Now Emily’s mamma and grandmamma and aunts, and all the rest of them, concluded that Dr. Hardhack was a very funny, odd old fellow, and, as he was very despotic and arbitrary, they set about immediately inquiring for a nice, neat farmhouse where the Doctor’s orders could be obeyed; and, curiously enough, they fixed on the very place where our Pussy lived; and so the two girls came together, and were introduced to each other, after having lived each sixteen years in this world of ours in such very different circumstances.
It was quite an event, I assure you, at the simple little farmhouse, when one day a handsome traveling-carriage drove up to the door, and a lady and gentleman alighted and inquired if they were willing to take summer boarders.
“Indeed,” said Pussy’s mother, “we have never done such a thing, or thought of it. I don’t know what to say till I ask my husband.”
“My daughter is a great invalid,” said the lady, “and the Doctor has recommended country air for her.”
“I’m afraid it would be too dull here to suit her,” said Pussy’s mother.
“That is the very thing the Doctor requires,” said Emily’s mother. “My daughter’s nerves are too excitable, —— she requires perfect quiet and repose.”
“What is the matter with your daughter9” said Mary Primrose.
“Well, she is extremely delicate; she suffers from palpitations of the heart; she can’t go up stairs, even, or make the smallest exertion, without bringing on dreadful turns of fluttering and faintness.”
“I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Primrose, “we should not be able to wait on her as she would need. We keep no servants.”
“We would be willing to pay well for it,” said Emily’s mother. “Money is no object with us.”
“Mother, do let her come,” said Pussy, who had stolen in and stood at the back of her mother’s chair. “I want her to get well, and I’ll wait on her. I’m never tired, and could do twice as much as I do any day.”
“What a healthy-looking daughter you have!” said Emily’s mother, surveying her with a look of admiration.
“Well,” said Pussy’s mother, “if she thinks best, I think we will try to do it; for about everything on our place goes as she says, and she has the care of everything.” And so it was arranged that the next week the new boarder was to come.
CHAPTER XI
AND so it was settled that our elegant young friend, Miss Emily Proudie, was to go and stay at the farmhouse with Pussy Willow. Dr. Hardhack came in to give his last directions, in the presence of grandmamma and the aunts and mamma, who all sat in an anxious circle.
“Do pray, dear Dr. Hardhack, tell us just how she must be dressed for that cold mountain region. Must she have high-necked, long-sleeved flannels?” said mamma.
“I will make her half a dozen at once,” chimed in Aunt Maria.
“Not so fast,” said Dr. Hardhack. “Let’s see about this young lady,” and with that Dr. Hardhack endeavored to introduce his forefinger under the belt of Miss Emily’s dress.
Now the Doctor’s forefinger being a stout one, and Miss Emily’s belt ribbon being drawn very snugly round her, the belt ribbon gave a smart snap, and the Doctor drew out his finger with a jerk. “I thought so,” he said. “I supposed that there wasn’t much breathing room allowed behind there.”
“Oh, I do assure you, Doctor, Emily never dresses tight,” said her mother.
“No indeed!” said little Miss Emily. “I despise tight lacing. I never wear my clothes any more than just comfortable.”
“Never saw a woman that did,” said the Doctor. “The courage and constancy of the female sex in bearing inconveniences is so great, however, that that will be no test at all. Why, if you should catch a fellow, and gird his ribs in as Miss Emily wears hers all the time, he’d roar like a bull of Bashan. You wouldn’t catch a man saying he felt ‘comfortable’ under such circumstances; but only persuade a girl that she looks stylish and fashionable with her waist drawn in, and you may screw and screw till the very life leaves her, and with her dying breath she will tell you that it is nothing more than ‘comfortable.’ So, my young lady, you don’t catch me in that way. You must leave off belts and tight waists of all sorts for six months at least, and wear only loose sacks, or thingumbobs, — whatever you call ‘em, — so that your lungs may have some chance to play, and fill with the vital air I’m going to send you to breathe up in the hills.”
“But, Doctor, I don’t believe I could hold myself up without corsets,” said Miss Emily. “When I sit up in a loose dress, I feel so weak I hardly know what to do. I need the support of something around me.”
“My good child, that is because all those nice strong muscles around your waist, which Nature gave you to hold you up, have been bound down and bandaged and flattened till they have no strength in them. Muscles are nourished and strengthened by having blood carried to them; if you squeeze a muscle down flat under a bandage, there is no room for blood to get into it and nourish it, and it grows weak and perishes.
“Now look there,” said the Doctor, pointing with his cane to the waist of a bronze Venus which adorned the mantle-piece,—”look at that great wide waist, look at those full muscles over the ribs that moved that lady’s breathing apparatus. Do you think a woman with a waist like that would be unable to get up stairs without fainting? That was the idea the old Greeks had of a Goddess, — a great, splendid woman, with plenty of room inside of her to breathe, and to kindle warm vital blood which should go all over her with a glow of health and cheerfulness, — not a wasp waist, coming to a point and ready to break in two in the middle.
“Now just there, under Miss Emily’s belt, is the place where Nature is trying to manufacture all the blood which is necessary to keep her brain, stomach, head, hands, and feet in good condition, — and precious little room she gets to do it in. She is in fact so cooped up and hindered, that the blood she makes is very little in quantity and extremely poor in quality; and so she has lips as white as a towel, cheeks like blanched celery, and headaches, and indigestion, and palpitations of the heart, and cold hands, and cold feet, and forty more things that people have when there is not enough blood to keep their systems going.
“Why, look here,” said the Doctor, whirling round and seizing Miss Emily’s sponge off the wash-stand, “your lungs are something like this, and every time that you take in a breath they ought to swell out to their full size, so that the air that you take in shall purify your blood and change it from black blood to red blood. It’s this change in your lungs that makes the blood fit to nourish the whole of the rest of your body. Now see here,” said the Doctor, squeezing the sponge tight in his great hand,—”here’s what your corsets and your belt ribbons do, — they keep the air-vessels of your lungs matted together like this, so that the air and the blood can hardly get together at all, and consequently it is impure. Don’t you see?”
“Well, Doctor,” said Emily, who began to be frightened at this, “do you suppose if I should dress as you tell me for six months my blood would come right again?”
“It would go a long way towards it, my little maid,” said the Doctor. “You fashionable girls are not good for much, to be sure; but yet if a doctor gets a chance to save one of you in the way of business, he can’t help wishing to do it. So, my dear, I just give you your choice. You can have a fine, nice, taper little body, with all sorts of pretty little waists and jackets and thingumies fitting without a wrinkle about it, and be pale and skinny, with an unhealthy complexion, low spirits, indigestion, and all that sort of thing; or you can have a good, broad, free waist, with good strong muscles like the Venus up there, and haye red lips and cheeks, a good digestion, and cheerful spirits, and be able to run, frisk, jump, and take some comfort in life. Which would you prefer now?”
“Of course I would like to be well,” said Emily; “and in the country up there nobody will see me, and it’s no matter how I look.”
“To be sure, it’s no matter,” chimed in Emily’s mamma. “Only get your healt
h, my dear, and afterwards we will see.”
And so, a week afterwards, an elegant traveling-carriage drew up before the door of the house where Pussy’s mother lived, and in the carriage were a great many bolsters and pillows, and all sorts of knick-knacks and conveniences, such as sick young ladies use, and little Emily was brought out of the carriage, looking very much like a wilted lily, and laid on the bed up stairs in a chamber that Pussy had been for some time busy in fitting up and adorning for her.
And now, while she is getting rested, we will tell you all about this same chamber. When Pussy first took it in hand it was as plain and dingy a little country room as ever you saw, and she was very much dismayed at the thought of putting a genteel New York young lady in it.
But Pussy one day drove to the neighboring town and sold her butter, and invested the money she got for it, — first in a very pretty delicate-tinted wall-paper and some white cotton, and some very pretty blue bordering. Then the next day she pressed one of her brothers into the service, and cut and measured the wall-paper, and contrived the breadths, and made the paste, and put it on the paper as handily as if she had been brought up to the trade, while her brother mounted on a table and put the strips upon the wall, and Pussy stroked down each breadth with a nice white cloth. Then they finished all by putting round the ceiling a bordering of flowers, which gave it quite an air. It took them a whole day to do it, but the room looked wonderfully different after it was done.
Then Pussy got her brother to make cornices to the windows, which she covered with bordering like that on the walls, and then she made full white curtains, and bordered them with strips of the blue calico; she also made a bedspread to match. There was a wide-armed old rocking-chair with a high back, that had rather a forlorn appearance, as some of its slats were broken, and the paint wholly rubbed off, but Pussy took it in hand, and padded and stuffed it, and covered it with a white, blue-bordered dress, till it is doubtful whether the chair would have known itself if it could have looked in the glass.
Then she got her brother to saw out for her a piece of rough board in an oblong octagon shape, and put four legs to it; and out of this foundation she made the prettiest toilet-table you can imagine. The top was stuffed like a large cushion, and covered with white, and an ample flowing skirt of white, bordered with blue, like the bedspread and window-curtains, completed the table. Over this hung a looking-glass whose frame had become very much tarnished by time, and so Pussy very wisely concealed it by looping around it the folds of some thin white muslin that had once been her mother’s wedding-dress, but was now too old and tender for any other usage than just to be draped round a mirror. Pussy arranged it quite gracefully, and fastened it at the top and sides with some smart bows of blue ribbon, and it really looked quite as if a French milliner had been at it.
Then beside this, there was a cunning little hour-glass stand, which she made for the head of the bed out of two old dilapidated spinning-wheels, and which, covered with white like the rest, made a handy little bit of furniture. Then Pussy had arranged vases of blue violets and apple-blossoms here and there, and put some of her prettiest books in the room, and hung up one or two pictures which she had framed very cleverly in rustic frames, and on the whole the room was made so sweet and inviting that, when Emily first looked around it, she said two or three times, “How nice! How very pretty it is! I think I shall like to be here.”
Those words were enough to pay Pussy for all her trouble. “ Oh, mother, I am so sorry for her!” she said, rushing down stairs; “and I’m so glad she likes it! To think of her being so weak, and I so strong, and we just of an age! I feel as if I couldn’t do too much for her.”
And what the girls did together we will tell you by and by.
CHAPTER XII
WE left little Miss Emily Proudie lying like a broken lily, stretched out on the white bed that Pussy Willow had made for her, where, tired with her day’s ride, she slept soundly.
Dr. Hardhack had been very positive in saying that neither her mother nor any of her aunts, nor indeed any attendant who had taken care of her in New York, should have anything to do with her in her new abode. “She is to break all old associations,” he said, “and wake up to a new life. I can’t answer for her health if you give her even a servant that she has had before. Engage some good, wholesome country-girl for a companion for her, and some good farmer’s wife to overlook her, and turn her out into a nice, wide old bam, and let her lie on the hay, and keep company with the cows,” he went on. “Nature will take care of her, — only give her a chance.”
About five o’clock the next morning, Emily was wakened by a bustle in the house. What could be the matter? she thought, there was such a commotion on the stairs. It was, however, only the men folk of the household going down to their breakfast; and Pussy and her mother had been up long before, in time to get the corn-cake baked, and coffee made, and everything ready for them.
Then there began to come up into the windows such a sound of cackling and lowing and bleating, as the sheep and the cows and the oxen all began, in different tones, calling for their morning breakfast, and gossiping with one another about a new day. Emily lay in her bed, and watched the pink light, making her white curtains look all rose-color, and the sounds of birds and hens and cows and sheep all mingled in her mind in a sort of drowsy, lulling murmur, and she fell into a soft, refreshing doze, which melted away into a deep sleep; and so she slept ever so long. When she awoke again the sun was shining clear and bright through her window-curtains, which had been looped back with festoons of wild roses, that seemed so fresh and beautiful that she could not help starting up to look at them.
She perceived at once that while she had been sleeping some one must have been in her room, for by the side of her bed was a table covered with a white cloth, and on the table was a tall, slender vase, full of fresh morning-glories, blue and purple and rose-colored and dark violet, with colors as intense and vivid as if they really had been morning clouds grown into flowers. “Oh, how beautiful!” she exclaimed.
“I’m so glad you like them!” said a voice behind her; and Pussy Willow stood there in a trim morning-wrapper, with just the nicest white frill you ever saw around her little throat.
“Oh, did you bring these flowers here?”
“Why, yes; I picked them for you with the dew on them. I thought it a pity you should not see them before the sun shut them up. They are ever so beautiful, but they only last one morning.”
“Is that so?” said Emily. “I never knew that.”
“Certainly; but then we always have new ones. Some mornings I have counted as many as sixty or seventy at my milk-room window when I have been skimming the cream.”
“How very early you must get up!”
“Yes, about the time the bobolinks and robins do,” said Pussy, cheerfully. “I want to get my work all done early. But come now, shall I help you to dress?” — and Pussy brought water and towels to the bedside, and helped Emily with all her morning operations as handily as if she had been a maid all her life, till finally she seated her, arrayed in a neat white wrapper, in the rocking-chair.
“And now for your breakfast. I have got it all ready for you,” — and Pussy tripped out, and in a few moments returned, bringing with her a tea-tray covered with a fine white cloth, which she placed upon the stand. “Now let’s move your table up to you, and put your vase of flowers in the centre.”
“Oh, what a pretty breakfast!” said Emily.
And so it was, and a good one too; for, first, there was a large saucer of strawberries, delightfully arranged on green vine-leaves; then there was a small glass pitcher full of the thickest and richest cream, that was just the color of a saffrano rose-leaf, if any of my little friends know what that is. Then there was the most charming little cake of golden butter you ever saw, stamped with a flower on it and arranged upon two large strawberry-leaves, that actually had a little round pearl of dew on each of their points. Pussy had taken great pains to preserve the dew
-drops unbroken on those leaves; she called them her morning pearls. Then there were some white, tender little biscuits, and some nice round muffins of a bright yellow color, made of com meal, by a very choice receipt on which Pussy prided herself. So on the whole, if you remember that Emily’s chair stood before an open window where there was a beautiful view of ever so many green hills, waving with trees, and rolling their green crests, all sparkling and fresh with morning dew, you may not wonder that she felt a better appetite than for months before, and that she thought no breakfast had ever tasted so good to her.
“Do eat some with me,” she said to Pussy, — for Emily was a well-bred girl, and somehow did not like to seem to take all to herself.
“Oh, thank you,” said Pussy, “but you see I had my breakfast hours ago.”
“Why, what time do you get up?” said Emily, opening her eyes wide.
“Oh, about four o’clock.”
“Four o’clock!” said Emily, drawing in her breath. “How dreadful!”
“I don’t find it so,” said Pussy, with a gay laugh. “If you only could see how beautiful everything is, — so fresh and cool and still!”
“Why, do you know,” said Emily, “that when I heard people moving this morning, I thought it was some time in the night? I thought something must have happened.”
“Nothing but what happens every morning,” said Pussy, laughing. “I hope it didn’t disturb you.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 580
