Annie F. Johnston

“ High above them, up the hill, on the back porch of the farmhouse, Molly stood ironing sheets and towels. Whenever she glanced down into the shady hollow, she could see Lloyd's pink dress fluttering along the ravine, or Betty's white sunbonnet bobbing up from behind the rocks. The laughing voices and the shouts of the boys came tantalisingly to her ears, and the old sullen pout settled on her face as she listened.
"It isn't fair that I should have to work all day long while they are off having a good time," she muttered, slapping an iron angrily down on the stove. ”

“ Dot was too weak to say much, but she asked Mrs. Walton to sing, and wanted the tapers lighted again on the tree. Thoughtful Allison had brought fresh ones with her, which she soon fastened in place. And so, presently, with only the soft firelight in the room, and the starlight of the little Christmas candles, Mrs. Walton began an old tune that she loved. Her beautiful voice had sung it in many a hospital, in the cheerless tents of many a camp. Many a brave soldier, dying thousands of miles away from home, had been soothed and comforted by it. ”

“ Betty paused a moment, twisting the little ring on her finger, and then repeated what she had confessed to Joyce, the afternoon that she thought she must be blind all the rest of her life.
"I wanted to build a road like that for godmother. Of course I couldn't dig one like those chiefs did, and she wouldn't have wanted it even if I could; but I thought maybe I could leave a memory behind me of my visit, that would be like a smooth white road. You know, remembering things is like looking back over a road. The unpleasant things that have happened are like the rocks we stumble over. ”

“ Feeling very elegant in her unusual party array, Lloyd surveyed herself in the mirror with a satisfied air, and sat down beside Allison to wait for the carriage that Mrs. Moore had promised to send for them. Mrs. Walton was tying Kitty's sash, and in the next room Elise was buzzing around like an excited little bee.
"Hold still! Do now!" they heard Milly say, impatiently. "I'll never get the tangles brushed out of your curls, and the others will go off and leave you, and you'll have to miss the party." ”

“ It would take too long to tell of all the good times that filled the happy holiday. At Fairchance it was a sight worth travelling miles to see,—those merry little lads, and the two little knights who had gone so far in their trying to "right the wrong and follow the king." At Locust Lloyd spent a happy day in a bewilderment of gifts, for besides all that she found in her overflowing stocking were the packages from Joyce and Eugenia and Betty. ”

“ It was with a view to impressing Eugenia with the elegance of her friends, that Lloyd noticed every detail of the beautiful luncheon. She intended that Eugenia should hear about it all. Gay butterflies, so lifelike that one could not believe that human hands had made them, were poised everywhere, on the flowers, the candle-shades, the curtains. The menu cards were decorated with them, the fine hand-painted china bore swarms of them around their dainty rims, and even the ices were moulded to represent them. ”

“ The manly little shoulders squared themselves with a grave resolution to wear whatever duty the future might lay upon them, in warfare against evil, as worthily as he had worn the epaulets in far-away Luzon.
Allison and Kitty and Elise were there, and the Little Colonel, all strongly moved by the unusual scene. It was a very short and simple service. The late afternoon sun shone in aslant through the western window, like a wide bar of gold. ”

“ Ranald and Rob started down the stairs, with Keith carrying a candle, and Malcolm calling for Walter to come on and help carry out his rival. The four boys, picking up the dummy as if it had been a real man, carried it up the steps and laid it carefully on the ground. So comical did it look with its pudgy pillow face, that everybody laughed except Cora. She was furiously angry, and not all Kitty's penitent speeches or the boys' polite apologies could appease her. If it had not been for Miss Allison she would have flounced home in high displeasure. ”

“ Not the cakes and ices that usually attended parties in the Valley, but things suggestive of Hallowe'en. Pop-corn, nuts, and apples, doughnuts and molasses candy. Then the fate cake was cut, and everybody took a slice to carry home to dream on.
"Eat it the last thing before you retire," said Miss Allison. "Then walk to bed backwards without taking a drink of water or speaking another word to-night. It is so salty that it is likely you will dream of being thirsty, and of somebody bringing you water. They say if you dream of its being brought in a golden goblet you will marry into wealth. ”

“ Wondering what kind of a picture such a creature as the Barley-bright witch would choose to decorate her room, Lloyd walked across to examine it. It was the front page from an old Harper's Weekly. The date caught her eye first: December 25, 1897. And then she found herself looking into a room still more pitiful than the one in which she stood, for the pictured room was part of an old New York tenement, and sobbing in the corner was a ragged, half-starved little waif, heartbroken because Santa Claus had passed her by, and she had found an empty stocking on Christmas morning. ”

“ On the porch steps Lloyd stopped her to whisper: "Mercy, Betty! How many children are there?" Several tow heads like Davy's were peering around the corner of the house, and a two-year-old baby toddled across the porch, squeezing a kitten in his arms.
"There are six, altogether," answered Betty. "Scott is just Rob Moore's age, but he is so bashful that you'll not see much of him. Then there's Bradley. He is such a tease that we keep out of his way as much as possible. Davy comes next. He's the nicest in the bunch. Then Morgan is six, and Lee is four, and that's the baby over there. ”

“ Only the swineherd's magic caldron can give you a glimpse into the future.
Gather around it, all you curious little princes and princesses, and thrust your fingers into the steam as the water bubbles and the bells begin again. I cannot tell what it will show you. Glimpses of college life, perhaps, and gay vacation times, as Rob and the captain and the two little knights leave their boyhood days behind them and grow up into manly young fellows, ready to take the places waiting for them in the world. ”

“ Every one of the boys but Pudding had at some time or another left a trail of blood behind him from barn to house as he went weeping homeward with some part of his body to be bandaged. So Lloyd's fall did not cause the commotion it might have done in a less adventurous family.
"Oh, she's coming around all right," said Mr. Appleton, cheerfully, as her head stirred a little on his shoulder, and she half opened her eyes.
"Here you are," he added a moment later, laying her on the bed in the parlour. "Scott, run call your mother. Bring a light, Molly. We'll soon see what is the matter." ”

“ Now and then the moon looked out like a pale bleared eye.
"It is a real Tam O'Shanter night," said Miss Allison, as she led the way up the winding walk to the front door. "I can easily imagine witches flying over my head. Can't you?" she asked, turning to the little group surrounding her. There were eight children. For not only Ranald and his sisters had come with Malcolm and Keith, but Rob Moore and his cousin Anna had been invited to come out from town to try their fortunes at Hartwell Hollow, and spend the night in the Valley where they always passed their happy summers. ”

“ The sight of Lloyd and Betty in their dainty dresses aroused her worst jealousy, and awoke the old bitterness that had grown up in her slum life, and that always raged within her whenever she saw people with whom fortune had dealt more kindly than with herself. ”

“ Little as she was, she felt that she was safer on the streets than inside those crowded, dirty quarters, where half-drunken negroes and coarse, brawling white men quarrelled and swore in loud tones.
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"It's the saloons that brought all the trouble to Molly and Dot," thought Elise, shrinking away from a group of noisy loafers, as they straggled out of one. "They made their father mean and their mother die and their grandmother go crazy and them lose each other. They're worse than wild beasts, and I'm afraid of 'em. ”

“ When the curtain went up the scene on the stage was so absorbing that she forgot Eugenia. She forgot where she was, for the play carried her bodily into fairy-land. The queen of the fairies was there with her star-tipped wand and all her spangled court, and Lloyd looked and listened with breathless attention, while the naughty Puck played pranks on all the butterflies, and, finally catching them at play in [184] a moonlighted forest, took all the gauzy-winged creatures captive. ”

“ As the door closed behind her and Betty, the Little Colonel turned to her mother with a puzzled face. "Did you evah see anything so queah in all yo' life?" she asked. "A bed in the pahlah! What if somebody should come to call aftah I've gone to sleep. Oh, I think this place is awful! I don't see how people can be happy, living in such an odd way."
"That is your first holiday lesson," said Mrs. Sherman, beginning to unpack her travelling bag. "You'll have to learn that our way of living is not the only way, and that people can be just as good and useful and happy in one place as another. ”

“ All the witches of Allway Kirk could not have made such a weird procession. Well, too, for old Ichabod Crane that he need not ride that night through the shadowy Valley. One pumpkin, in the hands of the headless rider, had been enough to banish him from Sleepy Hollow for ever. What would have happened no one can tell, could he have met the long procession of bodiless heads that straggled through the gate that Hallowe'en, from the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow. ”

“ Patient old Eliot had taken such a deep interest in all that belonged to Lloydsboro Valley since their journey to Locust, that it was a pleasure to confide in her. Even if Eugenia had had any one else to confide in, she could have found no one who had her interest at heart more than this sensible, elderly woman, who had taken care of her for so many years. ”

“ Lloyd, I don't believe that you are half thankful enough for being able to live in the country all the year round."
"But it isn't half so nice out heah aftah you all leave," answered the Little Colonel. "You don't know how lonesome the Valley is with you all gone. I can't beah to pass Judge Moore's place for weeks aftah the house is closed for the season. It makes me feel as if somebody's dead when I see every window shut and all the blinds down. When Betty goes home next week I don't know how I shall stand it to be all by myself. ”

“ Get another towel, Bradley. We'll wipe, and Davy can carry the dishes to the pantry. We'll be through before Scott has half filled the wood-box."
Molly could not keep her jealous mood and sulky frowns very long in the midst of the laughing chatter that followed, and in a very few minutes Betty had talked her into good humour with herself and all the world. Such light work did the many hands make of the dish-washing, that the sky was still pink with the sunset glow when they were ready to begin the game.
"We always go down to the hay-barn to play Barley-bright," said Bradley. ”

“ Kitty stole out of the kitchen cold with this new horror, and went back to whisper it to Allison and Lloyd, as they sat on the stairs ready to spring forward at the first sound of coming footsteps.
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"Now if it had been Allison who was lost," thought Mrs. Walton, "she could have found her way home without any difficulty. She is such a sensible, womanly child, always to be trusted for doing the right thing in the right place. Kitty might not act so wisely, but she would bang ahead and come out all right in the end. ”

“ Let's play that Aunt Cindy is an ogre, a dreadful old fat black ogre, and the gingerbread is some kind of a magic cake that will break the spell she has cast over us, if we can only manage to get it and eat some. ”

“ Bradley Appleton! You horrid boy!" she cried. "How could you be so mean? There's nothing I hate like worms. I could touch a mouse or even a snake soonah than those bare crawly things! Oh, I'll nevah, nevah be able to get the feel [71] of them off my hands, even if I should scrub them a week. I don't mind things with feet, but the feel of the squirmin' is awful!"
Bradley laughed so loudly over the success of his joke, that Betty came out smiling to see what was the matter, and was surprised to see Lloyd marching indignantly into the house, her head held high and her face very red. ”

“ Mamma will stand in the door and look out into the dark and call and call, but her little Elise will never answer. And Allison and Kitty will feel so bad that they won't want to play. They'll divide my things between them to remember me by, and for a long time it'll make them cry whenever they see my dolls and books, or my place at the table, or my little wicker chair in the library, that I'll never sit in any more. Ranald won't cry, 'cause he's a captain and he's brave. ”

“ And somewhere, hidden among the branches of each one, or lying at its base, was the especial book or toy or game that its owner had been known to long for.
"I believe that Molly and Dot would rather have theirs together," said Allison. "As they are in a [217] room by themselves we can give them as large a one as we please, and the others will never know it."
So it was a good-sized tree that was set aside for "The Fold." The very prettiest of the ornaments were put with it; the brightest coloured candles, and at the top was fastened a glittering Christmas angel and a shining Christmas star. ”

“ Jack and I have dozens of bright spots to remember because she made gala days of all our birthdays and holidays, and it's no more than right that we should do it for Mary and Holland and the baby, now that she is so busy."
"We have something for every month in the year," chimed in Mary, "counting our five birthdays and Washington's, and New Year and Decoration Day and Christmas and Hallowe'en and Valentine and Thanksgiving."
"There are more than that," added Joyce, "for there's always the Fourth of July picnic, you know, and the eggs and rabbits and flowers at Easter." ”

“ Like Kitty, both Allison and Elise had big dark eyes that might have been the pride of a Spanish señorita, they were so large and lustrous. Kitty's curls had been cut, but theirs hung thick and long on their shoulders. The sight of them moved Rob to a compliment.
"You and Anna Moore make me think of night and morning," he said, looking from Anna's golden hair to Allison's dusky curls. "One is so light and one is so black. You ought to go around together all the time. You look fine together." ”