Mr. Pat"s Little Girl.
by Mary F. Leonard.
CHAPTER FIRST.
THINGS BEGIN TO HAPPEN.
"A magician most profound in his art."
It was Sunday afternoon. The griffins on the doorstep stared straight before them with an expression of utter indifference; the feathery foliage of the white birch swayed gently back and forth; the peonies lifted their crimson heads airily; the s...o...b..ll bush bent under the weight of its white blooms till it swept the gra.s.s; the fountain splashed softly.
""By cool Siloam"s shady rill How fair the lily grows,""
Rosalind chanted dreamily.
Grandmamma had given her the hymn book, telling her to choose a hymn and commit it to memory, and as she turned the pages this had caught her eye and pleased her fancy.
"It sounds like the Forest of Arden," she said, leaning back on the garden bench and shutting her eyes.
""How sweet the breath beneath the hill Of Sharon"s lovely rose.""
She swung her foot in time to the rhythm. She was not sure whether a rill was a fountain or a stream, so she decided, as there was no dictionary convenient, to think of it as like the creek where it crossed the road at the foot of Red Hill.
Again she looked at the book; skipping a stanza, she read:--
""By cool Siloam"s shady rill The lily must decay; The rose that blooms beneath the hill Must shortly pa.s.s away.""
The melancholy of this was interesting; at the same time it reminded her that she was lonely. After repeating, "Must shortly pa.s.s away," her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears.
"Now I am not going to cry," she said sternly, and by way of carrying out this resolve she again closed her eyes tight. It was desperately hard work, and she could not have told whether two minutes or ten had pa.s.sed when she was startled by an odd, guttural voice close to her asking, "What is the matter, little girl?"
If the voice was strange, the figure she saw when she looked up was stranger still. A gaunt old man in a suit of rusty black, with straggling gray hair and beard, stood holding his hat in his hand, gazing at her with eyes so bright they made her uneasy.
"Nothing," she answered, rising hastily.
But the visitor continued to stand there and smile at her, shaking his head and repeating, "Mustn"t cry."
"I am not crying," Rosalind insisted, glancing over her shoulder to make sure of a way of escape.
With a long, thin finger this strange person now pointed toward the house, saying something she understood to be an inquiry for Miss Herbert.
Miss Herbert was the housekeeper, and Rosalind knew she was at church; but when she tried to explain, the old man shook his head, and taking from his pocket a tablet with a pencil attached, he held it out to her, touching his ear as he uttered the one word "Deaf."
Rosalind understood she was to write her answer, and somewhat flurried she sat down on the edge of the bench and with much deliberation and in large clear letters conveyed the information, "She is out."
The old man looked at the tablet and then at Rosalind, bowing and smiling as if well pleased. "You"ll tell her I"m going to the city to-morrow?" he asked.
There was something very queer in the way he opened his mouth and used his tongue, Rosalind thought, as she nodded emphatically, feeling that this singular individual had her at an unfair advantage. At least she would find out who he was, and so, as she still held the tablet, she wrote, "What is your name?"
He laughed as if this were a joke, and searching in his pocket, produced a card which he presented with a bow. On it was printed "C.J. Morgan, Cabinet Work."
"What is your name?" he asked.
Rosalind hesitated. She was not sure it at all concerned this stranger to know her name, but as he stood smiling and waiting, she did not know how to refuse; so she bent over the tablet, her yellow braid falling over her shoulder, as she wrote, "Rosalind Patterson Whittredge."
"Mr. Pat"s daughter?" There was a twinkle in the old man"s eye, and surprise and delight in his voice.
Rosalind sprang up, her own eyes shining. "How stupid of me!" she cried.
"Why, you must be the magician, and you have a funny old shop, where father used to play when he was little. Oh, I hope you will let me come to see you!" Suddenly remembering the tablet, she looked at it despairingly.
She couldn"t write half she wished to say.
Morgan, however, seemed to understand pretty clearly, to judge from the way he laughed and asked if Mr. Pat was well.
Rosalind nodded and wrote, "He has gone to j.a.pan."
"So far? Coming home soon?"
With a mournful countenance she shook her head.
Morgan stood looking down on her with a smile that no longer seemed uncanny. Indeed, there was something almost sweet in the rugged face as he repeated, "Mr. Pat"s little girl, well, well," as if it were quite incredible.
Rosalind longed to ask at least a dozen questions, but it is dampening to one"s ardor to have to spell every word, and she only nodded and smiled in her turn as she handed back the tablet.
"I wish father had taught me to talk on my fingers," she thought, feeling that one branch of her education had been neglected. "Perhaps Uncle Allan will, when he comes."
She watched the odd figure till it disappeared around a turn in the trim garden path, then she picked up the big red pillow which had fallen on the gra.s.s, and replacing it in one corner of the bench, curled herself up against it. The hymn book lay forgotten.
"I believe things are really beginning to happen," she said to herself.
"You need not pretend they are not, for they are," she added, shaking her finger at the griffins with their provoking lack of expression. "You wouldn"t make friends with anybody, not to save their lives, and it seemed as if I were never to get acquainted with a soul, when here I have met the magician in the most surprising way. And to think I didn"t know him!"
The dream spirit was abroad in the garden. Across the lawn the shadows made mysterious progress; the sunlight seemed sifted through an enchanted veil, and like the touch of fairy fingers was the summer breeze against Rosalind"s cheek, as with her head against the red pillow, she travelled for the first time in her life back into the past.
Back to the dear old library where two students worked, and where from the windows one could see the tiled roofs of the university. Back to the world of dreams where dwelt that friendly host of story-book people, where only a few short weeks ago Friendship, too, with its winding shady streets and this same stately garden and the griffins, had belonged as truly as did the Forest where that other Rosalind, loveliest of all story people, wandered.
Friendship was no longer a dream, and Rosalind, her head against the red pillow, was beginning to think that dreams were best.
"If we choose, we may travel always in the Forest, where the birds sing and the sunlight sifts through the trees."
These words of Cousin Louis"s in his introduction to the old story pleased Rosalind"s fancy. She liked to shut her eyes and think of the Forest and the brave-hearted company gathered there, and always this brought before her the fair face of the miniature on her father"s desk and a faint, sweet memory of clasping arms.
When the doctor with a grave face had said that only rest and change of scene could restore Cousin Louis"s health, and when Rosalind understood that this must mean for her separation from both her dear companions, it was to the Forest she had turned.
"I"ll pretend I am banished like Rosalind in the story," she had said, leaning against her father"s shoulder, as he looked over the proofs of "The Life of Shakespeare" on which Cousin Louis had worked too hard. "Then I"ll know I am certain to find you sometime."
Her father"s arm had drawn her close,--she liked to recall it now, and how, when she added, "But I wish I had Celia and Touchstone to go with me," he had answered, "You are certain to find pleasant people in the Forest of Arden, little girl." And putting aside the proofs, he had talked to her of her grandmother and the old town of Friendship.
She had been almost a week in Friendship now, and--well, things were not altogether as she had pictured them. Silver locks and lace caps, arm-chairs and some sort of fluffy knitting work, had been a part of her idea of a grandmother, and lo! her own grandmother was erect and slender, with not a thread of gray in her dark hair, nor a line in her handsome face.