MRS. WHITE’S PARTY.
BY MRS. H. G. ROWE.
“NOW, Ef May, you go right straight back home! Lotty an’ I want a little time to ourselves without a little snip like you taggin’ after, an’ listenin’ to every word we say; so you go right straight back this minute!”
Little Effie Maylie Marsh (called “Ef May” for short) turned her round blue eyes for a moment full upon her sister, and then, without word or sign, trotted composedly along in that sister’s wake, serenely oblivious of the fact that she was the one too many in the little party that had started, joyful at the prospect of a whole afternoon’s confidential chat, for the blackberry patch over the hill, when poor Ef May as usual intruded her roly-poly presence just when she was least wanted.
“Did Mother know that you came?”
Sister Anne looked and spoke with all the dignity that her twelve years was capable of, but the intruder never flinched.
“Yes, she did. I said lemme go pick blackberry with the other girls, an’ she said”—
“What?”
“Yes, if they don’t project.”
Both girls laughed, for Ef May was famous for her conversational blunders, and good-natured Lotty whispered under the shelter of her sunbonnet:
“Let her go, she won’t do any harm.”
“Yes she will. She’ll hear every single word we say and tell Gus of it just as quick as she gets home. I know her, of old.”
Poor Anne had had bitter experiences of her little sister’s quickness of hearing and equal quickness in repeating whatever she had heard, and she was far too shrewd to trust her on this occasion. But how to get rid of the dear little nuisance—ah, that was the rub!
“May,” she whispered mysteriously, and Ef May pricked up her ears and looked curious. “If you’ll go home now, like a good girl, you shall (put your ear closer, so Lotty won’t hear) go to Mrs. White’s party, to-night.”
Ef May had often heard older people talk about parties, and in her inquisitive little soul she had longed many a time, to know more about them, and especially to see with her own eyes what they were like; and now she stood with her great blue eyes wide open like a pair of very early morning glories, and a little flush of excitement deepened the roses on her plump cheeks, as Anne continued in her most seductive tones:
“Now, run right along, there’s a darling! and I’ll get you ready, my own self, and see that you have a”—
“Rockaway?” suggested Lotty, in a voice that sounded suspiciously hoarse, to which Anne replied, with an air of lofty disdain that,—
“Ef May had outgrown such babyish ways long ago, and would go to the party as other folks did.”
Ef May was a very old bird for one of her age, and this “chaff” between the two girls did strike her as a little suspicious. Perhaps there was some hidden flaw in this magnificent offer, and jerking her little yellow curly head one side like a shrewd canary, she fixed one round, bright eye full upon her sister’s face as she asked solemnly:
“Now, Anne Marsh,—‘honest an’ true, black an’ blue,’ can I go to Mrs. White’s party, this very night?”
“Yes, you shall, if I have to go with you myself.”
Ef May was satisfied; even Lotty’s half suppressed giggle passed unobserved, and her face shone with happy anticipation as turning her chubby feet homeward she smiled her parting salutation:
“Good-by,—I’ll go home an’ ’repair myself for the party.”
The girls laughed, but Lotty said rather regretfully:
“It was kinder too bad to fool the little thing so. What will you say to her when night comes?”
“Oh, I’ll coax her up, somehow—make her doll a new hat, maybe.”
And thus dismissing poor Ef May and her forthcoming disappointment from their minds the two girls walked gaily on, laughing and chatting in their pleasant school-girl fashion, as they gathered the rich purple berries, heedless of scratched hands and stained finger tips, while they listened to the partridge drumming in the cedars overhead, or the social chatter of that provident little householder the squirrel, who, perched upon some convenient bough out of possible reach of their longing fingers, discoursed in the choicest squirrel language of his way of preserving acorns and beechnuts by a receipt handed down from squirrel forefathers as far back as the days of Noah—a receipt that never had failed and never would.
It was after sunset when, with full baskets and tired steps, they walked up the lane that led to Anne’s home, both starting guiltily as they caught sight of Ef May’s little figure seated in the doorway with her bowl of bread and milk and her blue eyes turned wistfully upon them as they came slowly up the clover-bordered path.
“I was in hopes she’d be asleep,” muttered Anne with an uncomfortable feeling at the heart as she saw the joyfully significant nod with which her little sister greeted her, and hastily bestowing a generous handful of the delicious fruit upon her, she said, with an effort to appear natural and at ease:
“See what a lot of nice, ripe blackberries I brought you!”
The little girl smiled, but she shook her head with an air of happy importance.
“I’ll put ’em away for my breakfast,” she whispered. “I must save my appetite for to-night, you know.”
Anne could have cried with a relish.
“Oh, Ef May,” she began penitently, “I’m afraid I’ve done wrong in telling you—”
“Come, Anne! Come right in! Supper is waiting for you,” called their mother, and the confession was postponed until they should be alone again; but when that time came, and, after her usual custom Anne took the little one to her room to undress and put her to bed, the sight of the child’s happy expectant face forced back the words that she would have spoken and made her feel that she could not yet confess the deception.
“You must curl my hair real pretty, now. I do wish,” with a sigh, “that mamma would let me wear her waterwig.”
And the bright eyes shone like stars, as she thus gave the signal for the preparations to commence; and Anne obeyed, patiently brushing out the tangled locks and curling them one by one over her fingers, while she listened to the excited chatter of her little charge and vaguely wondered how long it would be possible for those dreadfully wide awake eyes to keep open. She was as long about her task as possible, but the the last curl was finished at last, and Effie asked eagerly:
“What dress are you going to put on me?”
By this time poor Anne was fairly desperate.
“I forgot to tell you,” she said with a sudden determination to carry out the joke to the end, “that this is a queer party, something like the ‘sheet and pillow case balls,’ that you’ve heard of,—and everybody goes to this in——in their nightgowns.”
Ef May looked up sharply.
“What’s that for?” she asked with a suspicious look at her sister’s guilty face.
“Because—well, I guess its because its the fashion.”
Ef May pondered the subject for a moment, and then her brow cleared:
“I’ll wear my very bestest one, then, with the tuckered out yoke an’ Humbug trimming,” she said, complacently, “an’ my corals outside.”
Anne obeyed without a word, and the little lady surveyed herself in the glass with a smile of intense satisfaction.
“Ain’t it most time to go?” she asked, and Anne detecting, as she thought, just the ghost of a yawn in the tone, replied briskly:
“Oh no, not for some time yet. Come and sit in my lap,—there lay your head on my shoulder, ea-sy, so as not to tumble the curls, and I’ll sing, ‘Tap, tap, tapping at the garden gate,’ so you won’t get tired of waiting you know.”
Mrs. White’s Party.
The little girl was nothing loth to accept her sister’s offer, for in spite of her exertions to keep herself awake the heavy eyelids would droop, the curly head press more heavily, and the lively, chattering little tongue grow slower and more indistinct in its utterances until at last it was silent altogether; not even the tiniest line of blue parted the golden lashes, the dimples settled undisturbed into their old places about the rosy mouth while only the faintest breath of a sigh answered to Anne’s good-night kiss as she softly laid her precious burden down among the snowy pillows of her own little bed, and stole away, with the secret resolve in her heart that never again, by word or act, would she deceive the innocent little sister who trusted so implicitly in her truth and honor.
. . . . . . . .
It was a funny party, and Ef May looked about her in astonishment as a servant in dressing gown and night-cap, announced in a sleepy sing-song tone:
“Miss Ef May Marsh?”
Mrs. White, a heavy-eyed lady in an elaborately embroidered and ruffled night-dress, gave her hand a little languid shake, and asked, in a faint, die-away voice:
“How do you rest, my dear?”
“Very well, ma’am, generally, ’cept when I eat too much cake for my supper.”
At this Mrs. White nodded intelligently.
“’S that you, Ef May?” murmured a voice at her elbow, and there was Tommy Bliss, his brown curls all in a tangle, and—oh, horrible! in a yellow flannel night-gown with legs. Such a figure as he was with his short body all the way of a bigness, and his little yellow straddling legs like an old-fashioned brass andiron.
Ef May turned away and pretended not to see him, while she remarked with an air of kindly condescension to a little girl near her:
“It’s impressively warm here.”
“Kick the clo’es off, then.”
There was a refreshing briskness in the tones that went straight to Ef May’s heart and she “took to” the stranger on the spot.
“Who is that old gentleman with such a big tassel in his night-cap?”
The little girl rubbed her eyes and looked in the direction indicated.
“Oh, that’s old Dr. Opiamus. He gives all the babies paragoric, and the old folks laudanum, so that they can die and not know it.”
Ef May shuddered. There was something in the idea that even to her childish fancy was horrible.
“Don’t you want another blanket?” asked her new friend; but Ef May shook her head.
“I hear some music?” she exclaimed, and just then began the funniest medley of sound that was ever heard:
First, a low, soft, half-frightened strain as of some wandering night-bird calling to his mate to set her glow-worm lamp in the window to light him home; then the quick, cheery note of the cricket chimed in; the owl’s solemn “too-whit! too-whit! too-whoo!” broke in at stately intervals; and the “rain-call” of the loon burst forth like a wild, weird laugh in the midst of the softer sounds, until the dancers, who had tried in vain to keep time with the strange music, faltered, hesitated, and at last stopped entirely, and dropped off to sleep upon the couches and easy chairs with which the rooms were filled, to a low, monotonous march that sounded exactly like the patter of raindrops upon the roof.
The costumes were a study, and Ef May who strange to say didn’t feel at all sleepy herself, found it rare fun to watch them.
There were old ladies, who minus their false fronts, teeth, and spectacles, would never have been recognized by their most intimate friends, in “calf’s-head” night-caps tied tightly under their chins, short night-gowns with wide, crimped ruffles at neck and wrists, and blue flannel petticoats just short enough to show the felt slippers beneath; young ladies, whose wealth of curls, braids and puffs had many a time excited the admiration and envy of their less fortunate sisters, appeared here, looking like picked chickens, their luxuriant tresses packed away in a drawer, their flounces, and ruffles, and panniers, and overskirts, all safe in the closet, their jewelry and their smiles laid aside together, and they nodded indifferently to stately gentlemen in tasselled night-caps and gorgeous dressing gowns, or frowned aside upon the boys, who, in all sorts of night gear, bobbed about in the most desirable nooks and corners, disturbing everybody with their clumsy ways and sleepy drollery.
In short, taken as a whole, a comical looking set they were,—and so stupid! Ef May felt somewhat hurt and a good deal offended when even her new friend dropped off into a doze instead of listening to her questions, and she was only too glad when a good looking young gentleman with a pen behind his ear and a roll of manuscript sticking out of the pocket of his dressing gown, walked leisurely up to her and began talking in a queer rambling fashion about the people around them.
“What makes some of the sleepiest folks groan and grumble so, all the time?” asked the little girl curiously, and her companion laughed, a queer, dreamy sort of a laugh, as he replied:
“Oh, those are the ones that came here on nightmares,—that sort of riding always makes people restless, it’s worse than a hobby for that!”
He spoke the last words with a sudden fierceness that startled her, but he didn’t seem to notice her frightened face for he kept on talking, in that steady but far off tone:
“Do you see that man there with his face all twisted up into a knot? That’s the head master of the Boys’ Grammar School,—he ate toasted cheese for his supper and he’s having a hard night of it,—no doubt the boys will have a hard time of it, to-morrow.”
Ef May thought of brother Gus’ careless scholarship, and trembled.
“There’s a little girl that told a lie to her mother,—hear her moan and sob! She will confess her fault and ask to be forgiven, in the morning, I think.”
Ef May silently took the lesson to heart.
“Do you see that old fellow in the corner? How he grasps with his hands and mutters, and now he is trying to call ‘murder!’ He has spent all his life hoarding up riches, and now, sleeping or waking, he lives in constant terror of losing his gold that he will neither spend for himself or others.”
“But here,” and the speaker pointed to a corner near at hand, where rolled up into a round yellow ball, was the figure of Johnny Staples, sound asleep in the velvety depths of an easy chair, his good-natured, honest little face, calm and peaceful, with not a cloud of suffering, remorse or fear to mar its innocent beauty.
“But here,” he repeated, “is one who will find in our friend’s party the refreshment and rest that only health and innocence can reasonably expect.”
Just then the company showed signs of a general breaking up, and the assembled guests gave such a loud, unanimous snore that Ef May started up, terrified half out of her senses; and pulling vigorously at her sleeping sister’s sleeve, she cried out with a burst of angry tears:
“It’s a nasty, mean old party, any how! They snore, an’ talk in their sleep, an’ make up faces, an’—I won’t go again, so, there!”
But she did for all that.
