A Little Girl of Long Ago - Amanda Minnie Douglas (top 100 novels of all time txt) 📗

same name, was anxious to take the practice. Joe felt as if circumstances were shaping a change for him; and he was ready now to take up a life of his own.

Then the Deans sold, and were to go up a little farther. Sometime, and before many years, there would be street-cars, instead of the slow, awkward stages, and people could get to and fro more rapidly. The trend was unmistakably up-town.

Mr. Reed hired out his house furnished, and went over to the Deans to board.

It seemed to Hanny that no one was quite the same. Nora Whitney was almost a head taller than Hanny, and was getting to be a very stylish girl. Her voice was considered promising, and was being cultivated. But poor old Pussy Gray had rounded out his life, and slept under a great white rosebush at the end of the yard. Mrs. Whitney's hair was nearly all white, and she was a very pretty woman. Mr. Theodore was showing silver in both hair and beard; but Delia changed very little. Aunt Clem went on living in her serene and cheerful fashion.

And then the bells rang out for the mid-century, 1850! How wonderful it seemed.

"I wonder if any one of us will live to nineteen hundred," questioned Hanny, with a strange thrill of awe in her voice.

"I don't suppose I will," replied her father; "but some of you may. Why, even Stephen wouldn't be much above eighty; and you'll be a little past sixty!" He laughed with a mellow, amused sound. "And all you young people of to-day will be telling your grandchildren how New York looked at the half-century mark. Well, it has made rapid strides since eighteen hundred. I sometimes wonder what there is to happen next. We have steam on land and water. We have discovered Eldorado, and invented the telegraph; and there are people figuring on laying one across the ocean. That may come in your day."

"And a sewing-machine," added the little girl, smilingly.

The sewing-machine was attracting a good deal of attention now, and making itself a useful factor.

But to live to see nineteen hundred! That would be like discovering the fountain of perpetual youth.


CHAPTER XII

UP-TOWN

There had been so many delightful things in First Street, the little girl thought at first it would almost break her heart to go away. Her father, with the inertia of coming years, hated to be disturbed.

"I hoped, when we did make any change, we would build on the old place," he said. "I'd like country life again. But I am getting too old to farm; and none of the boys care about it. If George had stayed at home," and Father Underhill sighed.

George had not yet found his bonanza. There was gold in plenty in that wonderful country. There were hardships, too. He kept those to tell of in after years. It was a wild, rough, marvellous life; and every man of them was waiting for a run of luck, that he might go East with his pile. Meanwhile cities were begun.

Mrs. Underhill sighed a little also, in an undecided fashion. All the children were here, and surely they could not go away and leave them behind. The attractive, rural aspect of Yonkers had changed, or was it that she had changed? Some of her old friends had gone to new homes some had died. Then she had grown so accustomed to the stirring life of the city.

"No, we should not want to go alone," she said.

"Steve's a bright business-man. John's long-headed, if he isn't quite so brilliant. Ben will be all for books and travel. And Jim--well, it's odd, but there won't be a farmer among them."

"No," returned their mother, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry.

"Then farming is changing. And the near-by places are turning into towns. What the next half of the century will bring--"

Since there was no prospect of the homestead, they allowed themselves to be persuaded to join the migration. Foreigners were crowding them a little. There was a finer, freer air up-town.

The Deans suited themselves, and Mr. Reed and Charles went with them. Charles was now a tall, fair young fellow, rather grave from the shock of the loss of his mother, intensified perhaps by his sympathy with Mrs. Dean and Josie. It was a great comfort to keep together.

John looked up a new home; but Cleanthe, with her arms around Mrs. Underhill's neck, said, in a broken sort of tone:--

"Oh, you must be somewhere near us! I don't feel as if I could live, if I did not see you every day. I have no mother but you."

Twentieth Street seemed a long way up, to be sure. But there was an odd, rather oldish house, with a two-story ell that seemed to have been added as an after-thought. There was a stable and quite a garden. It had been considered rather a country house in its inception.

Joe insisted that it was just the thing. He could have an office and a library, and a sleeping-room overhead, without disturbing the family.

Mrs. Underhill declared there was twice too much room; and if any of the other boys should marry and go away--

"There's only Ben. I am a fixture; and it will be years before Jim reaches that tempting period. Oh, I think you need not worry!" comforted the Doctor.

Hanny was glad to go with everybody else. They had one sad sweet time at the Deans, talking over old days and the tea in the back-yard, when there had been Nora and the pussy, and the one who was not. It was rather sad to outgrow childhood. Ah, how merry they had been! What a simple idyllic memory this was to be for all her later years! Mrs. Reed always lived in First Street to her; and Tudie Dean used to go up and down the street, a blessed, beautiful ghost. The little girl was quite sure she would not be afraid to clasp her white hand, if she should meet her wandering about those sacred precincts. She could not have put her idea into Longfellow's beautiful lines; but it haunted her in the same shape of remembrance.


"All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses."


They went down to the Jasper house also. There had been a family of children to tramp over the flower-beds and leave debris about. There was no pretty striped awning, no wheeling-chair, no slim, picturesque negro lad, and no ladies in light lawns sitting about. It looked common-place.

"We can write Ichabod on it," said Charles, half regretfully.

Hanny asked Joe why they should; and he showed her the verse, "Thy glory has departed."

"The glory has departed from the whole street," she said, glancing around. The new-comers were of a different class. No one swept the debris up to the crown of the street any more; and the city street-sweepers were infrequent visitors.

"It will be beginning all over again," Dr. Hoffman said to his brother-in-law. "It seems a pity to waste so much endeavour. Yet if you _can_ wait, the practice will be better worth while."

"It wouldn't be the fair thing to crowd in on young Dr. Fitch. He did suggest a partnership, but I thought I would rather strike out for myself. And I prefer having all my interests at home. Mother begins to miss the children that have gone out; and there were so many of us."

When Mrs. Underhill looked back, she always thought those early years in First Street were among the happiest of her life. They were broader and richer than the first wedded years. They could not keep together always. She wanted her children to know the sweetness of life and love. Steve and Margaret were very happy. John and his wife had supped of sorrow; but they were young and had each other; and children would come to restore beauty for ashes, and the oil of joy for mourning.

She was delighted with Joe's decision. That night, when Joe had come home a very ghost of himself, and dropped down on Hanny's bed, because he hadn't strength to go up another pair of stairs, and she had clasped her arms about him and cried, in her terror: "Oh, Joe, my dear son, is it cholera?" had been an awful moment for her.

"No, mother dear; but if I can't have a few hours' rest, I shall die of fatigue. Just let me sleep, but watch me well."

She had sat beside him the rest of the night, from midnight to morning, counting his pulse now and then, which showed no indication of collapse. Other mothers had their sons snatched from them,--mothers who were tender and worthy, and who loved as fervently as she did.

When he awoke at the next noon, she felt as if he had been given back to her out of a great danger. And she was glad now to have him plan for the home-interest, glad there would be several years before she was called upon to share him with any other woman.

So they said good-bye to the old house again, and placed their household gods in a new home. They had gone farther than any of the others, though they were nearer Margaret and Dolly. The Deans were lower down and on Second Avenue. Up above them were great open spaces. They had two lots, which gave them a grassy space beside the drive. The lot being deeper than usual, they could have a little garden where the fruit-trees did not shade. There was a tall, gnarled old pear-tree, and they found it bore excellent fruit. Right by the porch, in a lovely southern exposure, was a delicious nectarine.

The little girl was deeply interested in Joe's house, as she began to call it. A door opened from the main hall, and one quite outside from the flagged path. That would be the patients' entrance, when they began to come. Joe went up to Yonkers and exhumed some old furniture. There was a queer, brass-studded, leather-covered sofa, with high roll arms, and a roll at the back that suggested a pillow. There were two small spindle-legged tables; some high-backed, oaken chairs, rudely carved, and almost black with age; and a curious old _escritoire_ that was said to have come from France with the French grandmother who had landed with the emigrants at New Rochelle.

His office was plainly appointed, with an oil-cloth on the floor, a row of shelves for jars of medicines; for even then many doctors compounded their own prescriptions. There was a plain business-desk, a table, and some chairs, and a small book-case. All the odd old things were to go in his sitting-room.

Across one end, he had it filled in with book-shelves. One corner was for the little girl. And there was to be a special chair for her, so she could come in and study her lessons, or read or talk to her dear Doctor Joe.

Mrs. French made a splendid addition to the room in a large Oriental rug that Doctor Joe valued more highly as the years went on. For then we were getting bright-hued carpets from French and English looms, and these dull old things were not in any great favour. Only it was so thick and soft, the little girl said it was good enough for a bed.

Joe laughed. "I daresay I shall take many a nap on it. You must