“Won’t she be surprised, Mother, to have a birthday party? And on the very day school begins. The minute Mrs. Bragg said that January tenth was Mollie’s birthday I thought I’d make her a present; but it was you who thought of a party,” and Berry gazed admiringly at her pretty, smiling mother, who was always thinking of such interesting things for little girls to do. For it was Mrs. Arnold who had suggested ripping up a blue serge skirt of her own and making a blouse and skirt of it for Mollie. But it was Berry who, with her mother’s help, had cut out blouse and skirt, and who had stitched the seams and embroidered a star in red worsted on the corners of the collar.
When the Arnolds came to Tennessee they had brought a good store of clothing; but they had not believed a great war was so close at hand, a war that was to impoverish the Southern States and to make it nearly impossible for people to procure suitable clothing; and at the close of their second year in their mountain cabin the Arnolds began to realize that they must take good care of their garments, as they could not purchase new material in the town of Corinth. With the Braggs conditions were more difficult, as they had never possessed decent clothing; such dresses as Mrs. Bragg had managed to secure for herself and Mollie were worn to rags. Mrs. Arnold had given Mrs. Bragg a dress of stout gingham; but poor little Mollie ran about in a thin worn calico. Mrs. Arnold was teaching the little girl to knit a jacket for herself of the fine blue yarn that her mother spun, and, with a dress of serge, Mollie would soon be comfortably clothed.
When the last stitches were set and Mollie’s dress was quite finished, Berry carried the serge blouse and skirt into her own room, which opened from the sitting-room, and that was as pleasant a chamber as any little girl could ask. The floor of the room, like all the cabin floors, was painted yellow. The walls and ceiling were boarded with pine, whose soft color blended with the floor. Mr. Arnold and Francis had built this room on to the cabin, and its wide window overlooked the deep ravine toward Lick Creek. But a tall oak tree grew so close to the cabin on this side as to hide the little building from sight, and when Berry looked from her window she looked out between the branches of the trees toward rough banks and wooded ridges. Mr. Arnold had made the simple white bedstead that stood in Berry’s room, and the dressing-table, over which hung a small square mirror. And Francis had built the box-like window-seat, which Mrs. Arnold had covered with flowered chintz which she had brought with her from the North, and had made curtains for the window of the same material. A white rug of sheepskin lay beside the bed, and there was a chest of drawers in one corner of the room, and a small wooden rocking-chair painted white.
Berry put Mollie’s new dress in the lower drawer of the wide chest and looked at it admiringly. Then, from a far corner of the drawer she took a long package wrapped in a piece of newspaper—for tissue and wrapping paper were not easy to obtain in that part of the world in 1862—and unrolled it, and a small doll appeared, a doll made of cloth, whose hair was of yarn raveled from the foot of an old brown stocking; whose eyes were black buttons, and whose scarlet mouth had been marked by beet juice. The doll wore a gay dress made of bits of yellow silk from Mrs. Arnold’s scrap-bag. Her feet were covered with kid shoes, made from a worn-out glove, and the little hat, tied on with a bit of yellow silk, Berry had made by plaiting dried grasses.
“Mollie will like this doll, too,” Berry thought happily, as she returned the package to its former place. “I wish there were some other little girls to ask to her birthday party,” she thought, recalling her former playmates of the far-off Vermont village, where a birthday party had meant the gathering of at least a dozen little girls, all in pretty dresses, and each bringing a gift for the girl whose birthday they were celebrating. Berry smiled to herself as she glanced down at her stout leather boots and baggy knickerbockers. “They would all think my clothes as queer as Mr. Bragg does,” she thought, recalling the full flounced skirts and embroidered pantalettes that she had worn before coming to Shiloh.
Snow continued to fall during the night, so that Mollie’s feet were wet and her faded skirt more drabbled and limp than usual when she reached the Arnolds’ cabin the next morning. An old brown shawl of Mrs. Bragg’s covered her head and shoulders, and one end of it trailed behind her as she entered the pleasant kitchen.
Mrs. Arnold took off Mollie’s shawl as she welcomed their little visitor, and Berry ran for a pair of moccasin slippers that Mr. Arnold had made from tanned sheepskin, and in a few moments Mollie’s wet shoes had been set to dry and she was following Berry through the sitting-room to Berry’s chamber, looking about as she always did with admiring eyes at the simple comforts of a home so different from the Braggs’ dark, squalid cabin.
“Do you remember what day this is, Mollie?” Berry demanded as they entered her room.
Mollie nodded eagerly as she smiled radiantly up at her friend.
“’Deed I does. It’s the day school begins!” she responded, her pale eyes shining with delight.