Little Friend Lydia Part 4

Then every afternoon, she stood very still while Mr. Blake painted the picture, looking from Lydia to the canvas and back again at Lydia.

"Couldn't Miss Puss be in the picture, too?" asked Lydia. "She is all gray and white, just like me."

So Miss Puss was put in the picture, sitting as still as could be at Lydia's feet. Mr. Blake worked quickly, and so the picture was soon finished, and it happened that the very next day Lydia had a party. Mary Ellen and Sammy and Polly and little Tom were coming with Miss Martin to spend the afternoon.

When Lydia saw the children walking up the street, their friendly faces s.h.i.+ning with soap and water and happy smiles, she hopped up and down in the window and waved both hands in greeting. If she had been a boy she would have turned a somersault, I know.

"Is this our quiet little Lydia?" Miss Martin asked Mrs. Blake, with a laugh. "What have you done to her?"

For Lydia was dragging the children into her bedroom, and telling them of Mother and Father and Miss Puss, and bidding them look at Lucy Locket's cradle, and the doll carriage, and the picture-books, all in one breath, and before they even had time to take off their hats and coats. From the noise, and the confusion, and the rus.h.i.+ng about, and the sound of many voices all talking at once, as Lydia took them from one end to the other of that little house, you might have thought that all twenty children from the Children's Home had come visiting instead of four!

But after a little they quieted down, and when Mrs. Blake and Miss Martin peeped in at them, this peaceful scene met their eyes. Sammy was lying flat on the floor, lost in a picture-book of cowboys and Indians galloping madly over the Western plains. Polly was wheeling lazy Miss Puss up and down the hall. Over in a corner, sure that no one was looking at him, little Tom had turned his back upon the world, and was comfortably rocking Lucy Locket to sleep as he swayed to and fro in the little rocking-chair. In the closet, Lydia was proudly showing her Quaker dress to the admiring Mary Ellen. When she spied her mother-

"May I put it on?" she asked. "Mary Ellen thinks it's almost as good as a Red Cross nurse."

"Would you like to dress up as a nurse yourself this afternoon, Mary Ellen?" asked Mrs. Blake, who read a longing in Mary Ellen's eye.

And in a twinkling you wouldn't have known happy Mary Ellen. For a big cooking-ap.r.o.n covered her from neck to heels, and, with a Red Cross cap on her head, you couldn't have found a better nurse if you had searched the whole world over. Polly was turned into a fine lady, in a silk dress, a lace cap, and three strings of beads about her neck. Such flauntings and preenings, such bowing and curtsying as the three little peac.o.c.ks indulged in, what time they weren't admiring themselves in the mirror! They looked up to see Mr. Blake laughing at them in the doorway.

He made a low bow and shook them by the hand as if they had been real grown-up people.

"Aren't you going to do anything for the boys?" he asked, for Sammy and Tom were looking on with envious eyes. "Come upstairs with me, boys.

I've a trunkful of things to wear." And so he had, to use when he was painting pictures.

Such shouting and laughing as now floated down from the studio! The little girls sat at the foot of the stairs, and every now and then they would creep a step higher. At last the door opened and they started up with a rush, but it was only Father speaking to Miss Martin.

"Do you mind if I put paint on their faces?" he asked.

"Not a bit," said Miss Martin, who was used to all kinds of antics on the part of her brood, and who never said "no" when she could possibly answer "yes."

"But not on their mouths, Father," called Mother. "We haven't had the real party yet."

Then the door closed again, for hours and hours it seemed to Lydia and Polly and Mary Ellen, though Mother said it was only ten minutes by the clock.

But when Mr. Blake called "All aboard!" and they trooped up into the studio, they forgot their long wait in admiration at what they saw. For there stood an Indian, wearing a real deerskin over his shoulders, and with real deerskin leggings that ended in gay beaded moccasins. On his head was a gorgeous feather head-dress, and in his hands he carried a bow and arrow. His face was ornamented with spots and stripes and splashes of red and yellow and blue paint. He was not a very fierce-looking warrior, for he was grinning from ear to ear, and when the girls saw that smile, they knew.

"Sammy!" said Lydia and Polly and Mary Ellen in a breath.

As for Tom, there he stood in a black velvet cloak, and a big black hat, with green plumes drooping off the edge. He had a big black curling mustache that almost covered his face, but the pride of his heart was a pair of high, s.h.i.+ny, black boots, so big for him that he couldn't take a step without holding on to them with both hands for fear of losing them off. He wore a short wooden sword thrust in his belt, and I really don't know what the fine lady and the Quakeress would have done without that sword. For they immediately set sail down Studio River in a boat made of two chairs and a stool. Tom's sword kept the alligators and crocodiles from climbing into the boat after them. But alas! they were attacked by an Indian brave, skulking in the woods. They were all but killed by him, but were speedily brought back to health by a Red Cross nurse, who happened to be taking a stroll that afternoon in those selfsame woods.

This was such a good game that they played it over and over again, until Mrs. Blake called them to come to the "real party," and that they were quite ready to do. Sandwiches, little cakes, cups of milk disappeared like magic. They ate and ate and ate until even Sammy could eat no more.

Then there came a knock at the door, and who should it be but Friend Morris! She stared in surprise at all of them, but at Lydia most of all.

And when Mr. Blake whispered in Lydia's ear, and she led Friend Morris over to the picture Father had painted for her, it was a long time before Friend Morris had a word to say. She looked and looked at the picture, and she looked and looked at Lydia. Lydia couldn't tell whether Friend Morris was going to laugh or cry.

"Don't you like the present?" asked Lydia. "I wanted to make you horse-reins, but Father said you would like this better."

"Like it, Friend Lydia?" said Mrs. Morris at last. "There isn't another present in the whole world that I would like so well as this."

Lydia and Father and Mother nodded and smiled at one another. They were so glad that Friend Morris was pleased, and that their present was a success.

Then, cozily, they all gathered round the open fire, and each of the children hung up an apple on a string to roast before the blaze. They turned and turned the string to cook the apples through and through, and when at last they were done, a grown person might have thought them burned in spots and raw in others, but the children ate them with the greatest relish.

And while they watched the apples twist and turn, and the flames rise and fall-

"Would thee like me to tell a story?" asked Friend Morris, with a hand on Lydia's Quaker cap,-"a story my grandmother used to tell me, of a little Quaker girl who lived a long time ago?"

"Are there Indians in it?" demanded Sammy, admiring, with head on one side, his deerskin leggings stretched before him.

Friend Morris nodded, and every one settled back comfortably to hear the story she had to tell.

CHAPTER V-The Story of Little Gwen

"It was a long time ago," began Friend Morris, "when a little Welsh girl named Gwen set sail from England, with her father and mother and a company of Friends, to cross the Atlantic Ocean and make a new home for themselves in America. When they were perhaps halfway across, Gwen had a new little brother, and as he was born on the ocean he was given the name 'Seaborn.'

"Travel was slow in those days, and it seemed a long time to little Gwen before the s.h.i.+p reached land, and she could run and jump as much as she pleased on the solid ground, as she could not do on the crowded s.h.i.+p's deck. But even then their travels were not over, for Gwen's father, with a few other men and their families, pushed on into the woods where they meant to settle and build their homes."

"Were there Indians in the woods?" asked Sammy eagerly.

"Yes, plenty of them, but all friendly to the Quakers," answered Friend Morris. "I'm sorry for thee, Sammy, but there won't be a single fight in this story."

"Never mind," said Sammy generously, "I'll like to hear it just the same."

"What kind of a house did Gwen have in the woods?" asked Mary Ellen, anxious to hear the story.

"No house at all, for a time," said Friend Morris. "At first, each family chose its own tree, and under it they lived, glad of any shelter that would protect them from sun and rain."

"Like the squirrels and rabbits," murmured Lydia.

"Then, as the weather grew colder, they dug caves in the bank of the river, where with a roof of boughs and comfortable beds of leaves, they lived until they were able to build real houses of logs or stone."

"That was nice," said little Tom. "I'd like to live in a cave. I'd keep the bears out with my sword."

"Gwen liked it, too, though I don't know that she saw any bears,"

answered Friend Morris. "But oh, how glad her mother was when their log house was finished. It had a ladder on the outside that led to the upper room, and Gwen learned to run up and down this ladder as quickly as a squirrel runs up a tree. Gwen's father had built the house on the river-bank far away from his friends, for some day he meant to clear the land and have a large farm.

"There was little time for visiting in those busy days, and Gwen might have been lonely if it had not been for Seaborn. He was a fat roly-poly, a year old now, creeping and crawling into all kinds of mischief, and Gwen spent her spare moments trotting around after him. He was a good-natured baby, but now he was cutting his teeth, and this made him cross and fractious. And he cried. Oh! how he cried. His mother rubbed his gums with her thimble to help his teeth through, and he cried harder than ever. Gwen danced up and down and shook his home-made rattle, a gourd filled with dried peas, but he only pushed her away. And just then came the time for the big Friends' Meeting to be held across the river in the town of Philadelphia.

"'Father will go, but we must stay at home, Gwen,' said her mother. 'We meant to take thee, and Seaborn, too, but thee couldn't ask me to take this crying baby anywhere.'

"'How long would thee be gone, Mother? Two days and a night?' asked Gwen. 'Wouldn't thee trust me to stay at home and take care of Seaborn?'

"And Gwen coaxed and wheedled, and wheedled and coaxed, until the next morning, feeling very important and grown-up, she saw her father and mother start across the river in their little boat, bound for the great Quarterly Meeting.

"That very afternoon Seaborn's nap was so quiet and peaceful that Gwen wasn't the least surprised, on peeping into his mouth when he woke, to see a big new tooth s.h.i.+ning in that pink cavern. What if it was raining and they couldn't go out of doors? It was easy enough to amuse Seaborn now.