Changes and Plans
When the little dining-room was finished it was quite the prettiest room in the house, for the friendly Blossoms had painted the battered woodwork a delicate green to match the leaves in the paper; and by mixing what was left of the green paint with the remaining color left from the sideboard, clever Miss Blossom obtained a shade that was exactly right for as much of the floor as the rug did not cover. Of course all the neighbors and all the girls' relatives had to come in afterwards to see what Bettie called "the very dandelioniest room in Dandelion Cottage."
It seemed to the girls that the time fairly galloped from Monday to Thursday. They were heartily sorry when the moment came for them to lose their pleasant lodger. They went to the train to see the last of her and to assure her for the thousandth time that they should never forget her. Mabel sobbed audibly at the moment of parting, and large tears were rolling down silent Bettie's cheeks. Even the seven dollars and fifty cents that the girls had handled with such delight that morning paled into insignificance beside the fact that the train was actually whisking their beloved Miss Blossom away from them. When she had paid for her lodging she advised her four landladies to deposit the money in the bank until time for the dinner party, and the girls did so, but even the importance of owning a bank account failed to console them for their loss. The train out of sight, the sober little procession wended its way to Dandelion Cottage but the cozy little house seemed strangely silent and deserted when Bettie unlocked the door. Mabel, who had wept stormily all the way home, sat down heavily on the doorstep and wept afresh.
Pinned to a pillow on the parlor couch, Jean discovered a little folded square of paper addressed to Bettie, who was drumming a sad little tune on the window pane.
"Why, Bettie," cried Jean, "this looks like a note for you from Miss Blossom! Do read it and tell us what she says."
"It says," read Bettie: "'My dearest of Betties: Thank you for being so nice to me. There's a telephone message for you.'"
"I wonder what it means," said Marjory.
Bettie ran to the talkless telephone, slipped her hand inside the little door at the top, and found a small square parcel wrapped in tissue paper, tied with a pink ribbon, and addressed to Miss Bettie Tucker, Dandelion Cottage. Bettie hastily undid the wrappings and squealed with delight when she saw the lovely little handkerchief, bordered delicately with lace, that Miss Blossom herself had made for her. There was a daintily embroidered "B" in the corner to make it Bettie's very own.
Marjory happened upon Jean's note peeping out from under a book on the parlor table. It said: "Dear Jean: Don't you think it's time for you to look at the kitchen clock?"
Of course everybody rushed to the kitchen to see Jean take from inside the case of the tickless clock a lovely handkerchief just like Bettie's except that it was marked with "J."
Marjory's note, which she presently found growing on the crimson petunia, sent her flying to the grindless coffee-mill, where she too found a similar gift.
"Well," said Mabel, who was now fairly cheerful, "I wonder if she forgot all about me."
For several anxious moments the girls searched eagerly in Mabel's behalf but no note was visible.
"I can't think where it could be," said housewifely Jean, stooping to pick up a bit of string from the dining-room rug, and winding it into a little ball. "I've looked in every room and—Why! what a long string! I wonder where it's all coming from."
"Under the rug," said Marjory, making a dive for the bit of paper that dangled from the end of the string. "Here's your note, Mabel."
"I think," Miss Blossom had written, "that there must be a mouse in the pantry mousetrap by this time."
"Yes!" shouted Mabel, a moment later. "A lovely lace-edged mouse with an 'M' on it—no, it's 'M B'—a really truly monogram, the very first monogram I ever had."
"Why, so it is," said Marjory. "I suppose she did that so we could tell them apart, because if she'd put M on both of them we wouldn't have known which was which."
"Why," cried Jean, "it's nearly an hour since the train left. Wasn't it sweet of her to think of keeping us interested so we shouldn't be quite so lonesome?"
"Yes," said Bettie, "it was even nicer than our lovely presents, but it was just like her."
"Oh, dear," said Mabel, again on the verge of tears, "I wish she might have stayed forever. What's the use of getting lovely new friends if you have to go and lose them the very next minute? She was just the nicest grown-up little girl there ever was, and I'll never see—see her any—"
"Look out, Mabel," warned Marjory, "if you cry on that handkerchief you'll spoil that monogram. Miss Blossom didn't intend these for crying-handkerchiefs—one good-sized tear would soak them."
Miss Blossom was not the only friend the girls were fated to lose that week. Grandma Pike, as everybody called the pleasant little old lady, was their next-door neighbor on the west side, and the cottagers were very fond of her. No one dreamed that Mrs. Pike would ever think of going to another town to live; but about ten days before Miss Blossom departed, the cheery old lady had quite taken everybody's breath away by announcing that she was going west, just as soon as she could get her things packed, to live with her married daughter.
When the girls heard that Grandma Pike was going away they were very much surprised and not at all pleased at the idea of losing one of their most delightful neighbors. At Miss Blossom's suggestion, they had spent several evenings working on a parting gift for their elderly friend. The gift, a wonderful linen traveling case with places in it to carry everything a traveler would be likely to need, was finished at last—with so many persons working on it, it was hard to keep all the pieces together—and the girls carried it to Grandma Pike, who seemed very much pleased.
"Well, well," said the delighted old lady, unrolling the parcel, "if you haven't gone and made me a grand slipper-bag! I'll think of you, now, every time I put on my slippers."
"No, no," protested Jean. "It's a traveling case with places in it for 'most everything but slippers."
"We all sewed on it," explained Mabel. "Those little bits of stitches that you can't see at all are Bettie's. Jean did all this feather-stitching, and Marjory hemmed all the binding. Miss Blossom basted it together so it wouldn't be crooked."
"What did you do, Mabel?" asked Grandma Pike, smiling over her spectacles.
"I took out the basting threads and embroidered these letters on the pockets."
"What does this 'P' stand for?"
"Pins," said Mabel. "You see it was sort of an accident. I started to embroider the word soap on this little pocket, but when I got the S O A done, there wasn't any room left for the P, so I just put it on the next pocket. I knew that if I explained that it was the end of 'Soap' and the beginning of 'Pins' you'd remember not to get your pins and soap mixed up."
During the lonely days immediately following Miss Blossom's departure, Mrs. Bartholomew Crane proved a great solace. The girls had somewhat neglected her during the preceding busy weeks; but with Miss Blossom gone, the cottagers became conscious of an aching void that new wall paper and lace handkerchiefs and a bank account could not quite fill; so presently they resumed their former habit of trotting across the street many times a day to visit good-natured Mrs. Crane.
Mrs. Crane's house was very small and looked rather gloomy from the outside because the paint had long ago peeled off and the weatherbeaten boards had grown black with age; but inside it was cheerfulness personified. First, there was Mrs. Crane herself, fairly radiating comfort. Then there was a bright rag carpet on the floor, a glowing red cloth on the little table, a lively yellow canary named Dicksy in one window, and a gorgeous red-and-crimson but very bad-tempered parrot in the other. There were only three rooms downstairs and two bed-chambers upstairs. Mrs. Crane's own room opened off the little parlor, and visitors could see the high feather bed always as smooth and rounded on top as one of Mrs. Crane's big loaves of light bread. The privileged girls were never tired of examining the good woman's patchwork quilts, made many years ago of minute, quaint, old-fashioned scraps of calico.
Even the garden seemed to differ from other gardens, for every inch of it except the patch of green grass under the solitary cherry tree was given over to flowers, many of them as quaint and old-fashioned as the bits of calico in the quilts, and to vegetables that ripened a week earlier for Mrs. Crane than similar varieties did for anyone else. Yet the garden was so little, and the variety so great, that Mrs. Crane never had enough of any one thing to sell. She owned her little home, but very little else. The two upstairs rooms were rented to lodgers, and she knitted stockings and mittens to sell because she could knit without using her eyes, which, like so many soft, bright, black eyes, were far from strong; but the little income so gained was barely enough to keep stout, warm-hearted, overgenerous Mrs. Crane supplied with food and fuel. The neighbors often wondered what would become of the good, lonely woman if she lost her lodgers, if her eyes failed completely, or if she should fall ill. Everybody agreed that Mrs. Crane should have been a wealthy woman instead of a poor one, because she would undoubtedly have done so much good with her money. Mabel had heard her father say that there was a good-sized mortgage on the place, and Dr. Bennett had instantly added: "Now, don't you say anything about that, Mabel." But ever after that, Mabel had kept her eyes open during her visits to Mrs. Crane, hoping to get a glimpse of the dreadful large-sized thing that was not to be mentioned.
On one occasion she thought she saw light. Mrs. Crane had expressed a fear that a wandering polecat had made a home under her woodshed.
"Is mortgage another name for polecat?" Mabel had asked a little later.
"No," imaginative Jean had replied. "A mortgage is more like a great, lean, hungry, gray wolf waiting just around the corner to eat you up. Don't ever use the word before Mrs. Crane; she has one."
"Where does she keep it?" demanded Mabel, agog with interest.
"I promised not to talk about it," said Jean, "and I won't."
Miss Blossom had been gone only two days when something happened to Mrs. Crane. It was none of the things that the neighbors had expected to happen, but for a little while it looked almost as serious. Bettie, running across the street right after breakfast one morning, with a bunch of fresh chickweed for the yellow canary and a cracker for cross Polly, found Mrs. Crane, usually the most cheerful person imaginable, sitting in her kitchen with a swollen, crimson foot in a pail of lukewarm water, and groaning dismally.
"Oh, Mrs. Crane!" cried surprised Bettie. "What in the world is the matter? Are—are you coming down with anything?"
"I've already come," moaned Mrs. Crane, grimly. "I was out in my back yard in my thin old slippers early this morning putting hellebore on my currant bushes, and I stepped down hard on the teeth of the rake that I'd dropped on the grass. There's two great holes in my foot. How I'm ever going to do things I don't know, for 'twas all I could do to crawl into the house on my hands and knees."
"Isn't there something I can do for you?" asked Bettie, sympathetically.
"Could you get a stick of wood from the shed and make me a cup of tea? Maybe I'd feel braver if I wasn't so empty."
"Of course I could," said Bettie, cheerily.
"I tell you what it is," confided Mrs. Crane. "It's real nice and independent living all alone as long as you're strong and well, but just the minute anything happens, there you are like a Robinson Crusoe, cast away on a desert isle. I began to think nobody would ever come."
"Can't I do something more for you?" asked Bettie, poking scraps of paper under the kettle to bring it to a boil. "Don't you want Dr. Bennett to look at your foot? Hadn't I better get him?"
"Yes, do," said Mrs. Crane, "and then come back. I can't bear to think of staying here alone."
For the next four days there was a deep depression in the middle of Mrs. Crane's puffy feather bed, for the injured foot was badly swollen and Mrs. Crane was far too heavy to go hopping about on the other one. At first, her usually hopeful countenance wore a strained, anxious expression, quite pathetic to see.
"Now don't you worry one bit," said comforting little Bettie. "We'll take turns staying with you; we'll feed Polly and Dicksy, and I believe every friend you have is going to offer to make broth. Mother's making some this minute."
"But there's the lodgers," groaned Mrs. Crane, "both as particular as a pair of old maids in a glass case. Mr. Barlow wants his bedclothes tucked in all around so tight that a body'd think he was afraid of rolling out of bed nights, and Mr. Bailey won't have his tucked in at all—says he likes 'em 'floating round loose and airy.' Do you suppose you girls can make those two beds and not get those two lodgers mixed up? I declare, I'm so absent-minded myself that I've had to climb those narrow stairs many a day to make sure I'd done it right."
"Don't be afraid," said Jean, who had joined Bettie. "Marjory's Aunty Jane has taught her to make beds beautifully, and I have a good memory. Between us we'll manage splendidly."
"But there's my garden," mourned the usually busy woman, who found it hard to lie still with folded hands in a world that seemed to be constantly needing her. "Dear me! I don't see how I'm going to spare myself for a whole week just when everything is growing so fast."
"We'll tend to the garden, too," promised Bettie.
"Yes, indeed we will," echoed Mabel. "We'll water everything and weed—"
"No, you won't," said Mrs. Crane, quickly. "You can do all the watering you like, but if I catch any of you weeding, there'll be trouble."
The young cottagers were even better than their promises, for they took excellent care of Mrs. Crane, the lodgers, the parrot, the canary, and the garden, until the injured foot was well again; but while doing all this they learned something that distressed them very much, indeed. Of course they had always known in a general way that their friend was far from being wealthy, but they had not guessed how touchingly poor she really was. But now they saw that her cupboard was very scantily filled, that her clothing was very much patched and mended, her shoes distressingly worn out, and that even her dish-towels were neatly darned.
"But we won't talk about it to people," said fine-minded Jean. "Perhaps she wouldn't like to have everybody know."
Even Jean, however, did not guess what a comfort proud Mrs. Crane had found it to have her warm-hearted little friends stand between her poverty and the sometimes-too-prying eyes of a grown-up world.
Unobservant though they had seemed, the girls did not forget about the Mother-Hubbardlike state of Mrs. Crane's cupboard. After that one of their finest castles in Spain always had Mrs. Crane, who would have made such a delightful mother and who had never had any children, enthroned as its gracious mistress. When they had time to think about it at all, it always grieved them to think of their generous-natured, no-longer-young friend dreading a poverty-stricken, loveless, and perhaps homeless old age; for this, they had discovered, was precisely what Mrs. Crane was doing.
"If she were a little, thin, active old lady, with bobbing white curls like Grandma Pike," said Jean, "lots of people would have a corner for her; but poor Mrs. Crane takes up so much room and is so heavy and slow that she's going to be hard to take care of when she gets old. Oh, why couldn't she have had just one strong, kind son to take care of her?"
"When I'm married," offered Mabel, generously, "I'll take her to live with me. I won't have any husband if he doesn't promise to take Mrs. Crane, too."
"You shan't have her," declared Jean. "I want her myself."
"She's already promised to me," said Bettie, triumphantly. "We're going to keep house together some place, and I'm going to be an old-maid kindergarten teacher."
"I don't think that's fair, Bettie Tucker," said Marjory, earnestly. "I don't see how my children are to have any grandmother if she doesn't live with me. Imagine the poor little things with Aunty Jane for a grandmother!"