Under the circumstances I thought Althea might be the next girl to make the trip, and, on the way up the hill, I gave the Old Colonie call, which she recognized and answered. Annie noticed the whistle and the reply, and asked what it meant, and when I explained the signal, she said, “I would like to learn that.” I immediately repeated it until she caught the notes, and presently the strain was echoed all over the Knoll, and from that moment it became the call of the school. From that moment, too, Annie Page became the one girl of the place for me. She held that position in my regard until three years later, when she and her sister went to live with their parents in Italy. She was a year and a month and a day younger than myself, but was far my senior in the school. That was an advantage to me, as it had the effect of driving me ahead in my studies in order to reach her classes. We were together a good deal out of school hours, taking the same work to do, when that was practicable, as feeding the rabbits in the warren back of the Eyrie, and cultivating the herb-garden where we raised mint, anise and cummin, sage, marjoram and saffron for the Boston market.
One other incident occurred on the Knoll perhaps worth recording, as it gave me a name. Annie insisted on helping me pull the toboggan up the slide, and, on the way, she remarked, “I did not know boys liked perfumery.”
“That,” said I, “is from the cedar chest our clothes are packed in.”
Just as we reached the group at the top of the hill she answered, “Oh, cedar! So it is.”
As she spoke, a little toddlekins, three or four years old, came running to me, exclaiming, “Cedar, can’t I ride on the ’bog-gan?”
That settled it! My Brook Farm name was thenceforth Cedar, and would be Cedar, still, were there any of my companions left to remember it. I never had any other nickname, save that of late years some dear and intimate friends have made syllables of my initials and called me Jay Vee.
At four o’clock my sister and I trudged up to pay our call at the Eyrie. This was a square house of the surburban villa type, two-and-a-half stories high, and the handsomest building on the place, though plain, enough, as compared with villas in the neighborhood to-day. Doctor and Mrs. Ripley received us very kindly and gave us a most cordial welcome to Brook Farm. Mrs. Ripley, born Sophia Dana, was a slender, graceful lady, belonging to what Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes calls the Brahmin class of Boston; charming in manner, animated and blithe, but profoundly serious in her religious devotion to what she regarded as the true Christian life. She had, informally, the general charge of the girls in the school, and she at once made Althea feel at home under her motherly care.
