UNPACKING TRUNKS

“It’s a charming room, Aunt Parthenia!” Dorothea exclaimed, glancing out of the window overlooking the box-edged beds of the flower garden, but noting particularly the cheerful blaze on the hearth. “I shall love it here so much that I shan’t ever want to go away again.”

Mrs. May turned from straightening the curtains at the front where the windows opened on the gallery roof.

“That’s very prettily said, my dear,” she returned. “We shouldn’t like anything better than to have you stay always in your American home.”

There was a suspicion of tears in Dorothea’s eyes as she looked up at her aunt and then, impulsively, she put her arms about the elder woman with a convulsive hug.

“I really have never had a home,” she murmured, half to herself; and Mrs. May, understanding what was in the girl’s heart, patted her shoulder lovingly.

“April is next door to you and I’m just across the hall,” Harriot explained a moment later.

“Where she can look down upon the cook-house, and see just what’s going on,” April said, banteringly.

“Indeed I can,” Harriot admitted unblushingly. “I always know what Aunt Decent is baking by the smells coming in at the windows. You’ll find that my room has decided advantages, Dorothea.”

While they were waiting for the trunks to be brought up Dorothea, yielding to Harriot’s insistent demands for the story of her adventures on the way from Washington, told briefly what had happened.

“It wasn’t very much,” she began. “Everything was made very easy for me, and all the people I met were so pleasant and kind, that it seemed as if I was finding friends wherever I went. All the Americans are like that, aren’t they? It’s different in England. Of course, as I might have expected though I didn’t, FrÄulein lost all her courage and refused to go. You might have thought she would have to fight. She talked of both armies as if they wouldn’t have anything to do but kill us. But I wasn’t to be put off. There was a Mrs. Warren and her two children who were going through the lines at the same time, and she looked after me till we reached Charlotte. There I was handed over to a Miss Pettigrew who brought me here. So you see,” Dorothea ended, “it wasn’t much of an adventure after all.”

“Oh, but you haven’t told us about the soldiers, or the flag of truce or—or lots of things you must have seen,” Harriot suggested.

“There isn’t really much to tell,” Dorothea returned; but in her answer there was a hint of reluctance to talk of the matter. “We crossed a river called the Rappahannock in boats with a white flag flying, ‘under the special protection of the two great American armies,’ they said. There was a rope stretched on the Southern side and a Confederate officer met us, lifting the barrier to let us through. All the officers on each side were very polite and friendly to each other, exchanging newspapers and inquiring for mutual friends; but before we knew it everything was all over. After that, we were driven over awful roads to call on one of your commanding officers to deliver our passes and thanks for our special truce, as is customary. Oh, here are my boxes and I want to unpack them.”

Seeming glad of a diversion which allowed a change of subject, Dorothea ended her recital abruptly and turned to where two colored boys were unstrapping her luggage. Mrs. May watched her for a moment and unconsciously shook her head as if a little puzzled. April, her eyes upon the floor, sat immovable, as if her thoughts were very far away.

“I wonder why she doesn’t want to talk about the soldiers?” Harriot asked herself. All three had noted something of a lack of frankness that had set them wondering.

But trunks fresh from outside the blockade had a strong attraction for April and Harriot. Mrs. May, too, did not attempt to conceal her curiosity. However she had many household duties that called for immediate attention.

“I’m just as anxious to see your pretty things as the girls,” she said, as she rose to leave the room; “but I am obliged to wait till later. I’ll send Merry up.”

At once there was a protest.

“We don’t need her!” Harriot exclaimed.

“Let us help Dorothea, mother,” April proposed, a little excited in anticipation of a look at foreign finery.

“Very well,” Mrs. May agreed and went away regretfully. She, too, was anxious to see if the fashions had changed greatly during the years when the war had cut them off almost wholly from the rest of the world.

Left to themselves the three girls contemplated the fine array of boxes and trunks, which seemed to hold an excessive amount of apparel for one young lady.

“Gracious me!” exclaimed Harriot. “It’s good those two big wardrobes are in this room. You must have a dress for every day in the month.”

“Wait and you’ll see what I have,” Dorothea laughed knowingly. “There are lots of things besides clothes. I had to be very careful about my packing.”

“Why?” demanded the practical Harriot.

“Because the Union army wanted to be sure I wasn’t carrying anything down here that would be useful,” Dorothea explained. “They examine everything, of course. I suspected it would be like the customs house business in Europe, so I prepared.”

“And did they dare to search through everything?” demanded April indignantly.

“No, not everything,” Dorothea answered with a significant emphasis on the last word. “The man who was detailed to look over my luggage was awfully nice. He asked me at once if I had anything in my boxes that would give ‘aid or comfort to the enemy’ and I said, ‘No, sir! because I don’t call an aunt or a cousin an enemy, do you?’ He laughed and remarked he’d heard of those ‘as was enemies and those as wasn’t’; but when I told him I came from England, he looked at all my traps, shook his head and let them go through without much bother. As a matter of fact he fastened bands of white muslin on them with dabs of red sealing-wax to show they were ‘passed packages’—and you know I was just a little disappointed.”

“But why?” demanded Harriot. “If he let them through without mussing everything, I should think you would have been glad.”

“Oh! but I’d packed them so carefully,” Dorothea answered with a knowing smile. “Come, let’s have a look—but you’ll be careful, won’t you?”

All three set to work but they had not gone far when Dorothea had to repeat her warning.

“Look out for that. Cousin April,” she said, as the older girl took a tightly rolled silk parasol out of the trunk.

“It’s mighty pretty,” April remarked, looking at it curiously, “but not very perishable. I don’t see why I need be ’specially careful of it.”

“Open it over the bed,” Dorothea advised, and, when her suggestion was followed, a shower of pills fell out.

“Oh!” cried April and Harriot in one breath. “You hid contraband in it. What are these, Dorothea?”

“Opium pills!” was the answer. “I read in the papers that the poor Southern soldiers had little to stop the pain of their wounds, so I brought as much as I could. It isn’t very easy to get in Washington, though I sent to a lot of chemists’ shops so I wouldn’t be suspected.”

“That’s fine!” exclaimed April. “We’ve had an awful time about opium. Last year it rained just at the wrong time and our rows of poppies had very few flowers on them. We have been very short of it since.”

“And it’s a dreadfully sticky task to get the opium,” Harriot explained, twisting up her face. “We have to pick the poppy heads when they’re ripe and pierce them with a coarse needle. Then we have to catch the gum in a cup and let it dry. We’re hoping to get a lot this summer.”

Meanwhile, as they talked, the unpacking went on, and presently April held up a beautiful French doll of huge proportions.

“Is this for little Harriot?” she asked, with a teasing grin at her younger sister who had never, even in her younger days, had any taste for dolls.

“That’s one of the things I was most disappointed about,” Dorothea answered. “I just longed for the examining officer to find that, and I had made up my mind to tell him it was for my little Cousin Harriot; but he never noticed it.”

“It’s very pretty,” Harriot remarked coldly, “but I’m a trifle too old for dolls.”

“Not for this one,” Dorothea cried. “It’s stuffed with ground coffee and quinine pills.”

“Then I’d be glad to have it,” Harriot shouted, ready to laugh at herself. “Give it to me, April.”

“No, no!” her sister replied, retreating across the room. “Dorothea didn’t say she brought it for you. She said she was going to say that. However, you can have the pills, if you want them. They’re fine and bitter, worse than any dog-wood berry ones you ever tasted.”

“I’ll have some of the coffee, too,” Harriot insisted. “Oh, just imagine a cup of real coffee! I believe I’ve forgotten what it tastes like. But, Dorothea, how did you ever think of such a thing as stuffing a doll with coffee?”

“It wasn’t my own idea at all,” Dorothea confessed. “Some years ago, when father and I were traveling on the Continent, we saw a woman who tried the same trick in one of the custom houses. I can still remember my horror when the officer who was examining her luggage picked up a perfectly beautiful doll, all dressed in flowered silk, and deliberately snapped off its head, in spite of the fact that she told him it was for her brother’s little girl who was ill. But I was more astonished when the man drew out yards and yards of the finest lace which was concealed in the doll’s body. That’s what gave me the idea.”

“Such are the advantages of travel,” said April quizzically.

“It must be great fun to go everywhere,” Harriot put in half enviously. “Nobody I know ever went any farther than New Orleans or the White Sulphur. I’ve only been to the plantation and back, and that wasn’t even out of Georgia. I certainly should like to travel in Europe, wouldn’t you, April?”

“Indeed I should,” her sister agreed. “You are quite to be envied, Dorothea.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” was the unexpected answer. “It isn’t so much fun as you’d think. Most of the time you live in hotels and keep wondering if they are clean. Father and I would love a chance to settle down and have a home of our own. We talk a lot about it; but, somehow, there never comes a time when we can do it. Look out, April, that hat’s full of tea!” she exclaimed suddenly. “You’ll find it between the crown and the lining.”

Mrs. May came in again at that moment to see how the unpacking was progressing and stayed to praise the thoughtfulness and ingenuity that had brought them so many long-foregone luxuries.

“China tea!” she exclaimed, snuffing it longingly. “Yes, it’s there, I can smell it. How good it will taste after the sassafras and raspberry leaves we’ve been drinking. But,” she went on with a drop in her voice, “I think we must keep it for invalids.”

“But, Aunt Parthenia, I brought it for you!” Dorothea insisted. “They are presents from papa—the medicines and groceries—and he’d want you to have them, wouldn’t he? In that box there are some things I picked out myself for you and the girls.”

Dorothea, flushed with pleasure at the reception her gifts were receiving, opened another trunk in some little excitement. On her knees before it she paused in momentary embarrassment.

“I don’t know whether you’ll laugh at what I’ve brought; but I read in the papers how short you were of such things in the South and I thought they might be more useful than just luxuries.”

So saying she produced package after package of trimmings, ribbons, buttons, sewing silk, pins, needles, hair-pins and other feminine oddments. At each fresh discovery of these simple treasures Mrs. May and the two girls gave expression to their surprise and delight.

“Real pins!” exclaimed Mrs. May, looking at them as if they were strange and little known treasures. “I hoarded my last dozen for months, but they vanished long ago.”

“And real needles, mother, see!” cried Harriot.

April laughed gayly.

“You’d think that Harry cared for nothing in the world so much as sewing,” she teased.

“I do sew sometimes,” Harriot protested. “And now that we have some truly buttons, not persimmon seeds, I’ll do more of it. I like to sew on buttons when we have them.”

“I think the pins are the greatest blessing you could have brought us, Dorothea,” Mrs. May assured her enthusiastically. “I am so tired of sticking things together with thorns and pretending they are pins because they have sealing-wax heads.”

Then they began to find the dainty dresses, and lengths of fine materials that Dorothea had brought and, like four women anywhere, they were completely absorbed in fingering them and admiring them, each, no doubt, wondering if they would be becoming. They laughed and joked, praising this or that piece of silk, or camel’s hair, or de beige, and forgetting everything else for the time being. Then suddenly Dorothea stopped talking and listened. She had heard a gentle knocking at the door.

“Some one wishes to come in, Aunt Parthenia,” she said, calling attention to the summons.

But as she spoke the door slowly opened and there appeared on the threshold, the dearest, sweetest white-haired little lady that Dorothea had ever seen, who at the sight of the finery scattered about, clasped her hands in delight.

“Fal-lals!” she exclaimed. “Oh joy!”

“Oh, Imogene,” cried Mrs. May, “here are things that will delight your heart. I didn’t know you were in. But this is Susie’s daughter from England who has just arrived. I’m sure you’ll love her.”

Dorothea’s heart went out, on the instant, to this lady who, with a smile of welcome, came swiftly into the room and held out her arms.

“Your mother was my dearest friend, my child,” she said in a low, musical voice that seemed to thrill the girl. “I am overjoyed to see her daughter.”