Miss Lochinvar: A Story for Girls

by Marion Ames Taggart

To Nurse Hummel the Grahams repaired with their griefs, not to their busy mother; and “Hummie” was so fond of them that while they were small they did not realize that there were children whose mothers could give them more attention than theirs did, and that mother-love is more satisfactory than any other.

Mrs. Graham found at the last moment that she could not send Henry with the horses all the way over to the West Twenty-third Street Ferry; but Nurse Hummel was despatched, with instructions to select a hansom drawn by a lively horse, and to come up-town by the way of Fifth Avenue, so “Miss Lochinvar” would certainly enjoy her drive—probably enjoy it more than if she had been shut up in the Grahams’ more elegant brougham.

The new cousin was not to arrive until afternoon, a fortunate thing, for though it never occurred to either Gwendoline or Gladys to go to meet her, they were most curious in regard to her, and very anxious to be in the house when she reached it.

They were ensconced behind the long lace curtains of the library on the second floor, perfectly hidden, yet seeing perfectly, when the hansom drove up.

Janet Howe had not talked much during that drive, though Nurse Hummel tried in her most motherly way to draw her out. She thought that the little girl was bewildered into silence by the splendor, confusion, and hubbub of the second city of the world, but though this was in a measure true, it was not the main cause of Janet’s quietness.

All the way during the last half of her two days’ journey—the first half being given up to longing for the beloved faces and little house which she had left behind—Janet had let her thoughts leap forward to the dear cousins, the aunt and uncle who were awaiting her. She was all ready to love them; she did love them, for they were her blessed mother’s kindred, who were so good to her in taking her into their hearts and home, in letting her share the wealth she knew they possessed, and in sharing one another with her. She knew the names and ages of each one of them; that Sydney was very handsome and Gwen very clever. All the Howes knew their Eastern cousins literally by heart, for they occupied in the minds of the little folk in the plain house in Crescendo a position something between an embodiment of perfect kinship and the princes and princesses of the fairy tales. And Janet knew and loved her Aunt Tina and her dearest Uncle Howard with positive worship, heightened, if possible, by their kindness to her in offering her this winter in New York. Her mother had talked to the children of her happy girlhood with her brother, until every little brook, every shaded path and meadow in the distant New Hampshire home, and every trick of voice and manner of this favorite brother Howard were as familiar to them as were their own lives and one another. Janet felt quite sure that when she descended upon the platform in the station and found all the Grahams drawn up in line to meet her, waving their hands and laughing—for that was the way the Howes always welcomed a stray guest to Crescendo—that she should be able to pick out each one with perfect accuracy. She should make no mistake as to which was Sydney, and which was Jack—she couldn’t very well, since there was nearly six years’ difference between them—nor which was Gwen and which Gladys, and quiet Viva, and dear little Geraldine, for whom she hungered most of all because she was precisely the age of her own precious youngest sister, her pet Poppet, as she called little Elizabeth. When she did descend upon the platform on the Jersey City side, a trifle sobered by the vastness of the station, the rush of the crowd, and the babel of sounds, there was no line of merry young faces anywhere in sight, no one that could be Uncle Howard or Aunt Tina, not even one who could be Sydney, Gwen, or Gladys. Janet caught her breath with a sharp pain, half fright, half bitter disappointment, and looked wildly around at the mad-appearing passengers, tearing through the chilly station with as frantic haste to catch the lumbering ferry-boat as if it had been as fast as a Bandersnatch.

Just at that dreadful moment a woman in iron gray—all round, face, body, gait, and all—came toward Janet, smiling with sufficient expansiveness to cover the lack of several other smiles. “Is this little Miss Janet Howe from Crescendo?” she asked, with just enough of the German accent familiar in the West to make this meek, girlish Lochinvar feel comforted.

“Oh, yes. Where are my aunt and uncle, and my cousins?” cried Janet. “And who are you, if you please?”

“I am Nurse Hummel, and I’ve come to take you to your friends,” said the rotund creature, with such assurance that “all was right in the world” that Janet began to suspect herself of unreason in expecting her relatives to meet her.

“None of them could get down here to-day, but that doesn’t matter. You’ll soon find out that Nurse Hummel looks after all of you. I have taken care of every Graham child of them all since Master Sydney was a month old. Give me your check.”