CHAPTER IX

ANNABEL LEE

It was queer up at West Farms, delightful, too. The house was old, with a hall through the middle, and a Dutch door just as there was up at Yonkers. The top part was opened in the morning, sometimes the whole door. The front room was the parlour, and it had not been refurnished since Mrs. Odell came there as a bride; so it looked rather antiquated to modern eyes. The back room was the sleeping chamber; on the other side, a living room with rag carpet on the floor; then a kitchen and a great shed-kitchen, one side of which was piled up with wood. There was a big back stoop that looked on the vegetable garden; there was an orchard down below, and then cornfields and meadows.

The old house was what was called a story and a half. The pointed roof had windows in the end, but none in the front. There were two nice big chambers upstairs, and a garret. Mr. Odell began to talk about building a new house; and Mrs. Odell said the things--by which she meant the carpets and furniture--were good enough for the old place, but they'd have all new by the time the girls grew up, to fit the new house.

Mr. Odell had a peach-orchard and a quince-orchard, and two long rows of cherry-trees. Then he kept quite a herd of cows, and sold milk. He had a splendid new barn, with two finished rooms in that, where the hands slept in summer. The old barn was devoted to the hay and the horses.

There were chickens and ducks and geese, and a pen of pigs. This summer, they were raising three pretty calves and one little colt, who was desperately shy. But the calves would come up to be patted, and eat out of your hand.

Both of the girls were what their mother called regular tomboys. Polly was a few months older than the little girl, and Janey two years her senior. They were smart too. They could wash dishes and make beds and sweep, weed in the garden, look after the poultry; and Janey could iron almost as well as her mother. But they did love to run and whoop, and tumble in the hay, and they laughed over almost everything. They were not great students, though they went to school regularly.

A second or third cousin lived with the Odells, and did a great deal of the housework. She was not "real bright," and had some queer ways. Her immediate relatives were dead; and the Odells had taken her from a feeling of pity, and a fear lest at last she would be sent to the poor-house. She had an odd way of talking incoherently to herself, and nodding her head at almost everything; yet she was good-tempered and always ready to do as she was told. But the worst was her lack of memory; you had to tell her the same things everyday,--"get her started in the traces," Mr. Odell said.

Mrs. Odell put a cot in the girls' room for Hanny, since there was plenty of space. And Polly seemed to find so many funny stories to tell over that Hanny fell asleep in the midst of them, and woke up in the morning without a bit of homesick feeling. Then Mr. Odell was going to the mill, and he took Polly and Hanny along, and they had a rather amusing time.

Hanny was very much interested in the process, and amazed when she found how they made the different things out of the same wheat. They used "middlings" for pancakes at home, when her mother was tired of buckwheat. Not to have had griddle-cakes for breakfast would have been one of the hardest trials of life for men and boys through the winter.

It warmed them up of a cold morning, and they seemed to thrive on it.

Mr. Odell was very willing to explain the processes to Hanny. Polly wanted to know if she thought of going into the milling business, and suggested that she never would be big enough. Then they ran round to look at the water-wheel and the little pond where the stream was dammed so there would be no lack of water in a dry time.

They had a drawing pattern in school just like it, except that it lacked the broken rustic bridge a little higher up. She would take a new interest in drawing it now.

It was noon when they reached home, and Hanny felt real hungry, though Mrs. Odell declared she didn't eat more than a bird. She was glad her girls were not such delicate little things.

They went out on the shady back stoop afterward. Janey was sewing the over-seam in a sheet that her mother wanted turned. When she had finished, and picked out the old sewing, she was free. Then she said they would go down to the Bristows' and have a good game of hide and seek. They always had such fun at the Bristows'.

Polly brought out her basket of carpet-rags,--a peach basket nearly full.

"I just hate to sew carpet-rags!" she declared.

"Couldn't I help you?" asked Hanny.

"Why, to be sure you _could_, if you would, and knew how to sew."

"Of course I know how to sew," said Hanny, rather affronted.

"Oh, I was only in fun! I'll find you a thimble. It's in my work-box that was given me on Christmas. It's real silver, too. Mother's going to change it when she goes to New York, only she never remembers. My fingers are so fat. Oh, Hanny, what a little mite of a hand! It'll never be good for anything."

"I have made a whole shirt myself, and I have hemstitched, and done embroidery, and I wipe dishes when I haven't too many lessons,"

interposed the little girl.

"You can't make your own frocks," in a tone of triumph.

"No. Miss Cynthia Blackfan comes and does it. Can you?"

"No, she can't," said Janey, while Polly threw her head back and laughed, showing her strong white teeth. "And she could no more make a shirt than she could fly. You're real smart, Hanny. I'm two years older, and I've never made a whole one. I'm going to try though, and father's promised me a dollar when I do it all by myself."

Polly had found the thimble. It wasn't any prettier than Hanny's, though Polly begged her "to be real careful and not lose it."

"Now you can just sew hit or miss; and then you can put in a long strip of black, 'cause there's more black than anything else. Oh, dear, I do hate to sew rags!"

"What kind of sewing do you like?" asked Janey, in a tone that would have been sarcastic in an older person.

"I just don't like any kind. Hanny, do _you_ know that some one has invented a sewing-machine?" and Polly looked up with the triumph of superior wisdom.

"Oh, yes, I saw it at the Institute Fair. And there's a place on Broadway where a woman sits in the window and sews. It's very queer; but we think it doesn't sew real nice."

Polly was for the moment nonplussed. Hanny _did_ seem to know almost everything. Then curiosity overcame her.

"Does it do really and truly sewing?"

"Why, yes. When you come down, I'll ask Joe to take us over to see it."

"Carpet-rags?"

"Well--I don't know. Long straight seams, and hems and stitching."

"Well, I'm going to have one when I'm married. I wonder if they cost very much!"

"There'll be lots of things for you to do before you are married. And some girls don't have any chance. You'll want to know how to keep house--"

"I like housekeeping. You just go from one thing to another. I'll have some one to cook and peel potatoes and all that. And we'll keep a horse and waggon, and I shall go to ride every day."

Janey laughed. "Just now, you had better sew carpet-rags."

"And I'll never have any rag carpets. I will give away all the old clothes."

"I'm afraid you'll never have much of anything, nor a husband either, Polly Odell," said her mother. "You talk, and leave the rags for Hanny to sew."

Polly turned scarlet, and sewed very industriously.

"I'd like to see a sewing-machine," began Janey, presently. "How does it go?"

"There is a strap around a wheel that is fast to a frame. You put your feet on, so, and just make them go up and down after you have started the wheel with your hand. The needle goes through, and something catches the thread, then it goes through again, and that makes the stitch. It is very curious."

"You know a good many things, don't you, Hanny?" said Janey, admiringly.

Hanny coloured.

"I can beat her all out running, I know; and I'll bet a penny she can't jump over the creek."

"And don't you dare her to, Polly. Remember how you fell in. Oh, Hanny, she was a sight to behold!"

"Well--it had been raining, and the ground was soft, so I slipped a little on the start. But I've done it time and again."