Joanna Mathews - Bessie on Her Travels

“You’re very ungrateful,” said Maggie. “This morning when you called the stewardess, I saw Lucy run very quick to call her. You ought to be ashamed all of you. You’re as bad as the Elisha children in the Bible, that were eaten up.”

“Are you going to let her go?” asked Lily, with a threatening shake of her head at the young tyrant, who still held Lucy fast.

“As soon as she tells us how many hundred dollars she paid for this love of a bonnet,” said Arthur, tossing off the unlucky shaker with a jerk of his thumb and finger.

Without another word, Lily reached up her small hand, and gave the big boy a sounding slap upon his cheek. In his surprise, he loosed his hold of Lucy, who quickly snatched up her bonnet, and made good her escape.

Arthur turned fiercely upon Lily; but she stood her ground, and not exactly caring, bully though he was, to strike back at a girl so much smaller than himself, he contented himself with catching her still uplifted hand in his, and saying, —

“How dare you do that?”

“’Cause you deserved it,” said Lily, sternly.

“And I’ve a good mind to give you another,” said Belle.

“Children! Children!” said Mr. Powers, who had seen from a distance that trouble was threatening, and had come to prevent it. “What is the matter here? Quarrelling and striking?”

“I’m striking,” said Lily, rather proud of having given a blow in what she considered a just cause; “but I’m not quarrelling, sir.”

“No, papa,” said Belle. “We’re not quarrelling: it’s only those bad, mean ones;” and she pointed at the Lathrops with as much scorn in her tone and manner as they had used towards Lucy.

But these children, knowing right well that their share in the dispute was by far the worst, did not choose to face Mr. Powers’s inquiries, and now scattered in all directions.

“Striking and calling names look a good deal like quarrelling,” said Mr. Powers, smiling.

“But we had to take Lucy’s side, papa,” said Belle; and neither she nor Lily was to be persuaded that it was not right for the latter to strike a blow in Lucy’s defence. Indeed, Maggie and Bessie were rather inclined to hold the same opinion, and all four were quite excited over Lucy’s wrongs.

While Lucy was telling her father the story, they were talking it over among themselves; and knowing, in spite of their sympathy, that she presented rather a comical figure, were trying to think of some means by which they might help her to dress herself more like other children. But they did not see exactly how it was to be done, nor did Mrs. Bradford when they consulted her.

“I fear it would not do to offer Lucy clothes, my darlings,” she said: “those she wears, though odd-looking, are good and comfortable; and her father might be offended if we offered her any thing which seemed like charity, or let him know that we do not think her properly dressed.”

“Mamma,” said Bessie, gravely, “do you think a thing is comfortable when it makes a child laughed at?”

“Well, no, dear, perhaps not,” answered Mrs. Bradford, smiling, “and I am very sorry for Lucy. Mrs. Norris and I were saying this morning that we wished we might tell the poor child how to make herself look less like a little old woman, but we thought it would not do to interfere.”

“I’d wish somebody would interfere if it was me,” said Maggie. “It must be most too much to have a father who won’t talk, and who has such very bad taste.”

This was said with so much emphasis, and with such a long-drawn sigh at the end, as if the mere thought of such misfortune were almost too much for Maggie, that every one laughed.

Bessie had less to say about Lucy’s troubles than any of the others; but she thought more of them: for we know how sensitive she herself was to ridicule, and she could not bear to think that Lucy might have to undergo the same trial again.

“Mamma,” she said, coming to her mother’s side that evening, “there are Lucy and her father sitting at the head of those steps, and she is showing him those queer dressing-gown frocks of hers. Could I go and speak to them?”

Mrs. Bradford turned to see if it was a proper place for Bessie to go to, and then gave her permission, thinking that her little girl might possibly see some way to help Lucy, and trusting to her good sense and kind heart not to say any thing that might give offence.

“Maybe they’re not just the right shape,” said the engineer, as Bessie came near; “but I don’t know how you are to better them;” and he turned over and over the two frocks, just like the one Lucy had on, which lay across his knee. “Maybe Dorothy would show you.”

“I don’t like to ask her,” said Lucy; or Dorothy the stewardess, was rather sharp and short with her.

Bessie came close.

“Would you be offended if some one tried to be kind to Lucy?” she asked, seizing her opportunity.

She was quite surprised to see how pleasantly Waters smiled as he answered, —

“Not I. Those that are friends to my Lucy are friends to me.”

“Some children laughed at her,” said Bessie, wishing to put the case as gently as she could.

The engineer frowned and nodded.

“I told him,” said Lucy.

“There’s no excuse for them,” continued Bessie, looking out over the waters as if she were talking more to herself than to the man, “but perhaps they would not have done it, if – if – if Lucy’s clothes were – were a little prettier.”

“And I’ll warrant if your power was as good as your will, you’d make them prettier for her,” answered the engineer. “You’re a kind little lady. Lucy was just asking me if I could tell her how to fix up her things a bit; but I don’t know. Old Mrs. Sims, who does her washing and sewing, she bought them, and I didn’t see but they were all right; but now Lucy says they’re not, and she can’t do ’em over.”

Lucy stood listening in amazement to this unusually long speech from her father, who was very rarely so sociable with any one as he now was with Bessie.

“But you wouldn’t mind if mamma was to try and help her, would you?” Bessie asked in a coaxing voice.

“Mind!” said the engineer, “I’d be only too thankful, and so would my Lucy; but such a lady as your mamma doesn’t want to bother with a little stranger girl.”

“Oh, yes, she does!” said Bessie, eagerly, “and mamma don’t think it a bit of bother if she can do a kind thing for some one; and she said she would like to fix Lucy up, ’cause she was such a nice, tidy child. Come and show her these, Lucy;” and without waiting for more words, she snatched up one gown, and taking Lucy by the hand drew her after her, telling her to bring the other two with her.

Lucy obeyed rather timidly; but the kind manner and words of the two ladies, Mrs. Bradford and Mrs. Norris, soon put her at her ease, and she became deeply interested in the plans for putting what Bessie called “the dressing-gown” frocks into proper shape.

There were four of them, all alike, of a good but dull gingham, without the least shape or fit, save what was given by a string about the waist; very long and scant, – so scant, that the ladies decided it would take two to make one suitable frock. Lucy asked and readily obtained leave from her father for this; and Mrs. Bradford allowed the four little girls to begin the work that very night by ripping apart the seams.

She and Mrs. Norris went to work also that evening; and when the steamer came into port the following night, Lucy was made happy by having one dress made in a manner proper for a girl of her age; and knowing that the second was surely promised to her by Mrs. Bradford. Belle presented her with “the doll of moderation,” which she had brought with her, she and her young friends having concluded to keep their money for another purpose instead of buying a new one.