ELLA

A Little Schoolgirl of the Sixties

ELLA

ELLA
A Little Schoolgirl of the Sixties

A Book for Children and for
Grown-Ups who Remember

BY
EVA MARCH TAPPAN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
RUTH J. BEST

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1923

COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY EVA MARCH TAPPAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

TO
“BOY COUSIN” AND THE DAYS ON
THE BEARCAMP

CONTENTS

ELLA

CHAPTER I
A LITTLE GIRL AND A BIG SEMINARY

The nicest thing that ever happened to a little girl eight years old was going to happen to Ella, and she was so delighted that she could hardly sit still in the big clumsy stage-coach that rolled and shook and swung slowly away from the city. Uphill and downhill it went, past ponds and meadows and brooks and woods, and little new houses and big old homesteads shaded by ancient elms or maples. Every roll of the wheels brought the little passenger nearer to perfect happiness.

Ella was going to live in a seminary, and surely nothing could be more charming than that. She knew all about seminaries, for she had visited one when she was little—at least two years before. The girls had petted her and given her candy; the principal had presented her with a story-book. Best of all, she had slept in an old-fashioned bed with a canopy, such a bed as she had never seen anywhere else. What could be more delightful! And now she was going to have every day such pleasures as these, and no one knew how much more marvelous ones.

By and by the stage came to a scattered village with a church or two, a schoolhouse, and a post-office. After the mail had been left, the driver turned up a long avenue with fields and a line of trees on either hand. At the head of the avenue was a circle of tall fir trees, and back of the circle was a large white building with a wing at each end, a narrow piazza in front, and tall fluted columns rising from its floor to the top of the second story.

The driver called “Whoa!” A tall man came from somewhere and shook hands with Ella’s mother and with herself. Then he led the way upstairs to some bare, almost unfurnished rooms. The mother was to use the furniture from her old home, and it had not yet arrived. After a little talk, they all went down some dark and winding stairs to the dining-room, a large, low, gloomy basement room with two long tables. The end of one of them was “set,” and there Ella and her mother and the tall man and two or three other grown-ups ate supper.

A little later Ella and her mother went up to the almost unfurnished rooms. 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.

“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. But the mother sat beside the window, looking out into the darkness and the past; for it was here that she and the father had first met, in the old joyful student days; and now he was gone, and she had come back, alone, to teach students who were, as she had then been, at the happy beginnings.

When the morning came, things were better, Ella thought. The sun shone, and people began to gather. The first arrivals were teachers and boy and girl students. Then came students of earlier days, for the seminary had been closed for some years and was now to be reopened. There were people from the village and the neighboring country, and a little later, when the stage from the city drove up, there were a number of dignified middle-aged men with long beards. These men were to make speeches.

The mother was helping to welcome the guests, and Ella wandered around alone. Before long she met a boy a little smaller than herself. The two children looked at each other.

“What’s your name?” the boy asked.

“Ella. What’s yours?”

“John. My father’s the principal. What did you have Christmas?”

“I had a doll and a bedstead for her and a book of fairy stories,” the little girl replied. “What did you have?”

“I had a sled and a rubber ball and some red mittens.”

“I had a sled three Christmases ago, when I was little,” said Ella. “Its name is Thomas Jefferson. How old are you?”

“Six. But I’m going on seven,” he added quickly.

Ella was eight, going on nine, and she thought that a boy who was only six was hardly more than a baby; but he was better than nobody, so they spent most of the day together.

It was a full day. The hundreds of people went through the building; they ate a collation in the basement dining-room; they renewed old friendships; and at two o’clock they assembled in the little grove fronting the main door to listen to the speeches.

And speeches there were, indeed; speeches on the old days of the seminary and on the plans for its future; and of course there was one on “The true theory of education,” delivered by the man who knew least about that subject. The lieutenant-governor of the State sent a check for $100 for the library; the mayor of the capital of the State sent one for $250. Ticknor & Fields, Little & Brown, and Wendell Phillips all presented books. Everybody was jubilant, and sunset was only one hour distant when with three hearty cheers for the seminary the people said good-bye to one another, and all but the teachers and the students started for their homes.

Ella had not heard any of the speeches, but she had found where early goldenrod and asters were growing; she had learned that there was a beautiful lake whose shore was a fine place to pick up pebbles and go in wading; and she had discovered on the hastily arranged shelves of the library some books that looked interesting. She and John had only one grievance, namely, that the watermelon had given out before it came to their end of the table.

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.

Ella’s mother had her own “theory of education.” She thought that it was better for young children to be out of doors than in a schoolroom, and that, when they began to study, arithmetic and foreign languages should come first. Ella had never been to school or been taught at home. Somehow, she had learned to read, no one knew exactly how, and she had read every book that had come to hand if it looked at all interesting. One of these books was a small arithmetic. It was quite the fashion in those days to bind schoolbooks in paper of a bright salmon pink. Ella liked the color, and the result was that she had picked up some familiarity with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The professor of mathematics was a courteous, scholarly young man just out of college. He said that it would not trouble him in the least to have in one of his classes a little girl in a short-sleeved, low-necked blue muslin dress and “ankle-ties.” Apparently the tall young men and young women students did not object either; and the result was that for half an hour every morning Ella made groups of straggling figures on the blackboard, and with the kindly teaching of “my professor,” as she proudly called the young instructor, she learned to “invert the divisor and proceed as in multiplication.” She learned also that a decimal point has an uncanny power to reduce a comfortable number of dollars to mere copper cents. She even learned that “If a student purchased a Latin grammar for $0.75, a Virgil for $3.75, a Greek lexicon for $4.75, a Homer for $1.25, an English dictionary for $3.75, and a Greek Testament for $0.75,” the whole cost of his purchases would amount to $15. This was her favorite among the “Practical Problems.” The teacher never guessed the reason, but it was because she had read a story about a carrier pigeon, and she was glad that the student had a “homer.”

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. He looked at the child thoughtfully; maybe she was in the right. At any rate, he only smiled when he saw how rapidly a certain page in her arithmetic was wearing out. Before it had quite disappeared, the multiplication table, even with the eights and nines, was as firmly fixed in the small pupil’s memory as if she had learned it with tears and lamentations.

Ella spelled rather unusually well, perhaps because in all her eight years she had seldom seen or heard a word spelled incorrectly; but her handwriting was about as bad as it could be, especially toward the end of the page, where the “loops and tails” pointed as many ways as if they had been an explosion of fireworks. The tall principal, John’s father, taught penmanship, and the little girl, with a copybook, a red-painted penholder, and a viciously sharp “Gillott, 303,” took her place at one of the long, slanting tables in the hall. It was much too high for her, but no one was troubled about that in those days. If a table was too high, it was because the child was too short, and that was all there was to it.

Day after day, Ella wrote in her copybook whole pages of such thrilling statements as, “Be good and you will be happy,” and, “Honesty is the best policy.” Of the truth of the first she was by no means convinced, for she remembered being—of necessity—very well behaved, indeed, when she was not at all happy. As to the second, she had no idea what “policy” was. She asked the principal very shyly what the sentence meant, and he said it meant that little boys and girls must always tell the truth. Of course no decent children ever told lies, thought Ella, with a vague indignation. She pondered over the reply, and at length made up her mind that the writing-book must have been printed for children that were ragged and dirty and said “ain’t got none.” She had to finish the page, but every line was worse written than the one before it. The principal looked a little grave and asked if she was sure that she had done her best. Ella hung her head and said nothing; but maybe she had done her best—under the circumstances.

The principal tried his utmost to teach her to write the fine “Spencerian” hand that was then so admired; but the wicked little “Gillott, 303,” continued to stick in the paper and make sprays of ink all about—which Ella rather admired as incipient pictures—and the red-painted wooden penholder still aimed at whatever point of the compass happened to suit the comfort of the little cramped fingers. “Where should the pen point?” the principal would patiently ask; and with equal patience the pupil would reply, “Over the right shoulder.” It would turn into place obediently, but long before the teacher had reached the other end of the long table, it was again pointing out the north window toward the lake or out the south window to the hill and the rocks. And why not? Where the thoughts were, surely the pen might point also.

Ella felt as if she was quite a busy little girl, for besides her lessons in arithmetic and penmanship, there was half an hour of French every day. It was good strong old-fashioned French, too, learned by main force from a grammar. She recited patiently, “Ah, bay, say, day,” etc., as she was taught; but in her heart of hearts she thought it utter foolishness to spoil perfectly good English letters by giving them such names. She learned that there were such things as nasal sounds, objected to in English, but highly esteemed in French; and she learned to translate into the French language and pronounce—with an accent that would have thrown the politest Frenchman into a state of collapse—such interesting dialogue as, “Have you the girl’s glove?” “No, sir, but I have the cook’s hat”; and such bits of tragedy as, “My brother’s tailor has broken my slate,” or—most touching of all—“I liked the little girl, but she did not like me.”

French, even grammar French, carried Ella into a new world. She concluded that to harmonize with its caprices she ought to take a French name when, so to speak, she entered France by way of Fasquelle’s Grammar and the French recitation room. Somewhere she had heard the word “elephantine,” and she had read, in English, about Fantine and Cosette. She concluded that this fine-sounding word—only she would spell it

and put on plenty of accents, circumflexes, because she thought acutes and graves had an unfinished look—would accord nicely with her own name and would also be a compliment to the French, especially if it was pronounced with a good strong nasal sound in the middle of the word.

She was rather too shy to ask the French teacher to call her

, but she wrote the name in her Fasquelle, and had fine times saying it over to herself when she was alone. One day the mother happened to take up the book, and she showed Ella in the dictionary what the word meant. All the poetry went out of it then, for Ella always bowed to the authority of the big dictionary; and she promptly rubbed out the new name, accents and all.

CHAPTER II
A LADY OF THE ENGLISH AND CLASSICAL GRADUATING COURSE

A second volume which Ella carried proudly under her arm when she went to the French class was called “Le Grandpère.” It was written expressly for the use of schools—so said the title-page. It was “Approuvé par le Conseil Royal de l’Instruction publique.” If further proof was needed of its value, the fact that it was “Carefully prepared for American schools” was surely sufficient. How could anything be better for a child to translate?

“Le Grandpère” began, with unpardonable guile, quite like a story: “The old Captain Granville inhabited a pretty village situated on the shore of the Loire,” as Ella slowly translated it. But her suspicions were soon aroused, for, looking ahead a few lines, she found something about “charging himself with overseeing their first education.” That did not sound promising, though it was possible that the four grandsons who were being educated might do interesting things betweentimes. As she read further, she found that the grandfather educated them by taking them to walk every Sunday and giving them instructive lectures. Now in Ella’s experience nice children did not study their lessons on Sunday, neither did they go to walk. It is true that occasionally, after they had been to church and Sunday school, had eaten the cold Sunday dinner, and had read their Sunday-school books through, they were allowed to take a quiet, almost awesome walk up and down the paths of the nearest cemetery and talk about the flowers or their books; but this was quite different from an everyday stroll off into the country.

The four boys and their “Grandpère,” however, wandered off shamelessly every Sunday—in the forenoon, too, when by all the customs of Ella’s Sunday mornings they should have been at church. It was true that occasionally their grandfather gave them a moral lecture on a Sunday morning, but these lectures were often a puzzle to Ella’s eight-year-old theology. For instance, she had, of course, been taught to do what she knew was right, but she was quite at sea when “Jules” confessed that he had struck his brother, and declared, “laying his hand upon his heart,” that “something here” told him he had done wrong. Ella laid her hand over the place where she supposed her heart to lie, but nothing made any remarks to her. She concluded that it was because she was not quite bad enough just then, and she made up her mind that—although of course she would not do anything wrong on purpose—yet the next time that she was naughty, she would watch carefully to see if she heard any conversation in the vicinity of her heart.

It was somewhat of a pity that Ella’s lessons made so little impression upon the bulk of “Le Grandpère,” for it was quite an amazing book, and to know it would have been a widely distended, if not a liberal education. It began, indeed, so simply that Ella was disgusted, for these boys, old enough to live in a seminary like herself, actually were amazed when they saw the sun, and appealed to their grandfather to tell them what it was. Ella did not appreciate the exigencies of authorship or realize that there must be something on which to hang a small lecture about the heavenly bodies.

Further on there were discourses on the five senses, on how to count, on the history of the French sovereigns; and then the chapters gradually worked on through slavery, avarice, extravagance, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, vaccination, and leprosy. What could have been better for a child? Any deficiencies that in later times manifested themselves in Ella’s education may be fairly ascribed to her never having completed the translation of this profound volume.

In Ella’s study of French, there was one thing that puzzled her greatly. She was willing to believe that French people understood French, but that they ever really knew it as she knew English without studying Fasquelle and “Le Grandpère” was something that she could hardly accept as truth. Then, too, the mother had told her that she had had a great-great-grandfather who was a Frenchman; and she often wondered whether, if she had lived in his day, they would have been able to talk together. She could have said, “Have you the knife of the brother of the carpenter?” but unless he made the proper reply, “No, but I have the pencil of the sister of the dressmaker,” she would not have known what to say next. She could never have said, “Great-great-grandfather, will you take me to ride this afternoon?” because that was not in Fasquelle.

She wondered if the French people really talked French every day, or only when they had company. After long deliberation, she came to the conclusion that they probably talked French all the time, but that of course they thought in English. These were the grown-ups. As for the children, no one could expect them to talk French, certainly not when they were playing. She wished she had one of them to play with. It would be almost like meeting her great-great-grandfather as a little boy.

Of course Ella “practiced.” In the sixties, boys “took lessons” only if they showed some talent for music, but girls were expected, talent or no talent, to spend in solitary confinement two hours a day at hard labor on the piano. In Ella’s case, the two hours were lessened to one by her mother’s decree, and “solitary confinement” was not added to the hard labor, because, when the sad moment had arrived, a genial “Bow-wow!” was always heard and a big black shaggy head, followed by the rest of a great Newfoundland dog, pushed open the door. If it chanced to be the day for Ella’s lesson, Ponto waved a friendly apology to the teacher and withdrew; but on other days he stretched himself out under the piano, and with a sigh of toleration proceeded to sleep away the time until the hour was up. He never failed to hear the first stroke of the bell, and if Ella did not stop on the instant, he slipped his great muzzle under her wrists and lifted them up from the keys.

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?”

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. In spite of the promised “piece,” however, “One, two, three, four,” became as tiresome as the multiplication table, and at length she invented a way to make the time pass; she played very loud with one hand and at the same time patted Ponto with the other.

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.

Ella had a reason for not caring. 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.

Like most children, Ella was younger than her years in some ways and older in others. She could cherish a belief in the efficacy of a ring to give her musical ability, and she could sit in a class with “ladies and gentlemen” more than twice her age without a thought of this being anything remarkable. Of course she knew that the children in the village went to school with boys and girls of their own years; but this was nothing; they did one thing and she did another, that was all. She even took it as a matter of course when in the “Institute Reporter,” the little four-page sheet that glorified the seminary with printers’ ink, she saw her own name among the other “ladies.” It had, too, a special mark of honor in the shape of an asterisk indicating that she was “In studies of the English and Classical graduating course.” To be sure, no one of her studies was classical, and she was many years removed from graduation, but it made one more name on the list.

As to the English, she really wrote with some degree of correctness because she had never seen writings that were incorrect, and she was quite aghast when she first heard the correction of compositions in class. She wrote to her uncle, “I can’t stop for dates. I want to tell you what funny compositions some of the scholars write. One great boy wrote his and commenced every word with a capital letter. I have not quite got to doing that.” Ella thoroughly enjoyed making tiny blankbooks and composing equally tiny stories carefully adjusted to the little pages. She even manufactured a paper for children, composing, editing, and copying it all herself.

Every Monday evening the “Lyceum” was held, an exercise which was expected to develop the literary ability of the students. Ella had joined it as a matter of course, and when called on for a recitation, she had given “Over the River” in her best style. When the second call came, she decided, possibly with a latent instinct for advertising, to read the first number of her paper. This was not exactly an innovation, for the “Lyceum” already rejoiced in a paper called “The Alpha.”

Ella’s paper was named “Little Pearls.” How the “ladies and gentlemen” and the august faculty kept their faces straight during its presentation is a mystery. It contained a few conundrums, whose answers were promised “in our next,” but otherwise it was carefully modeled on the weekly paper of the Sunday school. There were letters from children with the patronizing comments of the editor; there was an original story or two; and the sheet ended with the tragic tale, drawn from the little editor’s own experience, of a tiny fish, caught and brought home from the lake. I fear that the writer had never been properly trained in “nature study,” for she stated that the fish jumped out of the water and was found “lying upon its back,” dead, and she declared, “although a cat has nine lives, a fish has only one, and therefore it always stayed dead forever after.” Whether this literary production lengthened the list of subscribers, no one can say; but certainly Ella’s minute cash account showed no marked increase of income on that date.

CHAPTER III
THE THREE TRAGEDIES OF ELLA’S SEMINARY LIFE

At the seminary there were only three children besides Ella. One was two-year-old Nellie, the steward’s daughter, whom she loved with all her heart. The second was John, and the third was his little sister, two years younger than he. For this little sister there was rarely any real place in Ella’s world; she was too young for a companion and too old for a baby; but just as Ned, the steward’s son, fifteen years old, would sometimes allow Ella, “going on nine,” to share his amusements, so Ella would occasionally permit John, “going on seven,” to go to the lake with her to skip stones, or to the hills for wild flowers.

The village children all went to the village school, and Ella seldom saw any of them. The mother had once known the mother of Dora, daughter of the village doctor, and it was arranged that the two children should spend an afternoon together. No one ever found out exactly what happened, but after this day, whenever the two little girls passed, they held their heads very high and swung their short skirts disdainfully, and looked away from each other.

Soon after this visit, it came to pass that Ella needed to have a tooth out to make way for a newcomer. “I dare you to go to the doctor and have it pulled,” said Ned mischievously. Ella would have felt humiliated not to “take a dare,” and she appealed to the mother for permission. The mother was glad to escape the string-and-pull process, and she hoped that if the children met again, they might become better friends.

“Was Dora there?” she asked on Ella’s return.

“Yes, she was,” replied Ella with emphasis. “Her father told her to go out, but she just stayed in the room every minute. She wanted to hear me cry, but I wouldn’t. When it was out, she said, just as if she was glad, ‘Hm! Hurt you some, didn’t it?’ and I laughed and said, ‘No, not a bit.’” Ella did not add the fact that going down the doctor’s walk, she had swung her skirts with more disdain than ever.

The mother looked amused.

“Are you sure that that speech was quite true?” she asked.

“Why, you see, if Dora had not been there, it would have hurt, of course; but she was there, and so it didn’t; and anyhow, I wasn’t thinking about it, so I shouldn’t have known it if it had.” And the mother was wise enough not to press the question any further.

THEY HELD THEIR HEADS VERY HIGH AND SWUNG THEIR SHORT SKIRTS DISDAINFULLY, AND LOOKED AWAY FROM EACH OTHER

As has been seen, Ella would have been quite alone in most of her plays had it not been for Ponto. Fortunately, a dog is never too old or too young to be a good friend. People sometimes laugh at a little girl’s queer notions, but a dog never makes fun of them; he always understands. Every morning Ponto came upstairs, thumped on Ella’s door, and waited patiently till she was ready to go down with him. He was not allowed in recitation rooms, but everywhere else that she went, he followed. She greatly enjoyed visiting the laboratory when her professor was at work. Ponto would then lie down just outside the door and take a one-eyed nap, wondering sleepily why she stayed there instead of coming out of doors.

If the kind professor was at all disturbed by her presence and her occasional interruptions, he never let her know it, but answered every question with the courteous attention that children love, as if their questions were really worth while. The crowning glory of her visits came, however, one day when, after she had asked him something that never would have occurred to any one but a child, he looked at her thoughtfully and said, “I don’t know, but I will try to find out.” This was indeed an honor. The professor had treated her as if she was a grown-up lady, and he had met her little query with as much respect as if the principal himself had asked it. When she said, “Good-bye. I have an errand in the village,” and followed the jubilant Ponto down stairs, she held her small head at least one inch higher than usual.

The errand was closely connected with a big copper cent which she had held in her hand during her pursuit of scientific information. Indeed, she had kept close watch of it ever since it came into her possession, for pennies did not come her way every morning. The grocer kept cassia buds, and these to the little customer were a luxury far transcending peppermints or sticks of white candy striped with red, or even chocolate sticks, which were just coming into fashion.

There were two grocers in the same store. One had white hair and the other had brown. Ella had tested them both and had found out that the white-haired one gave her more cassia buds for a cent than did the brown-haired one; therefore she waited patiently until the white-haired one appeared. Then she went back to the seminary joyfully. She was sure that the generous dealer had given her more than ever before, and she would not eat one until she had shown them to the mother. But alas for the best-laid plans of little girls as well as mice and men, for when she reached the seminary, there was not a bud to be seen. Through a wicked little hole in the pocket every one had escaped.

This was one of the three tragedies in Ella’s life at the seminary. The others were even more crushing. Next to her big doll, her greatest treasure was a paint-box. She had had paint-boxes before, but this was the largest and finest she had ever owned. She had taken the greatest pains to keep it clean, and it was as fresh and white as when she first unwrapped it. If the mother had seen, she would have rescued it, but all her attention was given to a caller; and meanwhile his little boy, who had by no means the kind of soul that scorns a blot, daubed the fair white wood of the outside of the box with every hue that could be found within it.

Ella had been out with Ponto, and when she came in and saw her beloved paint-box in ruins, her grief was literally too deep for words. The mother had taken her callers to see the library, and Ella caught up the ruined treasure and slipped out of doors to Ponto. She told him all about it; then the two went to a quiet little place where wild roses grew. With much difficulty she dug a hole. Therein she laid the precious paint-box, and with it all the hopes of the pictures she was going to paint for the uncle in Andover and the grandmother in the mountains.

The next day, the mother asked, “Where can your paint-box be? Have you seen it this morning?”

Ella felt rather guilty, but she answered, “No,” and it was many years before the mother learned the solution of the mystery.

The third tragedy came from Ella’s ambition to wear a linen collar. The grown-up girls in school wore them, and she did so long to have just one. The mother did not approve; she thought a tiny ruffle for every day and a bit of lace for best were the only neckwear proper for a child of eight. Fate, however, promised to be kind. Ella had acquired some skill in the making of “perforated paper” bookmarks in the shape of a cross, elaborately cut out in an openwork pattern; and one Sunday after church a lady in the village, who knew her wishes, promised her a real collar of smooth, stiff linen in exchange for one of these crosses.

Ella was wildly happy, and she wanted to begin the cross at once; but it was Sunday. Somehow she had evolved the notion that while it was wrong to play games on Sunday, it was not wrong to read or write or, indeed, to do whatever she chose with books or paper. Perforated paper seemed, however, a little different. She appealed to the mother, but the mother often left things for the small girl to think out for herself, and this was one of them.

“Some people would say it was right, and some would say it was wrong,” she replied. “Suppose you decide for yourself, and do what you think is right.”

The little girl decided not to begin the work until Monday. Surely, she deserved a better reward than she received, for when the cross was done, the lady handed her a little flat package done up in white paper and tied with blue ribbon.

“My sister told me,” she said with a pleasant smile, “that a linen collar was not at all the thing for a little girl of eight, and that she was sure you would like something else better, so I got you this instead.”

Ella took the package with forebodings, which were justified, for in it was a little white handkerchief. Now handkerchiefs were things to lose and to have more of; but a linen collar was a vision, an aspiration, a heart’s desire. Her face must have shown disappointment, for the lady hastened to say, “There is a blue flower worked in one corner.” The lady had taken away her beautiful dream of being grown up and had given her instead a handkerchief—with a blue flower in one corner! These were the three tragedies of Ella’s first experience in the trials and disappointments of life.

WITH MUCH DIFFICULTY SHE DUG A HOLE

There was, however, a little comforting postscript to this third tragedy. Among Ella’s accomplishments was the ability to embroider fairly well those lines of crescent moons known as scallops. She marked out a collar on a strip of Marseilles, and by means of two spools she drew a line of scallops on its edge. After a season of diligent sewing, she was the proud owner of a stiff white collar. The mother objected to her wearing it in public, but she was free to put it on and stand before her looking-glass and admire it; and even this was bliss.

Then, too, Christmas was not far away, and its coming would make up for many troubles. To be sure, it was not the custom for children to be loaded down with gifts as they are now, but every one was to have something, the principal had said so; and Ella could hardly wait for the day. Nevertheless, in spite of her impatience, she thoroughly enjoyed herself. She had never before been in the country in the winter, and now she coasted on her “Thomas Jefferson”; she made snow men; she slipped under the branches of the pines and firs and hemlocks and shook them until when she came out her little blue hood was all powdered with snow; she brought in great armfuls of creeping Jenny and scarlet alder berries; she broke the thin ice that formed over the little brooks and delighted in the fairy palaces of frostwork that it had concealed. Best of all, however, was the time when the ice over a shallow pool broke into cakes, and she could float about on them. What the busy mother would have said if she had known of all these adventures is a question; but Ella was well and happy, and before long Christmas Day came, and in the evening the big Christmas tree.

Santa Claus, all a-jingle with sleighbells, climbed in at the window. Ella knew that he was not exactly a real Santa Claus, but still she felt highly honored when in his walk about the room he patted her on the head and asked “How old are you?”

“I’ll be nine to-morrow,” she replied; and it almost made up for the loss of the collar to have him exclaim, “Nine years old! Why, I thought you were a small child. I shall have to go pretty deep into my pack to find anything for a young lady of nine.”

By and by Santa Claus distributed the presents. In her ante-seminary days, Ella had felt rich if she had three or four gifts; but now there was a pearl-handled pen, a little writing-desk with a lock and key; there were new mittens to match the blue hood; there was a real jackknife, just such a one as she had been longing for, big enough to cut things and not too big to go into her pocket; there was a box of candy and another of cassia buds; there was a great package of writing-paper, some little blankbooks, half a dozen lead pencils, and a little matchbox of parian marble. 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. He had supposed that he could guide her choice toward the little muff; but of all the glories of Boston her heart had been set upon a box of tin soldiers. The tall uncle from Andover scoffed, pleaded, offered bribes, but the mite of a niece claimed her rights. “You promised I might have what I wanted, and I want the tin soldiers,” was her unchanging reply. At length he started in wrath to return to the study of theology, and the obstinate little niece called after him, “Good-bye, uncle; you broke your promise!” But she had relented sufficiently to send him a gracious note to the effect that a muff would really be very nice to have; he had relented sufficiently to send it to her, and so peace had come to pass between them.

One more present came to Ella’s share, and that was a thin, uninteresting envelop. But it was all glorious within, for here was a bright, fresh two-dollar bill from her professor. “To spend just as you like,” the card said. Fairyland had opened, for never before had Ella owned such an amount of money to spend as she liked. She had never expected to have so much, but she had decided long before this what she would buy if she should ever become a woman of wealth.

The next day she and the mother talked it over. The mother, too, had decided what would be the best way to spend the money. When she was a little girl, money given to girls was always put into silver spoons, and now she held before Ella the advantages of putting the gift into spoons, which she could always keep and which would always be a remembrance of the professor.

“But I’d never forget him, anyway,” declared Ella, “and I don’t want spoons. I want something useful. Spoons aren’t useful. People just have them on the table to eat with, and then they go away and forget them. I want something I’d really use and like to use and think about using; I want a pair of skates.”

SHE MADE SNOW MEN

It was against the mother’s inherited ideas of the desirable, and she was afraid of broken bones and thin ice and air holes, but the skates were bought. They had such a multiplicity of green straps as would arouse a skater of to-day to wrath; but to Ella they seemed the most beautiful things in the world, and before long she was gliding over the frozen lake in perfect bliss.

CHAPTER IV
GRADUATION DAY AND ITS MISFORTUNES

The winter was a delight, but the spring and summer were even more enchanting. The seminary did not close until late in July, and there was time for the blooming of more kinds of wild flowers than the little city girl had ever dreamed of. It was on one of her fishing trips with Ned that she saw her first lady’s-slipper. She had left the big rock and was roaming about under the pines when in a dusky little hollow she caught sight of a stately pink flower veined with a darker pink. It rose from two large green leaves, a queen with her courtiers bowing low before her. There it stood, elegant, dignified, quietly at ease, although no other of its kind was in sight. Ella wanted to break it off and carry it home to show to the mother, but there was something in the weird grace of the flower that held her back. She still believed that there might be a fairyland, and maybe this was the queen of the fairies. However this might be, she would not break the stem; she would ask the mother to come and see the blossom.

Another flower that Ella saw for the first time was the yellow daisy, the golden rudbeckia. She had no dream of fairyland about this, for it was a gorgeous, rollicking yellow blossom, ready to be picked and go wherever any one might wish to carry it and to make friends with anybody. 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. Nestled on the sunny side of a stone wall at the north of the seminary there was what had once been a flower bed. Little of the bed remained except a merry row of white narcissi, who perked up their red-edged ruffs and nodded their heads in friendly fashion as the child and the dog drew near.

Between the narcissi and the gray old stone wall behind them was Ella’s little burial ground. It happened sometimes that birds flew against the lighted windows of the seminary so violently that they were killed. Ella was always grieved when she found one lying on the grass, and she chose this bit of ground as a resting place for them. “Ponto,” she said to the big shaggy dog, “it was in our Sunday school lesson yesterday that God always noticed when a little bird fell to the ground. The teacher said the verse didn’t mean exactly what it said, because God wouldn’t care for birds; but I think it did; and I think He would like it if you and I made a pretty place for them to lie in. We’ll do it, won’t we, Ponto?” 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. Remember that this is all a secret, Ponto. Nobody must know anything about it except you and me and God.”

Down over the hill below the little cemetery was the island. This was really nothing more than a tussock just big enough to hold a few bushes, and the “body of water” which surrounded it was only a bit of swamp. Ella could easily step across from what she called the “main land,” but a bridge made the place seem more like an island, so she laid a board across the narrow strait. When she was once across she always drew the board over after her; and then she stood in a kingdom that was all her own. There were white violets growing in this island kingdom, there were ferns and rushes and wild lilies of the valley. 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. However that may be, these birds were not afraid of the little girl who always spoke to them softly and touched the young ones as gently as the mother bird herself. They made no objection when the child carefully lifted the half-grown fledglings out of the nest; and while she sat holding them and talking to them, the parent birds made little flights here and there as if, having now a reliable nurse for their children, they might allow themselves a little recreation.

When Ella first saw the young birds with their wide-open mouths, she was sure that they were dying of hunger. But what could she give them? She had no more idea how to feed young robins than young fairies. There was just one person in the seminary who could tell her, for he always knew everything; but he was in a class, teaching some of the big boys algebra. What algebra was, Ella had no idea; but she was absolutely certain that it could not be half so important as saving the life of a starving bird. She hurried to the house, and up stairs, then crept silently as a shadow along the corridor to the recitation room. The door was wide open. She stood on the threshold a moment, trying to get her courage up. The young men of the class smiled, for they were always interested in Ella’s exploits and wondered what was coming now. The professor was standing at the board with his back to the door.

Ella was a little frightened, but she screwed her courage up and said in a weak, thin little voice,

“Professor, please may I see you only just one minute? It’s very important.”

The professor came out, and closing the door behind him, which the students thought was a little unkind, he asked the visitor what he could do for her.

“It’s the birds,” she explained. “They were only eggs, but now they’re little birds, and they’re so hungry they are starving. I don’t know what to do,” and the tale ended in what sounded much like the beginning of a sob.

“That’s all right,” said the professor gently. “The mother bird knows how to take care of them; but if you want to help, just dig some angle worms and put them on the island where she can see them.”

“Oh, thank you,” cried Ella. “I knew I must do something, but I didn’t know what.”

Ella’s mother told her that she ought to apologize to the professor for interrupting his class. She went to him obediently and said,

“Professor, I am sorry I interrupted your class, but I don’t think I did—much—and anyway the birds had to be fed.”

“So they did,” said the professor kindly, “and more interruptions of that sort would be better for birds and for people.”

I am afraid that Ella was not exactly a model child, for she cut her name on a tree in the circle with the Christmas jackknife, much to the wrath of the man who cared for the grounds. She came in promptly when the mother, for fear of the lightning, called her in from the piazza during a heavy thunderstorm; but the next minute she was in the highest cupola. The time spent in the gloomy basement dining-room seemed to her so unbearably long that the mother sometimes yielded to her pleadings and excused her before the meal was over. This, the principal suggested, was not quite the thing to do, as it broke up the “uniformity,” whatever that may have been; so the mother told her she must remain through the meal. Ella remained, but she brought a little story-book and quietly read through the last quarter of an hour. The big boys smiled in comprehension of the situation, and the principal made an unconditional surrender. To Ella he said, “You need not wait if you would rather go out”; and to the boys, “If you would save every minute as that child does, you would accomplish a great deal more.”

The mother wrote to the grandmother in the mountains:

“Ella is very obedient, but she always thinks of something else. I will describe her, so the children can fancy a little how she looks. She has on a black beaver cloak, black felt hat trimmed with scarlet velvet and plumes, a chinchilla muff, and chenille scarf. She has just come in from church, and now, before her things are taken off, is reading her Sabbath-school book. She devours all the books that she finds.”

Ella’s worst—and most innocent—exploit was her sudden disappearance on the most important day of the whole school year. The first class was to graduate. It consisted of two students. One was to have the valedictory and the other the salutatory; but it was to be just as real a graduation as if there had been forty to go out into the world with the seminary’s blessing upon them.

It was indeed a great day. Every class was to recite. Compositions were to be read, songs sung, the piano played, diplomas presented, speeches made, and trustee meetings held. There was to be a collation, and the village band was to play while people ate. Surely nothing could be more festive than this. The building was crowded with guests. There were the people of the village, the home friends of the students, the people who used to be students in the early days, the thirty-six trustees whose fostering care was so necessary to the success of the school, and many other folk who came just because something was going on and they wanted to be in it.

Everything began finely. At nine, ten, eleven, the big bell in the belfry rang, and the members of the first three series of classes made plain to the delighted visitors how learned the year’s work had made them. The bell struck twelve. This was the signal for Ella’s French class, and after that the collation was to come. But where was Ella? The classes were so small that the absence of even one student was noticeable, and a messenger was sent to the mother, who was hearing her class in botany.

In those days, the more difficult the wording of a textbook, the more intellectual good those who studied it were supposed to get from its pages, and a member of the class in botany was at that moment declaring that “The cypripedium is perfectly symmetrical, yet has irregular cohesion in the calyx, great inequality in the petals, cohesion, adhesion, and metamorphosis in the—” but the guests were never told by that class where “cohesion, adhesion, and metamorphosis” might be found, for their teacher dropped the book and forgot all about cypripedium and everything else except that her one little girl was missing. Ella had established an enviable reputation for punctuality, and if she was not in her class, then something had happened.

A general alarm was given. Speeches, collation, graduating exercises were all forgotten, and a search was begun. The boys and girls and the faculty and the trustees and the guests all set out to explore the country. A man at work in a field said that he had seen a little girl in a red cape going toward the lake; and to the lake the whole company went. In the moist sand were prints of little feet going straight to the water’s edge, and the mother’s face turned white. But beside them were the marks of Ponto’s sturdy paws.

“The dog is with her,” said the steward. “You need not be the least bit afraid. Ponto would never let anything happen to her.”

But the mother was not comforted. Just what dogs would do, she knew not; but she did know that water would drown little children.

Some one had caught sight of a child in a Red Riding Hood cape strolling leisurely down a little hill on the right. The dog was with her, and they were having a fine ramble together. The people shouted to her, and Ponto answered with a deep and surprised “Bow-wow!” which probably meant,

“Of course I’m glad to see you, but what are you here for? Can’t you let us take a little walk?”

“Where have you been?” cried the mother, as the little girl came near.

“Over on the hill to get some flowers,” Ella replied serenely.

Then the mother told her how the footprints leading into the water had frightened her.

“Did you think I would walk right into the water and be drowned?” exclaimed Ella in disgust. “A baby a week old wouldn’t be so silly as to do that. I walked ever so far close to the water, but I suppose it washed the footprints away.” This was just what had happened, but no one had noticed that the wind was blowing toward the land. As to the French class, the mother had told her that it would meet at two in the afternoon, and when the hour was changed to twelve, she had forgotten to notify the small pupil, and then in the fear and confusion forgot that she had forgotten.

So they all went back through the lane to the seminary to gather up the fragments of the great day. The French class never welcomed its guests with a “Comment vous portez-vous, mesdames et messieurs?” but the collation was still palatable, the speeches were made, the valedictory and the salutatory were read, the band played the pieces they had been practicing, and the two students were as thoroughly graduated as if a little girl in a Red Riding Hood cloak had not interfered with the proceedings.

The mother had decided to return to the city, and this was Ella’s last day at the seminary, and the end of her first year of school life. She would have been broken-hearted over leaving, had it not been that she was going to visit her grandmother; and a month with a grandmother will make up to little girls for many losses.

CHAPTER V
ON THE WAY TO GRANDMOTHER’S

There were two grandmothers. The one with white curly hair that glistened in the sunshine lived in the village where Ella was born. It was a pretty village with hills and brooks and winding roads and meadows of flowers, and old-fashioned houses with piazzas and tall white pillars. Back of Ella’s home was a hill where great apple trees grew, and the very first thing that she remembered in the world was her father’s lifting her up into one of them, all sweet and dainty with pink-and-white blossoms, and telling her to pick as many as she pleased.

When they went to the grandmother’s, they walked straight up the village street, where a line of houses stood on one side and woods on the other. They were beautiful woods. Columbines grew in the clefts of the rocks, delicate pink windflowers blossomed in the little glades and the brave and cheery dandelions came out to the very edge of the road to give a welcome to those who loved them.

The mother had told her little daughter that one of the names of the columbine was Aquilegia Canadensis; of the windflower was Anemone Nemorosa; and of the dandelion was Taraxacum Officinale, just for the pleasure of seeing how so small a child would manage the long names. Ella felt especially well acquainted with those flowers whose “company names,” as she said, she had learned; and when she was alone with them and talked to them, she often called them by these names and pretended that she had come to make a call. “Miss Anemone Nemorosa,” she would say, “are you sure that you are feeling quite well to-day?” or, “Miss Aquilegia Canadensis, I think I saw a cousin of yours in the garden just now. Your dress is red and yellow, but hers was pink. Maybe she was your sister.” She fancied that they liked the little formality, and she was almost surprised that they did not answer her questions.

Beyond the woods was a bridge hanging high over a deep black river. Ella did not like dark, still water; and when they were crossing this bridge, she always held fast to her mother’s or her father’s hand. After they had crossed the bridge, they went up a little hill, not by the road, but through a field and over ledges where the sweet-smelling saxifrage grew; and then they came to grandmother’s little wooden gate that always closed of itself after they had gone through it.

They passed the balm of Gilead tree with its sticky buds, the black currant bush, and the great bush of white roses with creamy centers. Then Ella ran across the grass to the door, for grandmother was almost sure to see them and to come to the doorway to give them a welcome.

Grandmother’s house was one of a little group of white houses standing on the ledges at the top of the hill. These formed the tiny village within a village which was called the “New City.” Ella was always so happy at her grandmother’s that long after she was old enough to go to Sunday school, she always confused the “New City” with the “New Jerusalem.”

This was the “village grandma,” as Ella called her. But there was also the “mountain grandma,” and it was to her house that the little girl and her mother were going. Now when good New Englanders are starting for anywhere, they always begin by taking the morning train to Boston; so of course that was what our two travelers did.

Going to Boston, even if she did not go any farther, was a great treat to Ella. There were windows full of blankbooks, and what stories she could write in them, she thought longingly. There were whole stores full of toys; and in the window of one of these stores lay a box of tin soldiers. Ella looked again. It was exactly like the box that she had wanted. Maybe it was the very same one. It certainly was the same store.

“Mother,” she said, “that is my box of tin soldiers that uncle did not give me; but I’m so old now that I don’t care for it. I’d rather have the muff.”

“Don’t you love your uncle enough to forget that?” her mother asked.

“I love him better than almost anybody in the world,” said Ella, “and I do forget it except when I happen to think of it. But he really did break his promise,” she added slowly.

They left the stores and went to the Common. Ella’s little book of history said that in the Revolutionary War the Americans pitched their tents on the Common; and she fancied that she knew just where those tents stood. She had also read about the battle of Bunker Hill, and she never felt that she was really in Boston until she had caught sight of the monument in memory of it standing tall and gray against the northern sky.

At one side of the Common was the Capitol. The mother told Ella that the laws for the whole State of Massachusetts were made in that building.

“Do they ever make a mistake and make a bad law?” asked Ella.

“Perhaps they do sometimes,” the mother replied rather unwillingly, for she wanted her little girl to grow up with deep respect for the institutions of her country.

Ella thought a minute; then she asked slowly,

“If they made a law that everybody must tell lies, which would be naughtier, to obey it or not to obey it?”

Just then a man began to scatter grain for the pigeons, and Ella forgot all about laws whether good or bad.

Of all the pleasures of Boston, there was one that Ella wanted more than she had wanted the tin soldiers, but she feared she would never be permitted to enjoy it. This pleasure was, to have just one ride in the swan boats in the Public Garden. The mother was afraid of boats, especially of little ones, and Ella saw no hope of the ride that she wanted so badly.

“Couldn’t I go for just one minute?” she pleaded. “I couldn’t possibly drown in one minute if I tried. Couldn’t I just get in and get out again?”

But the mother had no idea how deep the water might be, and she always answered,

“No, not until you are tall enough to wade out if the boat tips over.”

“But I’ll be a woman then,” said Ella, “and tall women don’t ride in the swan boats.”

“You can take some little girl with you, and maybe the man with the boat will think you are a little girl too.”

“But I don’t want to take a little girl. I want some one to take me while I am a little girl. I don’t care for the tin soldiers now, and I’m afraid that by and by I shan’t care for the swan boats; and then I shan’t ever have had a ride in them, and I’ll be sorry all my life that I had to leave it out.”

But the mother was turning toward the railroad station. There would be only time enough to go there and to get some lunch, she said, and they must not stay in the Garden any longer.

After lunch they went on board the train, and before long they had crossed the line and were in New Hampshire. Ella had a tiny yellow-covered geography at home, and she knew from the map just how New Hampshire ought to look. It ought to look like a tall, narrow chair with a very straight back. But from the car window it looked like wide fields of grass and clover and daisies and hills and brooks and valleys. Here and there were great elms, their branches swaying gracefully in every breeze. Along the rail fences were bushes of what Ella was almost certain were blackberries, and nearly ripe. There were deep woods, too, and now and then she caught a glimpse of a gleaming yellow or white blossom as the train hurried onward. Sometimes they rode for quite a long way beside the blue Merrimack River. It was low water, and she could see the markings that the current had left on the sand. They were just like the markings in the little brooks that she always liked so much, only these were larger.

Early in the afternoon they came to Concord, and the mother’s friend met them at the station. But what did this mean? Ella’s eyes grew bigger and bigger, for the friend held by the hand a little girl about as tall as Ella. After she had greeted them, she said to Ella,

“This little girl has come to live just across the street from us, and I am sure that you will be good friends. Her name is Ida Lester, and she has come to meet you and walk home with you.”

So the mother and her friend walked up the shady street, and the two little girls walked along behind them, looking shyly at each other. Ella liked Ida, and Ida liked Ella.

“Do you like checkerberry candy?” asked Ella.

“Yes, I do,” Ida replied. “I had a stick of red and white peppermint candy yesterday.”

“A lady on the cars gave me some checkerberry candy,” said Ella. “I wish I had saved half of it for you.”

“I wish I had saved half of mine for you,” said Ida heartily. “I will next time. Are you going to live here?”

“Oh, no,” replied Ella. “We are just going to make a little visit, and then we’re going to see my grandmother in New Hampshire.”

“But this is New Hampshire,” said Ida, looking puzzled.

“Is it? I know it said ‘New Hampshire’ on the tickets, but I don’t call it ‘New Hampshire’ till I get where my grandmother is. But I’d just as soon,” she added quickly, for she was afraid she had not been exactly polite to this new friend, “and I’m so glad you live here.”

“I’m glad you’ve come,” said Ida. “Did you bring your dolls? Do you like to play ‘house’ or ‘school’ better?”

“I like to play both,” said Ella. “I brought my big doll, because she is the one I sleep with and the one I love best.”

“What is her name?”

“Minnie May Ida May. I like ‘May’ and that’s why I put it in twice.”

“You put in my name, too,” cried Ida joyfully. “I am so glad you chose it even before you ever saw me. I’m going to name my biggest doll over again, and call her Minnie May Ella May.”

“There wasn’t room for any more dolls in the trunk,” said Ella, “but I brought ever so many paper dolls and some pretty paper to make them some more dresses. I’ll give you some.”

“Oh, good!” Ida exclaimed. “My front steps are a splendid place to play with paper dolls; and there’s a deep dark crack where we can put them when they are naughty. We’ll have to tie a string around them though, so we can pull them up again. Come over now, will you? No, I forgot. My father raised some beans and they got mixed. He told me to pick them over this afternoon and put all the white ones in one box, the yellow in another, and the pink in another. He’s going to plant them in the spring.”

“I’ll help you,” Ella cried eagerly, “and we’ll play that we are in a castle where a wicked giant lives, and that he will whip us just dreadfully if we make any mistakes; and we’ll be thinking up some plan to get away from him.”

And so it was that the two little girls became friends. They had fine times together playing “house” and “school,” and working on bits of canvas with bright-colored worsteds in cross stitch, and telling stories to each other. Sometimes they wrote their stories and read them to the long rows of paper dolls standing up against the steps. Ella had a great admiration for Ida’s handwriting. Ella’s own writing had perhaps improved a very little, but even now it looked much like a fence that had been caught in an earthquake, its pickets and rails sticking out in all directions; but Ida’s was fair and round and looked quite as if she was grown up.

One reason why they liked to write stories was because they always tied the tiny books together with bright ribbons. Ida had a big box of odds and ends of ribbon, and these she shared generously with Ella. They had been given to her by her Sunday school teacher, who had a little millinery store. Ella did not wish to give up her own Sunday school teacher, but she did think it would be very agreeable if she would open a millinery store.

The two little girls did all sorts of pleasant things together. When Saturday came, Ida ran across the street, her face all aglow with smiles, and gave Ella’s mother a note. Ella could hardly wait till her mother had read it, and she stood first on one foot, then on the other. The note said,

“Will you please let Ella put on a big apron and come to dinner with Ida to-day?”

“Oh, mother, may I go? May I? May I? May I?” cried Ella, dancing about the room. “I know we are to do something nice. What is it, Ida?”

IDA’S MOTHER LOOKED IN AT THE DOOR TO MAKE SURE THAT ALL WAS GOING ON WELL

Ida only laughed, but the mother said yes, and the girls ran across the street and pinned on the big aprons. Then Ida opened a door into a little room back of the kitchen that Ella had never seen.

“This is the Saturday room,” she said.

“Oh, that’s lovely!” Ella cried. “I never saw such a beauty. Can you really do things with it?”

“Just like a big one,” replied Ida, “and every Saturday mother lets me cook my dinner on it.”

“It” was a little cookstove, the top not much more than a foot square. It had four little griddles and an oven and a little stovepipe that opened into the pipe of the big stove in the kitchen. Beside the stove was a small closet, and on the low hooks hung a mixing-spoon, a steel fork and knife, a griddle, and a wire broiler. On the shelf above was a mixing-bowl, a little cake pan, a small kettle, and a muffin pan that was just large enough to hold six muffins. Above these was a pretty set of blue-and-white dishes, and small knives, spoons, and forks. In one corner of the room was a table, and in its drawers were napkins and a tablecloth.

“And does your mother really let you get your own dinner?” cried Ella.

“Yes, she does,” said Ida. “She says that little girls always like to cook, and they may as well learn the right way as to play with scraps of dough that their mothers have made. We’re going to have steak and sweet potatoes and lettuce to-day, and blackberries and cream for our dessert. I made the fire before I came over, and the potatoes are all washed and ready to boil.”

“And may I help?” cried Ella.

“Of course you may. If you will put the potatoes into the kettle, I will wash the lettuce. We’ll set the table together, and then you shall broil the steak while I go to mother’s refrigerator for the blackberries and the cream.”

Once in a while Ida’s mother looked in at the door to make sure that all was going on well, and when the little girls had sat down to the table, she came and looked it over and said,

“Well, children, I think you have done everything as well as I could. I should really like to sit down and eat dinner with you.”

“Oh, do, do!” the girls cried; but Ida’s mother only smiled and shook her head.

“Your father will be here soon,” she said, “and I’m afraid there would not be enough for us all. When you are a little older, you shall cook a dinner for us some day, and if Ella is here, we will ask her to come and help.”

CHAPTER VI
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.

These were pressed into the hollow of the hand and bent around the wire stem. Real moss from the north side of the beech tree was twisted on at the base of the petals. Leaves were made by dipping real rose leaves first into water, then into melted green wax and peeling off the impression of the under side to use. The rosebuds and the sprays of leaves were brought gracefully together, and there was the bouquet, all ready to take its stand in a little vase under a glass shade on the parlor mantel.

Wax pond lilies, with long stems of green rubber, were also made. The stems were coiled upon a round piece of looking-glass to represent water. A glass shade in the shape of a half sphere was placed over them, finished with a chenille cord. “And there you have a thing that will always be an ornament for your parlor,” said the teachers of wax-flower-making. “It will never go out of fashion because it is true to nature.”

The two grown-ups were very kind to the smaller folk. They let them try and try until they had each made a really pretty bud and a spray of leaves to go with it. Then they made some little forget-me-nots and some syringas. This was as much as they could find time for without neglecting their large families of dolls.

One day Ella’s mother and her friend planned to go a little way out of the city to call on an old friend of theirs.

“Put on your blue-and-white checked silk and your leghorn hat,” said the mother.

“Do I have to go?” Ella asked in dismay, for she and Ida had some interesting plans for the afternoon.

“Yes,” said her mother. “This lady is an old friend, and she will want to see you.”

“Would she want to see me if she knew that I didn’t want to come?”

“I really can’t say about that,” said the mother with a smile, “but I’ll tell you something that I do know. I have noticed that when little girls do a thing because their mothers want them to, something pleasant is almost sure to happen before long.”

Ella did not know of anything pleasant that would be likely to happen in this call, and nothing did happen. The lady did not seem especially glad to see her. There was not a child or a cat or a dog to play with. There were a few books, but they were shut up in a tall bookcase with glass doors, and Ella was almost sure that it would not do to ask if she might take one to read. She sat in a stiff chair by the window, thinking of what she and Ida had meant to do. After a long, long time they said good-bye and started for home.

On the way Ella picked up a little stone and asked her mother if it was a fossil.

“Here’s a gentleman who will tell you,” said mother’s friend, and she introduced a tall man with white hair and deep blue eyes who was coming toward them.

“Doctor,” she said, “here is a little girl who wants to know whether her stone is a fossil.”

“Indeed,” said he with a kindly look at Ella. “I am afraid it is not; but what does she know about fossils?”

“Very little,” said her mother; “but even when she was very small, she was always bringing in pebbles and asking if they did not have names just as flowers did. Her father told her the names of a few of the minerals that were most common about our home, and she is always looking for them.”

“I think I must give myself the pleasure of showing her my cabinets,” said the Doctor. “Not many little girls care for minerals. May I take her home with me now?”

Then came a happy time. The Doctor had great cases full of the most interesting minerals. He soon found that Ella liked fossils and crystals especially, and as he showed them to her one by one, he told her stories of the places where he found them and of the fossils that were once living plants or animals a long, long time ago.

“Was it before you were born?” Ella asked, and wondered a little why he looked so amused when he answered yes.

When it was time for her to go home, the Doctor gave her a real fossil, a piece of rose quartz, and a little deep red garnet. He walked home with her, and when he left her, he said:

“I am going away in the morning, but I shall send you before long a package of specimens marked with their names and where they were found. Maybe some day we shall have a great mineralogist whose name will be Ella. I take off my hat to the mineralogist of the future,” he said with a friendly smile.

Ella was the happiest little girl in town. “He took off his hat to me just as if I had been a grown lady,” she told her mother.

The Doctor kept his promise, and not long afterwards he sent her a package of fifty or sixty minerals, all marked as he had said they would be. Ella wrote him a little letter, in her funny handwriting that looked as if it had been out in an earthquake, and told him how pleased she was to have them, and how much she liked to look them over. One thing puzzled her, however. The good Doctor must have forgotten for a moment what a little girl she was, for he had put into the package a pamphlet that he had written for some learned society about the cacao tree. It was a thick pamphlet in the finest of print and with the lines very close together.

“I can’t tell him that I am glad to have this to read,” said Ella in dismay, “for I’m not. What shall I do?”

“It was kind in him to send it to you,” her mother replied, “and you can thank him for his kindness. That will be perfectly honest. You need not tell him that you will enjoy reading it.”

Ella was having a good time, but when night came, she was often a little homesick for the grandmother and the “real New Hampshire,” and she did not grieve when she and her mother took the train for the mountains. She was very sorry to leave Ida, but the mother had promised her friend to stop on her way home. Ella had agreed to bring Ida some maple sugar; and the two little girls said good-bye without any tears. They exchanged parting gifts. Ella gave Ida “Minnie Warren,” her very best paper doll, and Ida gave Ella a little book with a story in it that she had written. It was tied with a bright red ribbon, and on the cover was written, “The Lost Child, A True Story Made up by Ida Lester.”

After an hour in the cars, Ella and her mother came to the most delightful part of the journey. The train stopped, then rushed on toward the north, leaving them standing beside a wharf that stretched out into a beautiful lake, blue as the sky and full of dainty little islands all rocks and trees and ferns. The lake seemed to have been dropped softly into a hollow among the mountains, for they were all around it, bending over it as if they loved it, Ella thought.

A shining white steamboat was coming into sight around an island. It did not blow any whistle, but floated up to the wharf as gracefully as a swan, making only the gentlest of ripples in the blue water. This was the “Lady of the Lake.” Ella thought the name had been given to the boat because it seemed so gentle and so ladylike.

They went on board, and as the steamboat made a wide curve away from the wharf and set out on her course across the blue water, roaming in and out among the islands, Ella joyfully watched for the peaks that she knew best in the ranges that circled around the old homestead. From one point on the steamer’s course Mt. Washington could be seen for a few minutes. Ella was looking for it eagerly when she saw a man with a harp coming up from the lower deck. A little girl followed him, and as he began to play, she sang in a sweet, clear voice.

“Mother,” Ella whispered, “couldn’t I ever learn to sing like that? I’d rather do it than almost anything else in the world.”

The singing stopped and the man passed his hat around for money. Ella looked at the little singing girl and found that the singer was looking at her.

“Couldn’t I go and speak to her?” she asked, and her mother said, “Yes, if you like. I think she looks rather lonely.”

So Ella went up to the singing girl a little shyly and said:

“I think your singing is beautiful. I wish I could go about and sing and be on a boat always.”

“I heard you say to your mother that you were going to your grandmother’s, and I wished and wished that I had a grandmother and could go to see her and play like other children. I’d so much rather than to go about singing.”

But the father was beckoning to her to get ready to go ashore, and Ella went back to her mother.

“I can see him! I can see him!” she cried. “And there’s the gray horse!”

One of her uncles always met them at the Harbor. Ella had caught sight of him on the wharf, and she had no more thought just then for the singing girl.

Pretty soon they were seated in the wagon and were riding slowly along the road that wound higher and higher up among the hills to the old homestead. It was good to go slowly, Ella thought, for every 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. The other road was shorter, but full of rocks, as if it had once been the bed of a river. The horse knew it well. He had learned just how to twist and turn among the rocks, and even if one wheel was a foot higher than another, there was no real danger of an overthrow, day or night.

Upward they went, past tiny villages, little blue ponds, comfortable farmhouses, usually in charge of a big dog, who came out to the road and greeted them with a friendly wag of the tail; past meadows and mowing lots; beside “sap orchards” of maple trees; through deep woods, dark and cool even that warm summer afternoon; past the tiny red schoolhouse under the maples at the crossroads. Ella had been there to school with an older cousin one day, and she thought that going to school and sitting at a desk must be the most delightful thing in the world. She had been allowed to sit, not with the little children, but, because she was company, on the high seats at the back of the room with the big girls. They were parsing in “Paradise Lost.” Ella had no idea what either “Paradise Lost” or “parsing” might be, but she was sure it must be something very agreeable. They had carried their dinner in a tin pail; and this, she thought, was a wonderfully fine thing to do, for when noon came, they ate it under the trees just as if they were on a picnic. Then they played in the brook and made playhouses, marking them out with white stones on the grass. They made wreaths of maple leaves, pinning them together with their long stems, and they pulled up long sprays of creeping Jenny to drape over their playhouses at home.

But now they were on the crossroad that led to grandmother’s, and Ella was getting much excited. “I know she will hear us when we go over the causeway,” she cried, “and she will come to the road to meet us;” and so it was, for two minutes later they could see the end of the house and the big asparagus bush standing under one of the west windows. Half a minute more, and they were at the gate, and there stood grandma and grandpa, and the uncles and the aunts and the cousins, and such a welcome as there was! Then came supper, with cottage cheese, made as no one but grandma could make it, custard pie, hot biscuit and maple syrup made from the sap of the very trees that they had just passed, and as many other good things as the table would hold.

After Ella was curled up in bed that night, she said:

“Mother, I don’t believe I want to sing on a boat. I’d rather be a little girl at her grandmother’s. Will you please take out my thick shoes? I shall be too busy to look for them in the morning.”

The mother went back to have a little talk alone with grandmother. She was sitting in her straight-backed rocking-chair. There were tears in her eyes. She looked up as the mother came in.

“The child looks more like her father every year,” said grandmother.

The mother nodded. Her eyes, too, were full of tears, and she could not speak.

CHAPTER VII
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.

When morning came, there were so many interesting things to do that Ella hardly knew how to choose among them. First of all, she must of course have a good long look at the mountains, every one of them. Little girl as she was, she could remember when some of them were a little different in their appearance. The nearest one was Ossipee, a kindly, friendly, sunny mountain, with a great pasture running far up the side to a gray rock that looked quite like a cabin. This had not come into view until the trees about it had been cut down. The children realized that the “cabin” was much larger than it appeared, and they had made up a story to the effect that a good-natured giant from the other side of the mountain had come over to this side, bringing his house with him.

Beyond this rock were ledges, and after a rain the water ran down over them in a silver sheet. The children called them the Shining Rocks, the home of the sunbeam fairies. They had once climbed to the top of the mountain, and when they came to the rocks, they more than half expected to catch a glimpse of a little man in grass-green hat or a dainty fairy queen in a gown of sunbeams. No fairies appeared, and they decided that it was foolish to expect them, for every one ought to know that they will not appear when grown-ups are about.

To the west lay Israel, massive and dignified. That had not changed; but Ella felt sure that Whiteface was not quite the same. It was called Whiteface because a slide many years before had torn off the face of the mountain, and left only the bare white granite. Every summer the trees and bushes made their way a little farther in upon the rocks; and a keen observer could really see that the slide was a little less white and a little more green.

Away to the north was Chocorua, the mountain that in sun and shade and mist and tempest and calm was always an exquisite picture. It lay with quiet majesty on the horizon, stately and beautiful. The forest had crept up the sides, but the summit was a great mass of granite, sharply pointed and reaching far up into the blue sky. Ella thought it looked like a picture that she had seen of the Alps. She did so hope that some day she might climb it. It would be like taking a trip to Europe, she thought. Of all the mountains in view, Chocorua was the one that she loved best. “I wish you could understand. I wish I could put my arm around you and tell you how I love you,” she used to whisper to it sometimes. The mountain looked more and more beautiful, but it made no reply. One day, however, a wisp of white cloud floated quickly over the peak while she was speaking. “You do understand, and you are waving to me,” she said to the mountain, and after this she loved it more than ever.

Ella had been walking slowly down the narrow road that wound between the tall alder bushes down to the river. 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.

But Boy Cousin was coming up the road, and Ella hastily brought the ferns together, for she had begun to suspect that he did not believe in fairies quite so firmly as she, so she did not speak of them when they met on the bridge.

This bridge was made of split logs laid upon great rough beams of wood. On each side there was a rail cut with many initials. Among them was a big “E,” which Ella had cut the summer before. Under the bridge, as far up and down stream as they could see, there were rocks of all sizes and shapes. It was so dry a season that in many places the water had slipped out of sight among them, making a fresh, merry, rippling sound.

“It’s playing hide and seek,” declared Boy Cousin, “and it is saying, ‘Here I am! Find me if you can!’”

Over the river hung wild grapes, as yet green and sour; sprays of goldenrod; graceful and dainty white birches; and here and there was a bright leaf or two of the early autumn, or a reddening spray of bittersweet or the scarlet berries of the black alder.

The children slipped down beside the bridge to one of their favorite places, a big flat rock overhung by a white birch and a maple. They were looking up through the branches when Ella exclaimed:

“Just see there, Boy Cousin! See the blue sky with the white birch bough running across it and the little spray of red maple leaves! It’s our flag, our own Red, White, and Blue. But let’s go and see the stone house. We can come back here this afternoon.”

So down the road they went. On the left was a little hill where lay some great-great-grandfathers, men who had forced their way into the new country and cut out for themselves homes in the wilderness. Their graves were marked by field stones, just as they had been left in the early times. At one or two of them an initial was rudely cut into the stone. Ella wondered a little whether she would have liked these great-great-grandfathers or her French ones better. “I had some French great-great-grandfathers, too,” said Boy Cousin. “What a pity that we couldn’t all have lived at the same time!”

On the right of the road was a row of tamarack trees, and over the wall a field through which the river ran in graceful curves, and a mass of great rocks that looked as if hurled together by an earthquake, but made the nicest places possible for little “cubby houses” and ovens for baking mud cakes.

Through the bars the children went, over a little bridge, across the wide-spreading meadow, and up a hill to a rocky pasture where the gray horse was roaming about.

“The horse and the rocks are the very same color,” said Ella. “I don’t see how you know which of them to put the bridle on when you go to catch him.”

“That’s easy,” replied Boy Cousin. “I just look the rocks over, and put the bridle on the one that shakes its tail.”

There was one rock, larger than the others, and of all the rocks that the children had seen, this was the only one that split into layers. Wide slabs of this rock lay all around, and of these slabs they had made, the summer before, a little cottage. It stood up against the great rock, with a slab of granite for each wall and one for the roof. By patient hammering they had contrived to break out a place for a doorway and a window. It was so well built that it had stood bravely through all the frosts and storms of a mountain winter.

“It looks just exactly as it did,” Ella said delightedly. “I was afraid it would fall down. I wonder that the ram did not knock it down.”

Boy Cousin was silent. He was never inclined to brag of his own exploits. Ella went on: “Grandpa told me last night. He said that the ram kept trying to butt you, and that you hadn’t anything to fight it with except a little stick; but that you climbed up on this rock and managed somehow to keep it off till your father came from the next field. He said you were a plucky boy, or you would have been killed.”

“Who wouldn’t be plucky rather than killed?” demanded the hero of the story. “There’s no end of checkerberries over there. Let’s make a birch-bark basket and pick some.”

They pulled some birch bark from a tree, took a piece seven or eight inches long and five wide, cut two slits an inch long in each end, bent the outer pieces on either end together, and fastened them with a little wooden pin; and there they had a strong basket that would hold a double handful of checkerberries.

After the berries were picked, Boy Cousin looked wisely at the sun and declared that it was time to go home to dinner.

“Let’s go fishing after dinner,” Ella proposed.

“No good; too early. Let’s play croquet first.”

“You haven’t any croquet set.”

“Haven’t I, though? You just come and see.”

“You didn’t have last summer.”

“This is another summer.”

“Have you really a set?”

“You said I hadn’t.”

“Well, I’ll say you have if you have. Where is it?”

“It’s where little girls can’t find it; but if you’ll come down this afternoon, we’ll play and I’ll beat you with it whether it’s real or not.”

“I don’t more than half believe it’s real, but I’ll come. Good-bye.”

When Ella came to see the croquet set, she thought it was quite wonderful.

“It isn’t the least bit like those in the stores,” she explained to her mother. “It is ever and ever so much nicer because it is so different. He just sawed off pieces of white birch for the mallet heads, bored a hole in each one, and drove the handle in. The bark is left on, and it’s so much prettier than paint and varnish. The ends are not much smoothed off, and so the balls do not slip half so badly.”

“And how did he make the balls?” asked the mother.

“Why, he didn’t have to make them at all. There was an old bedstead, and these balls were at the top of the posts. He just sawed them off. They’re not like common balls; they are shaped like those that boys play football with, and when you hit one, you never know which way it will go. It’s ever so much more fun than just plain croquet.”

There was always plenty of amusement for the two children, and no one ever heard them saying, “Please tell me something to do.” No one ever heard them wishing for more children to play with. Indeed, the river was as good as a dozen. They cut poles in the woods and fished in it. Ella kept a little diary, as was the fashion in those times, and it was a great convenience to be able to fill a whole day’s space with such entries as, “I caught 2 flatfish and 1 perch”; or, when apparently the fish had refused to bite on the previous day, “We did not go fishing to-day at all. I suppose I should not have caught anything if we had gone.”

The river had a charming way of suggesting things to do. In one place, clay stones had formed, and the children had fine times wading in and picking them up. In another it had overflowed and made a little bay that could easily be shut off by itself. They named it Beauty Bay, and whenever they caught a fish without harming it, they slipped it gently into this Bay to live in peace and plenty all the rest of its life.

A big flat rock in the middle of the stream was their picnic ground. Here they often built a fire and roasted eggs rolled in wet paper or ears of fresh green corn. On the bank just beyond the rock were blackberry bushes, and no one who has not tried it has any idea how good the berries taste when one takes first a berry and then a bite of maple sugar.