hey don’t name girls “Roxy,” and “Polly,” and “Patty,” and “Sally,” nowadays; but when the little miss who is my heroine was a lady, those short, funny old names were not at all old-fashioned. “Roxy,” especially, was considered a very sweet name indeed. All these new names, “Eva,” and “Ada,” and “Sadie,” and “Lillie,” and the rest of the fanciful “ies” were not in vogue. Then, if a romantic, highflown young mamma wished to give her tiny girl-baby an unusually fine name, she selected such as “Sophronia,” “Matilda,” “Lucretia,” or “Ophelia.” In extreme cases, the baby could be called “Victoria Adelaide.”
In this instance baby’s mother was a plain, quiet 049woman; and she thought baby’s grandmother’s name was quite fine enough for baby; and so baby was called “Roxy,” and, when she was ten years old, you would have thought little Roxy fully as old-fashioned as her name.
I think it is her clothes that makes her image look so funny as she rises up before me. She herself had brown hair and eyes, and a good country complexion of milk and roses—such a nice complexion, girls! You see she had plenty of bread and milk to eat; and a big chamber, big as the sitting-room down stairs, to sleep in—all windows—and her bed stood, neat and cool, in the middle of the floor; and she had to walk ever so far to get anywhere—it was a respectable little run even out to the barn for the hens’ eggs; and it was half a mile to her cousin Hannah’s, and it was three quarters to school, and just a mile to the very nearest stick of candy or cluster of raisins. Nuts were a little nearer; for Roxy’s father had a noble butternut orchard, and it was as much a part of the regular farm-work in the fall to gather the “but’nuts” as it was to gather the apples.
Don’t you see, now, why she had such a nice complexion? But if you think it don’t quite account for such plump, rosy cheeks, why, then, she had to chase ever so many ways for the strawberries. Not a strawberry 050was raised in common folks’ gardens in those days. They grew mostly in farmers’ meadows; and very angry those farmers used to be at such girls as Roxy in “strawberry time”—“strawberry time” comes before “mowing,” you know—for how they did wallow and trample the grass! Besides, the raspberries and blackberries, instead of being Doolittle Blackcaps, and Kittatinnies, and tied up to nice stakes in civilized little plantations, grew away off upon steep hill-sides, and in the edges of woods, by old logs, and around stumps; and it took at least three girls, and half a day, and a lunch-basket, and torn dresses, and such clambering, and such fun, to get them! Of course Roxy had red cheeks, and a sweet breath, and plump, firm white flesh—so white wherever it wasn’t browned by the sunshine.
But otherwise she certainly was old-fashioned, almost quaint. Her hair was braided tight in two long braids, crossed on her neck, and tied with a bit of black thread; there was a pair of precious little blue ribbons in the drawer for Sundays and high days. Roxy’s mother would have been awfully shocked at the wavy, flowing hair of you Wide Awake girls, I assure you!
And Roxy’s dress. You never saw a “tow and linen” dress, I dare say. Roxy’s dresses were all 051“home-made”—not merely cut and sewed at home; but Roxy’s father raised the flax in the field north of the house, and Roxy’s mother spun the flax and tow into thread upon funny little wheels. Then she colored the thread, part of it indigo blue, and part of “copperas color,” and after that wove it into cloth—not just enough for a dress, but enough for two dresses for Roxy, two for herself, and some for the men folks’ shirts, besides yards and yards of dreadfully coarse cloth for “trousers;” and perhaps there was a fine white piece for sheets and pillowcases. Bless me! how the farmers’ wives did work eighty years ago!
And how that “blue and copperas check” did wear, and how it did shine when it was freshly washed and ironed! Only it was made up so ungracefully—just a plain, full skirt, plain, straight waist, and plain straight sleeves. You never saw a dress made so, because children’s clothes have been cut pretty and cunning for a great many years. Roxy’s dresses were short, and she wore straight, full “pantalets,” that came down to the tops of her shoes; for Mrs. Thomas Gildersleeve would have thought it dreadful to allow her daughter to show the shape of her round little legs, as all children do nowadays.
To finish up, Roxy wore a “tie-apron.” This was 052simply a straight breadth of “store calico,” gathered upon a band with long ends, and tied round her waist. Very important a little girl felt when allowed to leave off the high apron and don the “tie-apron.”
The first day she came to school with it on, her mates would stand one side and look at her. “O, dear! you feel big—don’t you?” they would say to her. Maybe she would be obliged to “associate by herself” for a day or so, until they became accustomed to the sight of the “tie-apron,” or until her own good nature got the better of their envy.
A “slat sun-bonnet,” made of calico and pasteboard, completed Roxy’s costume on the summer morning of an eventful day in her life. It was drawn just as far on as could be. It hid her face completely. She was pacing along slowly, head bent down, to school. It was only eight o’clock. Why was Roxy so early?