“Why, my dear old friend,” replied Miss Rawlings, “for Barbara Allan to be sure.”
Mr. Moffat blinked very rapidly, and the invisible beard wagged more than ever. And he looked hard at Miss Rawlings’s immense bonnet as if he actually expected to see that busy bee; as if he even feared it might be a Queen Bee and would produce a complete hive.
But after bidding him good-bye with yet another wag of the bonnet and a “Yes, thank you, Dubbins,” Miss Rawlings was as good as her word. She always was. Three days afterwards there appeared in the Times, and in the Morning Post, and in the Daily Telegraph, and five days later, in the Spectator, the following:
WANTED as soon as possible, by a lady who has lost her as long as she can remember, a little girl of the name (probably) of Barbara Allan, or of a name that sounds like Barbara Allan. The little girl is about ten years old. She has a rather three-cornered shaped face, with narrow cheek-bones, and bright brown eyes. She is slim, with long fingers, and wears a pigtail and probably a round beaver hat. She shall have an exceedingly happy home and Every Comfort, and her friends (or relatives) will be amply rewarded for all the care and kindness they have bestowed upon her, for the first nine years or more of her life.
You should have seen Miss Rawlings reading that advertisement over and over. Her Times that morning had a perfume as of the spices of Ambrosia. But even Miss Rawlings could not have hoped that her advertisement would be so rapidly and spontaneously and abundantly answered. The whole day of every day of the following week her beautiful wrought-iron gates were opening and shutting and admitting all kinds and sorts and shapes and sizes of little girls with brown eyes, long fingers, pigtails and beaver hats, about ten years of age. And usually an Aunt or a Step-mother or the Matron of an Orphanage or a Female Friend accompanied each candidate.
There were three genuine Barbara Allans. But one had reddish hair and freckles; the second, curly flaxen hair that refused to keep to the pigtail-ribbon into which it had been tied; and the third, though her hair was brown, had grey speckled eyes, and looked to be at least eleven. Apart from these three, there were numbers and numbers of little girls whose Christian name was Barbara, but whose surname was Allison or Angus or Anson or Mallings or Bulling or Dalling or Spalding or Bellingham or Allingham, and so on and so forth. Then there were Marjories and Marcias and Margarets, Norahs and Doras, and Rhodas and Marthas, all of the name of Allen, or Allan or Alleyne or Alyn, and so on. And there was one little saffron-haired creature who came with a very large Matron, and whose name was Dulcibella Dobbs.
Miss Rawlings, with her broad bright face and bright little eyes, smiled at them all from her chair, questioned their Aunts and their Stepmothers, and their Female Friends, and coveted every single one of them, including Dulcibella Dobbs. But you must draw the line somewhere, as Euclid said to his little Greek pupils when he sat by the sparkling waves of the Ægean Sea and drew triangles in the sand. And Miss Rawlings felt in her heart that it was kinder and wiser and more prudent and proper to keep strictly to those little girls with the three-cornered faces, high cheek-bones, “really” bright brown eyes and with truly appropriate pigtails. With these she fell in love again and again and again.
There was no doubt in the world that she had an exceedingly motherly heart, but very few mothers could so nicely afford to give it rein. Indeed, Miss Rawlings would have drawn the line nowhere, I am afraid, if it had not been for the fact that she had only ten thousand pounds or so a year.
There were tears in her eyes when she bade the others good-bye. And to everyone she gave not one bun, not one orange, but a bag of oranges and a bag of buns. And not merely a bag of ordinary denia oranges and ordinary currant buns, but a bag of Jaffas and a bag of Bath. And she thanked their Guardianesses for having come such a long way, and would they be offended if she paid the fare? Only one was offended, but then her fare had cost only 3d.—2d. for herself, and 1d. (half price) for the little Peggoty Spalding she brought with her. And Miss Rawlings paid her sixpence.
She kept thirty little ten-year-olds altogether, and you never saw so many young fortunate smiling pigtailed creatures so much alike. And Miss Rawlings, having been so successful, withdrew her advertisements from the Times and the Morning Post and the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, and she bought a most beautiful Tudor house called Trafford House, with one or two wings to it that had been added in the days of Good Queen Anne, and William and Mary, which stood in entirely its own grounds not ten miles from the Parish boundary. The forest trees in its park were so fine—cedars, sweet chestnuts, and ash and beech and oak—that you could only get a glimpse of its chimneys from the entrance to the drive.