A Round Dozen

"I don't know as to that," responded Hetty. "Seems to me I've heard of people who did those things, and yet didn't find it so mighty easy to get along. Somebody's got to buy the pictures after they're painted, you know, and read the books, and pay for them." She spoke in an absent tone, and her brow was knitted into the little frown which Delia knew betokened that her twin was puzzling hard over something.

"Don't scowl, it'll spoil your forehead," she said, smoothing out the objectionable frown with her fingers.

"Was I scowling? Well, never mind. I'm trying to think, Dely. You can't paint and I can't write. The question is, What can we do?"

"That is a question," said a voice at the door. It was Aunt Polly's voice. She managed on most days to drop in and "give a look to them, the lonely little creeturs," as she would have expressed it.

"You're consultin', I see," she said, taking in the situation at a glance: the dismal room, the depressive and tearful cheeks of the two girls, the lack of comfort and cheer. She twitched open the stove door as she passed, threw in a stick of wood, twirled the damper, and gave a brisk, rattling shake to the ashes, – all with a turn of her hand as it were, – attentions to which the stove presently responded with a brisk roar. "Well, it's time you did. I was planning to have a talk with you before long, for you ought to settle to something. Pull the blind down, Dely, and, Hetty, you light the lamp, and come to the fire, both of you, and let's see what we can make of it. It's a tangled skein enough, I don't deny it; but most skeins are that, and there's always a right end somewhere, if the Lord'll give us sense enough to get hold of it and keep on pulling out and winding up."

Presently the girls were seated close to Aunt Polly's rocking-chair. The room looked more cheerful now with the lamplight and the yellow glow from the stove, and both were conscious of a sense of hopefulness.

"Now – what can you do?" demanded Aunt Polly, whirling round in her chair so as to face them.

"We hadn't got so far as that when you came in," replied Hetty; "I suppose we must do what other people do in the same circumstances."

"What's that?"

"Teach something, or sew, I suppose."

"Sewing's slow starvation, in my opinion, unless you've got a machine, which you haven't, and not much better then. What do you know that you can teach?"

"Not much," replied Hetty, humbly, while Delia added hesitatingly, "We could teach children their letters, perhaps."

"I presume you could," responded Aunt Polly, dryly. "But, though you mayn't know it, perhaps, there are about fifty women in this town can do the same, and who mean to do it, what's more. And most of 'em have got the start of you in one way or another, so what's your chance worth? No, girls, sewing and teaching are played out. They are good things in their way, but every woman who's got her living to earn thinks of them the very first thing and of nothing else, and the market is always overstocked. My advice to you is, to think up something you can do better than other people– that's what gives folks a real chance! Now, what is there?"

"There isn't anything I can do better than other people," cried the dismayed Delia. "Nor Hetty either – except make gingerbread," she added, with a faint little laugh. "Hetty beats everybody at that, grandmother always said."

"Very well; make gingerbread then. That's your thing to do," said Aunt Polly.

Hetty looked at her with incredulous eyes.

"You're not in earnest, are you?" she said.

"I am. In dead earnest."

"But, Aunt Polly, gingerbread! Such a little thing as that! Who ever heard of a girl's doing such a thing?"

"All the better if they never did. A new trade has a double chance. As for the 'little,' great things often come from small beginnings. Fortunes have been made out of gingerbread before now, I'll be bound, or if not that, out of something no bigger. No, Hetty, depend upon it, if your gingerbread is best, folks will want it. And if your teaching or sewing is only second best, they won't. It's the law of human nature, and a very good law, too, though it cuts the wrong way sometimes, like all laws."

"Aunt Polly, you're a genius!" cried Hetty, warmed into sudden glow by this vigorous common sense. "I can make good gingerbread, and it's just as you say, neither of us know enough to teach well, and we are both poor hands at sewing, and we should have a much better chance if we tried to do what we can and not what we can't. Why shouldn't I make gingerbread? Dely'd help me, and if folks liked our things and bought them, we could live and keep together. We could make a kind of shop of this room, couldn't we? What do you think?"

"'Tisn't a bad place for such a trade," said Aunt Polly, slowly, measuring the room with her eyes. "Being on a corner is an advantage, you see; and there's that double winder on the street gives a first-rate chance to show what you've got to sell. I never did see no use in that winder before. My father, he had it cut for a kind of a whim like, and we all thought it was notional in him; but, as they say, keep a thing long enough and a use'll turn up. It's a sort of a gain for you, too, having the house so old-fashioned. Folks has a hankering for such things, nowadays – the Lord knows why. I hear 'em going on about it when I'm out tailorin', calling ugly things 'quaint,' and lovely, because they're old. Hetty," – with sudden inspiration, – "here's an idea for you, be 'quaint'! Don't try for a shop, keep the room a room, and make it as old-fashioned-looking as you can, and I'll bet a cookie that your gingerbread'll be twice as popular with one set of folks, and if it's first-rate gingerbread, the other set who don't care for old things will like it just as well."

What a bracing thing is a word in season! Aunt Polly's little seed of suggestion grew and spread like Jack's fabled bean-stalk.

"Your light biscuits always turn out well," said Delia.

"And my snaps. Grandmother liked them so much. And you're a good hand at loaf bread, you know. Aunt Polly – I seem to smell a fortune in the air. We will begin at once, just as soon as I can get a half-barrel of flour and put an advertisement in the paper."

Hetty had a ready wit, and Aunt Polly's hint as to "quaintness" was not lost upon her. The advertisement when it appeared the next day but one ran thus: —

"After Monday next, the Old-Time Bakery, corner of Farewell and Martin Streets, will be prepared to furnish, to order, fresh bread, buns, biscuits, and grandmother's gingerbread, all home-made."

People smiled over the little notice, but the odd wording stuck in their memories as odd things will, and more than one person went out of his way during the next week to take a look into the wide, low window, within which, on a broad, napkin-covered shelf, stood rows of biscuits, light and white, buns, each glazed with shining umber-brown, and loaves of gingerbread whose complexion and smell were enough to vouch for their excellence. Acting on Aunt Polly's suggestion, Hetty had set forth her wares on plates of the oldest and oddest pattern which could be found in grandmother's closet. A queer, tall pitcher flanked them on either side, and round the window-frame she had twined the long, luxuriant shoots of a potted ivy. Altogether the effect was pretty, and no one need be told that the pitchers had for years been consecrated to the reception of yeast and corks, or that the plates had long since been relegated to kitchen use as too shabby for better occasions.

"Hain't ye no white chany?" inquired their first customer, an old woman, as she slowly counted out the pennies for half a dozen biscuit. "It would kind of set your cakes off."

"We used what we had," replied Hetty, diplomatically. "But I hope your biscuits'll taste just as good as if they came off a white plate."

This old woman, two others, and a little boy were the only customers that first day.

"'Tisn't a bit a good beginning," declared Delia, pouring the money received out of an old-fashioned china tea-caddy which Hetty had unearthed in an up-stairs closet and brought down to serve as a till. "Two dozen biscuits, that's twenty-four cents, a loaf of gingerbread, and about half the buns. That's fifty-three cents in all. What did you say the materials cost?"

"About seventy cents. But then we have our supper and breakfast out of them, and nearly half the stock to sell at a reduced rate to-morrow. We shan't lose anything, I reckon, but we shan't gain much either."

"Rome wasn't built all in a minute. You'll do yet," remarked Aunt Polly, who had dropped in to hear the result of the first day's sales.

But two days – three – a week, went by, and still trade did not materially improve, and it took all Aunt Polly's wise saws and hopeful auguries to keep their spirits up. Each day showed the same record, no loss, but almost no gain. Toward the end of the second week matters mended. Mrs. Corliss, the wife of a wealthy manufacturer, having an errand in Farewell Street, happened to pass the little window, and her bric-a-brac-loving eyes were caught at once by its unusual appearance. She stopped, studied the whole arrangement from the ivy wreath to the old pitchers; a recollection of the droll little advertisement over which she had laughed a few days previously, came over her. "I declare, this is the very place," she said to herself; and opening the door she entered, precisely as Hetty came from the kitchen through the opposite door, a handkerchief tied over her shiny hair, a white apron with a little ruffled waist protecting her print gown, her cheeks flushed rosy pink with heat, and in her hands a tray full of crisp, delectably smelling ginger-snaps.

"A real study – like a Flemish picture," Mrs. Corliss said afterward. She fell in love at once with the quaint room, the pretty sisters, the old china, stayed twenty minutes nibbling ginger-snaps and looking about her, bought a dollar's worth of everything, "on trial," as she said, and swept out, leaving a wake of rose-colored hope in the air – and Delia and Hetty executing a wild waltz behind her back, for joy and gratulation.

"Luck has turned – I know, I feel it," declared Hetty.

Luck had turned. Mrs. Corliss raved to everybody she knew about the room, the twin-sisters, and the excellence of the gingerbread. It became a fashion to go to Farewell Street for buns and biscuits. Hetty and Delia had to work early and late to fill their orders, but what was that "to sewing their fingers off for a bare living"? Hetty said; and toil was sweetened now by a gradually increasing profit. At the end of the first six months they had not only "lived and kept together," but had a little sum laid by, which, as Aunt Polly advised, was treated as "business capital," part of it being invested in the purchase of an awning for the window and an extra stove to increase their baking capacity. Very rarely were there any stale things left now to be sold next day at half-price, the regular orders and chance custom consuming all.

"We shall have to hire a boy to carry things round, I actually believe," declared Hetty. "Mrs. Malcomb and Mrs. Sayres both said that they would order our bread regularly if we could send it home."

"I've been expecting that would be the next step," remarked Aunt Polly, "and I guess I've got just the boy you want, in my eye. It's Widow McCullen's lad – Sandy, as they call him. He's a good little chap, and it'll be a real help to his mother to have him earning a trifle."

So Sandy McCullen was regularly engaged as "bread-boy," and business grew brisker still.

"Aunt Polly, we've got to another notch," said Hetty, at the end of the first year. "You don't happen to know of a girl, do you, who could help us in the baking? Delia and I can't keep up with the orders. She gets so tired every now and then that she can't sleep, and that worries me so that I lie awake, too."

"That'll never answer; no, I don't know of any girl, but there's a nice kind of an oldish woman, if she'll do, that I'd like to recommend. Yes – I mean myself," she went on, chuckling at Hetty's amazed look. "It's come to me more than once lately that it'd be sort of good and restful to make a change, and not go on tailorin' forever, all the rest of my days. I used to be a master hand at bread and pie-crust, too, when I was your age, and I've a little saved up which can go with the business if it's needed; and, if you girls say so, we'll just make a kind of family firm of the thing. How does it strike you?"

"Oh, Aunt Polly, the very thing, only it seems too good to be true. Do you really mean it? We did so hate the idea of a raw girl to whom we should have to teach everything, and who would spoil half she made for the first month, and I've fought it off as long as I could. Why, it will be like having grandmother come back, to have you living with us. There's the west room all ready. Dear me! How delightfully things seem to turn out for us always!"

"That wasn't your view always, it seems to me," rejoined Aunt Polly. "A year ago you was pretty down in the mouth, if I don't mistake. Gingerbread is good for something, you see."

"The Old-Time Bakery" still goes on in Farewell Street, but it has grown far beyond its original proportions. If you were to visit it to-day you would find a room double the size of the former, and which has been made by taking down a partition wall between the sitting-room and a spare bedroom and throwing them into one. There are two windows on the street now, one full of bread, biscuits, and buns, the other stored with Hetty's now famous gingerbread, and with delicious-looking pumpkin-pies and apple-tarts with old-fashioned flaky crust, which are Aunt Polly's specialty and have added greatly to the reputation of the establishment. Still it is not a shop. Hetty, with wary good taste, has scrupulously preserved the "quaint" look which first gave character to the little enterprise, and by judicious rummaging in neighbors' garrets has acquired sundry old-time chairs, bottles, jugs, and platters, which help in the effect. Everything is scrupulously clean and bright, as all things must be where Aunt Polly supervises; but the brightest things in the room are the faces of the twin sisters. They have tested and proved their powers; they know now what they can do, and they taste the happiness of success.

I tell their little story, in which is nothing remarkable or out of the way, for the sake of other girls, who, perhaps, are sitting to-day with folded hands and puzzling and wondering, just as Hetty and Delia did, over what they are to do and how to set about it. I do not mean at all that these girls should all make gingerbread – that indeed would be "overstocking the market," as Aunt Polly would say, but only that they should hearken to her word of wisdom, "find out what they can do best, and do that," whatever it is, secure that good work, and hearty striving will win some measure of success soon or late, even if its beginnings are small and insignificant as a gingerbread loaf or a batch of biscuit!

THE SECRET DOOR

KNOWLE, in Kent, is an ancient manor-house. It stands knee-deep in rich garden and pasture lands, with hay-fields and apple-orchards stretching beyond, and solemn oak woods which whisper and shake their wise heads when the wind blows, as though possessed of secrets which must not be spoken.

Very much as it looks to-day, it looked two hundred and thirty years ago, when Charles the First was king of England. That was the Charles who had his head cut off, you may remember. Blue Christmas smokes curled from the twisted chimneys in 1645, just as they will this year if the world lasts so long as December. The same dinnery fragrance filled the air, for good cheer smells pretty much alike in all ages and the world over. A few changes there may be – thicker trees, beds of gay flowers which were not known in that day; and where once the moat – a ditch-like stream of green water covered with weeds and scum – ran round the walls, is now a trimly cut border of verdant turf. But these changes are improvements, and in all important respects the house keeps its old look, undisturbed by modern times and ways.

In the same nursery where modern boys and girls eat, sleep, and learn their A, B, C to-day, two children lived, – little Ralph Tresham and his sister Henrietta. Quaint, old-fashioned creatures they would look to us now; but, in spite of their formal dresses and speech, they were bright and merry and happy as any children you can find among your acquaintances. Ralph's name was pronounced "Rafe," and he always called his sister "Hexie."

Christmas did not come to Knowle in its usual bright shape in 1645. Gloom and sadness and anxiety overshadowed the house; and though the little ones did not understand what the cause of the anxiety was, they felt something wrong, and went about quietly whispering to each other in corners, instead of whooping and laughing, as had been their wont. They had eaten their Christmas beef, and toasted the king in a thimbleful of wine, as usual, but their mother cried when they did so; and Joyce, the old butler, had carried off the pudding with a face like a funeral. So after dinner they crept away to the nursery, and there, by the window, began a long whispering talk. Hexie had something very exciting to tell.

"Nurse thought I was asleep," she said, "but I wasn't quite; and when they began to talk I woke up. That wasn't wrong, was it, Rafe? I couldn't sleep when I couldn't, could I?"

"I suppose not; but you needn't have listened," said Rafe, whose notions about honor were very strict.

"I did pull the pillow over my ear, but the words would get in," went on Henrietta, piteously. "And it was so interesting. Did you know that there were such creatures as Bogies, Rafe? Dorothy thinks we have got one in our house, and that its hole is in the great gallery, because once when she was there dusting the armor, she heard a queer noise in the wall, and what else could it be? It eats a great deal, does the Bogie. That's the reason nurse is sure we have got one. It ate all the cold sheep's-head yesterday, and the day before half the big pasty. No victual is safe in the larder, the Bogie has such a big appetite, nurse says."

"I remember about the sheep's-head," said Rafe, meditatively. "Almost all of it was left, and I looked to see it come in cold; but when I asked, Joyce said there was none. Cold sheep's-head is very good. Do you remember how much Humphrey used to like it?"

"I don't remember exactly, it is so long ago," replied Hexie. "How long is it, brother? – since Humphrey went away, I mean. Won't he ever come back?"

"I asked Winifred once, but she only said, 'God knew,' that nothing had been heard of him since the battle when the king was taken. He might be dead, or he might be escaped into foreign parts – and then she cried, oh, so hard, Hexie! Poor Humphrey! I hope he isn't dead. But, about the Bogie, how curious it must be to meet one! Oh, I say, let us go to the gallery now, and listen if we can hear any strange noises there. Will you?"

"Oh, Rafe! I'm afraid. I don't quite like – "

"But you can't be afraid if I'm there," said Rafe, valiantly; "besides, I'll put on Humphrey's old sword which he left behind. Then if the Bogie comes – we shall see!"

Rafe spoke like a conquering hero, Hexie thought; so, though she trembled, she made no further objection, but stood by while he lifted down the sword, helped to fasten its belt over his shoulder, and followed along the passage which led to the gallery. The heavy sword clattered and rattled as it dragged on the floor, and the sound was echoed in a ghostly way, which renewed Hexie's fears.

"Rafe! Rafe! let us go back," she cried.

"Go back yourself if you are afraid," replied Ralph, stoutly; and as going back alone through the dim passage seemed just then worse than staying where she was, Hexie stayed with her valiant brother.

Very softly they unlatched the gallery door, and stole in. It was a long, lofty apartment, panelled with cedar-wood, to which time had given a beautiful light brown color. The ceiling, of the same wood, was carved, here and there, with shields, coats of arms, and other devices. There was little furniture: one tall cabinet, a few high-backed Dutch chairs, and some portraits hanging on the walls. The sun, not yet quite set, poured a stream of red light across the polished floor, leaving the far corners and the empty spaces formidably dusk. The children had seldom been in the gallery at this hour, and it looked to them almost like a strange place, not at all as it did at noonday when they came to jump up and down the slippery floor, and play hide-and-seek in the comers which now seemed so dark and dismal.

Even Rafe felt the difference, and shivered in spite of his bold heart and the big sword by his side. Timidly they went forward, hushing their footsteps and peering furtively into the shadows. Suddenly Hexie stopped with a little scream.

Close to them stood a huge suit of armor, larger and taller than a man. The empty eye-holes of the helmet glared out quite like real eyes, and the whole figure was terrible enough to frighten any little girl. But it was not at the armor that Hexie screamed; the iron man was an old friend of the children's. Many a game of hide-and-seek had they played around, and behind, and even inside him; for Humphrey had contrived a cunning way by which the figure could be taken to pieces and put together again; and more than once Rafe had been popped inside, and had lain shaking with laughter while Hexie vainly searched for him through all the gallery. This had not happened lately, for Rafe was hardly strong enough to manage by himself the screws and hinges which opened the armor; but he knew the iron man too well to scream at him, and so did Hexie. The object which excited her terror was something different, and so strange and surprising that it is no wonder she screamed.

Close by the armor, half hidden by a curtain of heavy tapestry, was an open door, where never door had been known to be. It stood ajar, and dimly visible inside was a narrow staircase winding upward.

"The hole of the Bogie!" gasped Hexie, clutching at Rafe's arm. He started, and felt for the sword. It rattled fearfully, and the sound completed Hexie's terror. She burst away, flew like a scared lapwing down the gallery, along the passages, and never stopped till she reached the nursery and her own bed, where, with two pillows and the quilt drawn over her head, she lay sobbing bitterly at the thought of Ralph left behind, to be eaten perhaps by the Bogie! Poor little Hexie!

Ralph, meanwhile, stood his ground. His heart beat very fast, but he would not run away, – that was for girls. It must be owned, however, that when a moment later the sound of muffled voices became audible down the stairs, he trembled extremely, and was guilty of the unmanlike act of hiding behind the curtain. He was only ten years old, which must plead his excuse with bigger boys who are confident that they could never, under any circumstances, hide themselves or be afraid.

The voices drew nearer, steps sounded, and two figures came out of the narrow doorway. Could there be two Bogies? No wonder they ate so much. But in another minute all thought of Bogies vanished from Ralph's mind, for in one of the figures he recognized his own sister Winifred.

Her companion was a man. There was something familiar in his form. It moved forward, and Ralph jumped so that the big sword rattled again. Bogie number two was his brother Humphrey, mourned as dead ever since the summer before, when so many brave gentlemen gave up their lives for King Charles at the battle of Naseby.

"What noise was that?" whispered Winifred, fearfully.

"Some sound from below," replied Humphrey, after listening a moment. "Must you go, Winnie?"

"I must, dear Humphrey. I dare not absent myself longer lest I be missed and suspected. Oh, if to-morrow were but over, and you safe on the French lugger and over the sea! I cannot breathe while this hiding and danger go on."

"I suppose I ought to be glad also," said Humphrey, ruefully; "but to me that French lugger means exile, and loneliness, and poverty, for the rest of my life, perhaps. Better have laid down my life with the rest at Naseby, in striking one last blow for the king."

"Don't, don't speak so!" protested Winifred, tearfully. "You are alive, thank God; and once these wars are over we may rejoin you, and have a happy home somewhere, if not in the land of our fathers. Now, dear Humphrey, have you all you need for the night?"