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Title: Three girls and especially one

Author: Marion Ames Taggart

Release date: April 10, 2026 [eBook #78414]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Benziger Brothers, 1897

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78414

Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE GIRLS AND ESPECIALLY ONE ***

THREE GIRLS AND ESPECIALLY ONE.

IN THE SAME SERIES.

THE BLISSYLVANIA POST OFFICE. By Marion Ames Taggart. 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.

AN HEIR OF DREAMS. By Sallie Margaret O’Malley. 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.

A SUMMER AT WOODVILLE. By Anna T. Sadlier. 16mo, cloth, 50 cents.

THREE GIRLS AND ESPECIALLY ONE.

BY

MARION AMES TAGGART,

Author of “The Blissylvania Post Office,” etc.

NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO:

BENZIGER BROTHERS,

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See.

1897.

Copyright, 1897, by Benziger Brothers.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

CHAPTER I.

A GIFTED GIRL,

5

CHAPTER II.

AN ARRIVAL,

17

CHAPTER III.

HUMILIATIONS,

31

CHAPTER IV.

THE END OF DREAMING,

42

CHAPTER V.

THE BEGINNING OF LIVING,

54

CHAPTER VI.

LITTLE THINGS,

68

CHAPTER VII.

A FRIEND IN NEED,

83

CHAPTER VIII.

A MERRY CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL,

97

CHAPTER IX.

NEW YEAR’S CALLS,

112

CHAPTER X.

A PARTING,

125

CHAPTER XI.

A REAL POEM,

137

THREE GIRLS, AND ESPECIALLY ONE.

CHAPTER I.

A GIFTED GIRL.

THE Merricks as a family were very much like a great many other people in the world—not remarkable in any way. The five younger children were every-day girls and boys, but the eldest girl was gifted.

Mr. Merrick was too busied with making money for his flock—in which he was wonderfully successful—to realize what it meant to be the father of a genius; but Mrs. Merrick felt with pride that Marcella was not like other girls, and her sisters and brothers realized it too, but with more annoyance than pleasure.

Marcella—or Marcy as she was called—was only twelve, but she had made up her mind to do something to amaze the world. She was not sure whether she should be the greatest singer, or the greatest painter, or the greatest poet of her day; but she should be one of these things, and that which she finally decided upon she was to be in the superlative degree.

In the mean time she wrote pretty bad verses, and made sketches in which nothing ever seemed to have the appearance it had in nature; and these bulls of the promise of her future greatness were carefully treasured by her mother, to whom alone—and the genius herself—they were beautiful. Marcy was a pretty child, and would have been much prettier had not her delicate face been written over with thoughts of self, and there were in it possibilities of great beauty if the nobler side of her childish character should be ever aroused.

Mr. Merrick was occupied with business; his children did not feel very well acquainted with him. Poor Mrs. Merrick had social ambition, and was eagerly pursuing an upward course in life, trying, as she said, “to make a place in the world for her children,” which left her less time than was needed to make them fit to occupy a place in the world as fine men and women. Happily she sent the children to Catholic schools, and, being healthy and sweet-natured little souls, they were growing up better than one might have feared they would in a home where the highest standards were lacking.

There were Marcy, and Inez—whose name was Agnes, but whose mother preferred the Spanish form as less common—and Bob, and Hugh, and Grace, and little Lucy, the baby, who resented the title, being arrived at the dignity of three years.

Bob and Hugh managed to get a good deal of pleasure out of each other, but the rest were not especially congenial; and though Inez was but a year younger than Marcy, they had scarcely any interest in common. Marcy took refuge in a land of dreams, and spent most of her time in the house curled up in a favorite window that gave her a glimpse of the grass of Central Park and full view of the tree-tops, in dreamy idleness, which Bob scornfully called “mooning,” and from which, if any one disturbed her, she was likely to emerge very cross.

Poor little Marcy “dreamed noble deeds all day long,” but did not do them; nor had it ever occurred to her that there was no poem, or song, or picture so beautiful as an unselfish life.

Marcy sat in her own particular nook one bright October afternoon. For fully twenty minutes she had not taken her eyes from the floating clouds over the swaying tree-tops, nor had she touched the pencil, poised in mid-air, to the sheet of paper laid ready on her lap. The sheet was long, but so far there was but one line on it, written very fine near the top, to leave plenty of room for the long poem of which it was intended to be the beginning.

Clump! clump! clump! came a rapid and sturdy tread up the stairs. The door burst open, and Hugh appeared. “Say,” he began before he was in sight, “fix my marble bag? It’s got a big hole in it, and I’ve lost my new agate. Oh, I thought Norah was here! Where’s Norah?”

“My goodness! how should I know?” cried Marcy impatiently.

“Well, I want her to sew up my marble bag. I’ve lost my agate and some alleys, only I can’t tell how many, ’cause I’ve forgotten how many Will Easton won off me. Where’s Norah?”

“I tell you, I don’t know!” cried Marcy. “Go find her if you want your bag sewed up. And, Hugh, never say he won them ‘off me’; you don’t have marbles on you. Say ‘he won them from me.’”

“What d’you s’pose I care?” retorted Hugh, and departed to find Norah, leaving the door open behind him. Marcy shut it with unnecessary emphasis, and reseated herself with a sigh.

Presently some one came down-stairs from the floor above at such a rate as could only be done by casting the body over the banisters, and letting the feet follow as they could. This time it was Bob.

“Say, where are my bicycle stockings?” he cried. “Oh! I thought Norah was here. I want my bicycle stockings, and I can’t find them. Where’s Norah?”

“Bob, I don’t know,” said Marcy.

“Well, don’t take my head off. I want my stockings; the boys are waiting. Couldn’t you come help me find them?”

“No, I could not. Go away; you’ve spoiled my rhyme, and I’ve just thought of a good one,” said Marcy despairingly.

“And you don’t care a cent if my ride’s spoiled; glad I’m not such a mean thing as you are,” retorted Bob, going off in high dudgeon.

Marcy settled herself once more, feeling very much abused, and had only succeeded in forgetting Bob when down-stairs, one step at a time, came the tread of little feet.

“Nonie, where’s Nonie?” cried Lucy, coming in. “I want Nonie to fitz my dolly. Marcy, you fitz her; her dwess is all cwooked.”

“Lucy, I can’t fix your doll. Go find Norah,” cried Marcy. “Go away this moment, and don’t bother me.”

“Naughty Marcy!” said Lucy severely. “I’ll wite Santa Closet not to bwing you any pwesents Cwistmus.”

Bob met her in the doorway; he looked dangerous; the boys had gone without him. He had not found Norah nor the stockings; his ride was spoiled, and he was ready for mischief. “Hold on, Lu; where’re you going?” he cried, seizing a curl in each hand and holding Lucy fast. “Stay here; I want you. ‘Linger longer, Lucy, linger longer, Lu,’” he sang tantalizingly.

Lucy raised her voice in vigorous protest. “Let me ’lone, Bob Mehwick!” she screamed. “Let me go! I want Nonie. Marcy, make Bob let go me.”

“Bob,” cried Marcy, springing up, “let go of Lulie’s hair, and stop bothering me. I’d box your ears for a cent.”

“I won’t offer one,” cried Bob, sticking his head around the door from the hall whither he had fled, while Lucy went up-stairs one step at a time, talking to her doll indignantly all the way.

Marcy shut the door in profound disgust. “I wonder if Madeleine Greene knows how lucky she is to be an only child?” she said aloud as she picked up the paper and pencil she had dropped in her rush on Bob. “There’s no peace in this house for one single minute.”

Ten minutes later the door opened, and a pretty but angry face peeped in, followed by the odor of violets, and a slender girl entered, saying:

“Oh, here you are, Marcy! I was looking for you.”

“Now, Inez, what do you want? I do wish you’d let me alone!” cried Marcy.

But Inez was too vexed to quarrel with her sister, to whom she wished to pour out her grievance. “I’ve got something to tell you,” she said, laying off her hat with a tragic gesture. “What do you think May Vanderberg’s done?”

“I don’t know,” said Marcy in a tone that meant, “and, what is more, I don’t care.”

“She hasn’t invited me to her party!” said Inez, as if she defied the world to produce another such wrong.

“Well, what of it? She didn’t ask me either, did she? I wish you’d go away and let me write, Inez,” said Marcy.

“Of course she didn’t ask you,” said Inez, ignoring the latter part of her sister’s remark. “But you don’t care. I heard she said she didn’t want us.”

Marcy almost laughed. “Well, since she didn’t ask us, I suppose that’s so,” she said.

“Yes, and if you had one bit of pride you’d care,” cried Inez.

“H’m! I don’t see that,” retorted Marcy. “That’s a funny pride to want May Vanderberg’s invitation. I don’t care about going to her house one bit more than she cares to have me. I don’t think she’s a very nice girl. She stayed overnight with Mary Whiting once, and you know she made fun and told about everything they had and did just because they’re poor. And a girl that will do that isn’t a lady, and I don’t care about knowing her.”

Inez gasped. “Not a lady! Why, Marcy Merrick! the Vanderbergs are one of the old New York families; mamma said so.”

“I don’t care; she’s not a lady,” Marcy maintained stoutly. “It was a mean, sneaky thing to do. What do you care if she didn’t ask you to her party?”

“Well, I do care,” replied Inez. “And I hate to be slighted; and what would you do if you were me?”

“If I were you I’d speak good English, and I’d rather never be invited to anybody’s party than say: ‘If you were me,’” said Marcy severely.

“Well, ‘if you were I,’ then,” said Inez. “You don’t care for anything but trying to write poetry and mooning.”

“That’s all right,” said Marcy with sublime confidence. “When I’m famous I’ll have more invitations than I want, for I never shall care for such trash as parties; and you’ll be asked everywhere because you are my sister.”

“It’s no more trash to go to parties and like nice dresses than it is to be so vain and proud about being famous,” said Inez, stung by Marcy’s tone of superiority, and not very grateful for the vague prospect of future glory to be reflected on her by her sister’s fame.

“Oh, my, yes; it’s very different,” said Marcy. “These are great, big, noble things; and when you’re dead people will see what you did; but parties and all that kind of stuff is just—just stuff—that’s all.”

“There’s the bell to get ready for dinner,” cried Inez, rising hastily. “Mamma’ll be sorry we’re not asked to May’s party. She likes to have us know people like that.”

“Yes, there’s the bell; and between you, and Bob, and Hugh, and Lulie, I’ve lost this afternoon,” sighed Marcy, gathering up her papers. “Yes, I suppose mamma will be sorry. I don’t see why she cares, I declare,” Marcy added with vigor. “Papa says he’ll send me to Europe when I’m fifteen to finish my education. I wish he’d take the money now and build a room for me way off somewhere, where none of you could come, and pad the walls so I wouldn’t hear any noise.”

“Yes, you’re a nice sister,” said Inez. “All you want is never to see any of us, and yet nothing you do is anything. You think you’re gifted, but I don’t.”

Marcy’s eyes filled with sudden tears. Nothing touched her like throwing cold water on her hopes. “Inez,” she said solemnly, “if I thought I’d never be anything but just an every-day woman I’d die. I want to have a splendid life. You don’t understand, Inez, how I feel.”

Her earnestness impressed Inez for a moment, and she was sorry she had spoken so strongly. The two children were utterly unlike; and though a year younger, the worldly little Inez was older in many ways than Marcy, with her unguided longing for nobler things and mistaken notions of how to reach them.

“Well, never mind, Marcy,” Inez said kindly. “Very likely you won’t have a common life; you’re queer enough now, dear knows. Perhaps you are gifted; I’m sure I can’t tell. Sometimes I think you’re silly, but maybe that’s because you’re clever. I heard papa say once some man was either a fool or a genius, and it was pretty hard telling them apart. I forgot to tell you, the other day I heard one of the nuns saying Marcella Merrick was a gifted girl, and they ought to know.”

And Marcy was comforted.

CHAPTER II.

AN ARRIVAL.

DINNER was nearly over when Mr. Merrick suddenly laid down his knife and fork and began searching vainly in the pockets of his coat for something. “Hugh,” he said, “run up-stairs and go to my dressing-room and bring down a letter you will find in the outside pocket of my overcoat. I had a letter from Tom, my dear,” he continued, addressing his wife. “His little girl is coming here to spend the winter with us.”

Mrs. Merrick dropped her fork in her turn. “Coming here? Tom’s little girl?” she gasped.

“Yes,” Mr. Merrick said. “Coming here. Tom wrote me last summer saying he wanted to send her to school somewhere in New York; but the girl did not like the idea of leaving home; besides, he was afraid it would cost a good deal, so he asked my advice.”

“Did you ask her here then?” inquired Mrs. Merrick with unmistakable disapproval.

“Yes, Clara, I asked her here,” Mr. Merrick answered. “I told him that she could go to school with our children, and it would be pleasanter than going to a boarding-school, be more like home to her, and to send her on. This was last summer; and I had forgotten all about it when this letter came, accepting the offer.”

“It is most annoying!” exclaimed Mrs. Merrick.

“Why, in a big house like this, with so many children in it, one more or less can make no difference,” said Mr. Merrick. “Tom says Minnie—no, Bessie—no, that’s not her name either. Oh, here’s the letter. Thank you, Hugh. Oh, yes, Nellie. Tom says Nellie is a pretty girl and a wonderfully good one, with such a sweet temper that no one can help loving her. I’ve no doubt the children will enjoy her tremendously.”

The children had been listening to this conversation in such amazement that they forgot to eat, and at this point a chorus of questions burst forth.

“Who’s Tom, papa?”

“How old is she?”

“Is a little girl coming here to live?”

“When is she coming?”

Mrs. Merrick answered the first question. “Tom, children, is your Uncle Tom, who lives in some dreadful little Western town, and is quite poor. This little girl is his daughter, whom your father has brought among us.”

“Tom is not very poor, Clara,” her husband corrected her. “He says he has a comfortable home.”

“How horrid!” Inez cried petulantly. “I shall be ashamed to be seen with her, I know, and I shall never introduce a girl like that to nice people as my cousin.”

“She is your cousin, Inez,” said her father sternly, “and you will treat her with all kindness. I will have no such nonsense as this in my house; so remember to behave yourself properly to your guest.”

When Mr. Merrick did arouse himself to lay down commands to his children they dared not disobey; but there was a look around Inez’s mouth that indicated anything but cheerful obedience, and boded ill for the comfort of the coming cousin.

“After all,” said Marcy, with a look of amused contempt at her sister, “she may not dress in feathers and buffalo skins, Inez. And, perhaps, after she has been here a while we can get her to eat roast beef instead of dog meat. How old is she, father? And when is she coming?”

Mr. Merrick smiled. It often occurred to him that when he could so arrange his business as to have more leisure for his family he might find his eldest daughter good company. “She is just your age, Marcy,” he said. “And she is coming—let me see. Your uncle writes she leaves Monday—that was yesterday. She will be here to-morrow.”

“I can only repeat that it is most annoying,” said Mrs. Merrick, rising.

“Well, all I say is it’s a pity she’s not a boy,” said Bob, taking a hasty drink of water before sliding sideways out of his chair. “We’ve got too many girls here now.”

“Of course it’s a pity,” said Inez sharply; “for you don’t have to introduce boys to your friends.”

“W-ell, I’m sorry she’s so big,” remarked six-year-old Grace, the quiet member of the family. “Marcy and Inez are big, and Lulie’s a baby, and Bob and Hugh are boys, and there’s no one for me at all. Papa, hasn’t Uncle Tom got a nice little girl about six?”

“I’ve no doubt he has, Gracie,” her father replied, smiling. “I believe your Uncle Tom has children of all ages, to suit all demands.”

“Well, please ask him to lend us a little one next time,” said Grace mournfully.

The next afternoon Marcy, and Inez, and Bob were watching eagerly behind the lace curtains of the sitting-room for the arrival of “the prairie chicken,” as Bob had christened her. Faithful nurse Norah had gone to the station to meet the little traveller. Mrs. Merrick had a club meeting to attend, and Mr. Merrick could not leave his business.

When the carriage drove up the children saw Norah’s portly form descend first, and after her came a little figure all in brown, which stood looking up and down the tall gray stone house, with every shade drawn on a level with the upper sash and every window veiled in lace, with no living thing to be seen that seemed to be looking for or thinking of a homesick, frightened little stranger.

“I guess she doesn’t know whether she ought to go in the front door or the basement,” laughed Bob.

“She really is pretty,” said Marcy. “Look, Inez, what big brown eyes she has, and how prettily her hair curls round her forehead.”

“Well, so it does,” admitted Inez grudgingly. “But for pity’s sake, where did she get that hat? What will the Hales say to her?”

“They wouldn’t be the Hales if they didn’t say something rude,” said Marcy.

And Bob added: “H’m! they needn’t talk, if they have got lots of money. I’ve seen some of their relations, and they were a queer lot.”

The sitting-room door opened at this point, and Norah looked in.

“Oh, here they are. Come in, Miss Nellie, dear. Miss Marcy, Miss Inez, Master Bob, here’s your cousin all safe, and glad to get here, I’ll be bound.”

The children turned to meet a wistful and very pretty childish face surmounting a slender figure taller than either of theirs.

“How do you do?” said Inez in her most grown-up and fashionable air. “Hope you’re not too tired.” She gave her cousin her hand, and pecked one cheek, which reddened fiercely at her greeting.

“How are you, Cousin Nellie? I am Marcy,” said Marcy with cordiality, much heightened by Inez’s foolish airs. “You must be half dead after such a journey.”

“No, I’m not,” said Nellie, kissing Marcy heartily. “I was dreadfully scared at first, for I’d never been more than an hour on the train before. But it’s grand in those sleepers, isn’t it? Only I didn’t dare sleep the first night. I had to say my beads all night, it joggled so. Last night I never waked up once. I suppose you get used to it.”

“They serve pretty good dinners on those trains,” remarked Inez with the air of one who had been around the globe.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” laughed Nellie. “I didn’t try them. I had my food in a box. Ma had a whole chicken roasted for me, and lots of cake, and bread and butter, so I got on fine. I couldn’t afford to buy dinners. It’s dreadfully expensive coming East anyhow. It’ll cost pa more than fifty dollars just for my travelling both ways. I wrote postal-cards home all the way along, and posted them in Chicago, and Cleveland, and Buffalo, and told them I was beginning to count on going back already.” The pretty face flushed and looked distressed, and Nellie added hastily: “Not but that I shall be real happy here with you all. I think it was awfully good of Uncle Richard and Aunt Clara to ask me here, because, of course, it’s like being with brothers and sisters to be with cousins, or most like it. Only I’m awfully fond of my home, and it’s just the cutest little house anywhere round there. But isn’t New York grand though? And what a magnificent house you’ve got! Pa said Uncle Dick was rich; but I reckon he don’t know what a fine house this is. I’m most certain I won’t know how to behave among such big rooms and fine things; but you’ll pull me through, won’t you?” And Nellie gave a happy laugh, being full of affection for her cousins and feeling no envy of their greater possessions, nor shame for her own humbler but beloved home.

“You’ll find New York very different, of course,” said Inez scornfully. She thought Nellie was even worse than she feared.

But Marcy, with a share of Nellie’s honesty, and a sharpness of insight that made her see that true dignity lay in being free from false pretence, said heartily: “You’ll be all right, Nellie. I don’t suppose we’d know how to act in Kansas either.”

“Oh, I reckon Kansas, and Paris, and New York, and everywhere are about the same,” said Nellie with happy unconsciousness of little things. “Ma says if you’re good and try to make people happy you’re bound to have good manners.”

Inez tossed her head. “You have to do more than that,” she began; but Marcy interrupted her.

“No you don’t,” she said decidedly. “I never thought of it before; but Aunt—Aunt—Nellie’s mother is right.”

A look of pain came over Nellie’s face. “Why, don’t you know my mother’s name?” she asked wonderingly. “It’s Mary. We know all your names, and we talk lots about you, and I’ve been dying to see you ever since I can remember.”

“We never heard of you,” said Bob before Marcy could stop him. “We never talk about you, and I never thought before I had any cousins out West.”

Nellie turned to the girls in mute appeal.

Inez said: “You see, Nellie, we’ve lots of things to think about.”

But Marcy put her arm around her cousin. “Come to your room,” she said, “and take your things off. I’ll show you the way. You see, Nellie,” she added as they went up the broad stairs side by side, “father’s so busy we hardly see him; and mamma is fond of society, and taken up with all kinds of clubs and things, so we don’t hear much about our relations.”

Nellie shivered as though she had stepped from Florida to the North Pole. “It’s dreadful!” she cried. “If that’s the way you do in New York, I’d rather live in Prairie Rest—that’s the name of our town. I suppose you didn’t know where we lived either.”

Marcy discreetly refrained from saying that she did not. “It’s not New York, it’s just ourselves,” she said. “You know father made all his money; he didn’t have any more than Uncle Tom when he began. I think the reason we live so separate from one another is because they’ve all got so taken up with money, and society, and such things.”

“Then I hope I’ll always be poor,” exclaimed Nellie energetically. “Oh, what a lovely room!”

“This is your room,” said Marcy. “I don’t care one bit about parties, and knowing fashionable people, and all that,” she continued, seating herself on the edge of the bed. “Inez is the one for that. I mean to be great and famous some way. I haven’t just decided how.”

“Yes, I know,” said Nellie, taking her hat off and shaking a bright mass of waving brown hair over her shoulders. “You’re the clever one. Uncle Richard sent us some of your writings long ago, when you were little, and they were grand. I would give anything if I were so gifted. I can’t do one thing,” Nellie continued cheerfully. “I can dust, and clean, and look after children, and cook a little bit, and darn pretty well, but I haven’t any accomplishments.”

“Oh, never mind,” said Marcy with kindly condescension. “I should think those were good things too if there’s no one else to do them. You won’t see much of me, I suppose, because out of school I like to stay by myself and write, or think, or draw. I’m not sure I shall write when I grow up. I may be a great artist, or a very great actress, like Duse, you know.”

“Well, I’ll tell you the only great thing I ever thought I’d like to be,” said Nellie, “and that is a great saint.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Marcy, staring a little. “Are you pious? We’re not very pious here. We go to church, of course, every Sunday; and we children go to convent schools, and we’re good Catholics, but we’re not thinking of being saints.”

“I don’t mean doing something wonderful,” explained Nellie. “I mean being what pa calls a little cricket-on-the-hearth kind of saint—never thinking of yourself, or what you want at all, but trying to do something for others all the while, until every one feels as though they’d never be able to breathe another minute if you weren’t around. I think it’s simply grand to be that kind of person; don’t you?”

“I never thought about it at all,” Marcy said honestly. “I shouldn’t wonder if that would be a great thing if you thought it all out. Now I’m going to let you rest. Your trunk will be here soon, and we dine at seven. If you want anything, just ring or call Norah; she’s generally at the end of this hall. Good-by for awhile,” and Marcy kissed her.

“I wonder where Aunt Clara is?” thought Nellie. “Nobody seemed to think it queer she wasn’t around to see me. If they came out to Kansas, my, wouldn’t ma look after them! Now, Nellie Merrick, stop that!” she added, shaking her head at two brown eyes that looked at her in the glass through a mist of tears. “It’s simply grand here, and Marcy was very nice.”

CHAPTER III.

HUMILIATIONS.

NELLIE had been just one week in her new surroundings, a week full of many new experiences for the little girl, and not a few trials. Her uncle had aroused himself from his preoccupation on the night of her arrival sufficiently to ask her about her father and her home, but beyond a pleasant salutation at breakfast and dinner he never again seemed conscious of her existence. Her aunt treated her with polite indifference, if there be such a thing, and Inez snubbed her. Marcy exerted herself for three whole days to make her cousin comfortable, but after that, having grown accustomed to her presence, old habits reasserted themselves, and she fell back into her favorite pursuits, leaving Nellie to her own devices.

The little girl, accustomed to the loving intimacy of her simpler family life, had a hard time, and would have suffered more had it not been for the younger children. These regarded her as bees must regard a new and very honey-full variety of blossom. They never tired of hearing her talk of the mischievous brothers and sisters whom she had left in Prairie Rest, where, it seemed to them, life was as enchanting as a fairy tale.

Bob no longer regretted that Nellie was not a boy when he found out that she could bat straight and strong from her shoulder, throw a ball much straighter and swifter than he could, and heard her tell how she had ridden Mazeppa, the lively three-year-old bay, barebacked, and clung so tight he could not throw her when he tried. Grace found a cousin of twelve could be more satisfactory than one of six when she discovered how beautifully Nellie could play house, what marvellous new games she invented, and what triumphs of skill her doll’s dress-making was. Sometimes Marcy, seeing how her younger brothers and sisters clung to Nellie, felt a faint pang of jealousy, half grudging the love she had never tried to win. In a vague, far-off way new thoughts were beginning to form in Marcy’s active brain since Nellie came.

School was a great trial to Nellie. It was no small ordeal to face all those fashionably dressed, chattering girls, whose difference from herself she was not slow to feel. Nor did it console her after the first day to find that she knew a great deal more than they did, for the girls did not seem to think it the slightest consequence, and made the most absurd mistakes in recitations with unruffled serenity.

On the fourth day of her visit the Hales, whose criticism Inez had dreaded, came to call on the new cousin. Nellie, accustomed to little girls coming to see her like children, gave her abundant hair two hasty strokes, and turned from the glass ready to go down, without even taking off the little black alpaca apron, which, to Inez’s disgust, she wore about the house to protect the front of her dress.

“You can’t go down like that, Nellie,” cried Inez sharply. “Change your dress and look your best; the Hales have lots of money.”

“Well, but I haven’t,” said Nellie wonderingly. “I don’t see why I must wear my best dress.”

“I can’t stop to talk; but you must do it. I’ll go down, and you come with Marcy, and for mercy’s sake don’t say anything queer,” cried Inez impatiently.

“Now, I wonder,” Nellie began to say, but checked herself, obediently put on her plain best dress, and was ready when Marcy came.

“Happy to meet you, Miss Merrick,” murmured two very stylishly dressed, becrimped, and bedecked girls as they were introduced to Nellie. Their faces were thin, their voices shrill, they were little girls in years, but had the air of full-blown young ladies; no greater contrast to them could have been found than Nellie’s rosy face and childish air.

“Do you care for the theatre, Miss Merrick?” asked the elder, scanning with inward wonder “poor Inez’s queer cousin.”

“I never went,” answered Nellie. “The girls say we shall go Saturday afternoon, and I can’t wait.”

“I suppose you don’t have much worth seeing where you live,” said Rose Hale.

“They have grand plays in Kansas City,” said Nellie; “and Prairie Rest—that’s my home—is only an hour’s ride away. Most people go there when there’s something fine; but I don’t.”

“Must be tiresome,” murmured Jennie Hale, while Inez vainly tried to think of something to say, dreading Nellie’s candor.

“Oh! my, no,” Nellie said cheerfully. “It’s not that. I just love riding in the cars; but we can’t afford to go. The theatre tickets and the fare would be too much for us; the round trip to Kansas City, excursion ticket, costs ninety-four cents, and of course I wouldn’t go unless my sister and eldest brother could go, and it would cost a lot; so we all stay at home and act Shakespeare in the barn chamber.”

Inez was crimson and ready to cry with mortification at this speech, while Marcy’s eyes danced with fun as she looked from Nellie’s unconscious face to the shocked expression of the Hales and her sister’s agony.

“Dear me!” murmured the elder Hale. “How peculiar!”

“Shakespeare was an English poet,” Marcy said wickedly. “Indeed, he was the greatest of English poets. I thought you mightn’t understand what my cousin meant by ‘acting Shakespeare.’”

“You poor girls; it’s awfully hard on you to have to teach her our ways,” the Hales said to Marcy and Inez, who followed them to the door.

Inez almost sobbed. “I feel so mortified,” she began; but Marcy cut her short. “If only she could teach us,” she said. “You can hardly appreciate them, I suppose, but she has such perfect manners, and never tries for one moment to be anything but her honest self.”

“Marcy,” said Inez after their guests had gone, “I’ll die of shame if Nellie Merrick goes on like this. Think of telling the Hales she was too poor to go to the theatre! It’ll be all over New York.”

“Not quite,” retorted Marcy. “The trouble is Nellie’s too nice for such snobs. Can’t you see they were just as horrid and rude as they could be? And there’s one thing certain, Inez Merrick, I’d stand up for my own cousin in my own house if I were you.”

“Well, look at her dresses,” sighed Inez, changing her complaint.

“Yes,” replied Marcy, “I have been looking at them, and I’m going to ask papa to give her what she needs.”

The result of Marcy’s appeal to her father was that Nellie went to the matinée on Saturday clad in the prettiest little fur-trimmed jacket, a hat so delightful that it grieved her to be obliged to take it off and lay it on her knee, and with her face shining with the excitement of her first theatre-going and her fashionable raiment. From the moment the curtain rose she was lost to everything around her; indeed, so completely lost that even Marcy’s indifference to the opinion of the world was destined to receive a severe shock. The play was a war drama, as exciting as it well could be, and in the third act the heroine was in mortal danger at the hands of the villain, and Nellie, forgetting everything in the anguish of the moment, rose in her seat and cried aloud: “Oh, save her! save her!”

Her cousins clutched her skirts, and had her down again in an instant; but it had been done, and every one who sat near them looked at blushing Nellie and laughed.

“I’ll never go out with her again—never,” protested Inez with tears in her eyes. “What’s the use of getting things to make her look like other people if she’s going to act that way?”

But she did go out with Nellie again, and that in a few days. The three girls were invited to a luncheon party, and at the last moment Marcy had too severe a cold to go with them.

“Do your best and watch other people,” advised Marcy, to whom Nellie confided her fear of not knowing the right thing to do. “Don’t bother with Inez too much, or she’ll make you crazy. You’ll have better manners than most of them, because you don’t try to be finicky; and if they don’t know it, so much the worse for them.”

So Nellie went away comforted; but the party could hardly have been called a success.

Inez came to Marcy after their return in a towering rage. “It’s simply awful, Marcella Merrick,” she sobbed. “I’ll never be able to hold my head up again.”

“Now, what is it?” asked Marcy, both amused and anxious.

“Well, there’s no use talking about Nellie’s taking the wrong fork for her salad, and not knowing how to use her finger-bowl, and saying ‘No, thank you,’ and ‘If you please,’ to the waiter, though I thought that was bad enough when she did it; but when Mrs. Greene asked her if she wouldn’t have some mushrooms she said, ‘I don’t know what they are,’ instead of taking some and keeping still. And another time, when Mrs. Greene said: ‘I hope you are fond of chocolate cake; I think most little people are,’ Nellie said: ‘Yes, ma’am, I am. My mother makes it perfectly delicious, and she can never make enough for us children. She says she should like to have a girl just to make chocolate cake, if ever we get rich. But,’ she said, ‘I’ve learned to make it now, so ma won’t have to do it all.’”

“What did the rest do?” asked Marcy, half-laughing, but looking vexed too, for these things sounded worse when repeated than when one saw Nellie’s cheerful simplicity in saying them.

“The Hales laughed, and May Vanderberg tossed her head, but Madeleine Greene gave them a look and said: ‘Isn’t that fun? Lots of the girls go to cooking-school, but it’s much nicer to learn at home. I think it must be lovely to live in the country; you can’t do such things in the big city houses.’”

“I always did say Madeleine Greene was the truest lady of all the girls,” said Marcy warmly.

“Well, I’ll never, never, never go anywhere with Nellie Merrick again! I never was so humiliated in my life,” sobbed Inez in a burst of angry tears.

“You needn’t go with her,” said Marcy. “I’ll take her about till she gets used to things. I don’t mind so much, because I think there’s something wrong somewhere, only I can’t quite explain what I mean. I think Nellie needn’t tell so much to strangers, but it’s far nicer than pretending every minute, like the Hales and May Vanderberg. However, I’ll go out with her all the time and I’ll look after her.”

Poor Marcy! She little dreamed how near lay the end of her happy days, and how short would be the time when her gay young feet could carry her whither she would.

CHAPTER IV.

THE END OF DREAMING.

MARCY’S first waking thought on All Saints’ Day was that, being a holiday, there would be no school, and after Mass she should have nothing to do all day long but write her tragedy. She had begun a novel and an epic poem on Joan of Arc but a few weeks before, and had several other great works started, but now she was fired with the desire to write a tragedy and longed to begin.

Inez said Marcy did things “by fits and starts—mostly starts,” which was her way of stating that the genius of the family undertook more than she fulfilled.

“Now, Nellie, I’m going to write a play to-day,” said Marcy as she took off her things and smoothed her rumpled braid on their return from church. “I’m going to the observatory, and I want to be let alone. Will you keep the children away?”

“Of course,” said Nellie, impressed by this announcement. “What kind of a play will it be, Marcy?”

“It’s to be a tragedy. I don’t know yet what the plot will be, but it will be the sad story of the loveliest maiden you ever saw or heard of. She’s to be lovely—oh! more lovely than I can say,” replied Marcy, waving the pencil she was sharpening in a circle, as if to signify a loveliness that embraced everything. “I don’t care so much about the plot, but I do want a nice name for her, and I may have to think hours before I can find one.”

Marcy took her pad and pencil and a box of candy, and bidding Nellie good-by, started up to the top of the house.

The former owner had evidently been fond of star-gazing, for he had built an observatory on the roof, and here Marcy liked to establish herself when the sun was not too hot nor the wind too cold. She had piled several soft pillows and shawls in one corner, and it certainly made a nook that a greater poet than Marcy might have envied, though the delight of lazily watching the fleecy clouds drift by was apt to drive all thoughts of her great schemes from the little girl’s brain.

She had been here scarcely more than half an hour when Inez’s voice was heard calling her softly from the foot of the stairs.

Marcy gathered herself up and opened the small door, looking rather crossly down the steep flight of steps that led to her retreat.

“Nellie told me you wanted to be let alone, Marcy,” Inez began apologetically; “but it’s too good for you to miss. We’ve got a street fiddler in the gymnasium, and we’re dancing; come on down.”

Marcy could never resist the temptation to dance. She quickly closed the door behind her and ran down to join the others. She found a picturesque Italian boy standing in the corner and showing his teeth, while Grace was teaching Nellie to waltz, and Bob was trying to dance in a ladylike manner, with Hugh for partner.

“How did you do it?” demanded Marcy, getting her arm around Inez without loss of time. “Where’s Norah?”

“Norah has gone with mamma to take Lucy down-town to have her pictures taken. We brought the boy in by the front door, and nobody saw us,” Inez replied as they caught the right beat and began to waltz.

It was twelve o’clock before they thought of stopping dancing, and then they emptied their purses into the pockets of the young street musician, who rarely did such a good day’s work as that short time had proved.

After luncheon Inez went out, and Marcy and Nellie stopped in the gymnasium on their way up-stairs.

“I don’t see how boys can use those bars and rings, do you?” said Nellie, surveying the appointments of the gymnasium admiringly.

“Boys! Pooh! I can beat Bob at the exercise,” exclaimed Marcy contemptuously. “I never did gym exercise for you, did I? You wait here till I get my suit on, and I’ll show you something.”

Marcy ran away, leaving Nellie to spread the pads for the floor as she had directed. In a few moments a little figure all in red ran into the room and made a bow to left and right, like a performer in the ring.

Nellie exclaimed in delight. She thought that she had never seen anything so pretty.

Marcy wore a tight-fitting crimson woollen tunic that fell to her knees, trimmed with tiny lines of black fur, full Turkish trousers of the crimson gathered around her slender ankles, and her black-stockinged feet looked very small under the fur band above them, and her long dark hair fell loosely on her shoulders, surmounted by a jaunty crimson cap set saucily on one side.

Marcy ran across the gymnasium, sprang, caught a ring, pulled herself up, and swung gayly through the air, looking like a magnified Baltimore oriole. Giving herself a long, hard swing, she caught the bar, and did all kinds of things upon it till she was tired, and sat on it, swinging contentedly, her feet crossed and her lips parted with her quickened breath, while her cheeks glowed as red as her dress under her long hair.

“It’s splendid!” cried Nellie. “I never knew you were so strong. Isn’t the exercise fun?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful. The doctor said I was getting round-shouldered, so papa had this put in. I’ll tell you something, Nellie. Sometimes I think I’d like this to be the great thing I do in my life,” said Marcy.

“Gymnastics?” asked Nellie, rather puzzled.

“Oh, no, I don’t mean just that; but—well, do you suppose it would be awful to go in the circus?” asked Marcy.

“Why, Marcy! Of course,” said Nellie promptly.

“Well, sometimes I think I’d like to have a beautiful horse, and run and jump on his back, and do all sorts of strong, splendid things, and have the band playing, and the crowd cheering,” said Marcy, looking rather ashamed, but nodding her head emphatically as she swung.

“Why, they say it’s an awful life, and the people are rough who do these things,” Nellie began.

“Oh, well, I’d be a lady-like circus girl, of course,” said Marcy. “But I suppose I shouldn’t really like it. Look out, I’m coming down.”

“Don’t fall, Marcy,” cried Nellie anxiously.

“Fall! I never fall,” laughed Marcy. “Here goes.” She swung herself harder, threw herself towards a pair of rings, caught them dexterously, and dropped to the mattress, where she turned a hand somersault, and came up bowing and smiling like the acrobats in the circus. “Don’t tell about the somersault,” she said as soon as she could speak. “Mamma might think that was rough, and I only practise that when I’m alone. Now I must go up-stairs and write that tragedy; I haven’t done one thing all day. Good-by,” and waving her hands. Marcy ran into the hall and disappeared up the stairs like a red spark up the chimney.

Marcy opened the door of the observatory and dropped down among her cushions with a happy sigh.

“How nice it is to be alive!” she said aloud. “How lovely to dance, and jump, and run, and then how loveliest it is to think, and dream, and lie still, and watch the clouds! But I mustn’t watch the clouds now, I must write. I don’t believe it makes much difference about the characters in a tragedy, for I looked all through the books in the library, and I found some have lots and some have very few; so I’ll just write ahead, and whenever I need a new one I’ll put it in, and make a list afterwards. I’m going to call this tragedy ‘Cruel Fate,’ because it sounds nice, and might mean anything; and I don’t know yet what it will be about. Only it will be about this lovely, lovely princess, and I wish I knew a name nice enough for her; I must think one out, and I must make up my mind what she’s to be like. Oh, dear! I don’t know whether to have her a princess with hair like spun gold or black as a raven’s wing. I think she’d better have dark hair, because it suits an unfortunate person better. I’ll write the name any way.”

So Marcy wrote in her fairest hand at the head of her blank page, “Cruel Fate,” then she settled herself back and looked up at the floating clouds, turning over in her mind all the most beautiful names she had ever heard in the vain effort to discover one which should express all the lovely qualities of mind, and soul, and body with which she intended to endow her heroine.

Gradually her thoughts wandered to her own future, and she fell to building castles in the air of the fine deeds she would do. First of all, she imagined this tragedy finished and acted before a great audience, which went mad with delight over the beauty of the piece, and called for the author; and she bowed unconsciously, fancying herself responding to this call, and stepping from her box before the curtain. Or perhaps she should act the part of the heroine herself, and she pictured the enthusiasm rising to a tremendous pitch as the audience showered with flowers the gifted creature who could write and act such glorious things. Or, again, perhaps Nellie was right, and it was best to give up all thought of glory and live for others; and Marcy imagined her father beggared by some sudden reverse of fortune, and that she came forward, saying nobly, “Never mind, father, I will be your comfort and help. I will lay aside all my hopes of fame, and will work for you and the children;” and she wondered if she would be willing to take a position as a saleswoman in one of the big stores for the sake of her family.

Poor Marcy had no notion of doing humdrum duties day by day, and all her ideas were colored by fancy rather than facts. In the mean time the setting sun rested warm on the observatory, and her previous exercise made Marcy rather drowsy. Her fancies grew less and less distinct, and gradually the dark lashes drooped, her head fell over on her pad, and the would-be tragic author was fast asleep on the blank page whereon was written, like a prophecy, the last word her hand was to pen for many a day—“Cruel Fate.”

The sun went down in a blaze of crimson and golden splendor, and Marcy did not waken. The bell that warned the household that they had half an hour in which to get ready for dinner penetrated her brain dimly, reaching her in her high perch like a faint echo of real life; but it was enough to arouse her to partial consciousness. Following instinct rather than thought—for she was not fully awake—Marcy arose to her feet, gathered up her pad and pencil, staggered to the door of the observatory, opened it, and the next instant the household was startled by the sound of a heavy fall.

The nursery was the room nearest the observatory stairs, and Norah was the first to reach the little crimson and black heap lying motionless at their foot.

“O Miss Marcy! my darling!” cried poor Norah, trembling so that she scarcely dared lift the hand nearest her.

Marcy groaned as she touched her, and the entire family, that had by this time gathered with horror-stricken faces around her, uttered a sigh of gratitude that at least she was still alive.

“No bones broken,” said the doctor later, as he examined the poor little body, but a few hours before flying through the air in the gymnasium, so full of strength and life. “No one can be sure yet whether it is brain or spine; we must wait till she becomes conscious. It is an internal injury, and, I fear, serious.”

Night settled in awful stillness over the Merricks’ house. In all of great New York there seemed to be but one living thing, and that was the figure on Marcy’s bed, lying motionless and still but for an occasional groan, the dark hair falling around a face not less white than the pillow, on which even the few hours that had passed had set the mark of pain in the blue eyelids and drawn lips.

CHAPTER V.

THE BEGINNING OF LIVING.

A WEEK passed with no change in Marcy’s condition, but each of the seven days wrought its work in the Merrick family. Mr. Merrick forgot business altogether in his absorbing anxiety and grief, and Mrs. Merrick clung to her other children with a tenderness they had never felt in her before as she waited in tense dread to know the fate of her eldest, cleverest, and now, at least, her dearest child. Inez realized that she had never loved her sister half enough, and that there were other qualities more precious than knowledge of social propriety; for it was to Nellie—brave, pious, cheerful, kind Nellie to whom she turned for the only comfort she could get during these dark days. At last, on the eighth day, Marcy opened her eyes wonderingly on the world, smiled at the tear-wet faces around her, and fell asleep, and the three solemn doctors standing in consultation around her bed said that she would live. But following quickly on the joy of this verdict came the sorrow of hearing that, though Marcy would not die, she would never again be the bright, gay Marcy of old; that the injury was to the spine, and that the most that could be hoped for her was the suffering of a cripple through all the long coming years.

It was a hard saying, and her father and mother shrank from looking in the face the dreadful fate which had fallen on Marcy. Yet what must be borne must be, and each of the Merricks, in his or her way, tried to adjust themselves to a sorrow that at times seemed more bitter than if Marcy had died.

The only thing to do now was to nurse the poor child back to such health as might be hers, and keep from her the knowledge that never again would she run about, a happy creature on the happy earth. But it was not easy to deceive Marcy. As the days passed and she grew stronger she felt the sorrow in the air, and looked with eyes made big and hollow by pain from face to face, trying to penetrate the grief she saw written on them.

“I’m getting better, Norah?” she asked one day. “Truly, Norah, I am better. Don’t you think so? I shan’t die, shall I, Norah?”

“Die, alanna!” cried Norah, with a dismal attempt at gayety; “not you. Of course you’re better; and I only wish I was as sure of living as many years as you are. And that’s true. God help you, darling, and help us all, that we almost have to wish you weren’t,” added Norah under her breath.

But Marcy was not satisfied. One day Grace was left alone with her, very proud to be so trusted, and sat like a faithful little dog with her brown eyes fastened on Marcy’s face, ready to jump if she saw any sign of her wanting anything.

“Gracie, come here,” Marcy whispered.

Grace sprang up quickly and knelt by Marcy’s face, obedient to the motion of her finger.

“Tell me the truth, Gracie,” Marcy said, still in a whisper. “Have you heard them say anything about me?”

“I don’t know,” Gracie stammered.

“H’sh! not so loud. Yes, you know, Gracie. You must tell sister Marcy just the truth. Am I going to die?”

“No, Marcy, you’re not going to die,” answered Grace, relieved to be able to say something good.

“Honest, Grace? Maybe they don’t tell you,” Marcy said.

“Yes—no; but I heard them talking. You’re not going to die——”

Grace stopped so suddenly that Marcy seized her little hand.

“Then what is it? When shall I be well? When shall I get up, and go to school, and dance, and everything?” cried Marcy, the dread that had been haunting her more than the fear of death clutching her heart.

Grace only sobbed.

“You mustn’t ask me anything; I’m not to tell you,” cried the poor little thing in great distress.

“Grace, tell me, shall I ever be well again?”

Grace shook her head.

“Never!” cried Marcy sharply, forgetting her fear of being overheard.

“Not never,” wailed Grace, and Marcy’s clasp of her wrist relaxed.

“All right, Gracie,” she said in a queer, husky voice; “you were a good child to tell me the truth. I’ll go to sleep now.”

And Grace crept back to her chair, relieved that Marcy took the news so quietly.

But from that day Marcy did not mend; she lay with closed eyes, getting thinner and paler, scarcely speaking, but trying, poor child, to face her awful doom alone, and say good-by in silence to youth and life when she was but twelve. She did not dare ask any one just how bad her lot was to be, but she pictured herself lying as she then was for years and years, while the children grew up, and her father and mother and Norah died, and she grew old in her little bed, worse off than the prisoners whose pictures she had seen, working on the roads in chains. At last she could endure her thoughts no longer.

“Nellie,” she said one day, “shut the door and sit here by me.”

Nellie obeyed. For a few moments Marcy did not speak, then she opened her eyes and looked into Nellie’s rosy, healthy face.

“You look so well,” she said. “I know; Gracie told me, Nellie.”

Nellie looked frightened.

“Told you?” she began, and stopped.

“Told me I should never be better,” said Marcy, and two big tears ran down her cheeks.

Nellie was shocked, but rallied with great presence of mind.

“But that isn’t true, Marcy dear,” she said.

“Don’t fool me, Nellie; I couldn’t bear that,” Marcy cried.

“I’ll tell you just the truth,” said Nellie. “You will be better. The doctor says you may be able to lie in an invalid’s chair by Christmas, but you won’t ever be as strong as before you were hurt.”

“If she only won’t ask me if she will ever walk!” thought Nellie.

Marcy looked at her.

“That’s something, but it isn’t much,” she said slowly. “I’ll be an invalid, won’t I, Nellie?”

“Yes, I suppose you will,” Nellie answered gently; “but all invalids are not much invalids. You can’t tell how much better you will be.”

“And all those splendid things I was going to be and do! Invalids are no use,” said Marcy.

“Now, Marcy, I think you can do more splendid things than you ever dreamed of,” said Nellie.

“You mean I can be patient and good. Well, but I am not good, and all that is no use,” said poor Marcy.

“Indeed, it is,” cried Nellie. “Oh, I believe you’re not getting better just because you aren’t hoping for anything! Why, you can have the most wonderful life, and do the most splendid things even though you are shut up here. I can’t explain, but I know you can just be grand, and the most use of anybody in the whole house.”

Marcy closed her eyes wearily.

“Perhaps,” she said, and Nellie went away, having an idea in her busy brain which she meant to carry out at once.

From the first of her coming to New York Nellie had been a prime favorite with Father Glenn, the kindly, gray-haired priest who came occasionally to see the Merricks. To him Nellie repaired, and laid before him Marcy’s case.

“So you think she wants something to live for,” he said, smiling down on the earnest, little, round face. “I suspect you are right, Nellie. It is pretty hard for any one to live without hope. I’ll go to see Marcy to-morrow, and we will see if we cannot help the poor little soul to face her martyrdom with courage.”

Father Glenn was a busy man, but he made time that night to write a little story especially for Marcy. With this in his pocket he rang the Merricks’ bell, and went up to the room where Marcy lay. Norah slipped out when he entered, and he drew his chair up to the bedside, and holding the thin, white hand, talked gently to Marcy, telling her stories, and watching the pinched face, from which he could win no look of interest beyond a wan smile for politeness’ sake. At last he said:

“Well, Marcy, I could find it in my heart to envy you. It is not all of us who get our wishes so perfectly fulfilled as you are to have yours.”

Marcy opened her eyes.

“I, Father Glenn?” she said.

“Yes, you. Why, you always wanted to lead some sort of a great and wonderful life, and now you can. And you hoped to be able to write great poems, and now you will have a chance not merely to write them, but be one yourself.”

“I’m never going to be anything now, Father; I’ll never be well,” said Marcy, and her voice trembled.

“I’ve written a little wee bit of a story, Marcy dear. Will you let me read it to you, and tell me what you think of it?” was Father Glenn’s only answer.

He pulled his manuscript out of his pocket as Marcy moved her head on the pillow a little nearer him, and began to read:

“Once upon a time there was a garden, which was full of the most beautiful bright flowers. But though the flowers were all very gay, and nodded in the breeze, and made a fine display in the garden, not one bore any honey nor had any perfume. So the garden was not a very useful garden, and in spite of its beauty the gardener was sad when he looked at it, because it yielded no sweetness or no food for the bees, nor did the birds love to hover over it. One day there came up in a shady, out-of-the-way corner a tiny white blossom. It grew near the ground, and did not stand up tall and brave like the other flowers; indeed, no one walking through the garden would have seen it at all. But after it began to grow there quietly and humbly all the air was full of fragrance, and the birds and bees went out of their way to pass the garden, and having passed it, they would fly back again, and hover around that corner of the garden where the little white blossom was hidden; and soon all the air got musical with the song of birds and hum of bees where no birds or bees had ever been before. And the strangest part of it all was that, tiny as it was, this little blossom, and though it was hidden away in a dark corner, it was so full of honey and fragrance that it not only fed and rejoiced the bees and birds itself, but it shed its sweetness on all the other flowers, and they began to grow sweet, too; and the garden that had been but a garden of gorgeous colors and flaunting blossoms became so fragrant that the gardener smiled as he looked on it, and said: ‘Blessings on the little hidden, frail white blossom, for it has transformed my useless garden into a garden of delight.’”

“It is a sweet story, Father,” said Marcy as he ended; “but how?”

Father Glenn smiled, well pleased.

“I see you understand the little allegory, Marcy,” he said. “How are you to be like this little blossom, do you mean?”

“Yes, Father,” said Marcy. “You see, I never was anybody before I fell, and I don’t see how I can be anything now.”

“You have gained one thing,” said the kind priest. “I doubt if one little girl would have been willing once to admit that she was nobody. Now I’ll tell you, my dear, how you can be the happiest, cleverest, most useful little lassie in all this big city. You know, Marcy, this has been a household where everybody went his own way. You can be the link to draw them together. You can always be ready with needle and thread for any little service. You can be ready to listen to everybody’s troubles, and help them through them. You can read to the children, and play with them. You can show the boys how lovely a good, sweet girl is, and they will be better men for knowing it; and when they grow older the thought of their loving, pure sister will keep them away from many a danger of which you will never know. And you can coax your father into sitting with you and reading to you, until he gets into the habit of living close to his children, and enjoying them as much as they will enjoy him; and you can do all this merely by being unselfish, putting all yourself away, and living for others. Your misfortune can be the greatest blessing, for when anything goes wrong Marcy will be at her post, and when anybody needs a service or sympathy, they will know where to find Marcy. And you can make this room a blessed little chapel, like the churches in the early days, when men were wild and revenge was in every man’s own hand; for then the churches were sanctuaries, and whoever took refuge in them was safe. So your room can be the refuge of all you love, and this little white hand can change and hold together all the lives of the rest of the household. And so I say, although all this would not prevent your writing great poems, if the talent was yours, still you can surely do something much finer. You can make your whole life a poem, and your dreams can be fulfilled and far surpassed.”

Marcy’s cheeks were flushed when Father Glenn ceased speaking, and her eyes were bright.

“I’ve been praying to die,” she said, “but if I can do all this I won’t mind living.”

“That’s my brave girl,” said the priest heartily. “You mustn’t pray to die. You will have many a weary hour of discouragement, but never mind. When you feel thus do something for somebody, and don’t think about poor, little, wounded Marcy at all.”

“Nellie can help me; she’s that kind of girl. She does all those things for her brothers and sisters, and is well, too. Isn’t that better?” said Marcy wistfully.

“Neither better nor worse, but much easier,” said Father Glenn. “You have a harder, higher place to fill, because you will keep nothing for yourself. You try the plan, Marcy, and a year from now we shall see a real poem called Marcella Merrick—a poem of a brave, unselfish life, the patient bearing of a heavy cross. Good-by, dear little girl; don’t think I am not very sorry that you have such a hard burden to bear.”

But Marcy smiled brightly.

“Don’t be sorry, Father Glenn,” she said. “I’ll try to be like the flower that was so little and plain, but made one spot sweet. And I guess it was a happy flower, don’t you?”

“I am sure it was,” said the old priest, laying his hand on her dark hair. “God bless you, dear. I think instead of dying you are just beginning to live.”

CHAPTER VI.

LITTLE THINGS.

“PAPA, won’t you send Hugh down for your paper, and let me read to you?” asked Marcy when her father made his regular visit to her that evening.

“You can’t read, my daughter,” said Mr. Merrick.

“Oh, yes, I can,” said Marcy, with a touch of her old mischief. “I’ve learned to read—truly, papa. You’d really be surprised if you knew how advanced I am for a little girl of my age.”

Of course she obtained her desire, and Mr. Merrick found the first alleviation of his sorrow in listening to the clear little voice, grown a bit tremulous, going over the report of the stock market most conscientiously, pausing for prompting on the hard words.

“Will you come every night, papa dear, and let me read?” Marcy asked, drawing his head down for a good-night kiss. “And will you explain things to me, and make me understand all about politics and money and everything? You see, if I am to do without my feet, and depend on my head for pleasure, it ought to be a very good one, and you must fill it with sense.”

“Dear little Marcy,” said her father huskily, “have you found out that you may have to depend on your head for pleasure? I’ll come certainly, and I’ll do all I can to give you happiness, my poor little girl. But you are better, Marcy; you seem brighter and more like yourself. I have really enjoyed my hour with you.”

“That’s what I want,” cried Marcy delighted. “I’m not much better yet, papa, but I mean to try to be a great deal better.”

The next morning Marcy heard furious stamping and roars of wrathful misery from the next room.

“That’s no one on earth but Hugh,” she said to herself, and called, “Hugh! Hugh! come here. What is the matter?”

“Plague take this old tie!” said Hugh, appearing in the doorway, very red of face, with a plaid Windsor tie dragging dejectedly in his hand. “Norah’s off somewhere, and I called and called Nellie, and I can’t find her. I can’t tie this old tie, and I’ll be late for school.”

“If that’s all, I can help you. Come here, small boy; I’ll tie it for you,” said Marcy, turning on her side as much as she could, for she could not raise herself in bed.

Hugh marched over to her, and as her skilful fingers gave a deft pull here, and a pat and poke there, the scowl disappeared from his forehead, and the red faded from his cheek.

“There, give me a kiss in payment,” said Marcy. “Trot along now, and the next time you want anything, come to Marcy, and she’ll do it for you.”

“You’re awful nice, Marcy,” said Hugh, giving her a squeeze that nearly made her shriek with pain, but was welcome none the less. “I think you’re nicer than any one, and I never knew it till now.”

“There’s one little bee after honey,” thought Marcy, tired, but smiling as she remembered Father Glenn’s story of the garden.

Presently she heard a plaintive little voice outside her door singing in a kind of chant: “I wis I had some one to play wiz. I wis I had some one to play wiz.”

“Lulie, come in here,” called Marcy. “I’ll play with you.”

“How can you?” demanded Lucy, coming in with her doll—“how can you play fen you’re hurted so badily, Marcy? Good-morning,” she added as an afterthought.

“Good-morning,” replied Marcy. “I can play lots of things.”

“House?” asked Lucy, brightening at the prospect.

“House, and having company, and going travelling, and heaps of things,” said Marcy; and the eldest and youngest member of the Merrick family began to play without loss of time, and to Marcy’s surprise she really enjoyed it.

“Now, Marcy, let’s betend you was sick, and I’m your nurse, and must tell you a story to ’muse you,” said Lucy, climbing on the bed, and sitting down tailor fashion.

“Once upon a time there was a little boy, and he cut off his sister’s hair, and he went out in the woods to walk, and a big bear came ’long, and ate him up, and he was all deaded, and that’s all. Is that nice?” said Lucy, bringing her tale to a sudden and tragic close because she heard Norah coming.

“Not very nice for the little boy, but it’s a fine story, Lu. Where did you hear it?” asked Marcy.

“I just made it up as I went ’long,” said Lucy, with a wave of her hands and toss of her curly head.

“Now come up-stairs, Lucy dear,” said Norah, appearing in the doorway; “you mustn’t tire sister Marcy.”

“She didn’t tire me, Norah; at least not much, and I liked it. I never knew how cunning she was before,” said Marcy.

“And I never knew how nice you were,” said Lucy, not to be outdone in appreciation. “I’m coming every day to play wiz you.”

Lucy was borne away, and Marcy had a long rest. After luncheon Nellie came. She was dismissed from school early that day, and always hastened to Marcy’s side, who looked forward longingly to her coming. To-day she saw that there was a shadow on Nellie’s usually happy face, and set about discovering the cause.

“Anything wrong at school?” she asked.

“Oh, no,” Nellie said, swinging the curtain cord listlessly.

“Fail, Nellie?” hinted Marcy.

“Dear me, no; it’s so easy keeping ahead there I’m getting conceited. I used to think I was a dunce, but even a dunce, if she tries, can beat people who never try. Those girls hardly study at all, except Madeleine Greene,” said Nellie, coming over to sit by Marcy.

Marcy considered a moment, then with tact she never could have shown before her illness, she said:

“Talk to me about Prairie Rest, Nellie.”

Nellie’s face brightened. It was the first time any but her little cousins had shown an interest in her home.

“I was thinking about it all day,” she said. “It’s getting Thanksgiving time, and I keep wondering what they’re all doing.”

“Tell me what Aunt Mary looks like, and what kind of a sitting-room yours is,” said Marcy.

Nellie closed her eyes, tipped her head back, and rocking very hard began:

“Our sitting-room’s awfully sunny; it has two windows on the south and one on the west, and it looks out on the street. I reckon you’d say it was a funny street, because it has some blocks of limestone houses, and some of wood standing alone, and some stores, and a church, all in a bunch; but I don’t care, it’s nice. And the wall-paper’s cream color, with sprays of gilt flowers. And the carpet’s all bright colors mixed, and ma’s darned it in some places, for it gets such hard wear. And there are some pictures; they aren’t very nice ones, but they’re cheerful. They’re the kind of pictures that tell a story, and winter evenings we make up stories about them, and have cookies for prizes for the best, and pa’s judge. And the furniture’s covered with rep, and it’s faded some, but it’s good yet, and there are odd pieces around, mostly rockers. And we’ve china vases on the mantelpiece, and a picture of the Sacred Heart over it, and ma sits here when she gets to sit down. You needn’t laugh at it all, Marcy. It isn’t handsome, like this house, but we have more fun in it,” added Nellie, with a touchiness most unlike her pleasant self, born of the homesickness she was trying to drive off.

“I didn’t want to laugh, Nellie,” said Marcy gently. “I am afraid you do have better times there, but we shall have good times here, too, by and by. I have a plan, Nellie; I asked mamma, and she was willing. You know I have lots of nice clothes, and now I can never wear them again. Inez won’t take them because the girls would know they were mine, and you can’t wear them here for the same reason, besides you’re taller than I. I want to make a box and send them to Aunt Mary to fix for the children this winter. You say Kitty, next to you, is just about my height. She can take lots of the things, and my gymnasium dress will make a lovely winter dress for the little one Lulie’s age.”

Nellie ran to Marcy and buried her face in the counterpane, trying not to cry as she remembered how pretty and gay Marcy looked in that gymnasium dress on the fatal day of the fall, and how they had seen her lying at the foot of the stairs in its soft crimson folds, motionless, and perhaps dead.

“O Marcy dear, you don’t know how much good they’ll do, for ma wrote she couldn’t afford to get new things for the children this winter, because it had cost so much for me to come here. But I’d give anything in all the world if you could wear them,” she said.

“We mustn’t talk about that, you know,” said Marcy with a little shiver. “Norah has been laying them out for you to look at, so if you’ll go up she’ll show them to you, and you and she can pack the box and send it right away, so they’ll have it by Thanksgiving.”

Nellie did not dare trust herself to speak; she kissed Marcy, and went away without a word.

“There,” sighed Marcy after she had gone, “it feels a little like being dead, but it’s nice, for I’m sure they’ll like them, and after this I must get papa to send them presents every year, so Aunt Mary will always have things for the children. Dear me, I don’t believe I ever thought of any one before in my life.”

Inez was Marcy’s next visitor, and she came in with a most woe-begone expression.

“What’s wrong, Inez?” Marcy demanded. “You never look like that except you’re in a scrape.”

“Well, so I am, but I’m not going to bother you,” said Inez, with an air of heroic self denial.

“Why, it won’t bother me. I like to hear anything to make me forget, you know,” replied Marcy.

Inez did not need much urging.

“You see,” she explained, “Saturday will be my birthday, and I’d been telling the girls I would ask them to luncheon, and take them to the matinée, for mamma had said I could. Then when you got sick they all said they supposed the party was off, and I said it wouldn’t make any difference, for you weren’t going to be sick a little while—I mean, it wouldn’t be any different by and by. Oh, no, I mean——”

“Yes, I know, Inez; please go on,” said Marcy.

“Well,” Inez resumed, somewhat embarrassed, “I’ve been telling them we should have them just the same, and now mamma says it would be perfectly heathenish to have a theatre party so soon after you were hurt, and if I had any heart I should not want them, and I’m sure I didn’t want them, only I hate to tell them they can’t come.”

“Is that all? I’ll fix that for you. Mamma’ll do anything I ask her to, she’s so sorry for me, and I’ll tell her I want you to have the girls. I couldn’t see them,” Marcy said, with a little shudder at the thought of their curious and pitying eyes, “but I’d rather you would have your birthday just as if I were well. Why, if I’m to be sick all my life I must get used to your having good times without me, and what’s the use of waiting? I’ll get mamma to let you have the girls, so that’s easily set straight, Inez.”

Inez kissed her, quite unconscious of the pang this had cost her.

“It seems to me we were never sisters before, Marcy,” she said. “It’s just as if there had been a sort of crust, and you had fallen through and broken it all up.”

“Come,” said Marcy, smiling, “that’s one good thing, isn’t it? Maybe some day I’ll be glad I fell.”

The room was growing dark, and Marcy was aroused from a nap by Bob coming up-stairs, not two at a time, or tripping in his haste as usual, but heavily and slowly.

“Bob, aren’t you going to speak to me?” Marcy called out.

Bob came in, sat on the edge of a chair, and kicked at the floor with the toe of one boot, turned upright by a great effort.

“What’s the news?” asked Marcy.

“Nothing,” Bob replied gloomily.

“You don’t look jolly; won’t you tell me why?” Marcy persisted.

Bob looked up with a gleam of hope, which faded instantly.

“What’s the use?” he said.

“The use is I’d like to hear about almost anything, and so would you if you had to lie here till you died,” said Marcy, skilfully using her misfortune to obtain her desire, for no one in the family felt more keenly than Bob the affliction that had befallen active Marcy.

“Well,” he said, softening, “I got into a scrape this afternoon.”

“Please tell me; I won’t tell,” Marcy begged.

“Well,” said Bob, “I was over on Sixth Avenue with some boys after school, and we stopped in front of Old Bones’ shop. Old Bones is a tailor, and we call him that because he’s so thin. We kind of threw some pebbles around with our pea-shooters, and one—mine—went through Old Bones’ window. We ran off, but Old Bones saw one of the fellows—Nick Hale—and he says he’ll tell Mr. Hale and get Nick licked. Now Nick says if I’ll give him fifty cents he’ll take the licking, ’cause he don’t mind much; but if I don’t he’ll tell my father that I really was the one who did it, and then I’ll be licked for sure, and when father licks, he licks. I haven’t got a cent to buy Nick off, and he’ll tell father this evening if I don’t.”

“Why, Bob Merrick, what a mean, sneaky thing, and you don’t even see it’s mean!” cried Marcy, greatly excited.

“Yes, I do, but I can’t help it,” replied Bob. “What can a fellow do when he hasn’t any money?”

“It’s not that, but you’d bribe Nick to take your punishment, and you’d stand by and act a lie. Why, it’s as dishonorable and mean as it can be.”

“I might have known you wouldn’t care!” said Bob sullenly.

“Yes, I do care, Bob dear, and I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you the fifty cents if you’ll take it round to the tailor shop and tell the man that you broke the window, and not Nick Hale, and you came to pay for it. I’d rather have all my skin taken off, if I were you, than buy up such a cheating bargain as Nick made. But if you pay for the window nobody can say a word to you, and be sure you tell Nick Hale you’re not a liar nor a sneak.”

“You’re an awful good fellow, Marcy,” said Bob gratefully. “I’m glad I told you. It is kind of sneaky, now you speak of it——”

“It’s a lie,” interrupted Marcy.

“That’s so, but I hadn’t thought of it,” assented Bob. “If you’re sure you don’t want your fifty cents, I’ll give it to Old Bones, and be glad to be square.”

“I can’t use much money lying here,” said Marcy. “Hand me my purse from the upper drawer. There,” she added, handing Bob the half dollar, “the next time you’re in trouble tell me. Only, Bob, for mercy’s sake, always be square and honest. You’d better be a cripple, like me, than a sneak.”

Bob choked as he looked at her.

“I’m lots obliged, Marcy,” he said. “I wish you wouldn’t say cripple; it makes me sick. I don’t want to be a sneak—honest. I never once thought of it like that.”

“All right. Hurry up before the shop closes,” said Marcy. “Dear me,” she said aloud as the door slammed, “it’s time I tried to get Bob away from those boys.” And she sighed happily at this close of a day filled with little acts for others, and with a new feeling of sisterly love and care springing up in her heart.

CHAPTER VII.

A FRIEND IN NEED.

THERE was such excitement in school that it overflowed its boundaries, and reached the quiet chamber of that little pupil who had left its walls forever, to be taught by the sterner teaching of pain and patience. There was to be a play during Thanksgiving week, and Inez was selected for the principal part. She and Nellie came home one afternoon with burning cheeks and dilated eyes, and ran to Marcy’s room, followed by Grace, and seriously annoying Lucy, who was sitting in her favorite position on the foot of Marcy’s bed, “’musing her” with one of her wonderful tales.

“Oh, what do you think?” burst out Inez when scarcely inside the door.

“O Marcy, really it’s the sweetest thing!” added Nellie.

“And I’m to be the princess. You ought to see how mad the Hales are, though they try to act as if they didn’t care,” said Inez.

“They’re court ladies on the bad side,” cried Nellie. “And I’m to be the queen’s counsellor, sort of a good fairy.”

“Yes, and Madeleine Greene is my first maid of honor, who helps it all out,” added Inez.

“What is it all?” cried Marcy. “The play?”

“Yes, it’s the nicest play; one of the nuns wrote it,” said Nellie.

“Just think that I’ve the principal part!” cried Inez. “It makes me so nervous, I’m just about sure I’ll spoil it, but I love to do it.”

“You won’t spoil it,” said Marcy; “you always do well. What is the play? I can’t understand.”

“It’s a princess,” began Inez. “Oh! you tell, Nellie; I’m too crazy to remember it.”

“It’s a princess who has been put out of her kingdom, and she has to try to get it back. It’s kind of an alle—alleglory. Isn’t that what you call the things that mean something deeper than the story?”

“Allegory,” corrected Marcy, thinking of the one Father Glenn had read her.

“Well, allegory then. The princess kind of stands for a soul, and the kingdom is the right, and all her enemies and misfortunes stand for temptations, and she has to win her kingdom back herself. And the counsellor and maid of honor—that’s I and Madeleine Greene—they stand for conscience, and the guardian angel, or something like that.”

“Yes, and in the end, Marcy—oh, it’s fine!” Inez burst out. “You see, the princess wins back her kingdom, and all her foes are conquered, and she’s been dressed as poorly as poor can be, but here all her old things fall off, and she steps out in the most beautiful clothes, and puts a crown on her head, and there’s a cross on the crown, and the nuns say they’re going to have it beautiful, and have the cross all rhine stones, and a little electric light behind it, right on my head. And there’s to be a chorus, and a nice song behind the scenes, and then all the characters rush on, and the good ones dance with joy around the princess, and the bad ones fall on their knees and crouch down, like this,” and Inez struck an attitude of terror, shading her eyes from an imaginary ray.

“Oh, dear, it will be lovely!” sighed Marcy, realizing that she should never again have part in such joys.

Inez saw the pain on the face growing so thin and pathetic in its patient sweetness, and tears of sympathy arose in her eyes. With a gentleness taught by new sisterly love and pity, she kissed Marcy, saying:

“I would never have dared be the princess, only I knew you would help me. Nellie and I are going to practise in this room, and you can tell us just how to act, because you can act so well, and it will be most as if you did it; won’t it, Marcy?”

Marcy kissed her back, and answered, “Yes,” quite cheerily.

“And I’m something too, Marcy,” Grace remarked meekly, taking advantage of a pause.

“Why, of course you are, Gracie,” cried Nellie. “Grace is one of the little girls chosen to be the good fairies who dance before the princess in the second act, and try to lead her in the right path to her kingdom.”

“But, Marcy, you never saw any one so provoked as the Hales are,” said Inez. “Why, they show they care like anything. Jennie Hale was just as mean to me as she could be after the nuns had said who were to have the parts, and Rose Hale said to May Vanderberg, as they passed me in the corridor, just when she knew I couldn’t help hearing: ‘I’m glad I haven’t got to do it, because I hate to put myself forward; but I’m sorry she’s got it, because she can’t act, and she’ll spoil the whole play.’ And May said: ‘It’ll be fun seeing the Wild West show trying to act like a court lady.’”

“Well, you won’t spoil it, and you can act,” said Marcy, her pale face flushing. “Who is the Wild West show—Nellie?”

Inez nodded.

“The impertinent, hateful girls,” cried Marcy, losing her temper.

“Don’t get mad, Marcy,” said Nellie coolly, though her cheeks were redder than usual. “I don’t mind very much now; I did at first, because I wasn’t used to things, and they scared me, but now I see they’re not really worth minding. They put me in mind of the Indian ma used to tell us about that came to her house selling things when she first went to Kansas. She had a bottle of cologne one day when he came that she was using for headache, and the next time he came she said he was full of all kinds of strong things—musk, and mint, and grease, and everything—and he said, ‘H’m, Indian just as good as white woman, heap better than white woman! She got one little weak smell-bottle, Indian got quarts big, strong, many smell-bottles.’ And some way when I see the Hales trying to be fine ladies, and doing such disagreeable things, I always think of ma’s Indian.”

“Well, if that isn’t just it,” cried Inez.

From that day till the great event Marcy’s room was turned into a green-room and a stage. Grace did her dance for her, and tried heroically to give in her one small person the effect of twelve little girls dressed in different colors, dancing the most complicated, mazy figures, and if she did not succeed it was not for lack of trying. Inez and Nellie rehearsed their parts before Marcy, until she was quite able to prompt them without a book, and proved so ambitious for their success, that when she said she was satisfied with their performance they felt quite sure of pleasing their audience.

Their costumes were really beautiful, for Mrs. Merrick had done her utmost to have them so. Nellie’s was a silvery, grayish blue, with pearl trimming, a court train, and silver satin petticoat, laced with silver, and Inez’s was ivory white, with gold trimming, and such a profusion of stage gems on the rose-colored bodice as to make one blink at their splendor.

The rehearsals at school went on perfectly, and there seemed no doubt that the affair was an assured success, but for the ill-concealed malice of Jennie and Rose Hale. Either the nuns were blind to this, or thought it best to appear so, for they seemed quite unconscious of the spirit of opposition in the air; but Nellie and Madeleine Greene were aware of it, and worried over it in secret, for they both felt these girls were capable of making Inez taste their spite.

The dress rehearsal on the last day went off without a hitch, and the final scene in which right triumphed, and Inez, throwing off her ragged garments, shone forth resplendent in her glittering gown, and placed the blazing crown on her head, was so dramatic and effective, and so well acted, that all the community and pupils gathered to see it burst into applause.

The black look of anger and jealousy that passed between the Hale sisters did not escape Nellie, and she went home with Inez full of anxiety, yet not liking to disturb her by uttering her fears. Inez herself walked on air, and no happier little girl than she laid her head on her pillow the night before the play.

The hall was crowded when the curtain rose to the chorus of girls’ voices singing in the wings. Nellie quite astonished her friends by her performance; the Hales were clever as the leaders of the enemies of the princess, while Inez was so excited that her acting amazed her mother and father and Bob, all of whom were present at Marcy’s especial request. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but Nellie and Madeleine kept a sharp look-out, feeling that the day would not be safe till the curtain should have fallen for the last time.

The crown was in the dressing-room, and it was the duty of one of the smaller girls to fetch it in the beginning of the third act, and stand with it in the wings, until the moment when the stage should be darkened, when she was to carry it on the stage and lay it on a table, the reason for all this being that the crown was so brilliant that if it were on the stage before it was to be used it would be seen, and the dramatic effect spoiled. The moment was almost come, and Nellie was standing in the wings, watching the play, when some one touched her elbow. She turned, and saw the frightened face of the little girl who was to bring the crown.

“It’s gone,” whispered the child. “I can’t find the crown.”

Nellie gathered up her train and ran for dear life. There was not a moment to be lost. If the crown were not ready when needed, all the effect of the scene would be ruined, and Inez would surely be so shocked that she would break down, and her moment of triumph be turned into defeat.

“Those Hales!” gasped Nellie. “Have you seen them?”

“Yes, they came out of the dressing-room as I went in,” said the little girl wonderingly. “Did they take the crown?”

“Which way did they go, Lillie?”

“Into the hall,” said the child, and Nellie turned and ran swiftly down the corridor.

A pink and a green dress whisked across the end, and Nellie felt sure she had the right clew.

“Where are you going?” said Jennie Hale as she passed her.

Nellie never paused to answer.

“Stop!” said Rose Hale, putting out her hand.

Nellie pushed it down, saying breathlessly, “You’ll be sorry if you try to stop me,” and ran on.

Opening the door of the closet where the girls’ wraps were hung, with little Lillie’s help she threw them all on the floor, and, as she expected, the crown rolled out among them.

The Hales saw her snatch it and start back; they put themselves in her path.

“Here goes,” thought Nellie, who had played football with her brothers. Running with all her might, she put her head down just as she reached her foes, swung one of the sisters round by the force of the concussion, and before they could rally sufficiently to seize her, was beyond the reach of their hands, and flying for her life down the long hall.

“The Western savage!” exclaimed Jennie Hale, white with anger and shame as she realized they were found out and disgraced before the school.

Nellie made her best speed to get to the stage before it should be too late, and Lillie was left far behind. She got to the wings in time to see the darkened stage light up again, and Inez turn to take the crown, which was not there. Inez grew white. There was no time for Nellie to hesitate. She went swiftly on the stage, and knelt, saying, “Here, most gracious lady,” which was all she could think of at the moment, and more than she had breath for. Inez stared, but fortunately was not thrown off her balance. She took the crown, Nellie retired, and the play went on to the end amid great applause.

It had been an exciting ten minutes, and had taken no small amount of courage and presence of mind in the heroine of them, but she had saved the day, and only a few in the audience were the wiser.

“Now, what do you suppose possessed the Prairie Chicken to do that?” whispered Bob, but his mother, who had seen Inez’s face and the absence of the crown, and had trembled lest her girl was going to fail, after all, shook her head, and felt grateful for an evident rescue.

Inez sat on the edge of the bed that night thoughtfully unbuttoning her shoes. She had asked Nellie to let her share her room, for she wanted to discuss the events of the evening, and felt besides that she could not sufficiently show her affection for her once despised cousin, who had saved her from a mortification that it seemed to her only death could wipe out.

“I think I’m getting a little sense,” she remarked, with one shoe dangling in her left hand, while her right one absently smoothed the wrinkles out of the heel of her stocking.

“Isn’t that nice?” said Nellie sleepily from the pillow, where she had preceded Inez.

“You see,” explained Inez, “I’m beginning to find out what Marcy always knew about being a real lady. It’s not because these girls were mean to me to-night, but I see it’s all part of their being humbugs and pretending. Madeleine Greene and you and Marcy, though you’re so different, are all ladies, because you’re honest and polite, and never squirm around to try to seem what you are not. I’m through with imitation ladies forever.”

“Much obliged for my part of the compliment,” laughed Nellie, giving her pillow a few pokes and pulls. “Squirm around is good, Inez, but I’m glad if you’ve had enough of imitation people, because they’re not much good. I suppose the Hales can’t help being plated ware, poor things. Still they needn’t have taken the crown,” added candid Nellie, who found it hard to forgive such a contemptible trick.

CHAPTER VIII.

A MERRY CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL.

MARCY lay with her cheek pillowed on her hand, watching the fire burning red in the growing dusk of the December early twilight. Her mother had been reading to her the “Lady of the Lake,” the musical rhythm of which was delightful to the sick child’s ear, but it had long been too dark to read, and thinking Marcy asleep Mrs. Merrick had not moved, but sat with her finger shut in the book on her knee, meditating sadly on the coming of Christmas, which it seemed to her she could not celebrate this year.

But Marcy was not asleep, and she, too, was thinking of the celebration of Christmas, with similar thoughts to her mother’s, but she had reached the opposite conclusion. It took a little effort before she could say steadily:

“Mamma, I’ve been thinking of Christmas.”

Mrs. Merrick started.

“So have I, Marcy dear,” she said.

“You know,” Marcy went on, “I think we shall have to try to make it merry, or it may be the least wee bit sad. Nellie was never away from home at Christmas before, and I’m afraid she’ll be homesick, and, anyway, I wouldn’t like our children not to have a good time; so what can we do to keep my being sick from half spoiling things?”

“Oh, dearest, sweetest little daughter, what can we do to keep your Christmas from being wholly spoiled?” cried her mother, with more love than wisdom.

“Didn’t the doctor say I might get up at Christmas?” asked Marcy. “Do you think he meant just sit up, or that I might walk around?”

Mrs. Merrick’s heart ached. Marcy evidently did not know that he had said she would never “walk around again.”

“I think he only meant that you might be laid on a couch chair and moved a little,” answered her mother gently. “We shall have to be very careful, you know, Marcy.”

Marcy was silent a moment.

“Well, even that,” she said at last. “Then I could be taken into the sitting-room?”

“Yes, I think so,” said Mrs. Merrick.

“Now, mamma, would it be too much trouble for you to have a little supper laid there for us children?”

“None at all, dear, if you would like it,” replied her mother, rejoicing at the request.

“I thought,” Marcy continued, “we might have a kind of combination of a Twelfth Night, and Christmas, and birthday party. If Eliza would bake a cake for me I’d write a lot of mottoes, and have them laid all around the top in the icing, so that every one who took a piece of cake would get one. And we’d have a ring in the cake, too, if you would buy one. And Lucy could be crowned queen of the feast, and I could be there, and no one would feel a little sad, as they might if I were up-stairs alone, and we’d have a merry time after all.”

“It shall all be done, my dearest,” said her mother. “And now tell me if you have thought of anything you would like for yourself this Christmas?”

“Nothing but books and the Madonna I love, to hang opposite on the wall there,” said Marcy; “but I do want to send a splendid box to Prairie Rest, and have it packed here in my room, and let every one, even Lulie, have a hand in getting it up. And if we begin right away, and think of nothing but these things, I really do believe we can be happy.”

Mrs. Merrick got up and kissed Marcy.

“Do you know, dear, you are making the whole house sweet, like a bit of mignonette among a bunch of showy flowers?” she said; and after she had left the room Marcy lay smiling contentedly, pondering the remarkable coincidence that her mother had used almost the same comparison as Father Glenn.

A busier household than the Merricks’ could hardly have been found preparing for Christmas. Every afternoon after school Inez, and Nellie, and Bob, and Hugh, and Grace hastened up to Marcy’s room, where Lucy was already established, and the task of dressing dolls and getting things ready for the box for Prairie Rest went merrily forward. There were other meetings in mysterious corners of the house, as far from Marcy’s room as possible, yet where conversation was carried on in whispers lest she might hear, and discussions of presents for her were the object of the conclaves.

A chance remark of Norah’s that Miss Marcy might like a pet struck Grace and Lucy favorably, and they combined their pocket money to get her a canary-bird. The same remark had a similar effect on Hugh, who, without consulting any one, went off and bought her a pair of rabbits. Bob, too, considered this a happy thought of Norah’s, and he obtained a Yorkshire puppy from a boy who had five. Inez, ignorant of the secrets of the younger children, carried out her original intention, and bought for Marcy a snow-white Angora kitten, for which Nellie, who had to supply her lack of pin-money by the work of her skilful fingers, fitted up a cozy basket with blue linings.

The Christmas tree was abandoned for that year, and the presents were to be placed on the hearth in Marcy’s room, where the family was to assemble to get them. Marcy had to feign sleep while mysterious figures glided in, bent a moment over the hearth, and tiptoed out again. She had fallen asleep very late, and was still resting peacefully when she was aroused by a succession of most incomprehensible sounds. She distinguished short, sharp cries, ending in little whimpers and grunts, the sound of scratching, and sniffing, and something rather like damp fire-crackers, but she could not tell from what they came. While she was wondering the door opened softly, and Hugh poked a tumbled head through, followed briskly by the rest of his body, when Marcy spoke. Soon Inez crept in with Nellie, and then Bob stole down, and they all went over to the hearth. Earnest whispers took the place of the mysterious sounds which had ceased as soon as the children entered, and in a moment a shout of laughter, instantly checked by hands clapped over lips lest Mr. and Mrs. Merrick should be awakened. Marcy could see Bob rolling on the floor and kicking in an ecstasy of repressed laughter, while the shoulders under Inez’s and Nellie’s dressing-gowns were shaking convulsively, as they sat on the floor clasping their knees with their hands, on which their faces were bowed.

“Oh! do tell me the joke,” begged Marcy. “I’ve been hearing the queerest noises, and I’ll go crazy if you don’t tell me what is so funny.”

Bob climbed up and lit the gas, and Marcy saw a very frightened pair of rabbits huddled up in the corner of a wooden cage, a canary-bird on a chair, a long-haired, bow-legged little puppy making frantic dashes in his box at a beautiful snowy kitten, whose long plume of a tail was swollen to an enormous size, and she occasionally spit at the demoralized puppy, which explained the fire-crackers Marcy had heard.

“Oh, how funny! Oh, aren’t they dear?” cried Marcy, who loved all kinds of pets. “Where did they all come from?”

“That’s the joke,” explained Inez, wiping her eyes and gasping for breath. “We all thought you’d like a pet to keep you company while you’re sick, and we never said a word to one another, only I told Nellie about mine. So we each got an animal, only Hugh, and he got two, and among us we’ve turned your room into a menagerie. I think it’s the funniest thing I ever saw.”

Marcy laughed, too, but she was very much pleased, for she had room in her heart for all the animals in the ark. The rest of the family was aroused, and followed the sound of voices to Marcy’s room, and the presents were seized upon, though it was but half-past five, and they had been intended to be left till after Mass.

Nellie had never dreamed of such riches as she was gloating over: a beautiful little pin, a wreath of mistletoe, with the berries of tiny pearls from Marcy; a pretty moonstone ring from Bob; the softest of chinchilla muffs and collars from her uncle; a complete silver manicure set, the counterpart of the one Inez had, from her aunt, and a dear little chatelaine and watch from Inez, the chatelaine pin being in the form of a tiny crown, in memory of the play. Marcy rejoiced in her coveted Madonna, quantities of books, and her “menagerie,” and her father gave her three hundred dollars to do with as she liked. It came in crisp new bills, wrapped in a note, to be read at her leisure, and while the others were at church she read it with a glad heart.

“First of all, my dearest daughter,” Mr. Merrick wrote, “I wish you a blessed Christmas, which should be yours, who are proving yourself, in the midst of a great affliction, our chiefest blessing. I intend that each year you shall have this sum of money to use in charity as you see fit, for I foresee that your greatest pleasure will lie in doing for others. You will learn to use this sum, and thus be better prepared to make the most of the larger amount which will one day be yours to do with as you think best.”

Marcy lay dreaming of all she could do with so much money, and she planned to support several families, beside educating some clever child with it, for she had no more idea of the value of a hundred cents than many persons whom misfortune has not taught.

When it was time for the supper Marcy was taken for the first time from her bed, wrapped in her white eider-down wrapper with the swan’s down around her wrists and throat, and wheeled into the next room on the couch-chair, which was but another bed on wheels.

The sitting-room had been turned into a Christmas banqueting hall. The table in the centre was bright with holly and candles with red shades, and each napkin was tied with a bow of scarlet ribbon, ornamented with a sprig of holly. Evergreen, holly, and mistletoe hung on the walls, and made the chandelier a bower of green. Julia, the waitress, and Norah, who was to help, wore wonderful mediæval dresses, with canton-flannel ermine trimming, and holly-trimmed caps. Marcy’s couch was wheeled into place at one side of the table, and suddenly there arose the sound of music. A harp and violin began to play the carol, “God rest ye, merry gentlemen,” and in walked the procession. First came Queen Lucy, the queen of the feast, very stately, with a golden (pasteboard) crown on her pretty head, and a sceptre in her hand. Then came Grace and Hugh—one dressed as a cavalier in cuffs and slashed doublet, with a sword at his side; the other as a court lady, with a train as long as the queen’s, and her hair dressed high on her head and powdered, and a black patch of court-plaster in the form of a star on her chin. Bob and Nellie followed, another court lady and gallant, she in the costume she had worn in the play, he in rose-colored doublet, slashed with white, and a mustache that was at once the joy and trial of his soul, because it looked so fierce when it was on, and was perpetually falling off. Last came Inez and Madeleine Greene, both in the costumes of the play.

Marcy clapped her hands at the sight of her favorite schoolmate. Since her accident she had shrunk from seeing any of her friends, but Madeleine’s coming so unexpectedly was only a pleasure, and she held out her hands to her in ecstasy. The meeting might have been a sad one, but Mrs. Merrick gave them no time to think, and hurried the gorgeous company to their seats, Queen Lucy presiding at the head of the table with much dignity. Mr. Merrick was present, introduced as a distinguished guest from Australia. He wore a queer high collar, a flaring plaid necktie, and a green coat with brass buttons, and had black spectacles on his nose, and equally surprised and delighted his children by the funny things he said and did.

At last the great cake was cut, and everybody carefully nibbled around the frosting to find the motto which they were warned was hidden there. This was the supreme moment to Marcy, who had spent long hours composing these little couplets. When the last crumb of the cake had gone the reading of the mottoes was called for.

“No, first the ring. Who has the ring?” cried Marcy.

Nellie instantly cried, “I have,” and held up a dainty little golden ribbon, tied in a true lover’s knot, with two slender ends flying.

“You can’t get it on,” said Hugh, anxiously regarding the tiny band.

“It’s for her pinkie fin’ner, you silly boy,” said Lucy, to every one’s amusement.

“Now the guest from Australia will read his motto first, please,” cried Marcy.

Mr. Merrick had to poke up his spectacles to see, and read:

“May your Christmas joy and peace

Through the new year never cease.”

“Mamma,” cried Marcy.

“Christmas green, or Christmas white,

Be your heart forever light,”

read Mrs. Merrick.

Madeleine, Inez, and Nellie read in succession:

“For him whose heart is good and pure

Christmas joy shall aye endure.”

“May He who in the stable lay

Bless you every Christmas day.”

“She who loves both man and beast,

Truly keeps the Christmas feast.”

“Gracie,” said Marcy, and Grace read slowly and carefully:

“Once a Child was cold and sad,

That all children might be glad.”

“Queen Lucy next,” cried Marcy, and Lucy handed her slip to Norah, saying:

“P’raps you’d better read it, Nonie,” which, considering the small girl did not know her letters, seemed advisable.

Norah read:

“May the Babe of Bethlehem bless

All your life with happiness.”

Bob read his couplet next, which ran:

“May Christmases coming, and Christmases past,

Crown you with joys that forever shall last.”

Finally Hugh read:

“Christmas comes all wreathed in holly;

May each Christmas find you jolly.”

The applause for Marcy’s verses was the signal for her return to her room, and that the feast was over.

The procession formed once more to precede her; the harp and violin played the merriest airs, and Norah pushed Marcy’s chair back to her door, where the children divided, and drew up on each side, dropping her old-fashioned courtesies as she passed. The new white kitten and the excited puppy, who had been already named “Merry Christmas,” called Merry for short, and Kris Kringle, in honor of the day, welcomed her boisterously.

“One thing more, mamma,” said Marcy, “please sing the Adeste for me after I am in bed again, and leave the door open so I can hear it, for it is the dearest of all hymns. It has been a Merry Christmas after all, hasn’t it, mamma?”

“Yes, my darling,” said her mother, kissing her good-night.

And soothed by the beautiful Adeste Fideles, tired out with her exciting day, Marcy sank to sleep.

CHAPTER IX.

NEW YEAR’S CALLS.

IT was New Year’s Eve, and Mr. Merrick sat with Lucy on his knee, and his other children around him, in Marcy’s room. The custom of Marcy’s reading the paper to him every evening had grown into a long chat with all the children after the reading. From being exclusively occupied with thoughts of business in his home, Mr. Merrick had ceased to be exclusively occupied with it even in business hours. His associates on Wall Street were amazed to see him sometimes smiling to himself, and then hear him say: “That eldest boy of mine’s a funny rascal!” Or, “My little niece said a pretty good thing the other day.” Or, “Well, sir, what do you suppose that youngest girl of mine did yesterday?” and follow up these introductory remarks with an anecdote of the children. He was surprised himself to discover how he looked forward to this hour after dinner with the little band, and how the memory of it followed it throughout the succeeding day.

This New Year’s Eve Mr. Merrick was telling the children of the custom of making calls on New Year’s Day, which had been universal in his youth, and had fallen into disuse.

“Why, I am not old,” he began, but Hugh immediately interrupted him:

“Not old! Well!” he cried, but stopped himself.

“What’s this? Do you think I am old?” asked Mr. Merrick, looking down at the boy curled up on the rug, pulling Kris Kringle’s ears. “I am not quite forty-five.”

“Forty-five isn’t old,” said Nellie, with an air of decision. “Fifty is old though.”

“Five years more of grace,” said Mr. Merrick, laughing. “Nothing like having the line clearly defined; some people find it harder to settle. I’ll tell you a secret about old age, children. It is always the next turn beyond where you have gone, and though you can plainly see others reach it, you never quite get there yourself.”

“Poor papa; you don’t like to grow old, then,” said Marcy thoughtfully. “I suppose it’s like being crippled, and thinking you can never run around again, isn’t it?”

Mr. Merrick bent his head a moment over Lucy’s curls without answering; when he spoke, it was of something else, and his voice was husky.

“It was a pretty custom going to call on one’s friends to wish them health and happiness for a new year, but it grew into a caricature and abuse, and it was better then to stop it. Still I sometimes think I should like to see the old custom again in the old way.”

“Come, Miss Lucy, bed-time,” said Norah, appearing in the doorway, and Lucy slipped down, kissed every one good-night, and Marcy three times, and was gone.

New Year’s Day was damp and disagreeable. Grace had a cold, and required Norah’s care; Mr. and Mrs. Merrick were at church, and Nellie and Inez were in Marcy’s room, when Norah came down looking frightened.

“Dear Miss Inez and Miss Nellie,” she said, in great distress, “please come and help me look for Lucy. Her bonnet and cloak are gone, and she certainly is nowhere in the house; she must have slipped out unawares.”

The girls started up at this alarming summons, leaving Marcy in an agony of helpless excitement. The house was ransacked again in vain, and there was no mistake that she had gone out alone in the streets of the great city.

“She’ll be lost; she’ll be run over; she’ll be killed!” wailed Inez, falling on her knees, and burying her face in the coverlid of Marcy’s bed.

Marcy shook with speechless terror, and Nellie said:

“Stop, Inez, you’ll hurt Marcy. Let’s all say our beads till Uncle Dick and Aunt Clara come. Julia has gone to the church to find them.”

Meanwhile the cause of this alarm had gone serenely down the street to the avenue. She had put on her cloak and bonnet unaided, but rubbers and leggings were beyond her memory, and she sallied forth with no thought of her thin shoes and unprotected knees. Lucy had listened with much more attention than any one knew to her father’s stories of old-fashioned New Year’s calling, and finding herself left quite alone that morning felt that she had a golden opportunity to revive the pleasing custom. She had not forgotten to take the new muff, which, as she said, “Santa Closet” had brought her, and in its depths lay hidden her mother’s card-case with which she had thoughtfully provided herself. No one interfered with the small midget as she went her way past the high brown-stone houses of her street, and turned into Fifth Avenue, where she selected a dignified mansion, and going up the steps, put her finger on the electric bell button, and kept it there till her summons was answered.

The maid who came to the door was a newly arrived Swede, who could not speak a word of English. She showed the small caller into the parlor, received the card on her tray, and disappeared without a word.

Mrs. Francis, whom Lucy had selected for this first call, was very busy getting ready for a journey to Washington, when the card was brought her. She scanned it impatiently, read “Mrs. Richard Merrick” wonderingly, and gave a sigh of annoyance.

“I don’t know any Mrs. Richard Merrick,” she exclaimed. “What can have brought any one on such a day as New Year’s? I suppose I should better see her.”

She changed her dress very quickly, looked hastily at her slightly disordered hair, hoping that she should find the parlor shades, drawn, and went down indisposed to be gracious to her untimely visitor.

As she entered the room she could scarcely believe her eyes. There sat “Mrs. Merrick” on a stiff Louis XV. chair, upon which she had climbed with difficulty, her feet sticking straight out before her, and her eyes shining out very bright from a brown beaver-trimmed bonnet.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Francis, and stopped short in amazement.

“Good-morning. I’m making you a New Year’s call,” explained Lucy, slipping down from her perch in what might be called recklessness when one considers what a piece of work it was to get up.

“Where did you come from, you provoking little midget?” cried Mrs. Francis, laughing, yet irritated as she thought of her change of toilette and the unfinished packing waiting her supervision.

“I’m not a little midget,” cried Lucy indignantly. “I’m Mrs. Mehwick, and I don’t fink you’re very espectable.” She meant respectful, but it did not much matter.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Merrick,” said Mrs. Francis humbly. “Now I see you all, but when I came in it was so dark, I really thought you were a little girl.”

“Never mind,” said Lucy, mollified at once. “I’m ’fwaid I’ve got to go wight away quick, ’cause I’m going to make more’n a fousand calls.”

“Oh, then, good-by,” said her hostess, opening the heavy front door for her. “I hope you’ll come again for a longer call.”

“Yes, I will,” said Lucy cheerfully. “Good-by.”

She had made half the long journey down the high steps, one step at a time, when she remembered something.

“I wis you a happy New Year,” she said, retracing some of the hard road, then she was gone.

“I wonder if I ought not send a messenger to this address,” said Mrs. Francis, looking at the card. “I am sure the funny tot has run away. However, it is too late now.”

Lucy went on down the avenue. She passed many houses which for some reason did not attract her, and her feet were getting very wet, and she began to feel tired and thoroughly cold. At last she selected a house where children’s faces appeared at the window, and tried to ring the bell. But it was not an electric one, and her small arms could not manage to pull it. She tapped on the glass for a long time, till at last some one heard her, and a merry-faced girl came to the door. She took the card from Lucy, read it, stared at her a moment, and then burst out laughing.

“Come in, Mrs. Merrick, ma’am. Sure it’s delighted Mrs. Van Alen will be to see ye.”

This reception cheered Lucy’s soul, and she followed readily when the maid bade her come up to the sitting-room. Here a motherly-looking woman came to greet her, and shook the little hand extended to her.

“I am very glad to meet Mrs. Merrick,” she said.

But Lucy’s eyes were riveted on a wonderful doll house in the corner, before which a little girl and boy were seated staring at her.

“Well, I was Mrs. Mehwick out making New Year’s calls, but I guess I’ll be Lulie here, if you’ll let me see that pessely beautiful house,” she said.

“Certainly I will if you will do something for me first,” said Mrs. Van Alen, “and that is let me take off your wet shoes and stockings, and rub your little feet nice and warm, and then give you some warm milk to drink, for you are as cold as a little icicle.”

“Well, all wight,” said Lucy graciously. “I did forgot my wubbers and leggings.”

“I don’t believe nurse put your things on for you, did she?” asked Mrs. Van Alen, taking Lucy on her knee, and cuddling her feet in her warm hand as she held them close to the grate fire.

“Nobody didn’t put ’em on,” said Lucy, “nobody but just me. Gwacie’s got sore froat, and Nonie’s taking care of her, and mamma’s out, and Inez and Nellie is in Marcy’s woom, and nobody, not nobody saw me. Won’t they be s’prised fen they know I’s out?”

“I think it is only too certain,” said Mrs. Van Alen. “Hurry, Katie; the address is there.” And she gave Katie, who had been waiting, the card that Lucy had sent up to her.

“Now may I see the baby house?” asked Lucy when Mrs. Van Alen had put on a pair of her children’s stockings and slippers, and set her down on the hearth, and she had finished the last drop of her warm milk.

“Yes, indeed. This is Daisy Van Alen, and Harry Van Alen, and, children, this is little Lulie Merrick come to see you.”

After a few moments of silent staring the three burst into chatter over the charms of the cooking-stove in the doll-house kitchen, and the little Van Alens explained it had only just come, being a gift from Santa Claus delayed in the express.

While Lucy’s adventures had come to such a happy end, the agony at her home was increasing every moment. The description of the lost child had been telegraphed to every police station and hospital in the city, but no result had followed so far. Mrs. Merrick made up her mind that Lucy was kidnapped, and walked up and down the room, moaning and wringing her hands, refusing to be comforted. Perhaps it was hardest of all for Marcy, denied the relief of motion, and doomed to lie perfectly still through the two long hours of uncertainty, thinking of the dear little sister whose pretty curly head she might never see again tipped back against the foot-board of her bed, as she sat in her favorite position telling her stories. And Mr. Merrick hurried along in fruitless search from street to street, fearing that Lucy had been run over, and that if not killed outright, the youngest, like the eldest of his children, might be crippled.

Into all this agony came hurrying the pleasant, rosy face of Mrs. Van Alen’s Katie, saying breathlessly:

“I came to tell ye all your little girl was safe at our house, where she come and knocked at the front-door glass, being too small entirely to ring the bell, and sint up this card, saying she do be making New Year’s calls. And Mrs. Van Alen took off her wet shoes and stockings, and made her drink warm milk, for she was that wet and muddy from the sloppy streets, and she’ll be playing with our children till you send for her.”

Norah put her arms around Katie and hugged her, and all the Merricks would have liked to have followed her example.

When Norah, who went to fetch Lucy home, arrived, she found that young lady very ill-disposed to leave, being quite happy with the wonderful baby house, and having so much attention paid to her.

On her return she was hugged nearly breathless by the entire family, who were themselves so breathless from laughing and sobbing that they could not scold her.

But poor little Lucy paid for her adventures and forgotten rubbers by a sharp attack of croup that night, when for three hours her mother and Norah feared that they had only found her to lose her again forever.

“I don’t believe I’ll make more New Year’s calls, Nonie,” croaked the poor child hoarsely in the morning. “They’re nice, but they make me choke too badily. You tell papa I’m glad there’s no more New Year’s calls, and not to be sorry ’bout they’re being all stopped making them.”

CHAPTER X.

A PARTING.

THE soft winds of April were blowing over New York, and the spring sunshine made everything as gay and bright as that cheerful city always is in fine weather. The Merricks had “spring fever,” and school was irksome; they yearned to go somewhere, it did not much matter where, and talked longingly of the time when they should go into the country.

The mail was brought in as they were all seated at breakfast, and among the letters was one for Nellie. She read it with flushing cheeks and eyes dancing with joy, which gave place to a very sober look as she folded the letter and glanced around the table.

“Any news from home, Nellie?” asked her aunt, noticing her varying expressions.

“Pa says he would like me to come back,” said Nellie.

“Go back!” cried Inez in horror, while Bob said decidedly: “Well, you can’t do it!” and Hugh added: “Not much you can’t.”

“When does he want you, and why must you go?” asked Mrs. Merrick, while her uncle said: “Nonsense, you can’t go till school closes, and then I had planned taking you to the country with us, and keep you till school begins again.”

“Oh my, I never could stay away like that,” laughed Nellie. “Pa says he won’t set a day for my coming, because he doesn’t know what you may have planned for me to do, but he would like me to go the first of the week. He says a month or so more school can’t matter much, and ma isn’t well. It has been a hard winter for her without me, and she’s tired. He says he doesn’t want to tell her I’m coming, but let it be a surprise to her, and so I’m just to telegraph him when I start, and walk in on her. If ma’s tired and needs me, I’ll really have to go, you see.”

“I believe you want to go,” cried Inez, with tears in her eyes. “I suppose you haven’t thought how Marcy’d feel.”

“I do want to see them all at home just lots,” said Nellie honestly. “When I think about them I get nearly crazy, for, you see, I was never away from home before, and they are so nice. But when I think of leaving you all I feel as though I couldn’t do it, and I do think of Marcy, and I only hope she won’t miss me.”

“You know very well she will, and she needs you more than anybody,” cried Inez.

“She has you——” began Nellie.

“Oh, me,” cried Inez, in new and very becoming humility, “I’m not you, and I never shall be.”

“Now, my dear Inez,” said her mother, “I shall dread Nellie’s going quite as much as you will, not only because I cannot bear the thought of our poor girl up-stairs being lonely, but because I shall miss Nellie myself sorely. But if her mother needs her, and her father has bidden her come, I do not see how we can escape the misfortune. So we will try not to be selfish, only I want Nellie to know that we shall all feel that we have lost our right hand if she goes.”

“Where’s Nellie going?” demanded Lucy, who had held a teaspoonful of oatmeal suspended in mid air, with the milk slowly dripping back into the bowl, while she turned from one speaker to the other in puzzled dismay.

“Nellie’s going home,” said Grace, tears running quietly down each cheek.

“She can’t go. Papa, don’t let her go. You wite to ’em, and say, ‘I’m sowwy, but you can’t never get Nellie; not never, forever, at all,’” cried Lucy.

“Nellie will come back in the fall, Lulie. You must be a good girl, and take care of Marcy till she comes,” said Mr. Merrick. “Well, if it must be, Nellie, what day do you think you will go?”

“This is Saturday. Suppose I go Wednesday?” said Nellie.

“Alone?” cried Mrs. Merrick.

“I came alone,” said Nellie; “I don’t mind. Pa took me to Kansas City and put me in care of the conductor, and he looked after me.”

“Well, I think it’s the meanest thing I ever heard of,” said Bob, with a face crimson from repressing the tears that Hugh could not quite keep back, and which were streaming down Inez’s and Grace’s cheeks.

“Oh, I don’t want to leave you, though I shall be glad to see ma and pa and the children,” cried Nellie, choking. “Please don’t cry, Inez, or you’ll make me. If I can I’ll come East to go to school again next winter. I wish you’d all move to Prairie Rest.”

“What’s the matter with your moving to New York?” asked Bob.

“Oh, there’s so much more to do in Prairie Rest,” said Nellie, nor could she see why the others laughed.

The dismal news was broken to Marcy, who received it in silence, trying to keep Nellie from seeing how hard it was to give up the cheery cousin who made so much of the sunshine of her shadowed life.

“Well,” she said at last, “I’m glad you came, Nellie, for you have been such a comfort, and if you hadn’t we should never have known you. But it will be awful without you, and I’m sure I don’t see how we shall get on at all.”

“I want you to love me, Marcy, and it makes me so happy, I don’t know what to do to have you say I was a comfort to you, but I can’t bear to think you’ll miss me,” cried Nellie.

“I do love you so much,” said Marcy, putting her arms around her, and kissing the bright face till her breath gave out. “You’re so sweet and good, and full of fun, nobody could help loving you, and unless I lost my head as well as my feet, I don’t know anything I couldn’t better spare than you. And it might be a good idea to lose my head, for then maybe I’d go to heaven, after a while in purgatory, and then I could fly about. Sometimes I get into black pits of despair, Nellie.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing: if you went to heaven this house would be a pretty sad place,” said Nellie earnestly. “You may not know it, Marcy, but since you were hurt you’ve just been the hub of the wheel, and they all simply worship you, and think all you say is law and gospel. So if you want to know, I can tell you that you’re the thing on earth they all love best, and not because you are sick, but because you are so patient, and loving, and thoughtful, and sweet. I don’t suppose you remember that when I came you said you wanted to do some big, splendid thing, and I said I’d like to be a saint—just a little home saint. Well, you’re doing what I thought I’d like to do, and I envy you, Marcy Merrick, even if you never got one bit better than you are now.”

Marcy had hidden her face in the pillow and was crying quietly during this outburst, but her tears were tears of joy that her dreams were fulfilling.

At Marcy’s special request Nellie’s trunk was brought into her room to be packed, and many and peculiar were the things that found their way into it during the operation. Gifts for each member of the family in Prairie Rest of course were there, and many little treasures for Nellie were tucked in when she was not looking, to be discovered after she reached home. Mrs. Merrick had grown so fond of the sunny little girl, and was so grateful to her for the comfort she had given Marcy during the first hardest weeks of her trial, that she vied with the children in showing it in parting. Indeed, another trunk had to be purchased on the last day, in which Bob and Hugh deposited their parting gift to Nellie, which they had themselves made with much mystery and no small effort. This was a box, which they had put together and carved, which accounted for the two bandaged fingers on Hugh’s hand and the one on Bob’s. The box bore the initials N. M. on the lid in blue paint with red trimmings, and below that the boys’ own initials. This was intended as a work-box, and though the lid never would quite shut, and the letters were rather wavering, it was much prized by Nellie when she found it on opening her trunk in Prairie Rest.

“Where can my muff be?” cried Nellie, holding the chinchilla collar in her hand and whirling about wildly. “I was sure I laid it on the couch.”

Nellie and Inez shook up the pillows and peered under chairs, but there was no muff to be found. Suddenly Grace cried out:

“Oh, look, Nellie!”

There in the furthest corner, where Kris Kringle had carried it, was her muff, and in it lay the small Yorkshire himself, his forepaws and shiny nose sticking out of it, sleeping the sleep of youth, though not of innocence, for he did more mischief in a day than most dogs could think of in a week. And with her snowy head resting on the side of the muff, and her long plume of a tail gently tapping the floor, while her parted lips wore almost a smile of self-satisfaction, and her forepaws drooped gracefully was Miss Merry, also sound asleep.

“I’ll get it,” cried Inez. “You bad babies, get up this moment.”

But Nellie stayed her hand.

“No, don’t waken them, they’re so cosey and dozy,” she cried. “I’ll pack everything else, and put in the muff after they wake up.”

“Nellie’s a lady, sure pop!” cried Bob, who loved animals with all his boyish heart. “Nobody but a real lady would put herself out to be polite to a puppy and a kitten.”

“I never can thank you all for being so good to me,” said Nellie as they were gathered together for her last evening in New York. One hand was held tight in both of Marcy’s, while the other rested on Bob’s shoulder, and Hugh clasped the thumb. Inez sat behind Nellie, both arms around her neck, and her head on hers, while Lucy sat on her lap, and Grace clasped her knees, crying softly.

“We have not been kind to you, my dear child, because there can be no kindness where one is as dear to us as you are,” said Mr. Merrick heartily. “You’ve been a little sunbeam in the house through a hard winter, and if I had my way, I’d never let you go away, even for a visit, but I’d keep you in spite of your father and the law if I weren’t promised to have you back in October.”

When it was time to go to the train two carriages drew up to the Merricks’ door, for all the family insisted on seeing Nellie off; even Mr. Merrick had promised to be at the station to say good by, and give the conductor special injunctions to look after Nellie’s safety and welfare. Marcy clung to her as if she could never let go, and watched her out of the door with such wistful eyes that Nellie had hardly courage to turn back to wave her hand and meet them.

“Only till October, Marcy,” she cried, as she ran down the stairs. But to poor Marcy five months looked very long. All the servants gathered in the hall to bless Miss Nellie, and wish her good luck, for the little maid had endeared herself to high and low.

Inez, with her hat on ready to go to the station, had an inspiration of unselfishness, and resolved to go back to Marcy.

“Good-by, you dearest, darlingest thing,” she said, hugging Nellie with all her might. “I hope you will forgive me for being nasty to you when you first came, and I’ll be a better girl when you come back.”

At the station they found Madeleine Greene with flowers and candy, and Mr. Merrick said warningly:

“Now don’t eat all the candy you have, Nellie, or I don’t know what may happen. I wish I had brought you a bottle of medicine instead.”

For Bob, Inez, and Hugh had given her candy, and Mr. Merrick had himself brought down a five-pound box.

The bell rang, and her friends left Nellie in her compartment, and drew up in line along the platform below her window. The engine puffed, the couplings tightened with a little jar, and the train began to move slowly out of the station.

The last the Merricks saw was a tearful round face pressed close to the window-pane, surmounted by a hat very much awry, and with straining eyes striving to get the last glimpse of them.

“Well,” said Bob hoarsely, as they went through the station to the carriages, “she’s the nicest girl in the world, except Marcy. But who would have thought when she came that we should feel as if the bottom had fallen out of the world because we had lost the Prairie Chicken?”

CHAPTER XI.

A REAL POEM.

THERE is always a sensation of surprise in returning to a familiar spot after an absence and finding it unchanged. The feeling was strong in Marcy when, in May, the Merricks went to their country-house after the winter that had so transformed her life.

The journey was very painful to her, not only because of the fatigue, which was lessened by all sorts of devices, but because she had grown so sensitive to the wondering eyes of strangers, that even in her closed litter she felt as though they were fixed upon her curiously. Merry made the journey in the litter with her little mistress, which was fortunate, for she was so firmly convinced that she was being borne to destruction, and mewed her woes so plaintively, that in trying to soothe her Marcy forgot some of her own discomfort.

For a few days after her arrival Marcy was not so well, but when she had rested, and grown accustomed to the bracing air, she gained strength daily, and by June was able to spend long hours in her couch-chair, tasting a little of her old joy in merely being alive.

One day she said to her mother:

“Mamma, I want to get on the grass so badly; it seems as though my flesh and bones were aching for it. Don’t you know how I always loved to get right down in it, and Norah used to scold me for getting all grass stains, and say I was worse than the little children? Well, it seems to me I shall fly into tiny pieces if you don’t help me get at the grass. Can’t you have a bed made on the ground, so I can at least run my fingers through it?”

“I’ll try,” her mother said, and after that every day there was a mattress carried out under a big tree, and there Marcy could lie watching the swaying boughs above her and running her thin fingers through the grass blades.

She soon discovered that the tree was a sort of village, where myriad little lives were living. Gray squirrels frisked up and down its trunk, and would run out on a limb close above her, and scold her well when they discovered she was there, and whisk back, only to return and peer at her with uncontrollable curiosity. Marcy began providing herself with crumbs, and soon the little fellows learned that she was quite harmless, and vouchsafed to come down and partake of the luncheons she spread for them. An oriole had built a nest on a limb directly above her, and she could watch the quietly clad mother bird swing and swing in the soft air, while her husband, like a big jewel, flashed back and forth, bringing her solid comfort in some delicious morsel, or cheering her with short bursts of liquid song that sounded like the scent of flowers and the beauty of June made audible. And one day, to Marcy’s infinite delight, a cat-bird, that naughty cousin of the mocking-bird, who can sing so exquisitely when he will, poised in the air about three feet above the tall grass gone to seed close by her head, and keeping himself up by rapid strokes of his wings, poured forth his soul in such glorious, joyous melody, that Marcy felt her eyes grow moist from the keen delight of its beauty, and gratitude that life could still be so sweet.

These pleasures were hers only when she was alone, which was seldom. The children could not be tempted from her long by all the attractions of the country, and no joy was perfect and no sorrow comforted without Marcy.

A collection of all sorts of treasures were always around her couch—fading flowers, queer stones, and everything the fields can yield—brought by the little brothers and sisters as an offering at the shrine of their household saint.

“They love me—oh, they really do love me, and they’re never happy without me now!” thought Marcy in deep content. “And how I used to drive them off just to be selfish, and try to do silly things which I thought were fine ones.”

And Marcy found consolation on those days when the brisk breeze drove swiftly over her tree-top the gray clouds, with curly edges showing dazzling white beneath, that though she could no longer run over the hill-tops with her kite faster than the boys, they now thought no one could untangle their snarled kite-tails as well as Marcy, and no one could do anything as well as she could.

“Auntie Stockton is coming up for a week, Marcy,” said Inez one morning. “She will be here this afternoon.”

“Oh, I’m glad!” cried Marcy joyfully.

“Auntie Stockton” was a sweet old lady, no relation to the children, but was the kind of old lady who was auntie to all the world, whose coming is hailed with delight by all little folk.

When she came Marcy was seated on the western piazza. It was sunset, and all the west was flaming with crimson and gold, and Norah had just brought Marcy out to see it. The blinds of the parlor were closed, and no one knew she was there.

Mrs. Merrick welcomed Auntie Stockton heartily, and at once the dear old lady said:

“How is my poor little Marcy? I long to see her, and I dread to, I am so afraid of crying over her.”

“Oh, you mustn’t,” Mrs. Merrick said quickly. “Marcy is getting stronger; the country has done wonders for her. I suppose, considering the nature of her injury, we could hardly have hoped she would do so well.”

“I know. I saw the doctor before I came up here,” said Auntie Stockton. “He said he thought she would be able to walk on crutches when she was twenty.”

Marcy turned pale, and bowed her face on her hands.

The words that sounded so hopeful to her mother and old friend, who had feared she could never walk, rang in her ears like a knell. Although she had made up her mind to being an invalid, she had looked forward to walking in a year at most. The tears fell fast through her fingers. When she was twenty! Eight—no seven full years more, for she would be thirteen in September, and then only to walk with crutches!

“Oh, I can’t, I can’t!” she sobbed under her breath.

Just then a little brown song sparrow, perched on the very tip of a little cedar-tree, and outlined in a tiny silhouette against the bright west, repeated his simple little song, so sweet, so clear, so pathetic, and yet so cheerful. “Sweet, sweet, sweeter, sweeter, sweeter, sweet,” he sang.

Marcy raised her tear-wet face, and smiled at the little bird.

“Bless you, birdie; you always sing when the sun goes down,” she said. “Perhaps I can if I try.” And she hastily dried her eyes, hearing some one coming.

“How is it with Marcy?” asked a gentle voice, as a tender hand was laid on her shining hair.

“Well, dear auntie,” said Marcy cheerily, receiving her kiss, and returning it with all her heart.

Auntie Stockton sat down by her and watched Marcy as she asked about her life, and what pleasure she contrived to get out of it.

“I’ll tell you, auntie, but I never told any one else what made me able to bear it,” said Marcy. And she told Auntie Stockton how impossible it had seemed to her to live, with all that made life worth having, and her dreams of doing noble things all ended. And how Father Glenn had told her that her life could be a poem, which was more than writing one, and how beautiful it would be to make the children love and lean on her; and she repeated the little allegory of the garden. “And do you know, auntie, what the little flower is that grew there and sweetened all the air?” Marcy asked. “Father Glenn said it was a little white blossom, but I think it is all purple and gold, like the altar on Passion Sunday, for I am finding the little blossom, auntie, and it is heartsease.”

Auntie Stockton could not reply, but just then Hugh ran up, crying:

“Marcy! Oh, Marcy, here you are! I was looking for you down by the tree, and couldn’t find you.”

“Did you want anything, Hughie?” asked Marcy, stroking the damp hair from his forehead.

“Nothing but you,” replied Hugh, balancing affectionately on the arm of her chair.

“What could you do without Marcy?” asked Auntie Stockton, watching the scene, well pleased, and beginning to think Marcy’s fall was rather cause for rejoicing than regret.

“We couldn’t do a thing without her,” answered Hugh promptly. “They used to say she was the genius of the family, and I never knew what it meant, but now I do, for she is just like the genius in the fairy-tale that makes everything come out right.”

“You mean genii, Hugh—not genius,” laughed Marcy.

“Oh, what’s the difference?” said Hugh, with supreme contempt for trifles. “That’s what you are, anyhow, and what’s the difference whether you stick on an s or not?”

Auntie Stockton was given a chamber in the back of the house as the quietest.

“You won’t be afraid, auntie, though Mr. Merrick is not here,” said Mrs. Merrick. “There are so many of us, and there is a bell from my room into the coachman’s house; besides I have a revolver.”

“Dear me, no; I’m not afraid,” replied Auntie Stockton cheerfully.

But, nevertheless, Mrs. Merrick was wakened at what seemed to her the middle of the night by a tapping at her chamber-door.

“What is it?” she cried, and on Auntie Stockton’s voice responding tremblingly: “It’s I, Clara,” she sprang up to let her in.

“There is some one in the house,” whispered the old lady. “I heard him walking across the kitchen, and as I lay and listened to make sure, I distinctly heard a door shut and a window open.”

“Mercy upon us!” cried Mrs. Merrick, and ran trembling to her bureau drawer and took out the revolver; but Auntie Stockton threw up her hands imploringly.

“Clara, I beg you put it back,” she gasped. “I am more afraid of it than of any man.”

Inez and Grace had the room next their mother’s, and they appeared at this moment.

“Oh, mamma, is it burglars? Oh, mamma, what shall we do?” they sobbed.

The boys, too, sleeping at the end of the hall, had heard the voices, and came to ask what was happening. Bob was inclined to consider it good sport, but Hugh was panic-stricken.

“Now let us be calm, and think,” said Mrs. Merrick, forgetting all about the bell to the coachman’s house in the excitement. “Turn the gas up higher, Inez. We must do something.”

And to prove that she was perfectly calm and equal to the emergency, Mrs. Merrick went to the glass and put on a linen collar and necktie that lay on her bureau over her night-dress.

Bob giggled, and so did Inez, though she was dreadfully frightened, but Grace wept steadily, and Hugh tried to hide under the pillow. Mrs. Merrick, fortified by her fitting preparation to meet burglars, turned from the glass, saying:

“I am going down. We must not waken Marcy and Lulie. Children, you stay here. Auntie, I’ll take the revolver, and you can come with me if you like.”

“Clara Merrick, I will not stir one step if you touch that weapon,” said Auntie Stockton. “You mustn’t lay your finger on it. Your hands are shaking like a leaf, and you might kill these children.”

This awful suggestion, adding fear of his own mother to his other terror, caused Hugh to wail outright.

Suddenly Inez said:

“What time is it?”

Mrs. Merrick’s room was so darkened by heavy curtains and green shades that no one could guess the hour. Mrs. Merrick pulled her watch from under her pillow. “Six o’clock!”

With one accord Mrs. Merrick, Inez, and Bob ran to the head of the back stairs.

“Eliza, are you up?” “Eliza, are you down?” “Eliza, are you there?” cried all three together.

Eliza, the cook, was heard coming heavily across the floor, and opened the door at the foot of the stairs.

“Yes, ma’am,” she replied; “I’m building me fire.”

Bob sat down on the upper step and fairly howled with laughter, while Inez ran shrieking back to her mother’s room, crying:

“Why, auntie, auntie, the burglar is Eliza getting breakfast!”

It was Saturday, and Mr. Merrick came up that evening to spend Sunday with his family.

“A note from Father Glenn, Marcy,” he said, handing her one as he kissed her on his arrival. “This is the anniversary of your First Communion, and he remembered it.”

The note ran: “Just a line, dear child, to tell you how glad I am of the growth of the sweet little blossom, and that I pray every day the Good Gardener will tend it, and care for it, and long spare it to us to sweeten the lives of all who come into the garden.”

“A secret, Marcy?” said her mother, watching the smile and tears rise in the eyes of her darling.

“A little secret between Father Glenn and me, mamma dear,” replied Marcy, slipping the note in the folds of her wrapper.

“These dear little fingers used to try to do great deeds,” said Mr. Merrick, taking up Marcy’s hand. “What do you think, children? Do they do great things now?”

“I think they do everything I want done,” said Bob.

“I think Marcy’s just like the queen bee, and we’re the other bees,” said Grace, who had been much interested of late in reading of the wonderful ways of bees.

“I think she’s more like the honey pot if we are the bees,” said Hugh, giving her a hug that he had learned to make gentle as well as tight.

“I think she’s the comfort of her mother’s heart,” said Mrs. Merrick, kissing her.

“And the light of her father’s eyes,” added Mr. Merrick.

“And I say she’s just Marcy,” said Lucy.

“Yes, that’s the whole of it, Lulie; there’s only one Marcy,” cried Inez.

“At last our little genius has made her perfect poem, sung her perfect song, and painted her perfect picture,” said Auntie Stockton gently. “Yours was a fall upward, wasn’t it, Marcy?”

“They all spoil me,” Marcy said, with happy tears on the face grown beautiful in its sweetness and patience. “I think we’re the happiest family in the world, and when I fell I seemed to fall right into everybody’s heart.”

PRINTED BY BENZIGER BROTHERS, NEW YORK.

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

Hyphenation and spelling have been retained as they appear in the original publication except as follows:

- Page 21

W ell, I’m sorry she’s so big changed to

W-ell, I’m sorry she’s so big

- Page 73

so easy keeping head there changed to

so easy keeping ahead there

- Page 84

kind of an alle alleglory changed to

kind of an alle—alleglory

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Table of Contents

THREE GIRLS AND ESPECIALLY ONE.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. A GIFTED GIRL.

CHAPTER II. AN ARRIVAL.

CHAPTER III. HUMILIATIONS.

CHAPTER IV. THE END OF DREAMING.

CHAPTER V. THE BEGINNING OF LIVING.

CHAPTER VI. LITTLE THINGS.

CHAPTER VII. A FRIEND IN NEED.

CHAPTER VIII. A MERRY CHRISTMAS AFTER ALL.

CHAPTER IX. NEW YEAR’S CALLS.

CHAPTER X. A PARTING.

CHAPTER XI. A REAL POEM.

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