A Modern Cinderella. Douglas Amanda M.
What are you doing up this time of night, instead of asleep in bed? Rouse up! rouse up! Lucky you didn’t let my fire go out this cold night! Come, hustle!”
There seemed a sort of crash. Marilla glanced around with half-opened eyes. Yes, this was the old kitchen. There was Bridget with the lighted end of a candle in the tin candlestick.
“Come! get along, sleepy head.” She gave her a push up the stairs and through the halls, half scolding her but not cross. “It’s a wonder the gobble sirs didn’t come after you. If you’d been carried off now! It’s awful cold. I’d sleep in my stockings and they’ll be good and warm in the morning.”
Marilla hustled off her clothes, wrapped herself in an old blanket and tumbled into bed in a little heap. But there was some mysterious music floating through her brain and a fragrance in the air. The Prince smiled down into her eyes, and the fairy godmother she should always believe in. For she had been to real fairy land; that was the truth.
CHAPTER II
JACK
The Bordens were nice, ordinary people enjoying life in a commonplace way. There was Mr. Jack Borden, the junior partner in a fairly successful law firm, his wife an averagely nice, sensible body, Miss Florence, her husband’s sister, a bright girl of three and twenty, whose lover was in South America on a five years’ contract, with one year yet to serve.
After the twins were born they tried a grown nursemaid who bored them by sitting around when she was upstairs and making many excuses to get down to the kitchen, where she disputed with Bridget who declared one or the other of them must go, and they simply could not give up Bridget. The babies slept a good deal of the time and only cried when they were hungry. The mother and aunt thought them the dearest things and their father was as proud of them as a man could well be. If it wasn’t for giving them an airing now and then – but when it came pleasant weather they must be taken out.
Aunt Hetty Vanderveer who was queer and going on to eighty, who couldn’t live with a relative for they always wanted to borrow her money, got tangled up in a house on which she had a mortgage, and called her grandnephew, Mr. John Borden to her rescue. She took the house and persuaded them to come there, and she would live with them on certain conditions. She was to have the third floor front room and the store room, get her breakfast and tea and take dinner with them though it was their luncheon. Night dinners she despised. She entertained herself sewing patchwork, a dressmaker sent her bags of silk pieces; knitting baby socks and stockings and reading novels. They did get along very well though it made a good deal of running up and down.
The spare room and Bridget’s room was on this floor. On the second, two sleeping chambers, the nursery and the bath. Down stairs a long parlor and a dining room, with a basement kitchen which Bridget declared she liked above all things. A woman came to do the washing and ironing, Bridget’s nephew took out the ashes and swept the stoop and sidewalk. Bridget was a strong, healthy, good natured Irish woman when you didn’t meddle with her, and the ladies were very glad not to meddle. But some one for the babies they must have.
One day a friend came in for a subscription to some of her charities and heard the appeal.
“Now, I’ll tell you just what to do,” she said “Go over to the Bethany Home, you take the car out to the Melincourt Road that passes it. Ask for Mrs. Johnson. They have two girls; they put them out when they are twelve. And since you only want some one to amuse the babies and take them out, and she will be growing older all the time, you see, you can bring her up in your ways. Yes, that is what I’d do.”
Mrs. Borden followed the advice. There was a stout, rather vacant looking German girl, a good worker who delighted in scrubbing and scouring and who would make an excellent kitchen maid. The other was Marilla Bond, an orphan with no relatives that any one knew; a fair, nice looking intelligent child, with light curly hair cropped close, rather slim, and with a certain ready, alert look that was attractive.
Mrs. Borden brought her home for a month’s trial. She took to the babies at once, and Jack took to her. Oddly enough, so did Bridget. She had such a quaint sweet way of saying, “Yes’m” and “No’m;” she did what she was told to do with alacrity, she ran up and down stairs on numberless errands. She was a very good reader and at first, Jack kept her busy in this respect. But she wanted to hear about lions and tigers and men killing them and Indian fights and matters that didn’t please the little girl at all. Mother Goose was babyish.
The twins sat on a blanket on the floor and sometimes rolled around a little. She played with them, talked to them and they really listened to the stories that she acted off and laughed gleefully.
“They certainly are intelligent,” Aunt Florence said with pride.
On nice sunny days when it was not very cold she took them out in the carriage. They were carried down and put in it, then brought up again. Their mother “wasn’t going to have any nurse breaking their backs by a fall.”
So when the month of probation was ended, Marilla was bound to Mr. and Mrs. John Borden, to be clothed and fed and sent to school for half a year. She really did like her new home. Only if it wasn’t for Jack! He pinched her sometimes, and once he kicked her but his mother gave him a good trouncing.
The twins had some bread and milk and were put to bed at six. Then Cinderella went down stairs but not to sit in the ashes. She did numerous things for Bridget and they had a cozy dinner together, always a dessert, and they were so good.
“If Jack only wouldn’t run away,” she said. “You see I can’t leave the babies, and I am so afraid he will get lost.”
“Let him get lost then; that’ll bring his mother to her senses, and you tell her.”
He did come near it one day. She took the babies home and explained and then said she would go and find him.
Aunt Florence went with her. They had quite a long search and finally asked the policeman, who said: “there was a little boy down here on a stoop, crying.”
Jack, sure enough, and he was very glad to be found. His mother kept him in the house for two days and then he promised to be very good.
“Now, if you make any trouble you shall not go out for a whole week.”
The babies hadn’t gone much farther than “agoo, agoo,” but Marilla tried her best to make them talk. They each had a rubber doll and the child would dance them up and down and make them turn somersaults and stand on their heads, and invent every sort of grotesque action.
Jack was a good looking little fellow and had been spoiled in the earlier years. He was a little afraid of his father, and sometimes his mother would make him mind, but he was very full of badness.
Aunt Florence wanted some silk and twist and spools of cotton one morning.
“You could find your way down to Grand street where the stores are, couldn’t you Marilla – where we went that Saturday night?”
“Oh, yes. Down there opposite the park.”
“Yes. It’s a big store. Day and Belden. I’ll write it out for you and you may take my Leggy bag. Be sure and put the change in it before you leave the store.”
“Yes’m,” with her sweet accent.
“She may take Jack, and the babies will have a good long nap. Now Jack, you must be very good and mind Marilla, or you shan’t go out again for a week.”
Jack said he would. He looked very pretty in his brown coat with its fur collar, and his brown mittens.
“Give me a penny a’cause I’m gonter be good.”
“I’ll wait and see whether you are going to good or not.”
Jack stood it pretty well until they reached the little park which was a rather long triangle with a few trees in it. Here he made a sudden dash and was off like a squirrel.
Marilla was after him. “Go it sonny,” cried a man laughing, but she gained on him and took him by the arm with a jerk that nearly capsized them both.
He could not pull away. She marched him