Ella, a little schoolgirl of the sixties

by Eva March Tappan

As has been seen, Ella would have been quite alone in most of her plays had it not been for Ponto. Fortunately, a dog is never too old or too young to be a good friend. People sometimes laugh at a little girl’s queer notions, but a dog never makes fun of them; he always understands. Every morning Ponto came upstairs, thumped on Ella’s door, and waited patiently till she was ready to go down with him. He was not allowed in recitation rooms, but everywhere else that she went, he followed. She greatly enjoyed visiting the laboratory when her professor was at work. Ponto would then lie down just outside the door and take a one-eyed nap, wondering sleepily why she stayed there instead of coming out of doors.

If the kind professor was at all disturbed by her presence and her occasional interruptions, he never let her know it, but answered every question with the courteous attention that children love, as if their questions were really worth while. The crowning glory of her visits came, however, one day when, after she had asked him something that never would have occurred to any one but a child, he looked at her thoughtfully and said, “I don’t know, but I will try to find out.” This was indeed an honor. The professor had treated her as if she was a grown-up lady, and he had met her little query with as much respect as if the principal himself had asked it. When she said, “Good-bye. I have an errand in the village,” and followed the jubilant Ponto down stairs, she held her small head at least one inch higher than usual.

The errand was closely connected with a big copper cent which she had held in her hand during her pursuit of scientific information. Indeed, she had kept close watch of it ever since it came into her possession, for pennies did not come her way every morning. The grocer kept cassia buds, and these to the little customer were a luxury far transcending peppermints or sticks of white candy striped with red, or even chocolate sticks, which were just coming into fashion.

There were two grocers in the same store. One had white hair and the other had brown. Ella had tested them both and had found out that the white-haired one gave her more cassia buds for a cent than did the brown-haired one; therefore she waited patiently until the white-haired one appeared. Then she went back to the seminary joyfully. She was sure that the generous dealer had given her more than ever before, and she would not eat one until she had shown them to the mother. But alas for the best-laid plans of little girls as well as mice and men, for when she reached the seminary, there was not a bud to be seen. Through a wicked little hole in the pocket every one had escaped.

This was one of the three tragedies in Ella’s life at the seminary. The others were even more crushing. Next to her big doll, her greatest treasure was a paint-box. She had had paint-boxes before, but this was the largest and finest she had ever owned. She had taken the greatest pains to keep it clean, and it was as fresh and white as when she first unwrapped it. If the mother had seen, she would have rescued it, but all her attention was given to a caller; and meanwhile his little boy, who had by no means the kind of soul that scorns a blot, daubed the fair white wood of the outside of the box with every hue that could be found within it.

Ella had been out with Ponto, and when she came in and saw her beloved paint-box in ruins, her grief was literally too deep for words. The mother had taken her callers to see the library, and Ella caught up the ruined treasure and slipped out of doors to Ponto. She told him all about it; then the two went to a quiet little place where wild roses grew. With much difficulty she dug a hole. Therein she laid the precious paint-box, and with it all the hopes of the pictures she was going to paint for the uncle in Andover and the grandmother in the mountains.

The next day, the mother asked, “Where can your paint-box be? Have you seen it this morning?”

Ella felt rather guilty, but she answered, “No,” and it was many years before the mother learned the solution of the mystery.

The third tragedy came from Ella’s ambition to wear a linen collar. The grown-up girls in school wore them, and she did so long to have just one. The mother did not approve; she thought a tiny ruffle for every day and a bit of lace for best were the only neckwear proper for a child of eight. Fate, however, promised to be kind. Ella had acquired some skill in the making of “perforated paper” bookmarks in the shape of a cross, elaborately cut out in an openwork pattern; and one Sunday after church a lady in the village, who knew her wishes, promised her a real collar of smooth, stiff linen in exchange for one of these crosses.

Ella was wildly happy, and she wanted to begin the cross at once; but it was Sunday. Somehow she had evolved the notion that while it was wrong to play games on Sunday, it was not wrong to read or write or, indeed, to do whatever she chose with books or paper. Perforated paper seemed, however, a little different. She appealed to the mother, but the mother often left things for the small girl to think out for herself, and this was one of them.