Fanny Fern - Rose Clark

Dolly's house was on the further side of "the Park," a two story wooden tenement, of a bright red color, planted on a sand bank close to the road side, unornamented with a single green thing, if we may except some gawky boys who were eyeing the tin soldiers and peppermint candy in the milliner's window, and who had been attentively listening to the swearing cattle-dealers and picking up stray lobster-claws which good fortune had thrown in their way.

"That her ?" whispered Daffodil (Dolly's factotum), pointing to Rose, as she assisted Dolly to alight. Dolly nodded.

"Why – she'd be a real beauty if she was only a little fatter, and didn't stoop, and her eyes weren't so big, and she wasn't so pale."

"I don't see any beauty," mumbled Dolly, "she looks exactly like her mother."

"O no – of course she isn't a beauty," said Daffy, retracting her involuntary mistake, "she don't favor you in the least Dolly; I said she would be pretty if – "

"Never mind your ifs now, I'm as hungry as a catamount, give me something to eat, and then I'll talk; some of that cold ham, and warm over some tea; goodness, how faint I am, that young one has tired me all out argufying – she's just like her mother – exactly."

"Shall I set a plate for her too?" asked Daffy.

"Of course not, till I get through; children always cram all before them, there wouldn't be a mortal thing left for me – let her wait till I have done. Rose – here! take off your bonnet, sit down and unpack those boxes, don't break the strings now, untie the knots carefully, the strings may do to use again, and don't litter up the shop floor, and don't – Lord-a-mercy, Daffy, if she ain't undone the wrong boxes, I knew she would."

"T-h-o-s-e," she thundered in Rose's ear, pulling her along to the right pile, and bending her over till her nose touched the boxes; "now see if you can see them, and don't make another mistake short of ten minutes," and Dolly threw off her bonnet and sat down to her tea.

Rose stooped down as she was bid, and commenced her task, but the excitement she had undergone, so different from the monotonous life she had led, the heat of the day, and her insufficient breakfast before starting, brought on a sudden vertigo, and as she stooped to execute her task, she fell forward upon the floor.

"Sick now, the very first day," exclaimed Dolly, turning to Daffy, "now ain't that enough to provoke any body? Her mother used to be just so, always fainting away at every thing; she's got to get cured of that trick; get up Rose!" and Dolly shook her roughly by the arm.

"I really think she can't," said Daffy, looking at her white lips and relaxed limbs.

Dolly seized a pitcher of water near, and dashed it with rather more force than was necessary in the child's face.

"That's warm water," said Daffy.

"How did I know that?" muttered Dolly, "bring some cold then;" and Dolly repeated the application, at a different temperature.

Rose shivered slightly, but did not open her eyes.

"She intends taking her own time to come to," said Dolly, "and I have something else to do, beside stand by to wait for it."

"But it won't do for her to lie here," said Daffy. "Suppose Mrs. John Meigs should come in after that new bonnet of hern? It don't look well."

Dolly appreciated that argument, and Daffy had permission to carry her out of sight, into a back sitting-room, on the same floor.

"She does it remarkable, if she is making believe," soliloquized Daffy, as she laid Rose on the bed; "and she is pretty, too, I can say it now Dolly isn't round, pretty as a waxen doll, and not much heavier; she is not fit for hard work anyhow, with those bit-fingers. I shouldn't wonder if Dolly is too hard on the child, but I daren't say so. What can that little scar be on her left temple?" and Daffy lifted the curls to look at that indelible proof of Mrs. Markham's affection on Rose's initiation day.

"Well, she's a pretty cretur!" said Daffodil again, as she took one more glance at her from the half open door. "I couldn't find it in my heart to speak cross to the poor motherless thing; but it won't do for me to stay up here."

"Shall I make a cup of tea for Rose, agin she wakes up?" asked Daffy.

"Sick folks ought not to eat and drink," said Dolly, sarcastically; "no, of course not; clear away the table, and put things to rights here. Our Maria was always acting just so; if she didn't have her breakfast ready to put in her mouth the minute she got out of bed, she'd up and faint away; she'd faint if it was hot, and she'd faint if it was cold. She'd faint if she was glad, and faint if she was sorry. She was always a-fainting; I never fainted in my life."

"Sisters are different, you know;" said Daffy, polishing a tea-cup with a towel.

"I believe you," said Dolly. "It is lucky they are; I am glad I ain't such a miserable stick; but Rose has got to get out of that," added she.

"You don't really believe she, nor Maria, as you call her, could help it, do you?" asked Daffy.

"Help a fiddlestick," said Dolly, jerking down her pea-green paper window-curtain; "ridikilis!"

Daffy knew that word was Dolly's ultimatum, and pursued the subject no further.

"Aunt Dolly," said Rose, timidly, about a month after the events above related, "Aunt Dolly" – and here Rose stopped short.

"Out with it," said Dolly, "if you've got any thing to say. You make me as nervous as an eel, twisting that apron-string, and Aunt Dolly-ing such an eternity; if you have got any thing to say, out with it."

"May I go to the evening school?" asked Rose, "it is a free school."

"Well – you are not free to go, if it is; you know how to read and write, and I have taught you how to make change pretty well, that is all you need for my purposes."

"But I should like to learn other things, Aunt Dolly."

"What other things, I'd like to know? that's your mother all over. She never was content without a book at the end of her nose. She couldn't have earned her living to have saved her life, if she hadn't got married."

"It was partly to earn my living I wanted to learn, Aunt Dolly; perhaps I could be a teacher."

"Too grand to trim caps and bonnets like your Aunt Dolly, I suppose," added she, sneeringly; "it is quite beneath a charity orphan, I suppose."

"No," said Rose; "but I should like to teach, better."

"Well, you won't do it; never – no time. So there's all there is to that: now take that ribbon and make the bows to old Mrs. Griffin's cap – the idea of wanting to be a school-teacher when you have it at your fingers' ends to twist up a ribbon so easy – it is ridikilis. Did Miss Snow come here last night, after I went out, for her bonnet?"

"Yes," answered Rose.

"Did you tell her that it was all finished but the cap frill?" asked Dolly.

"No; because I knew that it was not yet begun, and I could not tell a – a – "

"Lie! I suppose," screamed Dolly, putting her face very close to Rose's, as if to defy her to say the obnoxious word; "is that it."

"Yes," said Rose, courageously.

"Good girl – good girl" said Dolly; "shall have a medal, so it shall;" and cutting a large oval out of a bit of pasteboard, and passing a twine string through it, she hung it round her neck – "Good little Rosy-Posy – just like its conscientious mamma."

"I wish I were half as good as my mamma," said Rose, with a trembling voice.

"I suppose you think that Aunt Dolly is a great sinner!" said that lady.

"We are all great sinners, are we not?" answered Rose.

"All but little Rosy Posy;" sneered Dolly, " she is perfect, only needs a pair of wings to take her straight up to heaven."

"Many a true word is spoken in jest," muttered Daffy, as she waxed the end of a bit of sewing silk, behind the counter.