A BALLAD OF THE ARK.
The elephant is painted blue, the lambs are painted red,
The zebra has rich carmine stripes upon his back and head.
The rooster's larger than the cow, the pigs are works of art,
And as for goats and lions, why, you can't tell them apart.
Shem, Ham, and Japhet look just like a row of wooden pegs,
With great long ulsters hanging down to cover up their legs.
In which they all resemble both their father and his wife,
And which is which I couldn't say—no, not to save my life.
The horses are both green and brown, and made, 'tis really true,
From just the same queer pattern as the bear and kangaroo;
And every dove and stork and chick in that strange wooden ark
Is modelled like the ostrich that they've got in Central Park.
And if you broke the horns and legs from off the yellow moose
You'd take him for a baby seal, or possibly a goose;
But spite of all I love that ark as well as any toy
That ever brought a bit of fun to any girl or boy.
But one queer thing that puzzles me, the ark, built for a boat,
When deluged in the bath-tub can't be got to stay afloat;
While all the beasts 'twas built to save instead of getting drowned,
Go floating gayly just as safe as when they're on the ground.
Carlyle Smith.
[AMERICAN-NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENTS.]
MARTHA WASHINGTON'S VALENTINE.
BY EMMA J. GRAY.
A group of merry girls and boys were talking with Mrs. General Washington one February evening, when one of the number suddenly inquired: "Did you ever get a valentine from the President?"
To which came the ready reply, "Of course I did!" as a conscious smile rippled over the still beautiful though now elderly face.
"And did you ever go to a valentine party when you were a girl?"
"Why, of course I did," and Mrs. Washington straightened herself more particularly in her high-back chair.
"Oh, do tell us all about it!"
And as she responded with a most indulgent smile, they gathered close to hear.
It was night in old Virginia when, for the entertainment of our visiting friends, grandmother laid aside her knitting, and glided slowly, stately, gracefully around the room. She was dancing the minuet.
Unexpectedly my maid entered, bearing a tray on which was a white envelope sealed with rose-colored wax imprinted with a laughing cupid. I was much embarrassed at receiving this before so many curious eyes, and warningly looked at the girl, but it was too late; indeed, her ready words made me only the more conspicuous.
"I 'member to watch, kase uver sence dey here"—with a nod of her head in the visitors' direction—"young misses mons'us quiet!"
Fearing she might become yet more garrulous, I hurriedly asked, "Nancy, did the carriage return from the King's Mill Plantation?" and the girl left the room to inquire.
It was St. Valentine's eve. And who had sent this beautiful valentine—for beautiful I knew it was—notwithstanding that as yet the seal remained unfastened! Would I open it before all these guests, or would I make excuse and go in hiding?
Grandmother settled the question by inquiring, "Valentine, dearie? Many's the one I got when I was a girl."
"I suppose you did, grandma, for you've told me you were much like your old friend Madam Ball—and she was a great belle;" and then continuing, foolish child that I was, with a quick rush of the red blood all over my face, even to the roots of my hair, "I've heard, too, that her daughter, when at my age, was just the comeliest maiden possible—so modest, so sensible and loving, with hair resembling flax, and cheeks like May-blossoms."
These words caused grandmother to come closer, and, scrutinizing my face, she asked, "Why, what's put Mary Ball into your head, child?" and, not waiting for reply, added, "You cannot deceive your old grandmother; you might as well give up now as at any other time;" and pointing to the still unopened valentine, while looking at the group of visitors, she tantalizingly said, "Open it, dearie, and see what George has sent you."
This was too much, and I fled from the room.
Grandmother was right, and I knew it, for I was learning to know George Washington's handwriting, and I was already planning how I would tease him when we met at the party to be given the following evening at the Oaklands, to which home we were both invited.
There had lately been a wedding at our house; a cousin of my mother's was the bride, and such a gay time as this excitement had brought! George Washington was among the guests, and I was much pleased because he danced with me several times.
Referring to an old Virginia wedding, there is nothing comparable to it, as the preparations go regularly on for successive nights and days—such preparations as ruffle-crimping, jelly-straining, cocoanut-grating, egg-frothing, silver-cleaning, to be ready for guests who arrive a few days before, and, as in our case, remain for a week or more afterwards. Nor do the guests arrive alone; they come in their private carriages, with horses and an army of negro servants to be entertained. Just think of the numberless rice-waffles, beat-biscuit, light bread, muffins, and laplands to be brought hot on the breakfast table! and the ham, dried venison, turkey, fried chicken, cinnamon cakes, quince marmalade on the tea table! Oh, a wedding meant an out-and-out stir in those days! But our house was a large old place in the midst of scenery both lovely and picturesque, and we owned many negroes, who had been taught all sorts of work, and therefore it was easy for us to prepare. Indeed, our head cook, Aunt Tamer, was a character, black and portly, but cleanly turbaned and white-aproned. I seem to hear her now praising her own concoctions, and she was especially proud of "bakin' de bes' beat-biscuit an' loaf bread."
But I was talking about my valentine and the party. Probably because the fête of St. Valentine belongs to nearly every country, and since the fifteenth century it was exceedingly popular in England and France, the girls were asked to wear fifteenth-century costume; my dress was of the finest white mull, as fine as a spider's web, and embroidered with lilies-of-the-valley. The boys' clothes were in exact copy of old English gentlemen, and they wore long queues tied with black ribbons, wide ruffled shirt fronts, short breeches, and knee-buckles. The decorations were elaborate—pink roses and rosebuds in solid banks of lavishness. Indeed, the large square rooms seemed transformed into flower-gardens. One exquisite effect was produced with magnolia leaves and wax candles. These leaves formed a cornice to the drawing-room ceiling, and the candles were so deftly placed that only the lighted tapers were seen. They shone like stars on a summer's night, for the dark green gloss on the large leaves acted as reflectors, while suspended from the ceiling's centre were several rows of pink satin sash ribbon, each piece hanging so gracefully that when the ends were fastened, about four feet below the cornice, the ceiling was as effective and beautiful as the most critical fresco-painter could desire. Where each end was fastened there was a large bunch of magnolia leaves and candles assimilating a side-chandelier, and in the centre of the ceiling there were magnolia leaves in profusion.
No sooner was I in the drawing-room, than my friend George Washington gallantly advanced, and begged me to do him the honor of being his partner in the cotillion. After that there followed many other dances, all of which he would ask me to dance; but I did not forget he had sent me a valentine the night before, and therefore I decided to tease him by dancing with some of the other boys, especially with my particularly kind friend, young Custis.
OUR HOSTESS APPEARED AS THE GODDESS OF LOVE.
We had reels, cotillions, and schottisches almost without number; but the dance just before supper was arranged for the occasion, and called St. Valentine. Our hostess suddenly appeared in soft fleecy white stuff, with spangled wings, as Venus, the goddess of love, her mother explained. First dancing one of the plantation dances that her old mammy had taught her, she sang a song about valentines; then taking a gilded basket, and coquetting through the drawing-room in the most graceful of reel steps, she gave a valentine to each guest. Then again dancing another of the plantation dances, she as gracefully withdrew.
A few moments later a musician's voice called, "Choose your partners by matching valentines"; and thus again George Washington advanced, and finding that his valentine really was the exact counterpart of mine, we walked to our places in the now rapidly forming minuet, and afterwards we marched together up and down the rooms and through the wide halls to supper.
After supper we played several games, one of which represented prominent characters, and some not so prominent—for example, making believe we were our own mothers or fathers. In this way, Colonel Ball of Lancaster, who was George Washington's grandfather, was taken, and Augustine Washington, his father. George Washington himself took the character of George III., while I took the character of Betty Washington, his sister. But some of the other boys and girls preferred representing Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Fairfax, Governor Dimwiddie, Miss Burney, Hannah Ball, who married Raleigh Travers, of the same blood as Sir Walter Raleigh, and other titled gentlemen and women. Those who were to be guessed decided for themselves who they would be. Then all the guests asked questions, to which correct answer was given. If the name was not guessed within five minutes, it had to be told, for longer than five minutes made the game too tedious.
GOSSIP.
This game was followed by two of the girls taking seats in the middle of the room. They had previously withdrawn and put over their pretty dresses queer-looking old shawls, and covered their chestnut-brown curls with odd-looking bonnets tied under the chin. Then a cup of tea was given to each, and looking intently at one another, slowly stirring their tea meantime, one exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. "You don't say so!" whereupon our hostess inquired, "Who can tell what these girls represent?" and a number of voices replied, "Gossip." At this answer the girls rose, and laughingly threw aside their shawls and hats.
Then the youngest boy took one of the chairs made vacant by the girls. After seating himself, it was noticed that he put a big coat over his lap, and making a great show of threading his needle, he diligently sewed on a button. And the hostess asked, "What does Charley represent?" The children could hardly reply for laughing, for the boy looked so demure and industrious; but after a moment's hesitation there came the vigorous answer, "A bachelor."
Then Aunt Charlotte, an old negro woman, entered; she pretended to be a fortune-teller. And I afterwards learned her coming had been all arranged by the hostess, to whom I had been foolish enough to tell of the advent of my valentine.
She approached me first, and prostrated herself, face downwards, on the floor. "Why, Aunt Charlotte!" I exclaimed, "do get up."
"Lor', honey, I never specs to see de greates' ladie in de lan'."
"Well, stand up," was my agitated reply, "and explain what you mean."
"Bless de chile! I love to think I'm some 'count."
"Hurry!" was my impatient exclamation, "I can't wait." And all my young friends were grouped close around, zealously listening for what the old creature was about to say.
"I mean you'll make de grandes' marriage 'bout here."
"Whom will I marry?" were my now eager though venturesome words.
"Why, de young mars' who sent you de valentine."
I was so provoked with myself that I could have bitten my tongue off, though, after all, it was a most natural answer to give on St. Valentine's night; and thus having decided my future, Aunt Charlotte hurriedly turned to another, and yet another, as both girls and boys pressed forward for their turn. When she reached George Washington I listened closely. She told him he would ride in a coach and six, and that "we've nuver seen sich wondrous time as 'Mars George'll hav'."
When the fortune-telling was concluded, I learned that it was already considerably beyond the time to start home, and therefore speedily made my adieux; a few moments later found me in our high-stepped carriage rapidly rolling out of the Oakland grounds.
"And thus ended the episode which I promised to tell you," said Martha Washington, the wife of the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental army and President of the United States, to the French officer De Grasse at the Peace Ball given in Fredericksburg.
"Pardon, madame; not ended, but rather begun," was the courtly response.
"Oh, what a lovely party!" was the exclamation from many of the attentive listeners. "And why couldn't we repeat it now?" was the immediate question.
"Indeed I shall," said one of the girls, with a decided shake of her long curls. "My very next party will be an old Virginia evening—dresses, dances, games, and all."
[JOHNNY'S ICE-BOAT.]
When Johnny was quite tired of making himself big pigs out of snowballs, and hammock-chairs for drawing the girls over the snow out of crotched sticks and old shawls, and Scandinavian skates out of barrel staves, he decided he would make an ice-boat, and all the more firmly because the whole family, except his pretty aunt Mamy, told him it was nonsense, and he never could, and an ice-boat was a dangerous thing if he could, and it was of no use anyway.
There were a lot of old skates in the garret, some big nails and some pieces of wood in the shed; his aunt Mamy could help him rig some sort of a sail. It was a pity if he couldn't make an ice-boat, and the river stretching away a glare of ice for twenty miles and more.
He ran down to the shed and chose for himself a board some five feet long, and a cross-board that he nailed on it a foot from the end. About a foot from the other end of the first board he nailed a bit of wood for a seat, the sides of it slanting out so that it was a little wider before than behind. That done, he nailed a couple of braces, slanting from just behind the seat nearly out to the ends of the cross-piece, and from the latter places two others, shorter ones, meeting on the extreme end of the long first board, beyond the cross-piece, so that the whole looked like the frame of a huge kite. He could have done without the braces, which were only stout three-inch-square sticks, but it seemed a little stronger and safer to have them, he said.
It seemed as if every one in the house had an errand for him to do that afternoon, and he almost gave up the idea of finishing his ice-boat at all. "When a fellow has such a piece of work as this in hand people might let him alone," he grumbled. And I don't know how he would have come out if he hadn't divined that his aunt Mamy was making mince patties for some use connected with himself.
But Johnny was up before the sun the next morning, and where the cross-piece of his frame rested on the longer board, in the very centre, he bored a hole for his mast—bored a lot of little holes close together, and worked them out with his jack-knife till he had one big hole. On either side of that he nailed a small block, and on the top of those he nailed a bit of board that just fitted the space, and then in the middle of that bit of board he made another hole just over the hole already bored, and there was a step for his mast, and his mast itself was ready in the shape of a good stout bean-pole that he had.
Very well pleased with himself so far, Mr. Johnny hurried through breakfast, and got out of the way before his grandmother could ask him to find her glasses, or his mother could suggest a few pages of history. His conscience was not easy, but then he would look for the glasses all a fore-noon another day, and learn a great many pages of history in the afternoon; and they really should consider, he thought, that one learns something in building an ice-boat; and if his heart smote him about the dear baby who cried for Johnny to play with him, the baby would cry at the other side of his mouth when he made a voyage in Johnny's ice-boat. So he took two of the old skates now, screwed the heel-screw of each into a bit of wood a foot long and three inches wide, and, working holes for the leathers, strapped the skates firmly, each to its own piece of wood, and then nailed the pieces securely under each end of the cross-piece, the skates there pointing forwards.
For the rudder then he took the third skate, screwed and strapped to a bit of wood as before, and nailed and screwed that bit of wood to the club end of a long round stick which he brought up through a hole already bored in the stern end of the main beam, or first long board; and he fitted this round stick to a handle by running it through a hole in something he had whittled out like the clothes-paddle or boiler-stick of washing-day.
"I've done well by the day, and the day's done well by me," said Johnny. "But now come needle and thread. I don't believe," said he, "that Aunt Mame is as hard-hearted as the rest." And by dint of hanging over the back of her chair with a good many judicious hugs and kisses—the little rogue really loved his aunt Mamy when there was nothing to gain by it—he induced her to coax a coarse and stout kitchen-table cloth from his mother's linen stores, to bind it with some strong tape, and then to cross the tape from corner to corner in order to strengthen it still more. When he had lashed his sail to his bean-pole with a stout twine, and made a gasket to hold his gaff, which was part of his bamboo fishing-rod, Johnny stopped to execute a brief war-dance, to hug his aunt again, to put on his reefer, and to stow away some mince patties. Then, securing the rope at the other corner of his sail, he dragged his tiny ice-boat free of the big blocks of ice along the shore, established himself upon the seat with his heels against the cross-piece, and waited for the wind.
It came along, with a little dust of snow upon its wings. It took Johnny's sail as if it were a puff of thistle-down; the rope slipped out through Johnny's fingers quick enough to burn them. His heart gave a great plunge, but he held fast, and the next moment a creak, a twist, a hiss, and he was moving. Moving? No—flying! Flying through the air even while he knew he was cutting with a sharp hiss into the ice—the razor-edge of the wind cutting with a sharp hiss, too, upon his cheek, and taking his breath away at first. And there he was speeding up the river so fast that his mother screamed and ran into the house, and his grandmother, looking from the window, began to blame every one else for letting him start out on such a hair-breadth undertaking, and his aunt Mamy declared it was like a great white bubble blowing up the sky, a great white spirit flashing up the river, and if he never came back she was glad to see the last of him that way—but he would be back all right. And so he was.
They said that little ice-boat went at the rate of forty miles an hour. Johnny always insists that it is eighty. But all I know about it is that the March maple-camp was twenty miles up river, and Johnny brought home a great parcel of the sweetest and richest morsels that the sunshine ever coaxed out of the earth through a maple-stem, that very sunset as he ran his ice-boat, "The Scarer," up the shore, and promised his mother he would never go half as fast as he could go in her, unless he had a mask to save his face from blistering, and his father was aboard.
THE MIDDLE DAUGHTER.[1]
BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER.
CHAPTER V.
CEMENTS AND RIVETS.
"How did we ever consent to let our middle daughter stay away all these years, mother?" said Dr. Wainwright, addressing his wife.
"I cannot tell how it happened, father," she said, musingly. "I think we drifted into the arrangement, and you know each year brother was expected to bring her back Harriet would plan a jaunt or a journey which kept her away, and then, Jack, we've generally been rather out at the elbows, and I have been so helpless, that, with our large family, it was for Grace's good to let her remain where she was so well provided for."
"She's clear grit, isn't she?" said the doctor, admiringly, stalking to and fro in his wife's chamber. "I didn't half like the notion of her giving readings; but Charley Raeburn says the world moves and we must move with it, and now that her object is not purely a selfish one, I withdraw my opposition. I confess, though, darling, I don't enjoy the thought that my girls must earn money. I feel differently about the boys."
"Jack dear," said his wife, tenderly, always careful not to wound the feelings of this unsuccessful man who was still so loving and so full of chivalry, "you needn't mind that in the very least. The girl who doesn't want to earn money for herself in these days is in the minority. Girls feel it in the air. They all fret and worry, or most of them do, until they are allowed to measure their strength and test the commercial worth of what they have acquired. You are a dear old fossil, Jack. Just look at it in this way: Suppose Mrs. Vanderhoven, brought up in the purple, taught to play a little, to embroider a little, to speak a little French—to do a little of many things and nothing well—had been given the sort of education that in her day was the right of every gentleman's son, though denied the gentleman's daughter, would her life be so hard and narrow and distressful now? Would she be reduced to taking in fine washing and hemstitching and canning fruit?"
"Canning fruit, mother dear," said Miriam, who had just come in to procure fresh towels for the bedrooms, "is a fine occupation. Several women in the United States are making their fortunes at that. Eva and I, who haven't Grace's talents, are thinking of taking it up in earnest. I can make preserves, I rejoice to say."
"When you are ready to begin, you shall have my blessing," said her father. "I yield to the new order of things." Then as the pretty elder daughter disappeared, a sheaf of white lavender-perfumed towels over her arm, he said: "Now, dear, I perceive your point. Archie Vanderhoven's accident has, however, occurred in the very best possible time for Grace. The King's Daughters—you know what a breezy Ten they are, with our Eva and the Raeburns' Amy among them—are going to give a lift to Archie, not to his mother, who might take offence. All the local talent of our young people is already enlisted. Our big dining-room is to be the hall of ceremonies, and I believe they are to have tableaux, music, readings, and refreshments. This will come off on the first moonlight night, and the proceeds will all go to Archie, to be kept, probably, as a nest-egg for his college expenses. That mother of his means him to go through college, you know, if she has to pay the fees by hard work, washing, ironing, scrubbing, what not."
"I hope the boy's worth it," said Mrs. Wainwright, doubtfully. "Few boys are."
"The right boy is," said the doctor, firmly. "In our medical association there's one fellow who is on the way to be a famous surgeon. He's fine, Jane, the most plucky, persistent man, with the eye, and the nerve, and the hand, and the delicacy and steadiness of the surgeon born in him, and confirmed by training. Some of his operations are perfectly beautiful, beautiful! He'll be famous over the whole world yet. His mother was an Irish charwoman, and she and he had a terrible tug to carry him through his studies."
"Is he good to her? Is he grateful?" asked Mrs. Wainwright, much impressed.
"Good! grateful! I should say so," said the doctor. "She lives like Queen Victoria, rides in her carriage, dresses in black silk, has four maids to wait on her. She lives like the first lady in the land, in her son's house, and he treats her like a lover. He's a man. He was worth all she did. They say," added the doctor, presently, "that sometimes the old lady tires of her splendor, sends the maids away to visit their cousins, and turns in and works for a day or two like all possessed. She's been seen hanging out blankets on a windy day in the back yard, with a face as happy as that of a child playing truant."
"Poor dear old thing!" said Mrs. Wainwright. "Well, to go back to our girlie, she's to be allowed to take her own way, isn't she, and to be as energetic and work as steadily as she likes?"
"Yes, dearest, she shall, for all I'll do or say to the contrary. And when my ship comes in I'll pay her back with interest for the loans she's made me lately."
The doctor went off to visit his patients. His step had grown light, his face had lost its look of alert yet furtive dread. He looked twenty years younger. And no wonder. He no longer had to dodge Potter at every turn, and a big package of receipted bills, endorsed and dated, lay snugly in his desk, the fear of duns exorcised thereby. A man whose path has been impeded by the thick underbrush of debts he cannot settle, and who finds his obligations cancelled, may well walk gayly along the cleared and brightened roadway, hearing birds sing and seeing blue sky beaming above his head.
The Ten took hold of the first reading with enthusiasm. Flags were borrowed, and blazing boughs of maple and oak, with festoons of crimson blackberry vine and armfuls of golden-rod transformed the long room into a bower. Seats were begged and borrowed, and all the cooks in town made cake with fury and pride for the great affair. The tickets were sold without much trouble, and the girls had no end of fun in rehearsing the tableaux which were decided on as preferable in an entertainment given by the King's Daughters, because in tableaux everybody has something to do. Grace was to read from Young Lucretia and a poem by Hetta Lord Hayes Ward, a lovely poem about a certain St. Bridget who trudges up to heaven's gate after her toiling years, and finds St. Peter waiting to set it wide open. The poor modest thing was an example of Keble's lovely stanza:
"Meek souls there are who little dream
Their daily life an angel's theme,
Nor that the rod they bear so calm
In heaven may prove a martyr's palm."
Very much astonished at her reception, she is escorted up to the serene heights by tall seraphs, who treat her with the greatest reverence. By-and-by along comes a grand lady, one of Bridget's former employers. She just squeezes through the gate, and then,
"Down heaven's hill a radiant saint
Comes flying with a palm,
'Are you here, Bridget O'Flaherty?'
St. Bridget cries, 'Yes, ma'am.'
"'Oh, teach me Bridget, the manners, please,
Of the royal court above,'
'Sure, honey dear, you'll aisy learn
Humility and love.'"
I haven't time to tell you all about the entertainment, and there is no need. You, of course, belong to Tens or to needlework guilds or to orders of some kind, and if you are a member of the Order of the Round Table, why of course you are doing good in some way or other, and good which enables one to combine social enjoyment and a grand frolic; and the making of a purseful of gold and silver for a crippled boy, or an aged widow, or a Sunday-school in Dakota, or a Good-will Farm in Maine, is a splendid kind of good.
This chapter is about cements and rivets. It is also about the two little schoolmarms.
"Let us take Mrs. Vanderhoven's pitcher to town when we go to call on the judge with father," said Amy. "Perhaps it can be mended."
"It may be mended, but I do not think it will hold water again."
"There is a place," said Amy, "where a patient old German man, with the tiniest little bits of rivets that you can hardly see, and the stickiest cement you ever did see, repairs broken china. Archie was going to sell the pitcher. His mother had said he might. A lady at the hotel had promised him five dollars for it as a specimen of some old pottery or other. Then he leaped that hedge, caught his foot, fell, and that was the end of that five dollars, which was to have gone for a new lexicon and I don't know what else."
"It was a fortunate break for Archie. His leg will be as strong as ever, and we'll make fifty dollars by our show. I call such a disaster an angel in disguise."
"Mrs. Vanderhoven cried over the pitcher, though. She said it had almost broken her heart to let Archie take it out of the house, and she felt it was a judgment on her for being willing to part with it."
"Every one has some superstition, I think," said Amy.
NEW PUPILS AND NEW TEACHERS.
Judge Hastings, a tall, soldierly gentleman with the bearing of a courtier, was delighted with the girls, and brought his three little women in their black frocks to see their new teachers.
"I warn you, young ladies," he said, "these are spoiled babies. But they will do anything for those they love, and they will surely love you. I want them thoroughly taught, especially music and dancing. Can you teach them to dance?"
He fixed his keen blue eyes on Grace, who colored under the glance, but answered bravely,
"Yes, Judge, I can teach them to dance and to play, not to count or to spell."
"I'll take charge of that part," said Amy, fearlessly.
Grace's salary was fixed at one thousand dollars, Amy's at four hundred, a year, and Grace was to come to her pupils three hours a day for five days every week, Amy one hour a day for five days.
"We'll travel together," said Amy, "for I'll be at the League while you are pegging away at the teaching of these tots after my hour is over."
If any girl fancies that Grace and Amy had made an easy bargain, I recommend her to try the same tasks day in and day out for the weeks of a winter. She will discover that she had earned her salary. Lucy, Helen, and Madge taxed their young teachers' utmost powers, but they did them credit, and each month, as Grace was able to add comforts to her home, to lighten her father's burdens, to remove anxiety from her mother, she felt that she would willingly have worked harder.
The little pitcher was repaired so that you never would have known it had been broken. Mrs. Vanderhoven set it in the place of honor on top of her mantel shelf, and Archie, now able to hobble about, declared that he would treasure it for his children's children.
One morning a letter came for Grace. It was from the principal of a girls' school in a lovely village up the Hudson, a school attended by the daughters of statesmen and millionaires, but one, too, which had scholarships for bright girls who desired culture, but whose parents had but very little money. To attend Miss L——'s school some girls would have given more than they could put into words; it was a certificate of good standing in society to have been graduated there, while mothers prized and girls envied those who could go there, for the splendid times they were sure to have.
"Your dear mother," Miss L—— wrote, "will easily recall her old schoolmate and friend. I have heard of you, Grace, through my friend, Madame Necker, who was your instructress in Paris, and I have two objects in writing. One is to secure you as a teacher in reading for an advanced class of mine. The class would meet but once a week; your office would be to read to them, interpreting the best authors, and to influence them in the choice of books adapted for young girls."
Grace held her breath. "Mother!" she exclaimed, "is Miss L—— in her right mind?"
"A very level-headed person, Grace, Read on."
"I have also a vacant scholarship, and I will let you name a friend of yours to fill it. I would like a minister's daughter. Is there any dear little twelve-year-old girl who would like to come to my school, and whose parents would like to send her but cannot afford so much expense? Because, if there is such a child among your friends, I will give her a warm welcome. Jane Wainwright, your honored mother, knows that I will be too happy thus to add a happiness to her lot in life."
Mother and daughter looked into each other's eyes. One thought was in both.
"Laura Raeburn," they exclaimed together.
Laura Raeburn it was who entered Miss L——'s, her heart overflowing with satisfaction, and so the never-shaken friendship between Wishing-Brae and the Manse was made stronger still, as by cements and rivets.