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Title: Little Sally Waters

Author: Ethel Calvert Phillips

Illustrator: Edith F. Butler

Release date: July 12, 2024 [eBook #74022]

Language: English

Original publication: Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company

Credits: Susan E., David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE SALLY WATERS ***


[Illustration]




LITTLE SALLY WATERS




[Illustration: THE MERMAID (_page 60_)]




  Little Sally Waters

  BY
  ETHEL CALVERT PHILLIPS

  WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  EDITH F. BUTLER

  [Illustration]

  BOSTON AND NEW YORK
  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
  The Riverside Press Cambridge
  1926




  COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY ETHEL CALVERT PHILLIPS
  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Riverside Press
  CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
  PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.




[Illustration]


CONTENTS


     I. SALLY’S GARDEN PARTY                  1

    II. WHAT HAPPENED TO TILLY MAUD          15

   III. JOLLY JACK TAR                       29

    IV. TIPPY GOES VISITING                  40

     V. ANDY AND THE MERMAID                 51

    VI. MUD PIES                             62

   VII. A PRESENT FOR AUNT BEE               75

  VIII. WHAT THE TIDE BROUGHT IN             85

    IX. THE PERIWINKLE FAMILY                98

     X. THE PINK-AND-WHITE APRON            109

    XI. LITTLE RED RIDINGHOOD’S SISTER      121

   XII. SIX BROWN MICE                      135




ILLUSTRATIONS


  THE MERMAID              _Frontispiece_

  JACK TAR                             32

  AFTER THE MUD PIES                   72

  LITTLE RED RIDINGHOOD’S SISTER      132

        Drawn by Edith F. Butler




Little Sally Waters




∵

CHAPTER I

SALLY’S GARDEN PARTY


Once upon a time, and not so long ago, there lived a little girl named
Sally Waters.

She was a merry, laughing little girl, with a lively twinkle in her
bright blue eyes, a neat pair of dimples--one in each red cheek--and
the sauciest little nose that has ever been seen.

Indeed, sometimes her father called her ‘Saucy Sally.’ But that was
only his way of saying that he loved her better than any one else in
the world, except, of course, Sally’s mother.

One bright summer morning Sally sat out on her doorstep in the sun.
At her feet, half asleep, lay Buff, Sally’s plump, yellow pussy-cat.
Beside her sat Tippy, her little brown dog, his ears cocked, his nose
in the air.

But this morning Sally was not smiling. She looked so sober that Tippy
watched her carefully with his shining brown eyes. She looked so very
sober that Tippy was almost afraid that Sally was going to cry.

What ailed little Sally Waters, who was usually so merry and full of
fun?

The truth is, Sally felt lonely. Not five minutes ago she had waved
good-bye to Father and Mother as they started off for a day in the
city. And as Sally remembered what a long, long day this was sure to be
before she saw Father and Mother again, it really did seem as if Sally
were going to cry.

She quite forgot that she was to spend the day with Aunt Bee just next
door. She quite forgot that Father had promised to bring her a present
from the city. She quite forgot that she had whispered to Mother, with
her very last hug, that she would be as good as gold all day long.

All Sally remembered was that Father and Mother had left her. And a
big round tear had squeezed itself from the corner of each eye and was
actually rolling down her cheek when Tippy sprang up in the air with
such a sudden, such a comical sneeze that Sally laughed out loud. Buff
opened his sleepy eyes with a look of surprise that made Sally laugh
again, while Tippy, seeing Sally’s smiling face, jumped up and down on
the doorstep, barking merrily the while.

After her laugh Sally felt better, much better.

‘We must go straight to Aunt Bee’s, Tippy,’ said she, drying her cheeks
with the hem of her frock. ‘She will be watching for you and me, I
expect. Good-bye, Buff. Take good care of the house, unless you would
like to come with us, too,’ she added politely.

Sally knew that Buff usually chose to stay at home alone. So she was
not at all surprised to see her pussy settle himself in a sunny spot
and prepare to take a comfortable morning nap.

‘Good-bye, Buff,’ said she again. ‘Be a good pussy.’

And with a farewell pat, she and Tippy were off.

Sally might have gone to Aunt Bee’s through the garden and over the
hedge. But instead she and Tippy walked down her front path and up Aunt
Bee’s just as if she were real company come to spend the day.

As Sally had said, there was Aunt Bee waiting for them in the doorway.

‘Come in, Sally,’ she began briskly, ‘and help me make a cake. Tippy
may stay out in the garden and chase the butterflies.’

‘Will you really let me help?’ asked Sally, smiling at the very thought
and holding fast to Aunt Bee’s hand on their way out to the kitchen.
‘What can I do to help, Aunt Bee?’

‘You can beat eggs, and butter pans, and watch,’ was Aunt Bee’s answer,
as she fastened an apron on Sally that reached from her neck to her
heels.

So first of all, Sally buttered pans with might and main. Then she spun
Aunt Bee’s little egg-beater round and round and round until her bowl
of eggs was as white and frothy as cream.

‘Better than I could do it myself, Sally,’ said Aunt Bee with a smile.

Last of all she watched Aunt Bee mix the batter, and pour it into
the pans, and shut it in the oven. She watched her make the icing,
chocolate icing, too.

Then Sally stopped watching because she was scraping, scraping the
bowls and eating what she scraped. She ate a whole spoonful of cake
batter and more than a spoonful of icing.

‘You have scraped the bowls so clean I am afraid you won’t be able to
eat your luncheon,’ said Aunt Bee.

But that was not true. Sally did eat her luncheon, running out to the
pantry only twice to see whether the icing on the cake had grown quite
hard.

For the cake was to be used at a party later that afternoon.

‘We will carry a little table out into the garden, Sally, under the
black-cherry tree,’ said Aunt Bee. ‘You would like that better than
going down to the rocks this afternoon, wouldn’t you?’

Sally, you must know, lived by the sea, and almost every day went
down to play on the rocky shore. A garden party would be much more of
a treat, and Sally said so, with her arms about Aunt Bee’s neck in a
tight, tight squeeze.

‘I thought you would like a party,’ said wise Aunt Bee. ‘You shall set
the table with the dishes I had when I was a little girl, and then you
and I will sit down like ladies at tea and have the party.’

Sally pressed her hands together hard and smiled all over her round
little face.

‘This is the very nicest time I have had since--since Christmas,’ said
Sally with a gay little hop. ‘I think you are just as good as Santa
Claus, Aunt Bee.’

Then Sally had a thought.

‘Won’t Tippy have any of the party?’ asked Sally.

‘Tippy? He shall have a bone,’ was Aunt Bee’s answer. ‘That is the kind
of a party he will like, you know.’

So Sally went into the garden to tell Tippy all about the party. And as
Tippy was still chasing butterflies, Sally in turn chased Tippy round
and round, in and out the garden beds, until at last she and Tippy
could run no more and sat themselves down on the doorstep to cool off
and rest.

Now the street upon which both Sally and Aunt Bee lived was a narrow
street, a narrow, crooked little street that ran downhill to the sea
with many a twist and turn. And across the way from Aunt Bee and Sally
there stood a little house on the slope of the hill in which lived
their friend Miss Neppy Lee.

Miss Neppy was a little old lady who lived all alone, with not even a
cat or a dog to keep her company. But early every summer Miss Neppy
put a sign in her front window, a card that read ‘Rooms,’ and every
summer Miss Neppy had a paying guest or two who stayed until the
flowers had gone and the wind grew cold and autumn and winter were
close at hand.

Sally was always interested in Miss Neppy’s ‘Roomers,’ as they were
called. Very often the ‘Roomer’ would be a tall young man or a pretty
young lady who, every day, with paint box and easel, would go down to
the rocks at the end of Sally’s street to paint pictures of the sea.
They usually nodded and waved their hands at the little girl over the
way who smiled at them from her doorstep in such friendly fashion.
‘Roomers’ seemed pleasant people to Sally, and she wished with all her
heart that Mother and Aunt Bee would put signs in their front windows
and take ‘Roomers,’ too.

Now, as Sally sat in Aunt Bee’s doorway, she glanced over at Miss
Neppy’s window, where last night the sign ‘Rooms’ had gleamed in all
its black and white. And in a twinkling, Sally saw that the sign
‘Rooms’ was gone. Even more, as she looked, she saw Miss Neppy’s front
door open and a little girl slip out and seat herself on the doorstone.

She was a small girl, not quite so tall as Sally. Her eyes were brown,
a gentle brown, while Sally’s were bright and blue. Her brown hair
curled softly about her face, not at all like Sally’s yellow mop that
had to be brushed and brushed before it would even think of lying down.

The little girl looked over at Sally and Sally looked over at the
little girl. Then Sally smiled and the little girl smiled back. Next
Sally waved her hand, and after waiting a moment as if to make sure
that Sally meant her, the little girl waved her hand, too.

Aunt Bee came round the corner of the house and Sally sprang off the
doorstep to meet her.

‘Aunt Bee,’ whispered Sally in a loud voice, ‘look over there. See
that little girl on Miss Neppy’s doorstep!’

Aunt Bee looked over at the strange little girl who was watching every
motion Sally made.

‘She must have come to Miss Neppy’s last night or this morning,’ said
Aunt Bee. ‘She looks as if she were about your age, Sally.’

Sally was silent for a moment. Then she caught her aunt’s hand in a
sudden squeeze.

‘Aunt Bee, oh, Aunt Bee!’ exclaimed Sally. ‘_Do_ you think that little
girl could come to our party?’

‘Why, I think so,’ said Aunt Bee, laughing at Sally’s eager face. ‘I
will go over and speak to Miss Neppy about it.’

So over the way stepped kind Aunt Bee, and back she came, in a moment
or two, leading the strange little girl by the hand.

‘Sally, this is Alice, Alice Burr,’ said Aunt Bee, ‘and she has come
with her mother to spend the summer here at Miss Neppy’s house. Now if
you little girls will set the table, I will bring out the refreshments
for our party.’

The two little girls soon made friends as they spread the cloth over
the low table set in the cool shade of the black-cherry tree.

‘Don’t you think my Aunt Bee’s dishes are beautiful?’ asked Sally,
setting out cups and saucers in a series of gentle thumps.

Alice was putting round the plates, but she stopped to admire the gay
pink-and-white china with her head tilted on one side.

‘It is the prettiest set I have ever seen,’ said she earnestly. ‘I
always like pink flowers best of all.’

‘Now Tippy must have his bone,’ said Sally, when the table was set and
they were ready to sit down. ‘And I think I will run home for Buff and
bring him over to have a saucer of milk. It is too bad he should miss
the party just because he is not very sociable.’

So Buff was coaxed through the hedge to join the party, and Tippy was
placed the other side of the tree to gnaw his bone. The cake was cut
and passed about. Milk was poured from a tall amber pitcher into the
delicate pink-and-white cups. And Sally and Alice and Aunt Bee smiled
at one another as they said over and over again what a pleasant party
they were having under the black-cherry tree.

‘It won’t take us a moment to clear away,’ said Aunt Bee, when the
pitcher was empty and the cake half gone. ‘I think, Sally, that you and
Alice will have time to play in the garden.’

And so they did.

First Sally showed Alice all about Aunt Bee’s garden, and then they
squeezed through the hedge into Sally’s yard.

‘Here is the robin’s nest up in the maple tree,’ cried Sally, pointing
up among the leafy green boughs. ‘Can you see, Alice? Can you see the
birds in the nest? And here on the edge of the path is the hole where
the old toad lives. He comes out for a walk every night when the sun
goes down. And here is my swing, Alice. Do you like to swing?’

Yes, Alice liked to swing.

And it was while they were playing happily together that Sally heard
Aunt Bee’s voice calling,

‘Sally! Sally! Here come Mother and Father up the street!’

Sally could scarcely believe it. It seemed such a short time ago that
she had watched them out of sight on their way to the city. How quickly
the long, long day had passed!

‘I was good, Mother,’ called Sally, dancing up and down and then
running forward to fling her arms about Mother’s neck. ‘I was as good
as gold. Did you bring me a present, Father? The present you promised
you would?’

Of course Father had brought Sally her present, a pretty, white wooden
dove, whose wings flapped merrily to and fro in the wind.

Father fastened him outside the window in Sally’s room where the breeze
from the sea blew all day long.

When bedtime came Sally went to the window for a last peep at her
little white dove, and there across the way in Miss Neppy’s window
stood Alice, in her nightgown, too, ready like Sally to creep into her
little white bed.

‘Good-night, Alice,’ called Sally across the narrow street. ‘Come and
play with me to-morrow, with my bird and dolls and everything.’

‘Mother,’ said Sally solemnly, as she turned away from the window, ‘I
don’t know what I would do if Alice hadn’t come to stay at Miss Neppy’s
this summer.’




CHAPTER II

WHAT HAPPENED TO TILLY MAUD


The first thing Sally heard the next morning when she opened her eyes
was a splash and a drip, a drip and a splash.

‘It is raining,’ said Sally. ‘My new little dove will be drowned.’

But when Sally ran to the window, her little white dove didn’t seem to
be minding the rain in the least. His coat glistened in the wet like
silver, his black eyes looked blacker, his yellow bill more yellow,
while his wings whirled briskly about in the damp wind as if the gay
little fellow were really enjoying the rainy day.

‘I believe he likes the rain, Mother,’ said Sally, ‘and so do I, if I
may have Alice over to play with me.’

Sally’s playroom was up in the attic. At one end were trunks and boxes
and bundles. These belonged to Mother and were not to be touched. But
the other end was Sally’s own, and here were gathered all her toys and
treasures, large and small.

So up the steep attic stairs this rainy morning climbed Sally, followed
by Alice from over the way, who held under one arm a gay picture book
and under the other a plump, if somewhat dingy, rag doll.

‘I thought I would bring my picture book,’ Said Alice, out of breath at
the top of the stairs, ‘and my dolly, too. Her name is Tilly Maud. But
let me see your toys first.’

Sally was only too glad to walk about her end of the attic, pointing
out her toys and telling the name and history of each one.

‘Here is my rocking horse,’ said she, patting a shabby gray pony, who
had lost most of his tail, but whose eyes still glistened brown and
bright. ‘His name is Dapple Gray. And here are three of my children.
They live in this shoe-box. Their names are Dora and Nora and Flora,
and no one can tell them apart but me.’

Dora and Nora and Flora were three little black-haired dolls with china
heads and sawdust bodies. One was dressed in pink, and one in blue, and
one in green. They sat in a stiff row and smiled sweetly up at Sally
and Alice with their tiny red mouths. They all had shining, black eyes
and round, red cheeks and black boots painted on their china feet.

‘They look just alike to me,’ said Alice. ‘I don’t see how you ever
know them apart.’

‘I will tell you,’ answered Sally, ‘only remember it is a secret.’

She leaned forward and spoke softly in Alice’s ear.

‘I know them by their clothes,’ whispered Sally. ‘Dora wears pink, and
Nora wears blue, and Flora wears green. Isn’t that easy? Now come and
see my other dolls. They are asleep in the cradle.’

Sally led the way to a low, old-fashioned wooden cradle, quite large
enough to hold a real baby or two, and with a push set it swinging
sleepily to and fro.

‘It is a really-truly cradle,’ explained Sally with a nod of her head.
‘It was mine, and it was Mother’s, and it was Grandmother’s, too. But I
use it for my dolls because we have no baby who needs it now.’

‘We have no baby, either,’ volunteered Alice, ‘only Mother and me.’

‘This is Nancy Lee,’ went on Sally, lifting from the cradle a doll
dressed in a white middy blouse and dark blue bloomers. ‘She is made of
wood. Captain Ball down the street made her. He has a little shop. See,
she can bend her arms and legs, and she will never, never break.’

Nancy Lee was a sturdy, strong little doll made of wood from head to
foot, with eyes of ocean blue and a neat row of yellow curls. Her back
was as stiff as a poker, quite different from the floppy rag doll whom
Sally now lifted from her bed.

‘Here is Paulina,’ said Sally, trying to straighten the dolly’s
drooping head. ‘She is as old as I am, and almost as worn-out looking
as your Tilly Maud. But I love her even if she is dirty and old.’

‘They are the best to sleep with,’ said Alice soberly. ‘I have a white
bed for my dolls at home. But all my toys are packed away, and I have
only Tilly Maud with me here.’

‘This is my stove, and here is my doll-house,’ went on Sally, moving
round the room. ‘Father made the house for me out of a big box last
winter. And this sofa has a broken leg. It can’t stay downstairs. So
sometimes I play it is a ship, and sometimes a train. It is anything I
like. Now what shall we play this morning, Alice? You tell first what
you want to play.’

‘I would like to play “house,”’ said Alice promptly. ‘I like “house”
best of all. Tilly Maud is sick. She ought to go to bed.’

‘So is Paulina,’ returned Sally, well pleased with this idea. ‘See how
red her face is! She has measles, I think. And Dora and Nora and Flora
ought to go to bed, too. Don’t you think their faces are too red,
Alice, to stay up any longer?’

It was quite true that the cheeks of Dora and Nora and Flora were as
red as the reddest cherries that ever grew on a tree, and Sally and
Alice were of one mind in thinking that these dollies must be very ill
indeed.

‘Let us put every one of them to bed together on the sofa,’ suggested
Alice.

So all in a row the sick and suffering children were placed on the old
sofa and tenderly covered from the chill of the rainy day.

On the end lay Tilly Maud, and next to her came Paulina, both of them
long and limp and shabby, with toes that would stick out from under the
coverlet no matter how often their nurses patted them down or tucked
them snugly in.

‘We will put Nancy Lee to bed, too,’ decided Sally, ‘because she is
sure to catch measles from the other children, even if she hasn’t them
now.’

So Nancy Lee, stiff and stubby, was snuggled down beside her sister
Paulina.

Then came the rosy Dora and Nora and Flora, still smiling sweetly in
spite of being put to bed in high black boots and the only dresses they
owned in all the world.

‘Now they must have medicine,’ said Sally with spirit. ‘Here are
spoons. But we haven’t any bottles. What shall we do?’

‘One can take a cup,’ answered Alice, who had been examining the stove
and the little tin cupboard above it, ‘and the other can use this
little pail.’

So up and down the row of sufferers went Sally and Alice, armed with
their spoons and pail and cup.

‘They must have medicine every two minutes by the clock,’ said Sally,
taking from the doll-house the little grandfather clock and setting the
tiny pendulum a-swing.

‘It is very thick and black medicine,’ said Alice, stirring round and
round in her empty pail. ‘I think thick and black medicine is the
best, don’t you?’

‘Always,’ was Sally’s answer, as she lifted poor Paulina to take her
tenth dose.

‘See how nicely Tilly Maud drinks her medicine! She doesn’t even make
a face,’ said Alice, smiling proudly down on helpless Tilly Maud, who
looked as miserable as a dolly could.

‘Paulina is not so good, I am afraid,’ said Sally, with a frown and a
severe wave of her spoon. ‘She doesn’t want to open her mouth for me.
Perhaps I shall have to hold her nose, next time.’

‘How can you,’ asked Alice, ‘when she hasn’t any nose?’

‘S-s-sh-sh!’ said Sally. ‘I only said that to make her behave. I don’t
think these children are getting well fast enough, Alice. You ride
Dapple Gray for the doctor, and I will go downstairs for Tippy to come
up and be the doctor for us.’

So Alice climbed on Dapple Gray and away she rode at a great pace to
fetch the doctor, while Sally sped downstairs in search of Master Tip.

Presently back came Sally dragging with her sleepy Buff.

‘I couldn’t bring Tippy,’ she explained, ‘because he has been out all
morning in the wet and Mother wouldn’t let him come in the house with
his muddy feet. He wanted to come. He is jumping and barking at the
back door now. But Buff will have to do instead.’

So Buff was marched up and down the sofa and made to look each sufferer
in the face. But before he had time to say whether he thought his
patients better or worse, there came a loud scratching of feet, a rush
up the attic stairs, and across the room whirled Tippy, wet and muddy,
to land with a thump on the sofa on top of the whole family of dolls.

‘Mi-e-ow!’ cried Dr. Buff in a fright, and took refuge on the
window-sill.

‘Come down, Tip, come down,’ called Sally, stamping her foot; while
Alice pressed her hands together in distress as she saw the pretty
coverlet and the row of clean dollies spattered and spotted from one
end to the other with mud.

‘Come down, come down!’ cried Sally again.

But Tippy had not finished his morning’s fun.

He did jump down from the sofa. But as he jumped, he seized in his
teeth poor plump Tilly Maud who lay on the end of the row, and with the
dolly in his mouth, ran round and round the room.

At this dreadful sight Alice hid her face in her hands. Sally called
and stamped her foot. But Tippy cared not at all. He thought only of
his fun.

Now he stopped to thump Tilly Maud up and down on the floor. Now he
threw her from him only to pounce upon her again. He ran to and fro,
round about, with a look on his face ‘just as if he were laughing’
Sally said afterward, when she told Father all about it that night.

Then Sally started downstairs to call Mother.

When Tippy saw this, he rudely pushed past Sally on the stairs, and
with Tilly Maud still in his mouth rushed like a whirlwind down through
the house and out of the back door into the wet grass.

Mother could scarcely believe her eyes when Tippy, shaking Tilly Maud,
flew past her, followed by Sally, with a very red face, calling out,

‘Mother! Mother! Stop him! Mother!’

Last of all came Alice, running very fast, her eyes filled with tears,
but not speaking a single word.

‘Sally, what is it?’ asked Mother, catching Sally by the arm and
bringing her to a stand-still. ‘You mustn’t go outdoors in the wet
grass. What has Tippy in his mouth?’

‘He has Tilly Maud, Alice’s doll,’ gasped Sally, her eyes big with
excitement and her hair standing out all round her head. ‘Stop him,
Mother, won’t you? He has Alice’s doll.’

‘She is all I have,’ wailed Alice, finding her voice. ‘She is all the
dolly I have. My other dolls are packed away at home.’

Out on the back porch they all three hurried, only to see naughty Tippy
racing round and round in the grass, flinging Tilly Maud up in the air,
dragging her along the ground, and then running as hard and fast as
ever a little brown dog could run.

Mother stepped inside and back she came with a broom. Tippy rolled his
eye up at the porch. He saw the broom.

With one great fling he tossed Tilly Maud up in the air, and then off
rushed Tippy and out of sight before you could say ‘Jack Robinson.’

At a nod from Mother down the steps darted Sally, but, oh! what a sad
dolly it was that she brought back and laid on the porch at Mother’s
and Alice’s feet.

Dirty, wet, bedraggled, torn!

Tears sprang to Sally’s eyes and tears rolled down Alice’s cheeks as
they looked at poor, miserable Tilly Maud lying there.

Even Mother’s face grew sober for a moment. Then she stooped and
tenderly raised Tilly Maud from the ground.

‘The first thing to do is to dry Tilly Maud,’ said Mother. ‘It may be,
when she is dry and cleaned, that she will be fit to play with again.
And the next thing to do is to put on our hats and coats and rubbers
and go down the street to Captain Ball’s.’

‘Captain Ball’s? What for?’ asked Sally.

Alice, winking away a tear, listened to what Mother had to say.

‘To buy a new doll for Alice,’ was Mother’s answer.

‘A Nancy Lee?’ cried Sally, spinning round on one toe. ‘Mother, will
you buy Alice a Nancy Lee?’

‘If that is the doll Alice wants,’ said Mother, with a smile at Alice’s
April face.

‘Do you?’ asked Sally, catching her friend by the arm. ‘Do you want a
Nancy Lee like mine?’

And Alice, with shining eyes, answered, ‘I would rather have a Nancy
Lee than any other doll in all the world.’




CHAPTER III

JOLLY JACK TAR


Captain Ball kept a toy shop, and all he had for sale were dolls and
ships.

He fashioned the toys himself, carved out of wood by his keen
jack-knife and painted to suit his own fancy, while his sister, Miss
Betsy Ball, made the clothes for the dolls and the sails for the ships
quite as well as any dressmaker or sailmaker in town.

Captain Ball’s dolls and ships were popular with the children of
Seabury. Almost every little boy owned a ship. Almost every little girl
owned a doll.

So the Captain was not at all surprised when Sally and Alice, followed
by Mrs. Waters, stepped into his front room, which was toy shop and
work room in one.

‘Well, Sally,’ said the Captain, laying down the paint-brush with which
he was putting a pair of pretty red lips on a doll; ‘well, Sally, and
how have you been this summer?’

‘I have been well,’ answered Sally, shaking hands with the Captain,
‘but this is Alice, and she isn’t well at all, because this morning
Tippy ruined her doll. It is the only doll Alice has with her here, so
we have come down to buy a Nancy Lee for her, just like mine.’

‘Too bad, too bad,’ said the Captain, shaking his head over naughty
Tip, ‘but such accidents will happen. Now, I have three Nancy Lees this
morning for Alice to choose from, one with brown hair, one with black
hair, and one with yellow curls. And here is a brand-new little Jack
Tar, finished only yesterday, in case she would like a boy doll for a
change.’

The Captain waved his hand toward a low shelf where the dollies sat
in an orderly row, and turned to talk to Mrs. Waters, while Alice and
Sally made their choice.

As the Captain had said, there was a Nancy Lee with brown curls, a
Nancy Lee with black curls, and a Nancy Lee with golden curls like the
one Sally had at home. Each wore a spotless white middy blouse with
trimmings of blue and a pair of dark blue bloomers. There was also one
boy doll with a yellow crop of boyish curls and the same blue eyes with
which the Captain had graced all the Nancy Lees. He was dressed very
much like the girls, except that a tiny handkerchief peeped from a
mannish pocket in his blouse.

‘Which do you like best?’ whispered Sally.

Alice whispered back, ‘I don’t know.’

But after a pause she said, ‘I think that I like the boy best, because
I never have had a boy doll. Have you?’

‘No,’ returned Sally, ‘I never have. And, if we play together, it will
be much better if you have a boy and I have a girl, instead of having
them just exactly alike.’

‘I think his name is pretty, too,’ said Alice thoughtfully. ‘Jack Tar.’

‘That means a sailor,’ said Sally, who was wise in ways of the sea.
‘And Nancy Lee means a sailor girl, you know. There is a song about
her. Father whistles it.

  ‘“See, there she stands
    And waves her hands
    Upon the quay,
    And every day
    When I’m away
    She’ll watch for me,”’

sang Sally. ‘That is the song about Nancy Lee.’

‘His clothes are just as pretty as Nancy’s,’ said Alice, whose heart
was plainly set upon jolly little Jack Tar. ‘Aren’t they?’

‘Every bit as pretty,’ agreed Sally. ‘And I will tell you something. If
ever you wanted him to have different clothes, you could just put them
on him and turn him into a girl, and I don’t believe he would ever know
the difference. Only don’t let him hear us talking about it.’

And Sally put her finger to her lip and looked the other way for a
moment, in case Jack Tar should have been trying to hear what she said.

[Illustration: JACK TAR]

So Jack Tar was chosen to go home with Alice, and once the choice was
made, the girls felt free to wander about and look at the Captain’s
ships, of which there were every kind and color that a little boy would
care to own.

There were sail-boats and row-boats, yachts and schooners, fishing
smacks and dories, even a little warship and a tiny submarine. They
ranged in color from gayest red and blue and yellow to the sober gray
of the small man-o’-war.

Before they were halfway round the room, Sally and Alice had almost
begun to wish that they were little boys.

‘I could sail a boat as well as a boy,’ said Sally in a low voice.

‘So could I,’ returned Alice, ‘but I don’t want to. I would rather play
with Jack Tar.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Sally in haste, ‘so would I. But perhaps some day
Father will buy a ship for me, too.’

The rain had ceased. A watery sun was shining and patches of blue sky
were showing here and there.

As they stepped out of the Captain’s shop they could hear the noise of
the sea rushing up among the rocks at the back of the Captain’s house.
‘Let us go home along the shore, Mother,’ begged Sally. ‘Alice came
only yesterday and she hasn’t seen the ocean yet at all.’

So Mother and Sally and Alice, carrying Jack Tar, walked home along the
rocky shore. The sea breeze blew their hair about their ears. The waves
thundered up among the rocks and broke into creamy foam. The boats in
the harbor danced up and down and bobbed about on the tossing gray
water.

Then, suddenly, the sun shone out, warm and golden, and turned the
whole world into blue and white. Blue sky, blue waves, white boats, and
great white clouds!

‘Oh, look, look!’ cried Alice, standing quite still in pleasure at the
beautiful sight.

‘When the tide goes out and we can climb down among the rocks, we find
all sorts of things in the little pools, don’t we, Mother? Seaweed, and
periwinkles, and little crabs, and jellyfish. Sometimes we go to the
beach, and play in the water and dig in the sand and find shells, pink
and lavender and blue. Oh, I am so glad that you have come to stay!’

And Sally squeezed Alice’s arm so violently in her gladness that Jack
Tar was only just saved from a tumble to the street.

Once home, Mother went over the way to call on Miss Neppy and to meet
Alice’s mother, she said.

So Sally with Nancy Lee, and Alice with Jack Tar walked up and down and
up and down the street.

Aunt Bee passed by on her way home from market, and stopped to hear all
that had happened that day.

She learned of Tippy’s wrongdoing, of poor Tilly Maud’s fate. She
admired Jack Tar and agreed that he might be turned into a girl at a
moment’s notice, and without the least harm to his feelings, too.

‘Really the most boyish thing about him is his hair,’ said Aunt Bee.
‘And if he wore a little cap or a ribbon I don’t believe Captain Ball
himself could tell whether he were Jack Tar or Nancy Lee.’

‘But I like him to be a boy,’ said Alice. ‘I like a boy baby and a boy
doll just as well as girls.’

‘And so do I,’ said agreeable Aunt Bee.

Presently the dolls grew sleepy, or so their mothers said, and down
on the doorstep, now dry in the sun, sat Sally and Alice, to give the
children a nap.

‘There is Buff,’ said Sally in a low voice, ‘up on the window-sill
asleep in the sun.’

‘I wonder where Tippy is,’ inquired Alice, whose tender heart held no
wrath against Tip, especially now that little Jack Tar lay sleeping in
her lap.

‘I wonder, too,’ said Sally.

‘Tippy! Tippy!’ she called softly.

There was no answer. Tippy did not hear. So putting Nancy Lee down on
the edge of Alice’s dress, Sally tiptoed off round the corner of the
house.

Alice heard her calling, ‘Tippy! Tippy! Tip!’

But back came Sally, shaking her yellow head.

‘He isn’t anywhere. He doesn’t answer,’ said she. ‘I wonder what Mother
will say when she comes home.’

What Mother said was that she thought Tippy was probably taking a nap.

‘Or else he has gone off to play somewhere,’ said she. ‘He knows he was
a naughty dog. He will be back at dinner time. Wait and see.’

But the long day passed and still Tippy did not come.

Father came home, dinner was over, bedtime drew near.

‘Do you think he is lost, Father?’ asked Sally for at least the tenth
time.

‘No, I don’t think he is lost,’ answered Father patiently. ‘I think he
will come home again.’

‘What do you think, Mother?’ asked Sally, as Mother at last tucked her
in bed. ‘I don’t feel as if I could go to sleep and not know where
Tippy is. Mayn’t I stay up and watch for him, Mother?’

But at this idea Mother shook her head.

‘Set your little white dove to watch for him,’ suggested she. ‘He can
see so far up the street that he would know the moment Tippy turned the
corner.’

‘I will,’ said Sally, springing out of bed. ‘I am glad you thought of
that, Mother.’

‘Now, Snow White,’ said Sally in the window, for so she had named her
little white bird, ‘you watch for Tippy, and when you see him you give
the loudest Squawk! you can to wake me up. Will you do that, Snow
White? Do you promise?’

And to her great delight the dove winked his shining black eyes and
nodded his little white head.

‘At least I _think_ he did,’ said Sally to Mother, as she climbed back
into bed.




CHAPTER IV

TIPPY GOES VISITING


Mother was quite right in saying that Tippy knew he had been a naughty
little dog. When he rolled his eye up at the porch and saw Mother with
the broom in her hand, Tippy knew that it was time for him to drop
Tilly Maud and to keep out of sight for a while.

So with a jump, and a whirl, and a push through the hedge Tippy dashed
across Aunt Bee’s garden, round the corner, and up the narrow, crooked
street.

Tippy felt lively this morning, as we already know. The wind blew his
ears back flat against his head. His glistening little black nose
smelled all kinds of sweet odors--flower gardens, wet grass, damp
sticks and leaves. His shining brown eyes saw many sights--puddles,
and men, a lady or two, birds catching worms, a butcher’s boy, with a
basket, whistling a tune.

Though the ground was wet and the sky was still gray, to Tippy it was
the gayest kind of a morning.

‘I could run and run and run forever,’ said Tippy to himself.

And that is just what he did do, run and run and run, until at last,
when Tippy stopped to draw a long breath, he stood in a strange street
where he had never been before. He didn’t know in the least where he
was nor how to get home to Sally’s house again.

But Tippy didn’t mean to go home for a long, long while. He meant to
stay away until Sally had forgotten all about Tilly Maud or until he
had forgotten about Tilly Maud himself.

At any rate he meant to stay just where he was until he found out what
was the matter with the little boy who at this moment flung open the
door of the house before which Tippy was standing and ran with a scream
straight down the path to the street.

The little boy’s face was red and he flung his arms about as he ran,
and when he reached the street he turned around and ran right back to
the porch steps again. There he jumped up and down, screaming all the
while, and ran his fingers through his hair until it stood out all
round about his head.

This was a tantrum, Tippy knew, because Sally sometimes had them, just
like this. She, too, screamed and jumped up and down and even ran her
fingers through her hair.

‘I shan’t leave here until I find out what this tantrum is about,’
thought curious little Tip.

And slowly, very slowly, he crept through the half-open gate and over
the grass toward the wide porch steps.

Now the little boy’s mother had come out to him, and in the doorway,
half hiding behind the door, there stood a tall, tall man.

‘Andy, stop crying and let me speak to you,’ said the little boy’s
mother.

But Andy only screamed the louder and began to whirl himself round like
a top.

‘Oh, Andy, stop, stop,’ said the little boy’s mother again. ‘Oh, what
shall I do with you?’

Tippy knew very well what Sally’s mother would have done, but he
wouldn’t have told, if he could. He didn’t want to see Andy whisked off
to bed, even though it would have cured the tantrum in a trice.

But just then Andy found his voice.

‘I won’t be sick!’ shouted Andy, still flinging his arms about. ‘I
won’t go to bed! I won’t take medicine! I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!’

When he heard this, the man behind the door poked his head out and
spoke to Andy’s mother.

‘Tell him he won’t have to go to bed,’ he called in a loud voice. ‘Tell
him that he won’t have to take medicine, and that he won’t be sick.’

‘There, Andy, listen to what the Doctor says,’ said Andy’s mother. ‘You
won’t have to go to bed, you won’t have to take medicine, and you won’t
be sick.’

At this good news Andy stood still and stopped screaming.

In the quiet the Doctor called again, ‘Keep him away from other
children for a few days and tell him to forget that he has chicken-pox.
Tell him to play with that nice little dog standing there at his feet.’

Then the Doctor disappeared, and Andy’s mother followed him into the
house.

Andy looked down at Tippy and Tippy looked up at Andy, and that is how
Andy and Tippy knew one another.

Next, Andy sat down on the steps, and after Tippy had barked two or
three times just to show that he was friendly, he snuggled up close to
Andy’s side.

‘Good doggie!’ said Andy, patting Tip. ‘Good doggie! Good dog!’

This was very pleasant for Tip to hear. Sally surely would not call him
‘good doggie’ this morning, if he were at home.

So wagging his tail as hard as ever he could, Tip made up his mind
that he would pay Andy a little visit.

‘I won’t stay too long,’ thought Tip to himself, ‘just long enough to
make Sally glad to see me when I do go home.’

Now Tippy meant only to spend the afternoon. He didn’t have a notion,
I am sure, of staying all night and sleeping out of his little basket,
lined with a shawl, that stood on Sally’s back porch. If you had told
him that it would be four whole days before he would see Sally’s
friendly, rosy little face again, he would have been the most surprised
little brown dog that ever wagged a tail.

But this is how it happened. To begin with, as they sat on the porch
steps, Andy told Tippy why he had had a tantrum. And when Tip knew all
about it, he wagged his tail and looked up into Andy’s face as if he
would say that really you could scarcely blame Andy after all.

‘We came here to the country yesterday,’ said Andy, gently pulling
Tip’s ears, ‘and I have a pail and shovel, and a bathing-suit,
blue-and-white. I am all ready to play and dig in the sand. Mother and
I were going down to the beach this morning the very first thing. But
when I woke up I was covered with little red spots like this.’

Sure enough, there were the red spots, ever so many of them. Andy eyed
them rather proudly and then went on with his story.

‘So Mother sent for the doctor, and when he said I had chicken-pox I
just couldn’t stand going to bed now when I want to play. But if I
don’t have to go to bed you and I can have some fun together, Bounce. I
am going to call you Bounce. Perhaps we can go to the beach. Let’s go
and ask Mother. Here, Bounce! Here, Bounce!’

And Andy and Tip, who didn’t at all mind being called Bounce, ran into
the house to see whether they might not go down to the beach.

But though Andy need not go to bed and might play as much as he wished
all day long he was not permitted to leave his own front yard. And as
Andy would not allow Tippy out of his sight, it followed that Tippy
was forced to stay inside the front yard, too. There was a tall, white
fence all about the yard, over which Tippy could not jump, and at night
he slept on the floor beside Andy’s bed.

He did not forget Sally. Oh, no! But the days slipped by as he romped
and played and tumbled about with Andy, who would never have known that
he was ill with chicken-pox if it had not been for the little red spots.

But now the red spots were disappearing fast, and one morning Andy’s
mother, whose name was Mrs. Thomas, said that Andy might leave the
front yard and go down into the town with her if he liked.

‘And Bounce? Bounce must come, too.’

So Bounce, or Tippy, was fastened to a string, and pulling and tugging
in a way that made Andy run far more than he walked, the little brown
dog led the way down into the town. For as soon as Tippy had walked
along a street or two, he knew where he was and felt at home. And the
farther they walked and the nearer they drew to Sally’s house, the more
at home he felt. Until, as Andy and his mother and Tip were walking
through a quiet, narrow little street, Tip began to run and jump and
pull at his string so that Andy could scarcely hold him back. Then,
suddenly, he halted, with a jerk, before a gray house that stood on the
side of the hill in the midst of a gay flower garden, and opened his
mouth in the loudest, sharpest bark that Andy had ever heard him give.

‘I have come home,’ is what Tippy’s bark said, though no one understood
him at the time.

And the next moment Tippy was racing around the house to the back porch
and then to the front of the house again, barking all the while.

‘It is Tippy! It is Tippy come home! Mother, here is Tippy come home!’
cried Sally, flinging open the front door and darting down the steps
only to bump into Andy, who had run all the way round the house after
Tip, as fast as he could run.

But Sally was too excited to notice a bump. She sat flat on the ground
and took Tip into her lap for one great hug. Tilly Maud was completely
forgotten. No one gave her a thought.

Then Sally stood up and looked at Andy, and Andy looked at her, while
Tip jumped about and barked and rushed at Sally to lick her hands and
then at Andy to lick his hands.

‘I do hope you will be friends,’ was what Tippy’s face said as he
jumped from one to the other and barked and barked again.

Sally didn’t understand it. She only knew that Tip had come home. Andy
didn’t understand it. He only saw that the little brown dog, of whom he
was so fond, now found himself among old friends.

But as Mrs. Waters and Mrs. Thomas talked together, they understood
what had happened without any trouble at all.

Poor Andy! His face grew doleful as his mother explained that Tip was
Sally’s dog. He winked and blinked and swallowed hard.

But a moment later he was able to say quite cheerfully, ‘Anyway, my
spots are gone and I am going to the beach this afternoon.’

‘So am I,’ cried Sally, ‘so am I. Mother said so. Didn’t you, Mother?
Bring your pail, Andy, and we will dig together in the sand.’

‘I will. I will bring my pail and shovel,’ promised Andy.

‘Perhaps Tippy will come with us, too,’ called Sally, as Andy and his
mother started down the path.

And from the back garden, where he was joyfully digging up an old bone,
Tippy answered for himself.

‘Bow-wow-wow!’ said Tippy.




CHAPTER V

ANDY AND THE MERMAID


Tippy did not go to the beach that afternoon, but Sally and Alice did.

And no sooner were their shoes and stockings taken off and they were
comfortably settled in a pleasant place to dig, than along came Andy,
with such a happy, smiling face that it made Sally and Alice smile,
too, only to look at him.

No wonder Andy was happy, for not only did he carry a gay blue pail and
shovel, but in his arms he bore a sail-boat, a brand-new sail-boat,
fresh from Captain Ball’s shop not half an hour ago.

‘I am late,’ said Andy, smiling the broadest kind of a smile. ‘I am
late because we went to a funny little shop to buy my boat. Isn’t she a
beauty? Did you ever see a boat like her before?’

‘She came from Captain Ball’s, didn’t she?’ asked Sally. ‘I know she
did.’

While Alice, not waiting for Andy’s nod, spoke up.

‘My doll, Jack Tar, came from Captain Ball’s, too.’

‘Isn’t she a beauty?’ asked Andy again. ‘Here is her name, painted on
the side, just like a real boat. “The Mermaid” she is called, and I
know what a mermaid is, too. Mother told me.’

‘So do I,’ said Sally proudly. ‘They are little girls and their mothers
who live under the ocean, and they have tails like fish. They swim and
dive and play in the water all day long.’

‘They are very pretty, too,’ added Andy. ‘Mother said so. They wear
necklaces of shells and coral, and they have long hair twined with
seaweed. Their eyes are green like the sea, and their arms are very
white.’

‘Did you ever see a mermaid?’ asked Alice. ‘Do they ever come out of
the sea?’

Sally shook her head doubtfully.

‘I never saw one,’ she admitted, ‘but perhaps Father has. He has seen
everything. And I don’t think mermaids ever come out of the water,
because fish never do, if they can help it, and mermaids have tails
like fish.’

This satisfied Alice, but Andy had a question to ask.

‘Aren’t there any little boy mermaids like me?’ asked Andy.

‘There are men,’ said Sally, ‘mermen, you call them, but nobody seems
to think much about them. Let’s sail your boat, Andy. Have you a
string?’

Indeed, Andy had a string, a long one, tied to the bow of ‘The
Mermaid,’ and presently the children were running up and down the
beach, the gay little boat sailing bravely along, dipping and bobbing
about in the waves for all the world like the big boats anchored near
by.

‘The Mermaid’ was a bright little red-and-white sail-boat, with her
name standing out strongly in green. The Captain liked gay colors,
you see, and so did the little boys who bought his boats. Andy was
sure that he had never seen a prettier sight than his little sail-boat
dancing on the waves, and he sat alone near the edge of the water
letting ‘The Mermaid’ drift in and out long after the little girls had
gone back to their sand-digging farther up the beach.

But Andy knew how to dig fully as well as he knew how to sail a boat.
He flourished his blue shovel and fell to work with a will when he
joined Sally and Alice, who sat cool and comfortable in the shade of
the great lighthouse, that towered up and up into the air high above
their heads.

They heaped sand piles, they dug deep holes, they built a fort. They
made pies and cakes and loaves of bread, enough to stock a bake-shop.

‘We ought to have more brown bread,’ said Alice, who found that by
packing her pail with sand and turning it upside-down she made as nice
a loaf of bread as could be bought in Boston town.

‘I will make cakes,’ decided Sally, ‘because I like to mark them with
a shell. When we have made one more row we will call your mother and
Andy’s mother and my mother to come and buy. Shall we?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Alice, beating on the bottom of her pail and turning out
a fresh loaf of brown bread with pride.

But Andy shook his head.

‘I’m tired of working,’ said Andy. ‘I want to sail my boat again.’

So off went Andy to launch ‘The Mermaid’ once more, and this time he
ran with her far, far up the beach.

The waves came rolling in, and Andy laughed and dodged the spray. The
white sails of ‘The Mermaid’ sparkled in the sunlight and the gay
red-and-white hull twinkled in and out among the tumbling waves. It was
all so pleasant. The sand was smooth and hard. It felt cool to Andy’s
bare pink toes. He ran faster and faster and behind him on her string
danced ‘The Mermaid.’

Faster, faster, faster ran Andy, and then suddenly, bump! went his toe
against a great round pebble, out of his hand jerked the string, and
down went Andy on his hands and knees.

He was up in a minute. Of course he didn’t cry. But, oh! oh! out on the
waves sailed the beautiful ‘Mermaid,’ her long string streaming behind
her in the wind.

‘My boat! My boat!’ shouted Andy, and started into the water after his
ship.

But the waves rolled in so high and so fast that he ran back on the
beach.

‘Come back! Come back!’ he called, dancing up and down and waving his
arms about. ‘Come back, “Mermaid,” come back!’

It seemed for a moment as if ‘The Mermaid’ had heard Andy’s frantic
call. A great wave bore her nearer and nearer the shore. But just as
Andy ran forward, his hand outstretched to grasp the string, back
rolled the great wave carrying ‘The Mermaid’ with it out of reach.

Poor Andy! His eyes grew large with dismay as ‘The Mermaid’ slowly
drifted farther and farther from the shore. She looked so tiny, a gay
little red-and-white dot bobbing about on the sunny sea.

A lump came into Andy’s throat. He stamped his foot, but he did not cry.

Farther and farther away floated ‘The Mermaid.’ Now a wave would hide
her from sight, now she would rise, gleaming red-and-white, only to
sink from view again.

‘Good-bye,’ called Andy, the lump in his throat so big he could
scarcely speak. ‘Good-bye, “Mermaid,” good-bye.’

And, then, I almost think Andy would have cried if, quite unexpectedly,
out of the green waves, there had not risen a snow-white arm, that
caught the dancing little ship and held it firmly by the string.

Andy stared and blinked and stared again.

Yes, it was a snow-white arm--he was not dreaming--and it held ‘The
Mermaid’ fast. And the snow-white arm belonged to some one dressed in
green, who no sooner caught sight of Andy standing on the beach than,
stroke by stroke, she came swimming slowly toward him.

Where had she come from? Who could she be?

Then, in a flash, Andy knew.

It was a Mermaid, a kind, thoughtful Mermaid, rising from her home
under the sea to bring back his little ship to him again.

Nearer swam the Mermaid, stroke by stroke. Nearer danced the little
boat, growing more beautiful, more red-and-white-and-green with every
wave. And brighter grew Andy’s face until, when he and the Mermaid
were near enough to look into one another’s eyes, Andy wore a smile as
bright as the glowing sun that shone above them in the sky.

When the Mermaid saw Andy’s smile, she smiled, too--a lovely smile,
Andy thought--and waved a white hand to him in greeting.

She was now so near shore that she was halfway out of the water, and
Andy could see that she was a green Mermaid, just the color a mermaid
should be, of course, with a little green cap that fitted tightly over
her head. Andy didn’t notice whether or not she wore a string of shells
about her neck, and of course he couldn’t see her tail because she was
in the water up to her waist.

‘Is this your boat, little boy?’ called the Mermaid.

She had a sweet voice, as soft as the rush of waves on the shore in the
early morning, and when she shook the water from her eyes it fell all
round about in silver drops as water would do for no one but a mermaid,
Andy felt sure.

‘Yes, it is my boat,’ answered Andy, finding his voice at last. ‘I fell
down and dropped the string and she floated away.’

‘I thought it was yours,’ said the Mermaid. ‘She is a beautiful boat.’

And with a strong push the Mermaid sent the little boat sailing toward
Andy and up on the beach at his feet.

She waited until Andy held the boat in his arms. Then with a farewell
smile the Mermaid turned and swam swiftly away.

‘Thank you,’ called Andy, remembering his manners, ‘thank you, Mermaid.’

A wave from a white, white hand was his only answer, and in a moment
the little green cap was lost to Andy’s sight in the moving green water.

‘She has gone down home to tell the little mermaids about it,’ thought
he. ‘I must go and tell Mother and Sally and all of them about it, too.’

Sally and Alice, surrounded by loaves of Boston brown bread, by pies
and cakes, were slowly putting on their shoes and stockings when Andy,
hot and out of breath, came running toward them.

‘Oh! Oh!’ gasped Andy, sitting down hard upon the sand. ‘I have seen a
mermaid. She saved my boat.’

That was the way Andy began his story.

And when he had finished he said it over again.

‘I have seen a mermaid, all but her tail,’ said Andy.

‘Oh, I do wish I could have seen her tail,’ said he.




CHAPTER VI

MUD PIES


Sally sat out in the back garden making mud pies.

‘Sand pies are cleanest,’ said Sally, ‘but mud pies are rich.’

Indeed, they were rich-looking pies that Sally had spread on a board
before her in the sun. Some of them were ornamented with tiny white
pebbles, some of them were crimped round the edges like a real crusty
pie. But all of them were as smooth as patting could make them, because
patting was the part of mud-pie making that Sally liked best of all.

‘I like to mix and I like to stir,’ said Sally, ‘but, oh! I love to
pat.’

This morning it looked as if Sally had done a great deal of patting.
Her hands were black and sticky and her romper was well spattered all
up and down the front.

But how could Sally help this when she was stirring up a great bowlful
of thick brown mud?

‘I will make a big cake, I think, for Paulina,’ decided Sally. ‘Perhaps
it will be a birthday cake with little sticks for candles.’

So round and round in the battered bowl went the old tin spoon, and out
of Sally’s little blue watering-can came the water in a lively shower.
Sally stirred and stirred and added more dirt.

‘It is too thin,’ said Cook Sally. ‘It is like jelly. I shall have to
dig more dirt from this hole.’

But before Sally could even turn round she heard Mother’s voice calling.

‘Sally! Sally!’

Down went the spoon and up rose Sally. It was too bad to be
interrupted, but when Mother called there was nothing to do but to go.

‘Well, Cooky!’ said Mother from the back porch steps. ‘You do look like
black Dinah.’

For by this time there were smudges of mud on Sally’s cheeks and even
on the tip of her nose.

‘It is a birthday cake for Paulina,’ explained Sally. ‘Mother, would
you put pebbles on it for trimming or candles of little sticks?’

‘You won’t have time to make the cake this morning, Sally,’ said
Mother. ‘You know I am going to have company at luncheon, and you must
be washed and dressed at once.’

Yes, Sally remembered that Mother had told her of the two friends who
were coming from the city to-day to have luncheon with Mother and Aunt
Bee. Sally herself was to sit at the table and was to be ‘as quiet as a
mouse and as polite as a lady.’

Those were Mother’s own words, and Sally meant to do just what Mother
said.

‘What dress am I to wear?’ asked Sally, as scrubbed and brushed, she
stood waiting for Mother to slip her frock over her head.

‘It really doesn’t matter what dress you wear, answered Mother,
stepping into Sally’s closet, ‘so long as you yourself are clean and
good.’

‘If it doesn’t matter, then,’ replied Sally, ‘I think I should like to
wear my new white dress. I think it is the very prettiest dress I have
ever seen.’

So Mother, laughing, Sally didn’t quite know why, put on the new white
dress, and Sally soon settled herself on the back steps to wait for the
guests to arrive.

Mother and Aunt Bee were going to the train to meet them, and Sally was
to take care of the house until they came home again.

‘But I will lock the doors,’ said Mother, ‘so that you won’t have to
think of the house. Then, if you grow tired of sitting on the steps,
you may go and swing, if you like. But keep yourself clean, Sally,’
said Mother, in a warning voice, ‘keep yourself clean.’

‘I will,’ promised Sally earnestly, ‘I will.’

So Mother and Aunt Bee, who, like Sally, was dressed in a pretty new
white frock, rode away in Aunt Bee’s little car, and for a long time,
perhaps as much as two minutes, Sally sat still on the steps.

Then she stood up and practiced making a curtsy.

‘This is the way I will do when the ladies come,’ said she.

She sat down again and wished that the door were open, so that she
might bring Paulina out to hold on her lap and talk to her for a while.

‘I could tell her about the birthday cake,’ thought Sally. ‘Oh, I wish
I could get in the house and bring her out.’

Sally stood up and pulled at the screen door. It was firmly hooked, and
the wooden door behind it was locked, Sally knew.

‘The front door is locked, I am sure,’ said she to herself. ‘What shall
I do? I know. I will just walk down and look at my pies. I won’t touch
them, not even with my little finger, for Mother said to keep clean.
But it can’t do any harm to look at the pies, can it? Just to _look_ at
them, you know.’

Oh, Sally, Sally! If only the big brown-and-gold bumble bee, humming
over the roses, could have droned, ‘Sally, keep away from those mud
pies.’ If only the birds, flying high in the sky, could have chirped,
‘Sally, keep away from those mud pies.’ If only Snow White, Sally’s
little wooden dove, could have warned her away. But Snow White was
fastened to Sally’s window-sill in the front of the house, so of course
he couldn’t know what Sally was about. And Buff was asleep on the
window-sill, and Tippy was tied in Aunt Bee’s cellar. There was really
no one to keep Sally away from those mud pies.

So off ran Sally to the end of the garden, where, baking in the sun,
lay her row of pies.

Sally counted them.

‘There are four big pies,’ counted Sally, ‘and five little ones, and
two crooked little cakes that I must make over again to-morrow, if I
can.’

Next, daintily holding back her white skirts, Sally stepped over toward
her bowl and spoon and watering-can that were lying where she had left
them when Mother called.

‘How I would love to stir this jelly round just once,’ said Sally,
looking longingly at the big bowl of soft, brown mud. ‘But I don’t
suppose I ought.’

Slowly Sally stretched out her hand toward the spoon, but at that
moment a large and hungry mosquito lighted on the back of Sally’s neck.

‘Oh!’ cried she, and gave a little jump.

Poor Sally! If she had jumped to the right or to the left or even
backward, nothing would have happened at all. But instead of that,
Sally jumped forward. She stepped on the spoon, it turned over under
her foot, and down she went with a splash! right into the bowlful of
soft, brown ‘jelly.’

‘Mother!’ cried Sally in a piteous voice, ‘Mother!’ and struggled to
her feet.

Mother was far away, Sally well knew, but who else was there to save
her from this dreadful plight?

The new white dress was covered with mud, wet and soft black mud.
Muddy were Sally’s shoes and stockings, muddy were her knees.

Sally looked at herself in dismay. Then she began to cry. She put her
hands up to her face, she cried and rubbed, she rubbed and cried.

And when Sally put her hands down, you could call her nothing but a
black-a-moor. Instead of a pink-and-white little girl, dressed in a
fresh white frock, there stood in Sally’s back garden a black child,
only faintly streaked with white, who stood first on one foot and then
on the other, because she simply didn’t know what else to do.

Where could she go? Who would help her? What would the company think?
And what, oh! what, would Mother say?

At the thought of Mother, Sally fairly danced up and down.

‘Oh! Oh!’ wailed Sally, remembering how Mother had told her to be ‘as
quiet as a mouse and as polite as a lady.’ ‘Oh! Oh! Oh!’

How could a wet, uncomfortable black-a-moor be ‘as quiet as a mouse
and as polite as a lady’? It simply couldn’t be done.

I really do not know what would have happened next if, just then, Sally
had not heard some one unlocking the back door.

Then came Mother’s voice calling, ‘Sally! Sally!’

Sally didn’t stir. She was hidden from the house by a great forsythia
bush, whose branches, long and slender, trailed upon the ground.

Mother called once more and then went into the house.

Presently, out came Aunt Bee, in her pretty white frock, looking for
Sally.

She walked down to the swing: no Sally there. She stood still and
looked about her. Sally made herself as small as ever she could. But
did Aunt Bee catch a glimpse of her behind the bush?

At any rate, Aunt Bee turned and came straight toward Sally. And what
do you think Sally did? Down on the ground she went in a little heap
and crawled under the forsythia bush. There she rolled herself into a
ball and waited.

Nearer came Aunt Bee, nearer and nearer, until she reached the bush.
Sally could feel her stop and look at the mud pies in a row, at the
overturned bowl, at the great muddy spot in the grass.

Then Aunt Bee stooped and looked under the bush. For a long time she
didn’t say a word, and Sally kept her head down and her eyes shut tight.

At last Sally opened one eye. She stole a glance at Aunt Bee. Aunt
Bee’s face was very red, and Sally couldn’t tell whether she were going
to laugh or to cry.

Either way it would be dreadful. It would break Sally’s heart to make
Aunt Bee cry, but she simply couldn’t bear it if Aunt Bee should laugh
at her when she was in such trouble. So Sally herself began to cry
again. It was the only thing she could think of to do.

Then Aunt Bee spoke. She was neither laughing nor crying, and her voice
was very gentle indeed.

‘Sally, don’t cry,’ she whispered, ‘don’t let Mother hear you cry. She
is going to have such a nice party to-day. You and I will slip into the
house. We won’t let any one see us. And I will put clean clothes on you
as fast as I can. Come, Sally, come!’

Aunt Bee held out her hand with such a sweet, inviting smile that
Sally, miserable as she was, scrambled out from under the bush and
hurried on tiptoe after Aunt Bee into the house.

Up the back stairs they went as quiet as could be. Mother and her
friends, talking busily together, did not hear them at all. And once
safely upstairs, Aunt Bee’s fingers were so nimble and Sally stood so
still that, in less time than you might think, she was turned from a
black-a-moor into a pink-and-white little girl again.

[Illustration: AFTER THE MUD PIES]

Mother opened her eyes in surprise when Sally came walking into
the room wearing a pink frock instead of the new white dress, but she
didn’t ask any questions, not a single one.

So Sally made her curtsy, as she had planned to do. And at the luncheon
table she was ‘as quiet as a mouse and as polite as a lady,’ just as
Mother had said.

When the party was over and the guests were gone, Sally sat on Mother’s
lap and told her all about it.

‘I felt dreadfully to spoil my new white dress, Mother,’ said Sally,
when the story was ended. ‘But I remembered what you said, that it
didn’t matter what dress I wore so long as I was clean and good.’

‘Do you know who I think was good to-day?’ asked Mother, looking down
into Sally’s upturned face. ‘Some one who was ready for a party in her
new white frock, and yet who washed and dressed a muddy little girl so
that she might come to the party, too.’

‘Aunt Bee,’ said Sally quickly, ‘Aunt Bee. She was good. She was the
best in the world.’

‘I think so,’ said Mother.

‘And so do I,’ said Sally.




CHAPTER VII

A PRESENT FOR AUNT BEE


Sally was planning a present for Aunt Bee.

‘I want to give Aunt Bee a present because she is so good,’ said Sally,
‘but I haven’t anything to give. I could give her my blue handkerchief,
I suppose, only it has washed almost white. Or perhaps I might give
her the little thimble in my workbox, because I don’t like to sew very
well. Do you think she would like my thimble for a present, Mother?
Tell me what you think.’

‘I don’t believe your thimble would fit Aunt Bee’s finger,’ was
Mother’s answer.

‘I wish I could sell papers like little boys in the city,’ said Sally
next. ‘Then I would have pennies, more than I could count. But I can’t
do anything at all, and I do want to give a present to my Aunt Bee.’

‘Why, yes, you can do something, Sally,’ said Mother, with a smile.
‘You can sweep. You know how you like to sweep with your little broom.
Now every day that you sweep the doorstep clean, I will give you a
penny for it. Don’t you think you could do that?’

‘Will you really give me a penny?’ asked Sally, hopping about for joy.
‘Will you, Mother? I will sweep the doorstep as clean as a pin. I will
sweep it this very minute, too. Only, will it be a new penny?’ asked
Sally, who liked shining gold ones far better than dingy brown.

‘If I can find a new one in my purse every day,’ was Mother’s answer.

So Sally ran for her little broom, and never before had the old
doorstep known such a sweeping as Sally gave it that day.

Fortunately, Mother had a new penny with which to pay Sally, and the
shining little coin was carefully put away in a small silver box that
stood on Father’s desk.

Evening came and Sally went down to the corner to watch for Father.

‘It is for a present for Aunt Bee,’ said Sally, as, walking up the
street, she told him all about earning the penny. ‘But will I grow rich
very fast, do you think, on a penny a day?’

‘Not very fast,’ answered Father, ‘but couldn’t you do some work for
me, besides?’

‘Oh, I could,’ said Sally, squeezing Father’s hand very tight. ‘What
can I do, Father? What can I do for you?’

‘Well,’ said Father thoughtfully, standing now in the doorway and
looking down the flagged path to the street, ‘it seems to me that Tony
always forgets the weeds among the flowers along either side of this
walk. If you think you could pull them out, I will give you ten cents
toward Aunt Bee’s present.’

‘Oh, Father, Father!’ cried Sally, swinging joyfully on Father’s hand,
‘shall I begin now? Shall I get down before dinner and begin to pull
the weeds?’

‘Wait until to-morrow morning,’ suggested Father.

And as Mother thought so, too, Sally was forced to wait.

But she was up in the morning early, and after a brisk sweeping of the
doorstep, down went Sally on her hands and knees to pull out weeds with
all her might and main.

Off and on Sally weeded nearly all morning. Then she swept the doorstep
again and proudly dropped her third bright penny into the silver box.

‘I am growing rich fast,’ said Sally.

And so it seemed when she shook the silver box and the three gold
pennies rattled gayly about inside.

The next day Sally was so busy about other matters--Alice came to play
and Mother had company in the afternoon--that she was able to sweep the
doorstep only once. But she finished her weeding, and that night Father
gave her a new ten-cent piece, the brightest ever sent out from the
Mint, or so, at least, Father said.

In the evening, Sally placed her money in a row and counted her riches
over and over again.

‘Ten cents and four cents make fourteen cents.’

It grew to be almost a chant, Sally said it so many times.

‘To-morrow morning I will sweep the doorstep again and earn another
penny,’ said she. ‘That will make fifteen cents, and fifteen cents is
enough to buy anybody a present, I think.’

The next morning a final sweeping of the doorway brought the sum up to
fifteen cents. So Mother and Sally, as happy as could be, started off
for a shopping trip in town.

Going to town was different from going to the city. A trip to the city
meant a ride on the train, rather a long ride, and a home-coming so
late that after supper you must go straight to bed. But going to town
was only stepping on a bus and whirling over a country road into town,
all in the space of ten minutes or so.

Mother had a few errands to do, and Sally liked shopping so well that
she did not grow at all tired of watching Mother select blue-and-white
wool to knit ‘perhaps a scarf or a sweater,’ she was told. Mother
bought buttons, too, and thread, and a new pair of shears, sharp and
shiny.

Then her errands were done, and it was time for Sally to select her
present for Aunt Bee.

‘Hadn’t I better go to the Five and Ten Cent Store?’ whispered Sally,
who well knew how many delightful articles might be purchased for very
little money in a scarlet-and-gold Five and Ten Cent Store.

Indeed, once inside the store, there were so many objects that Sally
was sure Aunt Bee would like, that it was really a difficult matter for
her to make her choice.

Mother was patient and allowed Sally to wander about as long as she
wished, and at last her choice was made.

‘Will Aunt Bee like these, do you think?’ asked Sally, smiling upon her
purchases with pride.

And Mother, carefully looking them over, answered, ‘Yes, I think she
will.’

‘You see,’ explained Sally, ‘I bought this little duck for five cents
because I thought he would look pretty floating in Aunt Bee’s white
glass flower bowl. He can sail under the flowers, you know, and in and
out of the stems.

‘And this little pink baby is made of soap. Would you ever think it,
Mother? It looks just like a real baby to me. I thought Uncle Paul
would like to see it smiling at him when he comes home at night and
washes his hands. He so often wishes that he had a little girl like me,
and a baby is much nicer than a little girl, I think.’

Yes, Mother agreed with Sally that Uncle Paul could not fail to like
this present.

‘The soap baby cost five cents, and that left me another five cents,’
went on Sally. ‘So I bought this big, thick stick of pink-and-white
peppermint candy, all wrapped up in shiny paper, too. Aunt Bee likes
peppermints. She almost always can find one for me when I go over to
see her.

‘Are we going straight home now, Mother? I want to give my presents to
Aunt Bee as soon as ever I can.’

So the moment Sally reached home, she ran over to Aunt Bee’s with her
hands full of presents. And never was any one more surprised than Aunt
Bee when the parcels were tumbled into her lap and she was told that
they were all for her.

‘Open them, open them,’ cried Sally, ‘and tell me which you like the
best. I think they are all pretty, the prettiest presents I ever saw.’

When Aunt Bee untied the string--bright green string, Sally was glad of
that--and took off the paper, she thought just as Sally did, that they
were the prettiest presents she had ever seen.

‘You must put the duck in the water, Sally,’ said she, leading the way
into the house.

So Sally did. And away floated Master Duck under the pink roses,
looking as much at home as if he had spent all his days in Aunt Bee’s
white glass bowl.

‘Let us go upstairs and stand the soap baby where Uncle Paul will see
him the first thing to-night,’ said Aunt Bee next. ‘Do you mean him to
wash his hands with the baby, or is he only to stand and smile at Uncle
Paul?’

Sally placed the pink baby on the edge of the wash-basin where Uncle
Paul would be sure to see him.

‘I think,’ said Sally thoughtfully, ‘that to-morrow he may wash his
hands with the baby, but that the baby ought only to smile at him
to-night.’

‘I think so, too,’ agreed Aunt Bee. ‘Now suppose we go down on the
porch and break the peppermint stick and eat it.’

‘Oh,’ said Sally, ‘wouldn’t that be nice?’

So Sally and Aunt Bee sat down to a little feast which was very
refreshing to a person who had spent the morning shopping in town.

‘Isn’t it good candy?’ said Aunt Bee, passing it to Sally again.

‘Yes, it is good,’ answered Sally, carefully choosing a piece not too
small. ‘Which one of your presents do you think you like best, Aunt
Bee?’

‘All of them,’ said Aunt Bee promptly. ‘I like all three of them best.’

‘I don’t,’ said Sally, ‘I think the peppermint candy is the best
present of all.’




CHAPTER VIII

WHAT THE TIDE BROUGHT IN


Father and Sally, Andy and Alice, were spending a morning down on the
rocks.

The tide was out, and the jagged, uneven, rocky shore lay brown and dry
under the hot summer sun. Soon the tide would turn and roll in again,
dashing up higher and higher over the rocks until every one would be
forced to run farther inland to escape the wash of the waves and the
dashing spray.

But now the rocks were well out of water, and over them climbed Sally
and Alice and Andy, hunting for treasures that the sea had left behind
in little pools and hollows everywhere.

‘Here is seaweed,’ called Sally, holding up the long, wet, brown
strands. ‘It is what the mermaids wear in their hair, Andy, you know.’

‘I don’t think my mermaid wore any,’ answered Andy, who still liked
to tell the story of how his mermaid, as he called her, had saved his
boat, ‘but then her green cap was very tight and I couldn’t see her
hair. Oh, Sally, Sally, what is this?’

Andy was dancing about a little pool as he pointed to something on its
edge, as excited as if he saw another mermaid rising from its clear and
shallow depths.

‘It is a crab,’ said Sally, laughing at Andy’s puzzled face, ‘a baby
crab. See him run.’

And Andy and Sally laughed happily together as the little crab scuttled
hastily away out of sight.

‘These are periwinkles,’ explained Sally, as she came upon Alice
gingerly poking with a stick a number of small gray shells. ‘That shell
is a house, and the periwinkle lives inside. When he goes walking he
carries his house on his back.’

‘Sit very still for a moment,’ said Father, who had come up behind the
little group, ‘and perhaps you will see the periwinkles walking away.’

Sure enough, while Sally and Andy and Alice waited, scarcely winking
an eyelash nor drawing a long breath, the procession moved slowly off,
each periwinkle carrying his little gray house that did not look unlike
the gray houses of Seabury Town itself.

‘If they were walking in the sand, each one would leave a little track,
wouldn’t he, Father?’ said Sally, blowing upon the slowly moving houses
as if to make their tenants hurry along.

‘I shouldn’t like to live all alone in a house,’ said Andy. ‘I
shouldn’t like it at night.’

And Andy shook his head as he thought of his own little crib standing
close beside his mother’s big bed.

‘Poor little periwinkle,’ said tender-hearted Alice. ‘Do you think he
is ever lonely?’

‘No, indeed,’ answered Father. ‘See him walking off with his family
now. He will tell every one he meets what an exciting morning he has
had, how one little girl rapped on the roof of his house with a stick
and another one blew on him until it almost gave him a cold in his
head. Perhaps the periwinkles will give a party to-night and invite the
crabs to come and hear all about it.’

This made every one laugh, and Sally asked, ‘What will they eat at the
party?’

‘Jelly,’ answered Father promptly, ‘made by the jellyfish, of course.’

‘Oh, show us the jellyfish,’ cried Sally, jumping about on the rocks
until it seemed as if she must tumble down. ‘Show us the jellyfish,
Father.’

So Father led the way in the search for jellyfish, and when they were
found, lying in pools of water here and there, it was seen at once that
they had been well named.

‘They do look just like jelly,’ said Alice, ‘raspberry jelly, I think.’

‘But jelly doesn’t have “stingers,”’ objected Sally, keeping a
respectful distance from the jellyfish’s long, waving ‘arms,’ that
would ‘sting like a bee,’ she told her friends, if they went too near.

‘Here is a sea anemone,’ said Father, pointing to a rose-colored,
star-shaped form lying in a pool.

‘It looks like a flower,’ said Alice.

And so it did.

‘Touch it gently,’ said Father to Andy, who carried a little stick.

Very carefully Andy leaned over the pool, very gently he touched the
anemone, and in an instant what had looked like a full-blown, brilliant
flower now grew smaller and smaller, until it was not half its former
size.

‘I don’t want to touch it,’ said Alice, her hands behind her back, ‘but
I do want to fish. Miss Neppy said that if I brought a fish home she
would cook it for my dinner.’

Now Alice and Sally and Andy had come down to the rocks this morning
quite prepared to catch any number of fish.

Each one had a fishing rod made of a lilac switch out by Father from
the white-lilac bush that grew beside Sally’s kitchen door. And each
one had fastened to the rod a long piece of string, on the end of which
was tied a bent pin.

As they settled themselves in a row and prepared to fling their lines
into the sea, you might have noticed that behind each fisherman stood a
pail, a gay-colored tin pail used for digging in the sand, but equally
useful for carrying home a large catch of fish.

‘Did you ever catch anything?’ asked Andy of Sally, who had lived all
her life by the sea.

‘No, I haven’t yet,’ answered Sally truthfully, ‘but then I always
think I may.’

‘There are whales in the sea,’ volunteered Alice. ‘The Bible says so.
Oh, how I wish I could catch a whale and carry it home to surprise Miss
Neppy and Mother!’

‘Whales are too big to carry home,’ instructed Sally. ‘I have seen
pictures of them. Father, isn’t a whale too big for Alice to carry
home?’

But Father was now sitting back in the shade, reading his morning
paper, and the sound of Sally’s shrill little voice was carried away by
the breeze.

Near by the blue waves glittered and danced, while farther out at sea
sail-boats scudded before the wind, little motor boats chugged busily
past, and stately yachts moved slowly along, dazzling white in the
morning sun.

The fishermen fished on with never a bite, not even a nibble. They drew
in their lines, they bent their pins a-fresh, they tossed out their
lines again with many a whirl and twirl.

‘Do you think we will catch anything to-day?’ asked Andy, whose leg had
begun to have a ‘crick’ in it from sitting still so long.

But just then Alice uttered a cry and pointed out into the water.

‘Look! Look!’ cried Alice. ‘It is a fish, a fish out there in the
water. It is a whale, I know it is, a big blue whale.’

Sally and Andy followed Alice’s pointing finger. There on the surface
of the waves they could plainly see a number of objects, red and blue,
that seemed to be swimming toward them at a rapid rate.

‘They look like people’s heads,’ said Sally.

‘Perhaps they are mermaids,’ murmured Andy.

‘I think that first blue one is a whale,’ insisted Alice.

Now all the fishermen were so excited that they dropped their rods and
rose to their feet.

Sally waved her arms and called, ‘Father! Father!’

Andy and Alice could think of nothing better to do, so they, too, waved
their arms and shouted, ‘Father! Father!’ as loud as ever they could.

Father heard. He folded his paper, and came slowly over the rocks
toward the excited little group.

Yes, Father, too, saw the red and blue objects bounding along, dancing
lightly over the waves, and, with the children, wondered what they
were.

The tide had turned. Each wave came higher up on shore, and already an
eager bather or two had waded out into the rising water.

Soon a boy bather, gay in his red bathing-suit, saw the objects at
which three pairs of hands were pointing and waving wildly. He paddled
toward them, as they bobbed about, red and blue, and then with a laugh
that made the children laugh, too, he set them bounding faster than
ever over the waves toward the spot where Alice and Sally and Andy
stood.

‘What are they? Oh, what do you think they are?’ asked Alice over and
over again. ‘Do you think they can be whales?’

‘No, I don’t,’ replied Sally, wisely shaking her head. ‘They don’t look
like whales to me. Why, I know what they are. They are balls!’

‘Balls?’ echoed Andy in a shout. ‘Oh, I love balls!’

And balls they were, great red and blue rubber balls, and what they
were doing, sailing alone over the ocean, was a question hard for any
one to answer.

The merry little boy bather waded back and caught the balls as they
came bounding in to shore. He handed them up to the children, a red
ball each to Andy and Sally, a big red ball, hard and full of bounce,
you could see, while Alice wanted the blue ball so badly that she
couldn’t help holding out her hands for it, so of course the boy gave
the blue ball to her.

‘Where did they come from?’ asked Sally and Andy in a breath.

As for Alice, she didn’t ask any questions. She was rubbing her blue
ball dry on her dress, with an extra loving little pat every now and
then.

‘I am sure I can’t guess,’ was Father’s answer. ‘Perhaps I shall hear
something about it later on. Play with them at any rate and have a good
time.’

Now you cannot bounce a ball on sharp pointed rocks, and Sally and
Andy and Alice, each holding a ball in his arms, were making ready to
scramble back to the mainland to try their new treasures, when there
was a loud shout from the water that made every one turn round to see
what it could mean.

A small motor boat was chuf-chuf-chuffing straight toward the point
where they stood. And a man was standing in the bow of the boat waving
his hat in the air and shouting at the top of his voice,

‘My balls! My balls! They are my balls! My balls!’

As Sally and Andy and Alice each held a ball, and even the merry boy
bather had an extra ball in his hand that had just come bouncing gayly
in on the waves, it was plain that the man was talking to them.

So Father called back--he could do nothing else--‘If they are your
balls, come and get them.’

When Sally and Andy and Alice heard these words, they clutched their
balls very tightly as if they would never let them go.

But now Father was speaking again, for the man in the boat was quite
near.

‘How did your balls get in the water?’ called Father.

And the man shouted back, ‘The box they were in fell overboard and the
cover came off. I bought them for my shop over in Rockport, and I was
carrying them home when they fell overboard. I nearly lost a box of tin
horns, too.’

‘If you have a shop, perhaps you will sell these balls to me,’
suggested Father. ‘Would you like that ball you have?’ he asked the boy
bather.

But the boy bather shook his head.

‘No, I play baseball,’ said he.

And he tossed the ball he held back into the man’s boat.

‘I guess I can sell the balls to you,’ agreed the man, looking more
cheerful at once. ‘I am glad to make a sale anywhere.’

When Sally and Alice and Andy heard this, they prepared at once to go
home.

‘Let us put our balls into our pails,’ said Sally, ‘and bounce them
when we get home.’

So each ball was popped into a pail. They fitted nicely except that
they rose high over the top, round and plump and gay.

‘My pail is so full I am glad I left my shovel at home to-day,’ said
Sally, admiring the effect of her new red ball in her bright green pail.

‘Perhaps people will think we are carrying home fish,’ suggested Andy,
swinging his pail so hard it was well that his ball was a tight fit.

‘Perhaps they will think it is a whale,’ said Alice hopefully. ‘I would
love to surprise Miss Neppy and my mother with a whale.’

‘Perhaps they will,’ said Sally kindly. ‘Anyway, it is the first time
I ever caught anything when I went fishing, and I am glad it is a ball
and not a fish, aren’t you?’




CHAPTER IX

THE PERIWINKLE FAMILY


That night Sally couldn’t go to sleep.

She tossed and turned in her little white bed. She watched Snow White’s
wings move lazily to and fro on the window-sill. She had two drinks of
water. But still she couldn’t go to sleep.

‘Mother,’ called Sally, ‘Mother, I can’t go to sleep.’

So Mother came to smooth Sally’s pillow and to tuck in the bed covers
that were sadly tumbled and twisted about.

‘Shut your eyes,’ said Mother softly, with a hand on Sally’s forehead,
‘and think of little white sheep jumping over a wall, one after
another, one after another, until you fall asleep.’

Sally shut her eyes just as Mother said and tried to count the little
white sheep. But instead of jumping nicely over the wall, the little
white sheep ran round and round the field as fast as ever they could,
and this made Sally feel so wide awake that her blue eyes flew open
with a jerk and she sat straight up in bed.

‘Mother,’ she called again, ‘Mother, I want a drink of water.’

It was Father, not Mother, who came into Sally’s room this time, and he
must have known that Sally wanted company more than she wanted a drink
of water. For he lay down beside Sally on the bed and took her hand in
his.

‘Once upon a time,’ began Father, in the most comfortable kind of a
way, ‘there lived a family of Periwinkles under a rock on the edge of
the sand.’

Now a story was just what Sally had been wishing for, and at this
pleasant beginning she snuggled down in bed without a word and closed
her eyes, the better to enjoy the tale.

‘There was Mother Periwinkle,’ went on Father. ‘She stayed at home and
kept the house. There was Father Periwinkle, too. He scurried round to
find food for the family.’

‘I never saw a periwinkle scurry,’ interrupted Sally. ‘I thought they
could only creep.’

‘You never saw Father Periwinkle out hunting sand-bugs for dinner,’ was
Father’s answer.

‘No, I never did,’ agreed Sally, with the tiniest kind of a yawn.

‘Then there were the children, Peri and Winkle,’ continued Father.
‘Peri was a sweet little girl and Winkle was a good little boy. That
is, he was almost always good. But one morning he woke up naughty. I
don’t know why, I am sure, but it was so.’

Sally nodded as if she understood. No doubt she did understand, for
sometimes the same thing happened to her.

‘What did he do naughty?’ she asked with interest.

‘Everything,’ replied Father, ‘everything he could think of to do. His
mother was hurrying round, cleaning up the house, because they were
all going to take dinner that day with Grandmother Periwinkle who lived
up the beach. But Winkle wouldn’t help his mother at all. He might
have dusted or straightened up the rooms. But he didn’t. Instead, he
kept standing in his mother’s way until twice she nearly tripped over
him and fell. Then when his little sister Peri was just getting over a
crying spell--’

‘What did she cry for?’ interrupted Sally again.

‘She cried when she was having her face washed,’ said Father, ‘for
she was like some little girls I know, only instead of saying that
her mother put soap in her eyes, she said salt, for of course she was
washed in salt water from the sea.’

‘Oh!’ said Sally, hiding her face on Father’s shoulder, ‘oh!’

‘Well, what do you think Winkle did to her then?’ asked Father.

‘I don’t know,’ said Sally eagerly, lifting her head. ‘What did he do?’

‘Why, instead of smiling at Peri and trying to keep her cheerful and
happy as any good little brother would,’ went on Father, ‘he put his
head in the air and called “Whimper-cat! Whimper-cat!” and stuck his
horns out at her, which for a periwinkle is just as bad as sticking his
tongue out is for a child.’

‘Oh,’ said Sally, delighted with Winkle’s naughtiness, ‘oh, I wouldn’t
do that, would I?’

‘No, indeed, you wouldn’t,’ replied Father. ‘Well, when Peri stopped
crying, and they were both washed and dressed and their horns nicely
curled, they started off. First Winkle crawled so fast that he bumped
into Peri and knocked her down. Her shell was all covered with sand,
and right there on the beach she had another crying spell. You might
think, now, he had done enough mischief. But while his mother was
brushing the sand off Peri with her horns, he gave his little sister
another push that toppled her over into a pool of water.’

Sally drew a long breath. ‘Wasn’t he naughty?’ said she, giving
Father’s hand a little squeeze.

‘He was,’ said Father, ‘and this last push made Mother Periwinkle very
angry.

‘“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Winkle,” said she, severely.
“You know your sister sneezed three times last night. Do you want to
give her a cold in her nose? Answer me that.”’

‘Her nose,’ said Sally laughing. ‘I would like to see a periwinkle’s
nose.’

‘Well, that is what Mother Periwinkle said,’ went on Father. ‘Winkle
didn’t answer his mother at all. Instead, just to be disagreeable, he
began to creep as slowly as he could. He scarcely seemed to move. He
crept so slowly that Mother Periwinkle was afraid they would all be
late to dinner.

‘“I don’t know what your grandmother will say if we are late,” said
she, looking anxious. “Do hurry, Winkle. You are as slow as a snail.”’

‘Why, periwinkles are snails,’ spoke up Sally, opening her eyes in
surprise.

‘Of course they are,’ answered Father, ‘but Mother Periwinkle didn’t
think of that. Anyway, Winkle wouldn’t hurry. So, first, Mother
Periwinkle coaxed him.

‘“You are the quickest little Periwinkle I know. Let me see how fast
you can crawl, Winkle,” said she.

‘But that didn’t make Winkle hurry.

‘Then she scolded him.

‘“Shame on you, Winkle Periwinkle. How can you be so naughty?”

‘But that didn’t make Winkle hurry.

‘Then Mother Periwinkle thought she would give him a shaking. But
Winkle, in a flash, drew himself inside his shell where no one could
reach him, not even his mother. So after tapping on his shell with her
horns to let him know how naughty he was, Mother Periwinkle and Peri
moved along and left Master Winkle sitting alone on the sand.

‘For a long, long time he sat there, just thinking of all he had done.
He was pleased that he had found so many naughty things to do. But
presently he began to feel hungry.

‘“I wonder what Grandmother will have for dinner,” thought he. “Perhaps
I had better go now. Peri will eat everything I like.”

‘Before he had time to start Winkle heard a Voice behind him, a big,
deep Voice that said,

‘“Move on, move on there. Move along at once.”

‘This made Winkle angry. He was a tempery little snail, you see. Who
could it be, talking to him in this rude fashion?

‘He moved round, shell and all, of course, to see who it was, but the
big Voice moved round, too, and kept behind Winkle no matter how fast
he turned.

‘Round and round went Winkle and round and round went the Voice, still
calling out,

‘“Move on, move on there, move on.”

‘Winkle was so angry that he made up his mind he would be saucy and
stick out his horns, when suddenly the Voice said something that made
him change his mind.

‘“Periwinkle Pie!” said the Voice. “Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty
little Periwinkle boys. How I like Periwinkle Pie!”

‘For a moment Winkle Sat quite still.

‘“Periwinkle Pie?” said he to himself. “We never have Periwinkle Pie at
home. I have heard of Clam Pie and Lobster Pie and Fish Pie, but never
Periwinkle Pie.”

‘And then came the deep Voice again, “Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty
little Periwinkle boys! Periwinkle Pie for dinner!”

‘Winkle didn’t wait to hear any more. He started off down the beach
toward Grandmother Periwinkle’s as fast as ever he could creep.

‘He made up his mind that if Grandmother asked him why he was so late
he would tell the truth and say he was sorry, for he didn’t mean to be
a naughty little Periwinkle boy any more.

‘Periwinkle Pie! Made of naughty little Periwinkle boys!

‘Ugh! The very idea made him shake inside his shell.

‘But good Grandmother Periwinkle didn’t ask any questions.

‘They were eating dessert, seaweed blanc mange and jelly-roll,
when Winkle came in, and he slipped into his seat and began to eat
jelly-roll, too, without saying a word.

‘“Won’t you have a little Clam Pie, Winkle?” asked Grandmother politely.

‘Winkle grew quite pale and shook his head. The very thought of pie
made him feel ill.

‘Father Periwinkle was late to dinner, too. He came in soon after
Winkle, and he ate Clam Pie with relish, two shellfulls, for the
Periwinkles use shells, of course, instead of plates.

‘All the rest of the day Winkle was the very best little Periwinkle boy
along the shore.

‘That night before he went to sleep he told his mother what had
happened to him, and whenever after that he began to be naughty, all
Mother or Father Periwinkle had to say to him was “Periwinkle Pie!” to
turn him into a good little Periwinkle boy again.’

‘What was the big Voice?’ asked Sally sleepily.

Her eyes were closing and opening and closing again.

‘It was his own father,’ was Father’s reply. ‘Mother Periwinkle met him
on the way to Grandmother’s and told him how badly Winkle was behaving.
So Father Periwinkle crept up behind him and talked in a deep bass
voice that Winkle didn’t know at all.’

‘His own father,’ murmured Sally, too sleepy to be surprised. ‘Now tell
me--tell me--’

‘I will tell you good-night,’ said Father softly, as he slipped out of
the room.

And Sally didn’t answer, for she was sound asleep.




CHAPTER X

THE PINK-AND-WHITE APRON


Alice had a toothache. At least she had had a toothache, but now the
pain was gone, leaving her with a swollen cheek twice as plump as it
ought to be.

Alice quite enjoyed her too plump face. When she looked in the mirror
she couldn’t help smiling, her face was so droll. And her smile was
so funny, so twisted, so ‘fat,’ that Alice just couldn’t help smiling
again.

As for Sally, she laughed outright at Alice’s face when she came over
to play that afternoon.

‘This is the way you look,’ said she, plumping out both cheeks like two
red balloons.

In spite of all the laughing and the fun, Alice didn’t feel yet like
playing lively games.

Her mother had gone to the city, shopping, and Alice, after a little
nap, had been sitting quietly downstairs with Miss Neppy until Sally
came over to play.

But when Sally did come, Alice didn’t feel like romping in the garden,
nor going down to the beach, nor even swinging in Sally’s big red
swing. So she and Sally settled down, with a picture book between them,
in the kitchen where Miss Neppy was ironing aprons.

Sally was always interested in Miss Neppy’s aprons, and it was because
she wore so many of them. Yes, all at one time, Miss Neppy would wear
as many as four or five aprons, and Sally knew quite well, by now, what
each apron meant.

First of all, just over her dress, Miss Neppy wore a small, fine, white
apron, trimmed with lace she had made herself, and often with pockets
ornamented by tiny bows of pale lavender ribbon. This was her very best
apron, quite nice enough to wear when the minister came to call.

Over the small white apron Miss Neppy would tie a large, full, white
one, with three fine tucks above the hem. This was the apron in which
Miss Neppy would knit or sew or even sit and talk with her friends.

Above this white apron came a stout one, perhaps of white with little
blue dots or rings, or perhaps with gay bunches of pink or blue posies.
In this apron Miss Neppy did her dusting, her bed-making, her shelling
of peas and stringing of beans.

While, last of all, came a dark blue-and-white gingham apron that
covered little Miss Neppy all round about and was meant for cooking and
washing, for digging in the garden and for scrubbing the floors.

As I say, Sally had grown to know the proper use of each apron, and she
knew, too, that Miss Neppy would not feel completely dressed unless she
had the right apron on at the right time. Sally had often watched her
slip out of her gingham and her dotted aprons when a neighbor knocked
at her door, and once she had seen Miss Neppy untie three aprons
in the twinkling of an eye and, neat and trim, shake hands with the
minister who had come to call.

This afternoon Miss Neppy was ironing aprons, and for this work she
wore a white apron covered closely with fine dark blue dots.

Thump, thump went the iron, with an occasional hiss! when Miss Neppy
tested it with a Wet forefinger to see whether it were hot enough or
no. The pile of ironed aprons grew higher and higher, and Sally and
Alice looked up every now and then from the picture book to watch it
grow.

‘You must have more than a hundred aprons, Miss Neppy,’ said Sally,
watching Miss Neppy unroll and shake out a dampened apron covered over
with bright pink flowers.

‘That is the prettiest apron of all,’ thought Sally to herself.

‘Oh, no, Sally,’ replied Miss Neppy, looking at the little girl over
her spectacles, ‘I have nothing like a hundred aprons. Why, I should
think it was wicked to have as many as that.’

Presently Miss Neppy finished her ironing.

‘I’m going into the garden to pick beans for dinner, children,’ said
she.

So she tied about her waist a dark blue-and-white checked apron that
covered her all round, and with her basket on her arm went into the
garden that sloped down the steep hill toward the sea.

‘I think I will go upstairs and bring down Jack Tar,’ said Alice. ‘I
haven’t seen him since last night when I went to bed with toothache.’

So Sally was left alone.

She walked round the kitchen that she knew almost as well as her own,
and looked out of the window at Miss Neppy’s head and back bending over
the green rows of beans. Then she eyed the high pile of aprons left on
the table to air. On top of the pile lay the pink-and-white apron, ‘the
prettiest one of all.’

The next thing Sally knew she had taken the pink-and-white apron from
the pile, had unfolded it, and was shaking it out.

Of course she knew she shouldn’t touch Miss Neppy’s apron. She knew it
as well as you or I. But in spite of this, she first held the apron up
before her, and then, finding that it dragged upon the floor, she flung
it round her shoulders like a cape, and swept about the room with the
cape flying out behind.

What fun it was! How fine she felt! When Alice came downstairs she,
too, must borrow an apron and they would play ‘lady come to see.’

Round the room whirled Sally again, laughing as she went. But, alas!
for Sally and her fun!

Somehow the pink-and-white apron caught on the iron latch of the
stairway door, there was a sharp sound of tearing, and frightened Sally
looked round to see a long strip of the apron hanging limp and loose
from the rest of the hem.

She had torn Miss Neppy’s apron! What should she do?

Sally didn’t stop to think. If she had, she would have known that the
only thing for her to do would be to go straight to Miss Neppy in the
garden and tell her just what had happened.

But Sally didn’t do this.

She took off the apron in a flash, she rolled it into a ball, and then
she tucked it away in the lowest drawer of Miss Neppy’s dresser, hidden
under a pile of napkins and the big kitchen roller towel.

She was just in time, for downstairs came Alice, smiling and laughing
and ready now for fun.

‘I have been making new faces upstairs, in front of Mother’s mirror,’
said she. ‘Look, can you do this?’

But Sally wouldn’t try the new faces, nor even laugh nor smile.

‘I feel sick,’ said Sally. ‘My throat hurts. I want to go home.’

So Sally went home. She couldn’t run fast enough, she wanted so badly
to whisper in Mother’s ear the dreadful thing she had done.

But Mother had company, two strange ladies, who stayed until Sally
thought they never meant to go.

And, somehow, when at last she and Mother were alone, Sally didn’t feel
like telling. When Father came home, Sally didn’t feel like telling
him, either.

She couldn’t eat her dinner. Her throat hurt, she said. She couldn’t
swallow. She couldn’t speak.

She sat alone on the doorstep with Paulina in her arms, and was really
glad when Mother called her to come in to bed.

Once in bed, Sally lay and tossed.

Why hadn’t she told Miss Neppy? Miss Neppy wouldn’t scold. Sally was
not afraid of that. Did Miss Neppy know yet about the apron? Had she
found it, tucked away in the lowest dresser drawer?

Perhaps Miss Neppy would come straight over the moment the apron was
found. She might be coming over that very night. Perhaps she would say
that Mother must buy her a new pink-and-white apron. Did such aprons
cost very much? Sally didn’t know.

Perhaps, too, when Mrs. Burr heard of it, she would not allow Alice to
play with Sally any more. And would Miss Neppy ever love Sally after
this? If she thought it was wicked to have one hundred aprons, what
would she think of a little girl who tore one and didn’t tell!

Oh, if Sally had only told Mother and Father! If only they knew!

Oh, oh, oh!

Sally was crying and choking, when suddenly she slipped out of bed.

Downstairs she started, tumbling over her long nightgown, slipping and
catching the banisters at every step.

In astonishment Father looked up from his paper and Mother from her
sewing to see Sally in the doorway, the tears rolling down her cheeks.

‘I tore Miss Neppy’s apron,’ sobbed Sally. ‘I tore it and I hid it in
the dresser drawer. I played with her apron, and I tore it and I didn’t
tell.’

And Sally fairly danced up and down, she felt so miserable and unhappy
about it all.

But after a moment or two, with Sally safe on Father’s lap, and Mother
kneeling on the floor, holding both hands in hers, Sally was able to
stop crying and to tell all that had happened that afternoon.

When she had quite finished, Father said, ‘Suppose we go straight over
to Miss Neppy’s and tell her now.’

Sally nodded. It was just what she wanted to do.

So Mother ran for Sally’s slippers and long blue coat, and Father
carried her over the way to where Miss Neppy sat alone by her front
window, rocking and knitting and humming a little song.

Miss Neppy, when she heard Sally’s story, was very much surprised.

‘Land sakes!’ exclaimed Miss Neppy, ‘I never missed that apron when
I put the others away. And I left it on the top of the pile, too,
because, when I ironed it, I saw that the hem was ripped. Go get the
apron, Sally, and let us look at it, do.’

Out of the lowest dresser drawer Sally pulled the apron, all crumpled
into a ball. And, would you believe it, when Sally and Miss Neppy and
Father looked at it, the apron was not torn at all, the hem was only
ripped. It seemed too good to be true.

‘Mother will mend it,’ said Sally joyfully. ‘She told me to bring it
home with me. Mother will mend it, Miss Neppy.’

And Sally put both arms about Miss Neppy’s neck and gave her a tight,
tight hug.

In the morning, bright and early, Sally ran over to Miss Neppy’s again,
with the apron nicely mended and freshly ironed in her arms.

‘Next time I will tell the very first thing, Miss Neppy,’ said Sally,
smiling up into her friend’s face.

Miss Neppy smiled back.

‘I would,’ said she. ‘Never keep a secret like that again. And, Sally,
there is a peach for you on the window-sill. Don’t spill it on your
dress.’




CHAPTER XI

LITTLE RED RIDINGHOOD’S SISTER


The postman was coming up the street and Sally stood on the doorstep
waiting for him.

His whistle sounded loud and shrill, slowly, house by house, he drew
near, and at last with a smile and a tap on Sally’s head, he put a
letter into her hands and bade her give it to her mother before she
lost it.

This was an old joke between the postman and Sally that never failed to
make them both laugh.

‘Just as if I would lose a letter,’ thought Sally to herself as she
went into the house, ‘when I am almost six years old.’

‘Mother,’ she called, climbing the stairs, ‘Mother, here is a letter
for you.’

And as Mother dropped her sewing into her lap, Sally placed the letter
squarely in her mother’s hands.

‘There now,’ said she with a triumphant nod, ‘I didn’t lose that
letter, did I?’

Mother absently shook her head. She was reading her letter and smiling
as she read.

‘Who wrote it?’ asked Sally, pressing against Mother’s knee.

‘Aunt Sarah Waters,’ was Mother’s reply.

‘My Aunt Sarah?’ demanded Sally. ‘What does she say about me, Mother?
What does she say about me?’

‘She is writing about your birthday,’ answered Mother. ‘She has made
a funny mistake. She thinks that to-morrow is your birthday, Sally,
instead of a whole month away. And she wants you to buy your own
birthday present this year, because she is in the country, far away
from any shop, and cannot buy it for you herself.’

Sally’s face grew very bright. A present from Aunt Sarah, and a present
that she might choose her very own self! She leaned forward suddenly
and placed a kiss on Mother’s chin. She was so happy she felt that she
must do something to show it.

‘What shall I buy, Mother?’ asked Sally, her cheeks red with
excitement. ‘What shall I choose? I want a tea-set and a doll’s piano
more than anything else, but I would like a farmyard, too, with little
cows and pigs and ducks like the new one Alice has, or perhaps a big
bag full of marbles like Andy’s. I could shoot marbles just as well as
Andy. I know I could.’

‘We will think about it,’ answered Mother. ‘There is plenty of time. It
is a whole month, four long weeks, before your birthday, remember.’

‘But, Mother,’ began Sally, in great surprise, ‘but, Mother, I shan’t
wait a whole month for my present, shall I? Won’t we go and buy it
to-morrow? I don’t want to wait, Mother. I don’t, I don’t.’

Sally’s face was no longer bright. It had clouded over, and her under
lip was thrust out as if she might be going to cry.

‘Why, Sally,’ answered Mother gently, ‘I hardly know what to say.
To-morrow isn’t your birthday, you know. If you bought a present now
from Aunt Sarah you wouldn’t have one when the real birthday came.’

‘Yes, I would, Mother,’ urged Sally, winking hard. ‘I would have the
one I would buy to-morrow. I won’t lose it or break it or let Tippy
play with it. I will be so careful. Aunt Sarah wants me to buy it
to-morrow. She says so in her letter. You know she does.’

Sally gazed so anxiously up into her mother’s face that Mother thought
for a moment and then said cheerfully,

‘This is what we will do, Sally. To-night we will tell Father all about
it and whatever he says we will do. Now run over to Aunt Bee’s with
this card of buttons. She left them here yesterday. And don’t stay too
long, Sally. Come home soon.’

What would Father say to-night? Was she to buy her present now or to
wait four long, long weeks? Sally could think and talk of nothing else.

‘If I am very good all day long, don’t you think Father will say, “Buy
your present now?”’ Sally asked Aunt Bee, and Aunt Bee thought it
likely that he would.

Then Sally went over to visit Alice, and she and Alice talked and
talked about the present that might be bought the very next day.

‘A tea-set,’ said Alice at once. ‘I don’t think there is anything
nicer than a tea-set. And do try to choose one with pink flowers. Pink
flowers are the prettiest of all.’

Sally did want a tea-set, but, oh! think of a doll’s piano!

‘A trunk would be nice for the dolls,’ suggested Sally, ‘only I haven’t
many clothes to put in it, and I would like a rolling-pin and a
wash-tub and some teeny, tiny clothes-pins, too. I wish it was night,
don’t you, Alice? Don’t you wish Father was home now?’

But, to-night, of all nights in the year, Father didn’t come home to
dinner at all. He telephoned Mother that he would not be home until
long past Sally’s bedtime. So Sally was forced to go to bed without
knowing what Father’s answer would be.

But the next morning she woke to find Mother standing at her bedside,
and before Sally could ask a single question she knew by Mother’s
smiling face that she was to buy her present now.

‘Yes, we are to go into the city to-day,’ said Mother, ‘to buy your
birthday present.’

At this news Sally was so happy that she could scarcely speak a word.

She left her chair at breakfast three times to hug Father close, and,
if she could, she would have hurried Mother off to the train an hour
before it started.

Once on the train there was so much to be seen from the window that
Sally had little time to talk.

Green meadows, fields of corn, a brook with cows knee-deep in the
shade. Over a bridge, through a dark tunnel, with every now and then a
glimpse of the sparkling sea.

On and on thundered the train. Sometimes it would stop at a small
village station to let an old woman with a basket climb on or off.
Sometimes it roared its way into a smoky town, the streets lined with
brick buildings and filled with people moving to and fro.

Then came the marshes, covered with pale green grasses and rushes, with
pools of water that gleamed white in the sun.

Last of all, the city, the great bustling city, with its dashing
automobiles and heavy trucks, its crowds of people, its haste and
confusion and noise.

Sally held fast to Mother’s hand. If she let go, even for a moment,
Mother might be swallowed up in the crowd, and then how would Sally
ever find her way home again?

‘Do you think all these people have little boys and girls like me at
home?’ asked Sally, as she and Mother made their way through the crowd
toward the big shops where you might buy almost anything in the world.

‘A great many of them have,’ answered Mother, ‘and some of them have
brought their little boys and girls with them to town.’

Sure enough, directly in front of Sally walked a little boy wearing a
blue sailor suit, and not far away she spied a little girl with long
yellow curls.

‘I see them,’ said Sally. ‘I wonder whether they would buy a tea-set or
a piano or a farmyard for a birthday present, if they had an Aunt Sarah
to give them one. Would you stop and ask them, Mother, if you were me?’

‘No, indeed,’ said Mother. ‘I would rather go into this shop and look
at the toys for sale.’

In the store entrance Mother paused to let Sally look in the shop
window. It was filled with stiff figures of women, wearing silk dresses
and fancy hats, and with gay scarfs thrown about their necks. They all
had pretty, smiling faces and very pink cheeks and lips. Sally thought
they were beautiful.

‘Are they dressed for a party?’ she asked.

‘They look as if they were,’ answered Mother.

‘Perhaps a birthday party,’ suggested Sally. ‘Oh, Mother, look, look!’

Sally gave Mother’s hand a violent shake, for from within the store a
man was lifting into the show window the figure of a little girl. She
was dressed in a neat dark blue frock. Upon her feet were shining brown
shoes. Her hands were outstretched in a most friendly fashion.

But what made Sally’s cheeks grow pink and her eyes very bright were
the cape and hood worn by the figure of the little girl. It was a
scarlet cape, a gay scarlet cape, and fastened to it was a round hood
that pulled snugly up over the little girl’s head.

As Sally looked at the cape she thought she had never seen anything so
beautiful in all her life.

She looked and she looked and she did not say a word. She saw how the
stiff brown curls of the little figure were pulled out so prettily from
under the close hood. Just so her own yellow hair would peep out, if
only the cape belonged to her. She liked the way the cape folded back
and showed the front of the dark blue frock. It is true that Sally had
no dark blue dress at home, but surely a white one would look just as
well.

Then Mother turned to go and Sally spoke.

‘Mother,’ said Sally, ‘I don’t want a tea-set and I don’t want a piano.
I want a cape for my birthday present.’

‘A cape?’ said Mother in surprise. ‘Do you mean a red cape like the one
in the window? Why, you don’t need a cape, Sally. Come upstairs now,
and look at the toys.’

‘I want a cape,’ persisted Sally. ‘Aunt Sarah said I might choose my
present myself.’

‘So you shall,’ answered Mother. ‘But come and look at the toys first.’

So upstairs went Sally, and round and round the toy department she and
Mother walked. Sally had never seen so many toys before in all her life.

She saw tea-sets and tea-tables, stoves and pianos. She saw dolls and
their carriages, their cribs, their bureaus, and even their bathtubs.
She saw toy animals and games, doll-houses, trains, and boats. There
were picture books and painting sets, there were balls and blocks.
There were really no toys made for a little girl’s pleasure that Sally
did not see.

When they had walked all round the room Mother said, ‘Well, Sally, what
will you choose?’

And Sally’s answer was, ‘Please, I want a cape.’

So Mother and Sally went downstairs in the store to buy a cape.

‘Suppose they haven’t one left,’ thought Sally.

But the saleswoman pulled out a rack hung with scarlet capes, and in a
trice she had fastened one round Sally’s neck that proved a perfect
fit. The hood was pulled up round her head and that, too, fitted
nicely. Sally noticed, as she stood before the long mirror, that her
hair peeped out from under the hood just as did the curls on the little
figure in the window downstairs.

‘Will you wear it home or shall we have it put in a box?’ asked Mother,
smiling to see Sally’s delight.

‘I will wear it, please,’ answered Sally in a whisper.

She was too happy to speak out loud.

All the long day spent in the city Sally wore her scarlet cape. She
trudged happily along at Mother’s side, in and out of the shops, up and
down in the great store elevators. She walked until her shoes felt as
heavy as if made of wood. She was so tired that she slept all the way
home on the train.

[Illustration: LITTLE RED RIDINGHOOD’S SISTER]

But when Father met them at the Seabury Station she was wide awake, and
turned proudly round and round so that Father might see her birthday
present from every side.

‘Well, I declare,’ said Father at last, ‘you look just like little Red
Ridinghood’s sister.’

‘Do I?’ said Sally, smiling up at Father as pleased as could be. ‘Do I?
But then, who is the wolf?’

‘Why, Tippy, of course,’ answered Father, smiling back.

‘Oh, oh!’ said Sally, squeezing Father’s hand. ‘Will you write and tell
Aunt Sarah about it, about the cape and little Red Ridinghood’s sister,
and the wolf?’

‘Yes, I will,’ promised Father. ‘I will write to her to-night.’

‘But, Father,’ said Sally, after a moment, ‘will you tell her that
Tippy is a good wolf, that he is not bad? Tell her that he is a good
wolf most times.’

‘Yes, I will write that, too,’ agreed Father. ‘But what shall I tell
her about Red Ridinghood’s sister? Is she good or bad?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Sally, turning bashful. ‘Mother, what shall Father
say about me?’

‘Well,’ answered Mother thoughtfully, ‘I think little Red Ridinghood’s
sister is like her wolf, Tippy, good most times, too.’




CHAPTER XII

SIX BROWN MICE


It was Sally’s birthday and she was six years old.

Four long weeks ago she and Mother had gone into the city and had
bought Sally’s little Red Ridinghood cape, a present from Aunt Sarah
Waters.

‘My early birthday present,’ Sally called it, and wore it every time a
cape was needed and often, too, when it was not.

This birthday morning Sally was out of bed early. She had been awake
a long, long time, as much as five minutes, perhaps, watching the sun
make a rosy pattern on her wall. But now she couldn’t wait any longer
for the presents that she felt sure were hidden in Mother’s closet or
dresser drawer.

She stopped long enough to put on her red cape over her nightgown and
then crept into Mother’s room across the hall.

Sally had meant to waken Mother and Father with a hug, a birthday hug.
But there on Mother’s table were the presents, all spread out in a row,
and Sally simply couldn’t stop to hug until she had untied the boxes
and bundles that she knew were meant for her.

Father and Mother, too, it seemed, were awake early like Sally, and
were quite as interested as she in finding out what her presents might
be.

There was a tea-set with pink flowers, the pinkest kind of pink
flowers, too.

‘Alice will like that,’ said Sally in great satisfaction.

There was a wash-tub and scrubbing-board and teeny, weeny, wooden
clothes-pins, and actually a little clothes-line, so that you wouldn’t
have to use a bit of string.

There was a bag of marbles, every color, red and blue and green and
purple, all striped and spotted, as gay as you please.

‘I won’t have to play with Andy’s marbles any more,’ said Sally,
shaking the bag and enjoying the cheerful rattle, ‘I have my own
marbles now.’

There were two bright picture books, filled with pictures.

And, oh! best of all, a bathtub just big enough to hold Nancy Lee, a
bathtub that you could really fill with water and in which you could
really bathe the stout and wooden Nancy Lee.

‘This is the best birthday I have ever had,’ said Sally, hopping from
one end to the other of Mother’s room.

Even after breakfast Sally couldn’t sit still a moment. She seemed to
be all over the house at once, and no matter where Mother went, there
was Sally, too, laughing and talking and standing in the way.

There was to be a birthday party that afternoon and Mother was as busy
as could be.

‘Now, Sally,’ said she at last, ‘you must go up to the attic and dress
your dolls for the party. Straighten the attic, too. It ought to be as
neat as a pin.’

Half-way up the attic stairs Sally turned and came down again. Mother
was in the kitchen and Sally followed her there.

‘My cake!’ said Sally. ‘I forgot it. Who is going to make my birthday
cake, Mother? Are you?’

‘No,’ answered Mother, who was slicing bread very thin, ‘Aunt Bee is
going to make your cake.’

‘Then I must go over and help her,’ said Sally. ‘I helped her before,
and the cake was good.’

‘No, indeed,’ replied Mother hastily. ‘Aunt Bee won’t need your help
this morning. And you really must straighten the attic, Sally. I am
ashamed of the way it looks.’

‘I will, then,’ said Sally, starting upstairs. ‘But what are you
making, Mother?’

‘Sandwiches,’ replied Mother. ‘Yes, for the party. Run, Sally, I think
I hear Paulina calling you.’

Sally laughed. She knew that was Mother’s way of telling her to go.

So, carrying the bathtub, she went up to the attic and told her
children all about her presents and promised a sight of them before
long.

She put Nancy Lee in the bathtub and bathed her all over, a dry bath
this morning because Sally was in a hurry. She took Dora and Nora and
Flora out of their shoe-box and sat them on the sofa in a row, just to
give them a change of scene, as it were.

She straightened the doll-house and tidied all her toys.

Then with two sashes, kindly lent by Paulina, she went in search of
Tippy and Buff.

Buff, as usual, sat on the window-sill in the sun. He allowed Sally to
tie the blue sash round his neck in a birthday bow. But the moment she
had finished he clawed it off, and when she tried again, he ran up the
black-cherry tree where Sally couldn’t reach him, and only blinked his
eyes at her when she called him to come down.

Tippy was more agreeable. He permitted Sally to fasten a gay red bow on
his collar, and barked and jumped about as if he really liked it.

‘Now, Buff, look at Tip,’ said Sally reproachfully. ‘But you shan’t
have the blue ribbon now, not if you cry for it.’

And Sally went upstairs to tie round Snow White’s plump neck the blue
sash, that streamed out finely in the wind and gave a holiday look to
the whole house.

Soon it was time for the party, and in came Andy and Alice, gay and
smiling Andy with his ball and Alice with jolly Jack Tar.

They bounced their balls, they ran races in the garden. They looked at
the new picture books and played with the marbles and the tea-set.

Then Mother called them, and there stood a little table, all set for
three, with Aunt Bee’s tea-set that she had when she was a little girl,
and a cake, a birthday cake, right in the middle of the table.

It was a white cake, white as snow, and on it were not candles--Sally
had had candles last year--but mice, six chocolate mice, with tiny
pointed chocolate ears, white sugar eyes, and, actually, long pointed
chocolate tails. Never was there such a birthday surprise! Who but
Mother and Aunt Bee would have thought of such a thing and would have
searched the big city over until the mice were found!

There were sandwiches and milk, all you could eat and drink, but of
course the cake was the real party. Mother cut it, and on top of
Sally’s piece there sat a mouse, and one on Alice’s and on Andy’s
piece, too.

‘There are three mice left,’ said Sally. ‘One for Mother, one for Aunt
Bee, and one for Father. But what will Uncle Paul do?’

‘He won’t mind,’ answered Aunt Bee. ‘He may have half of mine.’

The cake was soon gone, every crumb, but it seemed a pity to eat the
mice.

‘They are so pretty,’ said Alice.

‘I want to show mine to Mother,’ said Andy.

‘Let us eat the tails and save the mice,’ suggested Sally.

But the tails were so good that the mice soon followed them. And then
the party went out to swing until it was time to go home.

It was the end of summer, and the next day both Alice and Andy were
going home. It was their last play together.

When Mrs. Thomas called for Andy, Mrs. Burr came from over the way for
Alice, and every one said good-bye over and over again.

Alice and Andy were both coming back next summer, but Sally’s face was
sober as, standing between Mother and Aunt Bee, she waved good-bye
until Andy was round the corner and Alice indoors over the way.

‘They are both coming back next year, Sally,’ said Mother, cheerfully.
‘Remember that.’

‘But it is a long time to wait,’ answered Sally, shaking her head,
‘and I don’t know what I shall do without them.’

‘You have Mother and Father,’ suggested Aunt Bee.

‘And you and Uncle Paul,’ answered Sally quickly, slipping one hand
into Aunt Bee’s and with the other seizing Mother’s hand. ‘I love Andy
and Alice, but I love Mother and Father and you and Uncle Paul more.
Yes, those are the very ones that I love best,’ said little Sally
Waters.


THE END


[Illustration]





TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.





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