THE PRIMA DONNA OF THE ATTIC
"Aunt Maria, dare I go without sewing just this one Saturday?"
It was Saturday afternoon in early October. All the week-end work of the farmhouse was done: the walks and porches scrubbed, the entire house cleaned, the shelves in the cellar filled with pies and cakes. Maria Metz stood by the wooden frame in which she had sewed Phœbe's latest quilt and chalked lines and half-moons upon the calico, preliminary to the actual work of quilting.
Phœbe's face was eloquent as her aunt turned and looked down.
"Why?" asked the woman calmly.
"Ach, because it's my birthday, eleven I am to-day. And pop's going to bring me new hair-ribbons from Greenwald, pretty blue ones, I asked him to bring, and nice and wide"—she opened her hands in imaginary picturing of the width of the new ribbons—"but most of all," she hastened to add as she saw an expression of displeasure on her aunt's face, "I'd like to have a party all to myself. I thought that so long as you're going to have women in to help you quilt, and that is like a party, only you don't call it so, why I could have a party for me alone. I'd like to play all afternoon instead of sewing first like I do still. Dare I, I mean may I?"—in conscientious endeavor to speak as Miss Lee was trying to teach her.
Maria Metz smiled at the little girl's idea of a party, and after a moment's hesitation replied, "Ach, yes well, Phœbe, I don't care."
"In the garret, oh, dare I go in the garret and play?" she asked excitedly.
"Yes, I guess. If you put everything away nice when you are done playin'."
"I will."
She started off gleefully.
"And be careful of the steps. I'm always afraid you'll fall down when you go up there, the steps are so narrow."
"Ach, I won't fall. I'll be careful. I'll play a while and then shall I help to quilt?" she offered magnanimously in return for the privilege of playing in the garret.
"No, I don't need you. But you can quilt nice, too. The last time you took littler stitches than Lizzie from the Home, but she don't see so good. But you needn't help to-day, for so many can't get round the frame good. Phares's mom and David's mom and Lyddy and Granny Hogendobler and Susan are comin', and that's enough for one quilt. You go play."
In a moment Phœbe was off, up the broad stairs to the second floor. There she paused for breath—"Oh, it's like going to a castle somewhere in a strange country, goin' to the garret! I'm always a little scared at first, goin' to the garret."
With a laugh she turned into a small room, opened a latched door, closed it securely behind her, and stood upon the lower step of the attic stairs. She looked about a moment. Above her were the stained rafters of the attic, where a dim light invested it with a strange, half fearful interest.
"Ach, now, don't be a baby," she admonished herself. "Go right up the stairs. You're a queen—no, I know!—You're a primer donner going up the platform steps to sing!"
With that helpful delusion she started bravely up the stairs and never paused until she reached the top step. She ran to a small window and threw it wide open so that the October sunshine could stream in and make the place less ghostly.
"Now it's fine up here," she cried. "And I dare—I may—talk to myself all I want. Aunt Maria says it's simple to talk to yourself, but goodness, when abody has no other boys or girls to talk to half the time like I don't, what else can abody do but talk to your own self? Anyhow, I'm up here now and dare talk out loud all I want. I'll hunt first for robbers."
She ran about the big attic, peered behind every old trunk and box, even inside an old yellow cupboard, though she knew it was filled with old school-books and older hymn-books.
"Not a robber here, less he's back under the eaves."
She crept into the low nook under the slanting roof but found nothing more exciting than a spider. "Huh, it's no fun hunting for robbers. Guess I'll spin a while."
With quick variability she drew a low stool near an old spinning-wheel, placed her foot on the slender treadle and twisted the golden flax in imitation of the way Aunt Maria had once taught her.
"I'll weave a new dress for myself—oh, goody!" she cried, springing from the stool. "Now I know what I'll do! I'll dress up in the old clothes in that old trunk! That'll be the very best party I can have."
She skipped to a far corner of the attic, where a long, leather-covered trunk stood among some boxes. In a moment the clasps were unfastened, the lid raised, a protecting cloth lifted from the top and the contents of the trunk exposed.
The child, kneeling before the trunk, clasped her hands and uttered an ecstatic, "Oh, I'll be a primer donner now! I remember there used to be a wonderful fine dress in here somewhere."
With childish feverishness, yet with tenderness and reverence for the relics of a long dead past, she lifted the old garments from the trunk.
"The baby clothes my mom wore—my mother, Miss Lee always says, and I like that name better, too. My, but they're little! Such tweeny, weeny sleeves! I wonder how a baby ever got into anything so tiny. I bet she was cunning—Miss Lee says babies are cunning. And here's the dress and cap and a pair of white woolen stockings I wore. Aunt Maria told me so the last time we cleaned house and I helped to carry all these things down-stairs and hang them out in the air so they don't spoil here in the trunk all locked up tight. I wish I could see how I looked when I wore these things. I wonder if I was a nice baby—but, ach, all babies are nice. I could squeeze every one I see, only when they're not clean I'd want to wash 'em first. And here's my mom—mother's wedding dress, a gray silk one. Ain't it too bad, now, it's going in holes! And this satin jacket Aunt Maria said my grandpap wore at his wedding; it has a silver buckle at the neck in front. And next comes the dress I like. It was my mother's mother's, and it's awful old. But I think it's fine, with the little pink rosebuds and the lace shawl round the neck and the long skirt. That's the dress I must wear now to play I'm a primer donner."
She held out the old-fashioned pink-sprigged muslin, yellowed with age, yet possessing the charm of old, well-preserved garments. The short, puffed sleeves, lace fichu and full, puffed skirt proclaimed it of a bygone generation.
"It's pretty," the child exulted as she shook out the soft folds. "Guess I can slip it on over my other dress, it's plenty big. It must button in the front, for that's the way the lace shawl goes. Um—it's long"—she looked down as she fastened the last little button. "Oh, I know! I'll tuck it up in the front and leave the long back for a trail! How's that, I wonder."
She unearthed an old mirror, hung it on a nail in the wall and surveyed herself in the glass.
"Um, I don't look so bad—but my hair ain't right. I don't know how primer donners wear their hair, but I know they don't wear it in two plaits like mine."
She pulled the narrow brown ribbons from her braids, opened the braids and shook her head vigorously until her curls tumbled about her head and over her shoulders. Then she knotted the two ribbons together and bound them across her hair in a fillet, tying them in a bow under her flowing curls.
"Now, I guess it's as good as I can fix it. I wish Miss Lee could see me now. I wish most of all my mom—mother could see me. Mebbe she'd say, 'Precious child,' like they say in stories, and then I'd say back, 'Mother dear, mother dear'"—she lingered over the words—"'Mother dear.' But mebbe she is saying that to me right now, seeing it's my birthday. I'll make believe so, anyhow."
She was silent for a moment, a puzzled expression on her face.
"I just don't see," she spoke aloud suddenly, "I don't see why I shouldn't make believe I have a mother, just adopt one like people do children sometimes. Aunt Maria says it's a risk to adopt some one's child, but I don't see that it would be a risk to adopt a mother. Let me see now—of all the women I know, who do I want to adopt? Not Mary Warner's mom—she's stylish and wears nice dresses, but I don't think I'd like her to keep. Not Granny Hogendobler, though she's nice and I like her a lot, a whole lot, and I wish her Nason would come back, but I don't see how I could take her for my mother; she's too old and she don't wear a white cap and my mother did, so I must take one that does. I don't want Phares's mom, either. Now, David's mom I like—yes, I like her. Most everybody calls her Aunty Bab and I'm just goin' to ask her if I dare call her Mother Bab! Mother Bab—I like that vonderful much! And I like her. When we go over to her house she's so nice and talks to me kind and the last time I was there she kissed me and said what pretty hair I got. Yes, I want David's mom for mine. I guess he won't care. He always gives me apples and chestnuts and things and he shows me birds' nests and I think he'll leave me have his mom, so long as he can have her too. I'll ask him once when I see him. I wonder who's goin' on the road to Greenwald."
She gathered up her long skirt and stepped grandly across the bare floor of the attic. As she stood by the window a boyish whistle floated up to her. She leaned over the narrow sill and peered through the evergreen trees at the road.
"That's David now, I bet! Sounds like his whistle. Oo-oo, David," she called as the boy came swinging down the road.
"Hello, Phœbe. Where you at?"
He turned in at the gate and looked around.
"Whew," he whistled as he glanced up and saw her at the little window of the attic. "What you doing up there?"
"Playin' primer donner. I just look something grand. Wait, I'll come down."
"Sure, come on down and let me see you. I'm going to hang around a while. Mom's here quilting, ain't she?"
"Sh!" Phœbe raised a warning finger, then placed her hands to her mouth to shut the sound of her voice from the people in the gray house. "You sneak round to the kitchen door, to the back one, so they can't hear you, and I'll come down. Aunt Maria mightn't like my hair and dress, and I don't want to make her cross on my birthday. Be careful, don't make no noise."
"Ha," laughed the boy. "Bet you're sneaking things, you little rascal."
Phœbe lifted her finger, shook her head, then smiled and turned from the window. She tiptoed down the dark attic stairs, then down the narrow back stairs to the kitchen and slipped quietly to the little porch at the very rear of the house.
"Gee whiz!" exclaimed David. "You're a swell in that dress!"
"Ain't I—I mean am I—ach, David, it's hard sometimes to talk like Miss Lee says we should."
"Where'd you get the dress, Phœbe?"
"Up in the garret. Aunt Maria said I dare go up and play 'cause it's my birthday."
"Hold on, that's just what I came for, to pull your ears."
"No you don't," she said crossly. "No you don't, David Eby, pull my ears." She clapped a hand upon each ear.
"Then I'll pull a curl," he said and suited the action to the word. He took one of the long light curls and pulled it gently, yet with a brusque show of savagery and strength—"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and one to make you grow. Now who says I can't celebrate your birthday!"
"You're mean, awful mean, David Eby!" She tossed her head in anger. But a moment later she relented as she saw him smile. "Ach," she said in friendly tone, "I don't care if you pull my curls. It didn't hurt anyhow. You can't do it again for a whole year. But don't you think I look like a primer donner, David?"
"Oh, say it right! How can you expect to ever be what you can't pronounce? It's pri-ma-don-na."
"Pri-ma-don-na," she repeated, shaking her curls at every syllable. "Do I look like a prima donna?"
"Yes, all but your face."
"My face—why"—she faltered—"what's wrong with my face? Ain't it pretty enough to be a prima donna?"
"Funny kid," he laughed. "Your face is good enough for a prima donna, but to be a real prima donna you must fix it up with cold cream, paint and powder."
"Powder!" she echoed in amazement. "Not the kind you put in guns?"
"Gee, no! It's white stuff—looks like flour; mebbe it is flour fixed up with perfume. Mary Warner had some at school last week and showed some of the girls at recess how to put it on. I was behind a tree and saw them but they didn't see me."
"I thought some of the girls looked pale—so that was what made them look so white! But how do you know all about fixing up to be a prima donna? Where did you learn?" She looked at him admiringly, justly appreciating his superior knowledge.
"Oh, when I had the mumps last winter I used to read the papers every day, clean through. There was a column called the 'Hints to Beauty' column, and sometimes I read it just for fun, it was so funny. It told about fixing up the face and mentioned a famous singer and some other people who always looked beautiful because they knew how to fix their faces to keep looking young. But I wouldn't like to see any one I like fix their faces like it said, for all that stuff——"
"But do you think all prima donnas put such things on their faces?" she interrupted him.
"Guess so."
"What was it, Davie?"
"Cold cream, paint, powder—here, where are you going?" he asked as she started for the door.
"I'll be out in a minute; you wait here for me."
"Cold cream, paint, powder," she repeated as she closed the door and left David outside. "Cream's all in the cellar." She took a pewter tablespoon from a drawer, opened a latched door in the kitchen and went noiselessly down the steps to the cellar. There she lifted the lid from a large earthen jar, dipped a spoonful of thick cream from the jar, and began to rub it on her cheeks.
"That's cold cream, anyhow," she said to herself. "It certainly is cold. Ach, I don't like the feel of it on my face; it's too sticky and wet." But she rubbed valiantly until the spoonful was used and her face glowed.
"Now paint, red paint—I don't dare use the kind you put on houses, for that's too hard to get off; let's see—I guess red-beet juice will do."
She stooped to the cool, earthen floor, lifted the cover from a crock of pickled beets, dipped the spoon into the juice and began to rub the colored liquid upon her glowing cheeks.
"If I only had a looking-glass, then I could see just where to put it on. But I don't dare to carry the juice up the steps, for if I spilled some just after Aunt Maria has them scrubbed for Sunday she'd be cross."
She applied the red juice by guesswork, with the inevitable result that her ears, chin, and nose were stained as deeply as her cheeks.
"Now the powder, then I'm through."
She tiptoed up to the kitchen again, took a handful of flour from the bin and rubbed it upon her face.
"Ugh, um," she sputtered, as some of the flour flew into her eyes and nostrils. "I guess that was too thick!" Then she knelt on a chair and looked into the small mirror that hung in the kitchen. She exclaimed in horror and disappointment at the vision that met her gaze.
"Why, I don't like that! I look awful! I'll rub off some of the flour. I have blotches all over my face. Do all prima donnas look this way, I wonder. But David knows, I guess. I'll ask him if I did it right."
She grabbed one end of the kitchen towel and disposed of some of the superfluous flour, then, still doubtful of her appearance, opened the door to the porch where the boy waited for her.
"Do I look——" she began, but David burst into hilarious laughter.
"Oh, oh," he held his sides and laughed. "Oh, your face——"
"Don't you laugh at me, David Eby! Don't you dare laugh!"
She was deeply hurt at his unseemly behavior, but the deluge was only beginning! The sound of David's laughter and Phœbe's raised voice reached the front room where the quilting party was in progress.
"Sounds like somebody on the back porch," said Aunt Maria. "Guess I better go and see. With so many tramps around always abody can't be too careful."
The sight that met Maria Metz's eyes as she opened the back door left her speechless. Phœbe turned and the two looked at each other in silence for a few long moments.
"Don't scold her," David said, sobered by the sudden appearance of the woman and frightened for Phœbe—Aunt Maria could be stern, he knew. "Don't scold her. I told her to do it."
"You did not, David; don't you tell lies for me! You just told me how to do it and I went and done it myself. I'm playing prima donna, Aunt Maria," she explained, though she knew it was a futile attempt at justification. "I'm playing I'm a big singer, so I had to fix up in this dress and put my hair down this way and fix my face."
"Great singer—march in here!" The woman had fully regained her voice. "It's a bad girl you are! To think of your making such a monkey of yourself when I leave you go up in the garret to play! This ends playing in the garret. Next Saturday you sew! Ach, yes, you just come in," she commanded, for Phœbe hung back as they entered the house. "You come right in here and let all the women see how nice you play when I leave you go up in the garret instead of make you sew. This here's the tramp I found," she announced as she led her into the room where the women sat around the quilting frame and quilted.
"What!" several of them exclaimed as they turned from their sewing and looked at the child. Granny Hogendobler and David Eby's mother, however, smiled.
"What's on your face?" asked one woman sternly.
Phœbe hung her head, abashed.
"That's how nice she plays when I leave her go up on the garret and have a nice time instead of making her sew like she always has to Saturdays," Aunt Maria said in sharp tones which told the child all too plainly of the displeasure she had caused.
"I didn't mean," Phœbe looked up contritely, "I didn't mean to be bad and make you cross. I was just playing I was a big singer and I put cold cream and paint and powder on my face——"
"Cream!"
"Paint!"
"Powder!"
The shrill staccato words of the women set the child trembling.
"But—but," she faltered, "it'll all wash off." She gave a convincing nod of her head and rubbed a hand ruefully across the grotesquely decorated cheek. "It's just cream and red-beet juice and flour."
"Did I ever!" exclaimed the mother of Phares Eby.
"I-to-goodness!" laughed Granny Hogendobler.
"Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," quoted one of the other women.
"Come here, Phœbe," said the mother of David Eby, and that woman, a thin, alert little person with tender, kindly eyes, drew the unhappy little girl to her. "You poor, precious child," she said, "it's a shame for us all to sit here and look at you as if we wanted to eat you. You've just been playing, haven't you?" She turned to the other women. "Why, Maria, Susan, I remember just as well as if it were only yesterday how we used to rub our cheeks with rough mullein leaves to make them red for Love Feast, don't you remember?"
Aunt Maria's cheeks grew pink. "Ach, Barbara, mebbe we did that when we were young and foolish, but we didn't act like this."
"Not much different, I guess," said Phœbe's champion with a smile. "Only we forget it now. Phœbe is just like we were once and she'll get over it like we did. Let her play; she'll soon be too old to want to play or to know how. She ain't a bad child, just full of life and likes to do things other people don't think of doing."
"She, surely does," said Aunt Maria curtly, ill pleased by the woman's words. "Where that child gets all her notions from I'd like to know. It's something new every day."
"She'll be all right when she gets older," said David's mother.
"Be sure, yes," agreed Granny Hogendobler; "it don't do to be too strict."
"Mebbe so," said the other women, with various shades of understanding in their words.
Phœbe looked gratefully into the face of Granny Hogendobler, then she turned to David's mother and spoke to her as though there were no others present in the room.
"You know, don't you, how little girls like to play? You called me precious child just like she would——"
"She would," repeated Aunt Maria. "What do you mean?"
"I mean my mother," she explained and turned again to her champion. "I was just thinking this after on the garret that I'd like you for my mother, to adopt you for it like people do with children when they have none and want some. I hear lots of people call you Aunty Bab—dare I call you Mother Bab?"
The woman laid a hand on the child's tumbled hair. Her voice trembled as she answered, "Yes, Phœbe, you can call me Mother Bab. I have no little girl so you may fill that place. Now ask Aunt Maria if you should wash your face and get fixed right again."
"Shall I, Aunt Maria?"
"Yes. Go get cleaned up. Fold all them clothes right and put 'em in the trunk and put your hair in two plaits again. If you're big enough to do such dumb things you're big enough to comb your hair." And Aunt Maria, peeved and hurt at the child's behavior, went back to her quilting while Phœbe hurried from the room alone.
The child scrubbed the three layers of decoration from her face, trudged up the stairs to the attic, took off the rose-sprigged gown and folded it away—a disconsolate, disillusioned prima donna.
When the attic was once more restored to its orderliness she closed the window and went down-stairs to wrestle with her curls. They were tangled, but ordinarily she would have been able to braid them into some semblance of neatness, but the trying experience of the past moments, the joy of gaining an adopted mother, set her fingers bungling.
"Ach, I can't, I just can't make two braids!" she said at length, ready to burst into tears.
Then she remembered David. "Mebbe he's on the porch yet. I'll go see once."
With the narrow brown ribbons streaming from her hand and a hair-brush tucked under one arm she ran down the stairs. She found David, for once a gloomy figure, on the back porch, just where she had left him.
"David," she said softly, "will you help me?"
"Why"—his face brightened as he looked at her—"you ain't"—he started to say "crying"—"you ain't mad at me for getting you into trouble with Aunt Maria?"
"Ach, no. And I ain't never going to be mad at you now for I just adopted your mom for my mom—mother. She's going to be my Mother Bab; she said so."
"What?"
He knitted his forehead in a puzzled frown. Phœbe explained how kind his mother had been, how she understood what little girls like to do, how she had promised to be Mother Bab.
"You don't care, Davie, you ain't jealous?" she ended anxiously.
"Sure not," he assured her; "I think it's kinda nice, for she thinks you're a dandy. But did they haul you over the coals in there?"
"Yes, a little, all but Granny Hogendobler and your mom—Mother Bab, I mean. Isn't it funny to get a mother when you didn't have one for so long?"
"Guess so."
"But, David, will you help me? I can't fix my hair and Aunt Maria is so mad at me she said I can just fix it myself. The plaits won't come right at all. Will you help me, please?" She asserted her femininity by adding new sweetness to her voice as she asked the uncommon favor.
"Why"—he hesitated, then looked about to see if any one were near to witness what he was about to do—"I don't know if I can. I never braided hair, but I guess I can."
"Be sure you can, David. You braid it just like we braid the daisy stems and the dandelion stems in the fields. You're so handy with them, you can do most anything, I guess."
Spurred by her appreciation of his ability he took the brush and began to brush the tangled hair as she sat on the porch at his feet.
"Gee," he exclaimed as the hair sprang into curls when the brush left it, "your hair's just like gold!"
"And it's curly," she added proudly.
"Sure is. Wouldn't Phares look if he saw it! I told him your hair is prettier than Mary Warner's and he said I was silly to talk about girls' hair."
"I don't want him to see it this way," she said, "for he'd say it's a sin to have curly, pretty hair, even if God made it grow that way! He's awful queer! I wouldn't want him for my adopted brother."
"Guess he'd keep you hopping," laughed David.
"Guess I'd keep him hopping, too," retorted Phœbe, at which the boy laughed.
"Now what do I do?" he asked when all the hair was untangled.
"Part it in the middle and make two plaits."
"Um-uh."
The boy's clumsy fingers fumbled long with the parting; several times the braids twisted and had to be undone, but after a struggle he was able to announce, "There now, you're fixed! Now you're Phœbe Metz, no more prima donna!"
"Thanks, David, for helping me. I feel much better around the head—guess curls would be a nuisance after all."
