Holiday Stories for Young People

The Clover Leaf Club of Bloomdale

By Margaret E. Sangster.

CHAPTER I.

The heroine presents herself.

My name is Milly Van Doren, and I am an only child.  I won’t begin by telling you how tall I am, how much I weigh, and the color of my eyes and hair, for you would not know very much more about my looks after such an inventory than you do without it, and mother says that in her opinion it is pleasantest to form one’s own idea of a girl in a story book.  Mother says, too, that a good rule in stories is to leave out introductions, and so I will follow her advice and plunge into the middle of my first morning.  It was early summer and very lovely, and I was feeling half-sad and half-glad, with the gladness surpassing the sadness, because I had never before been half so proud and important.

Father and mother, after talking and planning and hesitating over it a long while, were actually going on a journey just by themselves and without me; and I, being now considered old enough and steady enough, was to stay at home, keep house, and take care of dear grandmamma.  With Aunt Hetty at the helm, the good old servant, whose black face had beamed over my cradle fifteen years ago, and whose strong arms had come between mother and every roughness during her twenty years of housekeeping, it really looked as if I might be trusted, and as if mother need not give me so many anxious directions.  Did mother think me a baby?  I wondered resentfully.  Father always reads my face like an open page.

“Thee may leave something to Milly’s discretion, dear,” he said, in his slow, stately way.

“Thee forgets her inexperience, love,” said my gentle mother.

Father and mother are always courtly and tender with one another, never hasty of speech, never impatient.  They have been lovers, and then they are gentlefolk.  Father waited, and mother kept on telling me about grandmamma and the cat, the birds and the best china, the fire on the hearth in cool evenings, and the last year’s canned fruit, which might as well be used up while she was away, particularly the cherries and plums.

“May the girls come over often?” I asked.

“Whenever you like,” said mother.  “Invite whom you please, of course.”

Here father held up his watch warningly.  It was time to go, if they were to catch the train.  Arm in arm they walked down the long avenue to the gate, after bidding me good-bye.  Grandmamma watched them, waving her handkerchief from the window of her room over the porch, and at the last moment I rushed after them for a final kiss and hug.

“Be good, dear child, and let who will be clever,” said father, with a twinkle in his eye.

“Don’t forget to count the silver every morning,” said mother.