Imagine a low, dark loft without any windows, and with only a very little light coming in through the square hole in the floor, to which the spikey post led. There was a strong smell of corn-cobs, though the corn had been taken away; a great deal of dust and spider-web in the corners, and some wet spots on the boards, for the roof always leaked a little in rainy weather.
This was the place, which for some reason I have never been able to find out, the Carr children preferred to any other on rainy Saturdays, when they could not play out-doors. Aunt Izzie was as much puzzled at this fancy as I am. When she was young (a vague, far-off time, which none of her nieces and nephews believed in much), she had never had any of these queer notions about getting off into holes and corners, and poke-away places. Aunt Izzie would gladly have forbidden them to go to the loft, but Dr. Carr had given his permission, so all she could do was to invent stories about children who had broken their bones in various dreadful ways, by climbing posts and ladders. But these stories made no impression on any of the children except little Phil, and the self-willed brood kept on their way, and climbed their spiked posts as often as they liked.
“What’s in the bottle?” demanded Dorry, the minute he was fairly landed in the loft.
“Don’t be greedy,” replied Katy, severely, “you will know when the time comes. It is something delicious, I can assure you.”
“Now,” she went on, having thus quenched Dorry, “all of you had better give me your cookies to put away: if you don’t, they’ll be sure to be eaten up before the feast, and then you know there wouldn’t be anything to make a feast of.”
So all of them handed over their cookies. Dorry, who had begun his as he came up the ladder, was a little unwilling, but he was too much in the habit of minding Katy to dare to disobey. The big bottle was set in a corner, and a stack of cookies built up around it.
“That’s right,” proceeded Katy, who, as oldest and biggest, always took the lead in their plays. “Now if we’re fixed and ready to begin, the Fête (Katy pronounced it Feet ) can commence. The opening exercise will be ‘A Tragedy of the Alhambra,’ by Miss Hall.”
“No,” cried Clover; “first ‘The Blue Wizard, or Edwitha of the Hebrides,’ you know, Katy.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” said Katy, “a dreadful accident has happened to that.”
“Oh, what?” cried all the rest, for Edwitha was rather a favorite with the family. It was one of the many serial stories which Katy was forever writing, and was about a lady, a knight, a blue wizard, and a poodle named Bop. It had been going on for so many months now, that everybody had forgotten the beginning, and nobody had any particular hope of living to hear the end, but still the news of its untimely fate was a shock.
“I’ll tell you,” said Katy. “Old Judge Kirby called this morning to see Aunt Izzie; I was studying in the little room, but I saw him come in, and pull out the big chair and sit down, and I almost screamed out ‘don’t!’”
“Why?” cried the children.
“Don’t you see? I had stuffed ‘Edwitha’ down between the back and the seat. It was a beau tiful hiding-place, for the seat goes back ever so far; but Edwitha was such a fat bundle, and old Judge Kirby takes up so much room, that I was afraid there would be trouble. And sure enough, he had hardly dropped down before there was a great crackling of paper, and he jumped up again and called out, ‘Bless me! what is that?’ And then he began poking, and poking, and just as he had poked out the whole bundle, and was putting on his spectacles to see what it was, Aunt Izzie came in.”
“Well, what next?” cried the children, immensely tickled.
“Oh!” continued Katy, “Aunt Izzie put on her glasses too, and screwed up her eyes – you know the way she does, and she and the judge read a little bit of it; that part at the first, you remember, where Bop steals the blue-pills, and the Wizard tries to throw him into the sea. You can’t think how funny it was to hear Aunt Izzie reading ‘Edwitha’ out loud – ” and Katy went into convulsions at the recollection “where she got to ‘Oh, Bop – my angel Bop – ‘ I just rolled under the table, and stuffed the table-cover in my mouth to keep from screaming right out. By and by I heard her call Debby, and give her the papers, and say: ‘Here is a mass of trash which I wish you to put at once into the kitchen fire.’ And she told me afterward that she thought I would be in an insane asylum before I was twenty. It was too bad,” ended Katy, half laughing and half crying, “to burn up the new chapter and all. But there’s one good thing – she didn’t find ‘The Fairy of the Dry-Goods Box,’ that was stuffed farther back in the seat.
“And now,” continued the mistress of ceremonies, “we will begin. Miss Hall will please rise.”
“Miss Hall,” much flustered at her fine name, got up with very red cheeks.
“It was once upon a time,” she read. “Moonlight lay on the halls of the Alhambra, and the knight, striding impatiently down the passage, thought she would never come.”
“Who, the moon?” asked Clover.
“No, of course not,” replied Cecy, “a lady he was in love with. The next verse is going to tell about her, only you interrupted.
“She wore a turban of silver, with a jewelled crescent. As she stole down the corregidor the beams struck it, and it glittered like stars.
“‘So you are come, Zuleika?’
“‘Yes, my lord.’
“Just then a sound as of steel smote upon the ear, and Zuleika’s mail-clad father rushed in. He drew his sword, so did the other. A moment more, and they both lay dead and stiff in the beams of the moon. Zuleika gave a loud shriek, and threw herself upon their bodies. She was dead, too! And so ends the Tragedy of the Alhambra.”
“That’s lovely,” said Katy, drawing a long breath, “only very sad! What beautiful stories you do write, Cecy! But I wish you wouldn’t always kill the people. Why couldn’t the knight have killed the father, and – no, I suppose Zuleika wouldn’t have married him then. Well, the father might have – oh, bother! why must anybody be killed, anyhow? why not have them fall on each other’s necks, and make up?”
“Why, Katy!” cried Cecy, “it wouldn’t have been a tragedy then. You know the name was A Tragedy of the Alhambra.”
“Oh, well,” said Katy, hurriedly, for Cecy’s lips were beginning to pout, and her fair, pinkish face to redden, as if she were about to cry; “perhaps it was prettier to have them all die; only your ladies and gentlemen always do die, and I thought, for a change, you know! – What a lovely word that was – ‘Corregidor’ – what does it mean?”
“I don’t know,” replied Cecy, quite consoled. “It was in the ‘Conquest of Granada.’ Something to walk over, I believe.”
“The next,” went on Katy, consulting her paper, “is ‘Yap,’ a Simple Poem, by Clover Carr.”
All the children giggled, but Clover got up composedly, and recited the following verses:
“Did you ever know Yap?
The best little dog
Who e’er sat on lap
Or barked at a frog.
“His eyes were like beads,
His tail like a mop,
And it waggled as if
It never would stop.
His hair was like silk
Of the glossiest sheen,