A Bookful of Girls

“Do you like it?” she asked, all her disappointment and chagrin forgotten.

“Like it? Why, it’s the most tasty place I was ever in! It’s better than any play; it’s like bein’ in a play yourself! Jest see them pillows supportin’ that gallery! ’N’ them picters of tropical fruits! ’N’ this ice-cream! Why, it’s different from what we hev at the Sunday-school picnics! ’Pears to me it’s more creamy!”

Now, at last, Miss Becky had lost all thought of the passage of time. She took her ice-cream, just a little at a time, off the tip-end of her spoon, and with every mouthful the look of content grew deeper. One of the little cakes that were served with the ice-cream was a macaroon with a sugar swan upon it – “a reel little statoo of a swan,” Miss Becky called it. She could not be persuaded to eat it, but she studied it with such undisguised admiration that Nannie ventured to suggest that she take it home with her. Again Miss Becky was enchanted. She wrapped it in her pocket-handkerchief, and placed it carefully in her reticule, whence it was to emerge only to enter upon a long and admired career as a parlour ornament.

“And now, Miss Becky,” Nannie queried, as they sat there embowered in palms and ferns, listening to the plash of the fountain, “didn’t you enjoy the play at all?”

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Becky, “I had a very pleasant time before they got so reckless with their guns. But – I wonder whether they take sech pains with the the-etter’s they used to? Why, when I went with Uncle ’Bijah Lane that time, they all wore the most beautiful clothes. Even the men was dressed out in velvets and satins, and they wa’n’t anybody on the stage that didn’t make a good appearance.”

“But, you know, this was a different sort of play, Miss Becky. The folks in The Shaughraun weren’t kings and queens, but just every-day people.”

“Well, s’posin’ they was! I don’t see no excuse for that man Con goin’ round lookin’ so slack. I sh’d think he might at least git a whole coat to wear when he ’pears before the public!”

“I’m afraid you’re sorry you came,” said Nannie, very meekly, feeling quite ashamed of her poor little party.

“Oh, no, I ain’t! Why, child, I’d hev come barefoot to see this place here, with the founting a-splashin’ and the fishes a-gleamin’! Barefoot, I tell ye!”

It was a forcible expression, yet Nannie was not quite reassured. She still demurred.

“But the play was the principal thing, you know.”

“The play? Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Becky, thoughtfully. “I don’t know’s I’m so terrible sot on the theetter’s I thought for. I’d a good deal ruther hev you come over ’n do that sleep-walkin’ piece for me. I don’t want nothin’ better’n that. ’F I can see you act that once in a while, ’n’ hev this here Garding of Eden to think about, – a founting playin’ right in the house, ’n’ all, – I ain’t likely to want for amusement.”

The best bonnet was still very much askew, but the pleasant old face within, whose wrinkles had resumed their accustomed grooves, was irradiated with a look of unmistakable beatitude; and somehow it was borne in upon Nannie that her theatre party had been a success after all.

Olivia’s Sun-Dial

CHAPTER I

OLIVIA’S SUN-DIAL

“It’s all we need to make it the prettiest garden in Dunbridge.”

“Hm! And why must we have the prettiest garden in Dunbridge?”

“Why shouldn’t we?”

Here was a deadlock – a thing quite shockingly out of place in a garden, and one’s own particular garden at that!

Olivia Page could make almost anything grow, as she had abundantly proved, but even her garden-craft could hardly suffice for the setting of a sun-dial on a pedestal of snow-white marble over there where the four triangular rose-beds converged to a circle, and where the south sun would play on it all day long.

For a year Olivia had dreamed of this, and, since she was not a churlishly reticent young person, it was not the first intimation her father had received of her desire. Not until to-day, however, had she asked outright for what she wanted.

“I wish you would say something more,” she remarked, glancing sidewise at the professor’s deeply corrugated countenance, which, for all their intimacy, was sometimes difficult to decipher. She had heard of girls who could twist their parents round their fingers; she wondered how they did it.

The two were sitting on the white half-circle of a bench that stood at the west boundary of the old tennis-court, just where one end of the net used to be staked up. Excepting for that break, three sides of the garden were fenced in by the high wire screen originally designed to keep the tennis balls within bounds, and now doing duty as a trellis over which a luxuriant woodbine clambered, waving its reddening tendrils in the light September breeze. Wide flowerbeds bordered the entire court, the central turf being broken only by the cluster of rose-beds at the further end. From the white bench one looked across the grass to a broad flight of veranda steps, flanked on the right by a mass of white boltonia, while on the left a superb growth of New England asters reared their sturdy heads.

The garden had been a great success this year, quite the admiration of the neighbourhood. Really, Papa must be proud of it, and it was all Olivia’s doing. Who would ever guess that it had had its modest beginnings in half a dozen tin cracker-boxes with holes bored in the bottoms, where, in March, two years ago, she had planted queer little brown seeds as hard as pebbles, which Nature had straightway taken in hand, softening and expanding them down there in the dark, till they came alive, and began feeling their way up to meet the sun. Ah, the bliss of seeing those first tiny shoots turn into stems and leaflets, ready to play their part in the great spring awakening! Would Olivia ever love any flowers quite as she had loved those first seedlings, especially a certain pentstemon, which blossomed “white with purple spots,” exactly as the seed-catalogue had promised?

Yes, the garden was a great success, and just now it was at one of its prettiest moments, gay with autumn colours; the rudbeckia in its glory, and the great pink blossoms of the hibiscus spreading their skirts for all the world like ladies in an old-time minuet, while over yonder the soldier spikes of the flame-flower threatened to set the woodbine afire. Olivia loved the Latin names, but somehow “tritonia” did not seem to express those spikes of burning colour. And the roses! How lovely those late hybrids were! Why, the way that Margaret Dickson drooped her head above the pansies, still blooming freely at her feet, was enough to melt the heart of a Salem gibraltar! A pity that the professor’s attention seemed for the moment to be riveted upon the toe of his boot!

“I wish you would say something more,” Olivia repeated.

“Something different, you mean,” and Doctor Page smiled, benignly and stubbornly.

“For instance, you might tell me why you are opposed to it.”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I might; you said, only the other day, that I sometimes displayed almost human intelligence!”

The professor liked to have his jokes remembered; but still he seemed inclined to temporise.

“I might say that we couldn’t afford it. It is generally conceded that Alma Mater is not a munificent provider.”

“Yes; and you might say that my great-grandfather was not an East India trader – only you don’t tell fibs.”

“Or that a sun-dial is an anachronism.”

“You are too good a Latin scholar for that.”

“So a subterfuge won’t do? Very well; then you’ll have to put up with a psychological proposition.”

“How interesting!”

The professor glanced at the expectant young face turned toward him, and he could not but admit that his estimate of its owner’s intelligence had been well within the truth.

“You think a sun-dial would make it the prettiest garden in Dunbridge?”

“I’m sure it would.”

“And that is what you are aiming at?”

“Yes.”

“Now, I have noticed that when you have got what you are aiming at you lose interest in it.”

“O Papa!”

“There was tennis,” he went on, marking off the list on a combative forefinger, “and cookery; there was the Polyglot Club, and the Sketching Club, and–”

“But, Papa! They were every one of them good things, and I got a lot out of them; truly, I did.”

“No doubt; but as soon as you could play tennis, or sketch a pine tree, or toss an omelette a little better than the other girls, you had squeezed your orange dry.”

“But, Papa! I’ve stuck to gardening for more than two years!” Olivia’s tone seemed to give those years the dignity of centuries.

“True; but you haven’t got your sun-dial. You will consider that the finishing touch, and then before we know it you will be wanting to turn the whole thing into a sand-garden for the little micks at the Corners.”