mary, jane, and florimel—these were the three garden girls. mary, jane said, “looked it.” she was seventeen, broad and low of brow, with brown hair softly shading it, brown eyes, as warm and trusty as a dog’s, looking straight out upon a friendly world from under straight brows and long brown lashes; a mouth that might have been too large if it had not been so sweet that there could not be too much of its full rosy flexibility. she had white, strong teeth and a clean-cut, reliable sort of nose, a boyish squareness of chin, and clear wholesome tints of white, underlaid with red, in her skin. she was somewhat above medium height and moved with a fine healthy rhythm, like one thinking of her destination and not of how she looked getting to it. last of all, she had wonderfully beautiful hands, not small, but perfectly modelled, capable, kind, healing hands which, young as they were, had the motherly look that cannot be described,4 yet is easily recognizable, the kind of hand that looks as if it were made expressly to support and pat baby shoulders.
jane was quite right: mary garden did “look like a mary.”
jane herself, at fifteen, did not in the least suggest her name. she was small, slender, if one were polite, “thin” if not. she had red hair of the most glorious, burnished, brilliant red, masses of it, and it was not coarse, like much of the red hair, but fine and uncontrollable. it glowed and rose and flew above and around jane’s startlingly white face till it might have been the fire around the head of an awakened brünhilde. no one could have said positively what colour her eyes were. they possessed life rather than tint. they flashed and dreamed, laughed and gloomed under their arching brows of red gold, through their red-gold lashes, with much of the colour of her hair in them. her face was long, with a pointed chin and a delicate little nose; its thin nostrils quick to quiver with her quickened breath. her upper lip was so short that her small, even teeth always showed; her mouth was sensitive, not to say melancholy. her neck was long and slender and swan-white. her shoulders sloped; she was not more than5 five feet tall; her hands were long and thin, quick and fluttering, like her lips. altogether jane was exactly the opposite of her prim, old-time name.
these two garden girls had received garden names from their father and his family. he had been doctor elias garden, doctor of letters and physics, not of medicine; a grave man, devoted to study, old of his age, and that age twelve years more than his wife’s, to whom he had left his three little girls, when mary was four years old, by dying untimely.
the third child this girl-wife had named. the mother was but twenty-four, and she was understood to have been fond of sentiment and the ornamental; she named her baby florimel, out of spenser’s “fairy queen.” this proved to be a misfit name even more than jane’s. florimel was a dark little witch, black-haired, black-eyed, white of skin, with red cheeks and red lips, a tomboy when she was small, an absolute genius at mischief as she grew older, devoid of the least love of the sentimental. she whistled like the blackbird mary called her, climbed trees, fell out of them, tore dresses, bruised flesh, got into scrapes, but also out of them, through her impetuosity. she was a firebrand in temper, yet6 easily moved to pity, exceedingly loyal and loving to those she loved, seeing no virtues in those she disliked. thus she had stormed her way up to her thirteen years, a problem to manage, except that she adored mary so much that she could not long grieve her, and was so true and affectionate that she was sure to come out right in the end.
young as they were, the garden girls were three distinct types, each beautiful. mary least could claim actual beauty, perhaps, yet she was the loveliest of the three. jane and florimel were creatures for an artist to rave over; mary was the type that men and women and angels love. when florimel was a year old their mother had left them. she was english, an artist of some sort, they knew, and she had elected to respond to the call of her art, and had gone to england, leaving her children to the more than efficient guardianship of the garden relatives, their legally appointed guardian, mr. austin moulton, their father’s friend, and the devotion of anne kennington, the housekeeper, nurse—everything. it would have been hard to define anne kennington’s position in the garden household, as it would have been hard to do justice to the way she filled it.
7 the girls had never thought much about their mother. the gardens had been too well-bred to decry her to her children, but they had gathered the impression that she “did not amount to much,” a fearful indictment from a garden! mary had silently felt, in a hurt way, that she could never have left three little girls, no matter to whom, and she had not talked about their mother, even to her sisters. as time went on, without being told so, the garden girls came to imagine that their mother was dead. this impression of one whom only mary remembered vaguely could not sadden them. they were motherless; but, though they envied girls with loving fathers and mothers, they had a great deal. each in her way, the three garden girls were philosophers and did not imagine they were unhappy when they were not, since no life holds every form of good.
they had the solid, fine old house; win garden, winchester, their father’s half-brother, only twenty-four years old, so big-brotherly that it was silly to call him uncle, and they never did; and the garden. the square house of pressed brick stood in a garden, a great, old-fashioned garden, blooming around it, as the house bloomed amid it, with its rosebud girls. sometimes the8 garden girls thought the garden was their chief earthly good; certainly it was their chief joy. with it and one another little else was needed for companionship.
now, in may, the lilacs blossomed and the irises were beginning, the herald shrubs were announcing themselves vanguards of the flower-beds. many of these were filled with perennials, growing taller, more luxuriant each year, thanks to the care they got, chief of them all the tall hollyhocks which illumined the garden on all sides. the hollyhocks were so many and so magnificent that they gave their name to the garden house. it was known as hollyhock house to all the countryside. other beds were left for seeds of swift-growing annuals; each garden girl had two of these beds for her own planting and, when they flowered, one could have accurately named their owners. even meteoric florimel did not neglect her flowers.
jane was singing in the sunshine as she cut sprays of white lilac. she looked like a sunray clad in flesh, with the sunshine on her magnificent hair, and her slender body pulsating with song, as a ray of light quivers in the air.
mary looked up from her aster seedlings which she was thinning.
9 “you look as though you were going to fly away, janie goldilocks!” she cried, dropping back on her heels to regard jane. mary was always discovering her sister anew.
“wish i could!” cried jane. “fly right up like a spark—my hair is red enough! and be a spark that wouldn’t cool in the air, but keep on and on! over the himalayas!” she added as an afterthought; that sounded magnificently distant, big and vague.
“over the home layers would do for me—the chicken house!” laughed mary.
“my voice goes up and up; it’s part of me, yet, when it is up, it is no longer a part of me,” said jane. “i’m here, my feet on the ground, and i can send my voice skyward, and it is mine, me, and not me. it goes very, very high——”
“i noticed it,” said mary. indeed janie’s singing had mounted to the treetops, an arrow of sound, sharp, clear, yet never shrill.
“you old nuisance!” cried jane. “why don’t you ever want to fly? and why do you sing in that purring alto, just like yourself? i want to jump over the moon and sing to c above high c! it’s just because you’ve brown hair!”
“i don’t know,” suggested mary. “it was the cow who jumped over the moon, and cows10 are supposed to be calm folk. maybe she was a red cow though; mother goose forgot her complexion.”
“she ought to have been an ayreshire cow, going up in the air like that.” janie rippled with laughter over this discovery. “never mind, molly bawn; i’d soon fly back again, if i flew away from you, and i don’t believe if i flew to the hanging gardens of babylon i’d be happy to hang in them, away from the garden garden, long!”
“of course you wouldn’t!” agreed mary promptly. “we both know there’s no place like home, but i settle down knowing it, and you keep fermenting like yeast! that’s what i don’t understand.”
“wine sounds nicer than yeast and ferments just as much,” jane reproached her. “yeast is gray and ugly and smelly; grape juice fermenting is lovely. i can’t help being fizzy! fuzzy, too, and red-haired! but i’d never fly far from you, mary blessing.” and jane ran over to hug mary till she toppled her over. they both laughed, and returned to their flowers, one cutting, the other transplanting. jane resumed her singing, her voice soaring high in “i love the name of mary,” transposed to an unreasonable key.
11 “i ought to have been the soprano garden, with my name,” said mary. “i’ve the prima donna name and the secunda donna voice—no, the tertia donna voice—such as it is! the alto isn’t even the second lady of the opera, is she?”
“i don’t know! what in all this world is all this learned latiny sounding count you’re trying! we’ve always called you our opera star, mary garden, haven’t we? i know what the prima donna is, but i don’t know what your secunda and tertia—oh, i see! prima is first—yes, i see! you’re not much like an opera mary garden, i suppose, but you can sing! i love your voice—just like a lovely cat that’s had plenty of cream, purring all contented on a cushion! soft and true and sweet; that’s your voice, little mary garden—even if you’re not big mary garden!”
“well, jane!” cried mary, when jane paused. “a cat purring, after cream! but it isn’t as though i thought anything about singing. what are we trying to get at? i never even think of singing. i see win coming out of the house, and i hear florimel talking like mad. i wonder what it is, now!”
“goodness knows!” sighed jane, as if anything might be expected of their youngest—as indeed it might!
12 winchester garden, the young half-uncle who seemed like a whole brother to the young girls, came down the central path of the garden to join mary and jane. he was good to look at, lean, but not thin, muscular, with a swinging easy walk; he had a smooth-shaven, humorous face, with keen, yet kindly eyes which twinkled in a way that matched a certain laughing twist of his lips. he was tall and his colouring was harmonious, hair, eyes, and skin all of a brownish tint.
“hallo, little nieces! hallo, little nices!” he called, correcting himself.
“hallo, win, the winner!” jane shouted back. “methinks i hear florimel—lifluous,” said win.
mary laughed; jane did not know what the word meant.
“nothing particularly mellifluous about florimel’s voice just now,” she said.
somewhere beyond the fence arose florimel’s voice. “come along!” it was saying sharply. “do you think i can drag you! big as you are? even if i knew you wouldn’t bite! come on!” this more encouragingly. “if you only won’t be shy,” they heard her add in a tone of exasperated patience, “i’m sure my sisters will be glad to see you, and some one will help you out,13 probably our guardian, mr. austin moulton. he can do ’most anything of that sort.”
“well, what on earth do you suppose the kid has in tow, now, that requires such an assorted exhortation?” murmured win.
florimel appeared at the wicket gate which admitted to the garden from the street at the rear of the garden place. but above her, over the hedge, arose another head, some ten inches higher than florimel’s dark one, the fair head of a boy about eighteen. his face was pale, his expression troubled, his eyes seemed to ask for pardon for his intrusion, but he was there. it was only when he followed florimel through the gate, at her vehement invitation, that one saw that he limped.
florimel was rosy from earnest and strenuous effort; her brilliant face was fairly scintillating with excitement, her dark eyes snapping. the reason for what win had called her “assorted exhortation” was revealed by the presence of the lame boy and of a dog which she was gingerly, yet forcibly, conducting by any part available for seizure, there being no collar by which to lead her. it was a dog of varied ancestry, setter and hound predominating. on a groundwork of white a large liver-coloured spot,14 like a stray buckwheat cake, was displayed on one side, and a large liver-coloured spot, with a smaller one just below it, giving the effect of the print of the sole and heel of a muddy and large shoe, decorated the dog’s other side. the liver and white tail which she cheerfully waved was too broad and thick successfully to carry out its design; so was the body too unevenly developed for beauty. but the head was really beautiful, with long liver-coloured ears, soft and fine, carrying out the liver-coloured sides of the face, divided by a broad white parting from crown to tip of nose. the brown eyes looking out from this fine head were the softest, loveliest of dogs’ eyes—and there can be nothing more said in praise of eyes than this.
“it’s homeless!” florimel announced breathlessly. “it hasn’t any home. it’s been hanging around the hotel and they won’t feed it for fear it will keep on hanging around. amy everett and i found them driving it off—with brooms!” florimel’s voice conveyed that this weapon was of all the most unpardonable. “i grabbed its hair—they said ’twould bite, but it never would! and i pulled its ears—they’re as soft! and it licked my nose before i could jump. so i’m going to keep her—please! we need a15 dog, really. it is a peach; only a puppy, about six months old; they said so at the hotel. people had it and dropped it—didn’t want it. isn’t it perfectly fiendish the way they do that to cats and dogs? so i want her. don’t shake your head, winchester garden; i—want—this—dog!”
mary, jane, and win had been following this eloquence with various degrees of embarrassment, for while florimel introduced the dog she made no allusion to the boy, whom some people, less animal lovers than florimel, might have thought should have been first introduced. he stood patiently awaiting his turn while florimel talked. but, after all, this was less a misfortune than it seemed, for it was absurd enough to make him laugh, and this put him slightly more at ease, besides recalling florimel to her duty.
“my sakes, i forgot!” she cried, but not in the least contrite. “i met this—this—— are you a gentleman or a boy?” she demanded.
this sent all four of her hearers into a burst of laughter, and laughter is a good master of ceremonies, abolishing ceremonial.
“i hope to be a gentleman soon; in the meantime i’d like to be considered a gentlemanly boy,” said the stranger. his voice and manner16 of speaking warranted his hope. “i am eighteen. i guess i’m still a boy. my name is mark walpole. i came to this town because i heard that there was a chance here for employment, but the place i was after is filled. i’ve had rather a setback starting out in life. my mother has been dead some years. there was a fire. it destroyed our house, and my father was—he died in it. it seems he left nothing behind him; we had been considered rather well-to-do. i’m afraid his step-brother got the best of him. he showed he hated me, and that may have been because he had wronged us. people thought so. he held the land where the house had been, and there wasn’t any money. i had to start out; of course i wanted to. i couldn’t have breathed in that town—this all happened in massachusetts. so i’m seeking my fortune. this little girl seems to be in the rescue line to-day. she heard me ask for work; she was struggling along with this dog. so she annexed me, too! she seemed to think she knew some one who was sighing for a chance to start me. i didn’t want to come here with her, but we couldn’t seem to help it—neither the dog nor i!” the young fellow stopped and smiled at florimel, with a glance at the others.
17 “yes, that’s florimel!” cried mary, with conviction. “she sweeps all before her.”
“she’s a six-cylinder, seventy-five horsepower,” added win. “but she’s all right—except when she’s all wrong! this time she’s dead right. we’re glad you came. come into the house; there’s supper soon, eh, mary?”
“indeed there is, a good one!” cried mary, jumping to her feet. “of course florimel was right, and we are glad you came! please don’t seem to be going to refuse to stay, because you must stay, anyway! we love to have company!”
“we get dreadfully tired of just ourselves,” added jane, though this was an exaggeration of her own occasional moods. “we’re awfully glad you came. this is hollyhock house, we are the garden girls—mary, florimel, jane.” she touched her own breast with her thumb bent backward.
“winchester garden,” added win, with a bow. “i’m jane’s uncle, but not worth her introducing. it’s pretty tough to have such disrespectful nieces! i’m their father’s half-brother. i’m afraid they are all trying to be sisters to me, not nieces. i know they are trying, if that’s all! awful trials! come up with me to my room18 and let’s wash up for supper. you said your name was mark; sure it isn’t maud? wish it were!”
“why?” asked the guest, evidently both alarmed and pleased by this cordiality.
“we never catch a maud. we want to say: ‘come into the garden, maud’—either this nice old garden, or the garden house—but no one turns up to fit! come into the house, anyway. mark is within three letters—two—of being maud.”
and win laid his hand on the lame lad’s shoulder, with great kindness underneath his nonsense, and bore him away in triumph. as he went the girls heard him saying: “we fit our tennyson in one way: we’ve a rosebud garden of girls, three of ’em.”
“take the dog around to abbie, and ask her to feed her and make a place in the woodhouse for her to sleep. she must stay to-night, anyway,” said mary. “then hurry to get yourself ready for supper, florimel; you’re covered with white hair and dogginess!”
“good thing to be covered with,” said florimel. “what’ll we call the dog, janie?”
“i was thinking; chum is a nice name for a dog,” said jane.
19 “it’s a fine name!” cried mary.
and florimel saw that her dog was safe. “but i knew you’d love her, you darling things!” she cried, as she tore off, with her large and cheerful outcast rushing after her.
