Read Online Charlotte in New York by Joan MacPhail Knight - Free Book Online Page B

listened to island stories. One was about a ghost who haunts the hotel, an old lady who warms her toes by the fire. Then Mrs. Thaxter told us about a wild storm they had when she was a girl, when her father was the lighthouse keeper here—the wind was so strong, they had to bring the cow into the kitchen so she wouldn’t blow out to sea!

August 12, 1894
    Appledore Island
The Isles of Shoals
    I went to meet the mail boat this morning and saw a strange-looking package for Mrs. Thaxter—a box of dirt with wire across the top. I told the mailman I’d take it straight to her.

    Mr. Childe Hassam
    When I got to Mrs. Thaxter’s house, Papa’s old friend Mr. Childe Hassam was on the porch. He was signing his name to a painting he had just finished. Next to it, he put a red crescent moon. When I asked if he knew where Mrs. Thaxter was, he said, “Try the parlor.”
    There were so many flowers in the room that I couldn’t see her at first. Then I spotted her. She was lying down, reading a book. When I handed her the box, she exclaimed, “Come with me!” and took me out to her garden.

    â€œPoor, dry, dusty creatures,” she said as she put the box down and sprinkled it with water from a watering can. All at once, I heard the high peeping sound of many little voices. She removed the wire and turned the box on its side. Out hopped what must have been a hundred tiny toads. “I ordered them from the mainland,” she said, “to feast on my pesky slugs. Before long, the toads will grow as large as apples, and there won’t be a single slug left in my garden.” Now I know why I saw toads for sale at markets in France!

    Mrs. Thaxter loves poppies, too, and has lots of different kinds.
    I told her how I sowed poppy seeds Monsieur Monet gave me over the snow in my garden in Giverny. She said that in February, when it’s still very cold, she plants poppies, too. But she plants them this way:
    Half-fill a shallow box with sand. Set rows of empty eggshells close together in the sand, each shell cut off at one end, wita a drainage hole at the bottom. Fill the shells with clean earth and sow a poppy seed in each. Keep damp and place in a sunny window. When seedlings are ready to plant in spring, gently remove the shell from the earth so as not to disturb the roots. Plant in the ground and water.

August 17, 1894
    Appledore Island
The Isles of Shoals
    Today at the ledges, Papa introduced me to Mr. J. Appleton Brown. He comes every summer to give painting lessons to Mrs. Thaxter. Papa says everybody calls him “Appleblossom Brown” because he likes to paint apple orchards. I wonder if I’ll have a nickname one day for what I like to paint best.
    He was making a watercolor, and Papa and I set up our easels. I squeezed the colors of Appledore onto my palette:

    Tonight we’re having a clambake on Smuttynose Island. Lizzy and I will find driftwood for the fire. Seaweed, too, for steaming lobsters and clams. I heard everybody is coming—they’re bringing out the whaleboats to ferry people across the channel. But we’ll sail out in our little boat, the Skimmer. Papa is down in the cove getting her ready. I’d better hurry! He wants to leave on the tide.

September 7, 1894
    24 Fifth Avenue
New York
    Papa and Mr. Foster are so excited about the paintings they made in Appledore that we all rushed back to New York so they could include them in the exhibition. I don’t mind a bit—the circus is in town! This morning, Raymonde took Lizzy and me to Madison Square to see the parade, and what a parade it was! “Four hundred horses, twenty elephants and one thousand performers,” a policeman next to us shouted over the brass band, “nothing like it anywhere else in the world.” When it was over, the parade marched into Madison Square Garden and disappeared.

    Madison Square Garden
    Tonight we went to the performance. The policeman was right!