A Little Girl in Old New York - Amanda Minnie Douglas (the beginning after the end read novel txt) 📗

shoe-tops like an old woman's and that sun-bonnet! Why she must have just come in from the backwoods!"


CHAPTER III

FINE FEATHERS FOR THE LITTLE WREN

The little girl stood still a moment as if transfixed. There came the passionate desire to run and hide. She gave the door-bell a sharp pull.

Martha Stimis answered it.

"Goodness sakes, is it you, ringin' as if the world wouldn't stand another minnit? Next time you want to get in, Haneran, you jest come down the _aree_! And me a-mouldin' up the biscuit!"

The little girl walked through the hall with a swelling heart. She couldn't be allowed to ring the door-bell when her own father's name was on the door!

The ell part was her mother's sleeping chamber and sitting-room. No one was in it. Hannah Ann walked down to the end. There was a beautiful old dressing-case that had been brought over with the French great, great grandmother. It had a tall glass coming down to the floor. At the sides were several small drawers that went up about four feet, and the top had some handsome carved work. It was one of Mrs. Underhill's choicest possessions. In the mirror you could see yourself from "top to toe."

The little girl stood before it. She had on a brown woollen frock and a gingham high apron. Her skirt _was_ straight and long. Her laced shoes only came to her ankles. Her stockings were black, and she remembered how she had watched these little girls coming down the street, their stockings were snowy white. Of course she wore white yarn ones on Sundays. A great piece of their pantalets was visible, ruffled, too. Yes, she did look queer! And the starch was mostly out of her sun-bonnet. It wasn't her best one, either.

She sat down on a little bench and cried as if her heart would break.

"Oh, Hanny dear, what is the matter?"

Margaret had entered the room unheard. She knelt by her little sister, took off her sun-bonnet and pressed the child in her arms. "What is it, dear?" in a soft, persuasive voice. "Have you hurt yourself?"

"No. I--I----" Then she put her little arms around Margaret's neck. "Oh, Peggy, am I very, very queer?"

"You're a little darling. Did Martha scold you?"

"No. It wasn't--some girls came along----" She tried very hard to stop her sobbing.

"There, dear, let me wash your face. Don't cry any more." She laid aside the bonnet and bathed the small face, then she began to brush the soft hair. It had not been cut all winter and was quite a curly mop. Stephen had bought her a round comb of which she was very proud.

"It was two girls. They went by and they laughed----"

Her voice was all of a quaver again, but she did not mean to cry if she could help it.

"Did they call you 'country'?"

Margaret smiled and kissed the little girl, who tried to smile also. Then she repeated the ill-bred comment.

"We are not quite citified," said Margaret cheerfully. "And it isn't pleasant to be laughed at for something you cannot well help. But all the little girls _are_ wearing short dresses, and you are to have some new ones. Mother has gone out shopping, and next week cousin Cynthia Blackfan is coming to fix us all up. But I _do_ hope, Hanny, you will have better manners and a kinder heart than to laugh at strangers, no matter if they are rather old-fashioned."

"I don't believe I ever will," said the little girl soberly.

"Now come up in my room. Mother said I might rip up her pretty blue plaid silk and have it made over. I came down to hunt up the waist."

She found it in one of the drawers, pinned up in a linen pillow-case.

"And you can have on a white apron," the elder said when they reached the room.

This had long sleeves and a ruffle round the neck. The little girl was ever so much improved.

And I think she would have felt comforted if she could have heard the rest of the talk between the two girls.

"I do wonder if she belongs to the new people," said the girl who laughed. "They can't be much. They came from the country somewhere."

"But they've bought all the way through to the other street. And ma said she meant to call on them. Some one told her they owned a big farm in Yonkers, and one of the young men is to be a doctor. Maybe the little girl doesn't really belong to them. I wish you hadn't spoken quite so loud. I'm sure she heard."

"Oh, I don't care!" with an airy toss of the head. "Mother said the other day she shouldn't bother about new neighbors. Calling on them is out of style."

Hanny looked out of the window a long while. Then she said gravely: "Margaret, are all those old Dutch people dead that were in the history? And where was their Bowery?"

"It is the Bowery out here, but it has changed. That was a long, long time ago."

"If I'd lived then no one would have laughed about my long frock. I almost wish I'd been a little girl then."

"Perhaps there were other things to laugh about."

"I don't mind the laughing _now_. But they must have had lovely gardens full of tulips and roses. There doesn't seem any room about for such things. And lanes, you know. Did the new people drive the Dutch away?"

"The English came afterward. You will read all about it in history. And then came the war----"

"That grandmother knows about? Margaret, I think New York is a great, strange, queer place. There are a good many queernesses, aren't there?"

Margaret assented with a smile.

"Oh, there's father in the wagon!" The little girl was all a tremor of gladness. He caught her eyes and beckoned, and she ran down. But she couldn't manage the night-latch, and so Margaret had to follow her.

"Bundle up my little girl," he said. "I've got to drive up to Harlem and I'll take her along."

Hanny almost danced for joy. Margaret found her red merino coat. The collar was trimmed with swan's down, and her red silk hood had an edge of the same. True, some ultra-fashionables had come out in spring attire, but it was rather cool so early in the season. Hanny looked very pretty in her winter hood. And as they drove down the street the same girls were standing on a stoop; one was evidently going away from her friend. The one who laughed lived there then. But neither of them would have guessed it was the "queer" girl, and they almost envied her.

"I've never been down to this corner," said Hanny. "And the streets run together."

"Yes, First Street ends and Houston goes on over to the East River."

The little girl looked about. There was a great sign on the house at the junction--"Monticello Hotel,"--and on the edge of the sidewalk a pump, which the little girl thought funny. They dipped the water out of the spring at home--they had not given up saying that about the old place. There was no need of a pump, and at grandmother's they had a well-sweep and bucket.

Then they turned up Avenue A, where he had an errand, and soon they were going over rough country ways where "squatters" had begun to come in with pigs and geese. They seemed so familiar that the little girl laughed. And if some one had told her that she would one day be driving in a beautiful park over yonder it would have sounded like a fairy tale. It was rough and wild now. Dobbin spun along, for the sun was hurrying over westward.

"We have some old cousins living beyond there on Harlem Heights," he said, "but it's too late to hunt them up. And it'll be dark by the time we get home. There was a big battle fought here. Their brother was killed in it. Why, they must be most eighty years old."

The little girl drew a long breath at the thought.

"We'll look them up some day." Then he stopped before a hotel where there was a long row of horse sheds, and sprang out to tie Dobbin.

"I had better take you out. Something might happen." He carried her in his arms clear up the steps. A lady came around the corner of the wide porch.

"I'll leave my little girl in the waiting-room a few moments. I have some business with Mr. Brockner," he said.

"I will take her through to my sitting-room," the lady replied, and holding out her hand she led Hanny thither. She insisted on taking off her hood and loosening her coat, and in a few moments she seemed well acquainted. The lady asked her father's name and she told it.

"There are some old ladies of that name living half a mile or so from here," she said. Then remembering they were very poor, and that poor relations were not always cordially accepted, she hesitated.

"Father spoke of some cousins," cried the little girl eagerly. "He said sometime we would hunt them up. We only came to New York to live two weeks ago."

"Then you have hardly had time to look up any one. They would be glad to see your father, I know. He looks so wholesome and good-natured."

The little girl was not an effusive child, but she and the lady fell into a delightful talk. Then her hostess brought in a plate of seed cookies, and she was eating them very delicately when her father entered.

"We have had such a nice time," she said, "that I'd like you to bring your little girl up again. Indeed, I have half a mind to keep her."

"We couldn't spare her," said her father, with a fond smile, which Hanny returned.

"I suppose not. But it will soon be beautiful around here, and when she longs for a breath of the country you must bring her up."

"Thank you, madam."

"And oh, father, the cousins really are here. Two old, old ladies----"

Mr. Underhill inquired about them, and learned their circumstances were quite straitened. He promised to come up soon and see them.

Mrs. Brockner kissed Hanny, quite charmed with her simplicity and pretty manner. And she had never once thought about the length of her old brown skirt.

It was supper time when they reached home. Steve and Joe and John were there. The three younger boys had been left at Yonkers. Indeed, George had declared his intention of being a farmer. Mrs. Underhill said she didn't want any more boys until she had a place to put them.

Afterward Joe coaxed the little girl to come and sit on his knee. They were talking about schools.

"Seems to me, Margaret better be studying housekeeping and learning how to make her clothes instead of going to school," said Mrs. Underhill shortly. "She can write a nice letter and she's good at figures, and, really, I don't see----"

"She wants to be finished," returned Steve, with a laugh. "She's a city girl now. I've been looking schools over. There are several establishments where they burnish up young ladies. There's Madame Chegary's----"

"I won't have her going to any French school and reading wretched French novels!"

Steve threw back his head and laughed. He had