Cover
Hazel
A
Daughter of the Rich
BY
M. E. WALLER
AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE CITIZEN"
ILLUSTRATED BY
ELLEN BERNARD THOMPSON
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1903
Copyright, 1903,
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
All rights reserved
Published October, 1903
UNIVERSITY PRESS
JOHN WILSON AND SON
CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
To
"MARTIE"
CONTENTS
- [Molasses Tea]
- [Mrs. Blossom's Valentine]
- [A Curious Case]
- [A Little Millionaire]
- [Transplanted]
- [Malachi]
- [The N.B.B.O.O. Society]
- [A Lively Correspondence]
- [The Prize Chicken]
- [An Unexpected Meeting]
- [Jack]
- [Results]
- [A Social Addition]
- [The Lost Nation]
- [Wishing-Tree Secrets]
- [A Christmas Prelude]
- [Hunger-Ford]
- [Budd's Proposal]
- [A Year And A Day]
- [Snow-Bound]
- [A Little Daughter of the Rich]
- [Rose]
- ["Behold how great a Matter a Little Fire Kindles"]
- ["Old Put"]
- [San Juan]
- [Maria-Ann's Crusade]
- ["--The stars above, Shine ever on Love--"]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
[Hazel] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece
["'You can begin to drop that corn this very afternoon'"]
["Rose was at the kitchen table, patting out the dough for the rolls"]
["Hazel flung both arms around Mrs. Blossom's neck"]
["'I want to tell you why I came up here'"]
["The two girls leaned over the box as Hazel took off the wrapper"]
A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH
I
MOLASSES TEA
"Good-night, Martie," called a sweet voice down the stairway.
"Good-night, Rose dear; I thought you were asleep."
"Good-night, Martie," duetted the twins, in the shrillest of treble and falsetto.
"Good-night, you rogues; go to sleep; you 'll wake baby."
"Dood-night, mummy," chirped a little voice from the adjoining room.
There was a shout of laughter from the twins.
"Shut up," growled March from the attic over the kitchen. "Good-night, mother." His growl ended in a squeak, for March was at that interesting period of his life indicated by a change of voice. At the sound, a prolonged snicker from somewhere was answered by a corresponding giggle from another-where.
"Now, children," said Mrs. Blossom, speaking up the stairway, "do be quiet, or baby will be wide awake."
"Tum tiss me, mummy," piped the little voice a second time, with no sound of sleep in it.
"Yes, darling, I 'll come;" as she turned to go into the bedroom adjoining the kitchen, there was the sound of a jump overhead, a patter of bare feet, a squabble on the stairs, and Budd and Cherry, the irrepressible ten-year-old twins, tumbled into the room.
"I 'll haul those kids back to bed for you, mother," shouted March, and flung himself out of bed to join the fray, while Rose was not behindhand in making her appearance.
Mrs. Blossom came in with little May in her arms, and that was the signal for a wholesale kissing-party in which May was hostess.
"Children, children, you 'll smother me!" laughed their mother. "Here, sit down on the rug and warm your toes,--coming over those bare stairs this cold night!" And down they sat, Rose and March, Budd and Cherry and little May, in thick white and red flannel night-dresses and gray flannel pajamas.
Budd coughed consumptively, and Cherry followed suit. March shivered and shook like a small earthquake, and Rose looked up laughingly at her mother.
"We know what that means, don't we, Martie," she said. "Shall I help?"
"No, no, dear,--in your bare feet!"
Mrs. Blossom took a lamp from the shelf over the fireplace, and, leaving the five with their fifty toes turned and wriggling before the cheering warmth of the blazing hickory logs, disappeared in the pantry.
"Oh, bully," said Budd, rubbing his flannel pajamas just over his stomach; "I wish 't was a cold night every day, then we could have molasses tea all the time, don't you, Cherry?"
"Mm," said Cherry, too full of the anticipated treat for articulate speech.
"There 's nothing like it to warm up your insides," said March; "mother 's a brick to let us get up for it. She would n't, you know, if father were at home."
"My tummy's told," piped May, frantically patting her chest in imitation of Budd, and all the children shouted to see the wee four-year-old maiden trying to manufacture a shiver in the glow of the cheerful fire.
Mrs. Blossom had never told her recipe for her "hot molasses tea;" but it had been famed in the family for more than a generation. She had it from her mother. The treat was always reserved for a bitterly cold night, and the good things in it of which one had a taste--molasses, white sugar, lemon-peel, butter, peppermint, boiled raisins, and mysterious unknowns--were compounded with hot water into a palate-tickling beverage.
When Mrs. Blossom reappeared, with a kettle sending forth a small cloud of fragrant steam in one hand and a tray filled with tin cups in the other, the delighted "Ohs" and "Ahs" repaid her for all her extra work at the close of a busy, weary day.
Budd rolled over on the rug in his ecstasy, and Cherry was about to roll on top of him, when March interfered, and order was restored.
As they sat there on the big, braided square of woollen rag-carpet, sipping and ohing and ahing with supreme satisfaction, Mrs. Blossom broached the subject of valentines.
"It's the first of February, children, and time to begin to make valentines. You 're not going to forget the Doctor this year, are you?"
"No, indeed, Martie," said Rose. "He deserves the prettiest we can make. I 've been thinking about it, and I 'm going to make him a shaving-case, heart-shaped, with birch-bark covers, and if March will decorate it for me, I think it will be lovely; will you, March?"
"Course I will; the Doctor 's a brick. I 'll tell you what, Martie, I can pen and ink some of those spruces and birches that the Doctor was so fond of last summer; how 'll that do?"
"Just the thing," said his mother; "I know it will please him. What are you thinking, Cherry?" for the "other half" of Budd was gazing dreamily into the fire, forgetting her tea in her revery.
"Fudge!" said Cherry, shortly. March and Rose laughed.
"Keep still making fun of Cherry," said Budd, ruffling at the sound; and to emphasize his admonishing words, he dug his sharp elbow so suddenly into March's ribs that some hot molasses tea flew from the cup which his brother had just put to his mouth and spattered on his bare feet.
March deliberately set down his tin cup on the hearth near the fire beside his brother's, and turned upon Budd.
Budd tried to dodge, but had no room. In a trice, March had his arms around him, and was hugging him in a bear-like embrace. "Say you 're sorry!" he demanded.
"Au-ow!"
"Say you 're sorry!" he roared at him, hugging harder.
"Au-ow-ee-ow!"
"Quick, or I 'll squeeze you some more!"
Budd was squirming and twisting like an eel.
"O-ee-wau-au-Au!"
"There," said March, releasing him and setting him down with a thump on the rug; "I 'll teach you to poke me in the ribs that way and scald my feet.--You 're game, though, old fellow," he added patronizingly, as he heard a suspicious sniff from Cherry. "You and Cherry make a whole team any day."
Cherry's sniff changed to a smile, for March did not condescend to praise either of them very often.
"Well," she said meditatively, "I suppose it did sound funny to say that, but I was thinking that if Budd would make me a little heart-shaped box of birch-bark, I 'd make some maple-sugar fudge,--you know, Martie, the kind with butternuts in it,--and that could be my valentine for the Doctor."
"Why, that's a bright idea, Cherry," said Mrs. Blossom; and, "Bully for you, Cherry," said Budd; "we'll begin to-morrow and crack the butternuts."
"What will May do?" asked Mrs. Blossom, lifting the little girl, who was already showing signs of being overcome with molasses tea and sleep. May nestled in her mother's arms, leaned her head, running over with golden curls, on her mother's breast, and murmured drowsily,--
"'Ittle tooties--tut with mummy's heart-tutter--tutter--tooties--tut--" The blue-veined eyelids closed over the lovely eyes; and Mrs. Blossom, holding up her finger to hush the children's mirth at May's inspired utterance, carried her back into the bedroom.
One after another the children crept noiselessly upstairs, with a whispered, "Good-night, Martie," and in ten minutes Mary Blossom knew they were all in the land of dreams.
II
MRS. BLOSSOM'S VALENTINE
It was a bitter night. Mrs. Blossom refilled the kitchen stove, and threw on more hickory in the fireplace in anticipation of her husband's late return from the village. She drew her little work-table nearer to the blaze, and sat down to her sewing. Then she sighed, and, as she bent over the large willow basket filled with stockings to be darned and clothes to be mended, a tear rolled down her cheek and plashed on the edge.
There was so much she wanted to do for her children--and so little with which to do it! There was March, an artist to his finger-tips, who longed to be an architect; and Rose, lovely in her young girlhood and giving promise of a lovelier womanhood, who was willing to work her way through one of the lesser colleges, if only she could be prepared for entrance. Mary Blossom saw no prospect of being able to do anything for either of them.
And the father! He must be spared first, if he were to be their future bread-winner. Mary Blossom could never forget that day, a year ago this very month, when her husband was brought home on a stretcher, hurt, as they thought, unto death, by a tree falling the wrong way in the woods where he was directing the choppers.
What a year it had been! All they had saved had gone to pay for the extra help hired to carry on the farm and finish the log-cutting. A surgeon had come from the nearest city to give his verdict in the case and help if he could.
The farm was mortgaged to enable them to pay the heavy bills incident to months of sickness and medical attendance; still the father lay helpless, and Mary Blossom's faith and courage were put to their severest test, when both doctor and surgeon pronounced the case hopeless. He might live for years, they said, but useless, so far as his limbs were concerned.
This was in June; and then it was that Mary Blossom, leaving Rose in charge of her father and the children, left her home, and walked bareheaded rapidly up the slope behind the house, across the upland pastures and over into the woodlands, from which they had hoped to derive a sufficient income to provide not only for their necessities, but for their children's education and the comforts of life.
Deep into the heart of them she made her way; and there, in the green silence, broken only by the note of a thrush and the stirring of June leafage above and about her, she knelt and poured out her sorrow-filled heart before God, and cast upon Him the intolerable burden that had rested so long upon her soul.
The shadows were lengthening when at last she turned homewards. Cherry and Budd met her in the pasture, for Rose had grown anxious and sent them to find her.
"Why, where have you been, Martie?" exclaimed the twins. "We were so frightened about you, because you didn't come home."
"You need n't have been; I 've been talking with a Friend." And more than that she never said. The children's curiosity was roused, but when they told Rose and asked her what mother meant, Rose's eyes filled with tears, and she kept silence; for she alone knew with Whom her mother had talked that June afternoon.
"Run ahead, Budd, and tell Malachi to harness up Bess. I want him to take a letter down to the village so that it may go on the night mail." Budd flew rather than ran; for there was a look in his mother's face that he had never seen before, and it awed him.
That night a letter went to Doctor Heath, a famous nerve specialist of New York City. It was a letter from Mary Blossom, his old-time friend and schoolmate in the academy at Barton's River. In it she asked him if he would give her his advice in this case, saying she could not accept the decision of the physician and surgeon unless it should be confirmed by him.
"I cannot pay you now," she wrote, "but it was borne in upon me this afternoon to write to you, although you may have forgotten me in these many years, and I have no claim of present friendship, even, upon your time and service; but I must heed the inner command to appeal to you, whatever you may think of me,--if I disobeyed that, I should be disobeying God's voice in my life,"--and signed herself, "Yours in childhood's remembrance."
The next day a telegram was brought up from the village; and the day after the Doctor himself followed it.
It was an anxious week; but the wonderful skill conquered. The pressure on a certain nerve was removed, and for the last six months Benjamin Blossom had been slowly but surely coming back to his old-time health and strength. But again this winter the extra help had been necessary, and it had taxed all Mary Blossom's ingenuity to make both ends meet; for there was the interest on the mortgage to be paid every six months, and the ready money had to go for that.
In the midst of her thoughts, her recollections and plans, she caught the sound of sleigh-bells. The tall clock was just striking ten. Smoothing every line of care and banishing all look of sadness from her face, she met her husband with a cheery smile and a, "I 'm so glad you 've got home, Ben; it's just twenty below, and the molasses tea is ready for you and Chi."
"Chi!" called Mr. Blossom towards the barn.
"Whoa!" shouted a voice that sounded frosty in spite of itself. "Whoa, Bess!"
"Come into the kitchen before you turn in; there's some hot molasses tea waiting for us."
"Be there in a minute," he shouted back, and Bess pranced into the barn.
"Oh, Mary, this is good," said Mr. Blossom, as he slipped out of his buffalo-robe coat and into his warm house-jacket, dropped his boots outside in the shed, and put on his carpet-slippers that had been waiting for him on the hearth.
"It is home, Ben," said his wife, bringing out clean tin cups from the pantry, and putting them to warm beside the kettle on the hearth.
"Yes, with you in it, Mary," he said with the smile that had won him his true-love eighteen years before.
"Come in, Chi," he called towards the shed, whence came sounds as if some one were dancing a double-shuffle in snow-boots.
"'Fraid I 'll thaw 'n' make a puddle on the hearth, Mis' Blossom. I 'm as stiff as an icicle: guess I 'll take my tea perpendic'lar; I ain't fit to sit down."
"Sit down, sit down, Chi," said Mrs. Blossom. "You 'll enjoy the tea more; and give yourself a thorough heating before you go to bed. I 've put the soapstone in it," she added.
"Well, you beat all, Mis' Blossom; just as if you did n't find enough to do for yourself, you go to work 'n' make work." He broke off suddenly, "George Washin'ton!" he exclaimed, "most forgot to give you this letter that come on to-night's mail."
He handed Mrs. Blossom the letter, which, with some difficulty, owing to his stiffened fingers, he extracted from the depths of the tail-pocket of his old overcoat. Then he helped himself to a brimming cup of the tea, and apparently swallowed its contents without once taking breath.
"Why, it's from Doctor Heath!" exclaimed Mrs. Blossom, recognizing the handwriting. "Is it a valentine, I wonder?" she said, feigning to laugh, for her heart sank within her, fearing it might be the bill,--and yet, and yet, the Doctor had said--she got no further with these thoughts, so intent was she on the contents of the letter.
Chi, with an eye to prolonging his stay till he should know the why and wherefore of a letter from the great Doctor at this season of the year, took another cup of the tea.
"Ben, oh, Ben!" cried Mrs. Blossom, in a faint, glad voice; and therewith, to her husband's amazement, she handed him the letter, put both arms around his neck, and, dropping her head on his shoulder, sobbed as if her heart would break.
Chi softly put down his half-emptied cup and tiptoed with creaking boots from the room.
"Can't stand that, nohow," he muttered to himself in the shed; and, forgetting to light his lantern, he felt his way up the backstairs to his lodging in the room overhead, blinded by some suspicious drops of water in his eyes, which he cursed for frost melting from his bushy eyebrows.
"Oh, Ben, think of it!" she cried, when her husband had soothed and calmed her. "Twenty-five dollars a week; that makes a little more than twelve hundred a year. Why, we can pay off all the mortgage and be free from that nightmare."
For answer her husband drew her closer to him, and late into the night they sat before the dying fire, talking and planning for the future.
"Children," she said at breakfast next morning, and her voice sounded so bright and cheery that the room seemed full of sunshine, although the sky was a hard, cold gray, "I 've had one valentine already; it came last night from the Doctor."
Chi listened with all his ears.
"Mother!" burst from the children, "where is it?" "Show it to us." "Why did n't you tell us before breakfast?"
"I can't show it to you yet; it's a live one."
"A live one!" chorussed the children.
"You 're fooling us, mother," said March.
"Do I look as if I were?" replied his mother.
And March was obliged to confess that she had never looked more in earnest.
Rose left her seat and stole to her father's side. "What does it mean, pater?" she whispered.
"Ask your mother," was all the satisfaction she received, and walked, crestfallen, back to her chair; for when had her father refused her anything?
"When will you tell us, anyway?" said Budd, a little gruffly. He hated a secret.
"I can't tell you that either," said his mother, "and I don't know that I shall tell you until the very last, if you ask in that voice."
Budd screwed his mouth into a smile, and, unbeknown to the rest of the family, reached under the cloth for his mother's hand. He sat next to her, and that had been his way of saying "Forgive me," ever since he was a tiny boy.
He had a squeeze in return and felt happier.
"I say, let's guess," said Cherry. "If I don't do something, I shall burst."
"You express my feelings perfectly, Cherry," said March, gravely, and the guessing began.
"A St. Bernard puppy?" said Budd, who coveted one.
"A Shetland pony," said Cherry.
"The Doctor's coming up here, himself." That was Rose's guess.
"'T ain't likely," growled Budd.
"A tunning 'ittle baby," chirped May.
March failed to think of any live thing the Doctor was likely to send unless it might be a Wyandotte blood-rooster, such as he and the Doctor had talked about last summer.
"You 're all cold, cold as ice," laughed their mother, using the words of the game she had so often played with them when they were younger.
"Oh, mother!" they protested. They were almost indignant.
Chi rose and left the table. "Beats me," he muttered, as he took down his axe from a beam in the woodshed. "What in thunder can it be? I ain't goin' to ask questions, but I 'll ferret it out,--by George Washin'ton;" and that was Chi's most solemn oath.
III
A CURIOUS CASE
"What is it, dear?"
"Bothered--bothered."
"A case?"
"Yes, and I must get it off my mind this evening."
The Doctor set down his after-dinner coffee untasted on the library table, and rose with a half sigh from his easy chair before the blazing wood-fire. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together into a straight line over the bridge of his nose, and that, his wife knew full well, was an ominous sign.
"Must you go to-night? It's such a fearful storm; just hear it!"
"Yes, I must; just to get it off my mind. I sha'n't be gone long, and I 'll tell you all about it when I get home." The Doctor stooped and kissed the detaining hand that his wife had laid lovingly on his arm; then, turning to the telephone, he bespoke a cab.
As the vehicle made its way up Fifth Avenue in the teeth of a February, northeast gale that drove the sleet rattling against the windows, Doctor Heath settled back farther into his corner, growling to himself, "I wish some people would let me manage their affairs for them; it would show their common sense to let me show them some of mine."
A few blocks north of the park entrance, the cab turned east into a side street, and stopped at Number 4.
"Mr. Clyde in, Wilkins?" asked the Doctor of the colored butler, who opened the door.
"Yes, sah; jes' up from dinner, sah, to see Miss Hazel."
"Tell him I want to see him in the library."
"Yes, sah." He took the Doctor's cloak and hat, hesitating a moment before leaving, then turning, said: "'Scuse me, sah, but Miss Hazel ain't more discomposed?"
"No, no, Wilkins; Miss Hazel is doing fairly well."
"Thank you, sah;" and Wilkins ducked his head and sprang upstairs.
"Why, Dick," said Mr. Clyde, as he entered the library hurriedly, "what's wrong?"
"The world in general, Johnny, and your world in particular, old fellow."
"Is Hazel worse?" The father's anxiety could be heard in the tone with which he put the question.
"I 'm not satisfied, John, and I 'm bothered."
When Doctor Heath called his friend "John," Mr. Clyde knew that the very soul of him was heavily burdened. The two had been chums at Yale: the one a rich man's son; the other a country doctor's one boy, to whom had been bequeathed only a name honored in every county of his native state, a good constitution, and an ambition to follow his father's profession. The boy had become one of the leading physicians of the great city in which he made his home; his friend one of the most sought-after men in the whirling gayeties of the great metropolis. As he stood on the hearth with his back to the mantel waiting for the physician's next word, he was typical of the best culture of the city, and the Doctor looked up into the fine face with a deep affection visible in his eyes.
"Going out, as usual, John?"
"Only to the Pearsells' reception. Don't keep me waiting, old fellow; speak up."
"How the deuce am I to make things plain to you, John? Here, draw up your chair a little nearer mine, as you used in college when you knew I had a four A.M. lecture awaiting you, after one of your larks."
The two men helped themselves to cigars; and the Doctor, resting his head on the back of the chair, slowly let forth the smoke in curling rings, and watched them dissolve and disperse.
"Come, Dick, go ahead; I can stand it if you can."
"Well, then, I 've done all I can for Hazel, and shall have to give up the case unless you do all you can for her."
Now the Doctor had not intended to make his statement in such a blunt fashion, and he could not blame Mr. Clyde for the touch of resentment that was so quick to show in his answer.
"I did n't suppose you went back on your patients in this way, Richard; much less on a friend. I have done everything I can for Hazel. If there is anything I've omitted, just tell me, and I 'll try to make it good."
The Doctor nodded penitently. "I know, John, I 've said it badly; and I don't know but that I shall make it worse by saying you 've done too much."
"Too much! That is not possible. Did n't you order last year's trip to Florida and the summer yachting cruise?"
Doctor Heath groaned. "I'm getting in deeper and deeper, John; you can't understand, because you are you; born and bred as you are-- Look here, John, did it ever occur to you that Hazel is a little hot-house plant that needs hardening?"
"No, Richard."
"Well, she is; she needs hardening to make her any kind of a woman physically and, and--" The Doctor stopped short. There were some things of which he rarely spoke.
"My Hazel needs hardening!" exclaimed the amazed father. "Why, Richard, have n't you impressed upon me again and again that she needs the greatest care?"
The Doctor groaned again and smote his friend solidly on the knee.
"Oh, you poor rich--you poor rich! 'Eyes have ye, and ye see not; ears have ye, and hear not.' John, the girl must go away from you, who over-indulge her, from this home-nest of luxury, from this private-school business and dancing-class dissipation, from her young-grown-up lunch-parties and matinée-parties, from her violin lessons and her indoor gymnastics--curse them!"
This was a great deal for the usually self-contained physician, and Mr. Clyde stared at him, but half comprehending.
"Go away? Do you mean, Richard, that she must leave me?"
"Yes, I mean just that."
"Well,"--it was a long-drawn, thinking "well,"--"I will ask my sister to take her this summer. She returns from Egypt soon and has just written me she intends to open her place, 'The Wyndes,' in June."
Again the Doctor groaned: "And kill her with golf and picnics and coaching among all those fashionable butterflies! Now, hear to me, John," he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder, "send her away into the country, that is country,--something, by the way, which you know precious little about. Let me find her a place up among those life-giving Green Hills, and do you do without her for one year. Let me prescribe for her there; and I 'll guarantee she returns to you hale and hearty. Trust her to me, John; you 'll thank me in the end. I can do no more for her here."
"Do you mean, Richard, to put her away into real country conditions?"
"Yes, just that; into a farmer's family, if possible,--and I know I can make it possible,--and let her be as one of them, work, play, go barefoot, eat, sleep, be merry--in fact, be what the Lord intended her to be; and you 'll find out that is something very different from what she is, if only you 'll hear to me."
The Doctor was pacing the room in his earnestness. He was not accustomed to beg thus to be allowed to prescribe for his patients. His one word was law, and he was not required to explain his motives.
Mr. Clyde's eyes followed him; then he broke the prolonged silence.
"Richard, you have asked me the one thing to which her mother would never have consented. How, then, can I?"
"Think it over, John, and let me know."
The two men clasped hands.
"Let me take you along in my cab to the reception; it's inhuman to take out your horses on such a night."
"Thank you, no; I think I 'll give it up; I 'm not in the mood for it. Good-night, old fellow."
"Good-night, Johnny."
The next morning, at breakfast, the Doctor took up a note that lay beside his plate, and after reading it beamed joyously while he stirred his coffee vigorously without drinking it. When, finally, he looked up, his wife elevated her eyebrows over the top of the coffee urn, and the Doctor laughed.
"To be sure, wifie, read the note." And this is what she read:--
DEAR RICHARD,--I 've had a hard night, trying to look at things from your point of view and see my own duty towards Hazel. Things have grown rather misty, looking both backwards and forwards, and I have concluded I can't do better than to take you at your word,--trust her to you, and accept the guarantee of her return to me with her physical condition such as it should be.
This decision will, as you well know, raise a storm of protest among the relations. The whole swarm will be about my ears in less than no time. Stand by me. The whole responsibility rests upon you,--and tell Hazel; I 'm too much of a coward. This is a confession, but you will understand. Let me know the details of your plans so soon as possible. I have never been able to give you such a proof of friendship. Have you ever asked another man for such? I mistrust you, old fellow.
Yours,
JOHN.
IV
A LITTLE MILLIONAIRE
"Gabrielle."
"Oui, mademoiselle Hazel," came in shrill yet muffled tones from the depths of the dressing-room closet.
"Bring me my white silk kimono."
"Oui, mademoiselle."
The order, in French, was given in a weak and slightly fretful voice that issued from the bed at the farther end of a large room from which the dressing-room opened. The apartment was, in truth, what Doctor Heath had called it, "a nest of luxury."
It was a bitter Saint Valentine's Day which succeeded the Doctor's evening visit. The wood-fire, blazing cheerily in the ample fireplace, sent its warmth and light far out into the room, flashing red reflections in the curiously twisted bars of the brass bedstead. At the left of the fireplace stood a small round tea-table, and upon it a little silver tea-kettle on a standard of the same metal. Dainty cups and saucers of egg-shell china were grouped about it; a miniature silver tray held a sugar-dish and a cream-pot and a half-dozen gold-lined souvenir spoons.
On the richly carved mantel stood an exquisite plate-glass clock, the chimes of which were just striking nine, and, keeping it company to right and left, were two dainty figures of a shepherd and shepherdess in Dresden china. The remaining mantel space was filled with tiny figures in bisque,--a dachshund, a cat and kittens, a porcelain box, heart-shaped, the top covered with china forget-me-nots, a silver drinking-cup, a small oval portrait on ivory of a beautiful young woman, framed in richly chased gold, the inner rim set round with pearls. A blue pitcher of Cloisonné and a tray of filigree silver heaped with dainty cotillion favors stood on one end; on the other, a crystal vase filled with white tulips.
Soft blue and white Japanese rugs lay upon the polished floor; delicate blue and white draperies hung at the windows. Dressing-case and writing-desk of white curled maple were each laden with articles for the toilet and for writing, in solid silver, engraved with the monogram H.C. A couch, upholstered in blue and white Japanese silk, stood at the right of the fireplace, and all about the room were dainty wicker chairs enamelled in white, and cushioned to match the hangings.
The bed was canopied in pale blue covered with white net and edged with lace, and the coverlet was of silk of the same delicate color, embroidered with white violets and edged like the canopy, only with a deeper frill of lace. The occupant of this couch, fit for a princess royal, was the little mistress of all she surveyed, as well as the mansion of which the room formed a small part; and a woebegone-looking little girl she was, who called again, and this time impatiently:--
"Gabrielle, hurry, do."
"Oui, oui, mademoiselle Hazel;" and Gabrielle tripped across the room with the white kimono in one hand and fresh towels in the other. She had just slipped it upon Hazel when there was a knock at the door. Gabrielle opened it, and Wilkins asked in a voice intended to be low, but which proved only husky:--
"Nuss say she mus' jes' speak wif Marse Clyde 'fo' she come up, an' wan's to know if Miss Hazel will haf her breffus now or wait till she come up herse'f."
Before Gabrielle could answer, Hazel called out, "You may bring it up now, Wilkins; and has the postman come yet?"
Wilkins' broad smile sounded in his voice, as it came out of its huskiness.
"Yes, Miss Hazel, ben jes' 'fo' I come up. I ain't seen no hearts, but dey's thicker 'n spatter by de feel, an' a heap o' boxes by 'spress!"
"Oh, bring them up quick, Wilkins, and tell papa to be sure and come up directly after breakfast."
"Yes, for sho', Miss Hazel," said Wilkins, delighted to have a word with the little daughter of her whom he had carried in his arms thirty-two years ago up and down the jasmine-covered porch of an old New Orleans mansion.
In a few minutes, he reappeared with two large silver trays, on one of which was the tempting breakfast of Hamburg grapes, a dropped egg, a slice of golden-brown toast, half of a squab broiled to the melting-point, and a cup of cocoa. On the other were boxes large and small, and white envelopes of all sizes.
Gabrielle cut the string and opened the boxes, while Hazel looked on, pleased to be remembered, but finding nothing unusual in the display; for Christmas and Easter and birthdays and parties brought just about the same collection, minus "the hearts," which Wilkins had felt through the covers. The only fun, after all, was in the guessing.
Just then Mr. Clyde entered.
"Oh, papa! I 'm so glad you have come; it's no fun guessing alone." She put up her peaked, sallow little face for the good-morning kiss; and her father, with the thought of his last night's struggle, took the face in both hands and kissed brow and mouth with unusual tenderness.
"Why, papa!" she exclaimed, "that kiss is my best valentine; you never kissed me that way before."
"Well, it's time I began, Birdie; let's see what you have for nonsense here. What's this--from Cambridge?"
"Oh, that's Jack, I 'm sure; he always sends me violets; but what is that in the middle of the bunch?" With a smile she drew out a tiny vignette of her Harvard Sophomore cousin. It was framed in a little gold heart, and on a slip of paper was written, "For thee, I 'm all 'art."
"Jack 's a gay deceiver," laughed her father; "he 's all ''art' for a good many girls, big and little. What's this?--and this?"
One after another he took out the contents of envelopes and boxes,--candy hearts by the pound in silver bonbon boxes, silk hearts, paper hearts, a flower heart of real roses ("That's from you, Papa Clyde!" she exclaimed, and her father did not deny the pleasant accusation), hollow gilt hearts stuffed with sentiments, a silver chatelaine heart for change, and last, but not least, an enormous envelope, a foot square, containing a white paper heart all written over with "sentiments" from the girls in her class at school.
"Come now, Birdie," said her father, after the last one had been opened and guessed over, "eat your breakfast, or nurse will scold us both for putting play before business."
"I don't think I want any, papa," said Hazel, languidly, for, after all, the valentines had proved to be almost too much excitement for the little girl, who was just recovering from weeks of slow fever; "and, Gabrielle, take the flowers away, they make my head ache,--and the other things, too," she added, turning her head wearily on the pillow.
"But you must eat, Hazel dear," said her father, gently but firmly; and therewith he took a grape and squeezed the pulp between her lips. Hazel laughed,--a faint sound.
"Why, papa, if you feed me that way, I shall be a real Birdie. Yes," she nodded, "that's good; I 'll take another;" and her father proceeded to feed her slowly, now coaxing, now urging, then commanding, till a few grapes and a half egg were disposed of.
"There, now, I won't play tyrant any longer," he said, "for your real tyrant of a doctor is coming soon, and I must be out of the way."
"Are you going to be at home for luncheon to-day, papa?"
"No, dear, I 've promised to go out to Tuxedo with the Masons, but I shall be at home before dinner, just to look in upon you. I dine with the Pearsells afterwards. Good-bye." A kiss,--two, three of them; and the merry, handsome young father, still but thirty-seven, had gone, and with him much of the brightness of Hazel's day.
But she was used to this. Ever since she could remember anything, she had been petted and kissed and--left with her nurse, her governess, or a French maid.
Her young mother, a Southern belle, lived more out of her home than in it, with the round of gayeties in the winter months interrupted and continued by winter house-parties at Lenox, a yachting cruise in the Mediterranean, an early spring-flitting to the mountains of North Carolina, and the later household moving to Newport.
In all these migrations Hazel accompanied her parents; in fact, was moved about as so much goods and chattels, from New York to the Berkshires, from the Berkshires to Malta, from Malta to the Great Smokies, from the mountains to the sea; her appurtenances, the governess and French maid, went with her; and the routine of her home in New York, the study, the promenade, the all-alone breakfasts and dinners went on with the regularity of clockwork, whether on the yacht, in the mountains, or in the villa on the Cliff.
So now, although she wished her father would stay and entertain her, it never occurred to her to tell him so; and likewise it never occurred to the father that his child needed or wished him to stay. Nor had it ever occurred to the young mother that she was not doing her whole duty by her child; for she never omitted to go upstairs and kiss her little daughter good-night, whether the child was awake or asleep, before going out to dinner, theatre, or reception.
She died when Hazel was nine, and it was a lovely memory of "mamma" that Hazel cherished: a vision of loveliness in trailing white silk, or velvet, or lace,--her mother always wore white, it was her Southern inheritance,--with a single dark-red rose among the folds of Venetian point of the bertha; always a gleam of white neck and arms banded with flashing, many-faceted diamonds, or roped with pearls; always a sense of delicious white warmth and fragrance, as the vision bent over her and pressed a light kiss upon her cheek. And if, in her bliss, she opened her sleepy eyes, she looked always into laughing brown depths, and putting up her hand caressed shining masses of brown hair.
But it was always a good-night vision. In the morning mamma did not breakfast until ten, and Hazel was off to the little private school at half-past nine. At noon mamma was either out at lunch or giving a lunch-party; and in the afternoon there was the promenade in the Park with the governess, and sometimes, as a treat, a drive with mamma on her round of calls, when Hazel and the maid sat among the furs in the carriage. Then Hazel played at being grown up, and longed for the time when she could wear a reception dress like mamma's, of white broadcloth and sable, and trip up the steps of the various houses, and trip down again with a bevy of young girls laughing and chatting so merrily.
All that had ceased when Hazel was nine, and the young father had made her mistress in her mother's place. It was such a great house! and there were so many servants! and the housekeeper was so strict! and it was so queer to sit at the round table in the big dining-room and try to look at papa over the silver épergne in the centre!
When she was eleven, she entered one of the large private schools which many of her little mates attended. Soon it came to be the "girls of our set" with Hazel; and then there followed music-lessons, and violin-lessons, and riding-lessons, and dancing-class, and riding-days in the Park, and lunch-parties with the girls, and theatre-matinée-parties, and concerts at Carnegie Hall, and birthday parties, and sales--school and drawing-room affairs--and Lenten sewing-classes; until gradually her little society life had become an epitome of her mother's, and when she began to shoot up like a bean-sprout, lose her round face and the delicate pink from her cheeks, uncles and aunt and cousin and friends whispered of her mother's frail constitution, and that it was time to take heed.
Then it was that the physician, who had helped to bring her into the world, was summoned hastily to prevent her early departure from it. This was the "curious case" that so bothered him; and this pale, languid girl of thirteen in the blue-canopied bed was the one he intended to transplant into another soil.
A short, sharp tap announced his arrival. The nurse opened the door.
"Good-morning, little girl--ah, ah! Saint Valentine's Day? I had forgotten it; all those came this morning?" he said cheerily, pointing to a table on which Gabrielle had placed all the remembrances but the flowers.
"Yes, Doctor Heath; but my best valentine, you know, is papa, and after him, you."
"Hm, flatterer!" growled the Doctor, feeling her pulse. "Pretty good, pretty good. Think we can get you up for half a day. What do you say, nurse?"
"I think it will do her good, Doctor Heath; she has no appetite yet, and a little exercise might help her to it."
"No appetite?" The two eyebrows drew together in a straight line over the bridge of his nose, and, from under them, a pair of keen eyes looked at Hazel.
"Well, I 've planned something that will give you a splendid one, Hazel,--the best kind of a tonic--
"Oh, I don't want to take any more tonics. I am so sick of them," said Hazel, in a despairing tone, for although she adored the Doctor, she despised his medicines.
"You won't get sick of this tonic so soon, I 'll warrant," he said, unbending his brows and letting the full twinkle of his fine eyes shine forth,--"at least not after you are used to it. I won't say but that it may cause a certain kind of sickness at first; in fact, I 'm sure of it."
"Oh, will it nauseate me?" cried Hazel, dreading to suffer any more.
"No, no, it won't do that, but--"
"But what do you mean, Doctor Heath? Are you joking?"
"Never was more in earnest in my life," replied the Doctor, rubbing his hands in glee, much to Hazel's amazement. "Hazel," he turned abruptly to her, "papa is a splendid fellow; did you know that?"
Hazel laughed aloud, a real girl's laugh,--Doctor Heath was so queer at times.
"Have you just found that out?" she retorted.
"No, you witch,--don't be impertinent to your elders,--I have n't; but really he is, take it all in all, just about the most common-sense fellow in New York City."
"What has he done now, that you are praising him so?"
"Just heard to me, my dear, and agreed to do just as I want him to," said the Doctor, demurely.
"Why," laughed Hazel, "that's just when I think he is a most splendid fellow, when he does just what I want him to. Is n't it funny you and I think just alike!" And she gave his hand a malicious little pat. The Doctor caught the five slender digits and held them fast.
"Now we 're agreed that you have the most splendid, common-sense father in the world, I want you to prove to me that your father has the most splendid, common-sense daughter in it, as well."
Again Hazel laughed. She was used to her friend's ways.
"That means that you want me to take that old, new tonic of yours."
"Yes, just that," said the Doctor, emphatically; "and now, as you don't appear to care to hear about it, I 'm going to make a long call and tell you its entire history."
"Have you brought it with you?" asked Hazel, somewhat mystified.
"No, I can't carry around with me in a cab five children, a hundred acres of pine woods, a whole mountain-top, and a few Jersey cows."
"What do you mean? You are joking."
Then the physician clasped the thin hand a little more closely and told her of the country plan.
At first, Hazel failed to comprehend it. She gazed at the speaker with large, serious eyes, as if she half-feared he had taken leave of his senses.
"Did papa know it this morning?" was her first question.
"Yes, my dear."
"Then that is why he kissed me the way he did," she said thoughtfully. "But," her lip quivered, "I sha'n't have him to kiss me up there, and--and--oh, dear!" A wail went up from the canopied bed that made the Doctor turn sick at heart, and even the nurse hurried away into the dressing-room.
Somehow Doctor Heath could not exhort Hazel, as he had her father, to use common-sense. He preferred to use diplomacy.
"You see, Hazel, a year won't be so very long, and it will give your hair time to grow; and perhaps you would not mind wearing a cap for a time up there, while if you were here you certainly would not care about going to dancing-school or parties in that rig; now would you?"
Hazel sniffed and looked for her handkerchief. As she failed to find it, the Doctor applied his own huge square of linen to the dripping, reddened eyes, and tenderly stroked the smooth-shaven head.
Hazel had her vanities like all girls, and her long dark braids had been one of them. After the fever, she had been shorn of what scanty locks had been left to her, and many a time she had wondered what the girls would say when they saw her. After all, the new plan might be endured, for the sake of the hair and her looks.
She sniffed again, and this time a good many tears were drawn up into her nose. The Doctor, taking no notice of the subsiding flood, proceeded,--
"My patients always look so comical when the fuzz is coming out. It's like chicken-down all over the head--"
"Fuzz!" exclaimed Hazel, with a dismayed, wide-eyed look; "must I have fuzz for hair?"
"Why, of course, for about five months," was the Doctor's matter-of-fact reply. "Then," he continued, apparently unheeding the look of relief that crept over Hazel's face, "you are apt to have the hair come out curly."
"Oh!"
"Yes, and it really grows very fast--that is," he said, resorting to wile, "if any one is strong and well; but if the general health is not good, why--hem!--the hair is n't apt to grow!"
"Goodness! I don't want to be bald all my life!"
"No, I thought not, and for that very reason it did seem the best thing for you to get into the country where you can get well and strong as fast as ever you can."
"Shall I have to eat my breakfast and dinner alone up there?" was her next question.
Doctor Heath laughed. "What! With all those five children! You will never want for company, I can assure you of that. And now I 'll be off; as it's Saint Valentine's Day, which I had forgotten, I 'll wager I have five valentines from those very children waiting for me at home."
"Will you show them to me, if you have?"
"To be sure I will. Now sit up for half a day, and get yourself strong enough to let me take you up there by the middle of March."
"Oh, are you going to take me? What fun! Are they friends of yours?" she added timidly.
"Every one," said the Doctor, emphatically. He turned at the door. "You have n't said yet whether you will honor me with your company up there."
"I suppose I must," she said, with something between a sigh and a laugh. "But I don't know what Gabrielle will do; she 'll be so homesick."
"Gabrielle!" cried the Doctor, in a voice loud with amazement; "you don't think you are going to take Gabrielle with you, do you?"
Before Hazel had time to recover from her astonishment, Gabrielle, hearing her name called so loudly, came tripping into the room.
"Oui, oui, monsieur le docteur;" and Doctor Heath beat a hasty retreat to avoid further misunderstandings.
In the afternoon, Hazel received a box by messenger, with, "Please return by bearer," on the wrapper. On opening it, she found the Doctor's valentines with the following sentiments appropriately attached.
I
By Rose-pose made, by March adorned,
'T is not a Heart that one should scorn:
For use each day, the whole year through,
Where find a Valentine so true?
II
Cherry Blossom made this fudge
(Buddie made the box).
Eat it soon, or you will judge,
She made it all of rocks.
III
Baby May has made this cookie;
Mother baked it--but, by hookey!
I can't find another rhyme
To match with this your valentine.
Your loving Valentines,
ROSE, MARCH, "BUDD AND CHERRY," MAY BLOSSOM.
(We're one.)
MOUNT HUNGER, February 14, 1896.
V
TRANSPLANTED
It was the middle of April, yet the drifts still blocked the ravines, and great patches of snow lay scattered thickly on the northern and eastern slopes of the mountains.
Not a bud had thought of swelling; not a fern dared to raise its downy ball above the sodden leaves. Day after day a keen wind from the north chased dark clouds across a watery blue sky, and now and then a solitary crow flapped disconsolately over the upland pastures and into the woods.
But in the farmhouse on the mountain, every Blossom was a-quiver with excitement, for the "live Valentine" was to arrive that day.
According to what Doctor Heath had written first, Mrs. Blossom had expected Hazel to come the middle of March. She had told the children about it a week before that date, and ever since, wild and varied and continuous had been the speculations concerning the new member of the family.
Both father and mother were much amused at the different ways in which each one accepted the fact, and commented upon it. At the same time they were slightly anxious as to the outcome of such a combination.
"They 'll work it out for themselves, Mary," said Mr. Blossom, when his wife was expressing her fears on account of the attitude of March and Cherry.