Chapter 2

A WEEK-END

Blue Bonnet came down to breakfast Monday morning a trifle uncertain as to whether the day was to be pleasant or profitable to her. She had a very clear conviction that it could not be both. In her experience profitable things were stupid--invariably!

It was raining--a condition of weather Miss Clyde hailed with delight.

"Just the very day to go through the linen closet," she said to Blue Bonnet as they rose from the table. "I think we will begin there this morning."

Blue Bonnet looked out at the lowering clouds and followed her aunt meekly. She, too, was glad that it was raining; otherwise she should have longed to be galloping over the country roads on Chula.

Mrs. Clyde's linen closet was a joy to behold; a room of itself, light and airy, with the smoothest of cedar shelves and deep cavernous drawers for blankets and down comforts.

Blue Bonnet had been in the room occasionally, when she had been sent for sheets for an unexpected guest. She had brought away the refreshing odor of sweet lavender in her nostrils, and a vision of the neatly piled linen before her eyes.

To-day she watched her aunt as she opened drawers, took the white covers from blankets and comforts, inspected sheets and patch-work quilts with an eye to necessary darning.

What a dreadful waste of time to have cut up all those little patches and have sewn them together, Blue Bonnet thought, as her aunt folded a quilt and returned it to its particular place on the shelf. She felt sure that Aunt Lucinda could have bought much prettier quilts with less bother.

"It seems almost like a sanctuary, here," she said at last, leaning against the window and watching the proceedings with interest. "It's so beautifully clean, and I adore that lavender smell. Where does it come from?"

Miss Clyde reached under a sheet and brought forth a small bag made of white tarlatan filled with dried flowers and leaves.

Blue Bonnet buried her nose in it.

"Oh, I love it," she said. "I must get some and send it to Benita. Benita is very particular about our beds. She says my mother was."

"She could not have been a Clyde and escaped that, my dear. It is a passion with all of us--linen and fine china."

Blue Bonnet nodded brightly.

"When I have a home I shall have a linen closet just like this," she said, glancing about admiringly.

"Then you cannot begin too soon to learn how to take care of it. Few things require closer supervision than a linen closet, in any home. You must learn to mend; not ordinary mending, but fine darning."

Miss Clyde cast her eye over a pile of sheets. She opened one and handed it to Blue Bonnet, directing her attention to a rent which had been skillfully repaired in one corner.

Blue Bonnet noted the stitches of gossamer fineness with absorbed interest. Then she folded the sheet carefully and handed it back with a sigh.

"I never could do it, Aunt Lucinda. Never, in a thousand years. I know I couldn't. I hate sewing."

"Then I fear you could never have a linen closet like this, Blue Bonnet. Mending represents but a small part of the detail and system necessary to good housekeeping."

"But, maybe, perhaps I could hire some one. Couldn't I, don't you think?"

"You certainly could not instruct servants if you did not know how to work, yourself. That would be quite impossible. Could your teachers have imparted their knowledge to you if they, themselves, had not been students?"

The argument seemed plausible. Blue Bonnet's sigh deepened.

"I shall employ a trained housekeeper," she said, as if that settled the question.

"Then you will miss the joy that comes through laboring with your own hands--the joy of accomplishment, Blue Bonnet. I hope you will change your mind."

Miss Clyde took a careful survey of a shelf where sheets were piled, and from it she filled her mending basket.

"Delia has overlooked these in my absence," she said, almost apologetically. "Linen should always be mended carefully before it is put away."

She straightened the window blinds to a correct line, closed all drawers carefully, and ushering Blue Bonnet into the hall, locked the door behind them.

In the sitting-room the rain beat furiously at the window-panes, a cold east wind rattled the casements, but a glowing fire in the grate offset the gloom.

Miss Clyde drew a chair up to the fire and took a piece from the basket.

"Bring up a small chair, Blue Bonnet. One without arms will be best." Blue Bonnet drew the chair up slowly.

Miss Clyde found her thimble and selected a proper needle.

"Go up and get your work-basket, Blue Bonnet."

When Blue Bonnet came down with her basket her aunt was holding a sheet up to the light.

"It is growing thin in places," she said, laying it on Blue Bonnet's knee, "but a few stitches will preserve it for some time yet."

The next hour was one not soon to be forgotten by Blue Bonnet. Threads knotted at the most impossible places; stitches were too long, sometimes too short. Her hands grew hot and sticky. At the end of an hour her cheeks were flushed and her head ached.

Miss Clyde took the work from the tired and clumsy fingers and smoothed the hair back from the warm brow.

"I think you have done very well for the first time, Blue Bonnet. Next time it will come easier. You would better rest now, and perhaps Grandmother will read to us until lunch time."

"Yes," Mrs. Clyde said, "I will indeed. What shall it be, Blue Bonnet?"

Blue Bonnet thought a minute, then she clapped her hands softly.

"I know, Grandmother. Thoreau! I read something of his this summer on the ranch, and I liked it."

Mrs. Clyde went into the library, coming back presently with Robert Louis Stevenson's "Men and Books."

"Perhaps you would like to know something of Thoreau's life, Blue Bonnet. Mr. Stevenson gives a fair glimpse of him. At least he does not spare his eccentricities. We view him from all quarters."

The lunch bell rang long before Blue Bonnet thought it time.

"Mark the place, Grandmother," she said, as they went into the dining-room. "I want to hear it all. I don't think I should have liked Thoreau personally, but there certainly is a nice streak in him--the way he loved animals and nature--isn't there?"

About four o'clock in the afternoon the clouds began to break, and Blue Bonnet in stout shoes and raincoat started off with Solomon for a run.

Her grandmother and aunt watched her as she turned her steps in the direction of the schoolhouse.

"Blue Bonnet is a gregarious soul," Miss Clyde said, turning away from the window. "She loves companionship. She likes to move in flocks."

"Most girls do, Lucinda. I often wondered how her mother ever endured the loneliness of a Texas ranch, with her disposition. She seemed to find room in her heart for all the world. But it is not a bad trait," Mrs. Clyde added. "It is a part of the impulsive temperament."

The next few days passed much as Monday had, except that the duties, not to become too irksome, were varied. There was a morning in the kitchen, when Blue Bonnet was instructed into the mysteries of breadmaking and the preparing of vegetables.

It was on this particular morning that Mrs. Clyde, going to the kitchen door to speak with Katie, found Blue Bonnet, apron covered, standing before the immaculate white sink, her hands encased in rubber gloves, with a potato, which she was endeavoring to peel, poised on the extreme end of a fork.

For the first time in nearly twenty years of service, Katie permitted herself the familiarity of a wink in her mistress's direction, and Mrs. Clyde slipped away noiselessly, wearing a very broad smile.

But, if the mornings were tiresome, the afternoons more than compensated. There were long rides on Chula; afternoons when Blue Bonnet came in looking as rosy as one of the late peonies in her grandmother's garden.

"Grandmother!" she would call, dashing up the side drive and halting Chula at the door. "Grandmother, come and look at us!"

Mrs. Clyde would hasten to the door to find Blue Bonnet decked from hat brim to stirrups with trailing vines in gorgeous hues, goldenrod and chrysanthemums tied in huge bunches to her saddle.

Nor was Chula neglected. Often she sported a flaming wreath--her mane bunches of flowers.

"Take all the flowers in," Blue Bonnet would call to Delia. "This week will see the very last of them. The man at the Dalton farm says there is sure to be frost most any night."

When the mail came on Saturday morning there was a pleasant diversion. Miss Clyde sorted the letters and handed a pamphlet to Blue Bonnet. It proved to be a catalogue of Miss North's school, and interested Blue Bonnet greatly. She seated herself in her favorite chair in the sitting-room and turned the pages eagerly.

"Oh, Aunt Lucinda, it's quite expensive, isn't it? A thousand two hundred dollars a year; and that doesn't include--let's see--'use of piano, seat in church, laundry, doctor's bills, music lessons, fencing and riding'--but then I wouldn't have to have all the extras. I could cut out the fencing and riding, of course, and the seat in church--"

"Elizabeth!"

Blue Bonnet turned quickly. It was the first time she had heard her baptismal name in months.

"I beg your pardon, Aunt Lucinda. I didn't think. Please excuse me."

"Certainly, Blue Bonnet. But remember that it is very bad taste to be irreverent."

Blue Bonnet brought the catalogue over to Miss Clyde, and together they looked through it.

"It seems just the place for you, Blue Bonnet," Miss Clyde said. "The location on Commonwealth Avenue is ideal. It is within walking distance of most of the places where you will want to go. This is a great advantage."

Blue Bonnet curled herself up comfortably in the deep chair and looked out through the window dreamily. Slowly a smile wreathed her lips.

"Aunt Lucinda," she said after a moment, "do you know what I'd just love to do? I've been thinking of how much more I have than most girls, and I wish I could pass some of the good things along. Now, there's Carita Judson. Wouldn't she just adore a year in Boston? Why couldn't I ask her to go with me to Miss North's? There's that great big room I'm to have with a bath, and all those advantages--" Blue Bonnet paused.

Miss Clyde was silent for a moment. Blue Bonnet's impulses bewildered her sometimes, they were so stupendous.

Blue Bonnet was insistent.

"There's all that money coming to me that my father left," she went on, "and Uncle Cliff says that some day there will be more--from him. What ever am I going to do with it? Carita Judson has an awfully poor sort of a time, Aunt Lucinda, awfully poor. She mothers all those small children in the family--"

"I daresay for that very reason she could not well be spared."

Miss Clyde was more than half in sympathy with Blue Bonnet's idea; she knew through her mother of Carita's fine father, of the girl's sweetness and refinement in spite of her restricted means and surroundings, but she did not wish to encourage Blue Bonnet in what seemed an impossibility.

Blue Bonnet jumped up from her chair.

"I'm going to write to Uncle Cliff about it this very minute," she said, moving toward the door. "I know he'll think it is a perfectly splendid idea."

"Would it not be better to wait until we have visited the school?" her aunt inquired tactfully. "There might not be room for Carita. The number of pupils is limited, you know. Suppose you wait until Uncle Cliff comes at Christmas. You could consult him then. It would be very unwise to get Carita's hopes up and then disappoint her."

Blue Bonnet had not thought of this.

"But I shall ask him the minute he comes," she assured her aunt as she left the room, taking the catalogue with her. "Just the very minute! I know what he'll say, too, Aunt Lucinda. He'll say that happiness is the best interest one can get out of an investment. I've heard him, no end of times!"

The week ended delightfully for Blue Bonnet.

"It's a sort of reward of merit for working so hard all these mornings," she said, as her grandmother granted permission to follow out a plan of Amanda Parker's.

Amanda's aunt had the second time invited the We Are Sevens for a week-end at the farm.

The girls were to take the street car as far as it would carry them--to be met at that point by a hay wagon.

Blue Bonnet was in high glee. A natural lover of the country, visions of a glorious time rose before her eyes.

She appeared at the corner drug store, where the girls were to take the interurban, a few minutes late. Aunt Lucinda had so many instructions at the last moment that she had been delayed.

The girls were all gathered, looking anxiously down the street. When Blue Bonnet appeared in the snowiest of white sweaters and tam-o'-shanter, as jaunty and blooming as if she were out for an afternoon walk, they immediately protested.

"For ever more, why didn't you wear your old clothes, Blue Bonnet?" Kitty Clark inquired. "That sweater will be pot black before you go a mile, and you'll be as freckled as a turkey egg without some shade for your face."

"The sweater will wash, thank you, that's why I wore it, and I'm not the freckly kind."

The shot was unintentional, but Kitty colored to the roots of her red gold hair.

"You are fortunate," she said. "I am."

"That's the penalty you pay for having such a peach of a complexion," Blue Bonnet retorted, and the breach was healed.

At the end of the car line the hay-rack was waiting. The girls climbed on.

"Wait," Blue Bonnet shouted, jumping off quickly, "I almost forgot I want a picture of you."

While she adjusted the camera, the girls struck fantastic poses, Debby perching herself airily on the end gate of the wagon.

There was a warning cry from the girls, which the staid and sober farm horses misinterpreted. Off they started at a mad gallop, leaving the bewildered Debby a crumpled heap in the roadway.

She was on her feet before Blue Bonnet reached her, laughing and crying in a breath.

"How stupid," she panted. "I might have known that gate would fly open. I guess I'm not hurt any."

Blue Bonnet felt Debby's arms and limbs and made her stretch herself. Then they fell in each other's arms and laughed until they were weak and hysterical.

"It's a good thing the roads are a bit soft," Blue Bonnet assured her, when she could get her breath. "You're something of a sight with all that mud on you, but it broke your fall."

"Praise be!" Debby murmured, struggling to remove some of the dirt that insisted upon clinging to her skirts. "I'll take mud to a broken limb, any day."

The rest of the journey was made in safety. Once the wagon halted for Sarah Blake to change her seat. Sitting just over the wheel was not altogether desirable. Sarah's stomach rebelled. The whiteness of her lips spoke louder than words. Blue Bonnet changed places with her cheerfully, keeping strangely silent after the first half mile.

"What makes Blue Bonnet so still?" Kitty inquired, surprised.

"Take this seat and find out, Little Miss Why," Blue Bonnet retorted with an effort. "Maybe you haven't as much regard for your tongue as I have. I want to keep mine whole."

The low, rambling farmhouse surrounded by green hills and ancient oaks, with cattle grazing peacefully on the gentle slopes, and the farm dog yelping frantically at the big gates, gave Blue Bonnet the worst pang of homesickness she had felt since she left the ranch.

Wreaths of blue smoke curled upward lazily from the kitchen chimney, and from the dooryard came the most tantalizing odors of chicken frying, coffee boiling, and fresh doughnuts.

Blue Bonnet jumped from the wagon and filled her lungs with the delicious fragrance.

"Girls," she cried, "just smell! It's chicken and coffee and--"

"Doughnuts," Amanda finished with rapture. "Wait until you taste them! Aunt Priscilla is a wonder at cooking. She has the best things you ever ate in your life."

Aunt Priscilla appeared in the doorway at that moment, a wholesome sweet-faced woman of middle age, and took the girls in to the spare bedroom to lay off their things and wash before supper.

Blue Bonnet took off her cap and sweater and laid them lightly on the high feather bed with its wonderful patch-work quilt--the "rising sun" pattern running riot through it.

"It's so clean I hate to muss it up with my things," she said, casting about for a chair.

"I speak for this bed," Kitty said, depositing her things carelessly. "I slept in it the last time we came. It's as good as a toboggan. You keep going down and down and--"

"We're going to draw for it," Amanda announced from the wash-stand where she was wrestling with Debby's mud. "It will hold four; the other three girls will have to go in the next room."

"Why couldn't we bring the other bed in here--I mean the springs and mattress?" Debby suggested. "Do you think your aunt would care, Amanda?"

Amanda volunteered to ask.

Blue Bonnet took her turn at the wash basin and then wandered into the parlor. She looked about wonderingly. Family portraits done in crayon adorned the walls. A queer little piano, short half an octave, occupied one corner of the room, a marble-topped table, the other. A plush photograph album, a Bible and a copy of Pilgrim's Progress lay on the table. The carpet was green, bold with red roses; roses so vivid in coloring that they seemed to vie with the scarlet geraniums that filled the south window to overflowing.

But over it all a spirit of peace and contentment rested--a homey atmosphere, unmistakable and refreshing. Blue Bonnet gazed through the one unobstructed window of the little room wistfully. Twilight was closing in. Somewhere out in the field a cow bell tinkled, and a boy's voice called to the cattle. How familiar it all was.

Amanda's voice broke the stillness.

"Why, Blue Bonnet Ashe," she said, coming in the room followed by her aunt with a lamp, "what are you doing in here all alone? You look as if you had seen a ghost. Come right out in the kitchen. Aunt Priscilla has supper all on the table."

And such a supper as it was!

The chicken, and there seemed an endless amount, was piled high on an old blue platter that Blue Bonnet fancied her grandmother would have paid almost any price for. Fluffy potatoes, flakey biscuits, golden cream and butter, preserves in variety--everything from a farmhouse larder that could tempt the appetite and gratify the taste.

"I feel as if I never could eat another mouthful as long as I live," Blue Bonnet declared as she rose from the table.

"That's just the way I used to feel last summer on the ranch after one of old Gertrudis' meals," Kitty said.

Amanda's aunt suggested a run down the lane.

Down the lane they ran, laughing and calling; old Shep, stirred from his usual calm, barking and bounding at their heels.

It was too dark for a walk, so the girls soon retraced their steps, settling themselves in the parlor for a visit with the family before going to bed.

"Do any of you play?" inquired Amanda's aunt, looking toward the odd little piano.

"Blue Bonnet does," Kitty announced promptly. "Come, 'little Tommy Tucker must sing for his supper.'"

Blue Bonnet went over to the piano. Kitty's remark served as a reminder. She was glad to repay Amanda's aunt for some of her kindness.

The piano was sadly out of tune, but it is doubtful if Amanda's relatives would have enjoyed a symphony concert as much as Blue Bonnet's simple ballads--the familiar little airs which she gave unsparingly.

After she had quite exhausted her stock, there were clamors for repetition, until Blue Bonnet felt that she had wiped out the debt of the entire "We Are Sevens."

Amanda's aunt was found to be quite reasonable about transferring the bed from the back room. Amanda and the small son of the household undertook its removal, Kitty giving orders.

"Anybody would think you were going to sleep in it, Kitty, you're so particular," Amanda objected. "Get busy and help some."

"I spoke for the big bed," Kitty reminded.

"Yes, and it was selfish of you. We're going to draw for the big bed. I told you that before."

There was a shout of laughter a minute later when Kitty pulled the short slip for the bed on the floor.

Sarah Blake offered to change with her, but the others objected.

"You're an obliging dear, Sarah," Kitty said appreciatively, "but I will stay where I'm put. I don't want to take your place."

Later in the night Sarah wished that she had. She wondered as she shrank to the edge of the bed and tried to make herself as small as possible, if three persons to a bed on the floor, wouldn't have been preferable to the rail which fell to her lot.

It was long past midnight when the last joke was told, the last giggle suppressed. The fun might have gone on indefinitely if, from somewhere in the house, Amanda's uncle's boot hadn't fallen ominously, and Amanda's aunt cleared her throat audibly.

Morning found them up with the larks. There was a stroll down the shady lane before breakfast, and afterward, when the dishes were cleared away and the bedrooms restored to proper order, Amanda's uncle insisted upon piling them all in the big farm wagon and taking them to church.

"It seems to me that it is so much easier to be good--that is, to be religious, in the country," Blue Bonnet said as they neared the meeting-house, and the bell in the small tower rang out slowly. "There's something comes over you when you hear the bell calling, and see the people gathering--"

"'A sort of holy and calm delight,'"

Kitty quoted.

Blue Bonnet nodded.

"I reckon so--that's as near as you can come to it. There are feelings there aren't any words for, you know, Kitty--kind of indescribable."

The sight of seven pretty, attractive girls--city girls--in one pew, occasioned some comment in church; otherwise there was scarcely a ripple to disturb the calm that rested upon the congregation.

"Unless some one will kindly volunteer to play the organ to-day," the minister said, rising in the pulpit, "we shall have to sing without music. Our organist is sick."

Blue Bonnet glanced about her. No one seemed inclined to offer services. There was a silence of several seconds. The minister waited. Then Amanda's aunt leaned over and whispered something in Blue Bonnet's ear.

Blue Bonnet rose instantly and went to the organ.

She was a little nervous. She knew that organs differed somewhat from pianos, and she wasn't familiar with them, but it never occurred to her to hesitate when she seemed to be needed. She found the hymn and started out bravely. Sometimes the music weakened a little when Blue Bonnet, absorbed in the notes, forgot to use the pedals, but, on the whole, it was not bad, and the minister's hearty handshake and radiant smile after the service more than compensated for any embarrassment she had suffered.

"It has been perfectly glorious," Blue Bonnet declared to Amanda's aunt as they parted with her at daybreak Monday morning. "We've just loved every minute of our visit here, and would you mind--all of you--I want the whole family--standing out there by the big gate while I get a picture of you? I couldn't possibly forget you after the perfectly lovely time you've given us, but I'd like the picture to show to Grandmother and Aunt Lucinda."

"Oh, Blue Bonnet," Kitty complained, "haven't you enough pictures yet? You've been taking them for a year--and more!"

Blue Bonnet quite ignored the remark as she proceeded to line up Amanda's aunt and her family. She got several snaps, and as she put away her kodak she promised to remember the group with pictures--a promise fulfilled, much to the delight of the farm people, later.