"She could not have been a Clyde and escaped that, my dear. It is a pa.s.sion 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 st.i.tches 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 cas.e.m.e.nts, 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 st.i.tches 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; st.i.tches 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. Th.o.r.eau! 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 Th.o.r.eau"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 Th.o.r.eau 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 pa.s.sed 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, ap.r.o.n 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 Sat.u.r.day 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!"