Eva March Tappan

“ At recess, Ella slipped into the big library and read a story. They marched out into the yard for a blissful quarter of an hour of play. She thought it would be delightful to march out in line with her hands down at her sides, one little girl before her and another behind her. In short, Ella wanted to be “in things.” It never occurred to her to boast of studying French and Latin and of reciting with “young ladies” many years older than she. She wanted to be just like other little girls, to study just what they studied, and to do just what they did. ”

“ Ella stood looking through the open door down the lonely corridor. There were no nice girls about; there was no canopy to the bed; there were no story-books; there was no one to talk to her. Everybody was grown up; there were no children. There were no city lights, and the twilight seemed to be shutting down faster than it ever did before.
[Pg 3]
“Oh, this doesn’t seem one bit, not one single bit, like a seminary,” Ella cried.
The mother gathered her into her lap, and there the little girl sobbed away her loneliness and disappointment, and forgot it all in sleep. ”

“ Such are the deceits of the world and the sellers of cocoanuts.
“Sold!” said Beejay; “but let’s never, never tell.”
“Indeed, we won’t,” declared Ella. “Cross my heart. We won’t have them all laughing at us. Mother said once cocoanuts were not good for me. Do you think one that size would make me very, very sick? Let’s eat it just as fast as we can and put the shell into the furnace, and no one will ever know.” No one ever did know, for the secret was faithfully kept.
There was no end to the things the playmates did. ”

“ There was just one Jack-in-the-pulpit, and on its seminary side Ella had drawn the ferns together so as to screen it from the eager hands of passers-by.
Then, too, there was the secret, and no one knew of this save the mother and the professor. On the highest part of the tiny island, just where the bushes were thickest, there was a bird’s nest with real eggs, and a little later, real birds in it. Mother birds are shy of grown folk, but there are sometimes children of whom they feel no fear, recognizing perhaps some “call of the wild” that makes them akin. ”

“ It was away off in the middle of a field; and although Ella had been taught never to trample down the tall grass, she could not resist the temptation to plunge into the midst of it and secure the wheel of gold that might have come from the end of the rainbow.
These were the rarities in flowers, but everywhere there were violets and daisies and anemones and hardhack and Quaker ladies, and swamp azaleas, and dandelions and clover and all the other “common flowers” that are beloved by children. ”

“ She held out her hand to the dog, and he laid his shaggy paw into it. “I knew you would understand,” said Ella. “I wonder why dogs and cats and birds and horses understand so much better than people!”
After this, whenever Ella picked up a little dead bird, she dug a tiny grave and lined it with fresh green ferns. She smoothed down the soft feathers, kissed the pretty little head, and laid the bird softly into its ferny bed. “A person would have to have a stone with poetry on it,” she said to Ponto, “but I think a lovely white narcissus is much prettier for a little bird. ”

“ Ella pondered a minute, then she said: “It’s because there isn’t any way to get the better of it. If I have arithmetic to do, I can work hard and then I can say, ‘There, you old thing, I’ve done you in half the time you wanted me to spend, and now Ponto and I are going to the lake in spite of you.’ But no matter how hard I practice, an hour is always an hour, and there isn’t any way to make it shorter.”
Of course Ella hated to count. Bribes were offered. “My music teacher said that if I would count three weeks without stopping, she would give me a piece,” Ella wrote in her little diary. ”

“ BOY COUSIN Ella was a fortunate little girl in having so many cousins. Some were tall, some were short; some had blue eyes, and some had black; some had curly hair and some had straight hair; some lived near the grandfather’s, some lived a long drive away, and some lived many hundreds of miles away. Most of them were younger; two or three were older. When one is nine, three or four years make a great difference, and Ella looked upon these older ones as being quite mature persons. She loved them all, but her special playmate was Boy Cousin, a boy of her own age who lived nearest. ”

“ She firmly expected that some day, even without that wearisome “One, two, three, four,” she would play as well as the little girl with two pieces, perhaps even as well as her teacher. It was all very simple and very logical. The teacher wore a ring with a bright red stone in it and was able to play; by and by she would have a ring with a bright red stone, and then of course she would be able to play. Ella knew that the grown-ups would laugh at her if she told them her fancy, so she only whispered it into Ponto’s ear. Dogs could understand, but grown-ups could not. ”

“ At one place she stopped to put aside the ferns growing in front of a rock of pale gray granite. The side of the rock nearest the road was of a darker gray and was shaped like a door. This was the entrance to fairyland, the children had decided, and Ella stood waiting a moment to see if the queen of the fairies would appear. If the queen should wear a bright pink dress with deep red lines, then Ella would know for sure that she had seen her Majesty in the little woods by the lake near the seminary. ”

“ In the midst of all the happy occupations of weekdays came Sunday with a dull thud. Everything stopped, everything was different. No more tramping shoes and runabout dresses; people must wear their best clothes to meeting. The little white meetinghouse was several miles away, and the two extra passengers made extra weight; they must drive slowly. No one could count upon the exact minute of arrival, and sometimes there were what seemed to Ella whole hours of waiting before they went into the church. ”

“ Just why any one should give a small child a matchbox may be questioned, but Ella did not question it. The grapes on the cover were pretty, and that was enough. There was a fine new dress of bright Scotch plaid, and a “jockey cap” of black velvet with trimmings of red and black ribbon; and pinned to the cap was a note from Ella’s dearest little girl friend at the old home, saying that she had a new cap just like this one.
There was a little chinchilla muff; and that muff had a story. The uncle from Andover had rashly promised to buy whatever she liked best in all Boston. ”

“ The next day classes were arranged and the regular life of the seminary began. Ella was delighted to find that she was to be called a “student” just as if she had been grown up, and when a young man, already lonesome for the little sister at home, asked her to sit on his knee, she refused. It was of course quite proper for a little girl to sit on the knee of an elderly gentleman, as he seemed to her, but she did not think that one “student” ought to sit on the knee of another. ”

“ She had never had for a Sunday school teacher a milliner who would give her bits of ribbon, but she did have one at that moment who kept a pretty little fancy store. She was glad of all the mittens that Ella could crochet, and the little girl was becoming quite a capitalist on the proceeds. She had planned many nice things to do with the money that she expected to make; and now there would be no time for anything but her lessons, and when the month was over, it would be too late for mittens. ”

“ It is to be feared that Ella did not pay very close attention to the “opening exercises,” but older folk have sometimes paid no more, even though with much smaller temptation.
But the assistant was beckoning to her and was handing her a paper.
“Do these examples,” she said; “or as many of them as you can,” she added, for she, too, was of Cora’s opinion in regard to the children who came from private schools.
The slate pencil that behaved like a gold one and the little girl who wielded it worked their way rather scornfully through addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. ”

“ Ella, like most children, had a healthy dislike of practicing. It was such an unmanageable interference with her plans. “You like French and you like arithmetic,” said her puzzled teacher; “why is it that you do not like music?” ”

“ How could she be always finding fault with a child who was invariably respectful to her and who slipped up to the head of the class so easily, went to the foot with a store of extras numerous enough to provide for all emergencies, and in a day or two stood at the head again, ready to collect more extras? The term would soon be at an end, and she wisely concluded that she would not walk around to the rear of the atlas when she could avoid it.
About this time came the revealing of the great secret. Ella and Ida still sat together. The paper dolls of each visited those of the other. ”

“ Ella learned that “cwt.” meant hundredweight, that “d” meant penny, and that a queer sign somewhat like a written “L” meant pound. Why these things should be, she had no idea; she supposed grown people had just made them up. She could overlook even such foolishness as this, but she did draw the line at learning the multiplication table. It was in her book, and she could turn to it at any time, so why should she bother to learn it? The young professor was always charitable to a new idea. ”

“ She is rather too young to have to keep quiet so long.”
Oddly enough, it had happened that Ella had never visited the public school, and all the glory of something unknown was about it. Of course she had heard many school stories from her playmates. She knew that it was carried on in a businesslike fashion, that children did not choose their books by the color of the covers or recite what they pleased and when they pleased, and go home whenever they liked; but that lessons had to be learned, and had to be recited when the time for recitation had come. ”

“ THE REAL NEW HAMPSHIRE On Ella’s side of the street, as well as on Ida’s, interesting things were often going on. The mother and her friend were making wax flowers, and this was a delight to see. Ella thought that the pink mossrose buds were the loveliest things in the world. The mother had brought with her some thin sheets of white wax, and out of these she cut the petals, using the real buds for patterns. Some people made the petals of pink wax, but it was thought to be much more artistic to make them of white and paint them with pink powder. ”

“ It was good to go slowly, Ella thought, for every [Pg 58] mountain and every tree seemed like an old friend, and it would hurt their feelings if she hurried past them.
There were two roads that found their way to “the West,” that is, the little village that was nearest to the homestead, and it was always a question which to choose. One led over a hill so high that it was almost a young mountain. Indeed, when Ella was smaller, she had fancied that if the road had not held it down like a strap, it would have grown into a mountain. ”

“ Ella asked.
“You stick into the sour tree some twigs from a [Pg 77] good tree and put wax around them to keep them dry,” replied Boy Cousin.
“Let’s stick one into this tree.”
“Why isn’t that work just as much as ploughing would be?” Boy Cousin queried.
“Trees grow Sunday just as much as on other days, and if we graft them so they can raise good apples instead of poor, we are not working; we are only helping them to do their own work well. We haven’t any wax, but why can’t we get some spruce gum? That would keep the water out.” ”

“ She felt a little guilty when her music teacher said: “I heard you practicing two or three measures over and over this morning, Ella, and I thought what a good lesson you were going to have to-morrow.”
Ella did not reply, and she forgot to listen to see whether her heart would make any speeches to her. She didn’t like practicing, and she didn’t, and when she heard of remarkable little girls no older than she who had taken only twelve lessons and could play “two pieces” already, she did not care very much that she could play only one. Neither did Ponto. ”