The Knights’ Sunday went like this: When it was time for Sunday-school the front door opened (mind you, in any other family of like position in life, that door would have opened for only one of three things—a wedding, a funeral, or the first visit of the clergyman, so think how they honored that mere child)—then big Mrs. Knights appeared and brushed the step over with a cloth and retired from view (a pause), then little Rosie appeared, balancing a moment on the step like one of her own pet, white doves, her many short skirts and her white dress starched to the uttermost limit of rattling stiffness, open-work white stockings and black slippers, with an ankle strap fastened with a gold button, a broad, pink sash about her waist, pink ribbon bows on each long, blond braid, a big leghorn hat secured first by an elastic band, and over that by broad, pink ribbons tied in a large bow under her milk-white chin. In her little, mitted hands she held a testament, and from between its leaves peeped a pink or a rose—a handkerchief the size of a large postage stamp finished her outfit—and so, gravely and with great propriety, she came down the narrow path between the “flox” and “sweet-william,” the “larkspur” and “four o’clocks,” and all the horde of strong-growing, free-blooming flowers of the poor—herself the daintiest flower of them all—and at the gate she turned and kissed her hand to the two heads thrust out at either side of the door—the fresh-shaven face of her father low down on one side, the broad-smiling face of her mother high up on the other—then walked sedately on towards the church, while behind her, the heads gone, the door closed, seemingly of its own volition—to open no more until the next week.
A few minutes later Mrs. Knights appeared at the side door where there was a tiny, tiny little platform, with “scarlet-beans” trained thickly over its morsel of roof. On this porch one chair was carefully placed on Sunday mornings and occupied by Mrs. Knights, arrayed in a white petticoat and white bedgown (as the short, loose garment was called). Her hair was oiled and brushed to a glassy smoothness, a big horn-comb loomed high above her head, and a pair of gold ear-drops, that seemed to have been sold by the yard, dangled from her ears. Her tired, old feet rested in a huge pair of braided list shoes that looked like boats. Once seated, “Little Knights” trotted out with a Bible of a size so prodigious one wondered how it ever found a resting place inside that little bit of a house. Its mighty clasps undone, he placed it on his wife’s lap, and then made another trip and brought out a great pair of spectacles, framed in silver, which he solemnly fitted on her nose, then most carefully and cautiously he adapted himself to such narrow margin of floor space as was left for him, and their service began.
It was with a rather wavering, quavering rendering of an old hymn, after which Mrs. Knights opened the book, and looking over the tops of her glasses—she could not see a word through them, but she felt they loaned her a certain dignity as of office—she found the place, and by the aid of one blunt finger (its stained, cracked nail worn down to the very quick), she made her way with pathetic slowness across the page of frenzied Dutch print. Not that they doubted the saving-power of the English Bible for the English and incidentally for the American sinner, but they felt that their own sins were so peculiarly Dutch in quality that nothing short of a Dutch Bible could save them. Wherefore, Mrs. Knights, each Sunday, with blunt forefinger seemed to dig out words of Holy-writ from the great book, while her small husband carefully stored them in the basket of his memory.
After the chapter had come to its laborious close, they both took breath and wiped their dripping brows, then clasped their hands, bowed their heads and offered each a silent prayer. I had once come upon them so, the bees circling about their gray, old heads, while their prayers, like the perfume of two souls mingling with the perfume of the flowers, rose through the warm air, straight to that great God who had given them Rosie.
And that sweet name encompassed all of good his life contained—health and strength, growing wealth and the respect in which his neighbors held him, and when he would have offered humble thanks for them, instead he blessed God for Rosie.
With a slight trace of that peasant cunning which had been his when the stocking-foot had been his only bank, he tried to hide, as far as possible, his increasing prosperity. He had long owned the double lot and the toy house that made home for him, and it was whispered that certain lots on the outskirts of the town, used by “Little Knights” for a truck-garden, were really his, though the wily Jacobus often, perhaps too often, referred to the fact: “Dat he had paid de rent dem gartens of!” However, the old neighbors to this day tell a story of “Little Knights” touching upon his secretiveness about money.
Rosie, who, by the way was Rosie to all the world except her father—he called her ever and always his Rose or his “Little Rose;” in babyhood, or in womanhood, “My Rose” was the name he gave his idol! When his Rose had reached the age of fourteen, she stood before him one evening, holding a match to his pipe, and when the tobacco glowed evenly all over, she shut down the perforated silver cover, and said suddenly: “Father, I wonder if you can be rich enough to buy me something, an expensive something, too, father?” and the old eyes had fairly danced, and surely in that moment, Jacobus Knights tasted all the sweetness of prosperity. Yet, Jacobus was a Dutchman, and therefore cautious, and so assuming as much doubt as was possible over so absolutely certain a matter, he inquired as to the nature of “dis ting vat made such expense mit itself,” and Rosie, with clear eyes on his face, had answered with a little tremble of anxiety in her voice: “A piano, father.”
And the small father had crushed back a smile, and averted joyous eyes, and had basely suggested that an accordeon “might answer youst as well.”
But clever Rosie noticed he said no word about not affording it, so she instantly assumed a patient look of endurance, saying: “No father, an accordeon will not do; but never mind, I see you are not rich enough yet, I can wait!” and he had hastily broken in on this meekness with: “You see, you see, youst noddings, my Rose! How many dimes a hunnert tollars, makes dem bianos mit demselves, all mit der india-rupper overcoats on ’em, too, unt lots of dat moosic pieces sphilt all de top over? All—youst all de nice hair-horse biano stools, too, vat twist round unt round, and make you sick mit yourself—everyting vat goes dat biano mit? Dat is, vat I come rich enough to give mit my Rose!”
But imagine the stupefaction of every soul who knew “Little Knights,” when two weeks later, without a word of his intentions to anyone, he sent men to lay the foundation of a new house on the next-door lot, which was vacant; and to the excited inquiries of his neighbors he naively replied, between puffs of smoke: “Vell, you see now, my Rose, she vant dat biano, unt—(pause)—unt I have to make first de house to put him in—don’t you see mit me?” And the laugh that followed rolled around the town and made him known far and wide as the little, Dutch gardener who built a house for his daughter’s piano.