A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays, Amy Ella Blanchard [top e book reader txt] 📗

tearing up the place. Couldn't find my papers, my sticks, my umbrella or anything when I wanted them. I am glad you all have come so you can help me hunt for them."

"Why, father, how you do go on," Mrs. Willis interposed. The old gentleman laughed. He was a great tease, as Edna well knew.

"Where shall we go to lay off our things, mother?" asked Mrs. Conway.

"Up to your own old room over the dining-room. Here, Reliance, take the kitten and you, Edna, can come along with your mother."

"There's no need for you to go up, mother," said Mrs. Conway. "I have been there before, you know, and I think I can find the way." Then the two smiled wisely at one another.

But grandma would go and presently Edna found herself in a large room which looked out upon the west. Mrs. Conway stood still and gazed around her. "How natural it all seems," she said, "even to the pictures upon the walls. I went from this room a bride, Edna, and when I come back to it I feel not a day older. This is the same furniture, but this is a new carpet, mother, and new curtains, and the little cot you have put in for Edna, I suppose."

"Yes, there are some things that will not last a lifetime," answered Mrs. Willis, "and we must furbish up once in a while. I thought you would rather have Edna here with you than elsewhere, and at such a crowded time we have to stow away as we can. I have put another cot in my room for one of the other children and Celia is to go in with Becky."

While they were talking Ira brought up the trunks and Mrs. Conway commenced the task of unpacking, so very soon they were settled and ready for dinner, which was served in the big dining-room where was another open fireplace not quite so large as the first, but ample enough. Reliance waited upon the table and helped to clear away the dishes afterward.

"When you are through with your tasks, Reliance, you can take Edna out and show her the chickens and pigs and things," said grandma.

"Reliance is quite a recent addition to the family, isn't she?" said Mrs. Conway when the little maid went out.

"Yes," Mrs. Willis replied. "Amanda isn't as young as she was and we thought it would be a good thing to have someone here who could save her steps and who could be trained to take her place after a while. I think Reliance promises to be very capable in time."

While her mother talked to the grandparents, Edna walked softly around the room looking at the different things, the pictures, books and ornaments. There was a high mantel upon which stood a pair of Dresden vases and two quaint little figures. In the middle was a china house with a red door and vines over the windows. Edna had always admired it and was glad to see it still there. She stood looking at it for a long time. She liked to have her grandmother tell her its history. "That was brought to me by my grandfather when he returned from England," Mrs. Willis always said. "I was a little girl about six years old. Later he brought me those two China figures. He was a naval officer and that is his portrait you see hanging on the wall."

"I love the little house," remarked Edna, knowing that the next word would be: "You may play with it if you are very careful. It is one of my oldest treasures and I should be very grieved if it were broken."

The little house was then handed down and Edna examined it carefully. "It is so very pretty," she said, "that I should like to live in it. I would like to live in a house with a bright red door."

"I used to think that same thing when I was a little girl," her grandmother told her.

"I think maybe you'd better put it back so I won't break it," said Edna, carefully handing the treasure to her grandmother, "and then will you please tell me about the pictures?"

"The one over the mantel is called 'The Signing of the Declaration of Independence,' and that small framed affair by the chimney is a key to it, for it tells the names of the different men who figure in the picture."

"I will look at it some day and see if I can find out which is which," said Edna. "That is Napoleon Bonaparte over there; I know him."

"Yes; and that other is General Washington, whom, of course, you know."

"Oh, yes, of course; and I know that little girl, the black head over there; it is my great-great-grandmother."

"The silhouette, you mean? Yes, that is she, and she is the same one who did that sampler you see hanging between the windows. She was not so old as you when she did it."

Edna crossed the room and knelt on a chair in front of the sampler. It was dim with age, but she could discern a border of pink flowers with green leaves and letters worked in blue silk. She followed the letters with the tip of her finger, tracing them on the glass and at last spelling out the name of "Annabel Lisle, wrought in her seventh year."

"Poor little Annabel, how hard she must have worked," sighed Edna. "I am glad I don't have to do samplers."

"You might be worse employed," said her grandmother, smiling.

"Did you ever do a sampler?" asked Edna.

"Not a sampler like this one, but I learned to work in cross stitch. Do you remember the little stool in the living-room by the fireplace?"

"The one with roses on it that I was sitting on?"

"Yes; that I did when I was about your age, and the sofa pillow with the two doves on it I did when I was about Celia's age. I was very proud of it, I remember."

"May I go look at them?"

"Assuredly."

So Edna went into the next room and carefully examined the two pieces of work which now had a new importance in her eyes. A little girl about her age had done them long ago. She discovered, too, a queer-looking picture behind the door. It was of a lady leaning against an urn, a weeping-willow tree near by. The lady held a handkerchief in her hand and looked very sorrowful. Edna wondered why she seemed so sad. There were some words written below but they were too faint for her to decipher, and she determined to ask her grandmother about this picture which she had never noticed before. While she was still looking at it, Reliance came to the door to say, "I can go now; I've finished what I had to do." Edna turned with alacrity and the two went out together.


CHAPTER II


RELIANCE

"How long have you lived here?" Edna asked her companion when they were outside.

"About six months," was the reply.

"Are you 'dopted?" came the next question.

"No, I'm bound."

Edna looked puzzled. "I don't know what that is. I know a girl that was a Friendless and she was 'dopted so now she has a mother and a beautiful home. Her name used to be Maggie Horn, but now it is Margaret McDonald. Is your name Reliance Willis?"

"No, it is Reliance Fairman, and it wasn't ever anything else. I was friendless, too, till Mrs. Willis took me."

"Oh, and did you live in a house with a lot of other Friendlesses?"

"No, I wasn't in an orphan asylum, if that's what you mean, but I reckon I would have had to go there or else to the almshouse."

"Oh!" This seemed even more dreadful to Edna and she looked at her companion with new interest, at the same time slipping her hand into the other's to show her sympathy. "Tell me about it," she said.

"Why, you see, my parents died. We lived about three miles from here, and your grandmother used to know my grandmother; they went to the same school, so when us children were left without any home or any money your grandmother said she would take me and keep me till I was of age, so they bound me."

"How many children were there?"

"Three boys and me. Two of the boys are with Mr. Lukens and the other is in a home; he is a little chap, only six. If he'd been bigger maybe your grandfather would have had him here, and perhaps he will come when he is big enough to be of any use."

"I think that would be very nice and I shall ask grandfather to be sure to take him. Do you like it here?"

"Oh, yes, I like it. Amanda is awful pernickity sometimes, but I just love your grandmother and it is a heap sight better than being hungry and cold."

"Would you have to stay supposing you didn't like it?" Edna was determined to get all the particulars.

"I suppose so; I'd have to stay till I was eighteen; I'm bound to do that."

Edna reflected. "I suppose that is what it means by being bound; you are just bound to stay. I wonder if anyone else was ever named Reliance," she went on, being much interested to hear something about so peculiar a name.

"My grandmother was, her that your grandmother knew."

"Oh, was she? Then you are named after your grandmother just as my sister Celia is named Cecelia after hers. Yours is a funny name, isn't it? I don't mean funny exactly, for I think it is quite pretty, but I never knew of anyone named that."

"I don't mind it when I get it all, but when my brothers called me Li I didn't like it. Your grandmother gives me the whole name, and I am glad she does; but she said they generally used to call my grandmother Lyley when she was a little girl."

"I think that is rather pretty, too, don't you?"

"Yes, but I like the whole name better."

"Then I will always call you by the whole name," Edna assured her. "Can you tell stories, Reliance?"

"Do you mean fibs or reading stories like--let's see--Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk?"

"Oh, I mean the Cinderella kind; I'd hate to think you told fibs."

"I can tell 'em, but I guess I don't care to. I know two or three of the other kind and Bible stories, some of them: Eli and Samuel, and David and Goliath, and all those."

"Do you go to school?"

"Half the year, but I guess I won't be going very much longer. I'll soon be going on fourteen; I'll stop when I'm fifteen."

"Oh, shall you? Then what will you do?"

"I'll learn to housekeep and cook, and to sew and all that. Mrs. Willis says it is more important for me to be educated in the useful things, that I'll get along better if I am, and I guess she is right. My mother couldn't cook worth a cent and she just hated it, so we didn't get very good vittles."

"Was it your mother's mother after whom you were named?"

"No, my father's mother. The Fairmans lived around here, but there ain't many of them left now. My father was an only child, and he