was on his way to bed, had stopped, close to the air-tight stove, to warm his hands.
“I wish it were summer, Polly,” he said, with a wistful look in his great black eyes that cut Polly to the heart. “It’s been such a cold winter; and a fellow gets kind of tired of barking all the time.” ”

“ Ferns and palms grew all about the basin, and in among the greenery was a little table where Nannie and her guest sat hidden safe away from the world.
“Well, this doos beat all!” the old lady exclaimed, gazing at the fountain with an expression of rapt delight—just the expression that Nannie had counted upon seeing among the wrinkles.
“Do you like it?” she asked, all her disappointment and chagrin forgotten.
“Like it? Why, it’s the most tasty place I was ever in! It’s better than any play; it’s like bein’ in a play yourself! ”

“ As he rose to go, he said:
“Don’t you think I’m a pretty good sort of a Santa Claus after all, Miss Polly?”
Polly seized his outstretched hand.
“I didn’t believe any one person could be so rich, and so good, too!” she declared.
“And, O Dan!” cried Polly, the minute they were alone together, “let’s send a New-Year’s box home. There’ll be just time enough. We can get one of those great carriage rugs for Uncle Seth, and a China silk for Aunt Lucia.” ”

“ Having no expensive tastes, they regarded themselves as well-to-do and envied no one. 67
If Madge Burtwell’s eyes had been a whit less clear, or her nature a thought less guileless, Ned would not have been so enchanted with his new name for her. Indeed, a few years ago she had been described by an only half-appreciative friend as “a splendid girl without a mite of tact,” and if she had succeeded in somewhat softening the asperity of her natural frankness, there was enough of it left to lend a delicate shade of humour to the name. ”

“ Miss Beatrice Compton returned to her buckboard a captive to Polly.
“She’s the sweetest thing,” she told her mother, who chanced to be her passenger on this occasion. “She’s got eyes and hair exactly of a colour, a sort of reddish brown, and her eyes twinkle at you in the dearest way, and she wears her hair in the quaintest pug, just in the right place on her head, sort of up in the air; and she’s a lady, too; anybody can see that. I wonder who ‘Dan’ is; you don’t suppose she’s married, do you?”
“You can’t tell,” Mrs. Compton replied. “Persons in that walk of life marry very young.” ”

“ The street where their tiny cottage stood, though at the wrong end of the town, was a thoroughfare for pleasure parties driving to the great cañons, and Polly never saw the approach of a pretty turnout without a thrill of hope that the occupants might be attracted by her sign. She knew herself to be a quick and skilful needlewoman, and she thought that if only she might once get started in well-paid work, Dan, who was growing stronger every day, might go on with his education at the Colorado College Preparatory School. ”

“ Their first spring and summer were a very happy time, of which Polly and Dan could relate a hundred noteworthy incidents. They rented a tiny cottage of three rooms in the unfashionable part of the town where rents were low. Here 154 was a bit of ground all about, and a narrow porch that looked straight into the face of the splendid old Peak; and here they lived the merriest of lives on the smallest and most precarious of incomes; for they were determined to infringe as little as possible upon the slender capital, snugly stowed away in a Colorado bank. ”

“ Crosby never alluded.
It was six years ago, when Di, the eldest of the children, was ten years of age, that 244 she had come home from school one day, breathless with excitement.
“Mamma!” she cried, bursting into the room where her mother was changing the baby’s frock: “Mamma! Have I got a grandfather?”
Mrs. Crosby glanced furtively at the round eyes of the baby, and took the precaution of smothering him in billows of white lawn before replying, rather softly: “Yes, dear; Papa’s father is living. Why do you ask?” ”

“ There was one old woman, with abnormally deep wrinkles, and shoulders somewhat out of drawing, whose face had caught a curiously inspired look; Madge did not dare touch her again for fear of losing it. Her artist, on the other hand, the young man with the ideal brow and very large eyes, grew more and more inane and expressionless the more eagerly his creator worked at him.
On the whole, the production as a two-hour composition by a three-year student was rather good than bad. When time was called Madge felt pretty sure that she should not win the prize ”

“ Burtwell should be on Ned’s side was a foregone conclusion, and Madge appealed to her father.
“Father, is calling Eleanor Merritt a prize pig a form of wit?”
“Pretty poor wit I should call it!”
“Father is on my side!” shouted Ned. “He says it’s poor wit, which is only one way of saying that it is wit!”
“Can wit be poor?” asked Julia.
“Father says it can.”
“Then it isn’t wit!” Madge protested.
“I should like to know why not. Old Mr. Tanner is a poor man, but he’s a man for all that, and votes at elections 104 for the highest bidder. And your logic’s poor, but I suppose you’d call it logic!” ”

“ Blythe exclaimed.
Cecilia was again playing happily with the glasses, paying no heed to her companions.
“The strangest thing of all to me,” Mrs. Halliday declared, “is his relenting toward his daughter after all these years.”
“You must not forget that Fate had been pounding him pretty hard,” Mr. Grey interposed. “When a man loses in one year two of his children, and the only grandchild he knows anything about, it’s not surprising that he should soften a bit toward the only child he has left.” ”

“ Yes, a soldier must come first. And forthwith a very sketchy warrior stepped, with a very martial air, upon the paper. Then an artist ought to come next;—only she could not think of any way of indicating his calling without the aid of some conventional emblem. A mere look of inspiration might belong to a poet or a preacher as well as to an artist. Besides which, she was by no means sure that she knew how to paint a look of inspiration. And then it came to her that, unless she could paint just that, her picture must be a failure ”

“ My dear Miss Burtwell,
“We like Noah’s Dove as much as I thought we should. We shall hope to get him out some time next year. Can’t you work up the pickpocket idea? That small boy, the second one from the right, is nucleus enough for another set. In fact, it is the small-boy element in your Student that makes him original—and true to life. We think that you have the knack, and count upon you for better work yet. We take pleasure in handing you herewith a check for this. ”

“ Accordingly, close upon luncheon time, when the sun was just breaking through the clouds, and the sea, true to the Captain’s prediction, was already beginning to subside, the tiny Signorina was carried, in the strong arms of Gustav, up the steep gangway by the wheel-house, where Blythe and her mother, Mr. DeWitt and the poet, to say nothing of Captain Seemann himself, formed an impromptu reception committee for her little ladyship. ”

“ One lady, for instance, came to ask her for an “idea” for a Thanksgiving dinner, and Polly not only suggested the idea, but carried it out for her. She went about with a big basket to all the markets and collected perfect specimens of vegetables with which to make a centrepiece for the dinner table. The dinner was given in a house where the round dining table would seat twenty-four guests. In this ample centre she erected a pyramid of fruits of the earth. ”

“ Polly blushed to think that she had thought of Dan in such a connection for a single instant.
It was very unreasoning, this impulse of rebellious shame: are we not admonished to help one another? And what could the helpers do if all their benefactions were indignantly thrust back? Very unreasoning indeed, but natural!—natural as the colour of her hair and the quickness of her wit, natural as all the graces and virtues, all the misconceptions and foibles, that went to make up the personality of Polly Fitch,—of Polly Fitch, the daughter 181 of Puritan ancestors ”

“ Giuditta has an uncommonly high idea of high life,” he added. “I think she imagines that somebody in a court train and a coronet will come to meet her Signorina at the pier in Genoa. Poor things! There’ll be a rude awakening!”
“But we won’t let it be rude!” Blythe protested. “We must do something about it. Can’t you think of anything to do?”
They were standing now, clinging to the friendly rope stretched across the deck, shoulder high.
“Giuditta’s plan,” Mr. Grey replied, “is the naïve one of appealing to the Queen about it. ”

“ Madge looked at him suspiciously.
“I am sure you will agree with me that I don’t know much,” he continued, “when I tell you that I prefer your pen-and-ink work to the miniature. ‘The Consequences of Crime’ is full of humour; and I have been given to understand that you can’t produce an effect without skill,—what you would probably dignify with the name of technique. The second small boy on the right is not at all bad.”
“You do know about art!” cried Madge. “I rather think you must be an artist.”
Mr. Spriggs did not exactly change countenance ”

“ I should rather hate to pay another person to make love for me, though,” she went on, with a little toss of the head; and then she picked up her work and began again to “rhyme buttonholes.”
When Dan came home to supper he had much to learn. He was lost in wonder over the rhyme which Polly repeated to him, but still more impressed by the four great silver dollars she had to show; for her impatient customer had already called for the verses.
“Jiminy!” cried Dan; “that’s most a week’s earnings for some of us!” ”