—Sophie Jewett.
“THE children are late,” said Miss Ruth to Sarah who, soon after three o’clock the next Friday afternoon, came into the library with a large plate piled high with ginger cookies cut into shapes of animals,—horses, cats, dogs, giraffes, and elephants.
“Like as not they have given up wantin’ to have a club,” snapped Sarah, shutting her mouth as if she had bitten off the words. “Children nowadays are spoilt with havin’ such a lot done for ’em.” Sarah looked disappointed, however; she had spent a long time in making those cookies.
Sarah Judd was the only servant in the Warren household, and she had lived in the family a long time. Whenever Ruth Warren said anything to her about having a younger woman to help, Sarah always shook her head until the corkscrew side-curls fairly bobbed up and down and answered: “No, madam: if you have anybody else come to work for you, I go!” As old Sarah understood perfectly the ways and wishes of Miss Virginia Warren, Ruth’s aunt, Ruth kept the cross-spoken servant, who was in reality a kind-hearted woman.
Ruth Warren had learned the wisdom of silence when Sarah made scolding remarks; so now she kept on cutting out dresses for the rows and rows of dolls,—big and little dolls, blond-haired and black-haired, waxen-headed and china-headed, blue-eyed, gray-eyed, black-eyed,—two of each kind and twenty-four in all, lying there on the centre-table.
Sarah lingered in the room, brushing a little dust from the table with the corner of her white apron. “What a handsome lot of doll-babies,” she said after a moment; “I hope the children will come. I thought at first that havin’ ’em come would make an awful sight of dust an’ crumbs; but I can sweep Saturday mornin’s instead of Fridays, an’ it’s kinder nice to hear children ’round, a-talkin’ an’ a-laughin’, as fast as a sewin’-machine. Bless my heart, here they come now, a-hurryin’ along!” Sarah dodged behind the curtain and looked out over the tops of her spectacles. “Ain’t they cunnin’ little things!” she exclaimed, “comin’ along with their arms twined ’round one another, an’ that lively Betty White in the middle!”
As Sarah turned from behind the window-curtain to answer the quick ring of the front door-bell, she said anxiously: “If they eat all the animals in the plate, I have got some more plain cookies they can have.”
A moment later Sarah led the three girls into the library, her side-curls bobbing with excitement.
“O, look at those cookies!” cried Betty, after she had greeted Miss Ruth. “Good old Sarah must have made them.” And Sarah vanished from the doorway with a smile which made her thin, dry face seem suddenly to have cracked.