Chapter 18. The Children's Hour: Reported In A Letter By An Eye-Witness

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_ CHAPTER XVIII. THE CHILDREN'S HOUR: REPORTED IN A LETTER BY AN EYE-WITNESS

It was the last Monday in March, and I had come in from my country home to see if I could find my old school friend, Margaret Crosby, who is now Mrs. Donald Bird, and who is spending a few years in California.

The directory gave me her address, and I soon found myself on the corner of two beautiful streets and before a very large and elegant house. This did not surprise me, as I knew her husband to be a very wealthy man. There seemed to be various entrances, for the house stood with its side to the main street; but when I had at last selected a bell to ring, I became convinced that I had not, after all, gone to the front door. It was too late to retreat, however, and very soon the door was opened by a pretty maid-servant in a white cap and apron.

"You need n't have rung, 'm; they goes right in without ringing to-day," she said pleasantly.

"Can I see Mrs. Bird?" I asked.

"Well, 'm," she said hesitatingly, "she 's in Paradise."

"Lovely Margaret Crosby dead! How sudden it must have been," I thought, growing pale with the shock of the surprise; but the pretty maid, noticing that something had ruffled my equanimity, went on hastily:--

"Excuse me, 'm. I forgot you might be a stranger, but the nurses and mothers always comes to this door, and we 're all a bit flustered on account of its bein' Miss Pauline's last 'afternoon,' and the mothers call the music-room 'Paradise,' 'm, and Mr. John and the rest of us have took it up without thinkin' very much how it might sound to strangers."

"Oh, I see," I said mechanically, though I did n't see in the least; but although the complicated explanation threw very little light on general topics, it did have the saving grace of assuring me that Margaret Bird was living.

"Could you call her out for a few minutes?" I asked. "I am an old friend, and shall be disappointed not to see her."

"I 'm sorry, 'm, but I could n't possibly call her out; it would be as much as my place is worth. Her strict orders is that nobody once inside of Paradise door shall be called out."

"That does seem reasonable," I thought to myself.

"But," she continued, "Mrs. Bird told me to let young Mr. Noble up the stairs so 't he could peek in the door, and as you 're an old friend I hev n't no objections to your goin' up softly and peekin' in with him till Miss Pauline 's through,--it won't be long, 'm."

My curiosity was aroused by this time, and I came to the conclusion that "peekin' in the door" of Paradise with "young Mr. Noble" would be better than nothing; so up I went, like a thief in the night.

The room was at the head of the stairs, and one of the doors was open, and had a heavy portiere hanging across it. Behind this was young Mr. Noble, "peekin'" most greedily, together with a middle-aged gentleman not described by the voluble parlor maid. They did n't seem to notice me; they were otherwise occupied, or perhaps they thought me one of the nurses or mothers. I had heard the sound of a piano as I crossed the hall, but it was still now. I crept behind young Mr. Noble, and took a good "peek" into Paradise.

It was a very large apartment, one that looked as if it might have been built for a ball-room; at least, there was a wide, cushioned bench running around three sides of it, close to the wall. On one side, behind some black and gold Japanese screens, where they could hear and not be seen, sat a row of silent, capped and aproned nurse-maids and bonneted mammas. Mrs. Bird was among them, lovely and serene as an angel still, though she has had her troubles. There was a great fireplace in the room, but it was banked up with purple and white lilacs. There was a bowl of the same flowers on the grand piano, and a clump of bushes sketched in chalk on a blackboard. Just then a lovely young girl walked from the piano and took a low chair in front of the fireplace.

Before her there were grouped ever so many children, twenty-five or thirty, perhaps. The tots in the front rows were cosy and comfortable on piles of cushions, and the seven or eight year olds in the back row were in seats a little higher. Each child had a sprig of lilac in its hand. The young girl wore a soft white dress with lavender flowers scattered all over it, and a great bunch of the flowers in her belt.

She was a lovely creature! At least, I believe she was. I have an indistinct remembrance that her enemies (if she has any) might call her hair red; but I could n't stop looking at her long enough at the time to decide precisely what color it was. And I believe, now that several days have passed, that her nose turned up; but at the moment, whenever I tried to see just how much it wandered from the Grecian outline, her eyes dazzled me and I never found out.

As she seated herself in their midst, the children turned their faces expectantly toward her, like flowers toward the sun.

"You know it 's the last Monday, dears," she said; "and we 've had our good-by story."

"Tell it again! Sing it again!" came from two kilted adorers in the back row.

"Not to-day;" and she shook her head with a smile. "You know we always stop within the hour, and that is the reason we are always eager to come again; but this sprig of lilac that you all hold in your hands has something to tell; not a long story, just a piece of one for another good-by. I think when we go home, it we all press the flowers in heavy books, and open the books sometimes while we are away from each other this summer, that the sweet fragrance will come to us again, and the faded blossom will tell its own story to each one of us. And this is the story," she said, as she turned her spray of lilac in her fingers.

* * * * *

There was once a little lilac-bush that grew by a child's window. There was no garden there, only a tiny bit of ground with a few green things in it; and because there were no trees in the crowded streets, the birds perched on the lilac-bush to sing, and two of them even built a nest in it once, for want of something larger.

It had been a very busy lilac-bush all its life: drinking up moisture from the earth and making it into sap; adding each year a tiny bit of wood to its slender trunk; filling out its leaf-buds; making its leaves larger and larger; and then--oh, happy, happy time!--hanging purple flowers here and there among its branches.

It always felt glad of its hard work when Hester came to gather some of its flowers just before Easter Sunday. For one spray went to the table where Hester and her mother ate together; one to Hester's teacher; one to the gray stone church around the corner, and one to a little lame girl who sat, and sat, quite still, day after day, by the window of the next house.

But one year--this very last year, children--the lilac-bush grew tired of being good and working hard; and the more it thought about it, the sadder and sorrier and more discouraged it grew. The winter had been dark and rainy; the ground was so wet that its roots felt slippery and uncomfortable; there was some disagreeable moss growing on its smooth branches; the sun almost never shone; the birds came but seldom; and at last the lilac-bush said, "I will give up: I am not going to bud or bloom or do a single thing for Easter this year! I don't care if my trunk does n't grow, nor my buds swell, nor my leaves grow larger! If Hester wants her room shaded, she can pull the curtain down; and the lame girl can"--_do without_, it was going to say, but it did n't dare--oh, it did n't dare to think of the poor little lame girl without any comforting flowers; so it stopped short and hung its head.

Six or eight weeks ago Hester and her mother went out one morning to see the lilac-bush.

"It does n't look at all as it ought," said Hester, shaking her head sadly. "The buds are very few, and they are all shrunken. See how limp and flabby the stems of the leaves look!"

"Perhaps it is dead," said Hester's mother, "or perhaps it is too old to bloom."

"I like that!" thought the lilac-bush.

"I 'm not dead and I 'm not dying, though I 'd just as lief die as to keep on working in this dark, damp, unpleasant winter, or spring, or whatever they call it; and as for being past blooming, I would just like to show her, if it was n't so much trouble! How old does she think I am, I wonder? There is n't a thing in this part of the city that is over ten years old, and I was n't planted first, by any means!"

And then Hester said, "My darling, darling lilac-bush! Easter won't be Easter without it; and lame Jenny leans out of her window every day as I come from school, and asks, 'Is the lilac budding?'"

"Oh dear!" sighed the little bush. "I wish she would n't talk that way; it makes me so nervous to have Jenny asking questions about me! It starts my sap circulating, and I shall grow in spite of me!"

"Let us see what we can do to help it," said Hester's mother. "Take your trowel and dig round the roots first."

"They 'll find a moist and sticky place and be better able to sympathize with me," thought the lilac.

"Then put in some new earth, the richest you can get, and we 'll snip off all the withered leaves and dry twigs, and see if it won't take a new start."

"I shall have to, I believe, whether I like it or not, if they make such a fuss about me!" thought the lilac-bush. "It seems a pity if a thing can't stop growing and be let alone and die if it wants to!"

But though it grumbled a trifle at first, it felt so much better after Hester and her mother had spent the afternoon caring for it, that it began to grow a little just out of gratitude,--and what do you think happened?

"George Washington came and chopped it down with his little hatchet," said an eager person in front.

"The lame girl came to look at it," sang out a small chap in the back row.

No, (the young girl answered, with an irrepressible smile), it was a cherry-tree that George Washington chopped, Lucy; and I told you, Horatio, that the poor lame girl could n't walk a step. But the sun began to shine,--that is the first thing that happened. Day after day the sun shone, because everything seems to help the people and the things that help themselves. The rich earth gave everything it had to give for sap, and the warm air dried up the ugly moss that spoiled the beauty of its trunk.

Then the lilac-bush was glad again, and it could hardly grow fast enough, because it knew it would be behind time, at any rate; for of course it could n't stand still, grumbling and doing nothing for weeks, and get its work done as soon as the other plants. But it made sap all clay long, and the buds grew into tiny leaves, and the leaves into larger ones, and then it began to group its flower-buds among the branches. By this time it was the week before Easter, and it fairly sat up nights to work.

Hester knew that it was going to be more beautiful than it ever was in its life before (that was because it had never tried so hard, though of course Hester could n't know that), but she was only afraid that it would n't bloom soon enough, it was so very late this spring.

But the very morning before Easter Sunday, Hester turned in her sleep and dreamed that a sweet, sweet fragrance was stealing in at her open window. A few minutes later she ran across her room, and lo! every cluster of buds on the lilac-bush had opened into purple flowers, and they were waving in the morning sunshine as if to say, "We are ready, Hester! We are ready, after all!"

And one spray was pinned in the teacher's dress,--it was shabby and black,--and she was glad of the flower because it reminded her of home.

And one spray stood in a vase on Hester's dining-table. There was never very much dinner in Hester's house, but they did not care that day, because the lilac was so beautiful.

One bunch lay on the table in the church, and one, the loveliest of all, stood in a cup of water on the lame girl's window-sill; and when she went to bed that night she moved it to the table beside her head, and put her thin hand out to touch it in the dark, and went to sleep smiling.

And each of the lilac flowers was glad that the bush had bloomed.

* * * * *

The children drew a deep breath. They smoothed their flower-sprays gently, and one pale boy held his up to his cheek as if it had been a living thing.

"Tell it again," cried the tomboy.

"Is it true?" asked the boy in kilts.

"I think it is," said the girl gently. "Of course, Tommy, the flowers never tell us their secrets in words; but I have watched that lilac-bush all through the winter and spring, and these are the very blossoms you are holding to-day. It seems true, doesn't it?"

"Yes," they said thoughtfully.

"Shall you press yours, Miss Polly, and will it tell you a story, too, when you look at it?" asked one little tot as they all crowded about her for a good-by kiss.

Miss Polly caught her up in her arms, and I saw her take the child's apron and wipe away a tear as she said, "Yes, dear, it will tell me a story, too,--a long, sad, sweet, helpful story!"

[THE END]
[Kate D. Wiggin's Book: Polly Oliver's Problem] _


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