Mary Waller - A Daughter of the Rich

"Good-night, Martie," called a sweet voice down the stairway.

"Good-night, Rose dear; I thought you were asleep."

"Good-night, Martie," duetted the twins, in the shrillest of treble and falsetto.

"Good-night, you rogues; go to sleep; you 'll wake baby."

"Dood-night, mummy," chirped a little voice from the adjoining room.

There was a shout of laughter from the twins.

"Shut up," growled March from the attic over the kitchen. "Good-night, mother." His growl ended in a squeak, for March was at that interesting period of his life indicated by a change of voice. At the sound, a prolonged snicker from somewhere was answered by a corresponding giggle from another-where.

"Now, children," said Mrs. Blossom, speaking up the stairway, "do be quiet, or baby will be wide awake."

"Tum tiss me, mummy," piped the little voice a second time, with no sound of sleep in it.

"Yes, darling, I 'll come;" as she turned to go into the bedroom adjoining the kitchen, there was the sound of a jump overhead, a patter of bare feet, a squabble on the stairs, and Budd and Cherry, the irrepressible ten-year-old twins, tumbled into the room.

"I 'll haul those kids back to bed for you, mother," shouted March, and flung himself out of bed to join the fray, while Rose was not behindhand in making her appearance.

Mrs. Blossom came in with little May in her arms, and that was the signal for a wholesale kissing-party in which May was hostess.

"Children, children, you 'll smother me!" laughed their mother. "Here, sit down on the rug and warm your toes,–coming over those bare stairs this cold night!" And down they sat, Rose and March, Budd and Cherry and little May, in thick white and red flannel night-dresses and gray flannel pajamas.

Budd coughed consumptively, and Cherry followed suit. March shivered and shook like a small earthquake, and Rose looked up laughingly at her mother.

"We know what that means, don't we, Martie," she said. "Shall I help?"

"No, no, dear,–in your bare feet!"

Mrs. Blossom took a lamp from the shelf over the fireplace, and, leaving the five with their fifty toes turned and wriggling before the cheering warmth of the blazing hickory logs, disappeared in the pantry.

"Oh, bully," said Budd, rubbing his flannel pajamas just over his stomach; "I wish 't was a cold night every day, then we could have molasses tea all the time, don't you, Cherry?"

"Mm," said Cherry, too full of the anticipated treat for articulate speech.

"There 's nothing like it to warm up your insides," said March; "mother 's a brick to let us get up for it. She would n't, you know, if father were at home."

"My tummy's told," piped May, frantically patting her chest in imitation of Budd, and all the children shouted to see the wee four-year-old maiden trying to manufacture a shiver in the glow of the cheerful fire.

Mrs. Blossom had never told her recipe for her "hot molasses tea;" but it had been famed in the family for more than a generation. She had it from her mother. The treat was always reserved for a bitterly cold night, and the good things in it of which one had a taste–molasses, white sugar, lemon-peel, butter, peppermint, boiled raisins, and mysterious unknowns–were compounded with hot water into a palate-tickling beverage.

When Mrs. Blossom reappeared, with a kettle sending forth a small cloud of fragrant steam in one hand and a tray filled with tin cups in the other, the delighted "Ohs" and "Ahs" repaid her for all her extra work at the close of a busy, weary day.

Budd rolled over on the rug in his ecstasy, and Cherry was about to roll on top of him, when March interfered, and order was restored.

As they sat there on the big, braided square of woollen rag-carpet, sipping and ohing and ahing with supreme satisfaction, Mrs. Blossom broached the subject of valentines.

"It's the first of February, children, and time to begin to make valentines. You 're not going to forget the Doctor this year, are you?"

"No, indeed, Martie," said Rose. "He deserves the prettiest we can make. I 've been thinking about it, and I 'm going to make him a shaving-case, heart-shaped, with birch-bark covers, and if March will decorate it for me, I think it will be lovely; will you, March?"

"Course I will; the Doctor 's a brick. I 'll tell you what, Martie, I can pen and ink some of those spruces and birches that the Doctor was so fond of last summer; how 'll that do?"

"Just the thing," said his mother; "I know it will please him. What are you thinking, Cherry?" for the "other half" of Budd was gazing dreamily into the fire, forgetting her tea in her revery.

"Fudge!" said Cherry, shortly. March and Rose laughed.

"Keep still making fun of Cherry," said Budd, ruffling at the sound; and to emphasize his admonishing words, he dug his sharp elbow so suddenly into March's ribs that some hot molasses tea flew from the cup which his brother had just put to his mouth and spattered on his bare feet.

March deliberately set down his tin cup on the hearth near the fire beside his brother's, and turned upon Budd.

Budd tried to dodge, but had no room. In a trice, March had his arms around him, and was hugging him in a bear-like embrace. "Say you 're sorry!" he demanded.

"Au-ow!"

"Say you 're sorry!" he roared at him, hugging harder.

"Au-ow-ee-ow!"

"Quick, or I 'll squeeze you some more!"

Budd was squirming and twisting like an eel.

"O-ee-wau-au- Au! "

"There," said March, releasing him and setting him down with a thump on the rug; "I 'll teach you to poke me in the ribs that way and scald my feet.–You 're game, though, old fellow," he added patronizingly, as he heard a suspicious sniff from Cherry. "You and Cherry make a whole team any day."

Cherry's sniff changed to a smile, for March did not condescend to praise either of them very often.

"Well," she said meditatively, "I suppose it did sound funny to say that, but I was thinking that if Budd would make me a little heart-shaped box of birch-bark, I 'd make some maple-sugar fudge,–you know, Martie, the kind with butternuts in it,–and that could be my valentine for the Doctor."

"Why, that's a bright idea, Cherry," said Mrs. Blossom; and, "Bully for you, Cherry," said Budd; "we'll begin to-morrow and crack the butternuts."

"What will May do?" asked Mrs. Blossom, lifting the little girl, who was already showing signs of being overcome with molasses tea and sleep. May nestled in her mother's arms, leaned her head, running over with golden curls, on her mother's breast, and murmured drowsily,–

"'Ittle tooties–tut with mummy's heart-tutter–tutter–tooties–tut–" The blue-veined eyelids closed over the lovely eyes; and Mrs. Blossom, holding up her finger to hush the children's mirth at May's inspired utterance, carried her back into the bedroom.

One after another the children crept noiselessly upstairs, with a whispered, "Good-night, Martie," and in ten minutes Mary Blossom knew they were all in the land of dreams.

It was a bitter night. Mrs. Blossom refilled the kitchen stove, and threw on more hickory in the fireplace in anticipation of her husband's late return from the village. She drew her little work-table nearer to the blaze, and sat down to her sewing. Then she sighed, and, as she bent over the large willow basket filled with stockings to be darned and clothes to be mended, a tear rolled down her cheek and plashed on the edge.

There was so much she wanted to do for her children–and so little with which to do it! There was March, an artist to his finger-tips, who longed to be an architect; and Rose, lovely in her young girlhood and giving promise of a lovelier womanhood, who was willing to work her way through one of the lesser colleges, if only she could be prepared for entrance. Mary Blossom saw no prospect of being able to do anything for either of them.