 A Real New England Girl by Anna I. Parsons 1. The Shower 2. Oxford County 3. The Stranger and the Girl 4. The Youth and the Girl 5. Pansy and Richard Go Trading 6. The Marvelous Storyteller 7. The Dinner 8. The The Minister Comes for Tea 9. Pansy's Father 10. Pansy and Her Mother 11. Poland Springs 12. The Birthday Cake 13. Ned Patterson Comes for a Visit 14. The Blue Berrying Party 15. The Beginning of Wisdom 16. The Tempted and the Penitent 17. The Concert 18. Stanley's Ride 19. The Bench by the Wayside 20. The Banker and the Widow 21. The Bag of Nuts 22. How They Kept Thanksgiving at Little Farm 23. Hardly a Merry Christimas 24. A Call Down and a Caller 25. The Pride of Mrs. Bradford 26. A Happy New Year 27. Amusement and Winter Sport 28. Kim 29. Richard, the Lion Hearted 30. A Tour of the White Mountains 31. Talking Over the Trip with Henry Bright 32. Thoughts That Lie Too Deep for Words 33. Economics 34. His Toast 35. The Busy Haunts of Man 36. Christmas in New York 37. The Last Night of Their Visit 38. The Language Understood by All 39. Sugaring Off 40. Correspondence 41. Commencement 42. Conclusion Afterward     |
The Pride of Mrs. Bradford "That best portion of a good man's life, Is the little unnamed, unremembered acts of kindness and love." -- Wordsworth When questioned by the Bradford family as to what had taken place on Christmas Eve, Stanley would say but little, and when told that Pansy had seen a man whom she believed to be Len Frost come from his direction and pass the house long after Len should have been at his own home, he looked surprised and remarked stiffly, "The fellow that doesn't know when to go home, doesn't know how to keep within the rules of the game," and with this indefinite statement, they had to content themselves, for the subject seemed too distasteful to Stanley to be further pursued. Under his fur hat, Stanley wore a black silk stockinette cap such as young men slip on when making their toilet to keep refractory locks in place, and this, well pulled over his forehead, he did not remove when indoors, so that the scar of which his mother had spoken to Richard was not visible, and they had no idea of its extent and character. They saw him frequently at short intervals, and he always seemed to be enjoying his winter vacation in the country. After Ruth, Pansy and Richard had left for the village on Saturday afternoon, Stanley had run into the Bradford house as was his wont when he had a little time to spare, and finding only Mrs. Bradford at home, was about to leave again when, prompted by her loneliness, he suddenly turned about and asked, "Would you like to have my company for a little while?" "I'd be glad to, Stanley, if you have nothing important calling you home. The children won't be back until late, and, of course, time goes slowly without them." He took off his fur-lined coat, laid it over the back of a chair, and seated himself near the table where she was sewing on a silk patchwork quilt. "It seems to me you are always working," he said. "If I come in the morning, you are cooking; if I come in the afternoon you are sewing; if I come in the evening, you are knitting. Do you never take any time off from work?" "Oh, yes," she answered cheerfully, "I never do anything on Saturday night, except teach the children their Sunday School lesson, and I have all day Sunday in which to rest." "Is there never any time when you just amuse yourself?" "Oh, yes, I'm amusing myself now." "But do you never feel you would like to go to the theatre or a picture play or concert, or something that is considered a real diversion?" "I like to go to the concerts we have sometimes, but I heartily disapprove of the theatre with its painted actresses in dresses that would shock a modest woman to wear when alone in her own room, and the picture plays are mostly too sensational or too silly on which to spend time." Stanley looked over the large pasteboard box on the table in one end of which were neat rolls of scraps of silk of many colors and in the other end was piled the finished squares. For want of other occupation, he began pulling out the squares one by one and looking them over. "Cousin Lizzie sends me the silk pieces from Boston," explained Mrs. Bradford. "She gets her dressmaker and her friends to save them, and every once in a while she forwards a large package." "It's a real system of economy you follow," he said. "The dressmaker's waste is converted into a cover that will afford warmth to some lucky sleeper and give him energy for toil. Father and I visited the big sled factory of the Paris Manufacturing Company, and they showed us their system whereby all waste wood, shavings, and sawdust are transmitted to the engine room and there converted into heat and energy, and nothing is allowed to be wasted, for what steam is not needed to run the machinery is used in heating the factory. It is as interesting to go there as -- well, as looking over these squares, but they haven't any such artistic work to show as yours. Take this square, for instance, there's a display of color that equals the rainbow." "That's the square Pansy made," said Mrs. Bradford, looking up from her work, "and I put it at the bottom of the pile, it is so badly sewed. I told the children, the quilt was to go to the one who got married first, and so one day when Pansy asked if she could make a square, I let her to encourage her to sew. She said, as it was to be a part of somebody's dower, it ought to be stitched as a bride in the Holy Land walks to her wedding, which is two steps forward and one step backward, and so you see, instead of being a running seam, every other stitch is a back stitch and very badly done at that. I've tried to teach Pansy to sew properly, but she never took to it as Ruth did. When Ruth was seven years old she could run up a seam as well as she can now, but I didn't begin young enough with Pansy. My husband always wanted Richard with him when he was at work, and Pansy wouldn't stay in the house without Richard and Richard wouldn't stay out doors without Pansy, and so I just had to give in and let her run with her father." "I've a great favor to ask, Mrs. Bradford. May I have one of your squares for my room home?" There's a place where it would look better than anything else I know of." "You flatter me, Stanley, but take your choice, and keep it to remind you that you have some real friends here who are highly incensed over the attempt to spoil your holidays." "Let's call that a closed chapter. I don't need any reminder that you are my friends, always, but we all like to possess something that has been closely associated with those we like the best." "Why, that's the square Pansy made you have selected! Don't take that, take a good square, Stanley." "I sort of like the arrangement of colors," he said, putting the square into his pocket. "That's Pansy over again. She wouldn't put blue and gray together because they look well, or green and red because they complement each other, but she must get in all the colors of the spectrum, as she calls it. Pansy can't do anything without annexing some notion she has got out of books. If I ask Ruth to look in the over when I am baking biscuit, she will say, 'They have raised and are browning nicely,' but if I ask Pansy to look in the oven, she will come dancing back with her eyes shining and mouth watering and say, 'The bi-carbonate's working fine, mother. They're all puffed up like a bunch of conceit, and are beginning to put on the high lights.' It beats all, the amusement she gets out of the most common place things." "She doesn't get all her notions out of books, Mrs. Bradford. I find she and Richard have received a Liberal education in itself from living this rural life. They know more from observation than even great scholars do from constantly poring over books. One day I was telling them of our visit to Concord, Massachusetts, and of how placid was the Concord River; that our guide told us Ralph Waldo Emerson had said he was there three weeks, before he found out which way the current ran. Whereupon Pansy said with some disgust, 'Humph, why didn't he throw in a chip!' Mrs. Bradford smiled in motherly pride, and Stanley continued: "If you dropped her out of an aeroplane into the dense north woods, she'd make her living and find her way south again. She taught me to eat brake meat, dig ground nuts, chew cherry bark, and find nourishment in many other forest products. And she and Richard put me wise as to how to avoid walking in a circle when astray in the woods. Mrs. Bradford, I owe them a whole lot for the best kind of mental development, and since you won't accept father's offer to pay their way through college, I wish, at least, you would let me give you half my allowance toward their expenses. By winter I'll be qualified to take up newspaper work, or something else that will be lucrative, and I can help earn my own spending money if I want to, just the same as some of the other fellows at college are doing." In his earnestness, Stanley had gotten up and was walking about the room. "I couldn't let you do such a thing, Stanley." "But Mrs. Bradford, a girl ought to have the things she wants without worrying about how she is going to get them, especially a girl that's talented. Pansy would attract anywhere by her cleverness alone, and not because she has such winning ways. Mother has the pride of a queen and is cold as an iceberg to any who are not of her own kinship, but she has warmed up to Richard and Pansy a whole lot, and says they are extraordinarily children. That's going some for mother." "If it is right that they shall have the advantages of a higher education, divine Providence will open the way." "But hasn't the way already been opened, and haven't you yourself closed it by refusing to accept what you might have without the least privation to others?" "Stanley, you just spoke of the pride of your mother, if you will consider mine a little bit, you won't urge this matter any farther." He came over and took both of her hard working hands in his own. "Forgive me, if I have seemed to overstep the bounds of privilege in this matter," he said, with great tenderness. "I only meant it for your happiness." "Your good intentions are beyond question, but don't, like a bad advocate, pursue a hopeless cause." "Your wishes are commands to be obeyed to the letter, and hereafter, I will try to think, as you do, there is some better way by which Pansy and Richard may attain the desired education." He slipped on his heavy coat again, and with the manners of a prince, bowed himself out of her presence. Click Here for Chapter 26 |