Holiday Stories for Young People Part 1

Holiday Stories for Young People.

by Various.

PREFACE.

Boys and girls, I am proud to call a host of you my personal friends, and I dearly love you all. It has been a great pleasure to me to arrange this gift book for you, and I hope you will like the stories and ballads, and spend many happy hours over them. One story, "The Middle Daughter," was originally published in Harper's "Round Table," and is inserted here by consent of Messrs. Harper and Brothers. Two of the ballads, "Horatius," and "The Pied Piper," belong to literature, and you cannot afford not to know them, and some of the fairy stories are like bits of golden coin, worth treasuring up and reading often. Miss Mary Joanna Porter deserves the thanks of the boys for the aid she has given in the making of this volume, and the bright stories she has contributed to its pages.

A merry time to you, boys and girls, and a heart full of love from your steadfast friend,

M.E.S.

CHAPTER I.

THE HEROINE PRESENTS HERSELF.

My name is Milly Van Doren, and I am an only child. I won't begin by telling you how tall I am, how much I weigh, and the color of my eyes and hair, for you would not know very much more about my looks after such an inventory than you do without it, and mother says that in her opinion it is pleasantest to form one's own idea of a girl in a story book. Mother says, too, that a good rule in stories is to leave out introductions, and so I will follow her advice and plunge into the middle of my first morning. It was early summer and very lovely, and I was feeling half-sad and half-glad, with the gladness surpa.s.sing the sadness, because I had never before been half so proud and important.

Father and mother, after talking and planning and hesitating over it a long while, were actually going on a journey just by themselves and without me; and I, being now considered old enough and steady enough, was to stay at home, keep house, and take care of dear grandmamma. With Aunt Hetty at the helm, the good old servant, whose black face had beamed over my cradle fifteen years ago, and whose strong arms had come between mother and every roughness during her twenty years of housekeeping, it really looked as if I might be trusted, and as if mother need not give me so many anxious directions. Did mother think me a baby? I wondered resentfully. Father always reads my face like an open page.

"Thee may leave something to Milly's discretion, dear," he said, in his slow, stately way.

"Thee forgets her inexperience, love," said my gentle mother.

Father and mother are always courtly and tender with one another, never hasty of speech, never impatient. They have been lovers, and then they are gentlefolk. Father waited, and mother kept on telling me about grandmamma and the cat, the birds and the best china, the fire on the hearth in cool evenings, and the last year's canned fruit, which might as well be used up while she was away, particularly the cherries and plums.

"May the girls come over often?" I asked.

"Whenever you like," said mother. "Invite whom you please, of course."

Here father held up his watch warningly. It was time to go, if they were to catch the train. Arm in arm they walked down the long avenue to the gate, after bidding me good-bye. Grandmamma watched them, waving her handkerchief from the window of her room over the porch, and at the last moment I rushed after them for a final kiss and hug.

"Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever," said father, with a twinkle in his eye.

"Don't forget to count the silver every morning," said mother.

And so my term of office began. Bloomdale never wore a brighter face than during that long vacation--a vacation which extended from June till October. We girls had studied very diligently all winter. In spring there had been scarlet fever in the village, and our little housekeepers, for one cause or another, had seldom held meetings; and some of the mothers and older sisters declared that it was just what they had expected, our ardor had cooled, and nothing was coming of our club after all that had been said when we organized.

As president of the Bloomdale Clover Leaf Club I determined that the club should now make up for lost time, and having _carte-blanche_ from mother, as I supposed, I thought I would set about work at once.

Cooking was our most important work, and there's no fun in cooking unless eating is to follow; so the club should be social, and give luncheons, teas and picnics, at which we might have perfectly lovely times. I saw no reason for delay, and with my usual impulsiveness, consulted n.o.body about my first step.

And thus I made mistake number one. Cooking and housekeeping always look perfectly easy on paper. When you come to taking hold of them in real earnest with your own hands you find them very different and much harder.

Soon after I heard the train whistle, and knew that father and mother were fairly gone, I harnessed old Fan to the phaeton, and set out to visit every one of the girls with an invitation to tea the very next evening. I did put my head into grandmamma's chamber to tell her what I thought of doing, but the dear old lady was asleep in her easy-chair, her knitting lying in her lap, and I knew she did not wish to be disturbed. I closed the door softly and flew down stairs.

Just as I was ready to start, Aunt Hetty came to the kitchen door, calling me, persuasively: "Miss Milly, honey, what yo' done mean to hab for dinner?"

"Oh, anything you please, aunty," I called back, gathering up the reins, chirping to Fan, and taking the road to the Curtis girls' house.

Certainly I had no time to spend consulting with Aunt Hetty.

Mother knew me better than father did. I found out later that this wasn't at all a proper way to keep house, giving no orders, and leaving things to the discretion, of the cook. But I hadn't really begun yet, and I was wild to get the girls together.

Bloomdale is a sort of scattered up-hill and down-dale place, with one long and broad street running through the centre of the village, and houses standing far apart from each other, and well back from the pavement in the middle of the green lawns, swept into shadow by grand old trees. The Bloomdale people are proud of the town, and keep the gardens beautiful with flowers and free from weeds. Life in Bloomdale would be perfectly delightful, all the grown-up people say, if it were not for the everlasting trouble about servants, who are forever changing their places and going away, and complaining that the town is dull, and their church too distant, and life inconvenient; and so every one envies my mother, who has kept Hetty all these years, and never had any trouble at all.

At least I fancied that to be so, till I was a housekeeper myself, and found out that Aunt Hetty had spells of temper and must be humored, and was not perfect, any more than other people vastly above her in station and beyond her in advantages.

I stopped for Linda Curtis, and she jumped into the phaeton and went with me. We asked Jeanie Cartwright, Veva Fay, Lois Partridge, Amy Pierce and Marjorie Downing to tea the next day, and every girl of them promised to come bright and early.

When I reached home I ran to grandmamma to ask her if I had done right, and to get her advice about what I would better have for my bill of fare.

"Thee is too precipitate, dear child," said grandmamma. "Why not have waited two or three days before having a company tea? I fear much that Hetty will be contrary, and not help as she ought. And I have one of my headaches coming."

"Oh, grandmamma!" I exclaimed. "Have you taken your pills?" I was aghast.

"Thee needn't worry, dear," replied grandmamma, quite unruffled. "I have taken them, and if the headache does not vanish before dark, I'll sleep in the south chamber to-night, and be out of the way of the stir to-morrow. I wish, though, Aunt Hetty were not in a cross fit."

"It is shameful," I said. "Aunt Hetty has been here so long that she does not know her place. I shall not be disturbed by her moods."

So, holding my head high, I put on my most dignified manner and went to the kitchen. Aunt Hetty, in a blue gingham gown, with a gay kerchief tied on her head, was slowly and pensively rocking herself back and forth in her low chair. She took no notice of me whatever.

"Aunt Hetty!"

No answer.

"Aunt Hetty!" This time I spoke louder.

Still she rocked back and forth, apparently as deaf as a post. I grew desperate, and, going up to her, put my hand on her shoulder, saying:

"_Aunt Hetty_, aren't we to have our dinner? The fire seems to be out."

She shook off my hand and slowly rose, looking glum and preoccupied.

"Didn't hear no orders for dinner, Miss Alice."

"Now, Aunt Hetty," I remonstrated, "why will you be so horrid? You know I am the housekeeper when mother is away, and you're going to spoil everything, and make her wish she hadn't gone. _How_ can I manage if you won't help? Come, be good," I pleaded.

But nothing moved her from her stony indifference, and I went back to grandmamma in despair. I was about to pour all my woes in her ear, but a glance at her pale face restrained me.

She was going to have a regular Van Doren headache.

"We never have headaches like other people."

How many times I have heard my aunts and uncles say this in just these words! They do not think me half a Van Doren because, owing to my mother's way of bringing me up, I have escaped the family infliction. In fact, I am half a Neilson, and the Neilsons are a healthy everyday set, who do not have aches and pains, and are seldom troubled with nerves.

Plebeian, perhaps, but very comfortable.