Chapter III: Part 3

“I trusted my darling to you in a very strange way,” the lady began, “but not, believe me, without knowing in whose hands I placed her. I was in mortal terror, then, lest she should be taken from me, and I dared not keep her until she had been legally made mine, and mine only. But you have made me your debtor for life, and I shall try to show it some day.”

“But, at least, you will come in and wait until my father returns. He loves Rosebud so dearly, that it would be a cruelty to take her away until he has had time to bid her good-by.”

“You are right,” the stranger answered courteously. “Jane, go with the carriage to the hotel, and I will come or send for you when I want you.”

In a few moments more the strange lady was seated in the doctor’s parlor. Miss Harding saw now where Rosebud had got her bright, wilful beauty.

“I must explain,” the mother said, as she lifted her child upon her lap. “I am Mrs. Matthewson. My husband is dead, and Rosebud has a very, very large fortune of her own. Her uncles, who were to have the management of her property, by her father’s will, claimed her also; and I have had such a fight for her! They were unscrupulous men, and I feared to keep Rosebud with me, lest by some means they should get some hold on her. So I resolved to lend her to you for the summer; and, indeed, I never can reward you for all your care of her.”

“You can reward us only by not altogether taking her away from us. We have learned to love her very dearly.”

And, after a while, the doctor came home and heard all the story. And it was a week before Mrs. Matthewson had the heart to take away the child she had lent them. Then it was not long before the doctor and Miss Ellen had to go to see Rosebud. And then, very soon, Mrs. Matthewson had to bring her back again; and, really, so much going back and forth was very troublesome; and they found it more convenient, after a while, to join their households.

Before Rosebud came, the doctor had thought himself an old man, though he was only forty-five; but, as he said, Rosebud had made him young again; and Rosebud’s mamma found it possible to love him very dearly. But Miss Ellen always said it was Rosebud and nobody else whom her father married, and that he had been in love with the borrowed blossom from the first.

TOM’S THANKSGIVING.

“It was very provoking that seamstresses and such people would get married, like the rest of the world,” Mrs. Greenough said, half in fun and half in earnest. Her fall sewing was just coming on, and here was Lizzie Brown, who had suited her so nicely, going off to be married; and she had no resource but to advertise, and take whomsoever she could get. No less than ten women had been there that day, and not one would answer.

“There comes Number Eleven; you will see,” she cried, as the bell rang.

Kitty Greenough looked on with interest. Indeed, it was her gowns, rather than her mother’s, that were most pressing. She was just sixteen, and since last winter she had shot up suddenly, as girls at that age so often do, and left all her clothes behind her.

Mrs. Greenough was right,--it _was_ another seamstress; and Bridget showed in a plain, sad-looking woman of about forty, with an air of intense respectability. Mrs. Greenough explained what she wanted done, and the woman said quietly that she was accustomed to such work,--would Mrs. Greenough be so kind as to look at some recommendations? Whereupon she handed out several lady-like looking notes, whose writers indorsed the bearer, Mrs. Margaret Graham, as faithful and capable, used to trimmings of all sorts, and quick to catch an idea.

“Very well indeed,” Mrs. Greenough said, as she finished reading them; “I could ask nothing better. Can you be ready to come at once?”

“To-morrow, if you wish, madam,” was the answer; and then Mrs. Graham went away.

Kitty Greenough was an impulsive, imaginative girl; no subject was too dull or too unpromising for her fancy to touch it. She made a story for herself about every new person who came in her way. After Number Eleven had gone down the stairs, Kitty laughed.

“Isn’t she a sobersides, mamma? I don’t believe there’ll be any frisk in my dresses at all if she trims them.”

“There’ll be frisk enough in them if you wear them,” her mother answered, smiling at the bright, saucy, winsome face of her one tall daughter.

Kitty was ready to turn the conversation.

“What do you think she is, mamma,--wife or widow?” And then answering her own question: “I think she’s married, and he’s sick, and she has to take care of him. That solemn, still way she has comes of much staying in a sick-room. She’s in the habit of keeping quiet, don’t you see? I wish she were a little prettier; I think he would get well quicker.”

“There’d be no plain, quiet people in your world if you made one,” her mother said, smiling; “but you’d make a mistake to leave them out. You would get tired even of the sun if it shone all the time.”

The next day the new seamstress came, and a thoroughly good one she proved; “better even than Lizzie,” Mrs. Greenough said, and this was high praise. She sewed steadily, and never opened her lips except to ask some question about her work. Even Kitty, who used to boast that she could make a dumb man talk, had not audacity enough to intrude on the reserve in which Mrs. Graham intrenched herself.

“_He’s_ worse this morning,” whispered saucy Kitty to her mother; “and she can do nothing but think about him and mind her gathers.”

But, by the same token, “_he_” must have been worse every day, for during the two weeks she sewed there Mrs. Graham never spoke of any thing beyond her work.

When Mrs. Greenough had paid her, the last night, she said,--

“Please give me your address, Mrs. Graham, for I may want to find you again.”

“17 Hudson Street, ma’am, up two flights of stairs; and if I’m not there Tom always is.”

“There, didn’t I tell you?” Kitty cried exultingly, after the woman had gone. “Didn’t I tell you that he was sick? You see now,--‘Tom’s always there.’”

“Yes; but Tom may not be her husband, and I don’t think he is. He is much more likely to be her child.”

“Mrs. Greenough, I’m astonished at you. You say that to be contradictious. Now, it is not nice to be contradictious; besides, she wouldn’t look so quiet and sad if Tom were only her boy.”

But weeks passed on, and nothing more was heard of Mrs. Graham, until, at last, Thanksgiving Day was near at hand. Kitty was to have a new dress, and Mrs. Greenough, who had undertaken to finish it, found that she had not time.

“Oh, let me go for Mrs. Graham, mamma,” cried Kitty eagerly. “Luke can drive me down to Hudson Street, and then I shall see Tom.”

Mrs. Greenough laughed and consented. In a few minutes Luke had brought to the door the one-horse coupé, which had been the last year’s Christmas gift of Mr. Greenough to his wife, and in which Miss Kitty was always glad to make an excuse for going out.

Arrived at 17 Hudson Street, she tripped up two flights of stairs, and tapped on the door, on which was a printed card with the name of Mrs. Graham.

A voice, with a wonderful quality of musical sweetness in it, answered,--

“Please to come in; I cannot open the door.”

If that were “he,” he had a very singular voice for a man.

“I guess mamma was right after all,” thought wilful Kitty. “It’s rather curious how often mamma _is_ right, when I come to think of it.”

She opened the door, and saw, not Mrs. Graham’s husband, nor yet her son, but a girl, whose face looked as if she might be about Kitty’s own age, whose shoulders and waist told the same story; but whose lower limbs seemed curiously misshapen and shrunken--no larger, in fact, than those of a mere child. The face was a pretty, winning face, not at all sad. Short, thick brown hair curled round it, and big brown eyes, full of good-humor, met Kitty’s curious glance.

“_I_ am Tom,” the same musical voice--which made Kitty think of a bird’s warble--said, in a tone of explanation. “I can’t get up to open the door because, don’t you see, I can’t walk.”

“And why--what--Tom”--

Kitty struggled desperately with the question she had begun to ask, and Tom kindly helped her out.

“Why am I Tom, do you mean, when it’s a boy’s name; or why can’t I walk? I’m Tom because my father called me Tomasina, after his mother, and we can’t afford such long names in this house; and I can’t walk because I pulled a kettle of boiling water over on myself when I was six years old, and the only wonder is that I’m alive at all. I was left, you see, in a room by myself, while mother was busy somewhere else, and when she heard me scream, and came to me, she pulled me out from under the kettle, and saved the upper half of me all right.”

“Oh, how dreadful!” Kitty cried, with the quick tears rushing to her eyes. “It must have almost killed your mother.”

“Yes; that’s what makes her so still and sober. She never laughs, but she never frets either; and oh, how good she is to me!”

Kitty glanced around the room, which seemed to her so bare. It was spotlessly clean, and Tom’s chair was soft and comfortable--as indeed a chair ought to be which must be sat in from morning till night. Opposite to it were a few pictures on the wall,--engravings taken from books and magazines, and given, probably, to Mrs. Graham by some of her lady customers. Within easy reach was a little stand, on which stood a rose-bush in a pot, and a basket full of bright-colored worsteds, while a book or two lay beside them.

“And do you never go out?” cried Kitty, forgetting her errand in her sympathy--forgetting, too, that Luke and his impatient horse were waiting below.

“Not lately. Mother used to take me down into the street sometimes; but I’ve grown too heavy for her now, and she can’t. But I’m not very dull, even when she’s gone. You wouldn’t guess how many things I see from my window; and then I make worsted mats and tidies, and mother sells them; and then I sing.”

Kitty stepped to the window to see what range of vision it offered, and her eye fell on Luke. She recalled her business.

“I came to see if I could get your mother to sew two or three days for me this week.”

Tom was alert and business-like at once.

“Let me see,” she said, “to-day is Tuesday;” and she drew toward her a little book, and looked it over. “To-morrow is engaged, but you could have Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, if you want so much. Please write your name against them.”

Kitty pulled off her pretty gray glove, and wrote her name and address with the little toy-pencil at the end of her chatelaine; and then she turned to go, but it was Tom’s turn to question.

“Please,” said the sweet, fresh voice, which seemed so like the clear carol of a bird, “would you mind telling me how old you are? I’m sixteen myself.”

“And so am I sixteen,” said Kitty.

“And you have a father and mother both, haven’t you?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Kitty.

“Oh, I’ve only mother, but she is good as two. Must you go now? And I wonder if I shall ever see you again?”

“Yes, you _will_ see me again,” answered Kitty cheerily; and then, moved by a sudden impulse of her kind, frank young heart, she bent over and touched her lips to the bright, bonny face of the poor girl who must sit prisoner there for ever, and yet who kept this bright cheerfulness all the time.

“Oh mamma, I’ve had a lesson,” cried Kitty, bursting into her mother’s room like a fresh wind, “and Tom has taught it to me; and he isn’t _he _at all--she’s a girl just my age, and she can’t walk--not a step since she was six years old.”

And then Kitty told all the sad, tender little story, and got to crying over it herself, and made her mother cry, too, before she was through.

After dinner she sat half the evening in a brown study. Finally she came out of it, and began talking in her usual impulsive manner.

“Can’t we have them here to Thanksgiving, mamma? There’s not a single pretty thing in that house except Tom herself, and the rose-bush; and every thing did look so bare and clean and poverty-stricken; and I know they’ll never afford a good dinner in the world. Oh, say yes, mamma, dear! I know you’ll say yes, _because_ you’re such a dear, and you love to make every one happy.”

“Yes; but, first of all, I must love to make papa happy, must I not? You know he never wants any company on Thanksgiving but grandpa and grandma and Uncle John. I’m sure you would not like to spoil papa’s old-fashioned Thanksgiving Day.”

Kitty’s countenance fell. She saw the justice of her mother’s remark, and there was no more to be said. She sat thinking over her disappointment in a silence which her mother was the one to break.

“But I’ve thought of a better thing, Puss,” said this wise mamma, who was herself every bit as tender of heart as Kitty, and cared just as much about making people happy. “No doubt Mrs. Graham and Tom would just as much prefer being alone together as papa prefers to be alone with his family; and how will it suit you if I have a nice dinner prepared for them, and let you go and take it to them in the coupé? Mrs. Graham is hardly the woman one could take such a liberty with; but I’ll beg her to let you have the pleasure of sending dinner to Tom.”

“Oh, you darling!” and Mrs. Greenough’s neck-ruffle suffered, and her hair was in danger, as was apt to be the case when Kitty was overcome with emotion, which could only find vent in a rapturous squeeze.

Before bed-time Kitty had it all planned out. She was to go in the coupé and take Bridget and the basket. Bridget was to mount guard by the horse’s head while Luke went upstairs with Kitty and brought down Tom for a drive; and while they were gone Bridget would take the basket in, and see that every thing was right, and then go home.

Mrs. Greenough consented to it all. I think she enjoyed the prospect of Tom’s ride, herself, just as much as Kitty did. While Mrs. Graham was sewing there she made the arrangement with her, approaching the subject so delicately that the most sensitive of women could not be hurt, and putting the acceptance of both drive and dinner in the light of a personal favor to Kitty, who had taken such a fancy to Tom.

The last afternoon of Mrs. Graham’s stay Kitty called her mother into her room. Mrs. Greenough saw spread out upon the bed a thick, warm, soft jacket, a woollen dress, a last year’s hat.

“You know them by sight, don’t you, mother mine? They are the last winter’s clothes that I grew away from, and have taken leave of. May Tom have them?”

“Yes, indeed, if you’ll undertake to give them to Tom’s mother.”

Kitty had seldom undertaken a more embarrassing task. She stole into the sewing-room with the things in her arms.

“You’ll be sure, won’t you, Mrs. Graham, not to let Tom know she’s going to ride until I get there, because I want to see how surprised she’ll look?”

“Yes, I’ll be sure, never fear.”

“And, Mrs. Graham, here are my coat and hat and dress that I wore last year, and I’ve grown away from them. Would you mind letting Tom wear them?”

“Would I mind?” A swift, hot rush of tears filled Mrs. Graham’s eyes, which presently she wiped away, and somehow then the eyes looked gladder than Kitty had ever seen them before. “Do you think I am so weakly, wickedly proud as to be hurt because you take an interest in my poor girl, and want to put a little happiness into her life,--that still, sad life which she bears so patiently? God bless you, Miss Kitty! and if He doesn’t, it won’t be because I shall get tired of asking Him.”

“And you’ll not let her see the hat and jacket till I come, for fear she’ll think something?”

At last Mrs. Graham smiled--an actual smile.

“How you do think of every thing! No, I’ll keep the hat and jacket out of sight, and I’ll have the dress on her, all ready.”

When Thanksgiving came Kitty scarcely remembered to put on the new fineries that Mrs. Graham had finished with such loving care; scarcely gave a thought to the family festivities at home, so eager was she about Tom’s Thanksgiving. She was to go to Hudson Street just at noon, so that Tom might have the benefit of the utmost warmth of which the chill November day was capable.

First she saw the dinner packed. There was a turkey, and cranberry-sauce, and mince-pie, and plum-pudding, and a great cake full of plums, too, and fruit and nuts, and then Mr. Greenough, who had heard about the dinner with real interest, brought out a bottle of particularly nice sherry, and said to his wife,--

“Put that in also. It will do those frozen-up souls good, once in the year.”

At last impatient Kitty was off. Bridget and the basket filled all the spare space in the coupé, and when they reached Hudson Street, Luke took the dinner and followed Kitty upstairs, while Bridget stood by the horse’s head, according to the programme. He set the basket down in the hall, where no one would be likely to notice it in opening the door, and then he stood out of sight himself, while Kitty went in.

There was Tom, in the warm crimson thibet,--a proud, happy-looking Tom as you could find in Boston that Thanksgiving Day.

“I have come to take you to ride,” cried eager Kitty. “Will you go?”

It was worth ten ordinary Thanksgivings to see the look on Tom’s face,--the joy and wonder, and then the doubt, as the breathless question came,--

“How _will_ I get downstairs?”

And then Luke was called in, and that mystery was solved. And then out of a closet came the warm jacket, and the hat, with its gay feather; and there were tears in Tom’s eyes, and smiles round her lips, and she tried to say something, and broke down utterly. And then big, strong Luke took her up as if she were a baby and marched downstairs with her, while she heard Kitty say,--but it all seemed to her like a dream, and Kitty’s voice like a voice in a dream,--

“I’m sorry there’s nothing pretty to see at this time of year. It was so lovely out-doors six weeks ago.”

Through Beach Street they went, and then through Boylston, and the Common was beside them, with its tree-boughs traced against the November sky, and the sun shone on the Frog Pond, and the dome of the State House glittered goldenly, and there were merry people walking about everywhere, with their Thanksgiving faces on; and at last Tom breathed a long, deep breath which was almost a sob, and cried,--

“Did _you_ think there was nothing pretty to see to-day--_this_ day? Why, I didn’t know there was such a world!”

The clocks had struck twelve when they left Hudson Street; the bells were ringing for one when they entered it again. Bridget was gone, but a good-natured boy stood by the horse’s head, and Kitty ran lightly upstairs, followed by Luke, with Tom in his arms.

Kitty threw open the door, and there was a table spread with as good a Thanksgiving dinner as the heart could desire, with Tom’s chair drawn up beside it. Luke set his light burden down.

Kitty waited to hear neither thanks nor exclamations. She saw Tom’s brown eyes as they rested on the table, and that was enough. She bent for one moment over the bright face,--the cheeks which the out-door air had painted red as the rose that had just opened in honor of the day,--and left on the young, sweet, wistful lips a kiss, and then went silently down the stairs, leaving Tom and Tom’s mother to their Thanksgiving.

FINDING JACK.

Conn turned over and rubbed her sleepy blue eyes. It seemed to her that the world was coming to an end all at once, there was such a Babel of noise about her. What was it? Had everybody gone mad? Then her wits began to wake up. She remembered that it was Fourth of July. That worst noise of all--why, that must be Jack’s pistol, which he had been saving up money to buy all winter and all summer. And that other sound--that must be torpedoes; and there was the old dog, Hero, barking at them, and no wonder: it was enough to make any respectable dog bark. Fire-crackers--ugh! Wasn’t the pistol bad enough, without all these side shows? Just then Jack called out from the yard below,--

“Conn! Conn!”

The girl’s name was Constantia Richmond; but she was too slight and bonny for such a long name, and everybody called her Conn.

She shook back her fair, soft curls, as golden as a baby’s still, though Conn was fourteen, and, putting a little shawl over her shoulders, peeped out of the open window--as pretty a little slip of a girl as you would care to see--and looked down on the face, half-boyish, half-manly, which was upturned to her. If Jack had been her brother, perhaps she would have scolded at him; for Conn loved her morning nap, and the general din had discomposed her, no doubt. But Jack was only her cousin, and her second cousin, at that,--and it’s curious what a difference that does make. Your brother’s your brother all the days of his life; but your cousin is another affair, and far less certain. So Conn said, quite gently,--

“What is it? Can I do any thing? But I’m sure I don’t want to help you make any more noise. This has been--oh, really dreadful!”

She spoke with a droll little fine-lady air, and put her pretty little fingers to her pretty little ears. And Jack laughed; he had not begun to think of her yet as a charming girl,--she was just Cousin Conn.

“What!” he cried. “Not like noise on Fourth of July? Why, you don’t deserve to have a country.”

“I’m sure I wish I hadn’t,” said Conn, with a little dash of spirit.

“Are you dressed?” cried the boy, nearly seventeen years old, but all a boy still.

“No.”

“Well, just hurry, then, and come down. I’m off in half an hour with the Brighton Blues, and I want you to see first how this pistol works.”

High honor this, that she, a girl, should be invited to inspect the wonderful pistol!

Conn began to dress hurriedly. What should she put on? Her white dress hung in the closet,--such a white dress as girls wore then,--all delicate ruffles, and with a blue ribbon sash, as dainty-fine as possible. She knew that was meant for afternoon, when Aunt Sarah would have company. But might she not put it on now? Perhaps Jack wouldn’t be here then, and she could be careful. So she slipped into the dainty gown, and fastened hooks and buttons in nervous haste, and then looked in the glass, as every other girl that ever lived would have done in her place.

It was a bright, fair face that she saw there--all pink and white, and with those violet eyes over which the long lashes drooped, and that soft, bright hair that lay in little rings and ripples round her white forehead, and hung a wavy mass down to the slender waist which the blue ribbon girdled. Conn was pleased, no doubt, with the sight she saw in the mirror,--how could she help being? She tripped downstairs, and out of the door. Jack whistled when he saw her.

“What! all your fineries on at this time of day? What do you think Mother Sarah will say to that?”

The pretty pink flush deepened in the girl’s cheeks, and she answered him almost as if she thought she had done something wrong,--

“I’ll be so careful, Jack. I won’t spoil it. By and by you’ll be gone; and I wanted to look nice when I saw the new pistol.”

This seemed extremely natural to Jack. The pistol was to him a matter of such moment that no amount of demonstration in its honor would have seemed too great. Viewed in this light, it really appeared quite a meritorious act that Conn should have put on the white dress; and he looked her over with that air of half-patronizing approval with which boys are apt to regard the good looks of their sisters and their cousins.

Then he exhibited the pistol. It had--as a boy’s knife or gun or boat always has--distinguishing and individual merits of its own. No other pistol, though it were run in the same mould, could quite compare with it, and it was by some sort of wonderful chance that he had become its possessor. Conn wondered and admired with him to his heart’s content. Then came breakfast, and then the marching of the Brighton Blues. This was a company of boys in blue uniforms,--handsome, healthy, wide-awake boys from fourteen to seventeen years old,--every one of them the pride of mothers and sisters and cousins. They were to march into Boston, and parade the streets, and dine at a restaurant, and see the fireworks in the evening, and I don’t know what other wonderful things.

Jack was in the highest spirits. He was sure he and his pistol were a necessary part of the day; and he sincerely pitied Conn, because she was a girl and must stay at home.

“‘_Bang, whang, whang_ goes the drum, _tootle-te-tootle_ the fife;
Oh! a day in the city square, there is no such pleasure in life!’”

he quoted; and then he called back to her from the gate,--

“It’s too bad, Conn, that there’s no fun for you; but keep your courage up, and I’ll bring you something.”

And so they marched away, in the gay, glad morning sunshine, following their band of music,--a boy’s band that was, too.

Conn stood and watched them, with a wistful, longing look in her great violet eyes, and the soft, bright color coming and going on her girlish cheeks. At last she gathered a bunch of late red roses, and put them in her bosom and went into the house. She sewed a little, and then she tossed her work aside, for who cares to work on holidays? Then she took up her new book; but the tale it told seemed dull and cold beside the warm throbbing life of which the outside world was full. She wished over and over that she were a boy, that she might have marched away with the rest. Then she wondered if she could not go into town and see them from somewhere in all their glory. Very little idea had she of a Boston crowd on Fourth of July. She had been into town often enough, with her aunt or her uncle, and walked through the quiet streets; and she thought she should have little trouble in doing the same now. She looked in her purse; she had not much money, but enough so that she could ride if she got tired, and she would be sure to save some to come home. She called her Aunt Sarah’s one servant, and made her promise to keep the secret as long as she could, and then tell Aunt Sarah that she had gone to Boston to find Jack and see him march with the rest.

The girl was a good-natured creature, not bright enough to know that it was her duty to interfere, and easily persuaded by Conn’s entreaties and the bit of blue ribbon with which they were enforced.

And so Conn started off, as the boys had done before her, and went on her way. But she had no gay music to which to march, and for company she had only her own thoughts, her own hopes. Still she marched bravely on.

There were plenty of other people going the same way; indeed it seemed to Conn as if everybody must be going into Boston. Excitement upheld her, and she trudged along, mile after mile, across the pleasant mill-dam, and at last she reached Beacon Street. Her head had begun to throb horribly by the time she got into town. It seemed to her that all the world was whirling round and round, and she with it. But she could not turn back then; indeed, she did not know how to find any conveyance, and she knew her feet would not carry her much farther. Surely, she _must_ see Jack soon. He had said they should march through Beacon Street. She would ask some one. She had an idea that every one must know about any thing so important as the Brighton Blues. At last she got courage to speak to a kind-looking servant-maid in the midst of a group on the steps of one of the Beacon-street houses. The girl pitied her white face, so pale now, with all the pretty pink roses faded from the tired young cheeks, and answered kindly.

She did not know about the Brighton Blues, but she guessed all the companies had been by there, or would come. Wouldn’t the young lady sit down with them on the steps, and rest, and wait a little?

And “the young lady” sat down. What could she do else, with the whole world whirling, whirling, and her feet so strangely determined to whirl out from under her? And then it grew dark, and when it came light again there was a wet cloth on her hair, and she lay on a lounge in a cool basement, and the kind girl who had cared for her told her that she had fainted. And then she had some food and grew refreshed a little, but was strangely confused yet, and with only one thought, to which she held with all the strength of her will,--that she had come to see Jack and must look for him till he came. So on the steps she stationed herself, and the crowd surged by. Military companies, grown-up ones, came and went with glitter of brave uniforms and joyful clamor of music, and Conn watched, with all her soul in her eyes, but still no Jack.

It was mid-afternoon at last when suddenly she saw the familiar blue, and marching down the street came the boyish ranks, following their own band--tired enough, all of them, no doubt, but their courage kept up by the music and the hope of fireworks by and by. Conn strained her eyes. She did not mean to speak, but after a little, when the face she longed for came in sight, something within her cried out with a sharp, despairing cry, “Oh, Jack, Jack!”

And Jack heard. Those who were watching saw one boy break from the long blue line, and spring up the step where Conn sat, and seize in strong hands the shoulders of a girl all in white, her face as white as her gown, and some red roses, withered now, upon her breast.

“Conn--Conn Richmond!” the boy cried, “what _does_ this mean?”

“Don’t scold--oh, _don’t_ scold, Jack!” said the pitiful, quivering lips. “I only came in to see you marching with the rest, and--I’m tired.”

“Yes,” said the girl who had befriended her, “and she fainted clean away, and she’s more dead than alive now; and if you’ve a heart in your bosom, you’ll let your play soldiering go, and take care of _her_.”

And just then Jack realized, boy as he was, that he _had_ a heart in his bosom, and that his Cousin Conn was the dearest and nearest thing to that heart in the whole world. But he did not tell her so till long years afterwards. Just now his chief interest was to get her home. No more marching for him; and what were fireworks, or the supper the boys were to take together, in comparison with this girl, who had cared so much to see him in his holiday glory?

He took her to an omnibus, which ran in those days to Brighton, and by tea-time he had got her home. He found his mother frightened and helpless, and too glad to get Conn back to think of scolding.

* * * * *

It was six years after that, that in the battle of Malvern Hill, July 1, 1862, Jack, a real soldier then, and no longer a boy playing at the mimicry of war, was wounded; and next day the news came to the quiet Brighton home.

Conn had grown to be a young lady in the sweet grace of her twenty summers, and she was her Aunt Sarah’s help and comfort. To these two women came the news of Jack’s peril. The mother cried a little helplessly; but there were no tears in Conn’s eyes.

“Aunt Sarah,” she said quietly, “I am going to find Jack.”

And that day she was off for the Peninsula. It was the Fourth of July when she reached the hospital in which her Cousin Jack had been placed. She asked about him, trembling; but the news, which reassured her, was favorable. He was wounded, but not dangerously. It was a girlish instinct, which every girl will understand, that made Conn put on a fresh white gown before she used the permission she had received to enter the hospital. She remembered--would Jack remember also?--that other Fourth of July on which they had found each other, six years before. As if nothing should be wanting of the old attire, she met, as she passed along the street, a boy with flowers to sell,--for the flowers bloomed, just as the careless birds sang, even amid the horrors of those dreadful days,--and bought of him a bunch of late red roses, and fastened them, as she had done that other day, upon her breast.

The sun was low when she entered the hospital, and its last rays kindled the hair, golden still as in the years long past, till it looked like a saint’s aureole about her fair and tender face. She walked on among the suffering, until, at last, before she knew that she had come near the object of her search, she heard her name called, just as _she_ had called Jack’s name six years before,--

“Oh, Conn, Conn!”

And then she sank upon her knees beside a low bed, and two feeble arms reached round her neck and drew her head down.

“I was waiting for you, Conn. I knew you would come. I lay here waiting till I should see you as you were that day long ago,--all in white, and with red roses on your breast,--my one love in all the world!”

And the girl’s white face grew crimson with a swift, sweet joy, for never before had such words blessed her. She did not speak; and Jack, full of a man’s impatience, now that at last he had uttered the words left unsaid so long, held her fast, and whispered,--

“Tell me, Conn, tell me that you _are_ mine, come life or death. Surely you would not have sought me here if you had not meant it to be so! You _are_ my Conn,--tell me so.”

And I suppose Conn satisfied him, for two years after that she was his wife, and last night he gave the old pistol of that first Fourth of July to a young ten-year-old Jack Richmond to practise with for this year’s Fourth; and pretty Mother Conn, as fair still as in her girlhood, remonstrated, as gentle mothers will, with,--

“Oh Jack, surely he is too young for such a dangerous plaything.”

Father Jack laughed as he lifted little Conn to his knee, and answered,--

“Nonsense, sweetheart. He is a soldier’s boy, and a little pistol-shooting won’t hurt him.”

But how noisy it will be round that house on Fourth of July!

HER MOTHER’S DAUGHTER.

Syl Graham was an only child. Her name was Sylvia, but everybody called her Syl, except that sometimes, half playfully and half chidingly, her father called her Sylly. But that was a liberty no one else took,--and for which Mr. Graham himself was not unlikely to pay in extra indulgence.

Syl was seventeen, and she had never known any trouble in all her young, bright life. Her mother had died when she was two years old; and this, which might easily have been the greatest of misfortunes,--though Syl was too young to know it,--had been turned almost into a blessing by the devotion of her father’s sister, Aunt Rachel, who came to take care of the little one then, and had never left her since.

Not the dead Mrs. Graham herself could have been more motherly or more tender than Aunt Rachel; and the girl had grown up like a flower in a shaded nook, on which no rough wind had ever been allowed to breathe.

And a pretty flower she was; so her father thought when she ran into the hall to meet him, as he came in from business at the close of the short November day.

The last rays of daylight just bronzed her chestnut hair. Her face was delicately fair,--as the complexion that goes with such hair usually is,--colorless save in the lips, which seemed as much brighter than other lips as if they had added to their own color all that which was absent from the fair, colorless cheeks. The brown eyes were dancing with pleasant thoughts, the little, girlish figure was wonderfully graceful, and Papa Graham looked down at this fair, sweet maiden with a fond pride, which the sourest critic could hardly have had a heart to condemn.

“Are you cross?” she said laughingly, as she helped him off with his overcoat.

“Very,” he answered, with gravity.

“I mean are you worse than usual? Will you be in the best humor now or after dinner?”

“After dinner, decidedly, if Aunt Rachel’s coffee is good.”

Syl nodded her piquant little head. “I’ll wait, then.”

The dinner was good enough to have tempted a less hungry man than Mr. Graham, and the coffee was perfect. Papa’s dressing-gown and slippers were ready, upstairs; and when he had sat down in the great, soft easy-chair that awaited him, and his daughter had settled herself on a stool at his feet, I think it would have been hard to find a more contented-looking man in all New York.

“Now I’m very sure you are as good as such a bear can be,” said saucy Syl; “and now we’ll converse.”

To “converse” was Syl’s pet phrase for the course of request, reasoning, entreaty, by which Papa Graham was usually brought to accede to all her wishes, however extravagant. He rested his hand now on her shining chestnut braids, and thought how like she was to the young wife he had loved so well, and lost so early. Then he said teasingly,--

“What is it, this time? A Paris doll, with a trunk and a bandbox; or a hand-organ?”

“For shame, papa! The doll was four years ago.”

“All the more reason it must be worn out. Then it’s the hand-organ. But I must draw the line somewhere,--you can’t have the monkey. If Punch and Judy would do, though?”

“Now, Father Lucius, you know I gave up the hand-organ two years ago, and took a piano for my little upstairs room instead; and you know I’m seventeen. Am I likely, at this age, to want monkeys, Punch and Judys, and things?”

“O, no! I forgot. Seventeen,--it must be a sewing-machine. You want to make all your endless bibs and tuckers more easily. Well, I’ll consent.”

Syl blushed. It was a sore point between her and Aunt Rachel that she so seldom sewed for herself. Aunt Rachel had old-fashioned notions, and believed in girls that made their own pretty things.

“Now, papa, you are not good-humored at all. I had better have asked you before dinner. You don’t even let me tell you what I want.”

Papa sobered his face into a look of respectful attention, and waited silently. But now Syl was not quite ready to speak.

“Don’t you think pomegranate is a pretty color, papa?”

“What is it like?”

“O, it’s the deepest, richest, brightest, humanest red you ever saw.”

“Why, I think it must be like your lips;” and he drew her to him, and kissed the bright young mouth with a lazy content.

“Perhaps it _is_ like my lips; then, surely it will look well _with_ them.”

“Where does this blossom of beauty grow?”

“It grows at Stewart’s. It has been woven into a lovely, soft-falling silk, at four dollars a yard. Twenty-five yards makes a gown, and eight yards of velvet makes the trimming and the sleeveless jacket, and the velvet is six dollars a yard. And then there is Madame Bodin, she charges like a horrid old Jew,--forty dollars just to look at a gown; and then there are the linings and buttons and things. Have you kept account, papa, and added it all up in your head?”

“I think it means about two hundred dollars. Isn’t that what you call it, Sylly?”

“Yes, if you please. It’ll be _worth_ that, won’t it, to have your daughter look like a love, when all the people come on New Year’s Day?”

“So that’s it,--that’s what this conspiracy against my peace and my pocket has for its object,--that Miss Syl Graham may sit at the receipt of callers on New Year’s Day, in a robe like a red, red rose. O Sylly, Sylly!”

Syl pouted a little, the most becoming pout in the world.

“Well, I’m sure I thought you cared how I look. If you don’t, never mind. My old black silk is still very neat and decent.”

“September, October, November,--it’s nearly three months old, isn’t it? What a well-behaved gown it must be to have kept neat and decent so long! And as to the other, I’ll consider, and you can ask me again when I come home to-morrow.”

Syl knew what Papa Graham’s considers meant, and how they always ended. She had gained her point, and she danced off and sang to the piano some old Scotch airs that her father loved, because Syl’s mother used to sing them; and Papa Graham listened dreamily to the music, while his thoughts went back twenty years, to the first winter when he brought his girl-bride home, only a year older, then, than Syl was now. He remembered how the firelight used to shine on her fair, upturned face, as she knelt beside him; how sweet her voice was; how pure and true and fond her innocent young heart. And now Syl was all he had left of her.

Should he lose Syl herself, soon? Would some bold wooer come and carry her away, and leave him with only Aunt Rachel’s quiet figure and fading face beside him for the rest of his life?

Just then Syl might have asked him not in vain for any thing, even to the half of his kingdom.

Next morning Syl went into the sewing-room. A young girl just about her own age was there--altering, sewing, making all the foolish little fancies in which Syl’s heart delighted, though her idle fingers never wrought at them. Out of pure kindness of heart Syl found her way into the sewing-room very often when Mary Gordon was there. She knew her presence carried pleasure with it, and often she used to take some story or poem and read to the young listener, with the always busy fingers, and the gentle, grateful face.

But to-day she found the girl’s eyes very red as if with long weeping. If Syl was selfish it was only because she never came in contact with the pains and needs of others. She had “fed on the roses and lain among the lilies of life,”--how was she to know the hurt of its stinging nettles? But she could not have been the lovesome, charming girl she was if she had had a nature hard and indifferent to the pains of others.

To see Mary Gordon’s red eyes was enough. Instantly she drew the work out of the fingers that trembled so; and then she set herself to draw the secret sorrow out of the poor, trembling heart.

It was the old story, so sadly common and yet so bitterly sad, of a mother wasting away and fading out of life, and a daughter struggling to take care of her, and breaking her heart because she could do so little.

“I’m used to all that,” the girl said sadly, “and I don’t let myself cry for what I can’t help. But this morning I heard her say to herself, as I was getting every thing ready for her, ‘O, the long, lonesome day!’ She thought I did not hear her, for she never complains; but somehow it broke me down. I keep thinking of her, suffering and weary and all alone. But I can’t help that, either; and I must learn to be contented in thinking that I do my best.”

“But can’t you stay at home with her and work there?” cried Syl, all eager sympathy and interest.

“No, I can’t get work enough in that way. People want their altering and fixing done in their own houses, and plain sewing pays so poorly. Sometimes I’ve thought if I only had a machine, so I could get a great deal done, I might manage but to hire one would eat up all my profits.”

Syl thought a little silent while; and it was a pretty sight to see the fair young face settle into such deep earnestness.

“Well,” she said at length, “at least you shall stay at home with her to-morrow; for all those ruffles can be done just as well there as here, and you shall carry them home with you. And you’d better go early this afternoon; there’ll be enough work to last you, and I can’t bear to think of her waiting for you, and wanting you, so many long hours. We’ll give her a little surprise.”

Mary Gordon did not speak for a moment. I think she was getting her voice steady, for when she did begin it trembled.

“I _can’t_ thank you, Miss Syl,--it’s no use to try; but the strange part is how you understand it all, when you’ve no mother yourself.”

“Ah, but you see I have papa and auntie, and I just know.”

That day, after Syl and Aunt Rachel had lunched together, Syl said, in a coaxing little way she had,--

“Aunt Rachel, we never want to see the other half of that cold chicken again, do we?”

“Why, Syl--we”--

“Why, auntie, no--we never want to-morrow’s lunch furnished coldly forth by this sad relic. And there’s a tumbler of jelly we don’t want, either--and those rolls, and,--let me see, can sick people eat cake?”

“Why, Syl Graham, what are you talking about! Who’s sick?”

Syl grew sober.

“I’m thinking about poor Mary Gordon’s mother, auntie. She’s sick, and dying by inches; and Mary has to leave her all alone; and I’ve told her she shall stay at home to-morrow and make my ruffles, and we’ll pay her just the same as if she came here. And don’t you see that we must give her her dinner to take home, since she can’t come here after it?”

Aunt Rachel never said a word, but she got up and kissed Syl on each cheek. Then she brought a basket, and into it went the cold chicken and a cold tongue and jelly and buttered rolls and fruit, till even Syl was satisfied; and she took the heavy basket and danced away with it to the sewing-room, with a bright light in her dear brown eyes.

“I think you’d best go now,” she said. “I can’t get your mother, waiting there alone, out of my mind, and it’s spoiling my afternoon, don’t you see? And because you mustn’t come here to dine to-morrow, you must carry your dinner home with you; and Aunt Rachel put some fruit and some jelly in the basket that maybe your mother will like.”

That night, when Mr. Lucius Graham let himself into the hall with his latch-key, his daughter heard him and went to meet him, as usual. But she was very silent, and he missed his teasing, saucy, provoking Syl.

“Why, daughter, are you in a dream?” he asked once during dinner; but she only laughed and shook her head. She held her peace until she had him at her mercy, in the great easy-chair, and she was on the stool beside him, as her wont was. Then, suddenly, her question came.

“Papa, do you think a pomegranate silk without velvet would be very bad?”

He was inclined to tease her, and began with “Hideous!” but then he saw that her lips were fairly trembling, and her face full of eagerness, and forbore.

“How did you know you were to have the silk at all? But you know your power over me. Here is your needful;” and he put into her hands ten bright, new twenty-dollar bills.

“O, thank you! and _do_ you think it would be bad without the velvet?”

“Sylly, no; but why shouldn’t you have the velvet if you want it?”

And then came the whole story of poor Mary Gordon, and--in such an eager tone,--

“Don’t you see, with the money the velvet would cost, and a little more, I could get her the sewing-machine; and Madame Bodin wouldn’t ask so much to make the dress if it is plainer?”

Mr. Graham was a rich man, and his first thought was to give her the money for the machine, and let her have her pretty dress, as she had fancied it, first. But a second thought restrained him. She was just beginning to learn the joy and beauty of self-sacrifice. Should he interfere? He kissed her with a half-solemn tenderness, and answered her,--

“You shall do precisely as you please, my dear. The two hundred dollars is yours. Use it _just_ as you like. I shall never inquire into its fate again.”

And then she went away--and was it her voice or that of some blessed spirit that came to him, a moment after, from the shadowy corner where the piano stood, singing an old middle-age hymn, about the city--

“Where all the glad life-music,
Now heard no longer here,
Shall come again to greet us,
As we are drawing near.”

The next day, who so busy and happy as Syl--dragging Aunt Rachel from one warehouse to another--it was in the days when sewing-machines were costly--till she was quite sure she had found just the right machine; and then ordering it sent, at three o’clock, no earlier, no later, to Miss Gordon, No. 2 Crescent Place.

At a quarter before three Syl went there herself. The pleasure of witnessing Mary Gordon’s surprise was the thing she had promised herself, in lieu of velvet on her gown. She found the poor room neat and clean, and by no means without traces of comfort and refinement; and Mrs. Gordon was a sweet and gentle woman, such as Mary’s mother must have been to be in keeping with Mary. She chatted with them for a few minutes, noticing the invalid’s short breath and frequent cough, and Mary’s careful tenderness over her.

“It’s too bad Mary can’t be at home all the time,” said Syl.

“Yes; but then to have her to-day is such a blessing. If you knew how we had enjoyed our day together, and our feast together, I know you would feel paid for any inconvenience it cost you.”

Just then an express wagon rumbled up to the door and the bell rang loudly. Mary opened it at once, for their room was on the ground floor.

“A sewing-machine for Miss Gordon,” said a somewhat gruff voice.

“No, that cannot be. There is some mistake,” said Mary’s gentle tones. And then Syl sprang forward, in a flutter of excitement, which would have been pretty to see had there been anybody there to notice it.

“I’m sure it’s all right. Bring it in, please; and Mary, you will tell them where to put it, in the best light.”