Part 6 (1/2)

”Well, I know what I would do,” said Ruby. ”I would say to her this way--” and Ruby held her head very high, and tried to look exceedingly dignified--”I should say, 'Miss Abigail, if you will please tend to making Ruby's dresses, I will tend to her behavior.'”

Ruthy looked rather shocked.

”I am afraid that would make Miss Abigail feel dreadfully bad, to have your auntie say such a thing,” she said. ”I think Miss Abigail is real nice, I truly do. She saves pretty pieces of calico for my patch-work, and once she gave me a sash for my doll; don't you remember it?--that blue one, with a little rose bud in the middle.”

”Well, I don't like her,” and Ruby shook her shoulders. ”And I don't think it's nice in you to like her, when she makes me perfectly miserable. How would you like it if every time you wanted to do anything you heard her calling you, and had to go in and be fitted and fitted. She holds pins in her mouth, too, a whole row of them, and mamma never lets me do that, so Miss Abigail ought not to, and I just think I will tell her so. She has a whole row of them, just as long as her mouth is wide, and they bristle straight out when she talks. Just suppose she should drop some down my neck when she is talking. They would stick in to me, and hurt me like everything before I could get them out. I guess I would n't like that, would I? And if you had to stand just hours and hours, and have her cold fingers poking around your neck, and those great sharp scissors going snip, snip all around your neck, just where they would cut great pieces out if you dared move, I don't believe you would like that yourself, Ruthy Warren, even if she did give you things for your doll.”

”No, I don't s'pose I would like it any better than you do,” a.s.sented Ruthy, who was determined not to quarrel with her little friend, when they were so soon to be separated.

”Ruby, Miss Abigail wants you,” called Aunt Emma.

Ruby made a wry face.

”There she is again,” she exclaimed. ”It's just the way the whole livelong time. I think if she knew how to make dresses, she ought not to have to fit so much. If I fitted my doll so often when I made her a dress, I guess her head would fall off. It would get shaky anyway, with so much fussing. Wait till I come back, Ruthy, and then we will play.”

Miss Abigail was waiting to fit Ruby's blue delaine, and it looked so pretty that Ruby forgot how unwilling she had been to come in and have it fitted.

She showed her pleasure in it so plainly that good Miss Abigail was afraid that the little girl was in danger of becoming vain, and thought it best to warn her against this state of mind.

”I am afraid it is n't the best thing for you, Ruby Warren, to have so many new clothes all at once,” she said, with the row of pins waving up and down, as she spoke through her teeth, which she did not open when she spoke, lest the pins should fall out. ”If any one thinks more of clothes than they should, then dress is a snare and a temptation to them, and I am much afraid that that is what it is going to be to you.

Better for you to have only one dress to your back than to put clothes in the wrong place in your mind, and let them make you vain and conceited. What are clothes, anyway? There is n't any thing to be so proud of in them. Now this nice wool delaine was once growing on a sheep's back. Do you suppose that sheep was vain because it was covered with wool? No, it never thought anything about it. And so you see that you ought n't to be proud of it either.”

”I think new dresses are very nice,” said Ruby, speaking cautiously, lest she should inadvertently turn her head, and the sharp points of the scissors should run into her neck.

Miss Abigail felt that she must say still more, for it was evident that Ruby was putting too much value upon her dress.

”But it is n't new,” she said.

”Oh, Miss Abigail, it truly is,” exclaimed Ruby, forgetting herself and turning her head so suddenly that if the scissors had been in the right place, the points would surely have run into her. Fortunately, Miss Abigail had stopped to see how the neck looked, and her scissors were hanging by her side for a moment. ”Why, of course, it is new. I went with Aunt Emma to the store, and helped buy it my very own self, so I know it is brand-new. Why, I should think you could tell it is new, it is so pretty and bright, and there is n't one single teenty tonty wrinkle in it.”

”Yes, it is new to you,” Miss Abigail answered solemnly. ”But when you think about the matter, Ruby Harper, you know that the sheep wore it first, and you only have it second-hand, as you might say. Now, I should think a little girl was very silly that thought herself better than any one else, and let her thoughts rest on her clothes because she wore a sheep's old suit of wool made up in a little different way.

Shall I tell you some verses that my mother made me learn when I was a little girl, because I was proud of a new pelisse?”

”Yes 'm,” said Ruby, meekly, taking a great deal of pleasure in the thought that when Miss Abigail was a little girl she had been naughty sometimes, and had had to learn verses as a punishment.

”'How proud we are, how fond to show Our clothes, and call them rich and new, When the poor sheep and silk-worm wore That very clothing long before.

”'The tulip and the b.u.t.terfly Appear in gayer coats than I; Let me be dressed fine as I will, Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still.'”

”I don't think worms look nicer than I do,” said Ruby, not very politely, when Miss Abigail had finished. ”And I am very sorry for you, Miss Abigail, if you had to learn such ugly verses. If you had had a mamma like mine you would have had a better time, I think.”

Miss Abigail looked severely over her bra.s.s-bowed spectacles at Ruby, almost too shocked to speak for a moment.

”I am sure, I don't know what your mother would say, Ruby Harper, if she heard you talking that way. I am sure she would think that you were no credit to her bringing-up. You have a good mother, one of the best mothers that ever lived, and your father is such a good man, too, that I am sure I don't see where you get your pert ways from. I was a happy child, because I was, in the main, a good child, and no one ever had a better mother than mine; and I have tried to follow the way in which I was brought up, if I do say it myself. Those were counted to be very pretty verses when I was a child, and I don't know but they were better than to-day. At any rate, in my day, children were taught to have a little respect for their elders, and there are very few that do that now. There were some other verses that I was going to tell a good deal of the nonsense that children learn you, but if that is your opinion of those I did tell you, there is no use in my taking so much trouble.”

Miss Abigail looked sorrowful as well as vexed, and Ruby wished that she had not told her what she thought of the verses.

”I suppose she thinks they are nice,” she said to herself; ”and mamma would be sorry if she thought I had been rude to Miss Abigail.”