The Very Small Person

The Very Small Person
Annie Donnell

Annie Hamilton Donnell

The Very Small Person

Chapter I

Little Blue Overalls

Miss Salome’s face was gently frowning as she wrote.

“Dear John,” the letter began, – “It’s all very well except one thing. I wonder you didn’t think of that. I’m thinking of it most of the time, and it takes away so much of the pleasure of the rose-garden and the raspberry-bushes! Anne is in raptures over the raspberry-bushes.

“Yes, the raspberries and the roses are all right. And I like the stone-wall with the woodbine over it. (Good boy, you remembered that, didn’t you?) And the apple-tree and the horse-chestnut and the elm – of course I like them.

“The house is just big enough and just small enough, and there’s a trunk-closet, as I stipulated. And Anne’s room has a ‘southern exposure’ – Anne’s crazy spot is southern exposures. Mine’s it. Dear, dear, John, how could you forget it! That everything else – closets and stone-walls and exposures – should be to my mind but that! Well, I am thinking of moving out, before I move in. But I haven’t told Anne. Anne is the kind of person not to tell, until the last moment. It saves one’s nerves – heigh-ho! I thought I was coming here to get away from nerves! I was so satisfied. I really meant to thank you, John, until I discovered – it. Oh yes, I know – Elizabeth is looking over your shoulder, and you two are saying something that is unfit for publication about old maids! My children, then thank the Lord you aren’t either of you old maids. Make the most of it.”

Miss Salome let her pen slip to the bare floor and gazed before her wistfully. The room was in the dreary early stages of unpacking, but it was not of that Miss Salome was thinking. Her eyes were gazing out of the window at a thin gray trail of smoke against the blue ground of the sky. She could see the little house, too, brown and tiny and a little battered. She could see the clothes-line, and count easily enough the pairs of little stockings on it. She caught up the pen again fiercely.

“There are eight,” she wrote. “Allowing two legs to a child, doesn’t that make four? John Dearborn, you have bought me a house next door to four children! I think I shall begin to put the books back to-night. As ill luck will have it, they are all unpacked.

“I have said nothing to Anne; Anne has said nothing to me. But we both know. She has counted the stockings too. We are both old maids. No, I have not seen them yet – anything but their stockings on the clothes-line. But the mother is not a washer-woman – there is no hope. I don’t know how I know she isn’t a washer-woman, but I do. It is impressed upon me. So there are four children, to say nothing of the Lord knows how many babies still in socks! I cannot forgive you, John.”

Miss Salome had been abroad for many years. Stricken suddenly with homesickness, she and her ancient serving-woman, Anne, had fled across seas to their native land. Miss Salome had first commissioned John, long-suffering John, – adviser, business-manager, brother, – to find her a snug little home with specified adjuncts of trunk-closets, elm, apple, and horse-chestnut trees, woodbiney stone walls – and a “southern exposure” for Anne. John had done his best. But how could he have forgotten, and Elizabeth have forgotten, and Miss Salome herself have forgotten – it? Every one knew Miss Salome’s distaste for little children. Anne’s too, though Anne was more taciturn than her mistress.

“Hullo!”

Miss Salome started. In the doorway stood a very small person in blue jeans overalls.

“Hullo! I want your money or your life! I’m a ’wayman.”

“A —what?” Miss Salome managed to ejaculate. The Little Blue Overalls advanced a few feet into the room.

“Robber, you know; – you know what robbers are, don’t you? I’m one. You needn’t call me a highwayman, I’m so – so low. Just ’wayman ’ll do. Why, gracious! you ain’t afraid, are you? You needn’t be, – I won’t hurt you!” and a sweet-toned, delighted little laugh echoed through the bare room. “You needn’t give me your money or your life. Never mind. I’ll ’scuse you.”

Miss Salome uttered no word at all. Of course this boy belonged in a pair of those stockings over there. It was no more than was to be expected.

“It’s me. I’m not a ’wayman any more, – just me. I heard you’d come, so I thought I’d come an’ see you. You glad? Why don’t you ask me will I take a seat?”

“Will I – will you take a seat?” repeated Miss Salome, as if she were saying a lesson. The Little Blue Overalls climbed into a chair.

“Looks pretty bad here, doesn’t it? I guess you forgot to sweep,” he said, assuming social curves in his plump little body. He had the air of having come to stay. Miss Salome’s lips, under orders to tighten, found themselves unexpectedly relaxing into a smile. The Little Blue Overalls was amusing.

“We’ve got a sofy, an’ a rockin’-chair. The sofy’s new, but Chessie’s broke a hole in it.”

“Are there four of you?” Miss Salome asked, abruptly. It was the Little Blue Overalls’ turn to start now.

“Me?– gracious! four o’ me? I guess you’re out o’ your head, aren’t – Oh, you mean child’en! Well, there’s five, ’thout countin’ the spandy new one – she’s too little to count.”

Five – six, with the spandy new one! Miss Salome’s gaze wandered from the piles of books on the floor to the empty packing-boxes, as if trying to find the shortest distance.

“There are only four pairs on the line,” she murmured, weakly, – “stockings,” she added. The Little Blue Overalls nodded comprehendingly.

“I don’t wear ’em summers, – I guess you didn’t notice I was in my bare feet, did you? Well, I am. It’s a savin’. The rest are nothing but girls – I’m all the boy we’ve got. Boys are tough. But I don’t s’pose you ever was one, so you don’t know?” There was an upward inflection to the voice of the Little Blue Overalls. An answer seemed expected.

“No – no, I never was one,” Miss Salome said, hastily. She could hear Anne’s plodding steps in the hall. It would be embarrassing to have Anne come in now. But the footsteps plodded by. After more conversation on a surprising number of topics, the Little Blue Overalls climbed out of the chair.

“I’ve had a ’joyable time, an’ I’ll be pleased to come again, thank you,” he said, with cheerful politeness. “I’m glad you’ve come, – I like you, but I hope you’ll sweep your floor.” He retreated a few steps, then faced about again and advanced into the enemy’s near neighborhood. He was holding out a very small, brown, unwashed hand. “I forgot ’bout shakin’ hands,” he smiled. “Le’s. I hope you like me, too, an’ I guess you do, don’t you? Everybody does. Nobody ever didn’t like me in my life, an’ I’m seven. Good-bye.”

Miss Salome heard him patter down the hall, and she half thought – she was not sure – that at the kitchen door he stopped. Half an hour afterwards she saw a very small person crossing the rose-garden. If there was something in his hands that he was eating, Miss Salome never asked Anne about it. It was not her way to ask Anne questions. It was not Anne’s way to ask her. The letter to John was finished, oddly enough, without further mention of – it. Miss Salome got the broom and swept the bare big room carefully. She hummed a little as she worked. Out in the kitchen Anne was humming too.

“It is a pleasant little place, especially the stone-wall and the woodbine,” Miss Salome was thinking; “I’m glad I specified woodbine and stone-walls. John would never have thought. So many other things are pleasant, too; but, dear, dear, it is very unfortunate about that one thing!” Still Miss Salome hummed, and after tea she got Anne to help her move out the empty packing-boxes.

The next day the Little Blue Overalls came again. This time he was a peddler, with horse-chestnut “apples” to sell, and rose-petal pies. He said they were bargains.

“You can truly eat the pies,” he remarked. “There’s a little sugar in ’em. I saved it off the top o’ her bun,” indicating Anne’s locality with a jerk of his little cropped head. So it was a fact, was it? He had been eating something when he crossed the rose-garden? Miss Salome wondered at Anne.

The next day, and the next, – every day the Little Blue Overalls came, always in a new character. Miss Salome found herself watching for him. She could catch the little blue glint of very small overalls as soon as they got to the far side of the rose-garden. But for Anne, at the end of the first week she would have gone out to meet him. Dear, dear, but for Miss Salome, Anne would have gone!

The Little Blue Overalls confided his troubles to Miss Salome. He told her how hard it was to be the only boy, – how impossible, of course, it was to play girly plays, and how he had longed to find a congenial spirit. Mysteriously enough, he appeared confident that he had found the congenial spirit at last. Miss Salome’s petticoats seemed no obstacle. He showed her his pocketful of treasures. He taught her to whittle, and how to bear it when she “bleeded.” He taught her to whistle – very softly, on account of Anne. (He taught Anne, too – softly, on account of Miss Salome.) He let her make sails for his boats, and sew on his buttons, – those that Anne didn’t sew on.

“Dear John,” wrote Miss Salome, “the raspberries are ripe. When you were a very small person – say seven – did you ever mash them between raspberry leaves, with ‘sugar in,’ and call them pies, – and eat them? They are really palatable. Of course it is a little risky on account of possible bugs. I don’t remember that you were a remarkable little boy. Were you? Did you ever play you were a highwayman, or an elephant, or anything of that sort? Queer I can’t remember.

“Anne is delighted with her southern exposure, but she has never said so. That is why I know she is. I am delighted with the roses and the closets and the horse-chestnut – especially the horst-chestnut. That is where we play – I mean it is most pleasant there, hot afternoons. Did you use to dote on horse-chestnuts? Queer boys should. But I rather like them myself, in a way, – out of the way! We have picked up a hundred and seventeen.” Miss Salome dropped into the plural number innocently, and Elizabeth laughed over John’s shoulder. Elizabeth did the reading between the lines. John was only a man.

One day Little Blue Overalls was late. He came from the direction of the stable that adjoined Miss Salome’s house. He was excited and breathless. A fur rug was draped around his shoulders and trailed uncomfortably behind him.

“Come on!” he cried, eagerly. “It’s a circus! I’m the grizzled bear. There’s a four-legged girl – Chessie, you know, with stockin’s on her hands, – and a Manx rooster (’thout any tail), and, oh, my! the splendidest livin’ skeleton you ever saw! I want you to be man’ger – come on! It’s easy enough. You poke us with a stick, an’ we perform. I dance, an’ the four-legged girl walks, an’ the rooster crows, an’ the skeleton skel – Oh, well, you needn’t poke the skeleton.”

The Little Blue Overalls paused for breath. Miss Salome laid aside her work. Where was Anne? – but the stable could be reached without passing the kitchen windows. Saturdays Anne was very busy, anyway.

“I’m ready,” laughed Miss Salome. She had never been a circus-manager, but she could learn. It was easier than whittling. Together they hurried away to the stable. At the door Miss Salome came to an abrupt stop. An astonished exclamation escaped her.

The living skeleton sat on an empty barrel, lean and grave and patient. The living skeleton also uttered an exclamation. She and the circus-manager gazed at each other in a remarkable way, as if under a spell.

“Come on!” shouted the grizzled bear.

After that, Miss Salome and Anne were not so reserved. What was the use? And it was much easier, after all, to be found out. Things ran along smoothly and pleasantly after that.

Late in the autumn, Elizabeth, looking over John’s shoulder one day, laughed, then cried out, sharply. “Oh!” she said; “oh, I am sorry!” And John echoed her an instant later.

“Dear John,” the letter said, “when you were little were you ever very sick, and did you die? Oh, I see, but don’t laugh. I think I am a little out of my head to-day. One is when one is anxious. And Little Blue Overalls is very sick. I found Anne crying a little while ago, and just now she came in and found me. She didn’t mind; I don’t.

“He did not come yesterday or the day before. Yesterday I went to see why. Anne was just coming away from the door. ‘He’s sick,’ she said, in her crisp, sharp way, – you know it, John, – but she was white in the face. The little mother came to the door. Queer I had never seen her before, – Little Blue Overalls has her blue eyes.

“There were two or three small persons clinging to her, and the very smallest one I ever saw was in her arms. She looked fright – ” The letter broke off abruptly here. Another slip was enclosed that began as abruptly. “Anne says it is scarlet-fever. The doctor has been there just now. I am going to have him brought over here – you know I don’t mean the doctor. And you would not smile, either of you – not Elizabeth, anyway, for she will think of her own babies – ”

“Yes, yes,” Elizabeth cried, “I am thinking!”