Why Madge Changed Her Mind
Grandma’s room was the very handsomest one in the house. Madge and Nellie thought it was the pleasantest at least.
A bay window overlooked the street, where busy people came and went; two other large windows, that were doors as well, opened on to a piazza, and that piazza was a delightfully cool place to sit, on warm days.
Grandma’s large chair was out there most of the time in summer. Then she had to take but a few steps and she was in the flower garden. In winter the plants were in the conservatory, of course, and a glass door from grandma’s room opened into that too.
Between her pretty bedroom and the large room were folding doors. There were soft carpets and lace curtains, pictures, great easy-chairs, and everything for use and comfort and prettiness that could be thought of, for everybody in the house thought nothing was too fine and nice for grandma, and that was just as it should be.
It was a bright September morning, but cool enough for grandma to have a fire snapping on her brass andirons in the fireplace.
Some people dread to grow old, because they are so foolish as to think that young folks have all the good looks; but that is a great mistake. Grandma made just as pretty a picture in her black dress, white cap, and soft mull handkerchief folded about her neck, with her red knitting work in her lap, and the fire shining on her silver hair, as Madge and Nellie did over in the window in blue dresses, though their heads were brown and curly, and their cheeks round, and smooth, and rosy.
They were busy with pencil and paper, making out a list of little girls who were to be invited to their birthday party.
It happened that both birthdays came in September, and so they could be celebrated together.
“Shall we invite Minnie Dale?” asked Nellie.
“No; of course not,” Madge answered with a curl of her pretty lip.
“Why not?” said Nellie. “She’s the best girl in school, and she’s pretty too.”
“Well, it won’t do,” Madge declared, with the air and tone of a much older young lady than ten. “She doesn’t belong.”
“Belong to what? She belongs to our day-school and our Sunday-school.”
“Oh, what a little stupid you are,” laughed Madge. “She doesn’t belong to our set, of course. Do you know where she lives? She lives in that little bit of a brown house way down on Cedar street, just about as big as our smoke house.”
“Does she?” said her sister. “Why, I thought she was as good as any of us. She always wears pretty dresses, and she acts—well, sort o’ stylish.”
“You mustn’t say sort o’,” said Madge. “You mean she has pretty manners; that’s what they call it. Oh, yes; she’s nice enough, but what do you suppose Elsie Melbourne, and Clara Haines, and Lina Vedder would say to meeting a girl here who lives in such a hut as that, no matter how she looks and acts?”
“Sure enough!” Nellie answered. “It would not do, would it?”
Grandma arose just then and went to the bureau. She brought out a small rosewood box, and sitting down again by the fire, unlocked it. This drew the children’s attention. They always liked to get a peep into grandma’s treasures. She had so many curious and pretty things, and told such nice stories about them. So they came over to her, and this was just what she wished them to do.
“Do you want to see my old home?” Grandma said as she brought out a drawing and handed it to them.
“Why, grandma, what do you mean?” they both said at once.
“Why, this is a log house!” Madge said.
“And it’s such a little bit of a house!” said Nellie.
“Now, grandma, you truly didn’t ever live there?”
“I truly did!” grandma answered. “And a prettier home, or a happier one you never saw.
“When I was married, I went with your grandfather to live in this little house. It stood among the trees, and there was a brook not far away that went racketing over the stones. We used to take long walks in summer, after tea; in summer evenings following up that little brook. Sometimes it ran through green meadows, and then it wound and twisted itself around the hills and on into the dark, cool woods. There were moss-covered stones in it, and ferns and violets grew on its banks: such a pretty place as you never saw, my dears!”
“But how could you live in such a very little house?”
“Oh! Plenty of room,” said grandma. “You wouldn’t believe it to look at it, but in that house we had a parlor, bedroom, dining-room and kitchen. When we bought it, it had but one large room with a shed at the back. So we set to work to make a nice place of it.
“First of all your grandfather made the old shed into the neatest little kitchen with a corner cupboard. He whitewashed it and set up our stove, and I put our new dishes in the cupboard, and it was as pretty as a little girl’s playhouse. The large room was a bare rough place, but we made it white and pure with lime, and I made a curtain out of some pretty chintz calico, and pat it across one side of the room, and that was my bedroom; you see your grandma invented curtains between rooms, which are now so fashionable, long ago. Well, when we had our carpet down, and our pictures up, our books on the shelf, and our round table with a sage-green cloth over it, a bright fire snapping in the great old fireplace, an old armchair one side of the fire and my sewing rocker on the other, I say, there was no neater, prettier place in the whole world.”
“But grandma, where were your parlor and dining-room?”
“My child, the parlor and dining-room were all in one. The end of the room next the kitchen was the dining-room: when meal time came it was a dining-room, and when meals were over we just cleared off the table, turned down the leaves, set it back against the wall and put a spread on it, and the room was a parlor again; don’t you see?”
“Were you just as happy as you are in this handsome house?” asked Madge, casting her eyes over the beautiful room.
“Some of the happiest years of my life were spent in this dear humble home,” grandma said as she replaced the picture in the box with a last loving look at it.
“Just think,” said wise Nellie, looking thoughtfully into the fire, “if grandma was a little girl now she couldn’t come to our party because she lived in a log house.”
“There is somebody greater than grandma you would shut out if He were here,” grandma said; “the Lord Jesus himself had no fine house. He said the foxes and the birds had houses, but he had none.”
They went back to their work of making out a list.
“Madge,” Nellie said pretty soon, “I guess Jesus won’t be pleased with such a party as we are getting up. If you don’t care, I mean to ask mamma to let me have my party by myself some day, and I’ll invite Minnie Dale and that lame girl, and that Jessie Moore in our class that wears calico dresses.”
“Nellie Bryant,” said Madge, “don’t you suppose I want to please Jesus too, instead of Elsie Melbourne, or Clara Vedder, or any of them? I never thought how it would seem to him; we’ll ask Minnie Dale and everybody else mamma thinks best. If grandma lived in a poor little house once, who knows but Minnie Dale will live in a grander house than any of us some day?”
“Yes; and just think,” Nellie answered, “if papa should lose his money like Mr. Strong, and we have to go into a little bit of a house, wouldn’t it seem dreadful to have the girls leave us out when they made parties, and we would be the very same girls we always were, too?”