Not Quite Eighteen

"Oh, of course he did! That's the way stories always end."

"Now, Reuben, hurry to bed, and when you are all ready, light your candle, and if you speak loud we shall hear every word."

This was Reuben's story: "Once there was a Ghost. He had committed a murder, and that was the reason he had to go alone and fly about on cold nights in a white shirt.

"He used to look in at windows and see people sitting by fires, and envy them. And he would moan and chatter his teeth, and then they would say that he was the wind."

"Oh, Reuben! is it going to be very awful?" demanded Cynthia, apprehensively.

"Not very. Only just enough to half-scare you to death! He would put his hand out when girls stood by the door, and they would feel as if a whole pitcher of cold water had been poured down their backs.

"Once a boy came to the door. He was the son of the murdered man. The Ghost was afraid of him. 'Thomas!' said the Ghost.

"'Who speaks?' said the boy. He couldn't have heard if he hadn't been the son of the murdered man.

"'I'm the Ghost of your father's slayer,' said the Ghost. 'Tell me what I can do to be forgiven.'

"'I don't think you can be forgiven,' said the boy. Then the Ghost gave such a dreadful groan that the boy felt sorry for him.

"'I'll tell you, then,' he said. 'Go to my father's grave, and lay upon it a perfectly white blackberry, and a perfectly black snowdrop, and a valuable secret, and a hair from the head of a really happy person, and you shall be forgiven!'

"So the Ghost set out to find these four things. He had to bleach the blackberry and dye the snowdrop, and he got the hair from the head of a little baby who happened to be born with hair and hadn't had time to be unhappy, and the secret was about a goldmine that only the Ghost knew about. But just as he was laying them on the grave, a cold hand clutched – " The sentence ended in a three-fold shriek, for just at this exciting juncture the last candle went out.

"Children," said Mrs. Marsh, opening the door, "I'm afraid you've been frightening yourselves with your stories. That was foolish. I am glad there are no more little candles. Now, not another word to-night."

She straightened the tossed coverlids, heard their prayers, and went away. In a few minutes all that remained of the long-anticipated treat were three little drops of tallow where three little candles had quite burned out, three stories not quite told, and three children fast asleep.

UNCLE AND AUNT

UNCLE and Aunt were a very dear and rather queer old couple, who lived in one of the small villages which dot the long indented coast of Long Island Sound. It was four miles to the railway, so the village had not waked up from its colonial sleep on the building of the line, as had other villages nearer to its course, but remained the same shady, quiet place, with never a steam-whistle nor a manufactory bell to break its repose.

Sparlings-Neck was the name of the place. No hotel had ever been built there, so no summer visitors came to give it a fictitious air of life for a few weeks of the year. The century-old elms waved above the gambrel roofs of the white, green-blinded houses, and saw the same names on doorplates and knockers that had been there when the century began: "Benjamin," "Wilson," "Kirkland," "Benson," "Reinike," – there they all were, with here and there the prefix of a distinguishing initial, as "J. L. Benson," "Eleazar Wilson," or "Paul Reinike." Paul Reinike, fourth of the name who had dwelt in that house, was the "Uncle" of this story.

Uncle was tall and gaunt and gray, of the traditional New England type. He had a shrewd, dry face, with wise little wrinkles about the corners of the eyes, and just a twinkle of fun and a quiet kindliness in the lines of the mouth. People said the squire was a master-hand at a bargain. And so he was; but if he got the uttermost penny out of all legitimate business transactions, he was always ready to give that penny, and many more, whenever deserving want knocked at his door, or a good work to be done showed itself distinctly as needing help.

Aunt, too, was a New Englander, but of a slightly different type. She was the squire's cousin before she became his wife; and she had the family traits, but with a difference. She was spare, but she was also very small, and had a distinct air of authority which made her like a fairy godmother. She was very quiet and comfortable in her ways, but she was full of "faculty," – that invaluable endowment which covers such a multitude of capacities. Nobody's bread or pies were equal to Aunt's. Her preserves never fermented; her cranberry always jellied; her sponge-cake rose to heights unattained by her neighbors', and stayed there, instead of ignominiously "flopping" when removed from the oven, like the sponge-cake of inferior housekeepers. Everything in the old home moved like clock-work. Meals were ready to a minute; the mahogany furniture glittered like dark-red glass; the tall clock in the entry was never a tick out of the way; and yet Aunt never appeared to be particularly busy. To one not conversant with her methods, she gave the impression of being generally at leisure, sitting in her rocking-chair in the "keeping-room," hemming cap-strings, and reading Emerson, for Aunt liked to keep up with the thought of the day.

Hesse declared that either she sat up and did things after the rest of the family had gone to bed, or else that she kept a Brownie to work for her; but Hesse was a saucy child, and Aunt only smiled indulgently at these sarcasms.

Hesse was the only young thing in the shabby old home; for, though it held many handsome things, it was shabby. Even the cat was a sober matron. The old white mare had seen almost half as many years as her master. The very rats and mice looked gray and bearded when you caught a glimpse of them. But Hesse was youth incarnate, and as refreshing in the midst of the elderly stillness which surrounded her as a frolicsome puff of wind, or a dancing ray of sunshine. She had come to live with Uncle and Aunt when she was ten years old; she was now nearly eighteen, and she loved the quaint house and its quainter occupants with her whole heart.

Hesse's odd name, which had been her mother's, her grandmother's, and her great-grandmother's before her, was originally borrowed from that of the old German town whence the first Reinike had emigrated to America. She had not spent quite all of the time at Sparlings-Neck since her mother died. There had been two years at boarding-school, broken by long vacations, and once she had made a visit in New York to her mother's cousin, Mrs. De Lancey, who considered herself a sort of joint guardian over Hesse, and was apt to send a frock or a hat, now and then, as the fashions changed; that "the child might not look exactly like Noah, and Mrs. Noah, and the rest of the people in the ark," she told her daughter. This visit to New York had taken place when Hesse was about fifteen; now she was to make another. And, just as this story opens, she and Aunt were talking over her wardrobe for the occasion.

"I shall give you this China-crape shawl," said Aunt, decisively.

Hesse looked admiringly, but a little doubtfully, at the soft, clinging fabric, rich with masses of yellow-white embroidery.

"I am afraid girls don't wear shawls now," she ventured to say.

"My dear," said Aunt, "a handsome thing is always handsome; never mind if it is not the last novelty, put it on, all the same. The Reinikes can wear what they like, I hope! They certainly know better what is proper than these oil-and-shoddy people in New York that we read about in the newspapers. Now, here is my India shawl," – unpinning a towel, and shaking out a quantity of dried rose-leaves. "I lend you this; not give it, you understand."

"Thank you, Aunt, dear." Hesse was secretly wondering what Cousin Julia and the girls would say to the India shawl.

"You must have a pelisse, of some sort," continued her aunt; "but perhaps your Cousin De Lancey can see to that. Though I might have Miss Lewis for a day, and cut over that handsome camlet of mine. It's been lying there in camphor for fifteen years, of no use to anybody."

"Oh, but that would be a pity!" cried Hesse, with innocent wiliness. "The girls are all wearing little short jackets now, trimmed with fur, or something like that; it would be a pity to cut up that great cloak to make a little bit of a wrap for me."

"Fur?" said her aunt, catching at the word; "the very thing! How will this do?" dragging out of the camphor-chest an enormous cape, which seemed made of tortoise-shell cats, so yellow and brown and mottled was it. "Won't this do for a trimming, or would you rather have it as it is?"

"I shall have to ask Cousin Julia," replied Hesse. "Oh, Aunt, dear, don't give me any more! You really mustn't! You are robbing yourself of everything!" For Aunt was pulling out yards of yellow lace, lengths of sash ribbon of faded colors and wonderful thickness, strange, old-fashioned trinkets.

"And here's your grandmother's wedding-gown – and mine!" she said; "you had better take them both. I have little occasion for dress here, and I like you to have them, Hesse. Say no more about it, my dear."

There was never any gainsaying Aunt, so Hesse departed for New York with her trunk full of antiquated finery, sage-green and "pale-colored" silks that would almost stand alone; Mechlin lace, the color of a spring buttercup; hair rings set with pearls, and brooches such as no one sees, nowadays, outside of a curiosity shop. Great was the amusement which the unpacking caused in Madison Avenue.

"Yet the things are really handsome," said Mrs. De Lancey, surveying the fur cape critically. "This fur is queer and old-timey, but it will make quite an effective trimming. As for this crape shawl, I have an idea: you shall have an overdress made of it, Hesse. It will be lovely with a silk slip. You may laugh, Pauline, but you will wish you had one like it when you see Hesse in hers. It only needs a little taste in adapting, and fortunately these quaint old things are just coming into fashion."

Pauline, a pretty girl, – modern to her fingertips – held up a square brooch, on which, under pink glass, shone a complication of initials in gold, the whole set in a narrow twisted rim of pearls and garnets, and asked:

"How do you propose to 'adapt' this, Mamma?"

"Oh," cried Hesse, "I wouldn't have that 'adapted' for the world! It must stay just as it is. It belonged to my grandmother, and it has a love-story connected with it."

"A love-story! Oh, tell it to us!" said Grace, the second of the De Lancey girls.

"Why," explained Hesse; "you see, my grandmother was once engaged to a man named John Sherwood. He was a 'beautiful young man,' Aunt says; but very soon after they were engaged, he fell ill with consumption, and had to go to Madeira. He gave Grandmamma that pin before he sailed. See, there are his initials, 'J. S.,' and hers, 'H. L. R.,' for Hesse Lee Reinike, you know. He gave her a copy of 'Thomas à Kempis' besides, with 'The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me,' written on the title-page. I have the book, too; Uncle gave it to me for my own."

"And did he ever come back?" asked Pauline.

"No," answered Hesse. "He died in Madeira, and was buried there; and quite a long time afterward, Grandmamma married my grandfather. I'm so fond of that queer old brooch, I like to wear it sometimes."

"How does it look?" demanded Pauline.

"You shall see for yourself, for I'll wear it to-night," said Hesse.

And when Hesse came down to dinner with the quaint ornament shining against her white neck on a bit of black velvet ribbon, even Pauline owned that the effect was not bad, – queer, of course, and unlike other people's things, but certainly not bad.

Mrs. De Lancey had a quick eye for character, and she noted with satisfaction that her young cousin was neither vexed at, nor affected by, her cousins' criticisms on her outfit. Hesse saw for herself that her things were unusual, and not in the prevailing style, but she knew them to be handsome of their kind, and she loved them as a part of her old home. There was, too, in her blood a little of the family pride which had made Aunt say, "The Reinikes know what is proper, I hope." So she wore her odd fur and made-over silks and the old laces with no sense of being ill-dressed, and that very fact "carried it off," and made her seem well dressed. Cousin Julia saw that her wardrobe was sufficiently modernized not to look absurd, or attract too much attention, and there was something in Hesse's face and figure which suited the character of her clothes. People took notice of this or that, now and again, – said it was pretty, and where could they get such a thing? – and, flattery of flatteries, some of the girls copied her effects!

"Estelle Morgan says, if you don't mind, she means to have a ball-dress exactly like that blue one of yours," Pauline told her one day.

"Oh, how funny! Aunt's wedding-gown made up with surah!" cried Hesse. "Do you remember how you laughed at the idea, Polly, and said it would be horrid?"

"Yes, and I did think so," said Polly; "but somehow it looks very nice on you. When it is hanging up in the closet, I don't care much for it."

"Well, luckily, no one need look at it when it is hanging up in the closet," retorted Hesse, laughing.

Her freshness, her sweet temper, and bright capacity for enjoyment had speedily made Hesse a success among the young people of her cousins' set. Girls liked her, and ran after her as a social favorite; and she had flowers and german favors and flatteries enough to spoil her, had she been spoilable. But she kept a steady head through all these distractions, and never forgot, however busy she might be, to send off the long journal-letter, which was the chief weekly event to Uncle and Aunt.