The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales — John Shaqi
The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
Children's literature
Betty's mother did not say any more funny things after that. When
she had finished dressing Betty, to the tying of her shoes, she called
the little Indian girl up to her.
"What can you do?" she said. "Sew? Make moccasins?"
She had the pleasantest voice. Donee was not at all afraid. "I can
sew. I can make baskets," she said. "I am going to make a basket for
every one of you."
"Very well. You can have a tea-party, Jenny, out of doors." Then she
opened a cupboard. "Here are the dishes," taking out a little box.
"And bread, jam, milk, sugar, and candy."
"Candy!" cried Betty, rushing out to tell Thad.
"Candy? Hooray!" shouted Thad.
For there are no shops out in that wild country where a boy can run
for a stick of lemon or gumdrops every time he gets a penny. It was
very seldom that Thad. or Betty could have a taste of those red and
white "bull's eyes" which their mother now took out of the jar in the
locked cupboard. They knew she brought it out to please the little
Indian girl, whose own mother was dead.
Jenny set the table for the tea-party under a big oak. There was a
flat place on one of the round roots that rose out of the moss, which
was the very thing for a table. So there she spread the little white
and gold plates and cups and saucers, with the meat dish (every bit as
large as your hand), in the middle, full of candy. The milk, of
course, was put in the pot for coffee, and set on three dead leaves to
boil; and Jenny allowed Donee to fill the jam dishes herself, with her
own hands. Donee could hardly get her breath as she did it.
When they were all ready they sat down. The sun shone, and the wind
was blowing, and the water of the mill-race flashed and gurgled as it
went by, and a song-sparrow perched himself on the fence close to them
and sang, and sang, just as if he knew what was going on.
"He wants to come to the party!" said Betty, and then they all
laughed. Donee laughed too.
The shining plates just fitted into the moss, and there was a little
pitcher, the round-bellied part of which was covered with sand, while
the handle and top were, Jenny said, of solid gold; that was put in
the middle of all.
Donee did not think it was like fairy-land or heaven, because she had
never in her life heard of fairy-land or heaven. She had never seen
anything but her own filthy hut, with its iron pot and wooden spoons.
When it was all over, the children's mother (Donee felt as if she was
her mother too) called her in, and took out of that same cupboard a
roll of the loveliest red calico.
"Now, Donee," she said, "if you can make yourself a dress of this I
will give you this box," and she opened a box, just like Jenny's.
Inside, packed in thin slips of paper, was a set of dishes; pure
white, with the tiniest rose-bud in the middle of each; cups, saucers,
meat-dish, coffee-pot, and all; and, below all, a pitcher, with sand
on the brown bottom, but the top and handle of solid gold!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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