We Girls: A Home Story.

by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.

CHAPTER I.

THE STORY BEGINS.

It begins right in the middle; but a story must begin somewhere.

The town is down below the hill.

It lies in the hollow, and stretches on till it runs against another hill, over opposite; up which it goes a little way before it can stop itself, just as it does on this side.

It is no matter for the name of the town. It is a good, large country town,--in fact, it has some time since come under city regulations,--thinking sufficiently well of itself, and, for that which it lacks, only twenty miles from the metropolis.

Up our hill straggle the more ambitious houses, that have shaken off the dust from their feet, or their foundations, and surrounded themselves with green gra.s.s, and are shaded with trees, and are called "places." There are the Marchbanks places, and the "Haddens," and the old Pennington place. At these houses they dine at five o'clock, when the great city bankers and merchants come home in the afternoon train; down in the town, where people keep shops, or doctors' or lawyers'

offices, or manage the Bank, and where the manufactories are, they eat at one, and have long afternoons; and the schools keep twice a day.

We lived in the town--that is, Mr. and Mrs. Holabird did, and their children, for such length of the time as their ages allowed--for nineteen years; and then we moved to Westover, and this story began.

They called it "Westover," more or less, years and years before; when there were no houses up the hill at all; only farm lands and pastures, and a turnpike road running straight up one side and down the other, in the sun. When anybody had need to climb over the crown, to get to the fields on this side, they called it "going west over"; and so came the name.

We always thought it was a pretty, sunsetty name; but it isn't considered quite so fine to have a house here as to have it below the brow. When you get up sufficiently high, in any sense, you begin to go down again. Or is it that people can't be distinctively genteel, if they get so far away from the common as no longer to well overlook it?

Grandfather Holabird--old Mr. Rufus,--I don't say whether he was my grandfather or not, for it doesn't matter which Holabird tells this story, or whether it is a Holabird at all--bought land here ever so many years ago, and built a large, plain, roomy house; and here the boys grew up,--Roderick and Rufus and Stephen and John.

Roderick went into the manufactory with his father,--who had himself come up from being a workman to being owner,--and learned the business, and made money, and married a Miss Bragdowne from C----, and lived on at home. Rufus married and went away, and died when he was yet a young man. His wife went home to her family, and there were no little children. John lives in New York, and has two sons and three daughters.

There are of us--Stephen Holabird's family--just six. Stephen and his wife, Rosamond and Barbara and little Stephen and Ruth. Ruth is Mrs.

Holabird's niece, and Mr. Holabird's second cousin; for two cousins married two sisters. She came here when she had neither father nor mother left. They thought it queer up at the other house; because "Stephen had never managed to have any too much for his own"; but of course, being the wife's niece, they never thought of interfering, on the mere claim of the common cousinship.

Ruth Holabird is a quiet little body, but she has her own particular ways too.

There is one thing different in our house from most others. We are all known by our straight names. I say _known_; because we do have little pet ways of calling, among ourselves,--sometimes one way and sometimes another; but we don't let these get out of doors much. Mr. Holabird doesn't like it. So though up stairs, over our sewing, or our bed-making, or our dressing, we shorten or sweeten, or make a little fun,--though Rose of the world gets translated, if she looks or behaves rather specially nice, or stays at the gla.s.s trying to do the first,--or Barbara gets only "Barb" when she is sharper than common, or Stephen is "Steve" when he's a dear, and "Stiff" when he's obstinate,--we always _introduce_ "my daughter Rosamond," or "my sister Barbara," or,--but Ruth of course never gets nicknamed, because nothing could be easier or pleasanter than just "Ruth,"--and Stephen is plain strong Stephen, because he is a boy and is expected to be a man some time. n.o.body writes to us, or speaks of us, except as we were christened. This is only rather a pity for Rosamond. Rose Holabird is such a pretty name. "But it will keep," her mother tells her. "She wouldn't want to be everybody's Rose."

Our moving to Westover was a great time.

That was because we had to move the house; which is what everybody does not do who moves into a house by any means.

We were very much astonished when Grandfather Holabird came in and told us, one morning, of his having bought it,--the empty Beaman house, that n.o.body had lived in for five years. The Haddens had bought the land for somebody in their family who wanted to come out and build, and so the old house was to be sold and moved away; and n.o.body but old Mr. Holabird owned land near enough to put it upon. For it was large and solid-built, and could not be taken far.

We were a great deal more astonished when he came in again, another day, and proposed that we should go and live in it.

We were all a good deal afraid of Grandfather Holabird. He had very strict ideas of what people ought to do about money. Or rather of what they ought to do _without_ it, when they didn't happen to have any.

Mrs. Stephen pulled down the green blinds when she saw him coming that day,--him and his cane. Barbara said she didn't exactly know which it was she dreaded; she thought she could bear the cane without him, or even him without the cane; but both together were "_scare-mendous_; they did put down so."

Mrs. Holabird pulled down the blinds, because he would be sure to notice the new carpet the first thing; it was a cheap ingrain, and the old one had been all holes, so that Barbara had proposed putting up a board at the door,--"Private way; dangerous pa.s.sing." And we had all made over our three winters' old cloaks this year, for the sake of it: and we hadn't got the carpet then till the winter was half over. But we couldn't tell all this to Grandfather Holabird. There was never time for the whole of it. And he knew that Mr. Stephen was troubled just now for his rent and taxes. For Stephen Holabird was the one in this family who couldn't make, or couldn't manage, money. There is always one. I don't know but it is usually the best one of all, in other ways.

Stephen Holabird is a good man, kind and true; loving to live a gentle, thoughtful life, in his home and among his books; not made for the din and scramble of business.

He never looks to his father; his father does not believe in allowing his sons to look to him; so in the terrible time of '57, when the loss and the worry came, he had to struggle as long as he could, and then go down with the rest, paying sixty cents on the dollar of all his debts, and beginning again, to try and earn the forty, and to feed and clothe his family meanwhile.

Grandfather Holabird sent us down all our milk, and once a week, when he bought his Sunday dinner, he would order a turkey for us. In the summer, we had all the vegetables we wanted from his garden, and at Thanksgiving a barrel of cranberries from his meadow. But these obliged us to buy an extra half-barrel of sugar. For all these things we made separate small change of thanks, each time, and were all the more afraid of his noticing our new gowns or carpets.

"When you haven't any money, don't buy anything," was his stern precept.

"When you're in the Black Hole, don't breathe," Barbara would say, after he was gone.

But then we thought a good deal of Grandfather Holabird, for all. That day, when he came in and astonished us so, we were all as busy and as cosey as we could be.

Mrs. Holabird was making a rug of the piece of the new carpet that had been cut out for the hearth, bordering it with a strip of s.h.a.g.

Rosamond was inventing a feather for her hat out of the best of an old black-c.o.c.k plume, and some bits of beautiful downy white ones with smooth tips, that she brought forth out of a box.

"What are they, Rose? And where did you get them?" Ruth asked, wondering.

"They were dropped,--and I picked them up," Rosamond answered, mysteriously. "The owner never missed them."

"Why, Rosamond!" cried Stephen, looking up from his Latin grammar.

"Did!" persisted Rosamond. "And would again. I'm sure I wanted 'em most. Hens lay themselves out on their underclothing, don't they?" she went on, quietly, putting the white against the black, and admiring the effect. "They don't dress much outside."

"O, hens! What did you make us think it was people for?"

"Don't you ever let anybody know it was hens! Never cackle about contrivances. Things mustn't be contrived; they must happen. Woman and her accidents,--mine are usually catastrophes."

Rosamond was so busy fastening in the plume, and giving it the right set-up, that she talked a little delirium of nonsense.

Barbara flung down a magazine,--some old number.

"Just as they were putting the very ta.s.sel on to the cap of the climax, the page is torn out! What do you want, little cat?" she went on to her p.u.s.s.y, that had tumbled out of her lap as she got up, and was stretching and mewing. "Want to go out doors and play, little cat?

Well, you can. There's plenty of room out of doors for two little cats!" And going to the door with her, she met grandfather and the cane coming in.

There was time enough for Mrs. Holabird to pull down the blinds, and for Ruth to take a long, thinking look out from under hers, through the sash of window left unshaded; for old Mr. Holabird and his cane were slow; the more awful for that.

Ruth thought to herself, "Yes; there is plenty of room out of doors; and yet people crowd so! I wonder why we can't live bigger!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Mrs. Holabird's thinking was something like it.

"Five hundred dollars to worry about, for what is set down upon a few square yards of 'out of doors.' And inside of that, a great contriving and going without, to put something warm underfoot over the sixteen square feet that we live on most!"

She had almost a mind to pull up the blinds again; it was such a very little matter, the bit of new carpet, after all.

"How do I know what they were thinking?" Never mind. People do know, or else how do they ever tell stories? We know lots of things that we _don't_ tell all the time. We don't stop to think whether we know them or not; but they are underneath the things we feel, and the things we do.