CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

DIXIE’S LESSON IN DRESSMAKING

Miss Josephine Bayley was anticipating with real pleasure the coming of the little girl who was to have her first lesson in dressmaking.

The door of the small cabin stood welcomingly open, for it was one of those wonderful, balmy days known as Indian summer, and in Nevada they seem lovelier than elsewhere.

“See these beautiful ruddy leaves that I found this morning, Dixie, dear,” said the young teacher, who stood at the center-table arranging them, as the small girl appeared in the doorway. “I climbed a little lost trail, or, it was almost lost, it was so overgrown with tangled vines and scraggly dwarf pines.”

The great bowl of flaming-leaved branches was placed in one corner of the room, the table swept clear of books and magazines, and then the paper pattern was opened while Josephine Bayley continued, smiling across at her little visitor: “Dixie, how I wish that trails could talk. I’d love to know whose feet trod it so many times that a path was beaten there. Perhaps you have heard, have you, dear?”

Dixie shook her red-gold head. “Not ’zactly heard, Miss Bayley,” she replied, “but most likely ’twas the year of the big strike over at Silver City. My dad said that over-night, almost, these lonely, silent mountains were swarmed with men from everywhere, and they climbed all about with their pickaxes, hunting for other veins, but they didn’t find them. Maybe it’s selfish, but I’m glad, glad they didn’t.”

“So am I, Dixie,” the girl-teacher agreed, “for they would have dug ugly holes in these mountains and cut down the wonderful old pines. I would rather have nature at its wildest for my home than a castle of glistening white marble surrounded with artificial parks, however beautiful.”

“Oh, teacher, so would I.” The small girl had drawn close to the table, and her gold-brown eyes looked as though they were seeing a vision. “Miss Bayley,” she said, “I keep remembering. I can’t forget it. That violin music, I mean. And this morning, early, when I was up before the others, out under the pines, getting ready to do the washing, the sun came up over old Piney Peak, and it was just like a fairy shower of gold. Then a lark sang, and a little breeze stirred in the pine trees. Teacher, Miss Bayley, I think I could play it on a violin, if I had one.”

“Little Dixie Martin, you shall have one! You shall have a violin!” the young woman said, deeply touched. Then she added: “I only wish that I knew how to give you lessons, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. That is a true saying, dear, and you and I will keep watching for the way. Now, little ladykins, if you will stand up very straight and tall, I’d like to see if this pattern hangs well. I’m going to pin it on you, if you don’t mind, to get an idea of what kind of dress it will make.”

Miss Bayley did not tell that her real reason for wishing to pin on the pattern was to discover how much larger she would have to cut one before making a certain piece of shimmery green silk into a dress for Dixie.

When the pattern was on, the girl-teacher made many penciled notes on a bit of brown paper. “There, now,” she exclaimed, “we’ll cut out the material.”

Dixie, watching, suddenly put one hand on her heart, as though to still its too-rapid beating. “Oh, teacher,” she said in a little awed voice, “this is a wonderful minute, when we’re really going to begin to make a blue-silk dress for Carol.” Then she added almost wistfully: “How I do hope that dear old Grandmother Piggins knows that you are helping us. Before she died she sent for me and she said, ‘Dixie, dear, I’m glad to go, but I’m praying that somebody will be sent to take my place with you.’”

Then impulsively the child cuddled close to the girl-teacher and looked up with love shining in her eyes. “Miss Bayley, you are the answer to Grandmother Piggins’s prayer.”

Kneeling, the young woman held the little girl in a close embrace, as she said in a voice that trembled: “Dixie, I have wandered far, and have lost the simple faith, but, oh, what it means to me to know that I, even I, have been found worthy to be used as an answer to prayer!”

Then rising, she merrily added, “Now thread a needle, little Miss Seamstress, and sew these two edges together.”

Sitting in a low rocker, by a sunny open window, Dixie took painstaking little stitches, almost measuring each one, but when her girl-teacher noticed that, she laughingly said: “You needn’t be so careful, dear. The big thing in basting is to have the notches match and keep the edges together.”

For a moment the machine, which had been borrowed from the inn, hummed a merry song, then teacher looked up to see Dixie sitting very still, her sewing in her lap, while her eyes were gazing between fluttering white curtains and out toward the mountains.

“A penny for your dreams,” Miss Bayley called gayly, as she paused to snap a thread.

Dixie turned, smiling radiantly. “Oh,” she laughed, “I was ’magining ahead, I guess. I was wondering what lovely things would happen to Carol in this pretty blue silk dress.” Then, a little anxiously, she added, “There’d ought to be a party, shouldn’t you think, Miss Bayley?”

“Of course there should be a party, and, what is more, there shall be one, too. When is Carol to have a birthday?”

“November sixth, and that comes on Saturday,” the little girl replied. “I was meaning to make a cake, and there’d ought to be one more candle. Grandma Piggins gave Carol eight little candles last year, but now we need nine.”

Miss Bayley was again treading the machine and making it hum. Then, when she paused to adjust the ruffler, she glanced up brightly to find that the gold-brown eyes were still watching, apparently waiting. “We’ll have that party, dear,” the girl-teacher declared, “and the one more candle, I’ll promise that, but I’m going to keep it for a surprise for all of you little Martins.”

“Oh, Miss Bayley,” said the small girl, clapping her hands gleefully, “won’t that be the nicest? It’ll be a ’sprise for Baby Jim and for Ken and me, too, as well as for Carol.”

Teacher nodded, though at that particular moment she had not the vaguest idea what the surprise-party was to be. Then she added “When is _your_ birthday, Dixie, dear?”

“Mine? Oh, I came in February, on the snowiest, coldest, blustriest day, dad said. Brother Ken was born in April, but Baby Jim,” the girl’s voice softened to a tone of infinite tenderness when she spoke that name, “our little treasure-baby was born on Christmas day.” Then she added with that far-away expression which was so often in her eyes, “Grandmother Piggins said when little souls are sent to our earth on Christ’s birthday, they have been specially chosen to be His disciples.”

“It may be true, dear.” Miss Bayley had thought so little of these things. She had been brought up in boarding-schools without loved ones to guide. Then she added, as she adjusted a long, straight piece of blue silk that was soon to be a ruffle. “Of one thing I am sure, and that is that the influence of a beautiful life lives here on earth long after the form of the loved one has passed from our sight. Grandmother Piggins must have been a dear, dear old lady.”

“She was,” the child said simply. “Everybody loved her.”

“What epitaph could one more desire?” was what the girl-teacher thought. Then the machine began to hum, and Dixie bent over to watch the spindle fly, and to see the strip of silk that was straight on one side come out in the prettiest ruffle on the other.

“I’m glad it’s near the end of October now,” the small girl said with a little sigh, “for I just couldn’t wait more’n two weeks to give that dress to Carol.”

Then, as there was no more basting that she could do, Dixie wandered about the pleasant, home-like room, reading the titles on the books that were everywhere in evidence. Suddenly she paused before a photograph. “Why, Miss Bayley,” she exclaimed, “the boy in this picture looks almost ’zactly like you.”

“He is my brother, dear, two years younger than I am,” the girl-teacher replied, looking up with a smile.

“Oh, I remember now, you did tell me you had a brother Tim. Is he coming West some time to see you, Miss Bayley?”

There was a sudden shadow on the lovely face that bent over the blue silk. “I’m afraid Tim doesn’t care to find me,” she said. “I haven’t heard from him in over a year. I don’t even know where he is. Brother and I were left orphans when I was eight and he six. That was just twelve years ago. Although he is but eighteen, he is a giant of a chap, and would pass for twenty-one. Our guardian put me in a fashionable boarding-school in New York, and placed Tim in a military academy in the South. After that we saw very little of each other, but we did write, that is, I wrote every week and my brother replied now and then, but over a year ago his letters ceased coming, and so, when I graduated and was ready to do what I liked, I went South and visited the academy, only to find that my brother was not there. He had found military discipline too severe, his room-mate told me, and had disappeared. No one knew where he went, but his pal believed that he had gone to sea. Tim had said to him, ‘Tell Sis that I’ll turn up in three years, if not sooner.’ With Tim gone, I had no one in all the world, Dixie, for whom I really cared, and no one cared for me. I was so weary of the noise and artificial life of New York City, and I didn’t want to open up our father’s home on Riverside Drive without Tim, so I left it all and came West to seek—to seek— Oh, Dixie, dear, I don’t know what I came to seek, but I do know what I found.” With a little half-sob, the girl-teacher held out both arms, and Dixie went to her.

“I found some one to love, and some one to love me.” Then, hastily wiping her eyes, Miss Bayley smilingly declared, “It never would do to get a little salty spot on this lovely blue silk.” Then, springing up, she added gayly, “Come now, Miss Midget, you and I are going to have four-o’clock chocolate.”

During the next hour Dixie thought she had never known her beloved teacher to be so light-hearted and merry, but when the small girl had gone down the cañon trail Josephine Bayley went to her screened-in porch bedroom, and, stretching out her arms toward the sky that was such a deep blue over the mountains, she said, “O Thou who holdest the lands and the seas, take care of my brother, Tim.” Then, remembering the child’s faith in prayer, she added, “And bring him to me soon.”

There was peace in the heart of the girl-teacher as she turned back into the little log cabin, for, once again, she had faith in prayer.

“And a little child shall lead them,” she thought as she prepared her evening meal.