Lills Travels in Santa Claus Land | Page 9

preach-man's house; preach-man will want to see you."
On she went till she came to the church. Then she sat down on the big steps, dreadfully tired.
"Oh, my yubbers ache so! Now go s'eep, Kitty; and when you want to wake up, call me, and I'll wake you."
This was the last Flaxie remembered. When the postmaster found her, she was sitting up, fast asleep, with her little tow head against the door, and the kitty in her arms. The kitty was still alive.
Eva Snow had come and let Ninny out of the closet long ago; and lots of people had been hunting ever since for Flaxie Frizzle. When the postmaster and the minister brought her home between them, Mrs. Gray was so very glad that she laughed and cried. Still she thought Flaxie ought to be punished.
"O mamma," said Miss Frizzle next morning, very much surprised to find herself tied by the clothes-line to a knob in the bay-window. "The men laughed to me, they did! Mr. Lame Jones, he said I was very cunning!"
But for all that, her mamma did not untie her till afternoon; and then Flaxie promised "honestly," not to run away again.
Would you trust her?

FIVE POUNDS OF CINNAMON.
They don't name girls "Roxy," and "Polly," and "Patty," and "Sally," nowadays; but when the little miss who is my heroine was a lady, those short, funny old names were not at all old-fashioned. "Roxy," especially, was considered a very sweet name indeed. All these new names, "Eva," and "Ada," and "Sadie," and "Lillie," and the rest of the fanciful "ies" were not in vogue. Then, if a romantic, highflown young mamma wished to give her tiny girl-baby an unusually fine name, she selected such as "Sophronia," "Matilda," "Lucretia," or "Ophelia." In extreme cases, the baby could be called "Victoria Adelaide."
In this instance baby's mother was a plain, quiet woman; and she thought baby's grandmother's name was quite fine enough for baby; and so baby was called "Roxy," and, when she was ten years old, you would have thought little Roxy fully as old-fashioned as her name.
I think it is her clothes that makes her image look so funny as she rises up before me. She herself had brown hair and eyes, and a good country complexion of milk and roses--such a nice complexion, girls! You see she had plenty of bread and milk to eat; and a big chamber, big as the sitting-room down stairs, to sleep in--all windows--and her bed stood, neat and cool, in the middle of the floor; and she had to walk ever so far to get anywhere--it was a respectable little run even out to the barn for the hens' eggs; and it was half a mile to her cousin Hannah's, and it was three quarters to school, and just a mile to the very nearest stick of candy or cluster of raisins. Nuts were a little nearer; for Roxy's father had a noble butternut orchard, and it was as much a part of the regular farm-work in the fall to gather the "but'nuts" as it was to gather the apples.
Don't you see, now, why she had such a nice complexion? But if you think it don't quite account for such plump, rosy cheeks, why, then, she had to chase ever so many ways for the strawberries. Not a strawberry was raised in common folks' gardens in those days. They grew mostly in farmers' meadows; and very angry those farmers used to be at such girls as Roxy in "strawberry time"--"strawberry time" comes before "mowing," you know--for how they did wallow and trample the grass! Besides, the raspberries and blackberries, instead of being Doolittle Blackcaps, and Kittatinnies, and tied up to nice stakes in civilized little plantations, grew away off upon steep hill-sides, and in the edges of woods, by old logs, and around stumps; and it took at least three girls, and half a day, and a lunch-basket, and torn dresses, and such clambering, and such fun, to get them! Of course Roxy had red cheeks, and a sweet breath, and plump, firm white flesh--so white wherever it wasn't browned by the sunshine.
But otherwise she certainly was old-fashioned, almost quaint. Her hair was braided tight in two long braids, crossed on her neck, and tied with a bit of black thread; there was a pair of precious little blue ribbons in the drawer for Sundays and high days. Roxy's mother would have been awfully shocked at the wavy, flowing hair of you Wide Awake girls, I assure you!
And Roxy's dress. You never saw a "tow and linen" dress, I dare say. Roxy's dresses were all "home-made"--not merely cut and sewed at home; but Roxy's father raised the flax in the field north of the house, and Roxy's mother spun the flax and tow