The Brimming Cup. Dorothy Canfield Fisher
sank right into it. Oh, it was horridly soft, like touching the hand of that new man that had come to live with the old gentleman next door. She must hurry as fast as she could … it felt as though it was sucking at her feet, trying to pull her down altogether like the girl with the red shoes, and she didn't have any loaves of bread to throw down to step on …
Well, there! this was better, as the ground started uphill. There was firm ground under her feet. Yes, not mud, nor soaked, flabby meadow-land, but solid earth, solid, solid! She stamped on it with delight. It was just as nice to have solid things very solid, as it was to have floaty things like clouds very floaty. What was horrid was to have a thing that looked solid, and yet was all soft, like gelatine pudding when you touched it.
Well, for goodness' sake, where was she? Where had she come to, without thinking a single thing about it? Right on the ridge overlooking Aunt Hetty's house to be sure, on those rocks that hang over it, so you could almost throw a stone down any one of the chimneys. She might just as well go down and make Aunt Hetty a visit now she was so near, and walk home by the side-road. Of course Paul would say, nothing could keep him from saying, that she had planned to do that very thing, right along, and when she left the school-house headed straight for Aunt Hetty's cookie-jar. Well, let him! She could just tell him, she'd never dreamed of such a thing, till she found herself on those rocks.
She walked more and more slowly, letting herself down cautiously from one ledge to another, and presently stopped altogether, facing a beech tree, its trunk slowly twisted into a spiral because it was so hard to keep alive on those rocks. She was straight in front of it, staring into its gray white-blotched bark. Now if Mother asked her, of course she'd have to say, yes, she had planned to, sort of but not quite. Mother would understand. There wasn't any use trying to tell things how they really were to Paul, because to him things weren't ever sort-of-but-not-quite. They either were or they weren't. But Mother always knew, both ways, hers and Paul's.
She stepped forward and downward now, lightened. Her legs stretched out to carry her from one mossed rock to another. "Striding," that was what she was doing. Now she knew just what "striding" meant. What fun it was to feel what a word meant! Then when you used it, you could feel it lie down flat in the sentence, and fit into the other words, like a piece in a jig-saw puzzle when you got it into the right place. Gracious! How fast you could "stride" down those rocks into Aunt Hetty's back yard!
Hello! Here at the bottom was some snow, a great big drift of it still left, all gray and shrunk and honey-combed with rain and wind, with a little trickle of water running away softly and quietly from underneath it, like a secret. Well, think of there being still snow left anywhere except on top of the mountains! She had just been thinking all the afternoon how good it seemed to have the snow all gone, and here she ran right into some, as if you'd been talking about a person, saying how sick and tired you were of everlastingly seeing him around, and there he was, right outside the window and hearing it all, and knowing it wasn't his fault he was still hanging on. You'd feel bad to know he'd heard. She felt bad now! After all, the fun the snow had given them, all that winter, sleighing and snow-shoeing and ski-running and sliding downhill. And when she remembered how glad she'd been to see the first snow, how she and little Mark had run to the window to see the first flakes, and had hollered, Oh goody, goody! And here was all there was left, just one poor old forgotten dirty drift, melting away as fast as it could, so's to get itself out of the way. She stood looking down on it compassionately, and presently, stooping over, gave it a friendly, comforting pat with one mittened hand.
Then she was pierced with an arrow of hunger, terrible, devouring starvation! Why was it she was always so much hungrier just as she got out of school, than ever at meal-times? She did hope this wouldn't be one of those awful days when Aunt Hetty's old Agnes had let the cookie-jar get empty!
She walked on fast, now, across the back yard where the hens, just as happy as she was to be on solid ground, pottered around dreamily, their eyes half-shut up. … Elly could just think how good the sun must feel on their feathers! She could imagine perfectly how it would be to have feathers instead of skin and hair. She went into the kitchen door. Nobody was there. She went through into the pantry. Nobody there! Nobody, that is, except the cookie-jar, larger than any other object in the room, looming up like a wash-tub. She lifted the old cracked plate kept on it for cover. Oh, it was full—a fresh baking! And raisins in them! The water ran into her mouth in a little gush. Oh my, how good and cracklesome they looked! And how beautifully the sugar sprinkled on them would grit against your teeth as you ate it! Oh gracious!
She put her hand in and touched one. There was nothing that felt like a freshly baked cookie; even through your mitten you could know, with your eyes shut, it was a cookie. She took hold of one, and stood perfectly still. She could take that, just as easy! Nobody would miss it, with the jar so full. Aunt Hetty and Agnes were probably house-cleaning, like everybody else, upstairs. Nobody would ever know. The water of desire was at the very corners of her mouth now. She felt her insides surging up and down in longing. Nobody would know!
She opened her hand, put the cookie back, laid the plate on the top of the jar, and walked out of the pantry. Of course she couldn't do that. What had she been thinking of—such a stealy, common thing, and she Mother's daughter!
But, oh! It was awful, having to be up to Mother! She sniffed forlornly and drew her mitten across her nose. She had wanted it so! And she was just dying, she was so hungry. And Mother wouldn't even let her ask people for things to eat. Suppose Aunt Hetty didn't think to ask her!
She went through the dining-room, into the hall, and called upstairs, "Aunt Hetty! Aunt Hetty!" She was almost crying she felt so sorry for herself.
"Yis," came back a faint voice, very thin and high, the way old people's voices sounded when they tried to call loud. "Up in the east-wing garret."
She mounted the stairs heavily, pulling herself along by those spindling old red balustrades, just like so many old laths, noticing that her rubber boots left big hunks of mud on the white-painted stairs, but too miserable to care.
The door to the east-wing garret was open. Aunt Hetty was there, bossing Agnes, and they were both "dudsing," as Elly called it to herself, leaning over trunks, disappearing in and out of closets, turning inside out old bags of truck, sorting over, and, for all Elly could see, putting the old duds back again, just where they had been before. Grown-ups did seem to run round in circles, so much of their time!
She sat down wearily on an ugly little old trunk near the door. Aunt Hetty shut up a drawer in a dresser, turned to Elly, and said, "Mercy, child, what's the matter? Has the teacher been scolding you?"
"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly faintly, looking out of the window.
"Anybody sick at your house?" asked Aunt Hetty, coming towards the little girl.
"No," said Elly, shaking her head.
"Don't you feel well?" asked Aunt Hetty, laying one wrinkled, shaky old hand on her shoulder.
"No, Aunt Hetty," said Elly, her eyes large and sad.
"Maybe she's hungry," suggested Agnes, in a muffled voice from the depths of a closet.
"Are you?" asked Aunt Hetty.
"YES," cried Elly.
Aunt Hetty laughed. "Well, I don't know if there are any cookies in the house or not," she said, "we've been so busy house-cleaning. Agnes, did you bake any cookies this morning?"
Elly was struck into stupor at this. Think of not knowing if there were any cookies in the house!
Agnes appeared, tiny and old and stooped and wrinkled, like her mistress. She had a big, rolled-up woolen-covered comforter in her arms, over which she nodded. "Yes, I made some. You told me to make some every Wednesday," she said. She went on, looking anxiously at Aunt Hetty, "There ain't any moth-holes in this. Was this the comfortable you meant? I thought this was the one you told me to leave out of the camphor chest. I thought you told me … "
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