A Bookful of Girls

“Not such a bad idea,” Olivia admitted unguardedly.

“There you are! The mere mention of a new scheme is enough to set you agog!”

But this was not their first fencing match, and Olivia had learned to parry.

“I thought you believed in people being open-minded,” she ventured demurely.

“And so I do; but not so open-minded that for every new idea that comes in an old one goes out.”

“Oh, the sun-dial hasn’t got away yet,” she laughed, springing to her feet and going over to the court-end of the garden, where she placed herself in the exact centre of the converging rose-beds.

“There!” she cried; “don’t you see how my white gown lights up the whole place? It’s just the high light that it needs.”

And so it was: a fact of which no one was better aware than the professor. As he, too, rose and sauntered toward the house he could not deny that Olivia’s ideas were usually good. The only trouble was that she had too many of them; and here was the kernel of truth that gave substance to his whimsical argument. The beauty of the garden was not lost upon him, nor yet the skill and industry of the young gardener. But more important than either was the advantage to the girl’s health. Olivia was sound as a nut; of course she was! There could be no doubt of that. But – so had her mother seemed, until that fatal winter ten years ago. He did not fear for Olivia; why should he? Only – well, this out-of-door life was a capital thing for anybody. No, he could not have her tire of her garden.

At the foot of the veranda steps Dr. Page paused and glanced again at his daughter. She had left the rose-beds and was already intent upon her work, pulling seeds from the hollyhocks over yonder. She made a pretty picture in her white gown, standing shoulder-high among the brown stalks, her slender fingers deftly gleaning from such as showed no rust. The child was really very persistent about her gardening; she had fairly earned an indulgence. Perhaps, after all, she might be trusted. He moved a few steps toward her.

“Olivia,” he said, – and the first word betrayed his relenting, – “Olivia, your sun-dial scheme is not such a bad idea. I should rather like that white-petticoat effect myself. Supposing we say that if between now and next June you don’t think of anything you want more, we’ll have it.”

“Oh, you blessèd angel! What could I want more?”

“Time will show,” the blessèd angel replied, retracing his steps toward the house – unaided by angelic wings!

“Yes,” Olivia called confidently. “It’s the sun-dial that time will show, and afterward – why, the sun-dial will show the time!” – and although he made no sign, she knew there were little puckers of amused approval about her father’s mouth.

As if she could ever want anything more than a sun-dial! she thought, while she passed along the borders, harvesting her little crop. She had finished with the hollyhocks, and now she was bending over a bed of withered columbines. And there were the foxglove seeds still clinging. Really, it was almost impossible to keep up. How brilliant the salvia was to-day, and what a brave second blossoming that was of the delphinium, its knightly spurs, metallic blue, gleaming in the sun!

“No,” she declared to herself, “there will never be anything so much worth while as the garden. Why, of course there won’t; because Nature is the best thing in the world – the very best.”

“Plase, ma’am, will ye gimme a bowkay?”

Olivia turned, startled by a voice so near at hand, for she had heard no footfall on the thick turf. There, in the centre of the grass-grown space, stood two comical little midgets, their smutty yet cherubic faces blooming brightly above garments highly coloured and earthy, too, as the autumn garden-beds.

“Dear me!” Olivia laughed, “how things do sprout in a garden! Did you come right up out of the ground?”

“Plase, ma’am, a bowkay! Me mudder’s sick an’ me fader’s goned away.”

The speaker, a boy of five, stood holding by the hand something in the way of a sister, about two sizes smaller. At Olivia’s little joke, which they did not in the least understand, they had both grinned sympathetically, showing rows of diminutive teeth as white and even as snow-berries.

“Bless your little hearts, of course you shall have a bouquet! Come and choose one,” – and taking a hand of each Olivia led them slowly along the brilliant borders.

They were a bit shy at first, but they soon picked up their courage, and Patsy fell to accumulating a mass of incongruous blossoms whose colours fought each other tooth and nail. Little Biddy, more modest, as beseemed her inferior rank in the scale of being, fixed her heart upon a single flame-flower which absolutely refused to reconcile itself with the ingenuous pink of her calico frock.

“How long has your mother been ill?” Olivia asked of the boy, who by this time was quite hidden behind a perfect forest of asters and larkspur and lobelia cardinalis.

“Me mudder’s always sick. She coughs an’ coughs, and den she lays on de bed long whiles.”

“And she likes flowers?”

“Yes, ma’am; me an’ Biddy picked a bowkay outen a ashba’l oncet, an’ me mudder sticked it in a tumbler an’ loved it. Come, Biddy, make de lady a bow!” Upon which the small Chesterfield stood off a few steps and gave an absurd little bob of a bow which Biddy gravely endeavoured to imitate.

“I think I’ll go with you,” said Olivia, open-minded as ever to a new interest; and hand in hand and chattering amicably, the three moved across the turf and down the long gravel walk to the dusty street. Surprising how short the distance was between the sweet seclusion of the old tennis-court and the squalid quarter where these little human blossoms grew!

Olivia was thinking of that as she stood on the veranda an hour later, looking down upon the flowery kingdom to which all her interest and ambition had been pledged. Yes, it was lovely, lovely in the long afternoon light, and it would have been lovelier still with the gleaming marble she had dreamed of. She really tried to keep her mind upon it, to forget the little drama over there in the stuffy tenement. But no; she was too good a gardener for that. Was not a whole family broken and wilting for lack of means to transplant it?

The doctor had ordered Mrs. O’Trannon to Colorado, and Mike had dropped his work as “finisher” – whatever that might be – and had gone out to prepare the way for the others to follow. He had found no chance to work at his trade, but he had got a job on a ranch, where the pay was small, but the living good. A fine place it would be for the invalid and the children, when once he could get together the money to send for them. But meanwhile here they were, and the winter coming on.

As Olivia stood looking down upon her beloved garden, she could not seem to see anything but brown stalks and dead blossoms. All that lavish colour looked fictitious and transitory; she had somehow lost faith in it.

Mrs. O’Trannon had been pleased with the flowers; she had grown up on a farm, she said. Sure she never’d ha’ got sick at all if she’d ha’ stayed where she belonged. But then, where would Mike have been, and the babies? And where would Mike be, and the babies, Olivia thought with a pang, – where would they be if the mother wilted and died? She turned, suddenly, and passed in at the glass doors and on to her father’s study.

At sight of the kind, quizzical face lifted at her entrance, Olivia winced a bit. About an hour and a half it must be, since he said it, and he had given her a year! As if that made any difference! she told herself, with a little defiant movement of the chin, as she crossed the room and seated herself at the opposite side of the big writing-table where she could face the music handsomely.

“Well, Olivia; changed your mind yet?” the professor inquired, struck, perhaps, by the resolution of her aspect.

“Yes,” she answered, in an impressive tone, “I’ve thought of something I should prefer to a sun-dial.”

Dr. Page took off his glasses and laid them upon his open book. He did not really imagine that she was serious – such a turn-about-face was too precipitate even for Olivia; but it pleased him to meet her on her own ground.

“And what is it this time? A sixty-inch telescope? Or a diamond tiara?”

“Well, no. Those are things I had not thought of – before! It’s a kind of gardening project – a little matter of transplanting.”

“Will it cost a hundred and fifty dollars?”

“About that, I should think, to do it properly and comfortably. And – it can’t wait till June. It’s the kind of transplanting that has to be done in the autumn.”

Then, dropping the little fiction, and resting her chin upon her folded hands, the better to transfix her father’s mocking countenance, – “Papa,” she said, “there’s a poor family down at the Corners, – our neighbours, you know, – and the mother is dying for want of transplanting, just like the beautiful hydrangea – you remember? – that I didn’t understand about till it was too late. I never knew what too late meant, till I saw that splendid great bush lying stone-dead on the ground when we came home from the Adirondacks last year. A great healthy hydrangea dying just for lack of the right kind of soil! And now, here is this good human woman, that might live out her life and bring up her little family, and be happy and useful for years to come. Such a nice woman she must be to name her babies Patsy and Biddy, when she might have called them Algernon and Celestina, you know, and just spoiled it all! – and such a nice, kind husband to take care of her on a big ranch where there’s good air, and lots to eat, and plenty of work and not too much, and – why Papa! they might have a garden out there! who knows? What a thing that would be for the prairie! A real New England garden!”

“With a sun-dial?” the professor interposed.

For an instant Olivia’s face fell, but only for an instant.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, with a very convincing seriousness, “that perhaps a sun-dial is not so important, after all. At any rate it’s not so important as the mother of a family; now, is it, Papa?”

“That depends upon the point of view,” the professor opined. “As a high light among the rose-bushes I should be constrained to give my vote for the sun-dial.”

Olivia sprang to her feet.

“That means that you are coming straight over with me to see Mrs. O’Trannon,” she cried, “and that you are going to have the whole family packed off to Colorado quicker’n a wink! Come along, please! There’s plenty of time before dinner!”

“It’s just another of Nature’s miracles!” Olivia observed, as she and her father stood one morning in late October watching the workmen pack the sods about the beautiful pedestal, now securely planted upon its base of cement and broken stone. “It always makes me think of the wonderful things that came up in those tin cracker-boxes you used to make such fun of. There really doesn’t seem to be any place too unlikely for Nature to set things going in.”

The marble was but roughly hewn, in lines that held the suggestion of an hourglass. The top only was smoothly finished, while here and there on the curving sides the hint of a leaf, a blossom, a trailing vine, came and went with the point of view, like cloud-pictures or the pencillings of Jack Frost. It was as if a ’prentice-hand had tried to express the soul of an artist, too self-distrustful to work more boldly.

“Funny, how things come into your head,” Olivia went on. “Do you know, Papa, that day when I was helping Mrs. O’Trannon with her preposterous packing and suddenly came upon this miracle hidden away under an old bedquilt, the only thing I could think of was the way my first pentstemons came out, ‘white with purple spots,’ exactly as I had chosen them by the seed-catalogue. And to think that she had bought it for a dollar of that poor stone-cutter’s widow that was moving out – bought it to make pastry on because the top was smooth and cold! And then had never had time to make but one pie in the three years! I wish you could have heard her tell about it. ‘Faith, it cost me a dollar, me one pie did, an’ Mike says it’s lucky it was that I didn’t make a dozen whin they come so high! Silly b’y, that Mike!’ O Papa, isn’t it heavenly that they’re together again?”

“So you think there is nothing Nature can’t do?” Dr. Page mused, with apparent irrelevance. “How about the sun-dial itself?”