Part 11

The hired man, Reuben Hall, was well disposed and honest, but before Mr. Dorset's death he had begun to talk of going to the West, and Brie foreboded that he might not be willing to stay with them. Mrs. Dorset, broken down by nursing and sorrow, had become an invalid, unable to assist save in the lightest ways. The burden was sore for one pair of young shoulders to bear. Brie kept up a brave face by day, but at night, horrors of helplessness and apprehension seized her. The heavens seemed as brass, against which her feeble prayers beat in vain; the future was barred, as it were, with an impassable gate.

What could they do? Sell the farm? That would take time; for no one in particular wanted to buy it. If Reuben would stand by them, they might be able to fight it out for another year, and, what with butter and eggs and the corn-crop, make enough for his wages and a bare living. But would Reuben stay?

Our virtues sometimes treat us as investments do, and return a dividend when we least expect it. It was at this hard crisis that certain good deeds of Brie's in the past stood her friend. She had always been good to Reuben, and her sweet ways and consideration for his comfort had gradually won a passage into his rather stolid affections. Now, seeing the emergency she was in, and the courage with which she met it, he could not quite find the heart to "leave the little gal to make out by herself." Fully purposing to go, he stayed, putting off the idea of departure from month to month; and though, true to his idea of proper caution, he kept his good intentions to himself, so that the relief of having him there was constantly tempered by the dread lest he might go at any time, still it _was_ relief.

So April passed, and May and June. The crops were planted, the vegetables in. Brie strained every nerve. She petted her hens, and coaxed every possible egg out of them, she studied the tastes of the two cows, she maintained a brave show of cheer for her ailing mother, but all the time she was sick at heart. Everything seemed closing in. How long could she keep it up?

The balsam firs of the hill grove could have told tales in those days. They were Brie's sole confidants. The consolation they gave, the counsel they communicated, were mute, indeed, but none the less real to the anxious girl who sat beneath them, or laid her cheek on their rough stems. June passed, and with early July came the answer to Brie's many prayers. It came, as answers to prayer often do, in a shape of which she had never dreamed.

Miss Mary Morgan, teacher in grammar school No. 3, Ward Nineteen, of the good city of Boston, came, tired out from her winter's work, to spend a few days with Farmer Allen's wife, her second cousin, stopped one day at the Dorset's door, while driving, to ask for a drink of water, took a fancy to the old house and to Brie, and next day came over to propose herself as a boarder for three months.

"I can only afford to pay seven dollars a week," she said; "but, on the other hand, I will try not to make much trouble, if you will take me."

"Seven dollars a week; only think!" cried Brie, gleefully, to her mother after the bargain was completed, and Miss Morgan gone. "Doesn't it seem like a fortune? It'll pay Reuben's wages, and leave ever so much over! And she doesn't eat much meat, she says, and she likes baked potatoes and cream and sweet baked apples better than anything. And there's the keeping-room chamber all cleaned and ready. Doesn't it seem as if she was sent to us, mother?"

"Your poor father never felt like keepin' boarders," said Mrs. Dorset. "I used to kind of fancy the idea of it, but he wasn't willin'. I thought it would be company to have one in the house, if they was nice folks. It does seem as if this was the Lord's will for us; her coming in so unexpected, and all."

Two days later Miss Morgan, with a hammock and a folding canvas chair and a trunk full of light reading, arrived, and took possession of her new quarters. For the first week or two she did little but rest, sleeping for hours at a time in the hammock swung beneath the shadowing elms. Then, as the color came back to her thin face and the light to her eyes, she began to walk a little, to sit with Brie in the fir grove, or read aloud to her on the doorstep while she mended, shelled peas, or picked over berries; and all life seemed to grow easier and pleasanter for the dwellers in the solitary farmhouse. The guest gave little trouble, she paid her weekly due punctually, and the steady income, small as it was, made all the difference in the world to Brie.

As the summer went by, and she grew at home with her new friend, she found much relief in confiding to her the perplexities of her position.

"I see," Miss Morgan said; "it is the winter that is the puzzle. I will engage to come back next summer as I have this, and that will help along; but the time between now and then is the difficulty."

"Yes," replied Brie; "the winter is the puzzle, and Reuben's money. We have plenty of potatoes and corn and vegetables to take us through, and there's the pig to kill, and the chickens will lay some; if only there were any way in which I could make enough for Reuben's wages, we could manage."

"I must think it over," said Miss Morgan.

She pulled a long branch of the balsam fir nearer as she spoke, and buried her nose in it. It was the first week of September, and she and Brie were sitting in the hill grove.

"I love this smell so," she said. "It is delicious. It makes me dream."

Brie broke off a bough.

"I shall hang it over your bed," she said, "and you will smell it all night."

So the fir bough hung upon the wall till it gradually yellowed, and the needles began to drop.

"Why, they are as sweet as ever,--sweeter," declared Brie, smelling a handful which she had swept from the floor. Then an idea came into her head.

She gathered a great fagot of the branches, and laid them to dry in the sun on the floor of a little-used piazza. When partly dried, she stripped off the needles, stuffed with them a square cotton bag, and made for that a cover of soft sage-green silk, with an odd shot pattern over it. It was a piece of what had been her great-grandmother's wedding gown.

_Voilà!_ Do you realize the situation, reader? Brie had made the first of all the many balsam pillows. It was meant for a good-by gift to Miss Morgan.

"Your cushion is the joy of my life," wrote that lady to her a month after she went home. "Every one who sees it, falls in love with it. Half a dozen people have asked me how they could get one like it. And, Brie, this has given me an idea. Why should you not make them for sale? I will send you up some pretty silk for the covers, and you might cross-stitch a little motto if you liked. I copy some for you. Two people have given me an order already. They will pay four dollars apiece if you like to try."

This suggestion was the small wedge of the new industry. Brie lost no time in making the two pillows, grandmother's gown fortunately holding out for their covers. Then came some pretty red silk from Miss Morgan, with yellow _filoselle_ for the mottoes, and more orders. Brie worked busily that winter, for her balsam pillows had to be made in spare moments when other work permitted. The grove on the hill was her unfailing treasury of supply. The thick-set twigs bent them to her will; the upper branches seemed to her to rustle as with satisfaction at the aid they were giving. In the spring the old trees renewed their foliage with vigorous purpose, as if resolved not to balk her in her purpose.

The fir grove paid Reuben's wages that winter. Miss Morgan came back the following June, and by that time balsam pillows were established as articles of commerce, and Brie had a munificent offer from a recently established Decorative Art Society for a supply of the needles, at three dollars the pound. It was hard, dirty work to prepare such a quantity, but she did not mind that.

As I said, this was some years since. Brie no longer lives in her old home. Her mother died the third year after Miss Morgan came to them, the farm is sold, and Brie married. She lives now on a ranch in Colorado, but she has never forgotten the fir-grove, and the memory of it is a help often in the desponding moments that come at times to all lives.

"I could not be worse off than I was then," she says to herself. "There seemed no help or hope anywhere. I felt as if God didn't care and didn't hear my prayers; and yet, all the time, there was dear Miss Morgan coming to help us, and there were the trees, great beautiful things, nodding their heads, and trying to show me what could be made out of them. No, I never will be faithless again, nor let myself doubt, however dark things may look, but remember my balsam pillows, and trust in God."

COLONEL WHEELER.

Colonel Wheeler, as any one might see at a glance, had been a gallant officer in his day. It was true that he no longer had anything to do with military movements, but his very face suggested a martial past. So did his figure, which, though thin to an almost incredible degree, was unmistakably that of a military man, and also his dress, for the colonel invariably appeared in full uniform, with a scarlet, gold-laced coat, epaulettes, and a cocked hat and feathers, seldom removed even at meal-times. His moustache waved fiercely half-way across his cheeks, his eyes were piercing, and his eyebrows black and frowning; in short, it would be difficult to imagine a more warlike appearance than he presented on the most peaceful occasions.

Like all truly brave men, Colonel Wheeler was as gentle as he was valiant, and nothing pleased him better in the piping times of peace than to be detailed on escort duty, and made of use to the ladies of his acquaintance. So it came to pass that again and again he was asked to take charge of large family parties on long journeys. You might see him starting off with a wife or two, half a dozen sisters-in-law, and from eight to fourteen children, all of them belonging to somebody else; not one of them being kith or kin to the gallant colonel. They made really a formidable assemblage when collected, and it took the longest legal envelope which Liz--

There! I have let out the secret. Colonel Wheeler was a paper doll, and these ladies and children who travelled about with him were paper dolls also. They belonged to Lizzie Bruce and her cousin Ernestine, who between them owned several whole families of such. These families were all large. None of the mamma dolls had less than twelve children, and some of them had as many as twenty. Lizzie and Ernestine despised people not made of paper, who had only two or three little boys and girls. In fact, Lizzie was once heard to say of some neighbors with eleven children, "They are the only really satisfactory people I ever knew,--just as good as paper dolls;" and this was meant as the highest possible compliment.

Lizzie lived in Annapolis, Md., and Ernestine in Hingham, Mass., so, as you will see, there was a long distance between their homes. It took a day and a half to make the journey, and the little cousins did not visit each other more than once or twice a year. But the dolls went much oftener. _They_ travelled by mail, in one of those long yellow envelopes which lawyers use to put papers in, and Colonel Wheeler always went in the same envelope to take care of them. When they came back from these trips, Lizzie or Ernestine, whichever it chanced to be, would unpack them, and exclaim delightedly, "How well the dear things look! So much better for the change! See, mamma, how round and pink their faces have grown!"

"I wouldn't advise you to depend so much on Colonel Wheeler," Lizzie's mother would sometimes say. "These military men are rather uncertain characters. I wouldn't send off all the dolls at once with him, if I were you. And really, Lizzie, such constant journeys are very expensive. There is never a stamp in my desk when I want one in a hurry."

"But, mamma, the children really _had_ to have a change," Lizzie would protest, with tears in her eyes. "And as for the colonel, he is such a good man, truly, mamma! He would never steal anybody else's family! He takes beau-tiful care of the dolls, always."

"Very well, we shall see," answered mamma, with a teazing smile. But she saw that Lizzie was in earnest, so she did not say anything more to trouble her, and the very next day contributed seven postage-stamps to pay for the transportation of a large party which Lizzie wanted to send on to Hingham for a Christmas visit.

This party included, besides Colonel Wheeler, who as usual acted as escort, Mrs. Allen, the wife of Captain Allen, her fourteen children, her sister-in-law Miss Allen, her own sister Pauline Gray,--so called because her only dress happened to be made of gray and blue tissue-paper,--and Mrs. Adipose and her little girl. Mrs. Adipose, whose name had been suggested by papa, was the fattest of all the dolls. Her daughter was fat, too, and Ernestine had increased this effect by making her a jacket so much too large for her that it could only be kept on with a dab of glue. Captain Allen was a creature who had no real existence. Lizzie meant to make a doll to represent him some day. Meanwhile, he was kept persistently "at the front," wherever that might be, and Mrs. Allen travelled about as freely as if she had no husband at all. This Lizzie and Ernestine considered an admirable arrangement; for, as Captain Allen never came home and never wrote, he was as little of an inconvenience to his family as any gentleman can ever hope to be.

Well, this large and mixed company started off gayly in the mail-bag, and in due time Lizzie heard of their safe arrival, that they were all well, and that the baby "already looked better for the change." About three weeks later another letter came, and she opened it without the least qualm of anxiety, or any suspicion of the dreadful news it was to bring. It ran thus:--

DEAR LIZ,--Mrs. Adipose grew a little home-sick. She began to worry about Mr. Adipose. She was afraid he would have trouble with the servants, or else try to clean house while she was away, and make an awful mess all over everything. You never could tell what men would do when they were left alone, she said. So, as I saw she wasn't enjoying herself any more, and as the baby and little Ellen seemed to have got as much good out of the visit as they were likely to get, I sent them back last week Friday, and hope you got them safely.

Lizzie dropped the letter with a scream of dismay. This was Saturday. Last week Friday was more than a week ago. Where, oh, where were the precious dolls?

She flew with her tragic tale to mamma, who, for all she was very sorry, could not help laughing.

"You know I warned you against trusting too much to Colonel Wheeler," she said.

"Oh, mamma, it isn't his fault, I am sure it isn't," pleaded Lizzie. "I have perfect confidence in him. Think how often he has gone to Hingham, and never once didn't come back! He _would_ have fetched them safely if he hadn't been interfered with, I know he would! No, something dreadful has happened,--it's that horrid post-office!" and she wrung her hands.

Mamma was very sorry for Lizzie. Papa wrote to the postmaster, and Ernestine's papa inquired at the Hingham post-office, and there was quite a stir over the lost travellers.

Time went on. A month, six weeks, two months passed, and no tidings came, and Mr. Adipose still sat in the lonely baby-house, watching the cook brandishing a paper saucepan--always the same saucepan--over the toy stove, and Bridget, the "housemaid," forever dusting the same table-top, and never getting any farther on with her work. Mamma proposed that Lizzie should make some new dolls to take the place of the lost ones, and offered help and the use of her mucilage bottle; but Lizzie shook her head sorrowfully.

"I can't help feeling as if the Allens may come back some day," she said. "Colonel Wheeler is such a good traveller; and what would they think if there was a strange family in their rooms? Besides, it's almost as much fun to play without them, because there is Mr. Adipose, a widower, you know, which is very interesting, and the two pairs of twins, which Mrs. Allen forgot to take. Besides, I can always make believe that they are coming to-morrow."

The very next morning after this conversation, as mamma sat writing in her room upstairs, she heard a wild shriek at the front door. The postman had rapped a moment before, and Lizzie had rushed down to meet him, as she had each day since the dolls were lost. The shriek was so loud and sudden that Mrs. Bruce jumped up; but before she could get to the door in flew Lizzie, holding in her hand a wild huddle of battered blue envelopes with "Dead Letter Office" stamped on their corners, and a mass of pink and gray and green gowns and funny tumbled capes and hats. It was the doll party, returned at last!

"Mamma, mamma," she cried, "what did I tell you? Colonel Wheeler didn't run away with them; he has brought them all home."

There they were indeed; Mrs. Adipose as fat as ever, Mrs. Allen, and all her children, the sister, the sister-in-law, and Colonel Wheeler, erect and dignified as usual, in spite of a green crease across both his legs, and a morsel of postage-stamp in his eye, and wearing an air of conscious merit, which the occasion fully warranted. As Lizzie rapturously embraced him, she cried: "Dear old Colonel, nobody believed in you but me, not even mamma! I knew you hadn't run away with nineteen people. Mamma laughed at me, but she doesn't know you as well as I do. Nobody shall ever laugh at you again."

And nobody did. Colonel Wheeler had earned public confidence, and from that day to this no one has dared to say a word against him in Lizzie's hearing. He has made several journeys to Hingham without the least misadventure, and papa says he would trust him to escort Lizzie herself if it were necessary. He is the hero of the dolls' home, and poor old Mr. Adipose, who never stirs from home, is made miserable by having him held up as a perpetual model for imitation. But unlike the generality of heroes, Colonel Wheeler lives up to his reputation, and is not less modest, useful, and agreeable in the domestic circle because of being so exceptionally meritorious!

NINETY-THREE AND NINETY-FOUR.

Ninety-three and Ninety-four were two houses standing side by side in the outskirts of a country town, and to all outward appearance as like each other as two peas. They were the pioneer buildings of a small brick block; but as yet the rest of the block had not been built, which was all the better for Ninety-three and Ninety-four, and gave them more space and outlook. Both had French roofs with dormer windows; both front doors "grained" to represent oak, the graining falling into a pattern of regular stripes like a watered silk; and across the front of each, on the ground floor, ran the same little sham balcony of varnished iron,--balconies on which nothing heavier than a cat could venture without risk of bringing the frail structures down into the street.

Inside, the houses differed in trifling respects, as houses must which are under the control of differing minds; but in one point they were precisely alike within,--which was, that the back room of the third story of each was occupied by a girl of seventeen.

It is of these two rooms that I want to tell the story. So much has been said and written of late years about home decoration and the methods of producing it, that I think some other girls of seventeen with rooms to make pretty may like to hear of how Eleanor Pyne and May Blodgett managed theirs.

Eleanor was the girl at Ninety-three. She and May were intimate friends, or considered themselves such. Intimacy is a word very freely used among young people who have not learned what a sacred word it is and how very much it means. They had grown up together, had gone to the same schools, shared most of their pleasures as well as their lessons, sent each other Christmas presents and birthday cards every year, and consulted in advance over their clothes, spring bonnets, and fancy work, which, taken all together, may be said to make an intimacy according to the general use of the term. So it was natural that, when May, stirred by the sense of young-ladyhood just at hand and by the modern impulse for house decoration, desired to "do over" and beautify her room, Eleanor should desire it also.

Making a room pretty nowadays would seem easy enough where there is plenty of money for the purpose. There is only the embarrassment of choice, though that is so embarrassing at times as to lead one to envy those grandmothers of ours, who, with only three or four patterns of everything to choose from, and those all ugly, had but the simple task of selecting the least ugly! But in the case of my two girls there was this further complication, that very little money could be used for adornment of the bedrooms. Mrs. Blodgett and Mrs. Pyne had consulted over the matter, and the decision was that Eleanor and May might each spend twenty dollars, and no more.

What can be done with twenty dollars? It will buy one pretty article of furniture. It will pay for a "Kensington Art Square," with perhaps enough left for cheese-cloth curtains. It will paper a room, or paint it. You can easily dispose of the whole of it, if you will, in a single portière. And here were two rooms which needed renovation from floor to ceiling!

The rooms were of the same size. Both had two windows looking north and an ample closet. The most important difference lay in the fact that the builder of the houses, for some reason known only to himself, had put a small fireplace across the corner of Eleanor's room, and had put none in May's. _Per contra_ May's room was papered, which she considered a counterbalancing advantage; but as the paper was not very pretty, Eleanor did not agree with her.

Many were the consultations held between the two girls. And just here, before they had actually begun operations, a piece of good luck befell both of them. Eleanor's grandmother presented her with an easy-chair, an old one, very shabby as to cover, but a good chair still, and very comfortable. And almost simultaneously a happily timed accident occurred to Mrs. Blodgett's spare-room carpet, which made the buying of a new one necessary, and the old one was given to May. It was a still respectable Brussels, with rather a large medallion figure on a green ground. It did not comport very well with the blue and drab paper on the walls, and the medallions looked very big on the smaller floor; but May cared nothing for that, and she accepted her windfall gleefully.

"It will save ever and ever so much," she said, joyously. "Carpets do cost so. Poor Eleanor, you will have to get one for yourself, unless you can persuade your cook to upset an oil lamp on one of your mother's."

"Oh, Annie is too careful; she could never be persuaded to do such a thing as that," laughed Eleanor. "Besides, I don't want her to. I don't like any of mother's carpets very much."

"Well, I don't care what sort of a carpet it is so long as I don't have to buy it," said May.

"I do," replied Eleanor.