Mag and Margaret

Chapter 1

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MAG

Tell Mag to run with this letter to the post-box, right away.

Mag, I want the sitting-room dusted and put in order immediately; it is nearly time for Mr. Vance to call.

Mag, just take a stitch in this glove for me in about a second; that is all the time I have to spare.

I want Mag to come and clear out my closet-shelf so I can put those boxes in as soon as possible.

Mrs. Perkins, can Mag run to the corner for some lemons right away? Norah is waiting for them.

The subject of all these calls that needed instant attention was a girl of thirteen, Mag Jessup, little maid of all work in the boardinghouse of Mrs. Perkins. There was a time in her life when she was called Margaret. I think her mother used that name when she first looked at her. Once, when she was a little bit of a girl, and went to a free kindergarten for a few weeks, the sweet-faced teacher called her Maggie. But that was ever so long ago; centuries ago the thirteen-year-old girl thought. For years and years she had been called Mag. So long indeed that she had almost forgotten the other names. Mag Jessup was an orphan. Her mother had died when she was a wee girl, too young to remember her. The father had been killed when she was five years old, and the family had scattered. Mag’s sister Susan, only sixteen months younger than herself, had been adopted by a family whom Mag did not know even by name, and taken away off. Mag herself was taken charge of by an aunt, who had lived only two or three years after that time, and then there had come a new aunt, who had many children of her own to look after, and not much money to do it with, and when the uncle died, what more natural than that Mag, who was then ten years old, should have to earn her own living? It was about that time that Mrs. Perkins was looking for a little girl to answer her door-bell, and run of errands, and it was said by the aunt—who was really not an aunt at all—that here was just the place for Mag. So to Mrs. Perkins she went. In the spring, when the Perkins family went to the country, taking their boarding-house with them—or at least keeping boarders there—Mag went along to pick berries, and shell peas, and do a hundred other things for her board and clothes. When she returned to the city, she found that the aunt, with her family, had moved away. It came to pass, then, that the only home Mag Jessup had, was in Mrs. Perkins’s boarding-house. As for her duties, one can get some idea of them by reading over again the paragraphs with which this story began. She was to answer the doorbell, rub the silver, wash the knives and forks, set the tables, assist in waiting on one of them, keep the halls in order, dust and arrange the sitting-room, help the chambermaid with the beds and rooms, and be at the call of every boarder in the house to run of errands, sew on buttons, mend rips, and do anything else in the world that might be wanted. Cannot you imagine that Mag lived a very busy and useful life?

As for what she knew, she could read and write. She could not quite remember how she learned. She knew a little of the multiplication table, and something about addition. She had learned a little geography during the one winter in which she went to the public school. The second winter, when she was nearly ten, there had been scarlet fever in, or about, her aunt’s home during the entire season, and she had not been allowed to go to school. Since she had begun to earn her own living, of course school was out of the question. There had been some talk of sending her during the winter months, and sometimes Mrs. Perkins looked at her in a troubled sort of way and said: Just as soon as we get all the extras done, and are settled down for the winter, that child shall go to school. But never yet had the extras been all done. Mag herself had given up hope that they ever would be and was earning her board and clothes as faithfully as she knew how. Her clothes were not many and did not cost a great deal. She could not remember ever to have had any garment bought new for her in all her long life. Of course, it had been out of the question in her aunt’s family, where there were many children to think about; and at Mrs. Perkins’s there was Miss Kate, who was two years older than herself, and a good deal larger, and who grew rapidly and attended a good school; of course, she must have new clothes, and, of course, her old ones would make over for Mag, or, for that matter, do without making over. What did it matter if they were a little too long in the skirts and sleeves, and a trifle loose about the waist? She would soon grow to them. So Mag was always trying to grow to clothes somewhat too large for her, and never accomplishing it. For the rest, she was a brown haired, brown-eyed girl, too thin to look pretty, and with eyes too large for her face, so the few said who noticed her at all.

Do not imagine that Mag Jessup was an object of pity. Her clothes were always decently clean and whole; Mrs. Perkins wanted no shabby-looking folks about her; they were comfortable, too, so far as warmth was concerned. She had also wholesome food to eat, and enough of it; Mrs. Perkins starved nobody. To be sure, she locked away the cake and the sweetmeats—at least, the choice ones—before it was time for Mag to eat; but she did that for the other servants as well as for Mag. One couldn’t expect a woman who made her living by keeping boarders, to feed her servants on the same that she did people who paid eight and ten and twelve dollars a week. Besides, everybody knows that cake and sweetmeats are not the best food for a pale-faced, growing’ girl. It is true that it was often said to Mag about her supper-time, Here, child, take a bite and then run to the corner with this note, or to the grocery with this order, or to the drug store with this prescription; you can eat as you run. Nevertheless, Mag rarely went hungry, and was not often cold, except when she went to bed at night and got up in the morning. There was no means of warming the little fifth-story hall closet that held her cot; but there were clothes enough on her bed, when she was fairly under them, to stop the shivers after a while; and so, in this, as in all other respects, Mag Jessup was a great deal better off than hundreds and thousands of children in the streets of great cities.

Nobody was unkind to her or meant to be. It is true they kept her busy from Monday morning until Monday morning again. They sent her toiling up three long flights of stairs after a pin, or a newspaper, as carelessly as they would have sent a monkey or a kitten. Nobody ever seemed to remember that she might be tired, or sleepy, or busy about something important. What else could be expected? Was she not there to earn her living by doing errands, and odds and ends? I had almost said that nobody scolded her; but that would have been a mistake; Norah, the cook, scolded everybody that she dared. It seemed to be a part of her work. One would almost have supposed that her excellent pies, and delicious puddings, and delicate cake had to have sharp, cutting words for flavoring, so regularly were they used in the making. And who so convenient for scolding as Mag, whose duty it was, to be on hand when she summoned her, and to do her bidding?

Then there was Mrs. Perkins, with a large family on her hands, and some of them very trying people, and a hundred burdens of which others knew nothing, what more natural than that she should sometimes grow nervous and scold right and left? She could not scold Norah, for she would have given warning, and the head waiter was Norah’s cousin, and the chambermaid her friend; of course, it would not do to blame them, whatever went wrong; it was really a necessity to vent her nerves on Mag. It is also undeniable that Miss Annie Perkins was sometimes in ill humor, and Miss Kate had many school irritations, and both of them had a habit of calling Mag a lazy little thing! or a horrid poke! or a careless dunce! whenever anything went wrong. But, despite these, and a hundred other drawbacks, Mag Jessup had much to be thankful for. Mrs. Perkins often told her so. Many were the children who went hungry to bed; who, in fact, had no beds to go to. They had drunken fathers and cruel mothers, who knocked them down, and kicked them, and turned them out in the cold; she should think of them and be grateful.

Mag was grateful, in a way; and patient and painstaking; and always in doubt as to whether or not she earned enough to pay for her board and clothes, and whether, as she grew older and would have to eat more, Mrs. Perkins could possibly afford to keep her.

It was drawing near Christmas time. The boarders at Mrs. Perkins’s house talked incessantly, when they met, about the handkerchief-cases, and photograph-frames, and pin trays, and perfume-bags, and what not, that they were making or buying for Christmas gifts. Mag had to leave her knives, or her duster, twenty times in a day to run to the fancy counter of the great cheap store, to match floss, or get a spool of pink silk, or another square of canvas. From morning until night she heard nothing but snatches of Christmas talk. The kitchen was full of it. Norah was doing a wonderful bit of crazy work that was to decorate her cousin’s best-room sofa, and the chambermaid told her that she had been saving up money for three months to buy an elegant present for her mother. Mag listened to it all in respectful silence. She had no money to save up, and no mother to save it for, and she never had had a Christmas present in her life. Thirteen years old, and never a Christmas gift! You can scarcely believe that, but it is true. She did not go to Sunday school; the Perkins boarders liked their Sunday dinner at just about the hour for Sunday-school, and Mag could not be spared. She had gone when she was younger, a few Sundays, but had always, either on account of clothes, or illness, or carelessness, dropped out so long before Christmas-time that none of the gifts had sought her out. She wondered how it would seem to wake up in the morning and find a gift under her pillow, or on the stool beside her cot. She could not think how it would seem, but she laughed aloud over the idea.

Fiddlesticks! said Mr. Frederick Ainsworth, looking at the open package in his lap in great disdain, it isn’t in the least what I thought it was, from the advertisement; not so large nor so nicely bound; it is nothing but paper covers. That won’t do for Margaret. It is babyish, besides. I might have known that from the title: ‘Little Pillows!’ Whatever possessed me to tell Ned to get it for me? How came I to forget Margaret, I wonder, when I was buying the other things? This won’t do, anyhow. I must skip out this very evening and get something more suited to Miss Margaret. She would toss her yellow curls in disdain over a gift like this. I wonder what I will do with the thing?

Mr. Frederick, said a quiet little voice at his elbow. Here is a note I was to give you as soon as you came in.

All right, Mag, pass it over. As he drew the neat little note from the envelope he caught a glimpse of Mag’s large brown eyes and grave face and said to himself: What a serious faced little mouse that is. I wonder if she ever laughs? She looks as though she did not know that Christmas was only three days off. Halloo! Why shouldn’t I give the ‘Little Pillows’ to her? She wouldn’t mind the paper cover. That’s the very thing I’ll do. Just so, my respected uncle; I shall be happy to eat my Christmas dinner with you, since I can’t eat it at home. Seems to me your invitation is awfully late, but never mind; better late than never. Now I must skip out and get Margaret something fine, certainly.

Frederick Ainsworth, or Ainsworth, as the boys in school called him, or Mr. Frederick, as Mag had been instructed to say, was one of Mrs. Perkins’s boarders for the season. His father and mother lived in town, but had gone to Europe for a year, in search of health for the father; so the town house was closed, his sister was away at boarding-school, and he, being in his last year in High School, had been sent to Mrs. Perkins’s as the most convenient boarding-house. A merry, happy-hearted young fellow of fifteen was Frederick Ainsworth. A boy who worked hard in school and on the ball ground or, in fact, wherever else he was. A clean, wholesome, genial boy; who had hosts of friends, and missed his mother so much that he covered his face with the bedclothes every night, to hide the tears that would start at the thought of her; but he told himself cheerily every morning that father would be sure to get better fast, now that he was away from that horrid, confining business, and had mother with him all day long. Next year this time they would all be at home again, and as jolly as ever. Frederick had only been a member of Mrs. Perkins’s family since the fall term opened and knew very little of Mag save that she was always careful to dust his room neatly and would run to the post-box with a letter quicker than he could do it himself. No thought of making her a present had entered his mind until he wondered what to do with the book called Little Pillows that he had made a mistake in getting for his pretty cousin, Margaret.

This was the way it came to pass that Mag Jessup had a Christmas present. If she lives to be a hundred, she will never forget the excitement of that bitterly cold Christmas morning in which she sat up suddenly, rubbed her eyes to make sure that she was awake, then sprang out of bed, her face aglow with more than the cold air, and seized upon a package that lay on her stool! A package done up neatly in white paper, tied with a pink cord, and saying on its outside:

Merry Christmas to Mag. From F. F. A. A book! Actually, a whole clean book! Both covers on it, and a picture of green leaves and red berries on one side. And it was for her! She had a Christmas gift!

I am afraid you will almost want to cry when you hear it, but this was Mag Jessup’s first book. Not even a First Reader of her very own had she ever possessed. Was there ever anything anywhere in the world so dear and precious? She hugged it, she kissed it, she wanted to cry over it; but sharply chid back the tears lest they should fall on the precious cover.

Mag! called a firm voice at the foot of the second flight of stairs. Hurry up! there are twenty errands waiting to be done. You can’t sleep all day if it is Christmas. Merry Christmas, Mr. Jones. It was the same voice in a different key; the chambermaid’s voice, wishing Mr. Jones, the porter, a merry Christmas. Ah! somebody had wished her the same. Merry Christmas to Mag. Those were the very words. No Christmas chimes would ever sound sweeter. She had not the slightest idea who F. F. A. was. By and by, when she had time to think, she would try the names of all the boarders and see if they would fit. Now she must hurry into her clothes and run to do those twenty errands.

Chapter 2

ETHEL

By eleven o’clock the twenty errands and a hundred others were done, and Mag was ready for her Christmas. She had a delightful plan for the day. She had heard, by accident, that every boarder was going out to dinner. Surely this would make a great difference with the work; only Mrs. Perkins and her daughters at dinner. By three o’clock at the latest, possibly, if she was very smart, before that time, she could get away, and go down to the lovely lake where the skaters went and watch them fly over the ice in the way she had heard about. Mag had never seen anybody skate; her life had been spent in a city. But this lovely artificial lake, where fine ladies went, could not be more than two miles from Mrs. Perkins’s house, and she was sure she could walk that distance for

the sake of seeing the beautiful sight. Why, they actually built a bonfire on the-shore and skated by the light of it! and had hot coffee, and chocolate, and candies, for the skaters to eat. It must be such fun! Mag’s heart had been set on her plan for weeks. Alas for her! Mrs. Perkins had other plans.

Have you finished the upstairs work, Mag, and dusted the parlors? Very well, then, you are through with work; I am going to give you a holiday. Not many girls have almost the whole of Christmas Day to amuse themselves in. My daughters and I are going to our old neighbor’s on Claremont street to dinner; and, as the girls are going to the lake, afterwards, to skate, we shall not be at home until evening. None of the boarders will be back to tea. I have given Norah and the others the rest of the day; they are going out; so you will have the whole house to yourself; see how I trust you! And I’m not going to give you a bit of work, because it is Christmas. All you will have to do is to sit in the nice warm hall and answer the door bell; and toward night open the furnace dampers so that the house will be warm, and have the tea kettle boiled, so you can make us a cup of tea when we get home. Your dinner, Norah has fixed all ready for you in the closet; a nice Christmas dinner. There is some cold chicken, and biscuits, and a dish of cranberry sauce, and a piece of mince-pie. Don’t you wish the poor little street girls could have so good a Christmas dinner as that?

Yes, ma’am, said Mag, but her face was grave, and her voice low and almost trembling. Could it be that Mag was ungrateful enough to be almost ready to cry? Oh, you don’t know how her heart ached, and how long that Christmas Day suddenly seemed to her to grow. Alone in that great big house all day long; and to sit in the hall, which was always dark, and do nothing from morning until night! Not even the thought of the mince-pie and cranberry sauce could make such a prospect pleasant. She would rather go without a mouthful of dinner, if she could but put on her coat and hood and skip away to see the skaters! But there would be no getting away.

Now mind, Mrs. Perkins said, that you don’t leave the house for a single minute; there is a message of very great importance that I expect to have brought today; and, in any case, I don’t care about having the house left alone; it isn’t safe. It isn’t every little girl I would trust; but I know you are to be depended upon.

This was a crumb of comfort; it had a