THE OLD PARROTT HOMESTEAD
"Come, child." Miss Parrott drew herself out of Rachel"s clinging arms.
What should she do now to divert this little girl from her terror and distress? She was sorely put to it for the answer. She gathered up the nervous hands in one of her own, and led the way out into the wide hall, hung with ancestral portraits. "I am going to take you to my own room," she said suddenly.
Rachel didn"t know the wonderful condescension of this plan for her amus.e.m.e.nt, but she clung to the long, thin fingers, and presently she was seated on a cricket covered with tambour work, and watching Miss Parrott"s movements about the s.p.a.cious apartment.
"Move your cricket over here, child." Miss Parrott was unlocking what looked to Rachel"s eyes like a big cupboard that stood out from the wall.
It had little panes of gla.s.s all criss-crossed with strips of white wood across its face, and a set of drawers beneath. And as Rachel obediently carried the cricket over and set it down where Miss Parrott indicated, her chief attention was still upon this curious cupboard, and what Miss Parrott was doing in it, for the door now stood open.
Rachel leaned forward on her cricket and rested her hands on her knees. On the shelves was such an array of articles, that to the child"s gaze, nothing stood out distinctly as an object to lavish one"s sole attention upon. But Miss Parrott made early choice, and lifting out a big doll from one of the lower shelves, she laid it in Rachel"s lap.
"I used to play with it," she said softly.
Rachel looked down upon the doll in her lap. It was long and hard and angular as to body, and its face was a dull white, except some patches of pink on the outer edge of the cheeks, showing the rest of the coloring to have been worn away. Its eyes were staring up into Rachel"s in such an expressionless, unpleasant manner that she involuntarily turned away her own.
"Her name is Priscilla," said Miss Parrott, looking down at Rachel, which called her to herself and the necessity of attention to these efforts to amuse her.
"Yes"m," said Rachel.
"Now I don"t suppose you know how much I loved this doll," said Miss Parrott, turning her back on the cupboard, to draw up a chair opposite Rachel and seat herself upon it, "but I used to take her to bed with me nights."
"Did you?" said Rachel, beginning to finger the doll with sudden interest.
"Yes, and I made her clothes and talked to her, and sometimes I called her "Sister,"" said Miss Parrott, quite gone in remembrance.
"Oh!" said Rachel.
"You see, she was all I had. I was the youngest, and my real sister was married and away, and my brothers were men when I was a little girl."
"Oh!" said Rachel again.
"And so I had to make believe that Priscilla was alive," said Miss Parrott, her eyes glowing with remembrance of her childhood, brought so singularly near on this morning; "I really had to Rachel."
"I"ve got a child," said Rachel, growing suddenly communicative, and looking up from the old doll to watch the effect of her announcement.
"Have you, dear?" responded Miss Parrott, quite pleased at the bright face, from which the last tear had been wiped away.
"Yes, my Phronsie gave her to me, and she sleeps with me," said Rachel, in great satisfaction.
"I suppose she is very much like Priscilla," observed Miss Parrott.
"Oh, no, she isn"t," declared Rachel promptly, turning her mind again to the ancient doll; "my child is pretty and she shuts her eyes. She isn"t a bit like yours."
"Well, Priscilla was always pretty to me," said Miss Parrott, astonished that she felt so little the slight to her child. "Well, now, Rachel, we will put the doll aside. You may lay it on the bed and then come back here."
Rachel got off from her cricket and went over to the other side of the apartment.
"My, what a funny bed!" she exclaimed, using her eyes to their utmost to see as much of the canopy, with its tester of blue and white chintz, the four posts beneath, and the counterpane executed in honeycomb pattern.
Miss Parrott, exploring her cupboard to get out something else with which to entertain Rachel, did not hear her; so she slowly returned, walking backward to observe as much of this queer article of furniture as the time allowed. In this way she fell over the cricket.
"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Parrott, pulling her head out of the cupboard, "did you hurt yourself, child?"
"No"m," said Rachel, getting up with a very red face, and exceedingly ashamed. "I don"t believe I broke it." She set the cricket up in its proper position and anxiously examined it all over.
"Oh, no," said Miss Parrott rea.s.suringly, "the cricket is not harmed. See here, Rachel"--she held in her hand a long string of little irregular things that dangled as she turned toward her--"I am going to put these on your neck. Now stand still, child." And suiting the action to the words, something snapped with a little click under Rachel"s chin.
Rachel looked down quickly at the queer little odd-shaped red things, hanging over her breast.
"I used to wear them when I was a little girl, very much smaller than you,"
said Miss Parrott, her head on one side and falling back to see the effect.
"What are they?" asked Rachel, not daring to lay a finger on them, and holding her breath at the idea of being within the magnificent circle of Miss Parrott"s early adornments.
"Red coral beads," said Miss Parrott, smiling at the nice contrast between the necklace and the dark little face above. "Now, child, you are going to wear them whenever you come to visit me and as long as you stay. And that means they will not come off till to-morrow, for you are to sleep here to-night."
"I haven"t any nightgown," said Rachel, who by this time liked to stay well enough, but seeing here an insuperable objection.
"That"s easily managed," said Miss Parrott, quickly; "I shall send a note to the parsonage, saying you will stay, and----"
At the mention of "note" Rachel suddenly collapsed, and a look of terror spread over her face.
"Oh, I forgot," she cried.
"Why, what is the matter, child?" demanded Miss Parrott, in great concern.
"I must go and get it," said Rachel wildly, and, dashing blindly off, she left Miss Parrott standing in front of her ancestral cupboard holding her childish treasures, to rush over the long and winding back stairs. At their end she found herself hopelessly entangled in an array of back pa.s.sages and little old-fashioned apartments, from which, run as she would, she could never seem to find the right exit.
Her progress was noted with indignation and contempt by as many of the old retainers in the Parrott service as could be gathered at short notice, and their calls to her to leave the premises, accompanied by sundry shakings of a long crash towel in the hands of the cook, only impeded Rachel"s hope of success.
"I don"t know the way out," she cried at last, finding herself in a big closet whose door, being open, she fondly trusted would allow her pa.s.sage out into the free air.
"Well, "tisn"t here," said an angry voice, and the brandishing of a big, iron spoon made Rachel beat a hasty retreat, this time into the back hall.
Miss Parrott was just descending the stairs, her stiff, black silk skirt held high, before she set foot in the servants" quarters.
"Child, child," she said in reproach, "what _is_ the matter?"
"Oh, I"ve lost the note--I mean, I forgot it." Rachel flew to her and wailed it all out.
"She"s crying, that bad girl is, all over Mistress"s front breadth,"
announced Joanna, the parlor maid, through the little window of the butler"s pantry.
"La me!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the cook, raising her hands and the crash towel, "to think of our mistress so demeaning herself!"
"What note?" cried Miss Parrott, in great bewilderment. "Rachel, stop crying at once and speak plainly. What note do you mean?"
"The one Mrs. Henderson gave me," cried Rachel; "I must go and get it, but I don"t know the way out."