Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

MEADOW BROOK.

BY

MRS. MARY J. HOLMES,

AUTHOR OF “THE HOMESTEAD ON THE HILL SIDE,” “’LENA RIVERS,” “TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE,” ETC.

NEW YORK:

C. M. SAXTON, 25 PARK ROW.

1858.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven,

BY MILLER, ORTON & Co.,

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

W. H. TIMSON, STEREOTYPER. R. O. JENKINS, PRINTER.

TO

MY MOTHER,

Who, more than any one else, will be interested in a story which has in it so much of my childhood and early home,

THIS WORK

is affectionately dedicated by her Daughter

MARY.

PREFACE.

In this story of Meadow Brook there is, I am aware, nothing very startling or wonderful; but it has the merit, at least, of containing more truth than books of the same character usually possess. From this, however, the reader is not to infer that I have made myself the heroine; for though the early home, the childhood, and childish experience of “Rosa Lee” are mostly my own—while more than one whiskered young man will recognize the little girl of thirteen, at whom he once made faces from behind his desk as the “schoolma’am”—the similarity extends no further.

The fickle Mr. Clayton and his haughty bride, the unfortunate Herbert, the disappointed Ada, the proud Southern planter, and the gentle, bright-haired Jessie, are intended to represent different varieties of American character, and are such as many of us have met in our intercourse with the world. For my portrayals of Georgia life, I am indebted to a friend, who recently spent two years in that State, and whose graphic descriptions of what she there saw have been to me of much service.

Believing that the world loves better to read of the probable than of the improbable, I have tried to be natural; and if, by this means, but one friend is added to the number I now possess, I shall feel that my labor has not been in vain.

M. J. H.

Bockport, N. Y., 1857.

CONTENTS.

MEADOW BROOK.

CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD.

Far away among the New England hills stands a large, old-fashioned farmhouse, around whose hearth-stone not many years agone, a band of merry, noisy children played, myself the merriest, noisiest of them all. It stood upon an eminence overlooking a broad strip of rolling meadow-land, at the extremity of which was the old grey rock, where the golden rod and sassafras grew, where the green ivy crept over the crumbling wall, and where, under the shadow of the thorn-apple tree, we built our play-houses, drinking our tea from the acorn saucers, and painting our dolls’ faces with the red juice of the poke berries, which grew there in great abundance.

Just opposite our house, and across the green meadow, was a shady grove, where, in the spring-time, the singing birds made their nests, and where, when the breath of winter was on the snow-clad hills, Lizzie, Carrie, and I, and our taller, stronger brothers dragged our sleds, dashing swiftly down the steep hill, and away over the ice-covered valley below. Truly, ours was a joyous childhood, and ours a happy home; for never elsewhere fell the summer’s golden sunlight so softly, and never was music sweeter than was the murmur of the dancing water-brook which ran past our door, and down the long green lane, losing itself at last in the dim old woods, which stretched away to the westward, seeming to my childish imagination the boundary line between this world and the next.

In the deep shadow of those woods I have sat alone for many an hour, watching the white, feathery clouds as they glimmered through the dense foliage which hung above my head, and musing, I scarcely knew of what. Strange fancies filled my brain and oftentimes, as I sat there in the hazy light of an autumnal afternoon, there came and talked with me myriads of little people, unseen, it is true, but still real to me, who knew and called them all by name. There, on a mossy bank, beneath a wide-spreading grape-vine, with the running brook at my feet, I felt the first longings for fame, though I did not thus designate it then. I only knew that I wanted a name, which should live when I was gone—a name of which my mother should be proud. It had been to me a day of peculiar trial. At school everything had gone wrong. Accidentally I had discovered that I possessed a talent for rhyming; and so, because I preferred filling my slate with verses, instead of proving on it that four times twenty were eighty, and that eighty, divided by twenty, equalled four, my teacher must needs find fault with me, calling me “lazy,” and compelling me to sit between two hateful boys, with warty hands, who for the remainder of the afternoon amused themselves by sitting inconveniently near to me, and by telling me how big my eyes and feet were. I hardly think I should now mind that mode of punishment, provided I could choose the boys, but I did then, and in the worst of humors, I started for home, where other annoyances awaited me. Sally, the housemaid, scolded me for upsetting a pan of milk on her clean pantry shelf, calling me “the carelessest young one she ever saw,” and predicting that “I’d one day come to the gallus if I didn’t mend my ways.”

Juliet, my oldest sister, scolded me for wearing without her consent her shell side-comb, which, in climbing through a hole in the plastering of the schoolhouse, I accidentally broke. Grandmother scolded me for mounting to the top of her high chest of drawers to see what was in them; and to crown all, when, towards sunset, I came in from a romp in the barn, with my yellow hair flying all over my face, my dress burst open, my pantalet split from the top downward, and my sun-bonnet hanging down my back, my mother reproved me severely, telling me I was “a sight to behold.” This was my usual style of dress, and I didn’t think any one need interfere; so, when she wondered if there ever was another such child, and bade me look at myself in the glass, asking if “I didn’t think I was a beautiful object,” my heart came up in my throat, and with the angry response that “I couldn’t help my looks—I didn’t make myself,” I started through the door, and running down the long lane to the grape-vine, my favorite resort, I threw myself upon the ground, and burying my face in the tall grass, wept bitterly, wishing I had never been born, or, being born, that the ban of ugliness were not upon me.

Mother doesn’t love me, I thought—nobody loves me; and then I wished that I could die, for I had heard that the first dead of a family, no matter how unprepossessing they had been in life, were sure to be the best beloved in the memory of the living. To die, then, that I might be loved was all I asked for, as I lay there weeping alone, and thinking in my childish grief that never before was a girl, nine summers old, so wretched as myself. And then, in my imagination, I went through with a mental rehearsal of my own obsequies, fancying that I was dead, but still possessing the faculty of knowing all that passed around me.

With an involuntary shudder, I crossed my hands upon my bosom, stretched my feet upon the mossy bank, and closed my eyes to the fading sunlight, which I was never to see again. I knew they would lay me in the parlor, and on my forehead I felt the gentle breeze as it came through the open window, lifting the folds of the muslin curtain which shaded it. Throughout the house was a deep hush, and in my mother’s voice there was a heartbroken tone, which I had never heard before, and which thrilled me with joy, for it said that I was loved at last. Then I thought how lonely they would be as day by day went and came, and I came no more among them. “They will miss the little ugly face,” I said, and on my cheek my own hot tears fell as I thought how Lizzie would mourn for me in the dark night time, weeping that I was not by her side, but sleeping in a narrow coffin, which I hoped would be a handsome one with satin hangings, as I had seen at the funeral of a rich neighbor’s fair young bride. I did not want them to strew my pillow with roses as they did hers—for I knew they would not accord with my thin, plain face. In the distance I heard the sound of the tolling bell, and I saw the subdued expression on the faces of my school companions as they listened breathlessly, counting at last the nine quick strokes, which would tell to a stranger that ’twas only a child who was gone.

Then came the funeral, the roll of wheels, the tread of many feet, the hum of voices, the prayer, the hymn, in which I longed to join, but dared not for appearances’ sake, and then, one by one, they stole up for a last farewell, lifting my baby brother and bidding him look upon the sister he would never know save by the grassy mound where they would tell him she was buried. I knew when Lizzie bent over me by the convulsive sob and burning kiss which she pressed upon my lips, and divining her inmost thoughts, I fancied she was wishing that no harsh word had ever passed between us In my heart I longed to tell her how freely I forgave her, but ere I had time to do so, she stepped aside, while an older, a wrinkled hand was laid upon my forehead, and my aged grandmother murmured, “Poor little Rosa, far better that I should die, than that she, so young, should be laid in the lonesome grave.”

Instantly the dark grave loomed up before me, so dark and dreary that I shrank from being put there. I could not die; I was afraid to sleep with the silent dead. I would far rather live, even though I lived unloved forever. And then, softly in my ear, a spirit friend whispered, “Be great and good—get to yourself a name of which they shall be proud—make them love you for your deeds, rather than your looks, and when, in the future, strangers shall ask concerning you, ‘Who is she?’ let it be their pride to answer, ‘My daughter,’ or ‘My sister.’” Older and wiser heads than mine would have said it was Ambition, which thus counselled with me, but I questioned her not of her name. I only knew that her words were sweet and soothing, and I treasured them in my heart, pondering upon them until I fell asleep, unconscious that the daylight was fast declining, and that the heavy dew was falling upon my uncovered head.

Meantime at home many inquiries were being made concerning my whereabouts, and when, at last, night came on, and I was still away, my oldest brother was sent in quest of me down the long lane where I was last seen by Lizzie, who had attempted to follow me, but had desisted through fear of being called a tag. I was just dreaming that the trumpet of fame was sounding forth my name, when, alas! I awoke to find it was only brother Charlie, making the woods resound with “Rosa Lee! Where are you? Why don’t you answer?”

Of course I was disappointed,—who wouldn’t be?—and in a fit of obstinacy I determined not to reply, but to make him think I was lost—then see how he’d feel! But on this point I was not to be gratified, for failing of finding me in the lane, he made straight for the grape-vine, where he stumbled over me as I lay, this time feigning sleep, to see what he would do. Seizing me by the shoulder, he exclaimed, “You are a pretty bird, scaring us out of a year’s growth. Mother’ll scold you well for this.”

But he was mistaken, for mother’s manner towards me was greatly changed. The torn pantalet and the chewed bonnet-strings were all forgotten, and in the kindest tone she asked, “If I were not cold, and why I went to sleep on the grass.” There were tears in my eyes, but I winked hard and forced them back, until Lizzie brought me a piece of custard pie (my special favorite) which, she said, “she had saved for me, because she knew how much I loved it.”

This was too much, and sitting down in Carrie’s little chair, I cried aloud, saying in reply to the oft-repeated question as to what ailed me, that “I didn’t know, only I was so glad.”

“Hystericky as a witch,” was Sally’s characteristic comment on my strange behavior, at the same time she suggested that I be put to bed.

To this I made no objection, and pushing aside the pie, which, to Lizzie’s disappointment, I could not eat, I went to my room, a happier, and I believe, a better girl; so much influence has a kind word or deed upon a desponding, sensitive child. That night I was tired and restless, turning uneasily upon my pillow, pushing Lizzie’s arm from my neck, because it kept me from breathing, and lying awake until I heard the long clock in grandma’s room strike the hour of twelve. Then I slept, but dreamed there was a heavy pain in my head, which made me moan in my sleep, and that mother, attracted by the sound, came to my side, feeling my pulse, and saying, “What ails you, Rosa?” “There was nothing ailed me,” I said; but in the morning when I awoke, the pain was still there, though I would not acknowledge it, for scarcely anything could tempt me to stay away from school; so at the usual hour I started, but the road was long and wearisome, and twice I sat down to rest, leaning my forehead upon the handle of my dinner basket, and wondering why the smell of its contents made me so sick. Arrived at school, everything seemed strange, and when Maria, the girl who shared my desk, produced a love-letter from Tom Jenkins, which she had found on my side of the desk, and in which he made a formal offer of himself, frecks and all, I did not even smile. Taking my book, I attempted to study, but the words ran together, the objects in the room chased each other in circles, the little Abecedarian, shouting the alphabet at the top of his voice, sounded like distant thunder, and when at last the teacher called for our class in “Colburn,” she seemed to be a great way off, while between her and me was a gathering darkness which soon shut out every object from my view.

For a few moments all was confusion, and when at last my faculties returned I was lying on the recitation bench, my head resting in the teacher’s lap, while my hair and dress were so wet that I fancied I’d been out in a drenching shower. Everybody was so kind and spoke so softly to me that, with a vague impression that something had happened, I began to cry. Just then, father, who had been sent for, appeared, and taking me in his arms, started for home, while Lizzie followed with the basket and my sun-bonnet, which looked sorry and drooping like its owner. At the door father asked of mother, who met us, “Where shall I put her?” but ere she could reply, I said, “On grandmother’s bed.”

And there, among the soft pillows and snowy linen on which I had often looked with almost envious eyes, and which now seemed so much to rest me, I was laid. Of the weary weeks which followed, I have only a confused recollection. I know that the room was darkened as far as possible, and that before the window at the foot of the bed, grandma’s black shawl was hung, one corner being occasionally pinned back when more light was needed. After a while it seemed to me that it was Lizzie, instead of myself who was sick, and the physician said she had a fever, which had been long coming on, but was undoubtedly hastened by her sleeping on the wet grass in the night. And so we all trod softly about the house, speaking in whispers, and lifting the door-latches carefully, while Lizzie, with my cap and night dress on, lay all day long in bed, never speaking, never moving, except when the long clock in the corner struck off the hour; then she would moan as if in pain, and once when somebody, who looked like Lizzie, but was still I, Rosa, stole on tiptoe to her side, with a bouquet of flowers, which Maria had brought, she put her arms around my neck, and pointing to the clock, whispered, “It keeps saying ‘She’s dead’!—‘She’s dead’!—She’s dead!’ Won’t you tell it to be still?”

Then we knew that it disturbed her, and so the old clock was stopped, a thing which grandma said “had not been in fifty odd years,” except the time when grandpa died, and then, with the going out of his life, the clock itself ran down. All the night through the lamp burned upon the table where stood the vials, the Dover powders, and the cups, while Lizzie, with her great blue eyes so much like mine, wide open, lay watching the flickering shadows on the wall, counting the flowers on the paper bordering, wondering if there ever were blue roses, and thinking if there were that they must smell as the dinner did beneath the chestnut tree.

At last, when the family were wearied out with watching, the neighbors were called in, and among them our schoolteacher, who seemed to tread on air, so light and noiseless were her footsteps; and Lizzie, when she saw how kind she was, wondered she had not loved her better. Then came other watchers equally kind with Miss Phillips, but possessing far less tact for nursing; and even now I have a vivid remembrance of their annoying attempts “to fix me so I’d be more comfortable.” Was I lying in a position satisfactory to myself, I must be lifted up, my pillows shaken, turned over, and my head placed so high that my chin almost touched my chest. Did I fall into a little doze, I must rouse up to tell whether I were asleep or not, and did I get into a sound slumber, I must surely wake enough to say whether I wanted anything.

Again, I fancied that another beside Lizzie was sick, for in mother’s room, contiguous to mine, there was a low hum of voices, agoing in and out, a careful shutting of the door, and gradually I got the impression that Jamie, my beautiful baby brother, was connected with all this, for I heard them talk of scarlet fever, and it’s going hard with him. But I had no desire or power to ask the why or wherefore; and so time wore on, until there came a day when it seemed that the reverie beneath the grape-vine was coming true. There was the same roll of wheels, the tread of many feet, and through the closed doors I heard a mournful strain, sung by trembling voices, while from afar, I caught the notes of a tolling bell. I was much alone that day, and once, for more than an hour, there was no one with me excepting grandma, who frequently removed her spectacles to wipe the moisture which gathered upon them.

From that day I grew worse, and they sent to Spencer for Dr. Lamb, who, together with Dr. Griffin, held a council over me, and said that I must die. I saw mother when they told her. She was standing by the window, from which the black shawl had been removed, for nothing disturbed the little girl now, and the window was wide open, so that the summer air might cool the burning head, from which the matted yellow hair had all been shorn. She turned pale as death, and with a cry of anguish, pressed her hand upon her side; but she did not weep. I wondered at it then, and thought she cared less than Lizzie, who sat at the foot of the bed, sobbing so loudly that the fever burned more fiercely in my veins, and the physician said it must not be; she must leave the room, or keep quiet.

It was Monday, and a few hours afterward, as Sally was passing the door, grandma handed her my dirty, crumpled sun-bonnet, bidding her wash it and put it away. Sally’s voice trembled as she replied, “No, no, leave it as it is, for when she’s gone, nothing will look so much like her as that jammed bonnet with its chewed up strings.”

A gush of tears was grandma’s only answer, and after I got well, I found the bonnet carefully rolled up in a sheet of clean white paper and laid away in Sally’s drawer. There were days and nights of entire unconsciousness, and then with the vague, misty feeling of one awakening from a long, disturbed sleep, I awoke again to life and reason. The windows of my room were closed; but without, I heard the patter of the September rain, and the sound of the autumnal wind as it swept past the house. Gathered at my side were my father, mother, brothers, sisters, grandmother; and all, as my eye rested upon their faces, I thought, were paler and more careworn than when I last looked upon them. Something, too, in their dress disturbed me; but, before I could speak, a voice which I knew to be Dr. Griffin’s, said “She is better—she will live.”

From my mother’s lips there broke another cry—not like that which I had heard when they told her I must die—but a cry of joy, and then she fell fainting in my father’s arms. I never doubted her love for me again, but in bitterness of spirit, I have many a time wept that I ever distrusted her, my blessed mother.

The fourth day after the crisis I was alone with Lizzie, whom, for a long time, I importuned to give me a mirror that I might see myself once more. Yielding at length to my entreaties, she handed me a small looking glass, a wedding gift to my grandmother, and with the consoling remark, that “I wouldn’t always look so,” awaited the result. I am older than I was then, but even now I cannot repress a smile as I bring before my mind the shorn head, the wasted face with high cheek-bones, and the big blue eyes, in which there was a look of “crazy Sal,” which met my view. With the angry exclamation, “They’ll hate me worse than ever, I’m so ugly,” I dashed the mirror upon the floor, breaking it in a thousand pieces. Lizzie knew what I meant, and twining her arms about my neck, she said, “Don’t talk so, Rosa; we love you dearly, and it almost killed us when we thought you couldn’t live. You know big men never cry, and pa the least of all. Why, he didn’t shed a tear when lit”——

Here she stopped suddenly, as if on a forbidden subject, but soon resuming the conversation, she continued, “But the day Dr. Lamb was here and told us you would die, he was out under the cherry tree by our play-house, and when Carrie asked him if you’d never play there any more, he didn’t answer, but turned his face towards the barn, and cried so hard and so loud, that grandma came out and pitied him, smoothing his hair just like he was a little boy. Brother Charlie, too, lay right down in the grass, and said he’d give everything he’d got if he’d never called you ‘bung-eyed,’ nor made fun of you, for he loved you best of all. Then there was poor Jamie kept calling for ‘Yosa’”——

Here Lizzie broke down entirely, saying, “I can’t tell you any more, don’t ask me.”

Suddenly it occurred to me that I had neither seen nor heard little Jamie, the youngest of us all, the pet and darling of our household. Rapidly my thoughts traversed the past, and in a moment I saw it all. “Jamie was dead.” I did not need that Lizzie should tell me so. I knew it was true, and when the first great shock was over, I questioned her of his death, how and when it occurred. It seems that I was at first taken with scarlet fever, which soon assumed another form, but not until it had communicated itself to Jamie, who, after a few days’ suffering, had died. I had ever been his favorite, and to the last he had called for me to come; my grandmother, with the superstition natural to her age, construing it into an omen that I was soon to follow him.

Desolate and dreary seemed the house; and when I was able to go from room to room, oh! how my heart ached as I missed the prattle of our baby-boy. Away to the garret, where no one could see it, they had carried his empty cradle, but I sought it out; and as I thought of the soft, brown curls I had so often seen resting there, and would never see again, I sat down by its side and wept most bitterly. The withered, yellow leaves of autumn were falling upon his grave ere I was able to visit it, and at its head stood a simple stone, on which was inscribed, “Our Jamie.” As I leaned against the cold marble, and in fancy saw by its side—what had well-nigh been—another mound, and another stone, bearing upon it the name of “Rosa,” I involuntarily shuddered; while from my heart there went up a silent thanksgiving, that God, in his wise Providence, had ordered it otherwise.

From that sickness I date a more healthful state of mind and feeling, and though I still shrunk from any allusion to my personal appearance, I never again doubted the love of those who had manifested so much solicitude for me when ill, and who watched over me so tenderly during the period of my convalescence, which was long and wearisome, for the snows of an early winter lay upon the frozen ground, ere I was well enough to take my accustomed place in the old brown schoolhouse at the foot of the long hill.

CHAPTER II.
THANKSGIVING.

Thanksgiving! How many reminiscences of the olden time does that word call up, when sons and daughters, they who had wandered far and wide, whose locks, once brown and shining with the sunlight of youth, now give tokens that the autumnal frosts of life are falling slowly upon them, return once more to the old hearth-stone, and, for a brief space, grow young again amid the festive scenes of Thanksgiving Day. To you, who, like me, drew your first breath among the New England hills, and who have strayed away from your early home, in the busy world in which you are now mingling, comes there not occasionally pleasant memories of the olden time, when with eager haste you hied you back to the roof-tree which sheltered your infancy? And though, perchance, the snows of many a winter may have drifted across the graves of the gray-haired man you called your father, and the mild-eyed woman who bore the blessed name of mother, can you not recall them to mind, as when with tears of joy and words of love, they welcomed their children home, thanking God that as yet not one of their household treasures was missing? And if, after the lapse of years, there came a time when the youngest of you all was gone, when the childish prattle you loved so well to hear was hushed, when through the house was no more heard the patter of little, busy feet, when there was naught left of the lost one, save a curl of golden hair, or a tiny shoe, soiled and bent, but looking still so much like him who wore it once, that you preserve it as your choicest treasure: if, I say, there came to you a time like this, do you not remember how, amid all the social cheer, there was still an aching void, which nothing around you could fill?

But lest I make this chapter too sad, I shall not speak of our feelings as we missed our baby brother, for they who have lost from their fireside an active, playful child, understand far better than I can describe, the loneliness, the longing for something gone, which becomes almost a part of their being, although at times they may seem to forget. Children’s grief is seldom as lasting as that of mature years; and hence it is not strange if I sometimes forgot my sorrow in the joyous anticipation of Thanksgiving Day, which was then to me but another name for plum puddings, chicken pies, meeting dresses, morocco shoes, city cousins, a fire in the parlor, and last, though not least, the privilege of sitting at the first table, and using grandma’s six tiny silver spoons, with the initials of her maiden name, “P. S.” marked upon them.

On such occasions my thoughts invariably took a leap backward, and looking at grandma’s wrinkled face and white, shining hair, I would wonder if she ever were young like me; and if, being young, she swung on gates or climbed trees, and walked the great beams, as I did. Then, with another bound, my thoughts would penetrate the future, when I, a dignified grandmother, should recline in my arm-chair, stately and stiff, in my heavy satin and silver gray, while my oldest son, a man just my father’s size, should render me all the homage and respect due to one of my age. By myself, too, I had several times tried on grandma’s clothes, spectacles, cap and all; and then, seated in her chair, with the big Bible in my lap, I had expounded scripture to the imaginary children around me, frequently reprimanding Rosa for her inattention, asking her what “she thought would become of her, if she didn’t stop wriggling so in her chair, and learn ‘the chief end of man.’” Once, in the midst of my performance, grandma herself appeared, and as a natural consequence, I was divested of my fixings in a much shorter space of time than it had taken me to don them. From that day up to the period of my illness, I verily believe grandma looked upon me as “given over to hardness of heart and blindness of mind.”

But I am wandering from my subject, which was, I believe, the Thanksgiving succeeding Jamie’s death and my own recovery from sickness. For this occasion great preparations were made, it being confidently expected that my father’s brother, who lived in Boston, would be with us, together with his wife, a lady whose reputation for sociability and suavity of manners was, with us, rather below par. She was my uncle’s second wife, and rumor said that neither himself nor his home were as comfortable as they once had been. From the same reliable source, too, we learned that she breakfasted in her own room at ten, dined at three, made or received calls until six, went to parties, soirées, or the theatre in the evening, and seldom got to bed until two o’clock in the morning; a mode of living which was pronounced little better than heathenish by grandma, who had long been anxious for an opportunity of “giving Charlotte Ann a piece of her mind.”

Mother, who was more discreet, very wisely advised her not to interfere with the arrangements of her daughter-in-law. “It would do no good,” she said, “and might possibly make matters worse.” Unlike most old people, grandma was not very much set in her own way, and to mother’s suggestion, she replied that “Mebby she shouldn’t say anything—’twould depend on how many airs Charlotte put on.”

To me the expected visit was a sore trial; for, notwithstanding my cheeks and neck were rounder and fuller than they had ever been, my head, with its young crop of short, stiff hair, was a terrible annoyance, and more than once I had cried as I saw in fancy the derisive smile with which my dreaded Aunt Charlotte was sure to greet me. At last sister Anna, who possessed a great deal of taste in such matters, and who ought to have been a milliner, contrived for the “picked chicken,” as she called me, a black lace cap, which fitted me so well, and was so vastly becoming that I lost all my fears, and child-like, began to count the days which must elapse before I could wear it.

Meantime, in the kitchen there was a loud rattling of dishes, a beating of eggs, and calling for wood, with which to heat the great brick oven, grandma having pronounced the stove unfit for baking a Thanksgiving dinner. From the cornfield, behind the barn, a golden pumpkin, four times larger than my head and about the same color, was gathered, and after being brought to the house, was pared, cut open, scraped, and sliced into a little tin kettle with a copper bottom, where for hours it stewed and sputtered, filling the atmosphere with a faint, sickly odor, which I think was the main cause of the severe headache I took to bed with me. Mother, on the contrary, differed from me, she associating it in some way with the rapid disappearance of the raisins, cinnamon, sugar, and so forth, which, in sundry brown papers, lay open upon the table. She was generally right when she made up her mind, so I shall not dispute the point, for, let the cause have been what it would, it was a very sick little girl which, the night before Thanksgiving, was put early to bed by Sally, who remarked, as she undressed me, that “I was slimpsy as a rag, and she wouldn’t wonder if I had a collapse,” adding, as she tucked the clothes around me, that “if I did, it would be mighty apt to go hard with me.”

The next morning, just as the first grey streaks of daylight were appearing in the east, I awoke, finding, to my great joy, that my headache was gone. Rising upon my elbow and leaning far out of bed, I pushed aside the striped curtain which shaded the window, and looking out upon the ground below, saw, to my utter dismay, that it was covered with snow. To me there is nothing pleasant in a snow storm, a snow bank, or a snow cloud; and when a child, I used to think that with the fall of the first flake, there came over my spirits a chill, which was not removed until the spring-time, when, with its cause, it melted away: and even now, when, with my rubber boots, I dare brave any drift, not more than five feet four inches high, I cannot say that I have any particular love for snow; and as from my window I watch the descent of the feathery flakes, I always feel an irresistible desire to make at them wry faces, my favorite method of showing my dislike. On the morning of which I have spoken, I vented my displeasure in the usual way, and then I fell into a deep sleep, from which I was at last awakened by the loud shouts of my brothers, who, in the meadow across the road, were pelting each other with balls, occasionally rolling over in the pure, white snow, which they hailed as an old and well loved friend.

Not long after breakfast was over Anna, commenced dressing Lizzie and Carrie, and as she had herself to beautify before the arrival of the train which was to bring my uncle and aunt, it is not surprising that she hurried rather faster then was wholly agreeable to the little girls, who could see no good cause for such haste, even if Herbert Langley, my aunt’s son and a youth of seventeen, was to accompany her. I, however, who was older, read things differently, and when Anna pulled Lizzie’s curly hair, and washed Carrie’s nose up instead of down, until they both cried, and when she herself stood before the glass a whole half hour, arranging just in front of her ears two spit curls, sometimes called “beau catchers,” I shrugged my shoulders, wondering if she thought a city boy would care for her.

The morning train from Boston was due about ten o’clock, and as Meadow Brook did not then boast a daily omnibus, it was necessary that some one should be at the dépôt in order to meet our expected guests. In New England it is almost an unheard-of thing for an entire family to remain away from church on Thanksgiving Day, but considering all the circumstances, it was, on this occasion, decided orthodox for us to do so, and accordingly at nine o’clock father and old sorrel started for the dépôt, which was distant about two and a half miles. Long and wearisome to us children was that waiting for his return; for stiff and prim, as starched white aprons, best gowns, and hemstitched pantalets could make us, we sat in a row like so many automatons, scarcely daring to move, lest we should displace some article of dress. In the best chamber, the room which Aunt Charlotte was to occupy, a cheerful wood fire was burning, and at least a dozen times did grandma go up there to see if all were right, now smoothing the clean, linen pillow-case, now moving the large easy-chair a little more to the centre of the room, and again wiping from the mirror some imaginary specks of dust.

As she was coming down the twelfth time, the sound of sleigh-bells took us all to the window, where, instead of the costly furs and rich velvet wrappings of Aunt Charlotte, we saw the coarse plaid shawl and dark delaine hood of Aunt Betsey, while at her side was the shaggy overcoat and sealskin cap of her better half, Uncle Jason. This worthy couple, good enough in their way, lived in Union, about nine miles from Meadow Brook, where, for the last ten years, they had been in the habit of spending Thanksgiving, without ever seeming to think it possible for them to return the compliment. Although we had never seen Aunt Charlotte, we knew full well that there was nothing in common between her and Aunt Betsey, and after a long consultation it had been decided not to invite the latter, who, as it proved, did not deem an invitation necessary.

Uncle Jason was my father’s half brother, and the stepson of grandma, who, the moment she saw them was actually guilty of the exclamation, “Good Lord! what sent them here?” Before any of us could reply, the door burst open, and the loud, boisterous laugh of Uncle Jason greeted our ears, intermingled with the squeaky tones of Aunt Betsey, who, addressing my mother, said, “How d’ye dew, Fanny. You pretty well? I s’pose you’re lookin’ for us, though you didn’t send us no invite? Jason kinder held off about comin’, but I telled him ’twas enough sight easier to eat dinner here than to cook it to hum.”

With as good a grace as she could possibly assume, mother returned her greeting, and then, taking her into her own bedroom, asked her to remove her bonnet, at the same time telling her she was expecting Uncle Joseph and Aunt Charlotte from Boston.

“Now, you don’t say it,” exclaimed Aunt Betsey, stopping for a moment in the adjustment of her cap, the fashion of which was wonderful, having been devised by herself, as were all her articles of dress. “Now, dew tell if that puckerin’ thing is a comin’! How nipped up we shall have to be! I’m so glad I wore this gown!” she continued, looking complacently at her blue and white plaid, the skirt of which was very short and scanty, besides being trimmed at the bottom with two narrow ruffles.

With her other peculiarities Aunt Betsey united that of jealousy, and after getting herself warm, and looking round, as was her custom, she commenced with, “Now, if I won’t give up—a fire in the parlor chamber. I s’pose Charlotte’s too good to pull off her things in the bedroom, as I do. Wall, it’s the luck of some to be born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”

Grandma, who was the only person present except myself, made no answer, and after a moment Aunt Betsey continued, “Now I think on’t, Miss Lee (she never addressed her as “mother,” for, from the first, a mutual dislike had existed between them), now I think on’t, Miss Lee, mebby Fanny meant to slight me.”

“Fanny never slighted anybody,” was grandma’s reply, while her polished knitting-needles rattled with a vengeance.

“Wall, I guess she thought Jo’s wife and I wouldn’t hitch hosses exactly, but the land knows that I don’t care the snap of my finger for her. I’m as good as anybody, if I don’t keep a hired maid and have a carpet on every floor.”

Here she was interrupted by the sound of horses’ feet, and rising up, grandma said, “I guess they’ve come. Will you go and meet them?”

“Not I; I’m the last one to creep, I can tell you,” was Aunt Betsey’s reply, while grandma and I quitted the room, leaving her sitting bolt upright, with her feet on the fender and her lips pursed up as they always were when she was indignant.

Uncle Joseph, Aunt Charlotte, Herbert Langley, had all come, and as the latter leaped upon the ground and I caught a sight of his tall, slender figure, I involuntarily exclaimed, “Long-legs,” a cognomen, which he ever after retained in our family. Shaking down his pants, he went through with a kind of shuffle not wholly unlike the Highland fling, ending his performance by kissing his hand to the group of noses pressed close against the window-pane.

“I shall like him,” was my mental comment, as I turned from him towards the bundle of clothes which Uncle Joseph lifted from the sleigh and deposited upon the steps, and which we supposed to be our dreaded aunt.

“This is perfectly horrible,” were the first words which issued from under the folds of her veil; but to what she referred I never knew.

We all knew and loved Uncle Joseph, and for his sake my mother conquered whatever of prejudice she felt towards his wife, who returned her cordial welcome with the extreme end of her forefinger, saying, when asked to sit down, “I’ll go to my room immediately, if you please.”

“Speak to the children first,” suggested my uncle, and with a muttered, “It doesn’t matter,” the haughty lady bowed coldly to us, as one by one we were presented.

When it came my turn, her small, black eyes rested longer upon me, and the faintest derisive smile imaginable curled the corners of her mouth. I knew that either my cap or my face had provoked that smile, and with tears in my eyes I was turning away, when Herbert Langley caught me in his long arms, exclaiming, “And so, this is Rosa, the poetess, I mean to call you little ‘Crop-head,’ may I?”

He referred, I suppose, to a letter which I had once written in rhyme to my Uncle Joseph, but before, I could frame any reply, his mother said, scornfully, “Don’t be flattered, child—Herbert calls everything poetry that rhymes. He’ll learn to discriminate better as he grows older,” and with a stately sweep she left the room, saying, as she reached the rather steep and narrow stair-case, “Dear me—how funny—it’s like mounting a ladder.”

While she was making her toilet we had an opportunity of learning something of Herbert, who, whether he were so or not, seemed much pleased with everything around him. Occasionally, however, I doubted his sincerity, for when Aunt Betsey was presented to him, he appeared quite as much delighted with her as with anything else, drawing his chair closely to her side, and asking her numberless questions about the best modes of making cheese and raising chickens, while all the time there was a peculiarly quizzical expression in his eyes, which were dark and very handsome, saving that the lids were too red to suit my ideas of beauty. To Anna and her spit curls he took kindly, and ere his lady mother made her appearance a second time he had put his arm around her twice, telling her she should come to Boston sometime and go to school. A rustle of silk upon the stairs announced the descent of Aunt Charlotte, and with her nose slightly elevated, ready for any emergency, she entered the parlor, where she was introduced to Aunt Betsey, who, courtesying straight down, “hoped to see her well,” adding, that she “s’posed she’d come to the country to see how poor folks lived.”

Falling back into the rocking-chair which Anna brought for her, Aunt Charlotte made no particular reply, save an occasional attack upon her hartshorn. Aunt Betsey, however, nothing daunted, endeavored to engage her in conversation by asking if “she knew Liza Ann Willcott, a tailoress girl, that boarded with a Miss Johnson, who used to live in Union, but who now lived in Boston.”

Frowning majestically, Aunt Charlotte replied that she had not the honor of Miss Willcott’s acquaintance, whereupon Aunt Betsey advised her to make it by all means, assuring her that “Liza Ann was a first rate girl, and that Miss Johnson was the best kind of a neighbor, always willin’ to lend, or do a good turn”——

Here, with a haughty toss of her head, Aunt Charlotte turned away and began talking in a low tone to Herbert, he being the only one who, she seemed to think, was at all worth noticing. It is strange how much constraint one person can sometimes throw over a room full. On this occasion, had an ogress suddenly alighted in our midst, we could not have been more silent or less at ease than we were with that Boston lady, sitting there so starched and stiff, her fat hands folded one over the other, and the tips of her satin gaiters just visible from beneath the ample folds of her rich silk dress. Even Uncle Joseph, whose genial nature usually shed so much sunlight over our circle, was grave and reserved, rarely venturing a remark, or, if he did, glancing at his wife to see if she approved it. Uncle Jason, who painfully felt his own awkwardness, sat tipped back in his chair against the wall, with his feet on the rounds, while his fingers kept time to a tune, which he was evidently whistling to himself. Glad were we all when finally called to dinner, the savory smell of which had long been whetting our appetites.

“What! dinner so soon?” said Aunt Charlotte, consulting her gold watch, which pointed to half-past two. “I don’t believe I can force down a mouthful.”

But, spite of her belief, she did manage to make way with the contents of her well-filled plate, which was passed back a second time to be replenished. So eager were we all to serve her that we partially forgot Aunt Betsey, who, after waiting awhile for a potato, at last arose, and reaching half-way across the table, secured one for herself; saying, by way of apology, that “she believed in looking out for Number One, for if she didn’t nobody else would.”

So incensed was she with what she termed our neglect, that the moment dinner was over she insisted upon going home, saying, as she bade us good-bye, that “when she went again where she wasn’t wanted, she gussed she should know it;” and adding, while two big tears dropped from the end of her nose, that “she never s’posed she should be so misused by folks that she’d done so much for.”

The sight of her tears brought forth answering ones from me, for, with all her peculiarities, I loved Aunt Betsey, and I remembered that when sickness and death were among us, she had left her own home to stay with us, ministering as far as she was able to our comfort. Many a night had she watched with me, and though she invariably placed the lamp so that its rays glared full in my face, though she slept three-fourths of the time, snoring so loudly as to keep me awake, and though at the slightest change for the worse in my symptoms she always routed the whole household, telling them, “Rosa was dyin’ now, if she ever was,” thereby almost frightening me to death, I knew that she meant well, and in my heart I liked her far better than I did my Boston aunt, who, after bidding her sister-in-law good-bye, went back to the parlor, saying to her husband in a tone loud enough for us to hear, “What a vulgar creature! Did you notice her hands? Why, they are as coarse and black as a servant girl’s.”

“And she’s none the worse for that,” interposed grandma, warming up in the defence of her son’s wife. “She has now and then an odd streak, but on the whole she’s better than they’ll average.”

After this, Aunt Charlotte relapsed into silence, which she did not break until she overheard Herbert proposing to Anna a ride on the morrow. Then she roused up, and while her little black eyes snapped, she said, “I am going home to-morrow afternoon, and so are you. Consequently, there’ll be no time for a ride.”

In a twinkling, Herbert’s thumb and finger went up to his nose, a gesture which I did not then understand, but it struck me disagreeably, and had also the effect of silencing Aunt Charlotte, who made no further remark on the subject until they chanced to be alone, when I, who was in the hall, heard her say, “What can induce you to talk so much with that raw country girl? Your city friends would laugh well if they knew it.”

Consigning his “city friends” to the care of the old gentleman supposed to preside over the lower regions, Herbert walked off in quest of the “raw country girl,” by whose side he sat the remainder of the evening, talking to her so low that Lizzie whispered to me her private opinion that “they were courting.”

The next morning Aunt Charlotte did not appear at breakfast, it being so much earlier than her usual hour of rising that she felt wholly unequal to the task. Accordingly, though we did not wait, the table did until ten o’clock, when, pale and languid, she came down, seeming much disturbed to find that Herbert had coaxed Anna into going with him to call on Aunt Betsey, to whom he had taken quite a fancy, and who had asked him to visit her “if he didn’t feel too smart.”

Darting an angry glance at her husband, she said, “How could you suffer it?” asking at the same time if there was a hotel on the road. Being told that there was one at Union and another half-way between that and Meadow Brook, she seemed more disturbed than ever, eating little or no breakfast, and announcing her intention of staying over that day, or, at all events, until Herbert returned. Seating herself at the window, she watched and waited, while the hours crept on and the clock in grandma’s room struck four ere the head of “old Sorrel” was visible far down the road. Then with an eagerness wholly incomprehensible to me, she started up, straining her eyes anxiously in the direction of the fast approaching cutter. As it came nearer we all observed something rather singular in the position of Herbert, who seemed lying almost across Anna’s lap, while she was driving!

“Merciful Heavens! it’s as I feared!” was Aunt Charlotte’s exclamation, as she sank upon the lounge, moaning bitterly, and covering her face with the cushion, that she might not see the disgrace of her only son—for Herbert was drunk!

Lifting him out, my father and uncle laid him upon the settee in the sitting-room, just where little Jamie had been laid, and my mother, as she looked upon the senseless inebriate resting where once had lain the beautiful, inanimate form of her youngest born, thought how far less bitter was her cup of sorrow than was that of the half fainting woman, who would rather, far rather, her boy had died with the dew of babyhood upon his brow than to have seen him thus debased and fallen.

The story was soon told, my uncle supplying all points which Anna could not. It seems that early in life Herbert had acquired a love for the wine and porter which daily graced his mother’s dinner-table. As he grew older his taste increased for something stronger, until now nothing save brandy could satisfy the cravings of his appetite. More than once had he been brought home in a state of entire unconsciousness, for he was easily intoxicated, it usually taking but one glass to render him perfectly foolish, while a second was generally sure to finish the work. These drunken fits were always followed by resolutions of amendment, and it was now so long since he had drank that his mother began to have strong hopes of his reform, but these, alas! were now dashed to the ground. Unfortunately, Uncle Jason had offered the young man a glass of cider, which immediately awoke in its full vigor his old love for ardent spirits. Just across the road, creaking in the November wind, hung the sign of the “Golden Fleece,” and in that direction, soon after dinner, Herbert bent his steps, taking down at one time a tumbler two thirds full of raw brandy. This made him very talkative and very affectionate, insomuch that he kissed Aunt Betsey, who, as soon as she could, started him for home. When the half-way house, called in opposition to its neighbor “Silver Skin,” was reached, Herbert insisted upon stopping and taking another glass, which ere long rendered him so helpless that Anna was obliged to take charge of Sorrel herself, while her companion fell asleep, leaning his head upon her shoulder and gradually sinking lower and lower until he rested in her lap.

All that night he remained in the sitting-room, which in the morning presented so sorry and disgusting an appearance that when Aunt Charlotte for the hundredth time wished she had never come to Meadow Brook, our whole family mentally responded a fervent Amen. Herbert, when fully restored to consciousness, seemed heartily ashamed of himself, crying like a girl, and winding his arms around his mother’s neck so affectionately that I did not blame her when she forgave him and wiped away her tears.

She might not have had much faith in his sincerity could she have heard his conversation with Anna, whom he managed to withdraw from the family to the recess of a distant window. Alone with her, his manner changed, and with flashing eyes, he charged it to his mother, who, he said, first taught him to love it by allowing him, when a little boy, to drink the bottom of the wine glasses after dinner.

“And if I fill a drunkard’s grave,” said he, “she will be to blame; but,” he added, as he saw Anna involuntarily shudder, “it shall not be. I can reform. I will reform, and you must help me do it.”

Anna looked wonderingly at him, while he continued, taking her hand and removing from it a plain gold ring, which grandma had given her on her fifteenth birthday, “You must let me wear this as a talisman to protect me from evil. Whenever I am tempted I shall look at it and be saved.”

Anna hesitated awhile, but the soft, handsome eyes of Herbert Langley had woven around her a spell she could not break, and at last she consented, receiving from him in return a diamond ring, which he told her was worth two hundred dollars. When this became known to mother she very wisely insisted on Anna’s returning it, and together with the note explaining the why and the wherefore it went back to its owner, who immediately replied by a letter, the contents of which were carefully kept from us all. The effect, however, was plainly visible; for, from the time of its receipt we lost our merry, light-hearted sister, and in her place there moved among us a sober, listless girl, whom grandma called foolish, and whom Charlie pronounced “lovesick.”

Herbert’s letter was soon answered, but when Anna requested my father to put it in the P. O. he refused, telling her “she should not correspond with such a drunken dog.” Possibly it was wrong in him thus to address her, for kind words and persuasive arguments might have won her to reason, but now a spirit of opposition was roused—“Herbert was wronged—misunderstood”—so Anna thought, and the letter which father refused to take, was conveyed by other hands, a postscript longer than the letter itself being first added.

After this there was no more trouble. Anna wrote regularly to Herbert, who promptly responded; his missives always being directed to one of Anna’s schoolmates, who was just romantic enough to think her companion persecuted! Gradually I was let into the secret, and was occasionally employed to carry Anna’s notes to and from the house of her friend. I did not then consider the great wrong I was doing, but since I have shed many a bitter tear to think that I in any way helped to work my sister’s ruin.

CHAPTER III.
COUSIN WILL.

If so far as the golden Californian land this book of mine shall reach, it may, perchance, fall into the hands of some who, from their number, can select the veritable hero, the “Cousin Will” of my story. If so, I would ask them to think as leniently as possible of his faults, herein recorded, for the moustached Will of California, whose generous conduct wins the love of all, is hardly the same wild, mischievous boy, who once kept our home in a perpetual state of excitement.

The tears were scarcely yet dried, which he had shed over his mother’s coffin, when he came to us, and in one corner of his green, oval trunk, there lay a tress of soft brown hair, which he had severed from that mother’s head. He was the son of my mother’s only sister, who, on her death-bed had committed him to the guardianship of my father, asking him to deal gently with her wayward boy, for beneath his faulty exterior there lay a mine of excellence, which naught save words of love could fathom.

Without meaning to be so, perhaps, my father was a stern reserved man, never seeking the confidence of his children whose real characters he did not understand. It is true he loved us—provided for all our wants, and, as far as possible, strove to make us what the children of a New England Presbyterian deacon ought to be; but he seldom petted us, and if Carrie, with her sunny face and chestnut curls, sometimes stole up behind him and twined her chubby arms around his neck, he seemed ashamed to return her caress unless they were alone. Brother Charlie he looked upon as almost incorrigible, but if he found it hard to cope with his bold, fun-loving spirit, it was tenfold more difficult for him to tame the mischievous Will, whom scarcely any one could manage, but who, strange to say, was a general favorite.

It was night when he reached Meadow Brook, and I was in bed, but through the closed doors I caught the sound of his voice, and in an instant I experienced a sensation of delight, as if in him I should find a kindred spirit. I could not wait until morning before I saw him, and, rising softly, I groped my way down the dark stairway to a knot-hole, which had more than once done me service when sent from the room while my mother and her company told something I was not to hear! He was sitting so that the light of the lamp fell full upon his face, which, with its high, white brow, hazel eyes, and mass of wavy hair, seemed to me the most beautiful I had ever seen. Involuntarily I thought of my own plain features, and saying to myself, “He’ll never like me, never,” I crept back to bed, wondering if it were true that homely little girls made sometimes handsome women.

The next morning, wishing to produce as favorable an impression as possible, I was an unusually long time making my toilet—trying on one dress after another, and finally deciding upon a white cambric I never wore except to church, or on some similar occasion. Giving an extra brush to my hair, which had grown out darker and so very curly that Charley called me “Snarly-pate,” I started for the breakfast-room, where the family were already assembled.

“What upon earth has the child got on?” was grandma’s exclamation as she looked at me, both over and under her glasses, while mother bade me “go straight back and change my dress,” asking “why I had put on my very best?”

“Settin’ her cap for Bill, I guess,” suggested Charlie, who, boy-like, was already on terms of great intimacy with his cousin.

More angry than grieved, I went back to my room, where I pouted for half an hour or more. Then, selecting the worst looking dress I had, I again descended to the dining-room where Charlie presented me to Will, telling him at the same time “to spare all comments on my appearance, as it made me madder than a March hare to be called ugly.”

“I don’t think she’s ugly. Anyway I like her looks,” said Will, smiling down upon me with those eyes which have since made many a heart beat as mine did then, for ’twas the first compliment of the kind I had ever received.

Will had always lived in the city, and now, anxious to see the lions of the country at once, he proposed to Charlie a ramble over the farm, inviting me to accompany them, which I did willingly, notwithstanding that Charlie muttered something about “not wanting a gal stuck along.”

In the pasture we came across “old Sorrel,” whom Will said he would ride as they did in a circus, if Charlie would only catch him. This was an easy task, for Sorrel, suspecting no evil, came up to us quite readily, when Will, leaping upon his back, commenced whooping and hallooing so loudly that Sorrel’s mettle was up, and for nearly an hour he ran quite as fast as his rider could wish. But circus riding was not Sorrel’s forte, and he probably grew dizzy, for he at length stumbled and fell, injuring his fore foot in some way, so that, to our dismay, we found he was unable to walk without a great effort.

“Je-mi-my! Won’t the old gentleman rare!” said Charlie, who was never very choice of his language.

Will, on the contrary, seemed more concerned for the horse, bringing water in his hat, and bathing the fast-swelling limb of the poor animal, who appeared to be grateful for the kindness. Charlie proposed that we should keep it a secret, but to this Will would not listen, and in a plain, straightforward way he confessed what he had done, and father, who saw that Sorrel was temporarily injured, forgave him, for he could not resist the pleading of Will’s dark eyes.

This was his first day’s adventure—the next one was a little different. Finding a cow in the lane, he tried the experiment of milking, succeeding so well that when at night Sally came in with her half filled pail, she declared that “Line-back was drying up, for she’d only given a drop or so.” For this and numerous other misdemeanors Will also received absolution, but when on the second Sabbath after his arrival he and Charlie both were missed from church, whither they had started a full half hour before the rest of our family, father grew fidgety, holding his hymn book wrong side up, and sitting, instead of standing, during the prayer, a thing he was never known to do before. He was very strict in the observance of the fourth commandment, as indeed were most of the citizens of Meadow Brook, it being an almost State Prison offence to stay away from church on the Sabbath, or speak above a whisper until after sunset.

By the way, I think it a mistake, this converting the Sabbath into a day so much to be dreaded by the youthful, fun-loving members of the family, who are not yet old enough to see the propriety of having in reserve a Sunday face, as well as a Sunday gown. I would not have that sacred day profaned, but I would have it divested of that gloom with which it is too often associated in the child’s mind. I would have everything connected with it as cheerful and pleasant as possible, and in these days of Sabbath schools and Sabbath school-books, it seems an easy matter to make it “The day of all the week the best.” I well remember one rainy Sunday, when the whole family were obliged to remain at home, the younger ones reciting the Catechism to grandma, committing to memory and repeating to mother ten verses of the fifth chapter of Matthew, and then being compelled to sit up stiff and straight while father read to us a long metaphysical sermon, which he interspersed and lengthened out with remarks of his own, among which was the consoling one that “Heaven was one eternal Sabbath.”

This was too much for Charlie, whose mind, instead of dwelling on the words of the good divine, was sadly wandering towards a nest of young white pigs, only that morning born. Turning towards me with a most rueful face, he whispered, “Darned if I’ll go there. I’ll run away first.”

Of course I laughed aloud—how could I help it; and on my saying that “Charlie made me,” we were both ordered from the room in disgrace, which latter we bore manfully—Charlie going straight to his pigs, while I stole up garret to a big candle-box, where, on one of my old dresses, lay sleeping six beautiful kittens.

But I am wandering from my subject, which was the time when Will and Charlie were missing from church, and when, to his utter astonishment, father learned that they had gone to the consecration of a Roman Catholic church, which had recently been erected a little out of the village, on an eminence, where its white cross could be seen from every point.

Against the Catholics as a religious denomination my father was prejudiced, and when he ascertained that his son, born of orthodox parents, and baptized in the orthodox faith, had not only run away to their church, but had also paid twenty-five cents, the price of admission, he was a good deal excited, and for a deacon showed considerable temper. It was, of course, Will’s doings, he having coaxed Charlie to go by telling him of the wonderful sights there were to be seen.

At a late hour they came home, loitering around the barn a long time before they ventured into the presence of my father, whom my grandmother had somewhat appeased by telling him that “boys must sow their wild oats sometime, and it wasn’t best to be too strict with ’em, for it only made ’em act worse,” adding that “the Catholics were not the worst folks in the world, and they had just as much right to their form of worship as we had to ours.” This in a measure mollified him, and consequently the two boys only received a long lecture, and were debarred the privilege of going to the village, except on Sundays, for three weeks, a punishment which annoyed Will exceedingly. But nothing could subdue him, and the moment the three weeks had expired he was as ready for mischief as ever. For a long time the coming of a Circus had been heralded by flaming handbills in red and yellow, one of which Will plastered onto our great barn door, from which conspicuous post it was removed by my father, who conscientiously turned his back upon men and women riding on their heads, declaring it an outrage upon all rules of propriety, and denouncing circuses and circus-going people as utterly low and vulgar. Thus from my earliest remembrance had I been taught, and still my heart would throb faster, whenever, with the beat of the drum and the sound of the bugle, the long procession swept past our door, and more than once had I stolen to the top of the hill, whence could be seen the floating banner and swaying canvas, watching from afar the evil I dared not approach.

Great, then, was my surprise, when, on the morning of the eventful day, Will suggested that Charlie, John, Lizzie, and I should run away in the evening and visit the “doings,” as he called it. I was shocked that he should propose my going to such a place. “It was low and vulgar,” I told him, “and no one went there but loafers and rowdies.”

But he assured me that I was mistaken, saying that “some of our most respectable people attended;” and then he wondered “how I was ever to know anything unless I once in a while went to a circus, or a theatre, or something. It was perfectly ridiculous,” he said, “for father to keep us so cooped up at home. Nobody else did so. There was Lawyer Smith’s daughter, and Judge Brown’s niece in Albany, who always went, and if it didn’t hurt them, it wouldn’t me.”

Thus Will reasoned, persuading me at last; and just at dark, Lizzie and I, on pretence of going to bed early, went to our room, dressed ourselves in our best, I donning the white cambric, which I had worn on the first day of Will’s arrival, and then when we were ready, got out upon the roof of the woodshed, which came up under our window, descending thence by means of a ladder which Will and Charlie brought from the barn. I had the utmost confidence in Will, and yet as I drew near the tent, and saw the rabble, whose appearance fully equalled my father’s description, I wished myself away. Just then the band inside struck up, and giving my fears to the winds, I pressed forward, once involuntarily turning my head aside, as I heard a man near the door exclaim, “Deacon Lee’s children, as I live! Is the world coming an end?”

Instantly my face flushed, for I felt that injustice was done to my father, and my first impulse was to exonerate him from all blame by explaining that we had run away; but ere I could do so Will pulled me along, and in a moment we were in the close, heated atmosphere of the vast arena, where were congregated more than a thousand people, of all ages and conditions. I was confounded, for it seemed to me that each and every one was pointing towards us the finger of scorn, and never since have I felt so wholly degraded and ashamed as I did at the moment of my first entrance to a circus!

We had been but a short time seated, when Will, who had divined my feelings, nudged my elbow, and pointing towards a group just entering, said, “See, there’s ’Squire Talbot, his wife and daughter, Dr. Griffin, and lots more of Meadow Brook aristocracy. Now, ain’t you glad you came?”

It was as he said, and as I saw the above mentioned individuals, some of them professors of religion, and all of them people of the first standing in town, I can scarcely tell how I felt. It was a sensation of mingled pleasure, bewilderment, and perplexity. Could it be that, after all, my father was wrong, that he was too strict with us, debarring us from innocent amusements, for if it were proper for members of the church to frequent such places, why was it not for me? Now, I can answer promptly that my father was right, wholly right, but I was puzzled then, and gradually I began to care less for being there, and to have less fear of what father would say when he found it out. I was growing very brave, entrenching myself behind the bad example of those who little suspected the harm their presence was doing. Father did not know the ways of the world, I thought, but after being enlightened by me, I was sure he would become a convert at once, and possibly at the next circus he would be in attendance, but from this last idea I involuntarily shrank, thinking I could never respect him again, were he guilty of such a thing.

I enjoyed it vastly, all except the riding of the girl, who I fancied had on her little sister’s dress, and when she came out I looked for a place where to hide my head; but hearing the spectators cheer louder than ever, I cast furtive glances at those around me, discovering to my amazement that they seemed more delighted with her than with anything else; while, to crown all, I heard Will telling a young man, that “she was a splendid rider, that he never saw but one who could beat her, and that was a girl in Albany.” Then turning to Lizzie, he asked if she would not like to ride in that way?

With an involuntary shudder I threw my arm around my sister, as if to protect her from what I felt would be worse than a thousand deaths. Gradually there was dawning upon my mind the suspicion that a circus after all was not exactly the school for pure young girls, and I felt that not all the wealth of the Indies could tempt me to fill the post that that rider did. Towards the other actors I was more lenient, thinking that if ever I joined the circus, I should surely be the clown, whose witty speeches amused me greatly, for I did not then know that they were all made up beforehand, and that what he said to us to-day he would say to others on the morrow. Mlle. Glaraine was just finishing up her performance by riding around the circle without other support than the poising of one foot on a man’s shoulder, when who should appear but our father!

He had missed Will and Charlie from family prayers, and had traced them as far as the pavilion, where the fee-receiver demanded a quarter ere he would allow him to enter. It was in vain that father tried to explain matters, saying, “he never attended a circus in his life, and what was more never should; he’d only come for two boys who had run away.”

The doorkeeper was incorrigible; “he’d seen just as honest looking men,” he said, “who were the greatest cheats in the world, and if father wanted to go in, he could do so by paying the usual fee; if not, he must budge.”

Finding there was no alternative, father yielded, and then made his way into the tent, scanning with his keen grey eyes the sea of faces until he singled out Charlie, who was so absorbed in stamping and hallooing at Mlle. Glaraine’s leaping through a hoop, that he never dreamed of father’s presence until a rough hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a stern voice demanded of him why he was there?

Perfectly thunderstruck, Charlie started to his feet with the exclamation of “Je-ru-sa-lem!” but before he could make any explanation father discovered Lizzie and me. ’Twas the first suspicion he had of our being there, and now, when he saw us, he turned pale, and reeled as if smitten by a heavy blow. Had he felled me to the earth it would have hurt me less than did the expression of his face and the tones of his voice, as he said, “You, too, Rosa! I never thought you would thus deceive me.”

I began to cry aloud; so did Lizzie, and in this way we made our exit from the circus, followed by Charlie, John, and Will, the latter of whom, the moment we were in the open air, began to take the blame all to himself, saying, as was very true, that we never would have thought of going but for him, and suggesting that he alone should be punished, as he was the one most in fault. I thought this was very magnanimous in Will, and I looked up in father’s face to see how it affected him, but the moonlight was obscure, and I could discover nothing, though the hand that held mine trembled violently. I presume he thought that in this case corporal punishment would be of no avail, for we received none, but in various ways were we made to feel that we had lost the confidence of the family. For four long weeks we were each night locked into our rooms, while for the same length of time we were kept from school, Lizzie and I reciting our lessons to our mother, while Will, Charlie, and John, to use their own words, “worked from morning until night, like niggers.”

But the worst part of it all was the temporary disgrace which our act of disobedience brought upon father. A half drunken fellow, who saw him enter the tent, and who knew that we were there, hurried away to the village with the startling intelligence that “Deacon Lee and all his family were at the circus.”

The news spread like wildfire, gathering strength in its progress, until by the time it reached us it was a current report that not only was father at the circus, but grandma too! This was more than the old lady could bear. Sixty-nine years had she lived without ever having had a word breathed against her morals, and now, just as her life’s sun was setting, to have such a thing laid to her charge was too much, and she actually worried herself into a fever, which confined her to the house for several weeks.

After this adventure it became a serious question in father’s mind as to what he should do with Will, who kept our heretofore quiet household in a state of perpetual excitement. Nothing seemed to have the least effect upon him save the mention of his mother, and that for the time being would subdue him, but when temptation came, he invariably yielded, and Charlie, who was an apt scholar, was pretty sure to follow where his wild, dashing cousin led. There was scarcely any boyish vice to which Will was not more or less addicted, and “Deacon Lee’s sons,” who had often been held up as patterns for their companions, began soon to prove the old adage true, that “evil communications corrupt good manners.”

John learned to handle an oath quite fluently, while Charlie was one Sunday morning discovered playing euchre with Will on the hay loft, where they kept their cards hidden. But all this was nothing compared to the night when both the boys were brought home so intoxicated that neither of them was able to stand alone or speak! They had been to a “raising,” where the brandy bottle circulated freely, Will, as a matter of course, drinking from the beginning. Charlie, however, hesitated until they taunted him with “being afraid of the old deacon,” daring him “to drink and be a man.” Then he yielded, and with fiendish pleasure the crowd gathered around, urging him on, until he was undeniably drunk; after which they chuckled with delight as they wondered what the “blue Presbyterian” would say. We were sitting down to supper when they brought him home, and the moment mother saw him, she darted forward, exclaiming, “Is he dead? Tell me, is my boy dead?”

“Yes, dead—drunk,” answered the man, with a cold, ironical sneer at her distress.

He was used to it, for of five noble sons who once called him their father, four slept in a drunkard’s grave, and the fifth had far better have been there than the wreck he was. My father had risen from his seat, but at the words “he is drunk,” he dropped upon the floor as if scathed with the lightning’s stroke. You who think it a light matter—the holding of the wine-cup to the lips of your neighbor’s child—you should have seen my father that night, as moan after moan of anguish came from his pale lips, while the great drops of perspiration stood thickly upon his forehead and about his mouth. The effect it had upon him was terrible; crushing him to the earth, and weaving in among his hitherto brown locks more than one thread of silver. Once when Charlie was with me, I heard him in the barn, praying that the promise of a covenant God might be remembered towards him, and that his son might yet be saved. Charlie’s feelings were touched, and dropping on his knees at my side he made a solemn vow that never again should ardent spirits of any kind pass his lips; and God, who heard that vow mingled with my father’s prayer, registered it in Heaven, and from that day to this, amid all the temptations which come to early manhood, it has been unbroken.

Not thus easily could Will be reached. His was the sorrow of a day, which passed away with the coming of to-morrow’s sun, and after a long consultation, it was decided that he should go to sea, and the next merchantman bound for the East Indies, which sailed from Boston, bore on its deck, as a common sailor, our cousin Will, who went from us reluctantly, for to him there was naught but terror, toil, and fear in “a life on the ocean wave.” But there was no other way to save him, they said, and so with bitter grief at our hearts, we bade adieu to the wayward boy, praying that God would give the winds and waves charge concerning him, and that no danger might befall him when afar on the rolling billow.

CHAPTER IV.
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

Of the many thousand individuals destined to become the purchasers of a copy of this work, a majority have undoubtedly been, or are still teachers, and of these many will remember the time when they fancied that to be invested with the dignity of a teacher was to secure the greatest amount of happiness which earth can bestow. Almost from my earliest remembrance it had been the one great subject which engrossed my thoughts, and frequently, when strolling down the shady hill-side which led to our schoolhouse, have I fancied myself the teacher, thinking that if such were really the case, my first act should be the chastisement of half a score or more boys, who were in the daily habit of annoying me in various ways. Every word and action of my teacher, too, was carefully noted and laid away against the time when I should need them, and which came much sooner than I anticipated; for one rainy morning when Lizzie and I were playing in the garret, I overheard my father saying there was a chance for Rosa to teach school.

“What, that child!” was my mother’s exclamation, but ere he could reply, “the child” had bounded down two pair of stairs, and stood at his elbow, asking, “Who is it?—Where is it?—And do you suppose I can get a certificate?”

This last idea damped my ardor somewhat, for horrible visions came up before me, of the “Abbreviations” and “Sounds of the Vowels,” in both of which I was rather deficient.

“You teach school! You look like it!” said my sister Juliet. “Why, in less than three days, you’d be teetering with the girls, if indeed you didn’t climb trees with the boys.”

This climbing was undeniably a failing of mine, there being scarcely a tree on the farm on whose topmost limbs I hadn’t at some time or other been perched; but I was older now. I was thirteen two days before, and so I reminded Juliet, at the same time begging of father to tell me all about it. It appeared that he had that day met with a Mr. Randall, the trustee of Pine District, who was in quest of a teacher. After learning that the school was small, father ventured to propose me, who, he said, “was crazy to keep school.”

“A dollar a week is the most we can give her,” returned Mr. Randall, “and if you’ll take up with that, mebby we’ll try her. New beginners sometimes do the best.”

So it was arranged that I was to teach fifteen weeks for four dollars per month and board round at that! Boarding round! How many reminiscences do these two words recall to those who, like myself, have tried it, and who know that it has a variety of significations. That sometimes it is only another name for sleeping with every child in the family where your home for one week may chance to be—for how can you be insensible to the oft-repeated whisper, “I shall sleep with her to-night—ma said I might;” and of “ma’s” audible answer, “Perhaps, sis, she don’t want you to.”

If “sis” is a clean, chubby-looking little creature, you do want her; but if, as it not unfrequently happens, she is just the opposite,——I draw a blank which almost every country teacher in the land can fill, merely saying that there is no alternative. We have got the district to please and we must do it some way or other.

Again, “boarding round” means a quiet, cozy spot, where everything is so pleasant and cheerful, where the words are so kind and the smile of welcome so sweet, that you feel at once at home, and wish, oh, how you do wish, you could stay there all the summer long; but it cannot be;—the time of your allotted sojourn passes away, and then with a sigh, if indeed you can repress a tear, you gather up your combs, brushes, and little piece of embroidery, to which some spiteful woman has said “you devote more time than to your school,” and putting them in your sachel, depart for another home, sometimes as pleasant as the one you are leaving, sometimes not.

But of these annoyances I knew nothing, and when Mr. Randall came to see me, calling me Miss Lee, and when I was really engaged, my happiness was complete. In a country neighborhood every item of news, however slight, spreads rapidly, and the fact that I was to teach soon became generally known, creating quite a sensation, and operating differently upon different natures. One old gentleman, who, times innumerable, had held me on his knee, feeding my vanity with flattery, and my stomach with sweetmeats, was quite as much delighted as I, declaring, “he always knew I was destined to make something great.”

Dear old man! When the snows of last winter were high piled upon the earth, they dug for him a grave in the frozen ground, and in the world where now he lives, he will not know, perhaps, that I shall never fulfill his prophecy.

Aunt Sally Wright, who, besides managing her own affairs, kept an eye on her neighbors’, and who looked upon me as a “pert, forward piece,” gave her opinion freely. “What! That young one keep school! Is Deacon Lee crazy? Ain’t Rose stuck up enough now? But never mind. You’ll see she won’t keep out more’n half her time, if she does that.”

Aunt Sally was gifted with the power of telling fortunes by means of tea-grounds, and I have always fancied she read that prediction in the bottom of her big blue cup, for how could she otherwise have known what actually happened! Ere long the news reached Pine District, creating quite an excitement, the older people declaring “they’d never send to a little girl,” while the juvenile portion of the inhabitants gave a contemptuous whistle or so in honor of the school ma’am elect. Mrs. Capt. Thompson, who boasted the biggest house, handsomest carpet and worst boy in Pine Hill, was wholly incredulous, until she one day chanced to meet with Aunt Sally, who not only confirmed it, but also kindly gave her many little items touching my character as a “wild, romping minx, who was no more qualified for a teacher than for the Queen of England,” citing as proof of what she said, that only the year before she had seen me “trying to ride on a cow.”

Mrs. Capt. Thompson, who was blessed with an overwhelming sense of propriety, was greatly shocked, saying “she’d always thought Mr. Randall knew just enough to hire a child,” and consoling herself with the remark that “it was not at all probable I’d get a certificate.”

On this point I was myself a little fearful. True, I had been “sent away” to school, and had been flattered into the belief that I possessed far more book knowledge than I did; but this, I knew, would avail me nothing with the formidable committee who held my destiny in their hands. They were unbiased in my favor, and had probably never heard of me, as they lived in an adjoining town. But “where there’s a will there’s a way,” and determining not to fail, I ransacked the cupboard, where our school-books were kept, bringing thence Olney’s Geography, Colburn’s Arithmetic, History of the United States, Grammars, etc., all of which were for days my constant companions, and I even slept with one or more of them under my pillow, so that with the earliest dawn I could study. Whole pages of Geography were committed to memory, all the hardest problems in Colburn were solved, a dozen or more of compound relatives were parsed and disposed of to my satisfaction at least, and I was just beginning to feel strong in my own abilities, when one Monday morning news was brought us that at three o’clock that afternoon all who were intending to teach in the town of S—— were to meet at the house of the Rev. Mr. Parks, then and there to be questioned of what they knew and what they didn’t know. This last referred to me, for now that the dreaded day had come, I felt that every idea had suddenly left me, while, to increase my embarrassment, I was further informed that as there had the year previous been some trouble among the School Inspectors, each of whom fancied that the other did not take his share of the work, the town had this year thought to obviate the difficulty by electing nine!

One was bad enough, but at the thought of nine men in spectacles my heart sank within me, and it was some time ere I could be persuaded to make the trial. In the midst of our trouble, Aunt Sally, whose clothes on Monday mornings were always swinging on the line before light, and who usually spent the afternoon of that day in visiting, came in, and after learning what was the cause of my flushed cheeks, said, by way of comforting me, that “she didn’t wonder an atom if I felt streaked, for ’twant no ways likely I’d pass!”

This roused my pride, and with the mental comment that “I’d pass for all her,” I got myself in readiness, Juliet lending me her green veil, and Anna her fine pocket handkerchief, while mother’s soft warm shawl was wrapped lovingly about me, and Lizzie slipped into my pocket the Multiplication Table, which she thought I might manage to look at slily in case of an emergency. On our way father commenced the examination by asking me the length of the Mississippi, but I didn’t know as it had a length, and in despair he gave up his questioning.

Oh, how sombre and dreary seemed the little parlor into which we were ushered by the servant, who, on learning our business, looked rather doubtfully at me, as much as to say, “You surely can’t be one of them?” In a short time the parlor was filled, the entire nine being there. Not one was absent, and in a row directly opposite, they sat, some tipped back in a lounging attitude, some cutting their finger nails with their penknives, while others sat up stiff and stern, the whole presenting a most formidable appearance. There were eight or ten candidates present, and unfortunately for me, I was seated at what I called the foot of the class. It seemed that the most of them were acquainted, and as I was almost the only stranger present, it was but natural that they should look at me rather more that I liked. My pantalets evidently attracted their attention, but by dint of drawing up my feet and pushing down my dress I hoped to hide my short-comings.

When, at last, the examination commenced, I found, to my great delight, that Geography was the subject introduced, and my heart beat high, for I thought of the pages I could repeat and ardently longed for a chance to display! Unfortunately for me they merely questioned us from the map, and breathlessly I awaited my turn. At length the young lady who sat next to me was asked “What two rivers unite and form the Ohio?” I looked at her sidewise. The bloom deepened on her cheek, and I was sure she had forgotten. Involuntarily I felt tempted to tell her, but did not, and Mr. Parks, looking inquiringly at me, said, “Perhaps the next one can. Ahem!”

He caught sight of my offending pantalets, and thinking me some child who had come with her sister, was about to pass me by. But I was not to be slighted in that way, particularly when I knew the answer; so, with the air of one who, always at the foot, accidently spells a word right and starts for the head, I spoke out loud and distinctly “Alleghany and Monongahela,” glancing at my father just in time to catch a nod of encouragement.

“The Nine” were taken by surprise, and instantly three pair of eyes with glasses and six pair without glasses were brought to bear upon me. For reasons best known to themselves, they asked me a great variety of questions, all of which I answered correctly, I believe; at least they made no comment, and were evidently vastly amused with their new specimen, asking me how old I was, and exchanging smiles at my reply, “Thirteen, four weeks ago to-day.” One of my fellow-teachers, who sat near me, whispered to her next neighbor, “She’s older than that, I know;” for which remark I’ve never quite forgiven her. Arithmetic was the last branch introduced, and as mathematics was rather my forte, I had now no fears of failing—but I did! A question in Decimals puzzled me, and coloring to my temples, I replied “I don’t know,” while two undeniable tears dropped into my lap.

“Never mind, sis,” said one of the nine. “You know most everything else, and have done bravely.”

I was as sure of my certificate then as I was fifteen minutes afterwards, when a little slip of paper was given me, declaring me competent to teach a common school. I thought it was all over, and was adjusting mother’s shawl and tying on Juliet’s veil, when they asked me to write something that they might see a specimen of my penmanship. Taking the pen, I dashed off with a flourish “Rosa Lee,” at which I thought they peered more curiously than need be—and one of them, Dr. Clayton, a young man, and a handsome one, too, said something about its being “very poetical.” He hadn’t seen the negro song then.

The shadows of evening had long since fallen when we stopped at our door, where we found mother anxiously waiting for us. Very wistfully she looked in my face ere she asked the important question.

“Yes, I’ve got one,” said I, bounding from the buggy, “and I’d like to be examined every day, it’s such fun.”

“Didn’t you miss a word?” asked Juliet.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” cried Lizzie.

“Feel big, don’t you?” suggested Charlie, while Anna inquired “if I’d lost her pocket handkerchief!”

CHAPTER V.
PINE HILL.

Ere long, exaggerated rumors reached Meadow Brook of the very creditable manner in which I had acquitted myself at the examination, whereupon Aunt Sally Wright was quite taken aback. Soon rallying, however, she had recourse to her second prediction, which was that “I should not teach more than half the summer out.” Perhaps I wrong the old lady, but I cannot help thinking that the ill-natured stories concerning myself, which she set afloat at Pine Hill, were in a great measure the cause of her prophecy being fulfilled. Never before, to my knowledge, had she visited at Capt. Thompson’s, but now she spent an entire day there, bringing back to us the intelligence that John Thompson, a boy just one year my senior, was going to stay at home that summer, as “Miss Cap’n Thompson hadn’t no idee I could teach him.”

Added to this was the comforting assurance, that “Cap’n Thompson was hoppin’ mad because Mr. Randall had hired me in preference to his sister Dell, who had herself applied for the school.” This, as I afterwards learned, was the secret of the dislike which, from the first, the Thompsons entertained for me. They had no daughter, but the captain’s half sister Dell had lived with him ever since his marriage, and between her and their hopeful son John, the affections of himself and wife were nearly equally divided.

Dell Thompson was a proud, overbearing girl, about eighteen years of age, who esteemed herself far better than her neighbors, with whom she seldom associated, her acquaintances living mostly at what was called “the Centre” of the town. It seems that she had applied for the summer school, but remembering that she had once called him a “country clown and his wife ignorant and vulgar,” Mr. Randall had refused her and accepted me. Notwithstanding that the people of Pine Hill generally disliked the Thompsons, there was among them a feeling of dissatisfaction when it became known that I was preferred to Dell, who, they thought, would have given tone and character to the school, for “it wasn’t every big bug who would stoop to teach.”

Of this state of affairs I was fortunately ignorant, and never do I remember a happier morning than that on which I first took upon myself the responsibilities of a teacher. By sunrise, the little hair trunk, which grandma lent me, was packed and stood waiting on the doorstep, where I had carried it, thinking thus to accelerate the movements of my father, who did not seem to be in any particular hurry, telling me, “he’d no idea that school would be commenced before we got there!” Grandma had suggested the propriety of letting down my dresses, a movement which I warmly seconded, but mother said “No, she did not like to see little girls dressed like grown up women;” so, in my new plaid gingham and white pantalets, I waited impatiently until the clock struck seven, at which time father announced himself ready.

“When will you come home?” asked mother, as she followed me to the gate.

“In three weeks,” was my reply, as I bounded into the buggy, which soon moved away.

Pine Hill is not all remarkable for its beautiful scenery, and as old Sorrel trotted leisurely along, down one steep hill and up another, through a haunted swamp, where a man had once, to his great terror, seen his departed wife, and over a piece of road, where the little grassy ridges said, as plain as grassy ridges could say, that the travellers there were few and far between, my spirits lowered a little. But, anon, the prospect brightened, and in the distance we saw the white walls of Capt. Thompson’s residence gleaming through the mass of evergreens which surrounded it. This, however, soon disappeared, and for a mile or more my eye met with nothing save white birches, grey rocks, green ferns, and blackberry bushes, until suddenly turning a corner, we came to a halt before one of those slanting-roofed houses so common in New England. It was the home of Mr. Randall, and it was there that I was to board the first week. In the doorway, eating bread and molasses, were his three children who, the moment they saw us, set up a shout of “somebody’s come. I guess it’s the schoolma’am!” and straightway they took to their heels as if fleeing from the presence of a tigress.

After a moment, the largest of them ventured to return, and his example was soon followed by the other two, the younger of whom, after eyeing me askance, lisped out, “Don Thompthon thays he ain’t afraid of you; he can lick you like dunder!”

This was a pleasant commencement, but I smiled down upon the little boy, patting his curly head, while father inquired for Mrs. Randall, who, we learned, was sweeping the schoolhouse. Leaving the hair trunk, which was used by the children for a horse ere we left the yard, we again set forward, and soon reached our place of destination, which, without shade-tree or ornament of any kind, stood half-way up a long, sunny hill, commanding a view of nothing save the weathercock of Captain Thompson’s barn, which was visible across the orchard opposite. We found Mrs. Randall enveloped in a cloud of dust, her sleeves rolled up, and her head covered by a black silk handkerchief.

“The room wasn’t fit for the pigs,” she said, “and ought to have been cleaned, but somehow nobody took any interest in school this summer, and I’d have to make it answer.”

I didn’t care particularly for the room, which, in truth, was dirty and disagreeable enough, but the words “nobody took any interest this summer,” affected me unpleasantly, for in them I saw a dim foreshadowing of all that ensued. Father, who was in a hurry, soon left me, bidding me “be a good girl, and not get to romping with the scholars.” From the window I watched him until he disappeared over the sandy hill, half wishing, though I would not then confess it, that I and the little trunk were with him. I was roused from my reverie by Mrs. Randall, who, for some time, had been looking inquisitively at me, and who now said, “Ain’t you but thirteen?”

“No, ma’am,” I answered.

“Wall,” she returned, “it beats all how much older you look. I should s’pose you was full sixteen, if not more. But it’s all in your favor, and I guess you’ll be more likely to suit the deestrict, though they’re afraid you haven’t any government, and they’re terrible hard to suit. So, if I’s you,” she continued, “I’d hold a pretty tight rein at first. I give you full liberty to whip my young ones if they don’t behave. They know better than to complain at home.”

Involuntarily I glanced at the clump of alders which grew near the house, and if they were somewhat diminished ere my reign was o’er, the “Deestrict” owed it to Mrs. Randall’s suggestion. After sitting awhile, she arose to go, telling me “she should expect me at night,” and then I was alone. I looked at my watch; it was half-past eight, and not a scholar yet. This was widely different from Meadow Brook, where, by seven, the house was generally filled with children, hallooing, quarrelling over seats, and watching eagerly for the first sight of “the new schoolma’am.” Here the tables were turned, and “the schoolma’am” was watching for her scholars!

Suddenly a large bumble-bee came buzzing in, and alighted on a window opposite. Like Sir Thomas the Good, in the Ingoldsby Legends, I have a passion for capturing insects, especially whitefaced bumble-bees, and now I felt strongly inclined to mount the desks in pursuit of the intruder, but the thought “What if the scholars should detect me?” prevented, and, to this day, I have never known whether that bumble-bee had a white face, or belonged to the class of colored brethren! Ten minutes of nine, and I began to grow fidgety. I should have been more so, had I known how much is sometimes said about teachers not keeping their hours. Five minutes of nine, and round the corner at the foot of the hill appeared a group of children, while from another direction came others, shouting for those in advance to “wait,” which they did, and the whole entered the house together. A few of the girls made a slight obeisance, while the boys laughed, and throwing down their books in a very consequential manner, looked distrustfully at me. My age had preceded me, and in many of these childish hearts there was already a spirit of rebellion.

Here I would speak against the impropriety of discussing a teacher’s faults in the presence of pupils, who will discover them soon enough. Many a teacher starts disadvantageously because of some idle tale, which may or may not be true, but which, borne on the wings of gossip, reaches its place of destination, and is there thoughtlessly canvassed in the hearing of children, who thus become prejudiced against a person they have never seen, and whom they otherwise might have liked. In my case, the fault was my age, which had evidently been discussed in the neighborhood; for, on opening my desk, I found inscribed upon the lid, in a bold schoolboy style, “Rosa Lee, aged 13,” to which was appended, in a more delicate hand, “Ancient—very!”

Taking my India-rubber, I erased it while my scholars were settling the matter of seats, which, strange to say they did without disputing. Then there ensued a perfect silence, and the eyes of all present turned inquiringly upon me, while, with sundry flourishes with my silver pencil, I proceeded to take down upon a big sheet of foolscap the names, ages, and “what studies do you intend to pursue?” of my pupils. After much talking and arranging, the school was organized; but the first morning dragged heavily, and when 12 o’clock came, and I drew from my sachel the nice ginger snaps which mother had made, the sight of them, or the taste, or something else, choked me so much that I was obliged to wink hard, and count the rows of trees in the orchard opposite twice, ere I could answer the question addressed to me by one of the little girls.

In the rear of the house was a long strip of dense woods, and wishing to be alone and out of sight of the sports in which I felt I must not join, I took my bonnet and wandered thither. Seating myself upon a mossy log, I tried to fancy that I was at home beneath the dear old grape-vine, the faintest rustle of whose broad green leaves would, at that moment, have been to me like the sweetest music. But it could not be. I was a schoolmistress—Miss Lee, they called me, and on my brow the shadows of life were thus early making their impress. Slowly to me dragged the hour which always before had been so short, and when at last I took my way back to school, it seemed that in that short space I had lived an age. Often since, when I have looked upon young teachers hastening to their task, I’ve pitied them, for I knew full well how long and wearisome would be their first day’s labor.

As I approached the schoolhouse I saw that something was the matter, for the scholars were greatly excited, and with voices raised to the highest pitch, were discussing something of importance. Thinking that my presence would perhaps restrain them from such noisy demonstration$, I hastened forward, but the babel rather increased than diminished, and it was with difficulty that I could learn the cause of the commotion. George Randall was crying, while a little apart from him stood two boys, one of them apparently fourteen and the other twelve. They were strangers to me and instinctively I felt that they were in some way connected with the disturbance; and that the larger and more important looking was John Thompson, a surmise which proved to be correct.

It seemed that Isaac Ross, one of the new comers, had some weeks before selected for himself a corner seat, which, as he was not present in the morning, had been taken by George Randall, who knew nothing of Isaac’s intentions, and who now refused to give it up. A fight was the result, the most of the scholars taking sides with George, while Isaac was urged on and encouraged by John Thompson, who, though not a pupil, had come up “to see how he liked the schoolma’am.” As a matter of course an appeal was made to me, to know “if George hadn’t the best right to the seat,”

Perhaps I was wrong, but I decided that he had, at the same time asking Isaac “if he were coming to school.”

“I ain’t goin’ to do anything else,” said he, glancing towards John, who, with a wicked leer at me, knocked off one of the little boys’ hats and then threw it up in the air.

What would have ensued next I do not know, for at that moment Captain Thompson rode round the corner and called to his son, who, with mock deference, bowed politely to me and walked away. Disagreeable as Isaac Ross appeared in the presence of John Thompson, I found that when left to himself he was quite a different boy, and though he at first manifested some reluctance to taking another seat, he at last yielded the point, and for the remainder of the day conducted himself with perfect propriety.

On the whole, the afternoon passed away rather pleasantly, and at night, when school was out, I started for my boarding-place quite contented with teachers generally, and myself in particular. In passing the different houses which stood upon the road-side, I demeaned myself with the utmost dignity, swinging my short dress from side to side in imitation of a Boston lady who had once taught in our district, and whose manner of walking I greatly admired! From the window of Captain Thompson’s dwelling I caught a glimpse of two faces, which were hastily withdrawn, but I felt sure that from behind the curtains they were scanning my appearance, and I remember lowering my parasol a little, just to tantalize them! But when at last I was over the hill and out of sight, oh, how glad I was to be “Rosa Lee” again, free to pluck the sweet, wild flowers, to watch the little fishes in the running brook, or even to chase a whitefaced bumble-bee if I liked.

About fifty rods from Mr. Randall’s stands one of those old-fashioned, gable-roofed houses, so common in some parts of New England, and here, at the time of which I am speaking, lived Mrs. Ross, the mother of Isaac, or Ike, as he was familiarly called. I had never met the lady, but as I approached the house and saw a tall, square-shouldered woman leaning on the gate, I naturally thought that it might be she; and on this point I was not long left in doubt, for the moment I came within speaking distance, she called out, “How dy’ do, Miss Lee—I s’pose ’tis? You pretty well? I’m Miss Ross, Isick’s mother. He telled me that he had some fuss about a seat that he picked out more’n a month ago, and thinks he orto have. I don’t never calkerlate to take sides with my children, ’cause I’ve kept school myself, and I know how bad ’tis, but I do hate to have Isick git a miff again the schoolma’am on the first start, and if I’s you I’d let him have the seat instead of George Randall, for mebby folks’ll say you’re partial to George, bein’ that his father’s committee-man, and I’ve kept school enough to know that partiality won’t do.”

As well as I could, I explained the matter to her, telling her I wished to do right, and meant to as far as I knew how.

“I presume you do,” said she, “or I shouldn’t a’ taken the liberty to speak to you. I knew you’s young, and I felt afeard you didn’t know what an undertakin’ it was to teach the young idee how to shute. The schoolma’ams have always thought a sight of me, and generally tell me all their troubles, so I know jest how to take their part when the rest of the folks are again ’em. Was Susan Brown to school? But she wasn’t though, I know she wasn’t.”

I replied that there was a little girl present of that name, and my companion continued: “Now I’ll give up, if Miss Brown has come round enough to send, when she was so dreadfully opposed to your teaching you’ve heerd about it, I s’pose?”

I answered that “I didn’t know that any one had opposed me except Mrs. Thompson.”

“Oh, yes,” said she, assuming an injured look and tone. “Everybody knows about that, and there’s some sense in their bein’ mad, for ’twas plaguy mortifyin’ to Dell to offer to teach and be rejected by Mr. Randall, a man that none of the Thompsons would wipe their old shoes on, and then, ’tisn’t every big bug that will stoop to teach, for you know ’tain’t considered fust cut.”

“No, I didn’t know it,” and so I said, but she assured me of the fact, quoting as authority, both Mrs. Thompson and Dell, who, I found, were her oracles in everything. After a time I brought her back to Mrs. Brown, whose husband, she said, was gone to sea, and who had herself applied for the school.

“But between you and me,” she added, speaking in a whisper, “it’s a mighty good thing that she didn’t get it, for she ain’t the likeliest person that ever was, and nobody under the sun would have sent to her. Isick shouldn’t a’ gone a single day, for her morals is very bad. She used to belong to the Orthodox Church, but they turned her out for dancin’ at a party, and when she lived in Wooster she jined the ‘Piscopals, who, you know, let their members cut up all sorts—but, land sakes! how I’m talkin’! You must not breathe a word I say, for I make it a pint not to slander my neighbors, and if everybody minded their own business as well as I do, there wouldn’t be so much backbitin’ as there is. And that makes me think I’ve half a mind to caution you—but no, I guess I won’t—mebby you’ll tell on’t.”

Of course my curiosity was roused, and of course I said I wouldn’t tell; whereupon she proceeded to inform me that Mrs. Randall was a very talkin’ woman, and I must be pretty careful in her presence. “You can tell me anything you wish to,” said she, “for I’m a master hand to keep a secret; but Miss Randall is forever in hot water. She and Miss Brown are hand in glove, and both on ’em turn up their noses at Miss Thompson and Dell, who never pretend to make anything of ’em. I’m considerable intimate, at the Captain’s, and I know all about it. Dell is smart as a steel trap, and it’s a pity she’s took such a dislike to you.”

“I don’t think she ought to blame me,” said I, “for I didn’t know as she wanted the school”——

“’Tain’t that altogether,” resumed Mrs. Ross, again speaking in a whisper. “’Tain’t that altogether, and if you’ll never lisp a word on’t I’ll tell you the hull story.”

I gave the required promise, and then Mrs. Ross proceeded to inform me that Dell was jealous of me.

“Jealous!” I exclaimed. “How can that be?”

“You remember Dr. Clayton, don’t you?” said she.

“Yes, I remember him, but what has he to do with Miss Thompson’s being jealous of me!”

“Why,” returned Mrs. Ross, “Dell’s kinder settin’ her cap for him, and I guess he’s a snickerin’ notion after her. Any way he comes there pretty often. Well, he was there the week after the examination, and told ’em about you. He said you was bright as a new guinea, and had better larnin’ than half the teachers, and then you had such a sweet name—Rose—he liked it. You orto have seen how mad Dell was at you after he was gone. I don’t b’lieve she’ll ever git over it.”

Here Ike called out that “the Johnny-cake was burnt blacker than his hat,” and forthwith Mrs. Ross started for the house, first bidding me “keep dark,” and telling me she hoped “I wouldn’t be partial to Mr. Randall’s children, for they needed lickin’ if ever young ones did—they warn’t brought up like Isick, who was governed so well at home that he didn’t need it at school.”

I was learning to read the world’s great book fast—very fast—and with a slightly heavy heart I turned away, pausing once while Mrs. Ross, from the doorstep, called to me, saying, that “she guessed I’d better give Isick the seat to-morrow, seem’ his heart was set on’t.”

I found Mrs. Randall waiting to receive me in a clean gingham dress and apron, with her round, good-humored face shining as if it had been through the same process with the long line of snow-white linen, which was swinging in the clothes-yard. The little hair trunk had been removed to the “best room,” which was to be mine. The big rocking-chair was brought out for me, the round tea table, nicely spread, stood in the centre of the floor, and Mrs. Randall hoped I would make myself at home, and put up with her own rough ways if I could. To be sure, she didn’t have things quite as nice as Mrs. Captain Thompson, but she did as well as she knew how. Dear Mrs. Randall! how my heart warmed towards her; and as I took my seat at the table, and she helped me to a larger slice of pure white honeycomb than I had ever before been allowed to eat at one time, I felt that I would not exchange her house for a home at Capt. Thompson’s.

Without any intention of revealing what Mrs. Ross had imparted to me, I still felt a great curiosity to know Mrs. Randall’s opinion of her; so, after a time, I ventured to speak of my having seen her, and to ask when and where she taught school. With a merry laugh, Mrs. Randall replied, “I wonder, now, if she’s made your acquaintance so soon! She told you, I suppose, to come to her with all your troubles, for she knew just how to pity you, as she’d been a schoolma’am herself.”

My flushed cheeks betrayed the fact that Mrs. Randall had guessed rightly, and after a moment she continued: “Her keeping school amounts to this. When she was a girl, a friend of hers who was teaching wanted to go away for two days, and got Miss Ross, then Nancy Smedly, to take her place, and that’s the long and short of her experience. She’s a meddlesome woman, and makes more trouble in the District than anybody else. She tried to make Miss Brown think she was misused, because we wouldn’t hire her instead of you, who applied first, and for a spell, I guess Miss Brown was a little sideways, but she’s a sensible woman and has got all over it.”

I was about to tell her of the trouble between George and Ike, when she anticipated me by saying, “George says he and Ike Ross fit about a seat, and I’ve hired him to give it up peaceably, for if Miss Ross gets miffed in the beginning, there’s no knowing what kind of a row she’ll raise, and you are so young I feel kinder tender of you.”

If there were tears in my eyes, they were not tears of grief, and if I was pleased with Mrs. Randall before, I liked her ten times better now, for I saw in her a genuine sincerity which convinced me she was my friend indeed. To be sure, she was rather rough and unrefined, but her heart was right, and in her treatment of me, she was always kind and considerate, making ample allowance for my errors and warmly defending me when she thought I was misused. If in every District there were more like Mrs. Randall, the teacher’s lot would not be one half so hard to bear as oftentimes it is.

When I awoke next morning I heard the large raindrops pattering against the window, and on pushing aside the curtain, I saw that the dark heavy clouds betokened a dull rainy day. Involuntarily, I thought of the old garret at home, where on such occasions we always resorted, “raising Cain generally,” as Sally said, and when, with umbrella, blanket-shawl, and overshoes, I started for school, I looked and felt forlorn indeed. Raining as it was, it did not prevent Mrs. Ross from coming out with the table-spread over her head, to tell me that “though she never warn’t an atom particular, and never meant to interfere with teachers, as she knew just what it was, she did hope I’d give Isick the seat, and not be partial to George Randall.”

I replied that “I’d see to it,” and was hurrying along, when she again stopped me to know “what I’d got in my dinner basket that was good.”

Afterwards I found it to be one of her greatest peculiarities, this desire to know what her neighbors had to eat, and I seldom passed her door that she did not inquire of me concerning the “kind of fare” I had at the different places where I boarded. When I reached the schoolhouse, I found George Randall transferring his books to another part of the room, at the same time telling Isaac “he could have the disputed seat if he wanted it.”

With the right kind of training and influence Isaac Ross would have been a fine boy, for there were in his disposition many noble traits of character, and when he saw how readily George gave up the seat, he refused to take it, saying, “he didn’t care a darn where he sat—one place was as good as another.”

That day was long and dreary enough. Not more than half the children were there, and I found it exceedingly tiresome and monotonous, sitting in that hard, splint-bottomed chair, and telling Emma Fitch and Sophia Brown, for the hundredth time, that the round letter was “O” and the crooked one “S.” The scholars, too, began to grow noisy, and to ask me scores of useless questions. Their lessons were half learned, and if I made a suggestion, I was quickly informed that their former teacher, Sally Damm, didn’t do so. Even little Emma Fitch, when I bade her keep her eyes on the book instead of letting them wander about the room, lisped out that “Thally Damm let her look off;” a fact I did not dispute when I found that she had been to school all winter without learning a single letter by sight, though she could repeat the entire alphabet forward and back and be all the while watching a squirrel on the branches of the tree which grew near the window.

Before night a peculiar kind of sickness, never dangerous, but decidedly disagreeable, began to creep over me, and had it not been for the mud, I should probably have footed it to Meadow Brook, where alone could be found the cure for my disease. Just before school was out a little boy cried to go home, and this was the one straw too many. Hastily dismissing the scholars, I turned towards the window and my tears fell as fast as did the rain in the early morning.

“The schoolma’am’s cryin,’—she is. I saw her,” circulated rapidly among the children, who all rushed back to ascertain the truth for themselves.

“I should think she would cry,” said one of the girls to her brother. “You’ve acted ugly enough to make anybody cry, and if you don’t behave better to-morrow, Jim Maxwell, I’ll tell mother!”

After the delivery of this speech, the entire group moved away, leaving me alone; and sure am I there was never a more homesick child than was the one, who, with her head lying upon the desk, sat there weeping in that low, dirty schoolroom, on that dark, rainy afternoon. Where now was all the happiness I had promised myself in teaching? Alas! it was rapidly disappearing, and I was just making up my mind to brave the ridicule of Meadow Brook, and give up my school at once, when a hand was laid very gently on my shoulder, and a voice partially familiar said, “What’s the matter, Rose?”

So absorbed was I in my grief, that I had not heard the sound of footsteps, and with a start of surprise I looked up and met the serene, handsome eyes of Dr. Clayton, who stood at my side! He had been to visit a patient, he said, and was on his way home, when, seeing the door ajar, he had come in, hoping to find me there, “but I did not expect this,” he continued, pointing to the tears on my cheek. “What is the matter? Don’t the scholars behave well, or are you homesick?”

At this question I began to cry so violently, that the doctor, after exhausting all his powers of persuasion, finally laid his hand soothingly on my rough, tangled curls, ere I could be induced to stop. Then, when I told him how disappointed I was, how I wished I had never tried to teach, and how I meant to give it up, he talked to me so kindly, so brotherlike, still keeping his hand on my shoulder, where it had fallen when I lifted up my head, that I grew very calm, thinking I could stay in that gloomy room forever, if he were only there! He was, as I have said before, very handsome, and his manner was so very fascinating, and his treatment of me so much like what I fancied Charlie’s would be, were he a grown up man and I a little girl, that I began to like him very, very much, thinking then that my feeling for him was such as a child would entertain for a father, for I had heard that he was twenty-seven, and between that and thirteen there was, in my estimation, an impassable gulf.

“I wish I had my buggy here,” he said at last, after consulting his watch, which pointed to half-past five, “I wish I had my buggy here, for then I could carry you home. You’ll wet your feet, and you ought not to walk. Suppose you ride in my lap; but no,” he added, quickly, “you’d better not, for Mrs. Thompson and Mother Ross would make it a neighborhood talk.”

There was a wicked look in his eye as he said this, and I secretly wondered if he entertained the same opinion of Dell, that he evidently did of her sister. At length, shaking my hand, he bade me good-bye, telling me that the Examining Committee had placed me and my school in his charge, and that he should probably visit me officially on Thursday of the following week. Like a very foolish child, I watched him until a turn in the road hid him from view, and then, with a feeling I could not analyze, I started for my boarding-place, thinking that if I gave up my school I should wait until after Thursday.

In the doorway, with her sleeves rolled up above her elbows, and her hair, as she herself said, “at sixes and sevens,” was Mrs. Ross, who, after informing me that “it had been a desput rainy day,” asked, “if I knew whether Dr. Clayton had been to Captain Thompson’s?”

There was no reason why I should blush at this question, but I did, though my sun-bonnet fortunately concealed the fact from my interrogator, who, without waiting for an answer, continued, “He drove past here about fifteen minutes ago, and I guess he’s been sparkin’ Dell.”

It must have been an evil spirit surely which prompted my reply that “he had been at the schoolhouse with me.”

“How you talk! Isick never said a word about it!” was Mrs. Ross’s exclamation, the blank expression of her face growing still more blank when I told her that he did not come until the scholars were gone.

“You two been there all sole alone since four o’clock! I’ll give up now! I hope Dell Thompson won’t find it out, for she’s awful slandersome; but,” she added, coming to the gate, and speaking in a whisper, “I’m glad on’t, and mebby she’ll draw in her horns, if she finds that some of the under crust, as she calls ’em, can be noticed by Dr. Clayton as well as herself.”

Equivocal as this compliment was, it gratified me, and from that moment I felt a spirit of rivalry towards Dell Thompson. Still, I did not wish her to know of Dr. Clayton’s call, and so I said to Mrs. Ross, who replied, “You needn’t be an atom afeard of my tattlin’. I know too well what ’tis to be a schoolmarm, and have the hull Deestrict peekin’ at you. So if you’ve anything you want kept, I’m the one; for I can be still as the grave. Did the doctor say anything about Dell, but he didn’t, I know, and ’taint likely he said anything about anybody.”

I replied, that he talked with me about my school, and then as I heard the clock strike six I walked along. Looking back, as I entered Mr. Randall’s gate, I saw Mrs. Ross’s old plaid shawl and brown bonnet disappearing over the hill as fast as her feet could take them, but I had no suspicion that her destination was Captain Thompson’s! I did not know the world then as well as I do now, and when the next morning I met Dell Thompson, who stared at me insolently, while a haughty sneer curled her lip, I had no idea that she was jealous of me, little Rosa Lee, whose heart was lighter, and whose task seemed far easier on account of Dr. Clayton’s past and promised visit.

Saturday night came at last, and very joyfully I started home on foot, feeling not at all burdened with the compliments of my patrons or the esteem of my pupils. Oh, what a shout was raised at the shortness of my three weeks, as I entered our sitting-room! All laughed at me, except my mother. She was not disappointed, and when I drew Carrie’s little rocking-chair to her side, and told her how hard my head was aching, she laid her soft hand caressingly upon my brow, and gently smoothing my short curls, bathed my forehead in camphor until the pain was gone. Had there been no one present but our own family, I should probably have cried; but owing to some untoward circumstance, Aunt Sally Wright was there visiting that afternoon, and as a teacher I felt obliged to maintain my dignity before her prying eyes. Almost her first salutation to me was, “Wall, Rosa, so you’ve grown old since you left home?”

“I do not understand what you mean,” I answered.

“Why, I mean,” said she, “that somebody told me that Mrs. Green told them, that Major Pond’s wife told her, that Mary Downes said, that Nancy Rice heard Miss Cap’n Thompson say that you told Dr. Clayton you was sixteen!”

I knew that the subject of my age had not come up between me and the doctor, but it was useless to deny a story so well authenticated, so I said nothing, and Aunt Sally continued; “They do say you thrash ’em round about right,” while mother asked “who Dr. Clayton was?”

“Why, he’s a young pill-peddler, who’s taken a shine to Rosa, and staid with her alone in the schoolhouse until pitch dark,” said Aunt Sally, her little green eyes twinkling with the immense satisfaction she felt.

Greatly I marvelled as to the source whence she obtained the information, which so greatly exceeded the truth; and considering that no one knew of the doctor’s call but Mrs. Ross, it really was a wonder! She was proceeding with her remarks, when we were summoned to the supper table, where green tea had so good an effect upon her, that by the time she was blowing her third cup, she began to unbend, repeating to me several complimentary remarks which she said came from Mrs. Ross. By this I knew that she had Pine Hill as well as Meadow Brook upon her hands, and, indeed, ’twas strange how much Aunt Sally did manage to attend to at once; for, besides keeping her son’s wife continually fretted, and her daughter constantly quarrelling with her husband, by her foolish interference; there was scarcely a thing transpired in the neighborhood in which she did not have a part. Not a marriage was in prospect, but she knew something bad of both parties; not a family jar occurred in which she did not have a finger. Not a man owed more than he was worth, but she had foreseen it from the first in the extravagance of his wife. But everybody in Meadow Brook knew Aunt Sally, and it was a common saying, that “her tongue was no slander;” so I did not feel as much annoyed as I otherwise should at her spiteful remarks, which continued with little intermission until dark, when, gathering up her snuff-box, knitting, and work-bag, she started for home.

The next day was the Sabbath, and if at church, I did now and then cast a furtive glance at the congregation, to see if they were looking at me because I was a “schoolma’am,” it was a childish vanity, which I have long since forgiven, as I trust my reader will do. Among the audience was our minister’s young bride, and when, after church, he introduced her to me, saying to her, “This is Rose, who, I told you, was only thirteen and teaching school,” I felt quite reconciled to my lot, and thought that after all, it was an honor to be a teacher.

CHAPTER VI.
DR. CLAYTON’S VISIT.

Very slowly passed the days of my second week, for my mind was constantly dwelling upon the important Thursday, which came at last, and, with more than usual care, I dressed myself for school, sporting a pale blue and white muslin, which mother said I must wear only on great occasions. And this, to me, was a great occasion; and if, for want of a better mirror, I at noon went down to a clear spring in the woods, and there gave a few smoothing touches to my toilet, it was a weakness of which, in a similar way, many an older female has been guilty. On my return to the schoolhouse, I requested one of the larger girls to sweep the floor as clean as she possibly could, while two or three of the boys were sent after some green boughs to hang over the windows.

“I’ll bet we are going to have company; I thought so this morning when I see the schoolma’am all dressed up,” whispered one to another—and after a time, Jim Maxwell’s sister ventured to ask me, not who was coming, but “how many.”

With a blush, I replied, “Nobody but Dr. Clayton,” wondering why his name should cleave so to the roof of my mouth! In a few minutes, the fact that Dr. Clayton was coming was known both indoors and out, and when I saw how fast John Thompson took himself home, after learning the news, I involuntarily felt as if some evil were impending—a presentiment which proved correct, for not long after school commenced, there came a gentle rap at the outer door, which caused a great straightening up among the scholars, and brought me instantly to my feet, for I supposed, of course, he had come. What, then, was my surprise when, instead of him, I met a haughty-looking young lady, who, frowning majestically upon me, introduced herself as “Miss Thompson,” saying she had come to visit the school.

I had never before had so good a view of her, and now, when I saw how dignified she appeared, and that there really was in her manner something elegant and refined, I not only felt myself greatly her inferior, but I fancied that Dr. Clayton would also observe the difference between us when he saw us together. After offering her the seat of honor—my splint-bottomed chair—I proceeded with my duties as composedly as possible, mentally hoping that the doctor would come soon. She probably divined my thoughts, for once, when I cast a wistful glance over the long hill, she said, “You seem to be constantly on the lookout. Are you expecting any one?”

Involuntarily my eyes sought hers, but I quailed beneath their quizzical expression, and scarcely knowing what I said, replied, “No, ma’am,” repenting the falsehood the moment it was uttered, and half-resolving to confess the truth, when she rejoined, “Oh, I thought you were,” while at the same moment a little girl, who had been asleep, rolled from her seat, bumping her head, and raising such an outcry that, for a time, I forgot what I had said, and when it again recurred to me I thought it was too late to rectify it. It was the second falsehood I remembered telling, and it troubled me greatly. Turn it which way I would it was a lie still, and it smote heavily upon my conscience. Slowly the afternoon dragged on, but it brought no Dr. Clayton; and when, at a quarter of four, I called up my class of Abecedarians to read, what with the lie and the disappointment, my heart was so full that I could not force back all the tears which struggled so fiercely for egress; and when it came Willie Randall’s turn to read, two or three large drops fell upon his chubby hand, and, looking in my face, he called out in a loud, distinct voice—“You’re cryin’, you be!”

This, of course, brought a laugh from all the scholars, in which I was fain to join, although I felt greatly chagrined that I should have betrayed so much weakness before Dell Thompson, who, in referring to it when school was out, said, “she supposed I wanted to see my mother, or somebody!”

The sarcastic smile which dimpled the corners of her mouth angered me, and when, at last, I was alone, my long pent-up tears fell in copious showers. It is my misfortune never to be able to cry without disfiguring my face, so that it is sometimes almost hideous to look upon; and now, as I slowly walked home, I carefully kept my parasol lowered, so that no one should see me. But I could not elude the vigilance of Mrs. Ross, who, as usual, was at her post in the doorway. Although I knew she was a dangerous woman, I rather liked her, for there was, to me, something winning in her apparent friendliness, and we had come to be quite intimate, so much so that I usually called there on my way to or from school; but now, when she bade me come in, I declined, which act brought her at once to the gate, where she obtained a full view of my swollen features.

“Laws a mercy!” she exclaimed, “what’s up now? Why, you look like a toad. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing much,” I said, and this was all she could solicit from me.

That night she called at Mr. Randall’s, and after sitting awhile, asked me “to walk a little piece with her.” I saw there was something on her mind, and conjecturing that it might have some connection with me, I obeyed willingly, notwithstanding Mrs. Randall’s silent attempts to keep me back. Twitching my sleeve when we were outside the gate, Mrs. Ross asked if “it were true that I cried because Dr. Clayton didn’t come as he promised?”

“Why, what do you mean?” I said. To which she replied, by telling me that after I left her, she just ran in to Cap’n Thompson’s a minute or two, when, who should she find there but Dr. Clayton, and when Dell told him she’d been to visit the school, he said, “Ah, indeed, I was intending to do so myself this afternoon, but I was necessarily detained by a very sick patient.”

“‘That explains why she cried so,’ said Dell, and then,” continued Mrs. Ross, “she went on to tell him how you looked out of the winder, and when she asked you if you expected anybody, you said ‘No,’ and then at last you cried right out in the school.”

“The mean thing!” I exclaimed. “Did she tell Dr. Clayton all that?”

“Yes, she did,” answered Mrs. Ross; “and it made my blood bile to hear her go on makin’ fun of you, that is, kinder makin’ fun.”

“And the doctor, what did he say?” I asked. To which she replied, “Oh, he laughed, and said it was too bad to disappoint you, if it affected you like that, but he couldn’t help it.”

I hardly knew at which I was most indignant, Dr. Clayton or Dell, and when I laid my aching head on my pillow, my last thoughts were, that “if Dr. Clayton ever did come to school I’d let him know I didn’t care for him—he might have Dell Thompson and welcome!”

I changed my mind, however, when early the next afternoon, the gentleman himself appeared to vindicate his cause, saying he was sorry that he could not have kept his appointment, adding, as he finally relinquished my hand, “You had company, though, I believe, and so, on the whole, I am glad I was detained, for I had rather visit you alone.”

Much as I now esteem Dr. Clayton, I do not hesitate to say that he was then a male flirt, a species of mankind which I detest. He was the handsomest, most agreeable man I had ever seen, and by some strange fascination, he possessed the power of swaying me at his will. This he well knew, and hence the wrong he committed by working upon my feelings. Never passed hours more agreeably to me than did those of that afternoon. And I even forgot that I was to go home that night, and that in all probability father would come for me as soon as school was out, thus preventing the quiet talk alone with Dr. Clayton, which I so much desired: so when, about four o’clock, I saw the head of old Sorrel appearing over the hill, my emotions were not particularly pleasant, and I wished I had not been so foolish as to insist upon going home every week. The driver, however, proved to be Charlie, and this in a measure consoled me, for he, I knew, was good at taking hints, and would wait for me as long as I desired; so I welcomed him with a tolerably good grace, introducing him to Dr. Clayton, who addressed him as Mr. Lee, thereby winning his friendship at once and forever!

When school was out and the scholars gone, I commenced making preparations for my departure, shutting down the windows and piling away books, slowly and deliberately, while Charlie, who seemed in no hurry, amused himself by whipping at the thistle-tops which grew near the door. At last Dr. Clayton, turning to him, said, “And so you have come to carry your sister home, when I was promising myself that pleasure?”

Charlie glanced at my face, and its expression, doubtless, prompted his answer, “You can do so now, if you choose, for I like to ride alone.”

Of course I disclaimed against such an arrangement, but my objections were overruled, and almost before I knew what I was doing, I found myself seated in Dr. Clayton’s covered buggy, with him at my side. Telling Charlie “not to be surprised if he did not see us until sunset,” he drove off in a different direction from Meadow Brook, remarking to me that “it was a fine afternoon for riding and he meant to enjoy it.”

I hardly know whether he had any object in passing Capt. Thompson’s, but he certainly did so, bowing graciously and showing his white teeth to Dell, who, from a chamber window, looked haughtily down upon me, and as I afterwards learned, made fun of my pink sun-bonnet and little yellow dotted shawl. The sight of her naturally led him to speak of her, and much to my surprise, he asked me how I liked her! I could not answer truthfully and say “very well;” so I replied that “I hardly knew her. She was very fine looking, and I presumed she was very intelligent and accomplished.”

“You are a good-hearted little girl, Rose,” said he, “to speak thus of her. Do you suppose she would do the same by you if asked a similar question?”

“Oh, no,” I answered, eagerly, “she couldn’t say I was fine looking. Nobody ever said that.”

“If I should tell you that I think you better looking than Dell Thompson, what would you say?” he asked, looking under my bonnet, while, with glowing cheeks, I turned my head away, and replied, “I am sure you would not mean it. I know I am ugly, but I do not care so much about it now as I used to.”

There was a silence for some minutes, and when he spoke again, it was of faces, which, without regularity of features or brilliancy of complexion, still had an expression exceedingly pleasing and attractive. “I do not say yours is such a face,” said he, “for I never flatter; but I do say, and I mean it, too, that I like your looks far better than I do Miss Thompson’s.

If I had cried then, as I wished to, I should have done a most foolish thing; but by a strong effort of the will, I forced down my tears, and changing the conversation, commenced talking on subjects quite foreign to Dell Thompson, or good looks. I found Dr. Clayton a most agreeable companion, and ere the close of that ride, he was “all the world” to me. In short, I suppose I was as much in love as a child of thirteen can well be, and when we at last reached home and I introduced him to my mother and sisters, I blushed like a guilty thing, stealing out of the room as soon as possible, and staying out for a long time, although I wanted so much to be back there with him.

“Catched a beau, hain’t you? and a handsome one, too!” said Sally, applying her eye to the key-hole and thus obtaining a view of his face.

Tommy Trimmer, a little boy, five years of age, who lived near by, and who chanced to be there, overheard her, and when Dr. Clayton, who was very fond of children, coaxed him into his lap, he asked, pointing to me, “Be you Rosa’s beau? Sally said you was!”

The doctor laughed aloud, referring Tommy to me for an answer, and telling him “it was just as I said.”

“Rose is altogether too young to be riding round with beaux. It will give her a bad name,” said grandma, when at last the doctor was gone.

No one made any answer until Lizzie, who was more of my way of thinking, said, “You must have had beaux early, grandma, for you wasn’t quite fifteen when you were married; I saw it so in the Bible!”

Of course, grandma had nothing to offer in her own defence, save the very correct remark, that “girls now-adays were not what they were when she was young;”—and here the conversation ceased.

CHAPTER VII.
DELL THOMPSON’S PARTY.

One day, about three weeks after the commencement of my school, I was surprised by a call from Dell Thompson, who, after conversing awhile, very familiarly, astonished me with an invitation to visit her the next afternoon. “She was going to have a few of her friends from the village,” she said, “Dr. Clayton with the rest.”

Here she looked at me and I looked out of the window, while she continued, “You’ll come, I suppose.”

I replied that I would, after which she departed, leaving me in a perfect state of bewilderment. I invited to Captain Thompson’s, with Dell’s fashionable friends! What could it mean, and what should I wear? This last was by far the more important question; for I knew that the people of the village were noted for their fine dress, and I, of course, could not compete with them in point of elegance. Dr. Clayton too, I had heard, was rather fastidious in his ideas of a lady’s dress, and my heart sank within me as I mentally enumerated the articles of my scanty wardrobe, finding therein nothing which I deemed fit for the occasion, save a white dotted muslin, which was now lying soiled and wrinkled at the bottom of my trunk. It is true, I had a blue and white lawn, neatly made and quite becoming, but my heart was set upon the muslin, and so when Mrs. Ross, with whom I was that week boarding, offered to wash and iron it, I accepted the proffered kindness.

The next morning, when I passed Captain Thompson’s, I observed a great commotion in and around the house. The blinds were thrown back, and through the parlor windows I caught sight of brooms and dusters, while at intervals during the day, the scholars brought me tidings of cake, jellies, and ice-cream, said to be in progress. At precisely four o’clock I dismissed school, and taking a short cut across the fields, soon reached my boarding-place, where I found Mrs. Ross bending over the ironing-table with a face flushed, and indicative of some anxiety.

“I never see nothin’ beat it,” she began, holding down her hot iron and thereby making a slightly yellow spot on the dress. “I never see nothin’ beat it, how this gown pesters me. It must be poor stuff, or somethin’,—but mebby it’ll look better on you,” she continued, as she gave it a finishing touch, and then held it up to view.

And, indeed, it was sorry looking enough; some places being wholly destitute of starch, while others were rough and stiff as a piece of buckram. Common sense told me to wear the blue, but I had heard Dr. Clayton say that nothing became a young girl so well as white, and so I determined to wear it. It would look better on me, I thought, and with all the eagerness of a child I commenced my toilet, discovering to my great dismay that I had neither shoes nor stockings fit to wear with a muslin dress. The week previous I had taken my best ones home, where I had purposely left them, not thinking it possible for me to need them. Here then was a dilemma, out of which Mrs. Ross at last helped me, by offering to lend the articles which I lacked; an offer which I gladly accepted. Her stockings were rather coarse, having been knit by herself, but they possessed the virtue of being white, and clean, and would have answered my purpose very well, had it not been for the slippers, which were far too long for me, and showed almost the whole of my foot. Besides that, I found it rather difficult keeping them on, until Mrs. Ross suggested the propriety of stuffing the toes with cotton! This done, I donned the muslin dress, which seemed to me much shorter than when I had last worn it, inasmuch as I had the painful consciousness of being all feet, whenever I glanced in that direction.

But Mrs. Ross said “I looked mighty crank,” at the same time fastening on my low-necked waist her glass breastpin, which she pronounced, “just the checker.” “You orto have some gloves to wear when you get there,” said she, as she saw me drawing on my brown ones, “and I b’lieve I’ve got the very thing,” she continued, bringing from the depths of the bureau-drawer a pair of white cotton mitts, fancifully embroidered on the back with yellow and blue. These she bade me “tuck in my bosom until I got there, and on no account to lose ’em, as she had ’em before she was married!”

Thus equipped, I started for Captain Thompson’s, reaching there just as the clock was striking five, and finding, to my surprise, that I was not only the first arrival, but that neither Mrs. Thompson nor Dell had yet commenced dressing! Fearing I had mistaken the day, I questioned the servant girl who answered my ring, and who assured me that I was right, while at the same time, she conducted me to the chamber above, where, in the long mirror, I obtained a full-length view of myself, feet and all! My first impulse was to laugh, my second to cry, and to the latter I finally yielded. No one came near me—I heard no one—saw no one, until in light flowing muslin, white silk hose, and the tiniest of all tiny French slippers, Dell Thompson sailed into the room, starting with well feigned surprise when she saw me, asking how long I had been there, and what was the matter.

Without considering what I was doing, I told her unreservedly about the shoes and stockings, pointing to my peacock feet as proof of what I said. With all her faults, there was enough of the woman about Dell to inspire her with a feeling of pity for me, and after forcing back the laugh she could not well help, she said kindly, “Your shoes are rather large, but I think, perhaps, I can remedy the difficulty.”

At the same time she started to leave the room. What new impulse came over her, I never knew; but sure am I that something changed her mind, for, when nearly at the door, she suddenly paused, saying; “I know, though, you can’t wear my slippers, so it’s of no use trying the experiment:” adding, as she saw how my countenance fell, “I wouldn’t mind it if I were you. Nobody’ll notice it, unless it is Dr. Clayton, who, I believe, admires small ankles and little feet; but you don’t care for him, he’s old enough to be your father, and, besides that, he thinks you perfect, any way.”