A Modern Cinderella, Amanda Minnie Douglas [free ereaders .txt] 📗

a beautiful, shady street with great trees, and most everybody had gone away. The babies were not very well and a little cross. You had to be doing things all the while, and--I don't know what happened, but I fell off the stoop and some one picked me up and then Miss Armitage who lived opposite came over and had me taken to her house and for a long while I just seemed in the dark and didn't know anything. It was then that Dr. Richards came. They were all so good, and it was like being in heaven. The Bordens had gone to Long Island and the babies were very sick getting some teeth, and they wanted me, I was bound, you know, so I had to go as soon as I was well enough. Part of it was very nice; the babies could walk then. After we came back"--she made a little pause for she had not even told Dr. Richards Jack's part in the mishap--"I fainted one day. Their old aunt was ill and she wanted me, so I went and--it was dreadful--she died and I fainted again. Then Miss Armitage came and took me home with her. Mrs. Borden took a new nursemaid, a grown up woman and was willing to let me go, and these other things happened. Oh, I want to stay always with Miss Armitage."

"You poor little girl! I think you have had a rather hard time. What does Dr. Richards say?"

"The other doctor said I had a weak heart. Does that make you faint away? It's almost like dying--you don't seem to know anything for a long while, and it is very hard to get back."

"You have been worked pretty hard I guess." How simply the child had told her story. "But now life will be better. I am very glad this little fortune has come to you, and now I am going up stairs a few moments, and you may look over the books on the table. I will soon be back."

Instead Marilla looked about the room. The front one was the parlor, very nicely furnished. The back one shut off the end of the hall. There were three French windows reaching to the floor, the last one being a door leading out to an enclosed porch with windows that would be very pleasant in summer. There was only a small yard with a tiny grass plot and an alleyway running through at the back.

There was a big book case in one recess, a lounge, a Morris chair and a substantial center table containing books and papers. It had a home-like, well used look, with several cosy rocking chairs.

Mrs. Warren returned with some sewing and without evincing undue curiosity led Marilla to talk of her past, though the child really knew very little about her mother and seemed to have no tender or regretful regard for this Mrs. Jaques. But her whole heart went out to Miss Armitage in something like worship.

The girls came home and in a short time they were all friends. It seemed odd to them that Marilla had never been to a real school. Jessie was in the kindergarten, but would enter the primary in February. May was there and Edith hoped to get in the High School another year. Then they carried her off to their play room. This was the hall bedroom on the next floor. There was a small book case, a sort of closet with glass doors where playthings were kept and one shelf devoted to dolls. Marilla stood entranced before it.

"Have you many dolls?" asked May.

"I never had a doll since my mama died," and there were tears in the child's voice.

"But at Christmas--didn't you ever get a doll?"

"I was in a home for orphan girls, Mrs. Johnson didn't think it was right for girls to waste their time on dolls. One Christmas some store sent such a beautiful lot and she returned them all. Some of us cried and we had to learn a lot of bible verses about improving your time. Occasionally a girl would get a clothes pin and tie the middle of her handkerchief around the head, and play it was a baby, and lend it out, then they would all get punished. I used to feel so sorry. Dolls are so sweet if they are only make believe. Where I lived the babies had rubber dolls that they could bang on the floor, but they were ugly. This one is splendid."

"That is mine," said Edith. "One of our cousins brought it from Paris. It can walk a little and say 'Mama.' I'm too big to play with dolls, and I've given the others to May and Jessie."

"And we play tea with them. It is so lovely out on the back porch in the summer and mother lets us take the things down there. And I can make clothes," said May. "But now you can have a doll, because you are going to have some money of your very own."

"Yes," she returned slowly.

There were many pretty things that Marilla wondered at. Edith took out her doll and put it in the visitor's arms. It had such a lovely face that Marilla hugged it up tight and wanted to kiss it. Why it was fifty times sweeter than the twins.

Then they led her to their room. There were two pretty brass beds.

"Edith has the smaller one because she sleeps alone," explained May, "and we little ones love to sleep together."

There were two chiffoniers, and a big closet between the rooms, two pretty willow rockers and some lovely pictures beside various small gifts one could hang up or stand around. How charming it was!

Edith said she must go and study her lessons. May brought out her pretty dishes and her card albums. One was partly full of such pretty kittens Marilla wanted to hug them. Another was Christmas, Easter and birthday cards.

Marilla gave a soft little sigh. How many precious things she had missed out of her life! And though she could not have put it into words it was the tender companionship of childhood, of kindred tastes and eager loves. In the desert of Bethany Home all these emotions had been rigorously repressed. It was best for girls not to expect too much in the homes of other people, the little Cinderella whose place was in the chimney corner.

"Marilla," called the voice of Mrs. Warren, in a sort of joyous tone, "Dr. Richards has come."

She almost flew down stairs and he clasped her in his arms.

"I am so happy," she cried in a voice tremulous with emotion. "It seems such a long, long while since morning so much has happened, and Mrs. Warren is to be my Aunt Grace, she said so, and I have three cousins!"

Her face was alight with happiness.

"I wonder if you would get homesick if we did not go back to Newton until some time next week?"

"Oh, no. I shouldn't get homesick at all! But I couldn't stay away from fairy godmother a _long_ while. If I didn't have her, Aunt Grace would take me, and the girls are just splendid!"

"I've been to a hospital this afternoon and I want to learn some new things to take home with me, so I will write. You must write, too. I've brought you some envelopes addressed and stamped. Why do you smile?"

"I was thinking of the letter I wrote to you in the summer, and I had to beg everything to write with, and Edith has such a nice portable writing desk, and the girls have portfolios, and they all go to school. Oh, it must be splendid to go to school with a crowd of nice girls and have a lovely teacher."

She had been leading him through the parlor. Mrs. Warren met them and he went on in the sitting room, apologizing for his early appearance.

"Oh, I want you to come in and see your ward whenever you can, and I shall beg for quite a visit from her."

"That will suit me. I feel that I have grown a little rusty and want to look into some new methods. What a wonderful city it is! It quite shames a country doctor."

"I suppose so," smiling. "You should come in often. Mr. Warren will be home presently and glad to meet you. Will you excuse me a few moments? This is my eldest daughter, Edith."

"And can't the others come?" asked Marilla.

"Why, yes, if you like."

Dr. Richards was used to children. He thought he liked girls the best, and this was an attractive circle. How Marilla was enjoying it. Her eyes quivered with flashes of pleasure. Yes, children needed other children to start the real flow of delight through their veins, and his little Cinderella did not suffer by comparison.

Mr. Warren came in and welcomed his guest cordially, looking over the little girl about whom they had speculated. She was very attractive just now, with her face of sunshine and her eyes with their starry look under the long curling lashes.

The men had to discuss the queer unexpected fortune. The Warrens had been notified nearly a year before.

"But I hadn't much faith in it," laughed Mr. Warren. "My wife had really forgotten her family lineage, and we should hardly have claimed the Schermerhorns. There's so much red tape in these matters and by the time the expenses are paid, there's little left for the heirs, but this turns out better than I supposed, considering the many descendants the old man had. I can't complain of the lawyers."

"And we were very glad to find Marion's child, though I wish I had known it when her mother died. Do you want to keep her at Newton?"

"I think Miss Armitage has some claims," he returned.

"And I feel as if we ought to make up for our negligence."

The children were in a little huddle on the corner of the sofa. What was Newton like? A real city?

"Why there are some beautiful long streets and stores and churches and a park and rows of houses built together like this, and schools and trolleys--"

"Why it must be a city then?" said Edith. "Has it a mayor and a city hall and a postoffice?"

"It has a mayor and a postoffice and a court house. Mr. Borden used to talk of going there."

"It is a very old town," explained the guardian, "dating farther back than the Revolution, yet it was not much of a business center until the last thirty years; but it is very pretty and rather aristocratic."

"Children," said their mother, "go and make yourselves ready for dinner."

"What lovely curly hair," exclaimed May, half in envy. "I wish mine curled."

"But you have two such beautiful braids." "Jessie's curled a little but it was so thin mother kept cutting it. Dear me! You wouldn't catch me soaping and brushing the curl out of it if mine curled," declared May.

They had a rather merry time at dinner and the children did not seem a bit afraid to talk, though they were not aggressive. But Dr. Richards thought his little ward compared very favorably with the others. Her daintiness suggested Miss Armitage, he fancied.

They sat a long while over their dessert of fruit and nuts, and then the guest said he would have to go as he wanted to attend a lecture by an eminent surgeon. He