NIB AND MEG.
BY ELLA FARMAN.
AND who do you suppose rang at the Doll Doctor’s door one Saturday.
Two noticeable personages, I assure you.
Three or four lovely phaetons were drawn up before the house; the drawing-room was open; and pretty faces, set in brown, and black, and yellow hair, and crowned with flowery hats, were looking out until every one of Miss Chatty’s windows seemed like a painting thronged with cherubs; small ladies, gloved and parasolled, and drapedà la mode, were coming and going up and down the front steps; and Miss Teresa Drew was just stepping from the beautiful family carriage, that had its coachman, and its footmen, and its crested panels, and her tall French maid was behind her with a doll and a doll’s maid in her arms—but all the gay show didn’t begin to attract the attention that was universally bestowed, the moment they appeared in sight, upon the two queer little beings who came across the street, unattended and on foot, right up to Miss Chatty’s gate.
But, you see,theywere gotten up in their very, very best. I am not a fashion writer, my dears, and I couldn’t begin to tell you, so that you would have a clear idea, how Miss Teresa Drew was dressed; but I must try to give you thetout ensembleof these two new children. “Tout ensemble,” my Wide Awakes, is one of those French phrases that mean so much, and are so handy, but which take so many of our English words in the translation; a little miss of my acquaintance renders it as “theall-over-nessof a person.” The costume of these children had a peculiarall-over-ness. Their shawls, a pair of ragged and worn broches, enveloped them to the throat and dragged after them; and the effect over short dresses and bare legs was striking; and the shawls, in both cases, were surmounted by old straw hats which looked, for all the world, like two much-battered toadstools.
Miss Chatty happened to see them coming up to the door, all her richly-dressed little people drawing aside to let them pass; and she dropped her order-book and made her way through herà-la-modecherubs, and answered the door-bell herself.
“Be you the Doll Doctor, mem?” asked the elder of the children.
Miss Chatty intimated that she was.
“They told us as wot you lived here, mem, and as how you could put the wust cases together.” Opening her shawl, she drew forth a bundle, and, dropping upon one knee, undid it deftly. She was self-possessed in spite of her bare feet; but Miss Chatty was much embarrassed. The children, evidently, were street Arabs, and she hesitated, from various reasons, to ask them in among her little girls; but neither had she the heart to dismiss them; besides, she was, withal, considerably curious and amused. The hands busy with the bundle were very hard, and very tanned; the face, all intent upon the knot of the string, was strangely quaint and mature,—indeed, the utter absence of childish timidity and embarrassment was perhaps the chief reason why Miss Chatty hesitated, with such a dear, funny, soft-hearted manner, in her treatment of these new patrons.
Finally the knot was untied. A couple of dolls’ heads were displayed, very much curtailed as to nose, badly rubbed as to their black china curls, and sadly crackled as to their cheeks, as cheeks will after long painting.
“There, mem, Nib and me, us found these in an ash bar’l one day,” said the girl. “But jest heads hain’t much to hug; and Nib and me’s got nither time nor patterns for bodies; and wen us heard as wot there was a Doll Doctor, us done ’thout a breckfus mornin’s, and saved up fer ter buy ther cloth an’ ther waddink. Ther cloth is ter cut out ther bodies, and ther waddink is ter stuff ’em—Nib an’ me don’t like sawdust—waddink won’t go ter run out ’f ther’s a rip. An’, mem, Nib an’ me, us hopes as they’ll be done a-Saturdy. An’ here, mem, is wot us hopes’ll make a dress for ’em both. An’ here, mem, is ther thread ter sew it. An’ this here, mem, in this little paper, is some adgink for ter trim ther things. An’ us is werry pertic’ler ’bout its bein’ a-Saturdy, mem, as Sundy gits ter be a-lonesum with nothink ter do. Hain’t Sundy a-lonesum, Nib?”
“You bet!” affirmed Nib.
All the cherubs, haloed with the pretty hair and crowned with the flowery hats, and Miss Chatty, too, would, doubtless, have been very much shocked had Nib’s voice not been like a little flute, and the eyes she lifted, like two great big violets, and the teeth she showed, beautifully white. But when lips and lids closed again, she was as homely as the other; and then everybodywasshocked at what they had heard, the cherubs looking at each other, and the Doll Doctor’s face becoming much suffused as she received the young rag-pickers’ spoils. But she could not send them away. She shuddered at the old calico. Still she respectfully took it.
“Us want’s ’em as tall as this, jest about,” continued Meg, showing Miss Chatty a strip of paper. “Us thinks that’s the purtiest size for a doll.”
Miss Chatty was scarce able to speak even now; for the audacity, the simplicity, and the perfect good faith of the rag-baby “order” was as paralyzing as it was funny. She was a dear, honest Christian, but she couldn’t think quite what to do with her new customers much more readily than would Sexton Brown had Nib and Meg gone into Grace Church on Sunday. It was well for Sexton Brown that Nib and Meg had never heard that God the Father was preached at Grace Church, or they might have gone in.
Meg, at last, seemed struck by the silence of the Doll Doctor. “Mem,” said she, hastily, “don’t you go fer ter be afeard us won’t pay. Us has got ther money saved up—hain’t us, Nib?”
“I’m not afraid, not at all,” said Miss Chatty. “And they will be done on Friday. Come for them on that day. I am always extremely busy on Saturday.”
At that Meg looked much pleased. “Mem, ’f you do do us a nice job, an’ so prompt-like, ther’s lots of girls us knows as’ll get you ter fix ther dolls. Us girls thet sells things hain’t got no time fer nothink, and us couldn’t go fer ter sew and cut out if us had!”
Evidently not. Nib and Meg, under the shawls, were picturesque with tatters.
“Us wants our dolls tidy and lovesome, mem,” she added, caressingly touching the white cotton in Miss Chatty’s hand, and feasting her eyes upon its whiteness perceptibly. Miss Chatty saw it; and she saw something else at the same moment,—direful gaps and rents about the childish waist betraying that there was sad lack of “whiteness” for little Meg’s own wear,—poor Meg! that wanted her dolly “tidy and lovesome,” feasting upon the one shred of wholesome white cloth,—Miss Chatty knew the little girl’s soul to be clean by that token; and if she had halted in her treatment before, she took the little ones right into her heart now, which was a much lovelier place than her parlor.
“Don’t you think, mem, as ther’s likely to be adgink for all ther underclothes, cos us’d get more ef ther wasn’t.”
Miss Chatty was sure there would be plenty; and Nib and Meg went down the steps and away, at their leisure. “My! wasn’t them thar swell girls!” said little Nib, all aloud. “But I didn’t care; did you, Meg? An’ I seed derlicious dolls in ther,—I’ll bet ourn’ll have flouncers, or sumthink.”
Miss Chatty, hearing, resolved there should, at least, be “sumthink.”
Her little ladies all were looking at her as she re-entered the drawing-room. They were ready to burst forth into a breeze of fun and ridicule, or to be very sorry,—just which way their dear Doll Doctor gave the cue. She laid the bundle on the shelf, the pink calico by itself in a bit of paper, and wrote down the order. “Poor little waifs,” she sighed. “Think of it, children, how hard they try to be like other folks, and how much they seem to wish for something to love!”
There was a little hush, until Teresa Drew spoke. “I never thought of it, but I wonder what street-children do do for dolls!”
“Madame ought not to have to touch objects from the barrel of the ashes; it is very mooch disgoosted,” said Teresa’s French maid. She stooped and whispered to her little mistress. The child directly took out her purse, and laid a shining half eagle on the table by Miss Chatty’s hand.
“Please buy them both a nice, well-dressed doll, with plenty of ’adgink’ on the clothes. Who would think they could care for lace! We must tell mamma that, Hortense.”
Miss Chatty kissed her kind little customer. All her little ladies were pleased if she shook hands when they came, and very happy indeed if she twined a curl over her finger, or re-tied a sash,—for she had the dearest and daintiest of mother-ways. “My dear,” she said, “I think the little girls would feel tenderest toward the very dollies they have worked so hard to get. But I should like to buy clothing for the children themselves with your gold piece.”
The idea roused a creditable littlefuroreof benevolence among the children. Every tiny pocket-book came open, and although there was no more gold, Miss Chatty soon became the treasurer of a respectable fund for the benefit of Meg and Nib, whom several now remembered to have seen as rag-pickers and match-girls.
Indeed, there was so much generous talk about Meg and Nib that when Miss Chatty went to bed she dreamed a very long and very nice dream.
In this dream all the pavements in the city were fringed with toadstools, and the stems were little girls, each with a doll in her arms, and they were all on their way to her house to be mended. When all had arrived, a tall, white angel came, and stood in the door and looked in. And she said, “Behold, I am she that weepeth over the woes of children. I sit upon a cloud over this city. To-night, on the evening air, I listened for the noise of crying and quarreling, and, instead, I heard laughter, and playing, and lullabies. The thanks of one that weeps are sweeter than all others. Take my blessing, O giver of dolls, because you have learned that a little girl, to be good, must have something to love.”
Then the children sang “bye-low-baby-bye” in soft tones; and after they were through singing, they sat and nodded deliciously,—children, dolls, and she, too; and all this while the Angel of the Children’s Woes sat in their midst on a canopied coach that had a coachman, and a footman, and a French maid, and rested from her tearful labors—indeed her eyes grew every moment of a most bright and smiling azure; and while she was resting, on a loom of silver she wove edging until there was a great plenty to have trimmed all the dolls in the world.
It was quite a pleasant dream, in fact; and Miss Chatty woke with her heart all soft, and young, and warm, and it staid so all day Sunday.
After breakfast, Monday morning, she put on her holland gloves and went out to dig around her roses. She desired the circle of dark loam about her trees to be exactly and truly round. So she found it necessary to do her own digging.
As she set her foot on the spade, a little voice she knew called from the bottom of the garden. “Please, Miss Chatty, were there a great many nice dolls brought Saturday?”
And another little voice continued, “May we go and see them?”
It was Sylvey Morgan and Teddy. They were looking over the broken paling of the garden fence, their little faces twinkling with smiles and sunshine.
“Yes, birdies. You may go up through the basement, and I will step over and see Mintie.”
The children flew to the gate and up to the house, for you must know that it was very nice, indeed, to go up to Miss Chatty’s parlors and look at the beautiful dolls all by themselves. They well knew they “mustn’t touch;” and Miss Chatty was well assured they wouldn’t.
She picked some clove pinks and went over to the house of the children. It was a small cottage in vines fronting a back street. She went around to the sitting-room, where, by the window, sat a young girl with a poor little pinched-up face. A cane, gayly painted, and adorned with a flowing ribbon bow, leaned against the window, and told the girl’s story.
The room was very plain only about this corner. This nook had a bird cage and a hanging basket of ivy in the window; Mintie’s chair, with its gay cushion, stood on a Persian mat; there was a little window garden growing on the ledge; and on the elbow stand was a globe with gold fish, while opposite hung some pretty water colors. Mintie’s hair was tied back with a rose-pink bow, and her wrapper was a marvelous web of roses and posies. Altogether the endeavor to surround poor Mintie Morgan with brightness and beauty was very evident.
But Mintie herself looked peevish, and as if never anything in the world had been done for her. It was plain she was no nice, ideal invalid, but a girl whom to take care of would be a great trial.
She did smile, however, as she took Miss Chatty’s clove pinks. “You always bring enough, and plenty of grass and leaves, so that there is a chance to try a bouquet. I believe you do it that I may fuss with them half the forenoon if I like.”
Miss Chatty colored a trifle at being detected. “Well, that is nothing against me, I hope, Mintie. How do you feel to-day?”
“O, good-for-nothing, and all tired out just to think it is Monday morning instead of Saturday night.”
“I do wish you had something pleasant to occupy yourself with,” said Miss Chatty, sympathetically, instead of whipping out the little sermon on contentment. She had always thought she wouldn’t thank anybody to preach contentment to her, had she been broken-backed and with no feet to speak of, like Mintie.
“Isn’t there anything you can do?”
“Of course there isn’t,” said Mintie. “I want something pretty if I have anything, work which will make me forget I am in this chair. I won’t sew the children’s clothes. Father and mother should contrive that I was amused. And if you felt so very bad for me, Miss Chatty, I guess you would have offered to let me dress some of them dolls before now!”
“So I might, I should think myself,” said Miss Chatty, startled into saying a very unwise thing; for, of course, a ten-dollar doll wasn’t to be put in careless fingers.
“But, of course,” continued Mintie, fretfully, “you don’t have more than you can do yourself.”
“No,” said Miss Chatty, much relieved, “I don’t. But, poor little Mintie, you ought to have something nice to do!”
“Well, you need all the money, and I shouldn’t like to work, even at anything pretty, unless I was paid. I don’t wish to talk about work at all unless that is understood. You needn’t ever bring anything here to do just to amuse me.” And Mintie looked,—only think of a young girl looking as ugly as pictures of misers that you have seen!
As for Miss Chatty, she blushed clear up to her eyes. “My dear child!” she exclaimed. “How could you think I should be unjust!”
And then she went and stood in the door. The dear little old maid was dreadfully ashamed, and a trifle indignant, too, over Mintie’s bad manners and selfishness. But after a moment she reflected that probably the poor girl had no pocket-money at all, and couldn’t get any either; and she recollected also that it had been said that physical deformity often produced spiritual crookedness and halting. She tried to think of some way to help her. She thought of offering Nib’s and Meg’s dolls to make and clothe; but no, Mintie wished to handle only beautiful things.
All at once her dream came up before her, as pleasant as in her sleep, and it seemed to turn inside out and reveal its meaning.
She went back and kissed Mintie. Then she went home and kissed Sylvey and Teddy and sent them away. After that she made herself ready, and went upon another eccentric little journey among her wealthy friends.
It is said that Miss Chatty talked a deal of beautiful and flowery nonsense at every house where she called, all about the influence upon poor children of a flower to watch, or a bird to tend, or a lovely doll to love. She told everybody that she was going to send a missionary in the shape of a pretty doll to every ragged and dirty child in the city.
They laughed at the idea of the doll-mission; but as she begged at most places for nothing more than “pieces,”—bits of silk and bright woolens, remnants of ribbons and laces, the natural leavings of dressmaking, of which there is always plenty at every house,—Miss Chatty did not render herself very obnoxious.
But at three or four houses there was far more weighty talk; and from them Miss Chatty took away considerable money. Then she went down upon Vesey Street, and one of her friends among the merchants gave her a roll of bleached muslin, and the same good man also gave her a card of edging in the name of his little daughter. She then went down farther still, to Bleecker Street, where a jolly young importer of cheap toys sold her a gross of china dolls at cost.
Tuesday, all day, she cut patterns of skirts, and polonaises, and basques, and fichus, and walking jackets, all as fanciful as possible, bearing in mind the temper of her seamstress.
On Wednesday she went over to Mintie, carrying the bundles and her own walnut cutting board.
And when Mintie had looked at the great army of curly-pated dolls, with their naked little kid bodies, every one of them wearing the same rosy smile, and had laid all the lustrous silky velvets to her cheek, and had sheened the silks over her knee, and had delighted with the laces and the iris ribbons, she did smile, the first sunny smile of her blighted life, I do believe; and she said she should be very, very happy, and that she should dress no two dolls alike; and she never mentioned her wages at all.
But after Miss Chatty had unfolded her plan, and told her how well she was to be paid, Mintie became cross again. She said after the dolls were done it was a shame for ragged children to have them, and they would have to be taken from her house to be distributed, for she couldn’t, and wouldn’t, bear the sight of such creatures!
But in what manner the Doll Mission was organized, and how the lovely missionaries did their work, and whether the Angel really stopped weeping, will make another long story; and it will be still more beautiful than this and the other.