On the side nearest the school, the lawn followed Pleasant Street down a steep hill. It was hemmed in by that wall on which Winona was sitting. On the other side it ran flat along School Street and ended in a hedge. The bird bath stood here with flower beds on either side.
From this upper lawn a terrace rolled down to the lower lawn, which Winona especially liked. There was a swing down there, and room for the croquet set. Best of all, there was lots and lots of grassy space to play in. On the alley was the small corral where Ole, the hired man, exercised her father’s bangtailed riding horse, Bob, and her mother’s carriage horse, Florence. The carriage house stood near, and the barn where Bob and Florence lived.
There was an empty stall in the barn, just the right size for that pony Winona wished she had. And Ole had plenty of time to take care of a pony.
“He wouldn’t mind at all,” Winona thought. Old Ole liked horses better than people. He told her so often, especially when he found her climbing on Bob or Florence, or playing with the harness in his tidy harness closet, or pretending to ride in her mother’s carriage—an elegant surrey with a brown fringed top.
All of a sudden Winona had a wonderful idea.
“I might,” she thought, “ask for a pony for my birthday.”
Of course, she had already asked for a little printing press, and her father had said he couldn’t afford it. And she had asked for a doll as big as a baby, jointed, with yellow hair and eyes that opened and shut, and he had said he couldn’t afford that. But he always said he couldn’t afford the things she asked for. He would say he didn’t have any money, and then he would laugh and jingle some in his pocket. And, oftener than not, she got what she wanted.
“He spoils me. Everyone says so,” Winona thought hopefully.
Maybe she’d ask him tonight! Or maybe she shouldn’t, because it would remind her mother of how she had gone riding on the bird bath? Her mother hadn’t liked that a bit.
“My mother is too dignified,” Winona thought, kicking the wall hard with her black high-buttoned shoes.
Her mother was very dignified. She was president of the Ladies’ Foreign Missionary Society. She was slender and frail and always beautifully dressed, with never a hair out of place.
Winona’s sisters were dignified, too. Of course, they were young ladies. Bessie was fifteen and Myra was thirteen; they wore shirt waists and skirts and pompadours. They liked to study and to do embroidery, and Bessie painted place cards and fans and copied Gibson Girl heads. Myra was planning to marry a minister. Not any special minister; she just liked ministers.
Winona wasn’t a bit like either of them.
Winona had black eyes that snapped and flashed with mischief. Her face was tanned, and a mane of black hair was always flying out behind her. She liked to be outdoors, to play wild games, and run, and climb trees.
“This is my western daughter,” Winona’s mother always said when introducing Winona. She would explain with a loving smile that the two older girls had been born back in New York state while Winona had been born here in Deep Valley, Minnesota.
“She means I’m a tomboy,” Winona thought bitterly and kicked the wall so hard that she yelled, “Ouch!” and Toodles woke up.
He looked at her with his bulging dark eyes. He had a comical little black face full of worried-looking wrinkles.
“Prob’ly he worries about me,” Winona thought. “Toodles,” she said, putting her face down on his soft yellow back, “I’m the only one in this whole family that isn’t dignified. Even Father is, a little.”
Her father was a tall, important-looking man Across his starched white vest he wore a heavy gold watch chain with a Knights of Pythias fob. He had black hair and eyes like Winona’s, and white teeth like hers, and perhaps when he was a little boy he hadn’t been dignified either. Certainly he always understood what made her do the things she did. He always helped her out when she got into fixes.
“He isn’t very dignified,” Winona said. “Not any more than he has to be, when he’s editor of the paper.”
He was publisher and editor of the Deep Valley Sun. Winona liked to go down to his office and watch the busy presses. Not long ago he had bought a self-setting type machine. A linotype machine, it was called. He said it was a wonderful new invention. He had shown it to her and explained it to her just as though she were grown up. He had let her sit on the operator’s lap and push the keys and spell out her name in type.
It was on account of this that Winona had asked for that printing press for her birthday.
In September, when school began, he let her walk around the printing shop and pick out whatever she wanted—ink and pencil tablets, and clean note pads, and a full new box of pencils sharpened to fine points. He had her name printed on her notebooks. Betsy Ray, a girl in Winona’s class at school, always envied her that.
“I’d like my name printed on a notebook. I’d write a book in it,” she said.
Winona’s father was having the invitations to her birthday party printed at the paper. He was going to bring them home tonight.
Winona remembered how nice her father was.
“Yes, I will ask for a pony,” she decided. “But perhaps I’d better go in and practice my music lesson.”
Her father often asked her at supper whether she had practiced. He was anxious for her to learn to play the piano. She was supposed to practice half an hour twice a day. But she didn’t always do it. There was too much to do out of doors.
“But, Winona, you like music, just as I do. You’d be good at it,” he would say. “After you learn to play, you can play for me in the evening.”
“Yes, I’d better go in and practice,” Winona thought, jumping up. But then she remembered the Ladies’ Foreign Missionary Society, and she sat down again.
“I can’t practice,” she thought with satisfaction. “And it isn’t my fault. Prob’ly they’ll stay so late I can’t practice at all. Too bad! I might get so I could play beautiful pieces for Father. I might get to be a famous piano player, if it wasn’t for that old Foreign Missionary Society…in there eating up the refreshments.”
Toodles growled sympathetically, but after a minute he fell asleep again. And Winona grew crosser and crosser. It was lonesome, sitting on the wall.
2
Winona and Her Friends
SOME SYRIAN children came toiling up the hill. They were coming from the Catholic school on the north end of town and going to their homes on the south end of town in a valley called Little Syria.
Winona liked the Syrians. They were dark and foreign-looking and talked in an exciting way, waving their hands. They loved bright colors, and she did, too. Her father had asked her mother please to let Winona wear bright colors because she loved them so. Her mother favored dark blue sailor suits, with white dresses for Sunday.
The Syrian girls wore gay-colored head scarfs, and red ribbons woven into their braids. They wore earrings and glass bracelets, and the boys put feathers in their caps and flowers in their buttonholes.
They had come to know Winona, passing her house so much. Sometimes they stopped and turned her jump rope. Sometimes they joined her in hop scotch on the walk. A boy named Scundar often threw her a ball as he passed, and Winona would throw it back to him, and he would throw it back to her. A little girl named Marium often stopped to pet Toodles.
She stopped to pet Toodles now, and Scundar asked, “Would you like to toss the ball?”
But Winona had to shake her head.
The Syrian children went on.
Winona looked dismally across at the school house, a red brick building trimmed with yellow stone. There was a flight of steep stone steps leading to the big. front door. Whenever it was time for school to begin, a boy stood on those steps and rang a bell. Winona lived so near that she didn’t need to start to school until she heard that bell—unless she wanted to. Sometimes she ran over early for the fun of playing in the girls’ yard.
School was over now. The girls’ yard and the boys’
yard were empty. But after a while Winona saw a boy named Dennie come running down the school house steps.
He had been kept late because he had brought a garter snake to school and put it in a box of erasers. Miss Canning, the teacher, hadn’t liked it.
“What did she do to you?” Winona called as he came near.
“Aw, she just scolded me!” Dennie tossed his curly head. He stopped beside the wall. Dennie liked Winona. He had once left a stick of gum on her desk.
“I’ll race you down the hill,” he said.
Winona wished she could do it, but she had to say no. She had to sit on the wall.
Lottie and Lettie Pepper came up the hill next, pulling an empty cart. They had come to fetch the laundry. Their mother did the washing for the Roots. Lottie and Lettie were twins and looked just alike, thin and wiry, with bright blue, interested eyes.
“Want to do tricks?” they asked.
They often stayed to do tricks when they came to get the laundry or to bring it back. They could stand on each other’s shoulders, and were teaching Winona to do it.
“Yes, I want to, but that doesn’t mean I can,” Winona answered.
Lottie and Lettie took their cart around to the back door and received a brimming laundry basket from Selma, the Roots’ hired girl. They pulled the cart back down the hill and disappeared.
For a while there were only horses going up and down the hill, pulling surreys and buggies and delivery wagons. A load of hay went past, and Winona wished on it; she wished for a pony.
The street-sprinkling cart went past. That was fun, as a rule. It sprinkled water as it moved along the street, and you could run out and play in it and get wet. She couldn’t today.
The rag man went past in his mysterious wagon. He was calling, “Rags! Rags! Any rags today?” If she hadn’t had to sit on the wall, Winona could have followed him down the street. She might have seen him weigh somebody’s bundle of old clothes and give them a shiny pan or muffin tin in return.
“Double darn!” Winona said, although she knew it was practically swearing.
Three little girls came out of Mrs. Chubbock’s candy store, next door to the school house. They were in Miss Canning’s room too. Their names were Betsy, Tacy, and Tib.
Betsy Ray, the one who liked Winona’s notebooks, had a round face with short braids sticking out behind. Her front teeth were parted in the middle. Tacy Kelly had long red ringlets and Tib Muller was little and cute with yellow curls.
“Want to play?” they called now, running across the street.
This was too much, Winona thought! Everyone could play except her! The Syrian children, and Dennie, and Lottie and Lettie.
“If I did, I’d have plenty of people to play with,” she answered, scowling.
That made them mad.
“You think you’re pretty important,” said Betsy, “just because your father runs the newspaper. Well, my father is so handsome that people stop him on the street to tell him how handsome he is! Just last night old Mrs. Murphy stopped him right in front of his shoe store. She said he got handsomer every day.”
“He gives her shoes for nothing,” Tib explained. Winona saw Betsy and Tacy poke her to keep still.
“My father can play the violin,” said Tacy quickly. “He’s as good as Ole Bull, just about.”
Tib thought only a moment. “My father can eat spoiled catsup,” she said. “He did it once and it didn’t make him sick.”
The three of them looked at Winona defiantly.
“Who’s talking about fathers?” asked Winona. “I’ll bet you can’t guess who kissed me once?”
Betsy, Tacy, and Tib burst into scornful laughter.
“We don’t like kissing talk!”
“We hate it!”
“We don’t like boys!”
“Joke on you!” said Winona. “It wasn’t any old boy. I’ll tell you who it was because you never could guess. It was Buffalo Bill!”
“Buffalo Bill!” They were astounded.
Winona nodded importantly. “Yup!” she said. “Buffalo Bill kissed me.”
He had, too.
It was over a year ago when she was only six. He had been in town with his Wild West Show, and after the parade down Main Street, he had brought his band to serenade the office of the Deep Valley Sun. Winona had been hoisted up into the glittery wagon. Buffalo Bill, with his broad-brimmed black hat, his piercing eyes, his mustaches and spike of beard, had held her by the hand.
The band had played, and the music had sounded frighteningly loud, and the bandmen in their gaudy uniforms had looked frighteningly strange. Buffalo Bill had stood straight as an Indian holding Winona’s hand, and at the end he had picked her up and kissed her.
Winona had been terribly afraid. She knew better than to cry with her father and a whole crowd of people looking on. She hadn’t liked it, though.
“I didn’t like it,” she said now to Betsy, Tacy, and Tib. “His mustaches tickled.”
That made them laugh.
“Want a jelly bean?” asked Betsy, holding out the bag.
“Yup!” Winona answered, and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib hopped up on the wall beside her.
It was nice sitting there in the late afternoon sunshine. Red and yellow leaves drifted down upon their heads.
“You have a lot of leaves on this big lawn,” said Betsy. “Do you ever play in them?”
“I should say I do,” Winona answered. She munched a jelly bean and gave one to Toodles. He wasn’t supposed to have them, but she didn’t care today. “My father doesn’t burn up the leaves until after my birthday,” she said. “He leaves them just on purpose so I can play in them.”
“What do you play?” Tacy asked.
“I rake them into a house. You know—parlor and dining room and kitchen and bedrooms with piles of leaves for walls.”
“I’d be good at that,” said Tib, “because my father is an architect. I could tell you where to put in closets and halls and things.”
“Betsy could make up a story about us all living in that leaf house,” said Tacy.
“Could you?” asked Winona.
“Of course,” said Betsy. “We could have a big fight with the people next door.”
“A terrible fight! We’d get so mad we’d all throw leaves,” said Tacy, and her eyes began to sparkle.
“We’d throw so many leaves it would be the end of the house!”
“Why don’t we do it now?” asked Tib. “We can stay a little while.”
Winona wriggled uncomfortably. “Maybe your mothers wouldn’t want you to stay,” she suggested.
“Oh, they wouldn’t mind!” Betsy replied.
“Betsy and I were playing over at Tib’s house,” Tacy explained. “We found a nickel down a crack in the sidewalk, and Tib’s mother let us come and buy candy.”
“She wouldn’t worry if we were a little slow coming back,” added Tib. “Where do you keep your rake?”
But Winona had to shake her head.
“Toodles and I have to sit here on this wall,” she said hastily. “We’re…we’re waiting for something. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s something awfully dignified!”
“What does ‘dignified’ mean?” asked Tib.
“Important,” said Betsy. “Oh, well! We’ll come and make the leaf house some other day.”
“When is your birthday?” asked Tib. “Are you having a party?”
“A week from today. Of course, I’m having a party.”
“Ice cream?” asked Betsy.
“Of course.”
“Birthday cake?” asked Tacy.
“Of course!”
Everyone looked interested.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Tib inquired.
“A pony!” said Winona. It was wonderful to say it. Saying it right out loud like that sort of made up for having to sit on the wall.
“A pony!” cried Tib. “Why, I don’t know anyone that’s got a pony!” Betsy and Tacy nudged her to keep still. r />
“Oh, a pony isn’t so much!” said Betsy. “Maybe you’ll get one for your birthday, Tib. I’ll bet you will. Don’t you bet so, Tacy?”
“I’m practically sure of it,” said Tacy.
“Oh, my papa couldn’t afford one!” answered Tib. Betsy and Tacy nudged her again.
“Maybe Tacy will get one,” said Betsy. “Her father has a horse, and so has mine.”
“Would you like a pony, Betsy?” Tacy asked in a careless voice.
“Well, sort of! I wouldn’t mind!”
“I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind!” Winona jeered.
The front door of her house opened and the ladies of the Foreign Missionary Society began to come out. They were wearing hats and jackets, or short capes, and they caught up their sweeping skirts in their hands as they started down the porch steps. They were telling Winona’s mother that it had been a splendid meeting and the refreshments were delicious.
Several of them got into a surrey that had driven up in front. And others got into a phaeton that Ole brought around from the driveway. The rest started off down the walk, still holding their skirts daintily off the ground.
When everyone was out of sight, Mrs. Root came to the door.
“Winona!” she called. “You may come in now and practice your music lesson.”
Betsy, Tacy, and Tib whirled upon Winona.
“Winona Root!” cried Betsy. “You were just sitting here because you had to!”
“You were being punished!” cried Tacy.
“But you said it was something dignified!” cried Tib, bewildered.
“Yes,” said Betsy crushingly. “She said she was going to get a pony, too.”
“Winona!” called Mrs. Root again. “You must come in and practice. It’s almost time for supper.”
Toodles heard the word “supper” and struggled to his feet. Toodles loved to eat. That was why he was so fat. He curled his tail and started up the walk, but he stopped and waited for Winona.
Winona was dancing a jig on the wall. This was to show that she didn’t care because they had found her out.
Betsy, Tacy, and Tib started to go home.
“Can we come over and rake?” asked Tib.