Hitty – Her First Hundred Years Rachel Field Winner of the Newsbery Medal
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HITTY – HER FIRST HUNDRED YEARS RACHEL FIELD WINNER OF THE NEWSBERY MEDAL CHAPTER 1 In Which I Begin My Memoirs The antique shop is very still now. Theobold and I have it all to ourselves, for the cuckoo clock was sold day before yesterday and Theobold has been so industrious of late there are no more mice to venture out from behind the woodwork. Theobold is the shop cat--the only thing in it that is not for sale, which has made him rather overbearing at times. Not that I wish to be critical of him. We all have our little infirmities and if it had not been for his I might not now be writing my memoirs. Still, infirmities are one thing, and claws are another, as I have reason to know. Theobold is not exactly a bad cat, but he is far from considerate. Besides, he is prowlishly inclined and he has the most powerful claws and tail I have ever known. Then, just lately he has taken to sleeping in the shop window with his head on the tray of antique jewelry. If Miss Hunter could have seen how narrowly he missed swallowing one of the garnet earrings when he yawned night before last, she would be very uneasy indeed. But Miss Hunter has had Theobold ever since she opened the antique shop and she seems to set great store by him for his trying ways. Miss Hunter has a good many queer ones of her own and I must say that I felt a little wadgetty , as Phoebe Preble'e mother used to say, at first over her habit of poking and peering and turning everything upside down. One grows used to this in time, though it wasn't what I was brought up to consider the best manners. But Miss Hunter means well and if she decides you are genuine there is nothing she will not do for you. That is why after she found me knocked off my chair and on my nose three different mornings she said she would run no chances with such a valuable old doll but would take me out of the window each night before shutting up shop. So here I am in the midst of her very untidy desk with my feet on a spattered square of green blotting paper, my back against a pewter inkstand, and a perfect snow bank of bills and papers heaped about me. Nearby, weighting down another pile of scribbled sheets, is an old conch shell. I have seen far handsomer ones in my time; still, it is a reminder. I cannot see the light shine on its curving sides without thinking of the Island in the South Seas and all the adventures that befell us there. Across the store on the mantelpiece is the model of a sailing vessel, square-rigged, in a glass bottle. But its sails are not so well trimmed, and its gilding not so fine as the Diana- Kate when we sailed out of Boston Harbor. Perhaps tonight the old Swiss music box will begin to play all of itself, as it does sometimes without the least warning. It is strange to sit here and listen while it tinkles out the "Roses and Mignonette" waltz with the same precise gaiety as in the days when Isabella Van Rensselaer and the rest danced to that tune at Monsieur Pettoe's select salon for young ladies and gentlemen. That was just across Washington Square, scarcely a block away from where I sit today, but there were no skyscrapers then nor any street of little shops like this, It may have been the ship in the bottle, or it may have been the music box, though I think it more likely that the quill pen gave me the idea of writing the story of my life. The pen belongs with the pewter inkstand, but quills are as much out of fashion today as whalebones in ladies' dresses and poke bonnets for little girls. Still, one cannot forget one's early training, and not for nothing did I watch Clarissa copy all those mottoes into her exercise book with a quill pen. If it is true, as Miss Hunter and the Old Gentleman declare, that I am the most genuine antique in the shop, why should I not prefer quills to these new- fangled fountain pens! Nor am I inclined to scratchy steel affairs with sharp points. So I will be true to my quill pen which I now take in hand to begin my memoirs. I begin my memoirs. As far as 1 can learn, 1 must have been made something over a hundred years ago in the State of Maine in the dead of winter. Naturally I remember nothing of this, but I have heard the story told so often by one or another of the Preble family that at times it seems I, also, must have looked on as the Old Peddler carved me out of his piece of mountain-ash wood. It was a small piece, which accounts for my being slightly under-sized even for a doll, and he treasured it greatly, for he had brought it across the sea from Ireland. A piece of mountain-ash wood is a good thing to keep close at hand, for it brings luck besides having power against witchcraft and evil. That was the reason he had carried this about in the bottom of his pack ever since he had started peddling. Mostly he did his best business from May to November when roads were open and the weather not too cold for farmers' wives and daughters to stand on their doorsteps as he spread out his wares. But that year he tramped farther north than he had ever been before. Snow caught him on a road between the sea and a rough, woody country. The wind blew such a gale it heaped great drifts across the road in no time and he was forced to come knocking at the kitchen door of the Preble House, where he had seen a light. Mrs. Preble always said she didn't know how she and Phoebe would have got along without the Old Peddler, for it took all three of them, besides Andy the chore -boy, to keep the fires going and to water and feed the horse, the cow, and the chickens in the barn. Even when the weather cleared, the roads were impassable for many days and all vessels storm- bound in Portland Harbor. So the Peddler decided to stay on and help with odd jobs round the place till spring, since Captain Preble was off on his ship for months to come. At that time, Phoebe Preble was a little girl of seven with gay and friendly ways and fair hair that hung in smooth, round curls on either side of her face. It was for her that I was transformed from a piece of mountain-ash wood only six and a half inches high, not nearly so tall as a bayberry candle, into a doll of parts. My first memories, therefore, are of a square pleasant room with brown beams and a great fireplace like a square cave, where flames licked enormous logs of wood and an old black kettle hung from an iron crane. The first words I ever heard were Phoebe's as she called to her mother and Andy: "See, now the doll has a face!" They came over to peer at me as the Old Peddler held me between his thumb and forefinger, turning me this way and that in the firelight so my paint would dry. I can remember Phoebe's excitement over my features and her mother's amazement that the old man had been able to give such a small bit of wood a real nose and even a pleasant expression. Surely no one, they all agreed, had so much skill with a jackknife. That night I was left to dry on the mantelpiece with the light from the dwindling fire making strange shadows, with mice squeaking and scampering in and out of the walls, and the wind outside blowing through the branches of a great pine tree with the sound that I was to know so well later on. Phoebe's mother had decided that I was not to be played with until properly clothed. Phoebe was not a child who took readily to sewing, but her mother was firm, so presently out came needles and thread, thimbles and piece-bag, and I was being measured for my first outfit. It was to be of buff calico strewn with small red flowers, and I thought it was very fine indeed. Phoebe's stitches were not always of the finest. She was apt to grow fidgety after ten or fifteen minutes of sewing; still, she was so anxious to play with me that she quite surprised us all by her diligence. I do not remember exactly how I came by my name. At first, I was christened Mehitabel, but Phoebe was far too impatient to use so many syllables, and presently I had become Hitty to the whole household. Indeed, it was at Mrs. Preble's suggestion that these five letters were worked carefully in little red cross-stitch characters upon my chemise. "There," said Phoebe's mother when the last one was done, "now whatever happens to her she can always be sure of her name. "But nothing is ever going to happen to her, Mother!" cried the little girl, "because she will always be my doll." How strange it seems to remember those words now! How little we thought then of all that was so soon to befall us! Well, after some weeks I was finished and the last stitch set in my sprigged calico.