Chapter II: Part 2

“The medal does not belong to me,” she said. “My success was a false success. I dishonestly found the key to the French method, and corrected my mistakes by it, or I should have failed. The prize belongs, of right, to my cousin, Laura Mason.”

The chairman was a fussy little man, and was thoroughly discomposed by this interruption. He had had his little speech all ready, but it began with the name of Helen Ash, and he found it difficult to change it at a moment’s notice.

“Bless my heart!” he said quite unconsciously, and looking helplessly around him, he repeated, “_Bless_ my heart!”

“Miss Laura Mason,” suggested one of his brethren on the committee; and thus reinforced, he began again,--

“Miss Laura Mason, I am very sorry--I mean I am very glad, to bestow on you this medal, which you have fairly earned by your success.”

And then he sat down, and his confusion was covered by a gentle little clapping of hands.

That night Mrs. Mason went to Helen in her own room, when the twilight shadows were falling, and as she entered the door she said, “My darling,” in a voice so like Helen’s mother’s that the girl’s very heart sprang to meet it.

“My darling, I know now that you are true enough and brave enough to be my sister’s child.”

But Helen shrank back into the darkness, and this time the voice was broken with tears which faltered,--

“Is there any one who could know what I have done, and yet not despise me?”

“There is no one, dear, who dares to scorn the soul that repents and atones.”

And then loving arms held the poor lonesome girl close, and she knew that she was no longer alone. She had found a new home--the home her mother bade her seek--in the heart of that mother’s sister.

THE SURGEON OF THE DOLLS’ HOSPITAL.

It was nearly four years ago that I first noticed, in one of the quiet side-streets in the West Central district of London, a sign over a door on which I read:--

DOLLS’ HOSPITAL.

Operations from 9 A.M., to 4 P.M.

Whenever I passed through the street--and that was often, for it was a short cut to Mudie’s,--the largest circulating library in the world,--I used to notice this quaint sign, and wonder, laughingly, who was the superintending physician to this place of healing for the numerous race of dolls.

I often thought I would go in and see the establishment; but one is always busy in London, so, very likely, I should never have entered its door but for a casualty at my own fireside.

When I went downstairs one morning, I heard a sound of weeping, as bitter as that of Rachel of old mourning for her children. The mourner in this case was Mistress Brown-Eyes, as I was wont to call my friend’s little girl.

She was a pretty child, this little Milicent; but you forgot to think about the rest of her face when you saw her wonderful eyes--soft and clear, yet bright, and of the warmest, deepest, yet softest brown. She had made her home in my heart, and so her grief, whatever it was, appealed at once to my sympathies.

“My darling,” I said, as I tried to draw away the little hands from before the sorrowful face, “what can be the matter?”

“Bella is dead!” and the sobs recommenced with fresh violence.

Bella was the best-beloved of a somewhat large family of dolls,--a pretty Parian creature, with blue eyes and fair hair. I had myself lately assisted in making a trunk of clothes for Bella; and I grudged sorely all my wasted labor, if she had come to an untimely end.

I looked at the dear remains, stretched out sadly upon a chair. Bella was evidently very dead indeed. Her pretty neck was broken, her fair, foolish head lay quite severed from her silken-clad body. Suddenly there flashed into my mind the thought of the dolls’ hospital. I spoke cheerfully.

“Brown-Eyes,” I said, “I think that Bella may recover. I am pretty sure that her collar-bone is broken; but I have heard of people who got well after breaking their collar-bones.”

The child looked up, her eyes shining through tears, and said, with that air of grave, old-fashioned propriety which was one of the most amusing things about her,--

“It is a very serious accident. Do you think Bella _could_ recover?”

“I hope she may; and I shall at once take her to the hospital.”

“The hospital!” cried Mistress Brown-Eyes; “but that is where Mary Ann went when she had a fever. She was gone six weeks. Will my Bella be gone six weeks?”

“I think not so long as one week, if she can be cured at all.”

In five minutes more I was in the street, with Bella in a basket on my arm. Her little mother had covered her carefully from the cold, though it was already May; and I felt as if I were in a position of grave responsibility as I hurried to the dolls’ hospital.

A bell rang when I opened the door, and the oddest little person stood before me. At first I thought it was a child masquerading in long clothes; for she was not more than half the height of an ordinary woman.

But, looking more closely, I saw the maturity of her face, and realized that I stood in the presence of a grown-up dwarf, who might really have been taken for Dickens’s Miss Mowcher, herself.

She was dressed in a long, straight gown of rusty-looking black alpaca, and her rusty-looking black hair was drawn straightly back from as plain a face as one often sees. It was a kind, honest face, however, and I liked the voice in which she asked how she could serve me. I explained my errand.

“Please to let me see the patient.”

She spoke with as much gravity as if she had been the superintending physician of the largest hospital in London. I unveiled poor Bella, and the dwarf lifted her from the basket with grave tenderness.

“Poor little beauty!” she said. “Yes’m, I think I can cure her.”

“Will the operation take long?” I asked, humoring her fancy.

“I should prefer that the patient should not be moved, ma’am, before to-morrow.”

“Very well; then I will leave her.”

Just at that moment I heard a voice call, “Sally! Sally!”

It was a well-trained, ladylike voice, but somewhat imperious.

“Yes, Lady Jane, I’ll be there in a moment,” answered the dwarf, whom I now knew to be Sally. Then a door opened, and the most beautiful creature I ever saw stood in it, looking in.

The hospital was a bare enough place. There was a great table covered with dolls,--dolls with broken legs, dolls with punched heads, dolls with one arm gone, hairless dolls, broken-backed dolls, dolls of every kind, awaiting the ministrations of Sally; and dozens of other dolls were there, too, whom those skilful fingers had already cured of their wounds.

There was a shelf, on which was ranged the pharmacy of this hospital,--white cement, boxes of saw-dust, collections of legs and arms, wigs, every thing, in short, that an afflicted doll could possibly require. Then there were two or three wooden stools, and these completed the furniture of the apartment.

Standing in the doorway, Lady Jane looked as if she were a larger doll than the rest,--a doll with a soul. She seemed a lady’s child, every pretty inch of her. I should think she was about twelve years old. She wore a blue dress, and a blue ribbon in the bright, fair hair that hung all about her soft, pink-and-white face, out of which looked two great, serious, inquiring blue eyes.

“I will be through soon, Lady Jane,” Sally said quietly; and the girl turned away, but not before I had taken in a complete picture of her loveliness, and had noticed also a somewhat singular ornament she wore, attached to a slender golden chain. It was so strange a vision to see in this humble little shop that my curiosity got the better of me, and, after the door had closed on Lady Jane, I asked, “Does she live here?”

“Yes’m,” answered Sally proudly. “In a way, she is my child.”

I hesitated to inquire further; but I think my eyes must have asked some questions in spite of myself; for Sally said, after a moment,--

“You seem interested, ma’am, and I don’t mind telling you about her. I saw Lady Jane first some eight years ago. A man had her who used to go round with a hand-organ. She was such a pretty little creature that everybody gave her money, and she was a great profit to Jacopo, for that was his name.

“It used to make my heart ache to see the little beauty trudging round all day on her patient feet. When Jacopo spoke to her, I’ve seen her turn pale; and she never used to smile except when she was holding out her bit of a hat to people for money. She _had_ to smile then; it was part of the business.

“I was sixteen, and I was all alone in the world. I had a room to myself, and I worked days in a toy-shop. I used to dress the dolls, and I got very clever at mending them; but I hadn’t thought of the hospital, then.

“I lived in the same street with Jacopo, and I grew very fond of the little lady, as the people in the street used to call Jane. Sometimes I coaxed Jacopo to let her stay with me at night; but after three or four times, he would not let her come again. I suppose he thought she would get too fond of me.

“Things went on that way for two years; then one night, in the middle of the night, a boy came for me, and said Jacopo was dying and wanted me to come. I knew it was something about Jane, and I hurried on my clothes and went.

“The child was asleep in one corner. She had been tramping all that day, as usual, and she was too tired out for the noise in the room to wake her. Jacopo looked very ill, and he could hardly summon strength to speak to me.

“‘The end has come sudden, Sally,’ he said, ‘the end to a bad life. But I ain’t bad enough to want harm to happen to the little one when I am gone. There will be plenty of folks after her, for she’s a profitable little one to have; but if you want her, I’ll give her to you. You may take her away to-night, if you will.’

“‘Indeed I will,’ I cried, ‘and thank you. While I can work, she shall never want.’

“Jacopo had been fumbling under his pillow as he spoke; and when I said I would take the child he handed me a curious locket. Maybe you noticed it at her neck when she stood in the door?

“He said, as nearly as I could understand, for it was getting hard work for him to speak, that he had stolen the child, but he had always kept this thing, which she had on her neck when he took her, and perhaps it would help, some day, to find her people.

“So I took her home. The next morning I heard that Jacopo was dead, and the Lady Jane has been mine ever since.”

“Have you always called her Lady Jane?” I asked.

“Yes’m. There is a coronet on that locket she wears; and I know she must be some great person’s daughter, she is so beautiful, and seems so much like a real lady.”

“And so you’ve struggled on and worked for her, and taken care of her for six years, now?”

“Yes’m, and I’ve thanked God every day that I’ve had her to take care of. You see, ma’am, I’m not like other people; and it was a good fortune I couldn’t look for to have a beautiful child like that given into my arms, as you might say. It was all the difference between being alone and with no one to care for, and having a home and an interest in life like other women.

“I gave up working in the shop when I took her, for I didn’t like to leave her alone. I was a good workwoman, and they let me take work home for awhile; then I opened the hospital, and I’ve done very well. Lady Jane has been to school, and I don’t think if her true parents met her, they would be ashamed of her.”

“Do you ever think,” I said, “that they may meet her some time, and then you would lose her for ever?”

“Yes, indeed, I think about that, ma’am; and I make her keep the locket in sight all the time, in hopes it might lead to something.”

“In hopes!” I said, surprised. “You don’t want to part with her, do you?”

I was sorry, instantly, that I had asked the question, for her poor face flushed, and the tears gathered in her eyes.

“O ma’am,” she said, “if I stopped to think about myself, I suppose I should rather die than lose her; but I _don’t_ think of any thing but her. And how could I want her, a lady born, and beautiful as any princess, to live always in a little room back of a dolls’ hospital? Would it be right for me to want it?

“No; I think God gave her to make a few of my years bright; and when the time comes, she will go away to live her own life, and I shall live out mine, remembering that she _was_ here, once; and harking back till I can hear the sound of her voice again; or looking till I see her bright head shine in the corner where she sits now.”

Just then the bell rang, and other customers came into the hospital, and I went away, promising to return for Bella on the morrow.

I walked through the streets with a sense that I had been talking with some one nobler than the rest of the world. Another than poor Sally might have adopted Lady Jane, perhaps, tended her, loved her; but who else would have been noble enough to love her, and yet be ready to lose her for ever and live on in darkness quite satisfied if but the little queen might come to her own again?

I comforted Mistress Brown-Eyes with a promise of her “child’s” recovery, and I went to a kettle-drum or two in the afternoon, and dined out at night; but all the time, amidst whatever buzz of talk, I was comparing the most generous persons I had ever known with the poor dwarfed surgeon of the dolls’ hospital, and finding them all wanting.

I went for Bella about four the next afternoon. I wanted to get to the hospital late enough to see something of the little surgeon and her beautiful ward. I purchased a bunch of roses on the way, for I meant to please Sally by giving them to Lady Jane.

I opened the door, and again, at the ringing of the bell, the quaint little figure of the dwarf surgeon started up like Jack-in-the-box.

“Is the patient recovered?” I asked.

“The patient is quite well;” and the surgeon took down pretty Bella, and proudly exhibited her. The white cement had done its work so perfectly that the slender neck showed no signs of ever having been broken.

I paid the surgeon her modest fee, and then I said, “Here are some roses I brought for Lady Jane.”

Sally’s plain face beamed with pleasure. “It’s time to stop receiving patients for to-day,” she said. “Won’t you walk into the sitting-room and give the roses to Lady Jane, yourself?”

I was well pleased to accept the invitation. The sitting-room was as cosy as the hospital itself was barren of attraction. I really wondered at the taste with which it was arranged. The hangings were blue, and two or three low chairs were covered with the same color; and there were pretty trifles here and there which made it seem like a lady’s room.

My roses were received with a cry of delight; and, while Lady Jane put them in a delicate glass, Sally made me sit down in the most comfortable chair, and then she asked her ward to sing to me.

The girl had a wonderful voice, soft and clear and full.

When she had done singing, Sally said, “I have thought sometimes that, if no better fortune comes, Lady Jane can sing herself into good luck.”

“_I_ count on something better than that,” the little lady cried carelessly. “When I ‘come to my own,’ like the princesses in all the fairy tales, I’ll send you my picture, Sally, and it will make you less trouble than I do. It won’t wear out its gowns, nor want all the strawberries for supper.”

Sally didn’t answer; but two great tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled down her cheeks.

Lady Jane laughed--not unkindly, only childishly--and said, “Never mind. Don’t cry yet. You’ll have time enough for that when it all comes to pass. And you know you want it to happen; you always say so.”

“Yes, yes, dear, I want it to happen,” Sally said hastily; “I couldn’t want to shut you up here for ever, like a flower growing in a dungeon.”

“A pretty, blue-hung dungeon, with nice soft chairs,” Lady Jane said pleasantly; and then I got up to go.

Had this beautiful girl any real heart behind her beauty? I wondered. If the time ever came when Sally must give her up to some brighter fate, would it cost the little lady herself one pang? Could she be wholly insensible to all the devotion that had been lavished on her for all these years? I could not tell; but she seemed to me too light a thing for deep loving.

I carried Bella home to Mistress Brown-Eyes, who received her with great joy, and with a certain tender respect, such as we give to those who have passed through perils. I stayed in London till “the season” was over,--that is to say, till the end of July; and then, with the last rose of summer in my buttonhole, I went over to the fair sea coast of France.

It was not until the next May that I found myself in London again; and going to renew my subscription at Mudie’s, passed the dolls’ hospital. I looked up at the quaint sign, and the fancy seized me to go in.

I opened the door, and promptly as ever, the dwarf surgeon of the dolls stood before me. It was nearly four o’clock, and the hospital was empty of customers. Nothing in it was changed except the face of the surgeon. Out of that always plain face a certain cheerful light had faded. It looked now like a face accustomed to tears. I said,--

“Do you remember me, Dr. Sally?”

A sort of frozen smile came to the poor trembling lips.

“Oh, yes’m. You’re the lady that brought the rose-buds to Lady Jane.”

“And is she well?” I asked.

“I _think_ so, ma’am. Heaven knows I _hope_ so; but the old days when I _knew_ are over. Won’t you come into the sitting-room, please?”

I wanted nothing better for myself, and I felt that it might ease her sad heart to break its silence; so I followed her into the familiar room. It, at least, was unchanged. The blue hangings were there, and the low easy-chairs, and the pretty trifles; and yet, somehow, the room seemed cold, for the beauty which had gladdened it last year had gone for ever.

“Will you tell me what happened?” I asked; and I know the real sympathy I felt must have sounded in my voice.

“It wasn’t long after you were here,” she said, “a lady was driving by, and she saw my sign. She sent her footman to the door to see if the place was really what that said; and the next day she came in herself and brought a whole load of broken toys. She said she wanted these things put in order to take into the country, for they were favorite playthings of her little girl’s.

“I turned then and looked at the child who had come in with her mother. I can never tell you how I felt. It was as though Lady Jane had gone back six years. Just what my darling was when she came to me, this little girl was now,--the very same blue eyes, and bright, fair hair, and the pretty, pink-and-white face.

“Just at that moment, Lady Jane came into the hospital, and when the lady saw her, she stood and gazed as if she had seen a ghost. I looked at the lady herself, and then I looked at Lady Jane, and then again at the little girl; and true as you live, ma’am, I knew it was Lady Jane’s mother and sister before ever a word was spoken. I felt my knees shaking under me, and I held fast to the counter to keep from falling. I couldn’t have spoken first, if my life had depended on it.

“The lady looked, for what seemed to me a long time; and then she walked up to my darling and touched the locket that she wore on her neck. At last she turned to me and asked, with a little sternness in her gentle voice, if I would tell her who this girl was, and how I came by her.

“So I told her the whole story, just as I had told it to you, and before I had finished, she was crying as if her heart would break. Down she went on her knees beside Lady Jane, and put her arms around her, and cried,--

“‘O my darling, my love, I thought you were dead! I am your mother--oh, believe me, my darling! Love me a little, a little,--after all these years!’

“And just as properly as if she had gone through it all in her mind a hundred times beforehand, Lady Jane answered,--

“‘I always expected you, mamma.’

“Somehow, the lady looked astonished. She grew quieter, and stood up, holding Lady Jane’s hand.

“‘You expected me?’ she said, inquiringly.

“‘Yes, you know I _knew_ I had been stolen; and I used to think and think, and fancy how my true mother would look, and what my right home would be; and I always felt sure in my heart that you would come some day. I didn’t know when or how it would be; but I expected you.’

“‘And when will you be ready to go with me?’ asked the mother.

“‘When you please, mamma.’

“The lady hesitated, and turned to me. ‘I owe you so much,’ she said, ‘so much that I can never hope to pay it; and I do not like to grieve you. But her father and I have been without Jane so long, _could_ you spare her to me at once?’

“‘That must be as you and she say, ma’am,’ I answered, trying as hard as I could to speak quietly. ‘I never have wanted any thing but that she should be well off and happy so far, and won’t begin to stand in her light now.’

“Then the lady turned to the little girl who had come in with her. ‘Ethel,’ she said, ‘this is your sister. She has been lost to us eight years, but we will keep her always, now.’ And then, with more thanks to me, she started to go away,--the stately, beautiful lady, with her beautiful girls, one on each side of her.

“They got to the door, and suddenly my darling turned,--O ma’am, it’s the best thing in my whole life to remember that! Of her own accord she turned and came back to me, and said she,--

“‘Don’t think, Sally, that I’m not sorry to say good-by. Of course I can’t be sorry to find my own mamma and my right home, but I’m sorry to leave _you_.’

“And then she put her arms round my neck and kissed me just as she had done when I took her home that night from Jacopo’s, six years before; and then she went away, and the sunshine, it seemed to me, went out of the door with her, and has never come back since.”

The poor little surgeon of the dolls stopped speaking, and cried very quietly, as those cry who are not used to have their tears wiped away, or their sorrows comforted.

I wanted to say that Lady Jane seemed to me a heartless little piece, who cared for nothing in the world but herself, and wasn’t worth grieving for; but I felt there would be no comfort for her in thinking that there had never been any thing worth having in her life. Far better let her go on believing that for six years she had sheltered an angel at her fireside.

At last, when I saw her tears were ceasing to flow, I said, “And when did you see her again?”

“Oh, I have never seen her since that day. I think she pitied me too much to come back and give me the sorrow of parting with her over again. No, I have never seen her, but her mother sent me five hundred pounds.”

“And so she ought,” I said impulsively. “It was little enough for all you had done.”

Surgeon Sally looked at me with wonder, not unmixed with reproach, in her eyes.

“Do you think I wanted _that_?” she asked. “I had had my pay for all I did, ten times over, in just having her here to look at and to love. No; I sent the money back, and I think it must be that my darling understood; for, two months afterwards, I received the only gift I would have cared to have,--her portrait. Will you please to look round, ma’am? It hangs behind you.”

I looked round, and there she was, even lovelier than when I had seen her first,--a bright, smiling creature, silken-clad, patrician to the finger-tips. But it seemed to me that no heart of love looked out of the fair, careless face. I thought I would rather be Surgeon Sally, and know the sweetness of loving another better than myself.

“She is very beautiful,” I said, as I turned away.

“Yes; and sometimes I almost think I feel her lips, her bonny bright lips, touch my face, as they did that last day, and hear her say, ‘Don’t think, Sally, that I’m not sorry.’ Oh, my lot isn’t hard, ma’am. I might have lived my life through and never have known what it was to have something all my own to love. God was good.

“And after all, ma’am,” she added cheerfully, “there’s nothing happier in the world than to give all the pleasure you can to somebody.”

And I went away, feeling that the dwarf surgeon of the dolls’ hospital had learned the true secret of life.

PRETTY MISS KATE.

Everybody called her “pretty Miss Kate.” It was an odd title, and she had come by it in an odd way. A sort of half-witted nurse, whose one supreme merit was her faithfulness, had tended Squire Oswald’s baby daughter all through her early years; and she it was who had first called the girl “pretty Miss Kate.”

It was a small neighborhood where everybody knew everybody else; and, by dint of much hearing this title, all the neighbors grew to use it. And, indeed, at fifteen Kate Oswald deserved it. She was a tall, slight girl, with a figure very graceful, and what people call stylish.

She had blue eyes; not the meaningless blue of a French doll, but deep and lustrous, like the tender hue of the summer sky. She had hair like some Northland princess. It had not a tint of yellow in it, but it was fine and fair, and so light as to be noticeable anywhere. Her skin was exquisite, too, as skin needs must be to match such hair. When any color came to the cheeks it was never crimson, but just the faintest tint of the blush rose; her lips alone were of rich, vivid bloom. A prettier creature, truly, seldom crosses this planet; and the few such girls who have lived among us, and grown to womanhood, have made wild work generally, using hearts for playthings; and, like other children, breaking their toys now and then. But pretty Miss Kate was not at the age yet for that sort of pastime, and her most ardent worshipper was little Sally Green.

There was a curious friendship between these two, if one may call that friendship which is made up of blind worship on one side and gentle pity and kindliness on the other.

Squire Oswald owned the poor little house where Widow Green lived, and whenever there was an unusual press of work at the great house above, the family washing used to be sent down to Mrs. Green at the foot of the hill. Many an hour the widow worked busily, fluting the delicate ruffles and smoothing the soft muslins, out of which pretty Miss Kate used to bloom as a flower does out of its calyx. And on these occasions Sally used to carry the dainty washing home, and she nearly always contrived to be permitted to take it up to Miss Kate’s room, herself.

Nobody thought much about little Sally Green any way,--least of all did any one suspect her of any romantic or heroic or poetical qualities. And yet she had them all; and if you came to a question of soul and mind, there was something in Sally which entitled her to rank with the best. She was a plain, dark little thing, with a stubbed, solid, squarely-built figure; with great black eyes, which nobody thought any thing about in _her_, but which would have been enough for the whole stock-in-trade of a fashionable belle; with masses of black hair that she did not know what to do with; and with a skin somewhat sallow, but smooth. No one ever thought how she looked, except, perhaps, pretty Miss Kate.

One day, when the child brought home the washing, Kate had been reading aloud to a friend, and Sally had shown an evident inclination to linger. At that time Kate was not more than fourteen, and the interest or the admiration in Sally’s face struck her, and, moved by a girl’s quick impulse, she had said,--

“Do you want to hear all of it, Sally? Wait, then, and I will read it to you.”

The poem was Mrs. Browning’s “Romance of the Swan’s Nest,” and it was the first glimpse for Sally Green into the enchanted land of poetry and fiction. Before that she had admired pretty Miss Kate, but now the feeling grew to worship.

Kate was not slow to perceive it, with that feminine instinct which somehow scents out and delights in the honest admiration of high or low, rich or poor. She grew very kind to little Sally. Many a book and magazine she lent the child; and now and then she gave her a flower, a bit of bright ribbon, or some little picture. To poor Sally Green these trifles were as the gifts of a goddess, and no devotee ever treasured relics from the shrine of his patron saint more tenderly than she cherished any, even the slightest, token which was associated with the beautiful young lady whom she adored with all her faithful, reverent, imaginative heart.

One June evening Sally had been working hard all day. She had washed dishes, run her mother’s errands, got supper, and now her reward was to come.

“You may make yourself tidy,” her mother said, “and carry home that basket of Miss Kate’s things to Squire Oswald’s.”

Sally flew upstairs, and brushed back her black locks, and tied them with a red ribbon Miss Kate had given her. She put on a clean dress, and a little straw hat that last year had been Miss Kate’s own; and really for such a stubbed, dark little thing, she looked very nicely. She was thirteen--two years younger than her idol--and while Miss Kate was tall, and looked older than her years, Sally looked even younger than she was. Her heart beat as she hurried up the hill. She thought of the fable of the mouse and the lion, which she had read in one of the books Miss Kate had lent her. It made her think of herself and her idol. Not that Miss Kate was like a lion at all,--no, she was like a beautiful princess,--but she herself was such a poor, humble, helpless little mouse; and yet there might be a time, if she only watched and waited, when she, even she, could do pretty Miss Kate some good. And if the time ever came, wouldn’t she _do_ it, just, at no matter _what_ cost to herself? Poor little Sally! The time was on its way, and nearer than she thought.

She found Miss Kate in her own pretty room,--a room all blue and white and silver, as befitted such a fair-haired beauty. The bedstead and wardrobe were of polished chestnut, lightly and gracefully carved. The carpet was pale gray, with impossible blue roses. The blue chintz curtains were looped back with silver cords; there were silver frames, with narrow blue edges, to the few graceful pictures; and on the mantel were a clock and vases with silver ornaments.

Pretty Miss Kate looked as if she had been dressed on purpose to stay in that room. She wore a blue dress, and round her neck was a silver necklace which her father had brought her last year from far-off Genoa. Silver ornaments were in her little ears, and a silver clasp fastened the belt at her waist. She welcomed Sally with a sweet graciousness, a little conscious, perhaps, of the fact that she was Miss Oswald, and Sally was Sally Green; but to the child her manner, like every thing else about her, seemed perfection.

“Sit down and stay a little, Sally,” she said, “I have something to tell you. Do you remember what you heard me read that first time, when your eyes got so big with listening, and I made you stay and hear it all?”

“Yes, indeed,” Sally cried eagerly. “I never forgot any thing I ever heard you read. That first time it was ‘The Romance of the Swan’s Nest.’”

“Yes, you are right, and I know I was surprised to find how much you cared about it. I began to be interested in you then, for you know I am interested in you, don’t you, Sally?”

Sally blushed with pleasure till her face glowed like the June roses in Miss Kate’s silver vases, but she did not know what to say, and so, very wisely, she did not say any thing. Miss Kate went on,--

“Well, that very same poem I am going to read, next Wednesday night, at the evening exercises in the academy. The academy hall won’t hold everybody, and so they are going to be admitted by tickets. Each of us girls has a certain number to give away, and I have one for you. I thought you would like to go and see me there among the rest in my white gown, and hear me read the old verses again.”

You would not have believed so small a thing could so have moved anybody; but Sally’s face turned from red to white, and from white to red again, and her big black eyes were as full of tears as an April cloud is of rain-drops.

“Do you mean it, truly?” she asked.

“Yes, truly, child. Here is your ticket. Why, don’t cry, foolish girl. It’s nothing. I wanted to be sure of one person there who would think I read well, whether any one else did or not. And I’ve a gown for you, too--that pink muslin, don’t you know, that I wore last year? I’ve shot up right out of it, and it’s of no use to me, now, and mamma said I might give it to you. This is Saturday; you can get it ready by Wednesday, can’t you?”

What a happy girl went home that night, just as the rosy June sunset was fading away, and ran, bright and glad and full of joyful expectation, into the Widow Green’s humble little house! Widow Green wasn’t much of a woman, in the neighbors’ estimation. She was honest and civil, and she washed well; but that was all they saw in her. Sally saw much more. She saw a mother who always tried to make her happy; who shared her enthusiasms, or at least sympathized with them; who was never cross or jealous, or any thing but motherly. She was as pleased, now, at the prospect of Sally’s pleasure as Sally herself was; and just as proud of this attention from pretty Miss Kate. Together they made over the pink muslin dress; and when Wednesday night came the widow felt sure that her daughter was as well worth having, and as much to be proud of, as any other mother’s daughter that would be at the academy.

“You must go very early,” she said, “to get a good seat; and you need not be afraid to go right up to the front. You’ve just as good right to get close up there as anybody.”

When Sally was going out, her mother called her back.

“Here, dear,” she said, “just take the shawl. Do it to please me, for there’s no knowing how cold it might be when you get out.”

“The shawl” was an immense Rob Roy plaid,--a ridiculous wrap, truly, for a June night; but summer shawls they had none, and Sally was too dutiful, as well as too happy, not to want to please her mother even in such a trifle. How differently two lives would have come out if she had not taken it!

She was the very first one to enter the academy. Dare she go and sit in the front row so as to be close to pretty Miss Kate? Ordinarily she would have shrunk into some far corner, for she was almost painfully shy; but now something outside herself seemed to urge her on. She would not take up much room,--this something whispered,--and nobody, no, nobody at all, could love Miss Kate better than she did. So she went into the very front row, close up to the little stage on which the young performers were to appear,--a veritable stage, with real foot-lights.

Soon the people began to come in, and after a while the lights were turned up, and the exercises commenced. There were dialogues and music, and at last the master of ceremonies announced the reading of “The Romance of the Swan’s Nest,” by Miss Kate Oswald.

Other people had been interested in what went before, no doubt; but to Sally Green the whole evening had been but a prelude to this one triumphant moment for which she waited.

Pretty Miss Kate came forward like a little queen,--tall and slight, with her coronet of fair, braided hair, in which a shy, sweet rosebud nestled. She wore a dress of white muslin, as light and fleecy as a summer cloud, with a sash that might, as far as its hue went, have been cut from the deep blue sky over which that summer cloud floated. A little bunch of flowers was on her bosom, and other ornament she had none. She looked like one of the pretty creatures, half angel and half woman of fashion, which some of the modern French artists paint.

As she stepped forward she was greeted with a burst of irrepressible applause, and then the house was very still as she began to read. How her soft eyes glowed, and the blushes burned on her dainty cheeks, when she came to the lines:--

“Little Ellie in her smile
Chooseth: ‘I will have a lover,
Riding on a steed of steeds!
He shall love me without guile,
And to _him_ I will discover
That swan’s nest among the reeds.

“‘And the steed shall be red-roan,
And the lover shall be noble,
With an eye that takes the breath,
And the lute he plays upon
Shall strike ladies into trouble,
As his sword strikes men to death.’”

She had the whole audience for her lovers before she was through with the poem, and the last verse was followed with a perfect storm of applause. Was she not young and beautiful, with a voice as sweet as her smile? And then she was Squire Oswald’s daughter, and he was the great man of the village.

She stepped off the stage; and then the applause recalled her, and she came back, pink with pleasure. A bow, a smile, and then a step too near the poorly protected foot-lights, and the fleecy white muslin dress was a sheet of flame.

How Sally Green sprang over those foot-lights she never knew; but there she was, on the stage, and “the shawl” was wrapped round pretty Miss Kate before any one else had done any thing but scream. Close, close, close, Sally hugged its heavy woollen folds. She burned her own fingers to the bone; but what cared she? The time of the poor little mouse had come at last.

And so pretty Miss Kate was saved, and not so much as a scar marred the pink and white of her fair girl’s face. Her arms were burned rather badly, but they would heal, and no permanent harm had come to her.

Sally was burned much more severely, but she hardly felt the pain of it in her joy that she had saved her idol, for whom she would have been so willing even to die. They took her home very tenderly, and the first words she said, as they led her inside her mother’s door, were,--

“Now, mother, I know what I took the shawl for!”

I said how differently two lives would have ended if she had not taken that shawl. Pretty Miss Kate’s would have burned out then and there, no doubt; for if any one else were there with presence of mind enough to have saved her, certainly there was no other wrap there like “the shawl.” And then Sally might have grown up to the humblest kind of toil, instead of being what she is to-day; for Squire Oswald’s gratitude for his daughter’s saved life did not exhaust itself in words. From that moment he charged himself with Sally Green’s education, and gave her every advantage which his own daughter received. And, truth to tell, Sally, with her wonderful temperament, the wealth of poetry and devotion and hero-worship that was in her, soon outstripped pretty Miss Kate in her progress.

But no rivalry or jealousy ever came between them. As Sally had adored Kate’s loveliness, so, in time, Kate came to do homage to Sally’s genius; and the two were friends in the most complete sense of the word.

A BORROWED ROSEBUD.

There was a pattering footfall on the piazza, and Miss Ellen Harding went to look out. She saw a little figure standing there, among the rosebuds,--not one of the neighbors’ children, but a bonny little lassie, with curls of spun gold, and great, fearless brown eyes, and cheeks and lips as bright as the red roses on the climbing rosebush beside her.

A little morsel, not more than five years old, she was; with a white dress, and a broad scarlet sash, and a hat which she swung in her fingers by its scarlet strings. She looked so bright and vivid, and she was such an unexpected vision in that place, that it almost seemed as if one of the poppies in the yard beyond had turned into a little girl, and come up the steps.

“Did you want me?” Miss Harding asked, going up to the tiny blossom of a creature.

“No, if you please.”

“My father, then, Dr. Harding,--were you sent for him?”

The child surveyed her, as if in gentle surprise at so much curiosity.

“No,” she answered, after a moment. “I am Rosebud; and I don’t want anybody. Jane told me to come here, and she would follow presently.”

She said the words with a singular correctness and propriety, as if they were a lesson which she had been taught.

“And who is Jane?” Miss Harding asked.

Evidently the process of training had gone no further. The child looked puzzled and uncomfortable.

“Jane?” she answered hesitatingly. “Why, she is Jane.”

“Not your mamma?”

“No,--just Jane.”

“And what did Jane want here?”

“She told me to come, and she would follow presently,” said the child, saying her little lesson over again.

Evidently there was nothing more to be got out of her; but Miss Harding coaxed her to come into the cool parlor, and wait for Jane; and gave her some strawberries and cream in a gayly painted china saucer, that all children liked. Rosebud was no exception to the rest. When she had finished her berries, she tapped on the saucer with her spoon.

“I will have it for mine, while I stay,--may I?” she said. “Not to take away, but just to call, you know.”

“Surely,” said Miss Harding, more puzzled than ever. Had the sprite, then, come to stay? Were there, by chance, fairies after all,--and was this some changeling from out their ranks? She tried to entertain her small guest; and she found her quite accessible to the charms of pictures, and contented for an hour with a box of red and white chessmen. Towards night her curiosity got the better of her courtesy; and, looking from the window, she inquired,--

“I wonder where your Jane can be?”

“Presently; Jane said presently,” answered the child, with quiet composure, and returned to the chessmen.

Miss Harding heard her father drive into the yard, and slipped out to speak to him. She told her story, and the doctor gave a low, soft whistle. It was a way he had when any thing surprised him.

“It looks to me,” said he, “as if Jane, whoever she may be, intended to make us a present of Miss Rosebud. Well, we must make the small person comfortable to-night, and to-morrow we will see what to do with her.”

The small person was easily made comfortable. She ate plenty of bread-and-milk for her supper, and more strawberries; and when it was over, she went round and stood beside the doctor.

“I think you are a dood man,” she said, with the quaint gravity which characterized all her utterances. “I should like to sit with you.”

The doctor lifted her to his knee, and she laid her little golden head against his coat. There was a soft place under that coat, as many a sick and poor person in the town knew very well. I think the little golden head hit the soft place. He stroked the shining curls very tenderly. Then he asked,--

“What makes you think I’m a ‘dood’ man, Pussy-cat?”

“My name is not Pussy-cat,--I am Rosebud,” she replied gravely; “and I think you are dood because you look so, out of your eyes.”

The little morsel spoke most of her words with singular clearness and propriety. It was only when a “g” came in that she substituted a “d” for it, and went on her way rejoicing.

As the doctor held her, the soft place under his coat grew very soft indeed. A little girl had been his last legacy from his dying wife; and she had grown to be about as large as Rosebud, and then had gone home to her mother. It almost seemed to him as if she had come back again; and it was her head beneath which his heart was beating. He beckoned to his daughter.

“Have you some of Aggie’s things?” he asked. “This child must be made comfortable, and she ought to go to bed soon.”

“No,” the child said; “I’m doing to sit here till the moon comes. That means ‘do to bed.’”

“Yes, I have them,” Miss Harding answered.

She had loved Aggie so well, that it seemed half sacrilege to put her dead sister’s garments on this stranger child; and half it was a pleasure that again she had a little girl to dress and cuddle. She went out of the room. Soon she came running back, and called her father.

“O, come here! I found this in the hall. It is a great basket full of all sorts of clothes, and it is marked ‘For Rosebud.’ See,--here is every thing a child needs.”

The doctor had set the little girl down, but she was still clinging to his hand.

“I think,” he said, “that Jane has been here, and that she does not mean to take away our Rosebud.”

But the little one, still clinging to him, said,--

“I think it is not ‘presently’ yet,--Jane wouldn’t come till ‘presently.’”

“Do you love Jane?” the doctor asked, looking down at the flower-like face.

“Jane is not mamma. She is only Jane,” was the answer.

When the moon rose, the little girl went willingly to bed; and all night long Miss Ellen Harding held her in her arms, as she used to hold her little sister, before the angels took her. Since Aggie’s death, people said Miss Ellen had grown cold and stiff and silent. She felt, herself, as if she had been frozen; but the ice was melting, as she lay there, feeling the soft, round little lump of breathing bliss in her arms; and a tender flower of love was to spring up and bloom in that heart that had grown hard and cold.

There was no talk of sending Rosebud away, though some people wondered much at the doctor, and even almost blamed him for keeping this child, of whom he knew nothing. But he wanted her, and Miss Ellen wanted her; and, indeed, she was the joy and life and blessing of the long-silent household.

She was by no means a perfect child. A well-mannered little creature she was,--some lady had brought her up evidently,--but she was self-willed and obstinate. When she had said, “I’m doing to do” such and such a thing, it was hard to move her from her purpose; unless, indeed, the doctor interposed, and to him she always yielded instantly. But, just such as she was, they found her altogether charming. The doctor never came home without something in his pocket to reward her search; Miss Ellen was her bond-slave; and Mistress Mulloney in the kitchen was ready to work her hands off for her.

Often, when she had gone to bed, the doctor and Miss Ellen used to talk over her strange coming.

“We shall lose her some day,” the doctor would say, with a sigh. “No one ever voluntarily abandoned such a child as that. She is only trusted to our protection for a little while, and presently we shall have to give her up.”

“Should you be sorry, father,” Miss Ellen would inquire, “that we had had her at all?”

And the doctor would answer thoughtfully “No, for she has made me young again. I will not grumble when the snows come because we have had summer, and know how bright it is.”

But the child lived with them as if she were going to live with them for ever. If she had any memories of days before she came there, she never alluded to them. After the first, she never mentioned Jane,--she never spoke of a father or mother. But she was happy as the summer days were long,--a glad, bright, winsome creature as ever was the delight of any household.

And so the days and the weeks and the months went on, and it was October. And one day the bell rang, and Mistress Mulloney went to the door, and in a moment came to the room where Miss Ellen was sitting, with Rosebud playing beside her, and beckoned to her mistress.

“It’s some one asking for the child,” she said. “Can’t we jist hide her away? It’ll be hard for the doctor if she’s took.”

“No; we must see who it is, and do what is right,” Miss Ellen answered; but her lips trembled a little. She went into the hall, and there, at the door, stood a woman, looking like a nursery-maid of the better sort.

“I have come,” the stranger began; but Rosebud had caught the sound of her voice, and came on the scene like a flash of light.

“It is ‘presently!’” she cried; “and there, oh, _there_ is mamma!” And down the path she flew, and into the very arms of a lady who was waiting at a little distance.

Miss Harding went down the steps. “You have come, I see, to claim our Rosebud, and she is only too ready to be claimed. I thought we had made her happy.”

The child caught the slight accent of reproach in Miss Ellen’s voice, and turned towards her.

“You have been dood, oh, so very, very dood!” she said, “but _this_ is mamma.”