Stories and ballads for young folks

NEIGHBOR EDITH.

The north-west wind, driving feathery flakes of snow before it, heaps up gray masses of cloud over the sunny afternoon, and then, as if bent on subduing what cheeriness remains among the shadows it has brought, howls dismally down the chimneys, moans at the casements dismally. The Lieutenant throws himself down on the lounge, and draws a long sigh. Kate slips quietly out of the room, catches up her shawl and hat from the rack in the hall, and her brother, hearing her go down the steps into the street, wonders where she is bound for, and why she didn’t say something about it, and then falls back into his gloomy reverie.

“It may be ‘sweet for one’s country to die’; but to live on, a shattered, helpless wreck”—and, at the thought, he gripes the curving frame of the lounge with his one hand, and his firm-set lips quiver; when, suddenly, without the faintest footfall to indicate the approach of any one, two little arms creep about his neck, and between silvery peals of laughter a shower of kisses falls over forehead and sightless eyes, on either cheek, on nose, mouth and chin. “There!” cries a childish, laughing voice, “I surpized you, didn’t I? Ha, ha, ha!”

“Ha, ha!” echoes the Lieutenant, coming directly from a horizontal to a sitting posture, his arm around the wee mite, “so you did ‘surpize’ me, midget. And where did you come from? Did you drop out of the sky?”

“Out of the sky!” repeats the little maiden, with a great deal of scorn and emphasis. “Why, I comed right from our house! Katy comed after me, and we went round to the back door, so you wouldn’t hear, and then Katy took off my shoes, and I comed up on tiptoe in my stocking-feet. Ha, ha! I surpized you, didn’t I? I’m go’n to ’gin!” and away she rushes across the room and back against him, pell-mell, arms about his neck, and kisses raining all over his face. “There! how do you like it?” and the room rings with her musical laughter—in which the Lieutenant once more joins, with—

“My dear young lady, I must confess that I haven’t the least objection to the proceeding.”

“Young—_la_-day!” is the slow and scornful rejoinder; “young _la_-dy! Why, I’m a little girl!”

“Why, so she is, just a mere baby.”

“A _ba_-by! (the italics are to mark the emphasis) I’m four-years-old big! _I_’m no _ba_-by! Willie’s the baby. He’s got a new tooth! That makes three—six—five! He’s got five teeth!”

“You don’t say! And what is this Edith has in her hands—a doll?”

“Yes, it’s my dolly.”

“What curly hair she has. And this ruffled affair—is it an apron?”

“An _a_-pron! It’s an over-skirt!”

“Oh, I beg pardon! an ‘over-skirt,’ is it? So she’s a fashionable doll. What might be her name?”

“Guess.”

“Keturah?”

“No.”

“Jerusha?”

“No.”

“Mary Ann, Sacharissa, Sophia, Clarissa, Joan, Melissa, Eloise, Elizabeth, Jane—”

“No-o-o-o-o!”

“Victoria, Eugenia, Augusta, Paulina, Virginia, Aurelia, Geraldine, Mollie—”

“Yes! Mollie! that’s what it is; but none of your other old—elephants. There, you’re laughing! You knowed what it was all the time; you was only pertendin’. You’ve seen my dolly before.”

“Where’s Katy?”

“She stayed down-stairs to pop some corn for me and you.”

“Shall we go down and see her do it?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” And the Lieutenant, rising, manages to shift little dot up to his shoulder. “There, now, you’re a feather on top of a barn-door.”

“You’re not a barn-door!”

“What am I, then?”

“You’re my brave captain boy.” (That was in a whisper.)

“Shall I tell you what you are? You’re my little angel.” And, holding her carefully, he goes down the stairs, feeling his way, now and then, with the remnant of an arm in his dangling right sleeve.

“I’m almost through,” cries Kate, from the kitchen, her face all aglow with the heat. And Edith, from her lofty perch, watches the few yellow kernels that are nearly lost sight of in the bottom of the wire corn-popper, after a shake or two over the hot coals, suddenly—“Snap, snap, snap!” and look! it is full to the brim with something white and savory, which, seasoned with salt and the least bit of butter, she deals out (with great fairness and impartiality) to herself and her “captain boy,” after they have gone up-stairs again. By and by a thought strikes her.

“Katy, my doll hasn’t got any apron.”

“Why, so she hasn’t. We’ll have to make her one, won’t we?” And a box of ribbons and laces and pieces of silk is produced from somewhere, and the two sit down on the floor near the Lieutenant’s chair, talking all the time and planning out this wonderful apron.

“Now which of all these colors does Edie like best?” asks Kate.

“Well, I think the red’s the nicest.”

So an apron (with pockets, observe!) is soon manufactured out of a bit of a broad scarlet sash, and braided, too, with white silk braid; and straightway on it goes, in feverish haste (one is anxious to study the effect, you know), over the stylish (but serene) Mademoiselle’s black satin gown. (The effect isn’t bad.)

After due admiration from Edith, some other diversion is in order, and a book of engravings is brought for inspection. As the leaves are turned for her she glances for an instant at one picture after another, giving the word to proceed; but they finally come to something over which she pores a long while—so long that Kate is passing to the next without waiting for the “Go on” from little Miss, when the latter immediately takes the book into her own hands, returns to this picture, and continues to gaze at it. “What does it mean?” at length she asks.

“Had I better tell her?” Kate, in an under-tone, questions of her brother. “It’s Gustave Doré’s ‘The Deluge’—people and wild beasts huddled together upon a rock rising out of the waste of water, and the great, lashing waves reaching up for them greedily, like wide-mouthed monsters. Odd, isn’t it, that she should notice it so, among so many more attractive prints? She wouldn’t be likely to comprehend if I were to explain, would she? Good, there goes the tea-bell!” And Kate closes the book, glad of an excuse to escape telling the story of the flood to this blithesome little being, whom, she has a dim notion, it might give bad dreams.