Chapter I: Minnie, Maud, and Margerie

OUT in the quiet street the soft, cold snow lay thick; the round middle bed in the small front garden of Briar Cottage gleamed smooth and white in the gathering dusk like the top of a giant Twelfth-cake; the path was hidden, the bushes were loaded, the windowsill was piled high with a downy drift, yet the crystal flakes were still falling—falling—falling. Silently, ceaselessly they floated by millions through the breathless air, that was strangely lightened by their whiteness, and there were millions more to come. Long afterwards, that January evening which was then closing in was remembered as "the night of the great snowstorm."

Within the crimson-curtained window that made a spot of glowing radiance in the weird, pale, out-of-door gloaming, the firelight was ruddy, the shadows deep and soft. One of three small figures cosily huddled together on the rug thrust the poker into the heart of the biggest lump of coal, and then—! What a sudden leaping and dancing of the freed flame-sprites, what a mingling and bobbing of bright and dark in the corners of the room, what responsive gleams from spotless table-cloth and flashing tea-pot and glittering cups and spoons! Not to speak of the softer shining of three golden heads and the sparkle of six starry eyes. Soon the illumination grew more steady.

"Go on reading now, Maudie," begged Minnie, the eldest of the three. "Read us that piece of poetry about 'The King's Daughters,'—it looks pretty. Father must be home, I should think, by the time you have done."

Maud—studious, twelve year old Maud—lifted a book that was lying at her feet, and turning so that the amber glow might irradiate the open page, read in a sweet, precise voice, but with little or no feeling, the graceful story of the three young princesses, who—

"' . . . 'Neath the palace windows straying,
Had fallen into earnest talk that put an end to playing;—'"

and of how these little ladies vied with one another in expressing the greatest love for the king, their father.

"'It is I who love our father best,' the eldest daughter said;
'I am the oldest princess,' and her pretty face grew red;
'What is there none can do without? I love him more than bread.'"

The second princess, despising so poor a comparison, declared, (they didn't wear the blue ribbon in that far country!)—

"'I love him more than wine!'"

Then came the turn of "the little youngest daughter, with her eyes of steadfast gray," and she, as many of my readers know, aroused the derisive laughter of the other two by asserting only that she loved him "more than 'salt!'"

The king, too, who overheard them, was grieved that he should be thus lightly held in the affections of his favourite child. But the cook, who also had been listening, decided to prove to his master that this "little quiet thing" knew more than either of her sisters. So, by and by, at dinner-time, every dish came on the table "minus" salt.

The surprise and displeasure of the king, who yet could not discover what was wrong, and the subsequent explanation by the youngest daughter, were very prettily told in the verses Maud read. The last one ran as follows:

"'Great love through smallest channels will find its surest way;
It waits not state occasions, which may not come, or may;
It comforts and it blesses hour by hour and day by day.'"

"I wonder why it is always the 'youngest' princess who says and does the clever things?" observed Minnie in a somewhat dissatisfied tone, when Maud had finished. Minnie had already entered her teens, and was enjoying the first flush of dignity which that stage of advancement confers.

"Because it is only a story, I suppose; and it wouldn't do for stories to be too like real," said Maud, who appeared to have a rather poor opinion of the verisimilitude of fiction generally.

"And there's always three of them, isn't there?" said little Margerie. "Just three. Suppose 'we' all had to choose something, or say something."

"You wouldn't distinguish yourself much," observed Minnie.

"No, I expect Maud would be the best. Suppose you had to tell how much you loved our father," continued Margerie, addressing the reader, "what would you say you liked him better than?"

"The last new story!" answered Minnie for her sister. "Maud has always got her nose in a book."

"'You' would say the last new fashion!" retorted Maud. "Minnie has always got her nose in the glass."

"I should be sorry to see myself there without it," laughed Minnie, who, though she had a knack of upsetting other people's tempers, was generally good-humoured herself.

"After all," remarked Margerie, reflectively gazing into the fire as she sat on a low stool, elbows on knees, and her round little face resting in the palms of her hands, "the youngest is very often the worst. See what a torment the littlest Symmons is."

"Positive little, comparative less, superlative least," quoted Maud, didactically.

"Well, then, the least Symmons.—Oh, Maud, I don't believe that's right!—She's always crying and screaming about something or other."

"That's because the little and the less Symmonses have always been made to give her all her own way, just because she is the least," said Minnie.

"Don't be ridiculous!" said Maud, rather crossly.

"And there was father's youngest brother, too," pursued Margerie, who seldom heeded these frequent passages of arms between her elders. "Going and running away from home like he did."

"That was chiefly grandma's fault, though," remarked Maud. "Mother says so. She was so dreadfully strict and peculiar."

"She must have been an awfully exacting kind of person," said Minnie, "to have quarrelled with father on such slight grounds."

"She couldn't really have not liked mother, could she?" questioned Margerie. "Nobody could help loving her, I should think."

"It was jealousy," answered Maud. "When Tom, the middle one of the three, was dead, and after Harry had run away, all her affections were wrapped up in father. And she thought he would keep single and let her be first with him all his life. So when father got acquainted with mother and wanted to marry her, she was as angry as could be. She would give him up altogether rather than share him with anyone else."

"Funny sort of love, wasn't it?" said Margerie. "You would have thought that if she cared for him so very much, she would have been glad for somebody else to be fond of him too, especially anybody like mother."

"And he asked her to come and live with them and all," added Minnie. "He would have given her a nice room in his house, and made her as comfortable as could be, but she wouldn't. I'm glad enough she didn't, though. What a time of it we should have had with her!"

"Mother wouldn't have let her hurt us," said Margerie. "I think it is very sad for poor father to lose his own mother like that; because he is fond of her, and she was very good to him until he got married. And it is as bad as having her die, almost, not to know anything about her, or ever to hear from her, and not even to know where she lives."

"Mother says it all comes of selfishness," observed Maud. "If grandma had loved father truly, she would have cared ever so much more for him to have a nice, good wife to make him happy than to keep him all to herself. And I'm sure she can't feel satisfied to be estranged like this."

"No, she has punished herself the most, like proud and selfish people always do," said Minnie. "Here comes mother!"