Minerva Sees Today

       There was nobody at luncheon but Mother, Miss Weed, Jane and Mallory. Father had gone to the city early on the commuters' train. It was a lively luncheon, nevertheless, for Mallory and Jane had a great deal to tell about the wonderful old trunk and all that was in it; about the dinner-set, the little doll trunk, the doll dresses, the Godey books, and the package of letters, the sampler and everything else.

       Miss Weed evidently found it all quite as interesting as they did. She said she had an old doll too; some day, they should come to her house for a party and see her old doll whose name was Cornelia.

       She said that Cornelia always sat in her parlor upon a table in a little twig chair made of willow and put together with pins. Mallory and Jane were anxious to see her. They said, if Mother would let them, they would bring their old doll.

       Mother was going out right after lunch but, before she left, she and Miss Weed were easily persuaded to mount the steep attic stairs and have a peek at everything. Mallory lifted the trunk lid while the others stood about; one after the other, she showed all of it's wonderful treasures.

       Mother said she would take the letters and look them over. She took the package and untied the tape that bound the yellowed papers tight. In an envelope, she came upon an old daguerreotype. It was a kind of small square pressed leather box, flat with two covers that fastened with tiny hooks at one end.

       As the hook was loosened, the covers opened like a book. On one side of this case was a red velvet stamping, on the other the picture of a child of long ago with full skirts and pantalettes, curls clustering about a sweet little round face.

       In her arms she held the doll! It was the very little girl to whom all had belonged. Mother lifted a bit of writing from her lap which had fallen from the case as she opened it. It read, 'Ann Mallory, aged nine with her doll, Minerva Ida Adams.'

       "Oh, we hoped we'd find out her name," cried Mallory, clapping her hands and dancing about as much as the attic space would allow. "Oh, Mother, she ought to belong to me. I haven't any doll. I want her to keep to play with. Please let me, please. I want her."

       "Well," considered Mother, "I think she ought to belong to you, dear. And the toys ought to be yours too, if you could take very good care of them. They are such unusual old things and you would have to treat them with great care and respect."

       "Oh, I certainly would," urged Mallory.

       "We both would," put in Jane. "We'd want to; you know, Mother let me have her old doll, Baby Edith. I take splendid care of her." She held Baby Edith up for inspection. She was a jointed French Bebe Jumeau. "Mallory ought to have Minerva Ida Adams."

       "I'm sure she should" added Miss Weed. "But it seems to me that the dress and the letters should be put back into the old trunk and kept safe."

       "Yes," agreed Mother. "That is what we will do. Mallory may have the doll and the toys, but the other things we will put back where they were."

       It was settled. Into the old trunk, Mother carefully packed the clothes that had long ago been worn by Malory's great-grandmother. The trunk and dinner set were left in the happy corner of the attic playhouse that was beside the window looking over the lawn.

       "And now, children," suggested Mother, "it's by far too fine a day to miss the sunlight outdoors. You can play in the attic when it is stormy, but if I were you I would play outdoors this afternoon. Why don't you put Minerva's pelisse upon her? Put on her funny bonnet and take her out to see what the world nowadays looks like."

       It seemed the very thing to do. "So that strange little brown brocade wrap with the lace trim was called a pelisse! Mother said the ladies long ago wore shoulder capes just like the one fashioned for Minerva." The pelisse also had a funny red button-buckle and the bonnet of blue tied under Minerva's chin.

       "What are the especially new things that have happened all these years since she's been shut up in that trunk?" Mallory asked Jane, when Miss Weed and Mother had gone downstairs after a hurried peep at the robins' nest at the head of the stairs.

       Jane considered. "Why," she said, "there must have been no railways for one thing. People traveled by stagecoach and they used horses and carriages and buggies."

       "It's Funny to think of not going about in a car," said Mallory; "but even when Mother was small there were no automobiles at all. She remembers how people used to act surprised when they saw one in the street. I suppose all this town must be almost new to Minerva Ida Adams."

       "It must be," Jane answered. "Mother told me quite a bit about this old town. It used to be just country with woods and meadows all around this hill. That was when this house was built. People thought it strange to build so far outside of the town. There were just a few wooden houses, two stories, down by the waterfront. There were a few little shops there then."

       "And no trolley cars even," declared Mallory. "Just nothing, I suppose, but country roads!"

       "With here and there a homestead."

       "And in town, on the Green with the churches."

       Jane nodded. "They used to pasture the cows on the Green," she explained.

       "And when anybody went calling, it was an all day visit," she continued. "They'd arrive early in the morning and stay very late. The distances were so far that they couldn't make short visits; besides, they went so seldom, I suppose there was a lot to talk about when they came."

       Suddenly Mallory suggested: "Let's take Minerva up on the rocks back of the house. I dare say she will not find changes there. Probably little Ann Mallory used to play with her up there too, just as your mother and mine played. Would you like to go, Minerva, my dear?"

       Minerva slightly inclined her head with its blue bonnet.

       "I think," said Mallory, "she may be a little shy and not want to answer in words. I think she wants to go. We'll take her up there and show her the railway trains passing by. And we can see the trolley-cars and the automobiles. It will be fun to look down into the town and have her see how much it has changed!"

       "Wonderful," agreed Jane, taking her own doll and following Mallory down the steep attic stair past the robin's window.

       "The old house must even be changed for her," suggested Mallory, as she and Jane passed through the old sitting-room on their way to the side-door. "But I think she'll remember the garden, and the summerhouses, and the old fountain."

       Up there upon the further rocks on the other side of the orchard's stone wall, up at the top of the hill back of the big white house, Minerva Ida Adams resting upon a rock gazed off over the old town and seemed at home.

       "I'm sure she likes it," said Mallory. "She looks just as if she really does! You do, don't you, Minerva dear? I'm going to call you 'Minnie' if you don't mind. The other name is so very long. I think Ann Mallory must have called you Minnie. Jane, let's play house right here."

       Jane agreed. There were two sets of rocks and she chose those by the little precipice for her home. Over there, she rested with Baby Edith. "You can come to call on me and spend the whole day visiting." she called. She set her doll down beside a clump of buttercups.

       Mallory took Minnie into her lap. The doll was a delightfully comfortable doll to hold on one's lap because she was so soft. "Look," murmured Mallory. "See that smoke over there, Minnie? That's the place where the railway came long ago. It was after you were put away in the trunk and Ann Mallory had grown up and been married, I suppose.

"What strange things there were to see!"

       "At first, Father said, there were three coaches just like big stagecoaches, with a giant engine and just one track. At night there were bright sparks from the wood that the engine burned. They didn't even have coal. Coal is what we burn nowadays, Minnie,'' she explained. "You didn't know anything about that," she laughed. "Now, did you?"

       It was apparent from Minnie Ida's astonished silence that she had not and so Mallory went on. "Before you woke up from your long sleep like Rip Van Winkle, everybody just had wood or peat that was cut from swamp earth and dried. Isn't that what you remember? And big fireplaces where they cooked instead of on stoves, my dear? Still Minnie Ida kept her silence, listening. Her

dark eyes seemed to receive the information intelligently, interestedly.

       "Aren't you ever coming to see me in my house?" It was Jane's voice. She had been picking up pebbles that lay around the rocks. "I'm going to make a pie," she stated. "And down in the little cave is where I have my dishes. You never saw my dishes!" She ran down to the little cleft in the rocks where there was a very small cave. Its opening was hidden by a tangle of bushes.

       Mallory watched her go. After a moment she called back, "Minnie wants to know all about what's happened since she went to sleep up in the old trunk in the attic." She turned the old doll so that she faced about toward the town.

       She continued. "Do you see those very high buildings? They're factories. They make all sorts of things. You never saw them. They've been built since your day. And that long car that's ringing a gong. That is the trolley car. It goes by electricity, the thing that makes lightning in the sky, Minnie." she explained. "People ride in that car as you no doubt rode around in a stage coach; or else they go in that funny sort of carriage. That is an automobile. It doesn't even need a horse to draw it!" Mallory was growing interested in the history lesson given to Minerva Ida Adams. 

       Here Jane emerged from the mouth of the little cave carrying something in her arms. Mallory deposited dear Minnie upon the rock and ran down to see what the mysterious things were. They seemed small, perhaps toy dishes.

       Yet what Jane brought in her arms was not a lot of toy dishes. These items were bits of old china that had been broken. There were also some jar-tops, some very old tin spoons, and odds and ends. "I leave them here," she said. "They're what I use for mud pies when I play house up here. I'll give you some.''

       She began to place the hoard in equal divisions upon the short stubby grass that grew about the rocky pasture-land. "You couldn't play with the real dinner-set in a place like this; and Mother says that when she was little and played here, she used these kinds of things for mud pies when children made houses up here on the rocks. So I did it. It's fun. That big piece, you see, can be any kind of a dish we will certainly need. I like to make believe!"

       "So do I. I've been making believe that Minnie has to be told about all sorts of things that have happened since she was put away. It's a very long time ago," sighed Mallory. "I hadn't even got as far as railway trains yet."

       "And you didn't map out your house yet?"

       "No."

       "Let's do it together!"

       They came up the slope, each with the bits of broken dishes Jane had kept hidden in the cave. "When I play here, I'll show you how it is."

       "Let's have it a very old house and not a new one," Mallory put in. "Then Minnie will feel more at home."

       "All right. This can be the kitchen. They ate in their kitchens, did you know that?"

       "Oh, did they?"

       Jane nodded wisely. "And there is its big big fireplace where they cooked. At its side is a big brick oven. They cooked in that too. Mother told me. We have a fireplace and an old oven in our house. I'll show them to you some time. You can stand in it and look right up and see the blue sky!"

       "I remember Father's telling me that there used to be something like that in our house," mused Malory.

       But Jane went on. "They didn't have bathrooms or bathtubs," she pursued. "They washed in bowls and had pitchers of cold water. And here's the bedroom. There's the four-poster bed, you see," and Jane pointed to a ledge of rock.

       "Here's the parlor;" Jane said, "that was only for very best, you know. The family sat in the sitting-room or in the kitchen. And here's the pantry. That's where you put your dishes, Mallory."

       Obediently, Mallory laid the bits of broken crockery upon the shelf of rock that Jane indicated. "Down in the hollow there by the big butternut tree there's a spring where I get water for mud pie play."

       Mallory was soon getting quite into the spirit of Jane's old-fashioned playhouse of make-believe. It seemed very real. She took off dear Minnie's bonnet and her pelisse and put her upon the imagined four-poster bed to rest.

       "I'm making a batch of ginger cookies," explained Jane, "and a pie or so too." She turned to go back to her own playhouse. "Come and spend the day with me soon and I'll give you some!" She was gone, laughing.

       Mallory fell to work over her own mud pies, just as little girls long ago must have done, just as little Ann Mallory might have played on those very rocks long long ago. The same blue spring sky overhead, the same blue water off over the houses and treetops below the high hill where stretched the waters of Long Island Sound.

       She worked very hard, bringing water from the little spring in the hollow, using a bit of glass jar for a water bucket. She mixed the dry earth that she scraped from the ground. She added a pinch of this and a bit of that, stirring with the tin spoon in a broken blue earthen bowl. She added a few leaves from a little nearby plant.

       Just as she had reached the critical stage where she was pouring the ingredients out into different bits of broken  saucers ready to be put into the big brick oven that Jane had talked about, she heard Mother's voice calling. Looking behind her she saw Jane's mother. The two had come over the rocks together from the back road.

       "Just as we used to play," smiled Jane's mother. "It makes me feel as if I were a little girl again, Jane." The two laughed.

       "Come, children," cried Mallory's mother. "We came to get you to take a ride. Bring Minerva Ida Adams for it will be an experience for her to go in an automobile. We'll show her all that has happened since she went to sleep!"

       Jane came running. Her fingers were all dirty. "I'll have to wash in the spring first," she laughed. "I've been having a lovely time. But we must put our dishes away in the place where I keep them. If I don't the boys will find them when they come to fly kites here or I'll never have them to play with again. They toss them off the little precipice to see how far they can throw."

       Mallory, too, gathered up the bits of china and carried them to the cave for safe keeping. There they were hidden under a bush where boys could not find them. The two splashed their hands in the spring that was near the tiny brook in the hollow under the butternut tree.

Minerva Ida Adams.

       When they returned, they found their two mothers with Baby Edith and Minnie Ida Adams in their arms. Mallory's mother was telling how Mallory had found Minnie that very morning up in the old attic of the big white house; and she was describing the coral silk dress and the doll trunk, the pantalettes, the toy dinner set, the playhouse corner of the attic, and the robins' nest quite as if she had herself been a little girl. "Miss Weed has an even older doll," she was saying. "It dates back to Colonial times."

       "All this makes Baby Edith seem very young," smiled Jane's mother. "And yet that doll is at least thirty years old. Just think of it!"

       "Jane likes her much better than modern dolls," shouted Mallory as the girls joined their mothers.

       "I certainly do," cried Jane, joining in. "And Mallory likes Minnie Ida better, I'm sure."

       Then the four went down through the orchard to take Minnie Ida for her very first automobile drive.

       It certainly was a great event. Mallory had to sit with George in front so that Minerva Ida Adams might have a good view of all the wonders that had grown up in the town since her time. As the car whizzed over the smooth pavement of the elm shaded avenue Jane, Jane's mother, Mallory's mother, Mallory and even George kept pointing out new wonders to the astonished dark eyes of Minnie Ida Adams, who sat spellbound, listening and looking.

       Roadway, telephone poles, big high buildings, trucks, bridges, railways, and electric cars flew by until they reached the old Town House and the Green uptown with its churches. Minnie Ida Adams found that here there had been fewer changes. Though the residences were all new, yet the old historic Green was the same. After all some of the old life remained, as she did, to marvel at those younger days.

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