A Little Girl in Old Salem - Amanda Minnie Douglas (readict books .txt) 📗

when there was some one at hand to make him comfortable. And that he surely was. He understood and enjoyed it. He had only to suggest to have. Her affection for him was like that for a younger brother. Even Eunice could not minister so well for his comfort, though, like Mary of Bible lore, she often added a delicate pleasure in listening to matters or incidents that interested him.

Elizabeth had settled to the idea of a little heathen soul that she was to lead aright. Missionary work in godless lands had not made much advance and, having no mother, who was there to warn her of the great peril of her soul? Seafaring men were not much given to thought of the other world. Perhaps there was some grace for them in the hours of peril, she had heard they prayed to God in an extremity; and there was the dying thief. But on land no one had a right to count on this.

The child had changed everything. Even Eunice seemed to have lost the sharp distinction. Miss Winn belonged to the ungodly, that was clear--though she was upright, honest, neat, and in some ways sensible. But her ideas about the child were foreign and reprehensible--dangerous even. The child was no worse than others, not as bad as some, for she had either by nature or training a delicate respect for the property of others. She never meddled. She asked few questions even when she stood by the kitchen table and watched the mysteries of cake and pie making and the delicacies of cooking. It was the right to herself that annoyed Elizabeth. People had hardly begun to suspect that children had any rights.

"But if she went away? If she was swallowed up in the vortex of the more populous city"--greater, Salem would not have admitted. "If the child's soul was finally lost, would she be quite clear? Would she have done all that she could for her salvation?"

She thought of it as she prepared the supper. She surveyed the inviting-looking table and then rang the bell. Eunice brought in a handful of flowers. Chilian came--and Miss Winn.

"Cynthia has gone to bed, she does not want any supper," was her quiet announcement.

Elizabeth would have sent her to bed supperless, and approved of a severer punishment.

Miss Winn asked some questions about Boston.

"I have quite a desire to see it," she added.

Yes, she would no doubt plan for a removal. Then the child would be forever lost. And a Leverett, too, come of a strong God-fearing family!

The child, when she had hidden her face on Rachel's bosom, gave some dry, hard sobs that shook her small frame. Rachel smoothed her hair, patted the shoulder softly, and said "Dear" in a caressing tone. Then had come a torrent of tears, a wild hysterical weeping. She did not attempt to check it, but took Cynthia in her arms as if she had been a baby.

"I'm not going to that school any more," she said brokenly, after a while.

"What happened, dear?"

Cynthia raised her head. "It was very mean, as if I had done it on purpose! Why, I might have hurt myself;" indignantly.

"How was it?" gently.

And then the story came tumbling out. She saw a certain ludicrous aspect in it now, and laughed a little herself. "I couldn't help being saucy. And I thought she was going to strike me. Tommy Marsh began to laugh first. The slate broke----"

"Are you quite sure you were not hurt?"

"Well, my arm hurt a little at first, but it is all well now. But I shan't go back to school,--no, not even to please Cousin Leverett, and I like him best of any one."

"I'm going down to supper, dear. Shall I bring up yours?"

"I don't want any. I couldn't eat anything. And I can't have Cousin Elizabeth's sharp eyes looking at me. Oh, I'm glad I am not her little girl! I like you a million times better, Rachel;" hugging her rapturously. "I think I'd like to have a glass of milk. And may I lie on your little bed?"

"Yes, dear."

She was asleep when Rachel came up and it was past nine when she woke, drank her milk, and went to bed for the night.

How gaily the birds were singing the next morning, and the sunbeams were playing hide-and-seek through the branches that dance in the soft wind. All the air was sweet and the little girl couldn't help being light-hearted. She sang, too; not measured hymns of sorrow and repentance, but a gay lilt that followed the bird voices. And she went down to breakfast and said her good-morning cheerfully.

"That child has the assurance of the Evil One," Elizabeth thought.

Cynthia waylaid Cousin Chilian as he was going down the path.

"I meant what I said yesterday. I won't go to that school any more. If there was some other--only--only I wish you could teach me until I could get up straight in all the things, so the other children wouldn't laugh when I made blunders. I suppose it does sound funny;" and a smile hovered about the seriousness.

"We will consider another school," he returned kindly, smiling himself at the remembrance of the tempest of yesterday.

She persuaded Rachel to go out to walk and they went over to the bridge. She had been so interested in the story of it. Before it had faded from the minds of men it was to be splendidly commemorated as a point of interest in the old town.

"I like real stories," she said. "I don't understand about the war, but it is fine to think the Salem men made the British soldiers go back when all the while the cannon and other arms were hidden away. You don't mind, Rachel, if the Colonists did beat England, do you? I'm a Colonist, you know."

"That is long ago, and we are all friends now. I think the Colonists were very brave and persevering and they deserved their liberty. I have heard your father talk about the war."

"Oh, when do you suppose he will come? It seems so long to wait."

Rachel smiled to keep the tears out of her eyes.

Chilian Leverett made a call and a brief explanation to Dame Wilby. She admitted she had been hasty, but the children were unusually trying. She was getting to be an old body and maybe she hadn't as much patience as years ago. Cynthia said so many odd things that the children _would_ giggle. She was slow in some things, and it seemed hard for her to learn tables, but she was not a bad child.

So the tempest blew over. Elizabeth preserved a rather injured silence, but Eunice was cheerful and ready to entertain Cynthia with stories of the time when she was a little girl. Chilian arranged for her to spend most of the mornings with him when he was at home. She liked so very much to hear him read. The histories of that time were rather dry and long spun out, but he had a way of skipping the moralizing and the endless disquisitions and adding a little more vividness to people and incidents. It inspired him to watch her face changing with every emotion, her eyes deepening or brightening, and the slight mark in her forehead where lines of perplexity crossed. Then they would talk it all over. Often he was puzzled with her endless "whys" that he could not rightly explain to a child's limited understanding. Sometimes she would say, "Why, I would have done so," and he found her course would be on the side of the finest right, if not what was considered feasible.

The spelling was a trial when the words were a little obscure. And though she had a wonderful knack of guessing at things, she surely was not born for a mathematician. He had a fine, quick mind in that respect. But the Latin was a delight to her and she delved away at the difficult parts for the sake of what she called the grand and beautiful sound. His rendering of it enchanted her.

"I don't see any sense in educating her like a boy," declared Elizabeth. "And she can't do a decent bit of hemming. She ought to work a sampler and learn the letters to mark her own clothes. We did it before we were her age. Chilian thinks you can hire people to do these things for you, but it seems so helpless not to be able to do them for yourself. Housekeeping is of more account than all this folderol. She can never be a college professor."

"But women _are_ keeping schools," interposed Eunice.

"They don't teach Latin and all kinds of nonsense. That Miss Miller was here a few days ago to see if we didn't want our niece--folks are beginning to call her that--to see if we did not want her to take lessons on the spinet. I was so glad she did not appeal to Chilian, though he was out. I said, 'No,' very decidedly, 'that she had a good many things to learn before she tackled that.' And she said she ought to be trained while her fingers were flexible, and I said I thought washing would make them flexible enough. And there's fine ironing."

"There's no need of either for her," protested Eunice.

"Oh, you don't know. There might be a war again. And a trouble about money. I'm sure there is talk enough and the country raising loans all the time, one party pulling one way, one the other. People are getting awfully extravagant nowadays. Patty Conant gave seven dollars a yard for her new black silk, and there were twelve yards. It broke pretty well into a hundred, and there was some fancy gimp and fringe and the making. Of course, there's going to be two weddings in the family, and I don't suppose Patty will ever buy another handsome gown at her time of life. Abner brought her home that elegant crape shawl, with the fringe and netting nearly half a yard deep. Maybe 'twas a present, she let it go that way."

"Of course, there's money enough among the Conants," Eunice commented gently.

"As I said--one can't always tell what will come to pass, nor how much need you may have for your money. But I'm thankful my heart is not set on the pomps and vanities of this world. And children ought to be brought up to some useful habits."

It was a fact that Cynthia did not take to the useful branches of womanly living. She abhorred hemming--and such work as she made of it! Miss Eunice groaned over it.

"But you ought to have seen what I did two or three weeks ago," and she laughed with a gay ring. "Such stitches! When I made them nice on the top, they were dreadful underneath, and the cotton thread was almost black. What is the use of taking such little bits of stitches?"

"Why--they look prettier. And--it is the right thing to do."

"But you know Rachel can hem all the ruffles. And Cousin Elizabeth said ruffles were vanity. I'd like my frocks just as well to be plain."

"There would have to be nice stitches in the hem."

"Rachel didn't sew when she was little. A great lady took her to Scotland, to wait on her, to get her shawl when she was a little cool, and fan her when she was warm, and carry messages, and drive out in the