New Year's resolutions thought about? How about spending some time doing good deeds?I tell you what I think about it: we are a good-for-nothing, selfish lot. And it's a perfect shame that we never do anything to make anybody happy or—"
Well, if we were n't surprised to hear little, mild Dolly Ward pitch into us like that! You see, we girls—there are six of us, and every one of us is "perfectly sweet" (except me, of course), and we 've known each other for ever and ever. But now I 'll tell you what else Dolly said when she could be heard again, for we were all screaming at her for saying such things.
"Well, you can just 'Oh' and 'Ah' all you want to," she said, looking at us with those soft brown eyes of hers. Her eyes were exactly like a gazelle 's, or a giraffe 's, or something sort of pathetic and darling, you know; we just worship her, and that 's the reason we had n't simply annihilated her for her remark. How I do "digress!" I 'm writing as I talk—Miss Porter always tells me to (she 's our English teacher)—and the girls all say I 'm such a skippy talker. "Well," said Dolly, "just tell me one blessed thing you have really, truly done this day to make a single soul the happier for your being in this dark and grisly world, if it is dark and grisly—which it is n't, but sweet and flowery, and just ready to be filled with good deeds and sweet words, if you do or say them, which you don't!"
I remember every word she said, for it was so eloquent, I just made up my mind then and there that if Dolly had been a boy she would be either a lawyer or a preacher—she can take her choice. 'As for me—I almost said "and my house," I do so love to quote—I am to be a writer!
"Well, I 'm perfectly sure," broke in Helen Fay, whose father is rich and who lives in a beautiful house, "I 'd be glad to give money or clothes, or anything I had—"
"Pooh!" exclaimed Fan Clark, with her nose in the air, "and what would that cost you, Helen? Your father gives you the money, and you could have anything in the world without any sacrifice to yourself. You've got an allowance—but what of poor me? What does Dolly expect to get out of me?"
"Allowances don't do much good," wailed Edna Page, who is the most extravagant of us all; "mine never lasts the week out—I 'm as poor as Job's turkey by the eighth of the month!"
As for me, what was there for me to say? One of five fatherless children, and our mother teaching music! I could only groan and stretch out my empty hands.
"Did I say money only?" asked Dolly. "Did I not say sweet words, and kind acts, and good deeds? But what I really meant was sacrifice! It is n't sacrifice, as Fan says, for Helen to give things. It is n't sacrifice for Fan to be lovely to little children. It is n't sacrifice for Nan"—that 's me—"to go and play for old blind Miss King: and it 's no sacrifice for me—and I 'm going to confess it—to embroider all those things for the charity bazaar, because we every one simply adore to do those things. Now is n't that the truth?"
We sat simply dumb, convicted of our sins, there under the big apple-tree. We had been playing tennis over at Helen's; she has a perfectly splendid court. Well, there we sat with Dolly's beautiful eyes upon us, and at that moment I had a perfect inspiration; it came to me just kerslap!
Said I: "Girls, my dear, adorable girls! Let's have a club—a sacrifice club—and let 's call it the Heart's Ease!"
Really, my own breath was taken away by the beauty of that thought! But the others were charmed with my suggestion.
We started that club right then and there! Dolly was elected president; I was secretary, and Fan treasurer, though she said how she was going to treasure kind acts and sweet words was more than she could tell, for if we were going to report every one we should get to be regular little prigs in no time. But Dolly soon put our minds to rest on that point. Those of us to whom it was a sacrifice were to give money; those who had quick tempers were to keep them—I don't mean just that, either—control them, that's better; those who were stingy were to give, and the lazy ones were to work (we were mostly that!); the saucy ones were to be polite, and the despairing ones (that meant Lucy Chase, and she knew it instantly; she 's always getting the doleful dumps, and we really get worn out throwing the life-line to her)—well, the despairing ones were to simply beam, and the sulky ones were to forgive, and so on. Besides all this—and this did almost break our hearts, but Dolly was like rock—we were to take the other girls—Cora Davis and Ruth Button and all the rest—into our club, if they wanted to join, and be perfectly sweet to them, for Dolly said she thought we were all, herself among the number—was n't that dear of her?—getting to be somewhat snobbish, and it—the snobbishness—must be crushed out by an iron hand. You may be sure I set that down in my report; it sounded really like an "edict," as the books say.
Well though our folks laughed a little at our Heart's Ease Club, they did n't laugh long. And Helen's big sister was so pleased she painted us beautiful badges of lovely dark pansies on a pale-green satin ribbon, with "Heart's Ease Club" printed in gold underneath—pansy stands for heart's ease, you know. (My but I am skippy!)
And now just listen to what we did the very first month:
Helen practised faithfully an hour a day because her father loves to have her play, and she never begged off once, though she loathes it. She let her grandmother teach her to knit because she knew it would please her, though Helen never can bear to sit still. Dolly says you must never count on a reward—that 's priggy, indeed almost common—but you can always count on a result, you know. And Helen's "result" was her father's delight when she played Schubert's Serenade just divinely—that is almost—and Grandma Fay's smile when the pair of stockings was finished—just think of knitting a pair of stockings! Incidentally her father gave Helen twenty dollars which she at once turned over to the club, and Grandma Fay gave her the quaintest little pearl ring which she wore when she was a little girl, and which Helen prizes "more than rubies"—as she declares.
Fan gave fifty cents that she earned weeding the garden, and she mended the stockings for the whole summer. Her reward was her mother's lovely nap every day—Mrs. Clark never could take a nap with all that mending on hand—and a trip to the lake, and her garden was praised by the minister, and what higher reward than that could one wish?
Dolly learned to cook and make the most delicious bread, and she tended her sister's baby, and said sweet words to her little brother Billy, and indeed, indeed for that she should have a crown! Besides, she gave five dollars—all her allowance—and so would n't have had even one ice-cream soda that month if Helen had n't seen to that. Reward—really, Dolly says it was just too grand to mention, but I 'll tell you that after her Uncle Jack tasted that delicious bread—and this is the queerest thing, and she says her best reward—instead of hating cooking and housework as she always has, she now simply adores it, and her uncle is going to have her take a course in domestic science at any school she chooses! Her sister made her a perfect duck of a raffia hat for taking care of the baby, and as for little Billy—Dolly says her reward there is almost greater than she can bear, for now Billy tags after her everywhere until she 's almost worn to a frazzle.
Edna Page turned out to be what we never had suspected for one blessed minute—a really, truly martyr! She went and stayed a whole month with her Aunt Sarah. I know that does n't sound much like a sacrifice, but then you have never seen Edna's Aunt Sarah. Besides, she lives in a little ugly country town and they get up at five in the morning and go to bed with the chickens, and Aunt Sarah will only have the simplest things to eat—and Edna has always doted on rich things and perfectly loathed "wholesome cooking." And Aunt Sarah believes in sulphur for your complexion, and as Edna's was n't very good, she was simply wild for fear Aunt Sarah would insist upon her taking it, and, as a member of the Heart's Ease Club, she would n't dare refuse, because she might hurt Aunt Sarah's feelings!
I can tell you my heart just bled for Edna as we bade her good-by at the station on the fatal day she started. She really looked shabby, too, in her last summer's suit and her oldest hat, for one of her sacrifices was to be economical, and I must say I think she rather overdid it, for she went with one tan glove and one white one because her puppy ate the mate of each pair, and she would n't spend a cent of her allowance for new ones, but gave it all to the club! Well, Edna's reward was far greater than her sacrifice, for she came back with a complexion of peaches and cream! Aunt Sarah had really turned out to be a wonderful cook, and was splendid after she heard about the sacrifice club; and Edna just loved the girls in that little bit of a village. Indeed, she has raved about it all so that Dolly says she thinks Edna's sacrifice next year will be to stay away from Aunt Sarah's!
I sold a lot of my flowers—and that always breaks my heart, I do so love to give them away!—and I helped Sister Alice correct school papers (she teaches fourth grade), and I washed the dishes every single day for a whole month—so let none look at me! Dolly says I can hold my head up with the self-sacrificers after this, and my rewards were too many to mention.
But Lucy, oh, Lucy was the funniest! You know, she was the doleful dumpy one—well, that girl just grinned and grinned until it made your jaws ache to see her. Of course she did other self-sacrifices, too, but she said it was simply awful to smile with that dreadful empty hollow pain in your insides just the same—you see, you can't make yourself grin clear through if you don't feel like it—I know it was as painful for us to see it as it was for her to do it. So, at last, Dolly said she had read somewhere that the Russian soldiers always sing to keep up their courage, and that Lucy should try that since the smiling sacrifice seemed to make those around her almost as sad as she was herself. And what do you think—what do you think! Why, after Lucy sang and sang, it came out that she had a perfectly lovely voice, and her people are going to have it cultivated when she gets older, and maybe some day she will be a great prima donna, and Lucy, why Lucy is so happy, her smile is like the breaking of the dawn across the hilltops.
Besides this, we 've grown to like Cora and Ruth and those girls ever so much, and our meetings are delightful.
Well, at the end of our third month Fan reported, besides the other benefits which could never be counted, we had one hundred and fifty dollars in the treasury. Was n't that grand?
And then we started in to make all those dollars bring all the happiness they could, and I just wish I could tell you of the poor, tired mothers and the little children and the sad people that money helped.
Well, the girls wanted the secretary—that's your humble servant—to write this so the whole world might read, and Dolly, as our president, says her last word to you all is, "Go thou and do likewise!"
Nancy Kent, Secretary.
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