A Little Girl of Long Ago; Or, Hannah Ann / A Sequel to a Little Girl in Old New York

by Amanda M. Douglas

It was queer up at West Farms, delightful, too. The house was old, with a hall through the middle, and a Dutch door just as there was up at Yonkers. The top part was opened in the morning, sometimes the whole door. The front room was the parlour, and it had not been refurnished since Mrs. Odell came there as a bride; so it looked rather antiquated to modern eyes. The back room was the sleeping chamber; on the other side, a living room with rag carpet on the floor; then a kitchen and a great shed-kitchen, one side of which was piled up with wood. There was a big back stoop that looked on the vegetable garden; there was an orchard down below, and then cornfields and meadows.

The old house was what was called a story and a half. The pointed roof had windows in the end, but none in the front. There were two nice big chambers upstairs, and a garret. Mr. Odell began to talk about building a new house; and Mrs. Odell said the things—by which she meant the carpets and furniture—were good enough for the old place, but they'd have all new by the time the girls grew up, to fit the new house.

Mr. Odell had a peach-orchard and a quince-orchard, and two long rows of cherry-trees. Then he kept quite a herd of cows, and sold milk. He had a splendid new barn, with two finished rooms in that, where the hands slept in summer. The old barn was devoted to the hay and the horses. There were chickens and ducks and geese, and a pen of pigs. This summer, they were raising three pretty calves and one little colt, who was desperately shy. But the calves would come up to be patted, and eat out of your hand.

Both of the girls were what their mother called regular tomboys. Polly was a few months older than the little girl, and Janey two years her senior. They were smart too. They could wash dishes and make beds and sweep, weed in the garden, look after the poultry; and Janey could iron almost as well as her mother. But they did love to run and whoop, and tumble in the hay, and they laughed over almost everything. They were not great students, though they went to school regularly.

A second or third cousin lived with the Odells, and did a great deal of the housework. She was not "real bright," and had some queer ways. Her immediate relatives were dead; and the Odells had taken her from a feeling of pity, and a fear lest at last she would be sent to the poor-house. She had an odd way of talking incoherently to herself, and nodding her head at almost everything; yet she was good-tempered and always ready to do as she was told. But the worst was her lack of memory; you had to tell her the same things everyday,—"get her started in the traces," Mr. Odell said.

Mrs. Odell put a cot in the girls' room for Hanny, since there was plenty of space. And Polly seemed to find so many funny stories to tell over that Hanny fell asleep in the midst of them, and woke up in the morning without a bit of homesick feeling. Then Mr. Odell was going to the mill, and he took Polly and Hanny along, and they had a rather amusing time.

Hanny was very much interested in the process, and amazed when she found how they made the different things out of the same wheat. They used "middlings" for pancakes at home, when her mother was tired of buckwheat. Not to have had griddle-cakes for breakfast would have been one of the hardest trials of life for men and boys through the winter. It warmed them up of a cold morning, and they seemed to thrive on it.

Mr. Odell was very willing to explain the processes to Hanny. Polly wanted to know if she thought of going into the milling business, and suggested that she never would be big enough. Then they ran round to look at the water-wheel and the little pond where the stream was dammed so there would be no lack of water in a dry time.

They had a drawing pattern in school just like it, except that it lacked the broken rustic bridge a little higher up. She would take a new interest in drawing it now.

It was noon when they reached home, and Hanny felt real hungry, though Mrs. Odell declared she didn't eat more than a bird. She was glad her girls were not such delicate little things.