A Daughter of the Rich

Mary Waller

Mary E. Waller

A Daughter of the Rich

I

MOLASSES TEA

"Good-night, Martie," called a sweet voice down the stairway.

"Good-night, Rose dear; I thought you were asleep."

"Good-night, Martie," duetted the twins, in the shrillest of treble and falsetto.

"Good-night, you rogues; go to sleep; you 'll wake baby."

"Dood-night, mummy," chirped a little voice from the adjoining room.

There was a shout of laughter from the twins.

"Shut up," growled March from the attic over the kitchen. "Good-night, mother." His growl ended in a squeak, for March was at that interesting period of his life indicated by a change of voice. At the sound, a prolonged snicker from somewhere was answered by a corresponding giggle from another-where.

"Now, children," said Mrs. Blossom, speaking up the stairway, "do be quiet, or baby will be wide awake."

"Tum tiss me, mummy," piped the little voice a second time, with no sound of sleep in it.

"Yes, darling, I 'll come;" as she turned to go into the bedroom adjoining the kitchen, there was the sound of a jump overhead, a patter of bare feet, a squabble on the stairs, and Budd and Cherry, the irrepressible ten-year-old twins, tumbled into the room.

"I 'll haul those kids back to bed for you, mother," shouted March, and flung himself out of bed to join the fray, while Rose was not behindhand in making her appearance.

Mrs. Blossom came in with little May in her arms, and that was the signal for a wholesale kissing-party in which May was hostess.

"Children, children, you 'll smother me!" laughed their mother. "Here, sit down on the rug and warm your toes,–coming over those bare stairs this cold night!" And down they sat, Rose and March, Budd and Cherry and little May, in thick white and red flannel night-dresses and gray flannel pajamas.

Budd coughed consumptively, and Cherry followed suit. March shivered and shook like a small earthquake, and Rose looked up laughingly at her mother.

"We know what that means, don't we, Martie," she said. "Shall I help?"

"No, no, dear,–in your bare feet!"

Mrs. Blossom took a lamp from the shelf over the fireplace, and, leaving the five with their fifty toes turned and wriggling before the cheering warmth of the blazing hickory logs, disappeared in the pantry.

"Oh, bully," said Budd, rubbing his flannel pajamas just over his stomach; "I wish 't was a cold night every day, then we could have molasses tea all the time, don't you, Cherry?"

"Mm," said Cherry, too full of the anticipated treat for articulate speech.

"There 's nothing like it to warm up your insides," said March; "mother 's a brick to let us get up for it. She would n't, you know, if father were at home."

"My tummy's told," piped May, frantically patting her chest in imitation of Budd, and all the children shouted to see the wee four-year-old maiden trying to manufacture a shiver in the glow of the cheerful fire.

Mrs. Blossom had never told her recipe for her "hot molasses tea;" but it had been famed in the family for more than a generation. She had it from her mother. The treat was always reserved for a bitterly cold night, and the good things in it of which one had a taste–molasses, white sugar, lemon-peel, butter, peppermint, boiled raisins, and mysterious unknowns–were compounded with hot water into a palate-tickling beverage.

When Mrs. Blossom reappeared, with a kettle sending forth a small cloud of fragrant steam in one hand and a tray filled with tin cups in the other, the delighted "Ohs" and "Ahs" repaid her for all her extra work at the close of a busy, weary day.

Budd rolled over on the rug in his ecstasy, and Cherry was about to roll on top of him, when March interfered, and order was restored.

As they sat there on the big, braided square of woollen rag-carpet, sipping and ohing and ahing with supreme satisfaction, Mrs. Blossom broached the subject of valentines.

"It's the first of February, children, and time to begin to make valentines. You 're not going to forget the Doctor this year, are you?"

"No, indeed, Martie," said Rose. "He de