LADDIE
A TRUE BLUE STORY
To
LEANDER ELLIOT STRATTON
"The Way to Be Happy Is to Be Good"
Contents
CHAPTER
I. Little Sister
II. Our Angel Boy
III. Mr. Pryor's Door
IV. The Last Day in Eden
V. The First Day of School
VI. The Wedding Gown
VII. When Sally Married Peter
VIII. The Shropshire and the Crusader
IX. "Even So"
X. Laddie Takes the Plunge
XI. Keeping Christmas Our Way
XII. The Horn of the Hunter
XIII. The Garden of the Lord
XIV. The Crest of Eastbrooke
XV. Laddie, the Princess, and the Pie
XVI. The Homing Pigeon
XVII. In Faith Believing
XVIII. The Pryor Mystery
LADDIE
CHARACTERS
LADDIE, Who Loved and Asked No Questions.
THE PRINCESS, From the House of Mystery.
LEON, Our Angel Child.
LITTLE SISTER, Who Tells What Happened.
MR. and MRS. STANTON, Who Faced Life Shoulder to Shoulder.
SALLY and PETER, Who Married Each Other.
ELIZABETH, SHELLEY, MAY and Other Stanton Children.
MR. and MRS. PRYOR, Father and Mother of the Princess.
ROBERT PAGET, a Chicago Lawyer.
MRS. FRESHETT, Who Offered Her Life for Her Friend.
CANDACE, the Cook.
MISS AMELIA, the School Mistress.
Interested Relatives, Friends, and Neighbours.
CHAPTER I
Little Sister
"And could another child-world be my share,
I'd be a Little Sister there."
Have I got a Little Sister anywhere in this house?" inquired
Laddie at the door, in his most coaxing voice.
"Yes sir," I answered, dropping the trousers I was making
for Hezekiah, my pet bluejay, and running as fast as I could.
There was no telling what minute May might take it into her head
that she was a little sister and reach him first. Maybe he wanted
me to do something for him, and I loved to wait on Laddie.
"Ask mother if you may go with me a while."
"Mother doesn't care where I am, if I come when the supper
bell rings."
"All right!" said Laddie.
He led the way around the house, sat on the front step and took
me between his knees.
"Oh, is it going to be a secret?" I cried.
Secrets with Laddie were the greatest joy in life. He was so big
and so handsome. He was so much nicer than any one else in our
family, or among our friends, that to share his secrets, run his
errands, and love him blindly was the greatest happiness. Sometimes
I disobeyed father and mother; I minded Laddie like his right
hand.
"The biggest secret yet," he said gravely.
"Tell quick!" I begged, holding my ear to his lips.
"Not so fast!" said Laddie. "Not so fast! I have
doubts about this. I don't know that I should send you. Possibly
you can't find the way. You may be afraid. Above all, there is
never to be a whisper. Not to any one! Do you understand?"
"What's the matter?" I asked.
"Something serious," said Laddie. "You see, I expected
to have an hour or two for myself this afternoon, so I made an
engagement to spend the time with a Fairy Princess in our Big
Woods. Father and I broke the reaper taking it from the shed just
now and you know how he is about Fairies."
I did know how he was about Fairies. He hadn't a particle of patience
with them. A Princess would be the Queen's daughter. My father's
people were English, and I had heard enough talk to understand
that. I was almost wild with excitement.
"Tell me the secret, hurry!" I cried.
"It's just this," he said. "It took me a long time
to coax the Princess into our Big Woods. I had to fix a throne
for her to sit on; spread a Magic Carpet for her feet, and build
a wall to screen her. Now, what is she going to think if I'm not
there to welcome her when she comes? She promised to show me how
to make sunshine on dark days."
"Tell father and he can have Leon help him."
"But it is a secret with the Princess, and it's HERS as much
as mine. If I tell, she may not like it, and then she won't make
me her Prince and send me on her errands."
"Then you don't dare tell a breath," I said.
"Will you go in my place, and carry her a letter to explain
why I'm not coming, Little Sister?"
"Of course!" I said stoutly, and then my heart turned
right over; for I never had been in our Big Woods alone, and neither
mother nor father wanted me to go. Passing Gypsies sometimes laid
down the fence and went there to camp. Father thought all the
wolves and wildcats were gone, he hadn't seen any in years, but
every once in a while some one said they had, and he was not quite
sure yet. And that wasn't the beginning of it. Paddy Ryan had
come back from the war wrong in his head. He wore his old army
overcoat summer and winter, slept on the ground, and ate whatever
he could find. Once Laddie and Leon, hunting squirrels to make
broth for mother on one of her bad days, saw him in our Big Woods
and he was eating SNAKES. If I found Pat Ryan eating a snake,
it
would frighten me so I would stand still and let him eat me, if
he wanted to, and perhaps he wasn't too crazy to see how plump
I was. I seemed to see swarthy, dark faces, big, sleek cats dropping
from limbs, and Paddy Ryan's matted gray hair, the flying rags
of the old blue coat, and a snake in his hands. Laddie was slipping
the letter into my apron pocket. My knees threatened to let me
down.
"Must I lift the leaves and hunt for her, or will she come
to me?" I wavered.
"That's the biggest secret of all," said Laddie. "Since
the Princess entered them, our woods are Enchanted, and there
is no telling what wonderful things may happen any minute. One
of them is this: whenever the Princess comes there, she grows
in size until she is as big as, say our Sally, and she fills all
the place with glory, until you are so blinded you scarcely can
see her face."
"What is she like, Laddie?" I questioned, so filled
with awe and interest, that fear was forgotten.
"She is taller than Sally," said Laddie. "Her face
is oval, and her cheeks are bright. Her eyes are big moonlit pools
of darkness, and silken curls fall over her shoulders. One hair
is strong enough for a lifeline that will draw a drowning man
ashore, or strangle an unhappy one. But you will not see her.
I'm purposely sending you early, so you can do what you are told
and come back to me before she even reaches the woods."
"What am I to do, Laddie?"
"You must put one hand in your apron pocket and take the
letter in it, and as long as you hold it tight, nothing in the
world can hurt you. Go out our lane to the Big Woods, climb the
gate and walk straight back the wagon road to the water. When
you reach that, you must turn to your right and go toward Hoods'
until you come to the pawpaw thicket. Go around that, look ahead,
and you'll see the biggest beech tree you ever saw. You know a
beech, don't you?"
"Of course I do," I said indignantly. "Father taught
me beech with the other trees."
"Well then," said Laddie, "straight before you
will be a purple beech, and under it is the throne of the Princess,
the Magic Carpet, and the walls I made. Among the beech roots
there is a stone hidden with moss. Roll the stone back and there
will be a piece of bark. Lift that, lay the letter in the box
you'll find, and scamper to me like flying. I'll be at the barn
with father."
"Is that all?"
"Not quite," said Laddie. "It's possible that the
Fairy Queen may have set the Princess spinning silk for the caterpillars
to weave their little houses with this winter; and if she has,
she may have left a letter there to tell me. If there is one,
put it in your pocket, hold it close every step of the way, and
you'll be safe coming home as you were going. But you mustn't
let a soul see it; you must slip it into my pocket when I'm not
looking. If you let any one see, then the Magic will be spoiled,
and the Fairy won't come again."
"No one shall see," I promised.
"I knew you could be trusted," said Laddie, kissing
and hugging me hard. "Now go! If anything gets after you
that such a big girl as you really wouldn't be ashamed to be afraid
of, climb on a fence and call. I'll be listening, and I'll come
flying. Now I must hurry. Father will think it's going to take
me the remainder of the day to find the bolts he wants."
We went down the front walk between the rows of hollyhocks and
tasselled lady-slippers, out the gate, and followed the road.
Laddie held one of my hands tight, and in the other I gripped
the letter in my pocket. So long as Laddie could see me, and the
lane lay between open fields, I wasn't afraid. I was thinking
so deeply about our woods being Enchanted, and a tiny Fairy growing
big as our Sally, because she was in them, that I stepped out
bravely.
Every few days I followed the lane as far back as the Big Gate.
This stood where four fields cornered, and opened into the road
leading to the woods. Beyond it, I had walked on Sunday afternoons
with father while he taught me all the flowers, vines, and bushes
he knew, only he didn't know some of the prettiest ones; I had
to have books for them, and I was studying to learn enough that
I could find out. Or I had ridden on the wagon with Laddie and
Leon when they went to bring wood for the cookstove, outoven,
and big fireplace. But to walk! To go all alone! Not that I didn't
walk by myself over every other foot of the acres and acres of
beautiful land my father owned; but plowed fields, grassy meadows,
wood pasture, and the orchard were different. I played in them
without a thought of fear.
The only things to be careful about were a little, shiny, slender
snake, with a head as bright as mother's copper kettle, and a
big thick one with patterns on its back like those in Laddie's
geometry books, and a whole rattlebox on its tail; not to eat
any berry or fruit I didn't know without first asking father;
and always to be sure to measure how deep the water was before
I waded in alone.
But our Big Woods! Leon said the wildcats would get me there.
I sat in our catalpa and watched the Gypsies drive past every
summer. Mother hated them as hard as ever she could hate any one,
because once they had stolen some fine shirts, with linen bosoms,
that she had made by hand for father, and was bleaching on the
grass. If Gypsies should be in our west woods to-day and steal
me, she would hate them worse than ever; because my mother loved
me now, even if she didn't want me when I was born.
But you could excuse her for that. She had already bathed, spanked,
sewed for, and reared eleven babies so big and strong not one
of them ever even threatened to die. When you thought of that,
you could see she wouldn't be likely to implore the Almighty to
send her another, just to make her family even numbers. I never
felt much hurt at her, but some of the others I never have forgiven
and maybe I never will. As long as there had been eleven babies,
they should have been so accustomed to children that they needn't
all of them have objected to me, all except Laddie, of course.
That was the reason I loved him so and tried to do every single
thing he wanted me to, just the way he liked it done. That was
why I was facing the only spot on our land where I was in the
slightest afraid; because he asked me to.
If he had told me to dance a jig on the ridgepole of our barn,
I would have tried it.
So I clasped the note, set my teeth, and climbed over the gate.
I walked fast and kept my eyes straight before me. If I looked
on either side, sure as life I would see something I never had
before, and be down digging up a strange flower, chasing a butterfly,
or watching a bird. Besides, if I didn't look in the fence corners
that I passed, maybe I wouldn't see anything to scare me. I was
going along finely, and feeling better every minute as I went
down the bank of an old creek that had gone dry, and started up
the other side toward the sugar camp not far from the Big Woods.
The bed was full of weeds and as I passed through, away! went
Something among them.
Beside the camp shed there was corded wood, and the first thing
I knew, I was on top of it. The next, my hand was on the note
in my pocket. My heart jumped until I could see my apron move,
and my throat went all stiff and dry. I gripped the note and waited.
Father believed God would take care of him. I was only a little
girl and needed help much more than a man; maybe God would take
care of me. There was nothing wrong in carrying a letter to the
Fairy Princess. I thought perhaps it would help if I should kneel
on the top of the woodpile and ask God to not let anything get
me.
The more I thought about it, the less I felt like doing it, though,
because really you have no business to ask God to take care of
you, unless you KNOW you are doing right. This was right, but
in my heart I also knew that if Laddie had asked me, I would be
shivering on top of that cordwood on a hot August day, when it
was wrong. On the whole, I thought it would be more honest to
leave God out of it, and take the risk myself. That made me think
of the Crusaders, and the little gold trinket in father's chest
till. There were four shells on it and each one stood for a trip
on foot or horseback to the Holy City when you had to fight almost
every step of the way. Those shells meant that my father's people
had gone four times, so he said; that, although it was away far
back, still each of us had a tiny share of the blood of the Crusaders
in our veins, and that it would make us brave and strong, and
whenever we were afraid, if we would think of them, we never could
do a cowardly thing or let any one else do one before us. He said
any one with Crusader blood had to be brave as Richard the Lion-hearted.
Thinking about that helped ever so much, so I gripped the note
and turned to take one last look at the house before I made a
dash for the gate that led into the Big Woods.
Beyond our land lay the farm of Jacob Hood, and Mrs. Hood always
teased me because Laddie had gone racing after her when I was
born. She was in the middle of Monday's washing, and the bluing
settled in the rinse water and stained her white clothes in streaks
it took months to bleach out. I always liked Sarah Hood for coming
and dressing me, though, because our Sally, who was big enough
to have done it, was upstairs crying and wouldn't come down. I
liked Laddie too, because he was the only one of our family who
went to my mother and kissed her, said he was glad, and offered
to help her. Maybe the reason he went was because he had an awful
scare, but anyway he WENT, and that was enough for me.
You see it was this way: no one wanted me; as there had been eleven
of us, every one felt that was enough. May was six years old and
in school, and my mother thought there never would be any more
babies. She had given away the cradle and divided the baby clothes
among my big married sisters and brothers, and was having a fine
time and enjoying herself the most she ever had in her life. The
land was paid for long ago; the house she had planned, builded
as she wanted it; she had a big team of matched grays and a carriage
with side lamps and patent leather trimmings; and sometimes there
was money in the bank. I do not know that there was very much,
but any at all was a marvel, considering how many of us there
were to feed, clothe, and send to college. Mother was forty-six
and father was fifty; so they felt young enough yet to have a
fine time and enjoy life, and just when things were going best,
I announced that I was halfway over my journey to earth.
You can't blame my mother so much. She must have been tired of
babies and disliked to go back and begin all over after resting
six years. And you mustn't be too hard on my father if he was
not just overjoyed. He felt sure the cook would leave, and she
did. He knew Sally would object to a baby, when she wanted to
begin having beaus, so he and mother talked it over and sent her
away for a long visit to Ohio with father's people, and never
told her. They intended to leave her there until I was over the
colic, at least. They knew the big married brothers and sisters
would object, and they did. They said it would be embarrassing
for their children to be the nieces and nephews of an aunt or
uncle younger than themselves. They said it so often and so emphatically
that father was provoked and mother cried. Shelley didn't like
it because she was going to school in Groveville, where Lucy,
one of our married sisters, lived, and she was afraid I would
make so much work she would have to give up her books and friends
and remain at home. There never was a baby born who was any less
wanted than I was. I knew as much about it as any one else, because
from the day I could understand, all of them, father, mother,
Shelley, Sarah Hood, every one who knew, took turns telling me
how badly I was not wanted, how much trouble I made, and how Laddie
was the only one who loved me at first. Because of that I was
on the cordwood trying to find courage to go farther. Over and
over Laddie had told me himself. He had been to visit our big
sister Elizabeth over Sunday and about eight o'clock Monday morning
he came riding down the road, and saw the most dreadful thing.
There was not a curl of smoke from the chimneys, not a tablecloth
or pillowslip on the line, not a blind raised. Laddie said his
heart went--just like mine did when the Something jumped in the
creek bed, no doubt. Then he laid on the whip and rode.
He flung the rein over the hitching post, leaped the fence and
reached the back door. The young green girl, who was all father
could get when the cook left, was crying. So were Shelley and
little May, although she said afterward she had a boil on her
heel and there was no one to poultice it. Laddie leaned against
the door casing, and it is easy enough to understand what he thought.
He told me he had to try twice before he could speak, and then
he could only ask: "What's the matter?"
Probably May never thought she would have the chance, but the
others were so busy crying harder, now that they had an audience,
that she was first to tell him: "We have got a little sister."
"Great Day!" cried Laddie. "You made me think we
had a funeral! Where is mother, and where is my Little Sister?"
He went bolting right into mother's room and kissed her like the
gladdest boy alive; because he was only a boy then, and he told
her how happy he was that she was safe, and then he ASKED for
me.
He said I was the only living creature in that house who was not
shedding tears, and I didn't begin for about six months afterward.
In fact, not until Shelley taught me by pinching me if she had
to rock the cradle; then I would cry so hard mother would have
to take me. He said he didn't believe I'd ever have learned by
myself.
He took a pillow from the bed, fixed it in the rocking chair and
laid me on it. When he found that father was hitching the horses
to send Leon for Doctor Fenner, Laddie rode back after Sarah Hood
and spoiled her washing. It may be that the interest he always
took in me had its beginning in all of them scaring him with their
weeping; even Sally, whom father had to telegraph to come home,
was upstairs crying, and she was almost a woman. It may be that
all the tears they shed over not wanting me so scared Laddie that
he went farther in his welcome than he ever would have thought
of going if he hadn't done it for joy when he learned his mother
was safe. I don't care about the reason. It is enough for me that
from the hour of my birth Laddie named me Little Sister, seldom
called me anything else, and cared for me all he possibly could
to rest mother. He took me to the fields with him in the morning
and brought me back on the horse before him at noon. He could
plow with me riding the horse, drive a reaper with me on his knees,
and hoe corn while I slept on his coat in a fence corner. The
winters he was away at college left me lonely, and when he came
back for a vacation I was too happy for words. Maybe it was wrong
to love him most. I knew my mother cared for and wanted me now.
And all my secrets were not with Laddie. I had one with father
that I was never to tell so long as he lived, but it was about
the one he loved best, next after mother. Perhaps I should never
tell it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the family knew. I followed
Laddie like a faithful dog, when I was not gripping his waving
hair and riding in triumph on his shoulders. He never had to go
so fast he couldn't take me on his back. He never was in too big
a hurry to be kind. He always had patience to explain every shell,
leaf, bird, and flower I asked about. I was just as much his when
pretty young girls were around, and the house full of company,
as when we were alone. That was the reason I was shivering on
the cordwood, gripping his letter and thinking of all these things
in order to force myself to go farther.
I was excited about the Fairies too. I often had close chances
of seeing them, but I always just missed. Now here was Laddie
writing letters and expecting answers; our Big Woods Enchanted,
a Magic Carpet and the Queen's daughter becoming our size so she
could speak with him. No doubt the Queen had her grow big as Shelley,
when she sent her on an errand to tell Laddie about how to make
sunshine; because she was afraid if she went her real size he
would accidentally step on her, he was so dreadfully big.
Or maybe her voice was so fine he could not hear what she said.
He had told me I was to hurry, and I had gone as fast as I could
until Something jumped; since, I had been settled on that cordwood
like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. I had to get down some
time; I might as well start.
I gripped the letter, slid to the ground, and ran toward the big
gate straight before me. I climbed it, clutched the note again,
and ran blindly down the road through the forest toward the creek.
I could hurry there. On either side of it I could not have run
ten steps at a time. The big trees reached so high above me it
seemed as if they would push through the floor of Heaven. I tried
to shut my ears and run so fast I couldn't hear a sound, and so
going, I soon came to the creek bank. There I turned to my right
and went slower, watching for the pawpaw thicket. On leaving the
road I thought I would have to crawl over logs and make my way;
but there seemed to be kind of a path not very plain, but travelled
enough to follow. It led straight to the thicket. At the edge
I stopped to look for the beech. It could be reached in one breathless
dash, but there seemed to be a green enclosure, so I walked around
until I found an entrance. Once there I was so amazed I stood
and stared. I was half indignant too.
Laddie hadn't done a thing but make an exact copy of my playhouse
under the biggest maiden's-blush in our orchard. He used the immense
beech for one corner, where I had the apple tree. His Magic Carpet
was woolly-dog moss, and all the magic about it, was that on the
damp woods floor, in the deep shade, the moss had taken root and
was growing as if it always had been there. He had been able to
cut and stick much larger willow sprouts for his walls than I
could, and in the wet black mould they didn't look as if they
ever had wilted. They were so fresh and green, no doubt they had
taken root and were growing. Where I had a low bench under my
tree, he had used a log; but he had hewed the top flat, and made
a moss cover. In each corner he had set a fern as high as my head.
On either side of the entrance he had planted a cluster of cardinal
flower that was in full bloom, and around the walls in a few places
thrifty bunches of Oswego tea and foxfire, that I would have walked
miles to secure for my wild garden under the Bartlett pear tree.
It was so beautiful it took my breath away.
"If the Queen's daughter doesn't like this," I said
softly, "she'll have to go to Heaven before she finds anything
better, for there can't be another place on earth so pretty."
It was wonderful how the sound of my own voice gave me courage,
even if it did seem a little strange. So I hurried to the beech,
knelt and slipped the letter in the box, and put back the bark
and stone. Laddie had said that nothing could hurt me while I
had the letter, so my protection was gone as soon as it left my
hands.
There was nothing but my feet to save me now. I thanked goodness
I was a fine runner, and started for the pawpaw thicket. Once
there, I paused only one minute to see whether the way to the
stream was clear, and while standing tense and gazing, I heard
something. For an instant it was every bit as bad as at the dry
creek. Then I realized that this was a soft voice singing, and
I forgot everything else in a glow of delight. The Princess was
coming!
Never in all my life was I so surprised, and astonished, and bewildered.
She was even larger than our Sally; her dress was pale green,
like I thought a Fairy's should be; her eyes were deep and dark
as Laddie had said, her hair hung from a part in the middle of
her forehead over her shoulders, and if she had been in the sun,
it would have gleamed like a blackbird's wing. She was just as
Laddie said she would be; she was so much more beautiful than
you would suppose any woman could be, I stood there dumbly staring.
I wouldn't have asked for any one more perfectly beautiful or
more like Laddie had said the Princess would be; but she was no
more the daughter of the Fairy Queen than I was. She was not any
more of a Princess. If father ever would tell all about the little
bauble he kept in the till of his big chest, maybe she was not
as near! She was no one on earth but one of those new English
people who had moved on the land that cornered with ours on the
northwest. She had ridden over the roads, and been at our meeting
house. There could be no mistake.
And neither father nor mother would want her on our place. They
didn't like her family at all. Mother called them the neighbourhood
mystery, and father spoke of them as the Infidels. They had dropped
from nowhere, mother said, bought that splendid big farm, moved
on and shut out every one. Before any one knew people were shut
out, mother, dressed in her finest, with Laddie driving, went
in the carriage, all shining, to make friends with them. This
very girl opened the door and said that her mother was "indisposed,"
and could not see callers. "In-dis-posed!" That's a
good word that fills your mouth, but our mother didn't like having
it used to her. She said the "saucy chit" was insulting.
Then the man came, and he said he was very sorry, but his wife
would see no one. He did invite mother in, but she wouldn't go.
She told us she could see past him into the house and there was
such finery as never in all her days had she laid eyes on. She
said he was mannerly as could be, but he had the coldest, severest
face she ever saw.
They had two men and a woman servant, and no one could coax a
word from them, about why those people acted as they did. They
said 'orse, and 'ouse, and Hengland. They talked so funny you
couldn't have understood them anyway. They never plowed or put
in a crop. They made everything into a meadow and had more horses,
cattle, and sheep than a county fair, and everything you ever
knew with feathers, even peacocks. We could hear them scream whenever
it was going to rain. Father said they sounded heathenish. I rather
liked them. The man had stacks of money or they couldn't have
lived the way they did. He came to our house twice on business:
once to see about road laws, and again about tax rates. Father
was mightily pleased at first, because Mr. Pryor seemed to have
books, and to know everything, and father thought it would be
fine to be neighbours. But the minute Mr. Pryor finished business
he began to argue that every single thing father and mother believed
was wrong. He said right out in plain English that God was a myth.
Father told him pretty quickly that no man could say that in his
house; so he left suddenly and had not been back since, and father
didn't want him ever to come again.
Then their neighbours often saw the woman around the house and
garden. She looked and acted quite as well as any one, so probably
she was not half so sick as my mother, who had nursed three of
us through typhoid fever, and then had it herself when she was
all tired out. She wouldn't let a soul know she had a pain until
she dropped over and couldn't take another step, and father or
Laddie carried her to bed. But she went everywhere, saw all her
friends, and did more good from her bed than any other woman in
our neighbourhood could on her feet. So we thought mighty little
of those Pryor people.
Every one said the girl was pretty. Then her clothes drove the
other women crazy. Some of our neighbourhood came from far down
east, like my mother. Our people back a little were from over
the sea, and they knew how things should be, to be right. Many
of the others were from Kentucky and Virginia, and they were well
dressed, proud, handsome women; none better looking anywhere.
They followed the fashions and spent much time and money on their
clothes. When it was Quarterly Meeting or the Bishop dedicated
the church or they went to town on court days, you should have
seen them--until Pryors came. Then something new happened, and
not a woman in our neighbourhood liked it. Pamela Pryor didn't
follow the fashions. She set them. If every other woman made long
tight sleeves to their wrists, she let hers flow to the elbow
and filled them with silk lining, ruffled with lace. If they wore
high neckbands, she had none, and used a flat lace collar. If
they cut their waists straight around and gathered their skirts
on six yards full, she ran hers down to a little point front and
back, that made her look slenderer, and put only half as much
goods in her skirt. Maybe Laddie rode as well as she could; he
couldn't manage a horse any better, and aside from him there wasn't
a man we knew who would have tried to ride some of the animals
she did.
If she ever worked a stroke, no one knew it. All day long she
sat in the parlour, the very best one, every day; or on benches
under the trees with embroidery frames or books, some of them
fearful, big, difficult looking ones, or rode over the country.
She rode in sunshine and she rode in storm, until you would think
she couldn't see her way through her tangled black hair. She rode
through snow and in pouring rain, when she could have stayed out
of it, if she had wanted to. She didn't seem to be afraid of anything
on earth or in Heaven. Every one thought she was like her father
and didn't believe there was any God; so when she came among us
at church or any public gathering, as she sometimes did, people
were in no hurry to be friendly, while she looked straight ahead
and never spoke until she was spoken to, and then she was precise
and cold, I tell you.
Men took off their hats, got out of the road when she came pounding
along, and stared after her like "be-addled mummies,"
my mother said. But that was all she, or any one else, could say.
The young fellows were wild about her, and if they tried to sidle
up to her in the hope that they might lead her horse or get to
hold her foot when she mounted, they always saw when they reached
her, that she wasn't there.
But she was here! I had seen her only a few times, but this was
the Pryor girl, just as sure as I would have known if it had been
Sally. What dazed me was that she answered in every particular
the description Laddie had given me of the Queen's daughter. And
worst of all, from the day she first came among us, moving so
proud and cold, blabbing old Hannah Dover said she carried herself
like a Princess--as if Hannah Dover knew HOW a Princess carried
herself!--every living soul, my father even, had called her the
Princess. At first it was because she was like they thought a
Princess would be, but later they did it in meanness, to make
fun. After they knew her name, they were used to calling her the
Princess, so they kept it up, but some of them were secretly proud
of her; because she could look, and do, and be what they would
have given anything to, and knew they couldn't to save them.
I was never in such a fix in all my life. She looked more as Laddie
had said the Princess would than you would have thought any woman
could, but she was Pamela Pryor, nevertheless. Every one called
her the Princess, but she couldn't make reality out of that. She
just couldn't be the Fairy Queen's daughter; so the letter couldn't
possibly be for her.
She had no business in our woods; you could see that they had
plenty of their own. She went straight to the door of the willow
room and walked in as if she belonged there. What if she found
the hollow and took Laddie's letter! Fast as I could slip over
the leaves, I went back. She was on the moss carpet, on her knees,
and the letter was in her fingers. It's a good thing to have your
manners soundly thrashed into you. You've got to be scared stiff
before you forget them. I wasn't so afraid of her as I would have
been if I had known she WAS the princess, and have Laddies letter,
she should not. What had the kind of girl she was, from a home
like hers, to teach any one from our house about making sunshine?
I was at the willow wall by that time peering through, so I just
parted it a little and said: "Please put back that letter
where you got it. It isn't for you."
She knelt on the mosses, the letter in her hand, and her face,
as she turned to me, was rather startled; but when she saw me
she laughed, and said in the sweetest voice I ever heard: "Are
you so very sure of that?"
"Well I ought to be," I said. "I put it there."
"Might I inquire for whom you put it there?"
"No ma'am! That's a secret."
You should have seen the light flame in her eyes, the red deepen
on her cheeks, and the little curl of laughter that curved her
lips.
"How interesting!" she cried. "I wonder now if
you are not Little Sister."
"I am to Laddie and our folks," I said. "You are
a stranger."
All the dancing lights went from her face. She looked as if she
were going to cry unless she hurried up and swallowed it down
hard and fast.
"That is quite true," she said. "I am a stranger.
Do you know that being a stranger is the hardest thing that can
happen to any one in all this world?"
"Then why don't you open your doors, invite your neighbours
in, go to see them, and stop your father from saying such dreadful
things?"
"They are not my doors," she said, "and could you
keep your father from saying anything he chooses?"
I stood and blinked at her. Of course I wouldn't even dare try
that.
"I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say.
I couldn't ask her to come to our house. I knew no one wanted
her. But if I couldn't speak for the others, surely I might for
myself. I let go the willows and went to the door. The Princess
arose and sat on the seat Laddie had made for the Queen's daughter.
It was an awful pity to tell her she shouldn't sit there, for
I had my doubts if the real, true Princess would be half as lovely
when she came--if she ever did. Some way the Princess, who was
not a Princess, appeared so real, I couldn't keep from becoming
confused and forgetting that she was only just Pamela Pryor. Already
the lovely lights had gone from her face until it made me so sad
I wanted to cry, and I was no easy cry- baby either. If I couldn't
offer friendship for my family I would for myself.
"You may call me Little Sister, if you like," I said.
"I won't be a stranger."
"Why how lovely!" cried the Princess.
You should have seen the dancing lights fly back to her eyes.
Probably you won't believe this, but the first thing I knew I
was beside her on the throne, her arm was around me, and it's
the gospel truth that she hugged me tight. I just had sense enough
to reach over and pick Laddie's letter from her fingers, and then
I was on her side. I don't know what she did to me, but all at
once I knew that she was dreadfully lonely; that she hated being
a stranger; that she was sorry enough to cry because their house
was one of mystery, and that she would open the door if she could.
"I like you," I said, reaching up to touch her curls.
I never had seen her that I did not want to. They were like I
thought they would be. Father and Laddie and some of us had wavy
hair, but hers was crisp--and it clung to your fingers, and wrapped
around them and seemed to tug at your heart like it does when
a baby grips you. I drew away my hand, and the hair stretched
out until it was long as any of ours, and then curled up again,
and you could see that no tins had stabbed into her head to make
those curls. I began trying to single out one hair.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I want to know if only one hair is strong enough to draw
a drowning man from the water or strangle an unhappy one,"
I said.
"Believe me, no!" cried the Princess. "It would
take all I have, woven into a rope, to do that."
"Laddie knows curls that just one hair of them is strong
enough," I boasted.
"I wonder now!" said the Princess. "I think he
must have been making poetry or telling Fairy tales."
"He was telling the truth," I assured her. "Father
doesn't believe in Fairies, and mother laughs, but Laddie and
I know. Do you believe in Fairies?"
"Of course I do!" she said.
"Then you know that this COULD be an Enchanted Wood?"
"I have found it so," said the Princess.
"And MAYBE this is a Magic Carpet?"
"It surely is a Magic Carpet."
"And you might be the daughter of the Queen? Your eyes are
`moonlit pools of darkness.' If only your hair were stronger,
and you knew about making sunshine!"
"Maybe it is stronger than I think. It never has been tested.
Perhaps I do know about making sunshine. Possibly I am as true
as the wood and the carpet."
I drew away and stared at her. The longer I looked the more uncertain
I became. Maybe her mother was the Queen. Perhaps that was the
mystery. It might be the reason she didn't want the people to
see her. Maybe she was so busy making sunshine for the Princess
to bring to Laddie that she had no time to sew carpet rags, and
to go to quiltings, and funerals, and make visits. It was hard
to know what to think.
"I wish you'd tell me plain out if you are the Queen's daughter,"
I said. "It's most important. You can't have this letter
unless I KNOW. It's the very first time Laddie ever trusted me
with a letter, and I just can't give it to the wrong person."
"Then why don't you leave it where he told you?"
"But you have gone and found the place. You started to take
it once; you would again, soon as I left."
"Look me straight in the eyes, Little Sister," said
the Princess softly. "Am I like a person who would take anything
that didn't belong to her?"
"No!" I said instantly.
"How do you think I happened to come to this place?"
"Maybe our woods are prettier than yours."
"How do you think I knew where the letter was?"
I shook my head.
"If I show you some others exactly like the one you have
there, then will you believe that is for me?"
"Yes," I answered.
I believed it anyway. It just SEEMED so, the better you knew her.
The Princess slipped her hand among the folds of the trailing
pale green skirt, and from a hidden pocket drew other letters
exactly like the one I held. She opened one and ran her finger
along the top line and I read, "To the Princess," and
then she pointed to the ending and it was merely signed, "Laddie,"
but all the words written between were his writing. Slowly I handed
her the letter.
"You don't want me to have it?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "I want you to have it if Laddie
wrote it for you--but mother and father won't, not at all."
"What makes you think so?" she asked gently.
"Don't you know what people say about you?"
"Some of it, perhaps."
"Well?"
"Do you think it is true?"
"Not that you're stuck up, and hateful and proud, not that
you don't want to be neighbourly with other people, no, I don't
think that. But your father said in our home that there was no
God, and you wouldn't let my mother in when she put on her best
dress and went in the carriage, and wanted to be friends. I have
to believe that."
"Yes, you can't help believing that," said the Princess.
"Then can't you see why you'll be likely to show Laddie the
way to find trouble, instead of sunshine?"
"I can see," said the Princess.
"Oh Princess, you won't do it, will you?" I cried.
"Don't you think such a big man as Laddie can take care of
himself?" she asked, and the dancing lights that had begun
to fade came back. "Over there," she pointed through
our woods toward the southwest, "lives a man you know. What
do his neighbours call him?"
"Stiff-necked Johnny," I answered promptly.
"And the man who lives next him?"
"Pinch-fist Williams."
Her finger veered to another neighbour's.
"The girls of that house?"
"Giggle-head Smithsons."
"What about the man who lives over there?"
"He beats his wife."
"And the house beyond?"
"Mother whispers about them. I don't know."
"And the woman on the hill?"
"She doesn't do anything but gussip and make every one trouble."
"Exactly!" said the Princess. "Yet most of these
people come to your house, and your family goes to theirs. Do
you suppose people they know nothing about are so much worse than
these others?"
"If your father will take it back about God, and your mother
will let people in--my mother and father both wanted to be friends,
you know."
"That I can't possibly do," she said, "but maybe
I could change their feelings toward me."
"Do it!" I cried. "Oh, I'd just love you to do
it! I wish you would come to our house and be friends. Sally is
pretty as you are, only a different way, and I know she'd like
you, and so would Shelley. If Laddie writes you letters and comes
here about sunshine, of course he'd be delighted if mother knew
you; because she loves him best of any of us. She depends on him
most as much as father."
"Then will you keep the secret until I have time to try--say
until this time next year?"
"I'll keep it just as long as Laddie wants me to."
"Good!" said the Princess. "No wonder Laddie thinks
you the finest Little Sister any one ever had."
"Does Laddie think that?" I asked
"He does indeed!" said the Princess.
"Then I'm not afraid to go home," I said. "And
I'll bring his letter the next time he can't come."
"Were you scared this time?"
I told her about that Something in the dry bed, the wolves, wildcats,
Paddy Ryan, and the Gypsies.
"You little goosie," said the Princess. "I am afraid
that brother Leon of yours is the biggest rogue loose in this
part of the country. Didn't it ever occur to you that people named
Wolfe live over there, and they call that crowd next us `wildcats,'
because they just went on some land and took it, and began living
there without any more permission than real wildcats ask to enter
the woods? Do you suppose I would be here, and everywhere else
I want to go, if there were any danger? Did anything really harm
you coming?"
"You're harmed when you're scared until you can't breathe,"
I said. "Anyway, nothing could get me coming, because I held
the letter tight in my hand, like Laddie said. If you'd write
me one to take back, I'd be safe going home."
"I see," said the Princess. "But I've no pencil,
and no paper, unless I use the back of one of Laddie's letters,
and that wouldn't be polite."
"You can make new fashions," I said, "but you don't
know much about the woods, do you? I could fix fifty ways to send
a message to Laddie."
"How would you?" asked the Princess.
Running to the pawpaw bushes I pulled some big tender leaves.
Then I took the bark from the box and laid a leaf on it.
"Press with one of your rings," I said, "and print
what you want to say. I write to the Fairies every day that way,
only I use an old knife handle."
She tried. She spoiled two or three by bearing down so hard she
cut the leaves. She didn't even know enough to write on the frosty
side, until she was told. But pretty soon she got along so well
she printed all over two big ones. Then I took a stick and punched
little holes and stuck a piece of foxfire bloom through.
"What makes you do that?" she asked.
"That's the stamp," I explained.
"But it's my letter, and I didn't put it there."
"Has to be there or the Fairies won't like it," I said.
"Well then, let it go," said the Princess.
I put back the bark and replaced the stone, gathered up the scattered
leaves, and put the two with writing on between fresh ones.
"Now I must run," I said, "or Laddie will think
the Gypsies have got me sure."
"I'll go with you past the dry creek," she offered.
"You better not," I said. "I'd love to have you,
but it would be best for you to change their opinion, before father
or mother sees you on their land."
"Perhaps it would," said the Princess. "I'll wait
here until you reach the fence and then you call and I'll know
you are in the open and feel comfortable."
"I am most all over being afraid now," I told her.
Just to show her, I walked to the creek, climbed the gate and
went down the lane. Almost to the road I began wondering what
I could do with the letter, when looking ahead I saw Laddie coming.
"I was just starting to find you. You've been an age, child,"
he said.
I held up the letter.
"No one is looking," I said, "and this won't go
in your pocket."
You should have seen his face.
"Where did you get it?" he asked.
I told him all about it. I told him everything--about the hair
that maybe was stronger than she thought, and that she was going
to change father's and mother's opinions, and that I put the red
flower on, but she left it; and when I was done Laddie almost
hugged the life out of me. I never did see him so happy.
"If you be very, very careful never to breathe a whisper,
I'll take you with me some day," he promised.