A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia, Amanda Minnie Douglas [e novels to read txt] 📗

behalf, Mistress Primrose, but I knew nothing of this birthday except just as we met, so I can only offer second-hand, but then 'tis by a famous fellow:


"'May never was the month of love,
For May is full of flowers,--
But rather April wet by kind,
For love is full of showers.'"


"Am I such a crying girl?" Primrose's face was a study in its struggle not to smile.

"And here is another." Andrew Henry half turned:


"'When April nods, with lightsome smiles
And Violets all a-flower;
Her willful mood may turn to tears
Full twice within an hour.'"


"Then I am very fickle--and bad tempered, and--and----" There was deep despair in the voice.

"And Primrose, an April girl who can have whatever mood she chooses," said Wharton. "I wish I had known one was to bring posies of thought and I would have looked up one. How I envy those people who can write acrostics or sudden verses, and all I know seem to have gone from me."

Primrose made a mocking courtesy. "Thank you. We can all go and gather violets. I know a stretch of woods the British left standing, where the grass is full of them. And a bit of stream that runs into the Schuylkill. Oh, and a clean, well-behaved mead-house where one can get delightful cheesecake. Now that we have reached the summit, look about the town. A square, ugly little town, is it not?"

"It is not ugly," Polly protested resentfully.

The rivers on either side, the angle with docks jutting out, and creeping up along the Delaware, Windmill Island and the Forts; the two long, straight streets crossing at right angles, and even then rows of red-brick cottages, but finer ones as well, with gardens, some seeming set in a veritable park; and Master Shippen's pretty herd of deer had been brought back. There were Christ Church and St. Peter's with their steeples, there were more modest ones, and the Friends' meeting house that had held many a worthy.

"It is well worth seeing," said Betty Mason. "Some of the places about make me think of my own State and the broad, hospitable dwellings."

"Oh, but you should see Stenton and Clieveden! and the Chew House at Germantown is already historical. There is to be a history writ of the town, I believe, and all it has gone through!" exclaimed Polly.

Then they begin to come down in a kind of winding fashion. Women are out making gardens and tying up vines, some of them in the quaint, short gown and petticoat, relegated mostly to servants. Then Friends, in cap and kerchief; children in the fashion of their parents, with an odd made-over appearance.

"It will be a grand city if it stretches out according to Mr. Penn's ideas. And oh, Betty! you must see the old house in Letitia Street, with its dormer windows and odd little front door with its overhanging roof. And the house on Second Street that is more pretentious, with its slated roof. If the talk is true about peace there are great plans for the advancement of the town. They are going to cut down some of the hills and drain the meadows that the British flooded," and Primrose glanced sidewise at her brother's face with a half-teasing delight. "So, if the dreams of the big men who govern the city come true, there will presently be no old Philadelphia. I hear them talking of it with Aunt Wetherill."

They wander on, now and then changing places and partners, having a little merry badinage. Polly keeps coming to the rescue where Philemon Nevitt is concerned.

There are other gay parties out rambling; some with hands full of wild flowers, laughing and chatting, occasionally bestowing a nod on the Whartons and Primrose, and staring perhaps unduly at the tall fine soldier with his martial air and uniform, hardly suspecting the Quaker heart underneath.

"Now that we have come so near I bethink me of an errand for Mistress Janice Kent," exclaimed Primrose. "And you will like to see the row of small, cheerful houses where some poor women come, some poor married folks when life has gone hard with them. See here is Walnut Street. Let us turn in. It is an old, old place that somebody left some money to build."

"Old John Martin," said Andrew. "Yes, I have been here. It is a snug, pretty place, not an alms-house."

"My old lady is not in this long, plain house, but around in Fourth Street, in her own little cottage. See how quaint they are?"

A narrow passage like a green lane ran through the center. Small, one-storied cottages, with a doorway and a white-curtained window; a steep roof with a window in the end to light the garret. There was a garden with each. There were fruit trees ready to burst into bloom, so sheltered were they. There were grape arbors, where old men were smoking and old ladies knitting.

One old lady had half a dozen little children in her room, teaching a school. One was preparing dried herbs in small cardboard boxes. There were sweet flavors as of someone distilling; there was a scent of molasses candy being made, or a cake baked, even new, warm biscuit.

Everybody seemed happy and well employed.

"It is something like the Church Charities at home," said Vane, "only much more tidy and beautiful."

"It is where I shall come some day," announced Primrose with a plaintive accent, as if she were at the end of life.

"You!" Polly glanced at her with surprised eyes, hardly knowing whether to laugh or not.

"As if you would ever have need!" declared Betty Mason.

"But they are not very poor, you see. They have to be worthy people and nice people, who have been unfortunate. And when I am old I shall beg one of the little houses to live in. I think I shall make sweet flavors and raise herbs."

She looked so utterly grave and in earnest that both Wharton and Lieutenant Vane stared as if transfixed.

"What nonsense!" exclaimed her brother. "As if there would not always be someone----"

"But I shall live to be very old, I know. Aunt Wetherill tells of one of the Wardour women who lived to be a hundred and two years old, ever so long ago, in England. And it is hardly probable, Phil, that you can live to be one hundred and ten or more, and, if you did, you would most likely be helpless," in an extremely assured tone.

"Well, you would not be poor," he subjoined quickly, indignantly.

"How do you know? Some of the people here have been in comfortable circumstances. And, two days ago, when Mr. Northfield was over he was talking about some of papa's property that had nearly gone to ruin--been destroyed, I think, and would take a good deal to repair it. And--eighty or ninety years is a long time to live. There may be another war--people are so quarrelsome--and everything will go then! Betty's house was burned, and her father's fine plantation laid waste. And Betty is not very much older than I, and all these misfortunes have happened to her."

The whole four men are resolved in their secret hearts that no sorrow or want will ever come to her, even if she should outlive them all.

They reached Mrs. Preston's cottage and Primrose delivered her message. Then they lingered about, and Betty concluded it would be no great hardship to come here when one was done with other pleasures and things, and had little to live upon.

"It is a delightful spot," said Vane, "and I never dreamed of it before. That it should have been here all through that winter----"

"But you were dancing and acting plays!"

"Don't call up any more of my bad, mistaken deeds! Have I not convinced you that I repented of them, and am doing my best to make amends?"

The fire in Vane's eyes awed Primrose, conquered her curiously, and a treacherous softening of the lines about her sweet mouth almost made a smile.

"And now what next?" commented Polly. "Do you know how we are loitering? Has the place charmed us? I never thought it so fascinating before."

It was to charm many a one, later on, like a little oasis in the great walls of brick that were to grow about it, of traffic and noise and disputations that were never to enter here, and to have a romance, whether rightly or wrongly, that was to call many a one thither at the thought of Evangeline. And so a poet puts an imperishable sign on a place, or a historian a golden seal.

"We were to go somewhere else. And see where the sun is dropping to. It always slides so fast on that round part of the sky."

"Yes, the most beautiful little place, and to get our violets. Betty, when they are all gone we will have long days hunting up queer corners and things. And somewhere--out at Dunk's Ferry--there is a strange sort of body who tells fortunes occasionally--when she is in _just_ the humor. And that makes it the more exciting, because you can never quite know. We will take Patty; we can find all the strange corners."

"Why couldn't we all go? To have one's fortune told--not that I believe in it," and Vane laughed.

"Then you have no business to have it told. And Miss Jeffries runs over the cards and tells ever so many things, and they _are_ really true. You will meet her again some evening."

Gilbert Vane blushed. The fortune he wanted to hear was not one with which he would like a whole roomful entertained.

"It is this way."

Primrose walked on ahead with Andrew Henry.

"There is a suspicious-looking cloud, bigger than a man's hand."

"Oh, then let us hurry! Nonsense, Phil, why do you alarm a body? See how the sun shines. It is going past. Now--down at the end of this lane----"

Just then some great drops fell. Primrose ran like a sprite and turned a triumphant face to the others when she was under shelter.

It was indeed a fairy nook with a strip of woods back of it. A little thread of a stream ran by on one side. In summer, when the trees were in full leaf, it would be a bower of greenery. A low, story-and-a-half house, with a porch running all across the front, roofed over with weather-worn shingles. The hall doors, back and front, stand wide open, and there is a long vista reaching down to the clump of woods made up of a much-patched-up trellis with several kinds of vines growing over it to furnish a delightful shade in summer. Some benches in the shining glory of new green paint stand along the edge. There was a small table with three people about it, and the stout, easy-going hostess, who pronounced them "lucky," as there comes a three-minutes' fierce downpour of rain while the sun is still shining, then stops, and everything is beaded with iridescent gems. The very sky seems laughing, and the round sun fairly winks with an amused joviality.

In the small front yard the grass is green and thickly sown with tulips that have two sheath-like leaves of bluish-green enfolding the bud. "It will be a sight presently," exclaimed Polly, "but so will most of the gardens. Why,