Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic

by Olive Thorne Miller

The sun shone brightly, and she was almost too happy to look about to see her new possessions. The roof was flat, as large as a big room; on one side was a tall brick chimney and in the middle a queer-looking structure which she at once went over to examine. It was shaped like a tent, and all made of windows which she could not see through because they were of colored glass.

Both sides of this roof-room were tall, brick walls of neighboring buildings, and in the front a lower one, which was, however, too high for her to look over. Only the back was open.

It was not a very attractive place, but to Molly it was a new world. She was a strange child always, full of imagination, and she at once decided that the brick chimney was a castle in which some children were shut up, and the window tent looked into a garden where they were allowed to play.

She resolved to bring her doll out here, and she thought she should never be lonely again if she could only find a peep-hole in that glass roof and look down into the garden; so she was always looking for one.

After that day she spent all her time—when it did not rain—on the delightful roof. She carried her treasures out, her whole family of dolls with their furniture and things, her sisters keeping her well supplied so that she should not be lonely. She found a small box which she could leave out there, and made her a nice seat, and soon she began to get rosy and happy again, to the great delight of her sisters.

Every day, as soon as she was left alone, she pushed up the window, took that fearful step on which, if she had slipped or lost her hold, she would have been dashed to pieces on the pavement below, and then spent the day happily with her dolls and toys, making stories for herself.

It was not long before she found the peep-hole she was always looking for into the room under the glass tent—for it was a room, and not a garden, as she hoped. This peep-hole was a small three-cornered piece of clear glass among the colored, and through it she could see everything in the room below.

The room was not particularly interesting, but she made up a story about it as she always did. It seemed to be a gentleman’s office, for an elderly gentleman nearly always sat at a table under the roof-window and had papers about him.

To him came many callers; sometimes other men, sometimes shop-boys, now and then a shop-girl on some errand, and once a week a charwoman who cleaned, and swept, and dusted, and piled the papers neatly up on the table.

All this was of deepest interest to Molly, who passed hours every day looking into this room, her only outlook into the world, and making up stories about the people who came.