Three Little Cousins

"Would you like me to go there with you?" said Ellis bashfully. "I know where the cranberries grow, and there's lots of other things down there, the kind you city people like to get, weeds, we call 'em."

"Oh, may we go?" Molly appealed to her aunt.

"Why yes, I have no objection. It is perfectly safe if it's not wet. I suppose you may encounter a garter snake or two, but you don't mind them, Molly."

"Wait for us, Ellis," said the little girl speeding away for her cousins with whom she returned in a moment. All three were breathlessly eager to start on the voyage of discovery, for with Ellis as leader, into what regions of the unknown might they not penetrate.

Over the hill they went, leaving Cap'n Orrin's mild-eyed cows gazing after them ruminatively as they crept under the fence which separated the pasture from the wild bottom land at the foot of the hill. On the other side arose the ridge along which were ranged cottages looking both coveward and seaward. A winding path led past runty little apple trees and huge boulders, and finally was lost in the tangle of growth overspreading the marsh.

"It is dry enough now," said Mary exultantly, setting her foot on a tuft of dry grass. "Where are the cranberries, Ellis? I want to see those first."

"You are standing right over some," he said smiling.

Mary looked down, but only a mass of weeds and grass greeted her eyes. "I don't see them," she declared.

Ellis laughed, bent over and parted the grass to disclose the delicate wreaths of green, and the pretty smooth cranberries, tucked away in the dry grass.

"As if they were afraid of being picked," remarked Mary. "You will not escape me that way." And down on her knees she went in search of the pink fruit.

Molly meanwhile had gone further afield, and was gathering flowers strange to her, and grasses as lovely as the blossoms. Earlier in the season, she had delighted in the rosy plumes of the hard-hack, the sweet pinky-white clover, the wild partridge peas, but here were new acquaintances which were not to be found outside the marsh, and upon them she pounced eagerly.

It was Polly, however, who discovered the Roseberry family, for Polly, who had spent her life far from cities, had developed her imagination, and could fashion from unpromising material the most fascinating things, and though she, too, picked her share of cranberries, she also gathered a lot of roseberries which she declared were the biggest she had ever seen. These she bore away in triumph, while Molly carried her bouquet with a satisfied air and Mary was quite content with having the largest showing of cranberries. So they returned, well pleased, to the cottage.

"We had the splendidest morning," said Molly, setting her flowers in a large vase. "I never knew that bogs could be so perfectly fine. What are you doing, Polly?"

Polly was seated on the floor industriously picking off her roseberries from the twigs. "Wait and you will see," was her answer. "Do get me some pins, Molly, a whole lot. Aunt Ada will give you some."

Molly's curiosity being aroused, she rushed off to her aunt, returning with a paper of pins. She squatted down on the floor by Polly's side. Mary, meanwhile, had gone to the kitchen to superintend Luella's cooking of the cranberries. Polly stuck a pin in one side of the biggest, fattest roseberry, then another in the other side. "This is Mr. Roseberry," she said, "and these are his two arms. Now his head goes on, and then his legs. I use the pins, you see, because you can bend them so as to make the people sit down." She held up the completed mannikin. "Now I must pick out some berries for Mrs. Roseberry, and then I'll make the children."

"Polly, you are so ridiculous," said Molly in a tone of admiration, "but do you know, they are awfully funny with their little round heads and bodies." Polly worked away industriously till she had completed her entire family. "Now what?" said Molly. "What in the world is that?"

"It is a lamp," returned Polly, deftly fitting a base to her red globe. "Now, if I had some pasteboard I could make some furniture, and we'd play with the Roseberry family this afternoon."

"Dinner is nearly ready now," said Molly, "but it will be fun to play with them this afternoon. We could have two or three families. What can I name mine?" She watched Polly interestedly as she put the last touch to a vase in which she stuck a bit of green.

"You might call them Pod," said Polly. "These are really the seed pods of the wild roses, you know. They are like little apples, aren't they?"

"Oh, I'll call them Appleby," said Molly.

"We know some people named that. Save that tiny one for the baby, Polly."

"The cranberries are perfectly delicious," said Mary, coming in from the kitchen, "but they have to cool before we can eat them. Luella says they take so much sugar that they will keep perfectly for me to take some home. Oh, what curious little figures."

"This is the Roseberry family," Polly told her, indicating the dolls on the right, "and these," she pointed to those on her left, "these are the Applebys."

"You must have some, too, Mary," said Molly. "What shall you call yours?"

Mary had picked up one of the little figures. "Why, they are made of hips, aren't they?"

"What are hips?" asked Molly.

"That is what we call the berries of the briar-rose, and in England the hawthorn berries are haws."

"Hips and haws," sang Molly. "Don't they go nicely together? Shall you call your people Mr. and Mrs. Hips?"

"Why, yes, I can. I think that would be a very good name. Are we going to play with them?"

"After dinner we are, if Polly can find anything to make furniture of."

Polly's ingenuity did not fail her here, for, by the use of some match ends, birch bark and a needle and thread she contrived all sorts of things and then each girl hunted up a box for a house, so that these new playthings proved to be very fascinating.

But at last the every-day commonplaces grew too dull for Polly, and she suddenly exclaimed: "I'm tired of just visiting and talking about measles and nurses and mustard plasters! I'm going to take the Roseberry family down to the shore. They're going to have an adventure."

"Oh, Polly, what? Can ours go, too?" cried Molly. "I would like to have the Applebys meet an adventure, too."

"And I'd like Mr. and Mrs. Hips to have one," echoed Mary.

"Are they very wicked, black-hearted people?" asked Polly, darkly.

"Why – why – " Mary hesitated and looked to Molly for her cue.

"Do they have to be wicked to have an adventure?" asked Molly.

"If they join the Roseberries, they'll have to be, for the Roseberries are wreckers and smugglers." Polly spoke impressively, and at this flight of fancy Molly and Mary gazed at her admiringly. Yet they were not quite willing that their families should give up their morals to too great an extent.

"What do they have to do?" asked Mary, determined to find out the worst.

"Mine have a cave," said Polly, mysteriously. "It is on an island – I know what island I am going to have – and there they hide their treasures. They are counterfeiters, too," she added to their list of crimes, "and they have chests of counterfeit money – sand dollars."

Molly laughed and Polly looked at her reproachfully. "It is as good as any other counterfeit money," she remarked.

"Never mind the money. Go on, Polly." Molly was enjoying her cousin's inventions.

"Well, they go out in a boat on stormy nights and when a vessel is in distress, instead of helping, they don't do anything but just wait till the vessel is wrecked and then they help themselves, to what they can get. They have, oh, such a store of diamonds and rubies and precious stones in their cave, and they have their own vessel that flies a black flag."

"Then they're pirates," said Mary recoiling. "I don't want the Hips to be pirates."

"They don't have to be," Polly calmly assured her. "They can be as good as they want to, and can be on one of the vessels that gets wrecked."

"Then they'll all get drowned."

"No, they needn't; they can cling to a raft and go ashore on some desert island."

Having saved the lives as well as the reputations of the Hips family, although they would probably lose everything else, Mary was satisfied, but Molly was ready to compromise. A little spice of wickedness seemed necessary to make her Applebys interesting. "My family can be smugglers," she announced, "but I don't want them to be pirates and I don't want them wrecked either. Smugglers aren't so wicked as pirates; they only bring in things that you ought to pay duty on, Uncle Dick told me, and Mary's father told her that in England almost everything comes in free, and that the United States is as mean as can be about making people pay for what is brought into the country. A lady, Molly saw on the steamer when they came over, had an awful time about a shabby old sealskin coat she'd had for years, and just because she wore it ashore from the steamer, they made an awful fuss about it."

"Well, I don't understand about it, but if the United States said it was wrong, of course it must have been; they are always right," said Polly loyally. "I don't exactly know about smuggling," she confessed, "however, the Roseberries are going to be smugglers."

"Uncle Dick was telling us about smugglers the other night."