Sarah the Less

Front matter

Class, rz 7

COPyRIGHT DEPOSrr.

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Chapter I

O OME one in this family must amount to something, and I am afraid it will not be Absalom; he is so queer.” Sarah Rogers sighed, as, sitting on a stool beside her mother’s worktable, she looked up into Uncle Abram’s rugged, world-and-weather-worn face and delivered herself very positively of this sentiment.

Uncle Abram’s rugged wrinkles relaxed. They seldom relaxed, and you couldn’t guess when they were going to. He even chuckled slightly. He was always inclined to be a little, lenient toward Absalom’s “queerness”; although one would have thought it just the kind of queerness that he could not tolerate. “I can’t have mother sew herself to death,” said Sarah, and her sixteen-year-old face and voice were the more despairing for that chuckle of Uncle Abram’s, which reminded her of a complaint of Orinda Jenks, his housekeeper, that “sometimes he didn’t appear to have a realizin’ sense.”

If it were possible. Uncle Abram must be made to have a realizing sense.

“Mother isn’t willing that I should sew, because she thinks it hurts me,” pursued Sarah; and now her tone was an aggrieved one. “And there isn’t any other chance for me unless” —

“She has got a narrow chest like the Rogerses. I can’t have her sew ; it always makes her cough,” said Sarah’s mother, quickly. Sarah’s father had died of consumption. “If it hadn’t been for paying off the mortgage, I expect I could have sent her to the Highbury Seminary, myself, by this time,” she added, with a little touch of pride. It came hard, as she said to herself, to ask favors of Abram.

“Learning costs, and it ain’t always what it’s cracked up to be,” said Uncle Abram, sententiously. “I always managed to dispense without it, and my brother Charles that went to college always said he had five hundred dollars’ worth more than ever done him any good.”

“I could pay you all that it would cost; I’m sure I could !” said Sarah, eagerly, and swallowing desperately a lump in her throat that meant pride and fear and all such hindering things.

“Paying up is pretty sure to come harder than what you think for,” said Uncle Abram. “Between promise day and pay day there is as great a gulf fixed as there was between Dives and Lazarus.”

You believed that all hard things were true when Uncle Abram said them. His wrinkles seemed to vouch for them, and his harsh voice. Nevertheless, Sarah persevered.

“I would be so economical ; it wouldn’t cost very much,” she said.

“Dressing up and having receptions is what appears to be mostly going on in the schools and colleges that the gals go to, nowadays,” continued Uncle Abram, uncompromisingly. “If you could go as your Aunt Mehitabel went to the Hebron Academy when she was a gal, why that would be worth talking about. She and another gal hired a room and boarded themselves. We sent ’em provisions from the farm, and it didn’t cost anything to speak of. Young folks had to fight and wrestle for an education in them days.”

“I would do that — oh, I would do that!” cried Sarah, breathlessly. “Then you would have to lend me so little ! And I would pay for everything — everything I — that was sent me.”

Uncle Abram looked reflective, but the rigidity of his wrinkles was scarcely propitious. Sarah rose and stood beside her mother’s chair; it seemed like a rampart from which one could more successfully assail the enemy ; and she meant to conquer Uncle Abram if it were a possible thing. For she must have an education, and there was nothing that a girl could do to earn money in Gilboa. One could not even knit stockings, now, because the factories supplied the market, and the summer visitors seemed to have tired of hooked rugs, even if one made them after an oriental pattern. ,

Even if her mother had been willing that she should sew, there was not enough dressmaking for them both, now that two newer and more fashionable dressmakers had come to town and more and more people went, every year, to the city for their clothes.

Gilboa’s primitive conditions were changing since the manufactories had come. One would think that Uncle Abram might see the practical necessities of the case ; Sarah had set them before him plainly enough. And she had, with what she felt to be the wisdom of the serpent, refrained from mentioning to him that longing for book lore which had possessed her ever since she had learned her letters. Uncle Abram constantly avowed his belief that learning was “something that folks could dispense without.”

“It is a very different world from what it was when Mehitabel went to the Hebron Academy and did for herself,” said Mrs. Rogers, with a touch of asperity. “Sarah is willing and she’s smart. I should miss her dreadfully about the trimmings ; she has a knack for trimming that I never had — but whether she could stand it to live that way and go to such a fashionable school as Highbury Seminary, I don’t know. I shouldn’t want her to go there, anyway, if it wasn’t the only school near home. There would be so many mortifications.”

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'‘I don’t mind mortifications; not a bit,” said Sarah, stoutly.

Mrs. Rogers was verging upon tears — which Uncle Abram hated. He found Sarah’s undaunted spirit a pleasing contrast, and was, perhaps, unconsciously influenced by it. He shuffled uneasily in his chair.

“I expect nothing but what Orindy would spend all her time cooking up for you,” he said, grumblingly.

Then Sarah had an inspiration and assumed that he had consented. “Thank you very much. Uncle Abram,” she said. “You’ll see that I will pay you. And I can cook. Orinda needn’t cook a single thing for me !”

No one had ever before taken Uncle Abram’s consent for granted, and he drew his shaggy eyebrows together in surprise. But he had, nevertheless, a subtle sense of having been helped out of a difficulty. There was some “smartness” about this niece of his. Since he had no children of his own, perhaps he might as well do a little something for his brother John Henry’s daughter. She did seem to understand that if she was going to a fashionable school she must do without frills and furbelows.

1 1

“There was Laban Hotchkiss who went through Bowdoin College on Injin meal,” he said, reflectively. And Sarah knew that she had gained the day.

“Laban Hotchkiss never had a mite of health afterwards,” said Sarah’s mother. For she thought that Abram, being the richest farmer in Gilboa, might send Sarah to school and pay her board decently.

“Oh, ’sh — ’sh!” murmured Sarah, and gave her a little warning pinch.

Uncle Abram was going out. He thought he had made concessions enough for one morning, and the details of the plan could wait. Moreover, he was a little afraid that his niece’s smartness might lead him farther than he meant to go. He turned back at the door to respond to his sister-in-law’s reminiscence of Laban Hotchkiss.

“Folks that hain’t got a constitution to stand living on Injin meal had better not try to get an education,” he said, gruffly.

But there was one good thing about Uncle Abram : he always kept his word. So Sarah was not afraid that her prospects would be ruined by her mother’s indiscretion.

Sarah danced for joy and hugged her mother, and immediately proceeded to wind her long braid into a coil. Not even in the morning, at home, must she look so youthful and irresponsible again. But her mother could not be moved to responsive joy.

“I shall never think of you as having a decent meal,” she wailed. “And how can you study when you have to cook? and how, in a fashionable school like that, will you get a roommate?”

“A roommate?” Sarah had not thought of that.

“I could not bear to think of you as living ‘ all alone; you are not that kind,” continued her mother. “I don’t suppose that any of those fashionable girls would associate with you, to say nothing of living with you in that way.”

“I can live alone ! I can do anything for the sake of going! Mother, you don’t understand how much I want to go 1” cried Sarah.

Her mother looked at her and sighed a little, the sigh of the mother who recognizes in her child the alien, only half-understood, characteristics of “the other side.”

“There never was a Rogers that wouldn’t go through fire and flood to get what he had set his heart on,” she said to herself. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to go. I only hope your Uncle Abram will not be too stingy.” She sighed again, perhaps with a recollection of Laban Hotchkiss and his “Injin meal.”

Sarah went over to see Uncle Abram the next day. She wanted to have things settled. She was that kind. So was Uncle Abram. It was a Rogers trait, as Sarah’s mother would have said. Sarah met him on the way to see her.

“I’ve made up my mind that I’ll pay your tuition and your room rent and allow you a fair amount of provisions for a middlin’-sized gal, like you,” he said.

This was one of the somewhat rare occasions when Uncle Abram was sufficiently good-natured to be facetious. Sarah was very tall, and it pleased him to have her so, for that was, also, a Rogers characteristic.

“I’ll take your mother and you over to Highbury next week, and we can see the principal and pick out the room,” he continued. Sarah heaved a sigh of relief. There was a satisfaction in this promptness. There was, really, a kindly gleam in the eyes that looked out from under the old man’s shaggy eyebrows. Sarah felt, for the first time, something akin to tenderness in the tie of relationship that bound her to Uncle Abram.

“I’ll be over next Wednesday morning at nine o’clock sharp,” said Uncle Abram, as he turned his horse round.

“I think I’ll go over and see Orinda for a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” said Sarah, and Uncle Abram allowed her to get into the wagon.

“You can pay me just as soon as you get to school-keeping.” That was the only remark that Uncle Abram made on the way.

Orinda was mounted on a stepladder on the porch, picking hops from the vine that curtained it, to make a pillow to sleep on when she had neuralgia. Orinda always had neuralgia when the wind was east, and at that time, too, the kitchen stove would not draw. She explained to Sarah before she came down from the ladder that she felt as if she ought not to subject her Christian grace to such a strain as “them two things cornin’ together,” if she could help it.

Sarah was glad that Uncle Abram went immediately out to the back pasture to see to some colts that he was raising, for she wished to see Orinda alone.

Orinda had been Uncle Abram’s housekeeper ever since Sarah could remember, and had always been a devoted friend to her. There was no one to whom she felt more inclined to confide her happiness than to Orinda.

'T hope he’ll send you plenty,” said Orinda, when she had heard how Sarah was to live. “Anyhow, I’ll remember you whenever I do a bakin’. I’ll look out for you — never you fear!”

“That’s just what I wanted to see you about. You mustn’t do it!” said Sarah, positively. “Uncle Abram said you would, and he didn’t like it. I could see that he had half a mind not to let me go, on that account. I am determined to do everything for myself that I possibly can. I’ll not let mother send me anything that is cooked. Promise me — promise me, solemnly, Orinda, that you’ll not !”

“Why — why, land sake ! it seems a livin’ shame! You poor little cretur!” Orinda’s black eyes flashed and grew misty as she looked commiseratingly at the “poor little cretur” who towered half a head above her. “When I’m bakin’ a batch of pies or fryin’ a pan of doughnuts, I might jest as well send you some as not. When I roast a chicken or a turkey, it’s only a pickin’, as you might say, that me and your uncle eats. And he ain’t so close as some, not so close as what you’d think he might be about victuals.”

“He showed very plainly that he didn’t want you to do it. It — it’s the greatest thing for me, Orinda !” Sarah spoke with almost breathless eagerness, and a sudden pink wave nearly drowned the little brown freckles that were the bane of her life. “The greatest thing — this going away to school ! There’s no other way in which I can make something of myself and help mother and Absalom. I can trim well, better even than mother, but she thinks I’m not strong enough to be a dressmaker, and you know I always took to books. It’s the only way, and I can’t bear to have anything hinder me. What do I care what I eat?” Sarah made a fine gesture of contempt, and puckered her smooth brow, impatiently.

“Learnin ' and dyspepsy are some apt to go together,” murmured Orinda. But Sarah did not heed.

‘'I can cook for myself, perfectly well, the little that I need,” she continued. “And if you really want to be kind to me, Orinda, you’ll promise me that you’ll not send me a single thing that you’ve cooked.”

“Why, if that has got to be the way of it and is what you really want me to do, of course. I’ll promise,” said Orinda. “But I don’t like it a mite.”

“Uncle Abram will send me just what he chooses — potatoes and meal and such things; and I shan’t starve and you needn’t worry.” Sarah smiled brightly and laid a comforting hand on Orinda’s arm.

“He’ll not pamper you none,” said Orinda, dryly. “When he’s sendin’ out that way, he’s considerable closer than what he is when it’s cookin’ up for the house. But there ! he may remember that you’re his niece. He’s some peculiar, your Uncle Abram is. When you think you’ve got him all by heart, you’ll find out, all of a sudden, that you don’t know any more about him than you do about heathen mythology!”

I 8 SARAH THE LESS

‘‘Orinda, don’t you try to make him do anything for me, but just what he has a mind to do,” said Sarah, earnestly.

She went home with a mind set at ease by Orinda’s reluctant promise. Although it was reluctant, one could rely upon Orinda.

Uncle Abram drove Sarah and her mother to Highbury in his ancient carryall. It was so ancient a carriage that they got into' it after a gingerly fashion, expecting it to go to pieces like the “one-hoss shay.” Judy, the old mare, hitched herself along carefully, as if she expected that the same fate might befall her.

Uncle Abram had attired himself with a due regard for the fashionableness of Highbury Seminary, to the relief of Sarah’s mother, who had feared that he might go, as he was in the habit of going to Highbury, in the clothes he wore about the farm.

Uncle Abram was an antiquated figure in his shiny broadcloth suit, his high silk hat of a very ancient style, and a satin stock that reached to the tip of his ears. He always assumed an air of dignity and a solemn demeanor with these clothes, perhaps because he was in the habit of wearing them only to church, and Sarah felt, vaguely, but with gratification, that Uncle Abram looked like a gentleman. She did not share her mother’s fears that the seminary girls would laugh at him ; she thought she would not care for girls so ill-bred and so little discriminating as to do that.

It was the beginning of the fall term, and the regular routine of school work had not yet commenced. When the visitors were ushered into the reception room, groups of gay girls were overflowing the piazzas and halls, and their laughter and chatter came from every side like the sound of many magpies.

The principal was stately, but extremely aflable, not affected, as Sarah’s mother had feared, by the homespun appearance of the party. She said she was very sorry that she was not to have Miss Rogers in the house; the influence of earnest pupils being much needed there. Sarah wondered how she knew that she was going to be an earnest pupil, and thought it was probably because her height made her look old for her years.

There was no difficulty about terms, although Sarah’s mother afterwards confided to her that she was “hot and cold for fear Uncle Abram would beat her down.” So far was he from doing so that he paid a quarter’s tuition in advance, and he only remarked, doubtfully, as he did so, that he expected that “it would be the gal’s own fault if she didn’t get the money’s worth.”

He made this remark as they were going out of the reception room, and two girls in the hall heard it and looked at each other with a giggle. Sarah had thought that she would not mind, but her face burned.

There was a group of giggling girls whose attention seemed to be centered in a constrained and uneasy fashion upon a very plump girl who was seated upon a reception chair in the hall.

“Get up, Lora Bangs! Oh, dear, I never, never meant you to do it 1 I didn’t think you really would I” This voice came from a small, stylishly-dressed girl who came flying through the hall and jerked the plump girl from her seat.

Sarah knew almost by intuition what had happened, before the plump girl’s rising revealed the shapeless mass that had been, for more than ten years. Uncle Abram’s Sunday hat. He had felt that it was not etiquette to carry his hat into the reception room, and so had deposited it on a chair in the hall.

“Oh, I — I didn’t think it would be so altogether smashed!” murmured the plump girl. “I wouldn’t have, — only she said it would be such fun!”

Miss Almy, the principal, ignored the plump girl, after one withering glance, and turned her attention to the small, stylish girl in the background.

“Sarah Stuyvesant, go to your room!” she said, in an annihilating tone. “It is generally easy to guess where the responsibility for misconduct rests,” she added; “although I will admit that I supposed you incapable of such vulgar mischief as this.”

Sarah looked after the small figure, silently mounting the stairs, with a feeling of pity. It had been a silly and dreadful thing to advise Lora Bangs to do, but she didn’t like Lora Bangs who was so ready to lay all the blame on her adviser. She pulled out and smoothed out UncJ^e Abram’s hat until it was possible for him to put it on.

“I trust you will not fear the influences here for your daughter — your niece,” the principal said, anxiously, to the visitors. “I had hoped that Sarah Stuyvesant would not return, as she is a ringleader in mischief. I shall now feel it to be my painful duty to expel her.”

To be expelled ; — what a dreadful thing ! How would the girl bear it? thought Sarah Rogers. She had only told the other girl that it would be fun to sit upon Uncle Abram’s hat. It was Sarah’s opinion that the other girl was the more to blame.

But how could any girls be so foolish — girls who had such a great opportunity, such a chance to learn, and without any struggle at all? thought Sarah.

Probably they had no one who needed their help, whom they longed to help as she longed to help her mother and Absalom. But they needn’t be so childish. Why, they would scorn to play so silly a prank as that in the Gilboa Grammar School !

In the carriage. Uncle Abram took off his hat and regarded it ruefully.

‘T’m glad that gal is going to be expelled. Sarah might get more than her money’s worth of learning manners,” he said.

SARAH GAZED AT HERSELF ADMIRINGLY.*’ PAGE 43

Chapter II

I could have lived as you do, out- J[ side of the school, it never would have happened,” said Sarah Stuyvesant. “Oh, I wish I could live with you; you are so strong and sensible ! I believe that Miss Almy would let me stay now, if you would let me live with you. You said you would like to have a roommate ; oh, would you have me? Say you will and ask her to let me stay as a day pupil !” Sarah Stuvesant’s small, miserable, tear-stained face was raised appealingly to Sarah Rogers’ calm and somewhat severe one.

Sarah Rogers had been a day pupil at the school for a month, keeping house for herself in two rooms in a dingy old house on one of the Highbury side streets — room rent was expensive from Uncle Abram’s point of view. In the trying social world of a girl’s school Sarah’s straightforward simplicity and indifference to everything but the end she had in view served her in good stead. The few girls who were indined to scorn Gilboa looks and ways, and regard with contemptuous wonder a girl who “did for herself” in two rooms — a plan of living hitherto quite unknown to Highbury Seminary, respected the serene independence that quite ignored the possibility of being ashamed of her humble way of living, and enjoyed the easy good-fellowship that came of her country training.

There is always a schoolgirl freemasonry between good students, and they were the good students who immediately became Sarah Rogers’ friends — with one exception. Oddly enough that exception was Sarah Stuyvesant, the girl who was held responsible for the untimely end of Uncle Abram’s hat, and who was under sentence of banishment from the school — a sentence which was not immediately carried out only because her mother was living abroad and the uncle to whom she was to go was too ill to receive her.

Sarah Stuyvesant had made the advances toward an acquaintanceship by apologizing, with tears, for the ruin of Uncle Abram’s hat.

“I saw you look as if you pitied me that day. That’s why I dared to speak to you,” she said.

‘T think I wondered at you more than I pitied you,” returned Sarah Rogers, candidly. ‘T saw that you were about as old as I, and it seemed to me a childish thing to do; not funny at all. But yet the other girl needn’t have done it ; and she threw the blame all upon you.”

Sarah Rogers stood looking down upon the smaller Sarah as severely as a young Daniel come to judgment.

'‘They do that always because they think I don’t mind; and I do put them up to things — silly, senseless things like that, very often. I do it because it’s so monotonous here. You see. I’m quick and do my lessons easily, and there’s nothing else to do. I’ve never been to school since I was a child, until last year. I lived in Paris with mother, and we were always gay. Now she is married again and she wanted to get rid of me, so she sent me here to school. Uncle Harold doesn’t want me, either. He is an old bachelor, living alone. He will get me a governess and shut me up so that I shall scarcely see the light of day. Oh, I wish Miss Almy would let me stay here and room with you! I couldn’t contaminate the girls, then. And you are so strong and sensible, she would know I couldn’t hurt you. You ask her!”

The color rose to Sarah Rogers’ face, as she looked down at the dainty, elegant little figure that clung to her. It was always a dainty and elegant little figure, for even Sarah’s school frocks were sent to her from Paris.

''You don’t understand how I live,” she said. "Your world has been such a different one from mine. My mother is a dressmaker, and we have to live on what she earns. My uncle, who is a farmer, is lending me the money to come to school, and I am trying to get along with very little. He sends me provisions — potatoes and Indian meal and things from his farm, and I cook things — johnnycake, chiefly.” Johnnycake was the staple article of Sarah’s diet, for in her earliest zeal she had been stimulated by the example of Laban Hotchkiss.

"Oh, how delightful! and you would teach me?” cried Sarah Stuyvesant. "With such things as that to take up my mind I should never get into mischief, never!”

Sarah’s heart warmed to the eager pleader. Moreover, she sorely longed for human companionship. Often she had thought that the queer little housekeeping would seem quite like a picnic if there were but another girl to share it.

“I shouldn’t be willing that you should get anything different,” she said, sternly. “I couldn’t share any more expensive living, and I couldn’t — accept anything from you.”

“Oh, I understand !” The smaller Sarah wagged her head, knowingly. “You are proud in your way; well, independent, if you like to call it so. As for me, I should simply dote on johnnycakes and potatoes. And I am not rich — oh, not at all ! I have a very small allowance, a mere pittance. Mother and I managed to live on very little in Paris. Now she has married an artist, who only sells his pictures once in a while, and she has to cut me down. I haven’t had a decent gown sent me for a year — not for a year !”

Sarah Rogers glanced involuntarily from her gingham blouse and her old cashmere skirt, turned and pieced, to the stylish, daintily-made gown that adorned the other Sarah’s small figure.

“It’s only that mother has a real genius for bargains,” said Sarah Stuyvesant, in answer to the glance. “And she fairly tramples on dressmakers. It’s the only way with those people ! Oh — oh — I forgot that you said” — She stopped in dismay, her face grown scarlet.

“That I said my mother was a dressmaker? I’m not in the least sensitive about it,” said Sarah Rogers, quietly. “I should have been one if it had not hurt me to sew.”

“Of course it is different, very different, here in New England,” said Sarah Stuyvesant, quickly. “I was thinking of the Paris dressmakers.”

“Your world has been a different one from mine,” repeated Sarah Rogers, reflectively. “But I don’t know that that is any reason why we shouldn’t get along together,” she added. “I heard Miss Almy say the other day that differences in the people we associate with have a developing influence.”

“Oh, you will — you will ask her!” cried Sarah. “I have a chafing dish; oh, you will see that I can cook ! Mother and I used to, in Paris. And — and really in spite of my silly jokes I think” — she paused, her breath coming quickly — “I think there is something of me !”

The tall Sarah stooped impulsively and put her arm about the smaller girl.

‘T will ask her. I think w^e would be good for each other,” she said. “And I should have so much better times if I had another girl with me.”

Sarah Rogers had a private interview with Miss Almy, which lasted for a long time, while Sarah Stuyvesant sat perched upon her trunk, which had already been brought down into the hall, and waited, her childish face growdng wdiite and strained.

“No girl who was like her, strong and good for something, ever took to me, before !” she explained to one or two girls who knew what was happening in Miss Almy’s sanctum. “And it’s such fun to live as she does!” she added, with a lighting up of her troubled face.

“Wait until you have to wash the dishes!” said Alice Freeling, who was generally known as “wet blanket.” But Sarah had washed dishes and knew that it was only fun — especially when you washed them in company with Sarah Rogers.

“It’s queer that those two girls should take to each other,” said one of those who had stopped to speak to Sarah Stuyvesant, sitting upon her trunk. “Sarah Rogers couldn’t have found a more unsuitable friend in the whole school. I’m curious to see what comes of it, if Miss Almy lets her stay.” This was Albertina Loomis, who was suspected of surreptitiously writing stories and having them returned, in bu’ky packages, with the result of red-rimmed eyes for the day.

Miss Almy wished, of course, to allow Sarah Stuyvesant to remain as a day pupil. It would cast an unpleasant reflection upon the school to have a pupil expelled. She was sure that she could easily persuade her uncle to let her stay. But had Sarah Rogers duly weighed the responsibility she was undertaking? It was an opportunity for Sarah Stuyvesant ; the influence would be most beneficial. But did Sarah Rogers realize how wholly lacking in home training, how frivolous, how irresponsible, was the roommate she had chosen?