So she was bitterly grieved one day when a dear friend of the family, to whom our mother had read the play, rushed up to her, and seizing her hand, cried,—
“‘Julia, will you have me?’ ‘No!’ Exit Mr. Bruin.”
Deeply grieved the little maiden was; and it cannot have been very long after that time that she gave the little book to her dearest aunt, who has kept it carefully through all these years.
If Julia was like Milton’s “Penseroso,” Flossy was the “Allegro” in person, or like Wordsworth’s maiden,—
“A dancing shape, an image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and waylay”
She was very small as a child. One day a lady, not knowing that the little girl was within hearing, said to her mother, “What a pity Flossy is so small!”
“I’m big inside!” cried a little angry voice at her elbow; and there was Flossy, swelling with rage, like an offended bantam. And she was big inside! her lively, active spirit seemed to break through the little body and carry it along in spite of itself. Sometimes it was an impish spirit; always it was an enterprising one.
She it was who invented the dances which seemed to us such wonderful performances. We danced every evening in the great parlor, our mother playing for us on the piano. There was the “Macbeth” dance, in which Flossy figured as Lady Macbeth. With a dagger in her hand, she crept and rushed and pounced and swooped about in a most terrifying manner, always graceful as a fairy. A sofa-pillow played the part of Duncan, and had a very hard time of it. The “Julius Cæsar” dance was no less tragic; we all took part in it, and stabbed right and left with sticks of kindling-wood. One got the curling-stick and was happy, for it was the next thing to the dagger, which no one but Flossy could have. Then there was the dance of the “Four Seasons,” which had four figures. In spring we sowed, in summer we reaped; in autumn we hunted the deer, and in winter there was much jingling of bells. The hunting figure was most exciting. It was performed with knives (kindling-wood), as Flossy thought them more romantic than guns; they were held close to the side, with point projecting, and in this way we moved with a quick chassé step, which, coupled with a savage frown, was supposed to be peculiarly deadly.
Flossy invented many other amusements, too. There was the school-loan system. We had school in the little parlor at that time, and our desks had lids that lifted up. In her desk Flossy kept a number of precious things, which she lent to the younger children for so many pins an hour. The most valuable thing was a set of three colored worsted balls, red, green, and blue. You could set them twirling, and they would keep going for ever so long. It was a delightful sport; but they were very expensive, costing, I think, twenty pins an hour. It took a long time to collect twenty pins, for of course it was not fair to take them out of the pin-cushions.
Then there was a glass eye-cup without a foot; that cost ten pins, and was a great favorite with us. You stuck it in your eye, and tried to hold it there while you winked with the other. Of course all this was done behind the raised desk-lid, and I have sometimes wondered what the teacher was doing that she did not find us out sooner. She was not very observant, and I am quite sure she was afraid of Flossy. One sad day, however, she caught Laura with the precious glass in her eye, and it was taken away forever. It was a bitter thing to the child (I know all about it, for I was Laura) to be told that she could never have it again, even after school. She had paid her ten pins, and she could not see what right the teacher had to take the glass away. But after that the school-loan system was forbidden, and I have never known what became of the three worsted balls.