Such a quaint little song, such a quaint little voice! Miss Hurlburt wondered for a moment who it could possibly be. Then she remembered hearing that, while she was away in the summer, an elderly English woman and a little girl had been allowed to take possession of the cabin in the woods which her father owned.
It was a little house with two rooms, which had been built, long ago, as a lodge for hunters; but which had for several years stood vacant, being too far from the factories to be a convenient residence for any of the hands.
Miss Hurlburt went on a few steps farther, and saw the singer. It was a pretty picture. A little creature, who looked about five or six years old, sat in the door-way tending a battered doll. She was almost as brown as a gypsy, this small waif, but there was a singular grace about her. Her black hair hung in thick, short curls. She had great, bright, black eyes; lips as red as strawberries; and teeth as white as pearls.
Miss Hurlburt moved on softly, so as not to disturb her; and the waif took up her doll, and talked to it wisely and soberly, after the manner of some mothers.
"Now, Pinky, me love, I have singed you a song. Now you must be good for a whole week of hours, or I shan't sing to you, never no more. I mean any more, Pinky. Be very careful how you speak, always; no good children ever go wrong in their talking."
By this time Miss Hurlburt had almost reached her side.
"Does your child give you much trouble?" she said, in a tone friendly and inviting confidence.
The mite shook her head, with all its black curls.
"Pinky, me love? No; she only gives me trouble when she is bad. She is good most always, unless it rains."
"Is she bad then?" with an air of anxious interest.
"Certain she is: who wouldn't be? She has to stay in the house then; and she doesn't like it. Would you? How can persons be good when they don't have what they want?"
By this time a nice, motherly-looking old English woman had heard the talk, and came forward to the door.
"Missy," she said, "always thinks Pinky is bad when she is bad herself; and Missy is most always cross when it rains."
"What is your name?" Miss Hurlburt asked, bending to smooth the black curls.
"Berenice Ashford," the child answered, in a slow, painstaking manner, as if the words had been taught her with care; "but they don't call me that,—they call me 'Missy.'"
"Is she your grandchild?" was the next question, addressed to the elderly woman, who had set a chair near the door and asked the young lady to sit down.
"No, that she isn't, and I would like much to find out whose child she is. To be sure, I should miss her more than a little, if I had to part with her: but, all the same, I should like to find her kindred. She belongs to gentle-folks, and I can't do for her what ought to be done."
A few more questions drew out the whole story. The woman, Mrs. Smith, had a son in America, who was doing well at his trade of dyeing; and he had sent for her to come out to him. He had sent money enough for her expenses, and she had taken passage in the second cabin of a steamer.
Among her fellow-passengers were Missy and her mother,—the latter a beautiful young lady, Mrs. Smith said, but very pale and sad. She had complained sometimes of a keen and terrible pain in her heart; but she had made little conversation with any one. When they were five days out, she had been found in the morning dead in her berth, with Missy sound asleep beside her.
There was no possible clew to her history. In her trunk, full of her own clothes and Missy's, was no scrap of handwriting, no address. The one or two books which were there, bore on their fly-leaves only the inscription "E. Forsyth." She had taken passage as Mrs. Forsyth, but the captain knew nothing more about her.
Mrs. Smith had somehow taken possession of Missy. She had played with the child and amused her a good deal, before her mother died; and now the little creature clung to her as her only friend.
There was something over a hundred dollars in the mother's trunk, but as yet Mrs. Smith said she had not used it. When she reached New York, instead of being met by her son, an old neighbor came for her to the steamer, brought her the news of his death, and gave her the money—nearly a thousand dollars in all—which he had been saving to make the new home they were to have together comfortable.
It was an awful blow, and she clung to Missy, then, for it seemed as if the child was all she had left in the world. The captain said that he would advertise for the little one's friends; but, meantime, he was evidently very glad to be relieved of the responsibility of her.
"How happened you to come here?" Miss Hurlburt asked.
"I had always lived in the country, miss, and I didn't want to stay any longer than I could help in New York; and my son had been meaning to bring me here. It seemed a little comfort, to come where I should have come with him. He had engaged with Mr. Hurlburt—the one who owns the big factories—to come here and see to the dyeing; and Mr. Hurlburt was so good as to give me this little house rent-free, for a while. By and by I want to get something to do. If I could be housekeeper somewhere where I could keep Missy, or head-nurse, or something of that sort, it would suit me,—but there's no hurry."
"Mr. Hurlburt is my father," the young lady said, when she had heard the story through. "We must see what can be done. Missy, should you like to live with me?"
The child considered. Then she addressed her doll, inquiringly.
"Pinky, me love, should you like to live with the lady? I guess she's good. Would you go, if your mother went?" Then she pretended to listen. "'No, I thank you,' Pinky says; 'she couldn't go without Grandma Smith.'"
"Of course Pinky couldn't," Miss Hurlburt said, laughing. "Well, then, I'll come again to see you, and bring Pinky's new gown."
That evening, at dinner, Miss Hurlburt was radiant. She knew her father liked to see her well dressed, and she made a handsome toilet. She coaxed him into his very best humor by all the arts only daughters of widowed fathers are wont to use; and then, when he was seated comfortably before the open fire, which tempered the chill of the October evening, she unfolded her plan and her wishes.
The beginning and the end were that she wanted Missy,—she must have Missy,—and the middle was that she couldn't be so cruel as to take from Mrs. Smith her one comfort, so she wanted Mrs. Smith. She represented herself as fearfully overworked, in keeping the establishment in order. Now how nice it would be if Mrs. Smith could take all the troublesome details of that off her hands; could see that the house was clean, and the washing well done, and the buttons on. She had needed just such a person a long time, but she hadn't known where to find her; and now here she was, really made to order, as it seemed.
Of course she had her way. The world called Jonathan Hurlburt a stern man, but it was not often he could say "no" to his motherless daughter. The very next day Miss Hurlburt went with her proposition to the little cabin in the wood; and, before a week was over, Missy and Grandma Smith were duly installed as members of the Hurlburt household.
As for the business part of the experiment, Mrs. Smith proved worth her weight in gold, as they say. Before three months were over, Mr. Hurlburt discovered that she saved him five times her wages in money, and added immeasurably to the household comfort,—indeed, he concluded that she was, as Eleanor had said, really made to order.
As for Missy, with her quaint ways, her odd, old-fashioned speeches, and the little songs she sang, she was speedily the delight of the household. She lost no whit of her affection for Grandma Smith, but it was Miss Hurlburt who was her idol.
"Pinky, me love," she used often to say to her faithful doll friend, "did you ever see any miss so nice as our Miss Hurlburt? You had better not say you did, Pinky, me love; because then it would be me very sorrowful duty to whip you for telling lies."
Miss Hurlburt's delight in her little waif was unbounded. She dressed her up, like a child in a story-book. When she drove in her Victoria, Missy always sat beside her, gorgeous in velvet suit and soft ermine furs; and at home Missy was never far away.
Before spring, another strange event took place. I will not say happened, for no chapter of accidents would ever have read so strangely. A young English manufacturer came over to America. Mr. Hurlburt had had, by letter, various dealings with the firm which he represented; and, on hearing of his arrival in New York, wrote, begging a visit of some length from him. The young man, whose object in his American journey was partly business and partly pleasure, saw an opportunity to combine both in this visit, and accepted the invitation.
He amused himself more or less with Missy, as did every one who came to the house; but he had been a member of the household for several days before it occurred to him that she was not Miss Hurlburt's young sister. Under this impression he remarked one night,—
"How curiously slight is the resemblance between yourself and your little sister, Miss Hurlburt!"
"Oh! Missy is not my sister," was the smiling answer. "She is treasure-trove, Mr. Goring."
And a little later, when Missy had danced away in search of Pinky, she told him the whole story. He listened with intense interest.
"And do you know her name?" he asked, at last.
"She says it is Berenice Ashford. You would laugh to hear the slow, painstaking way in which she pronounces it."
Mr. Goring had turned pale as she spoke.
"Excuse me, Miss Hurlburt, but I truly believe your Missy is my niece. My half-brother married against the wishes of his family, and I was the only one of them who ever made the acquaintance of his poor, pretty young wife. Even when he died, last year, the rest would not have any thing to do with her. She had a brother in America, and she wanted to come here, so I took passage for her in the "Asia." She insisted on coming in the second cabin, because it was quieter, she said; but I think it was to save expense, as well. Tom had left her nothing; and, after the rest of the family had rejected her, I could see that it hurt her pride cruelly to let me help her. She should be all right, she said, when she reached her brother. She was to write me when she got there, but I have never heard a word. I confess that the hope to hear of her was one motive for my coming to this country."
"But she was Mrs. Forsyth," Miss Hurlburt said, in a curiously bewildered state of mind.
"Certainly: Forsyth was my brother's name. Berenice Ashford is the child's Christian name. It was the name of Tom's mother and mine."
"But I wonder you did not know Missy at once."
"Of course to find her here was the very last thing I could have expected. Then I had not seen her for two or three years. I had communicated with my sister-in-law chiefly by letter; and it was my man of business, and not myself, who put her on board the steamer."
"But her brother? Why has he never looked for his sister nor her child?"
Goring smiled.
"You are bent on making me prove my title to Missy, as one does to stolen goods. I think Mrs. Forsyth must have gone on without writing to him in what steamer she was coming, and he probably did not know my address. Nor do I think he had ever shown any especial interest in his sister. It was only her indomitable pride which made her so determined to go to him, when the family of her husband rejected her. Now, I think, I have proved property, and I'm ready to pay the cost of advertising."
Just then Missy's voice was heard in the hall, addressing a solemn exhortation to "Pinky, me love," on the duty of never being greedy at table. Miss Hurlburt called her in.
"Missy," she said, "what was your papa's name?"
"I never knew; did you ever know, Pinky, me love? Mamma called him Tom."
"And did you ever hear mamma speak of Uncle Richard?" Mr. Goring broke in, eagerly.
"You do remember, Pinky, me love. It is wicked to look as if you didn't. She said we couldn't go to America and find Uncle John, if Uncle Richard had not given us the money. I remember that, but I had 'most forgotten; so if you forgot, too, I shall not whip you, Pinky, me love."
"I am your Uncle Richard," the Englishman said with entire calmness of manner and gesture, but with tears in his voice and his eyes. Perhaps he expected the child to come at once to his arms; but she stood there, the same composed, self-poised little mite as ever.
"Your great-uncle, Pinky, me love," she announced,—manifesting an unexpectedly clear knowledge of degrees of kinship. "I think maybe we shall like him."
"And you will go with me back to England?" he asked, eagerly; for the little creature's likeness to his dead brother stirred his heart.
"Does she say I must?" Missy asked, shyly, looking at Miss Hurlburt.
"I will never say you must, Missy."
"Then, please, Uncle Richard, I am afraid going in a ship wouldn't agree with Pinky; and we'd rather stay here, unless our Miss Hurlburt will go too."
"Soh, soh!" and Mr. Goring smiled a quizzical smile, "I see I have a heart to storm."
Whose heart he did not say. But he lingered some time in America, coming back at frequent intervals to visit Missy, as he said. The result was that when he returned to England little Missy had become ready to go with him, even at the risk of exposing "Pinky me love," to the perils of the sea; and Miss Hurlburt, thinking she needed something other than masculine oversight, concluded to go with her and take care of her, having first changed her own name to Mrs. Goring. And they all said what a fortunate thing it was that Mrs. Smith was there to keep house.
THE HEAD BOY OF EAGLEHEIGHT SCHOOL.
The boys in Eagleheight school made up their minds before the first fortnight of Max Grenoble's stay among them was over that he had no spirit. The truth was, they didn't exactly understand him. They began when he first came to exercise upon him their usual arts of torture,—the initiation ceremonies for all new boys,—and found him practically a non-resistant. They could not, indeed, be quite sure that they even succeeded in vexing him: he was so imperturbable. At last Hal Somers, goaded to a degree of exasperation by the quiet calmness of the new boy, struck him, with the outcry,—
"There, boys, see how this suits the Quaker."
It was a sound, ringing blow; but Max only laughed a laugh which had a good deal of scorn in it, and said,—
"That's very little to take." Then regarding Hal curiously, "I looked for a tougher blow than that. To see you, Somers, one would think you had a good deal of strength in your arms; but a bad cause is always weak."
Hal would have liked then to "pitch into him" with whatever of strength he had; but I think he was afraid. So he only turned on his heel, muttered something about a fellow not worth fighting with, and walked away. From that time those who did not vote Max Grenoble a coward pronounced him a mystery. He did not look at all as if he were wanting in spirit. He was a great strong Saxon of a fellow, with the head of a young Greek, covered with thick, short golden curls. I wish I could photograph him for you: he was such an embodiment of fresh, vigorous life, with his clear, fearless blue eyes, his short, smiling upper lip, his well-cut features. He was just the fellow to be popular, if only he had not been misunderstood in the first place, and especially if he had not happened to incur Hal Somers's enmity.
Hal had been there two years, and was a positive force in the school. He had a large capacity in several other directions besides mischief. He had been the best scholar at Eagleheight before Max came to dispute his laurels with him; a favorite, therefore, with the teachers, who always passed over his escapades, which were not few, as lightly as they could. In fact he was a sort of ringleader of the faster boys, and he found time, in spite of his never failing in class, to plan out and head the execution of most of the jollifications which were the terror of the quiet villagers around Eagleheight. He seldom had any of his offences positively brought home and proven, it is true, and the faculty of the institution liked him too well to condemn him on suspicion, or even to try very hard to strengthen suspicion into certainty.
They, the aforesaid faculty, were not at all too ready to give Max Grenoble his due when he first came. He was not, like Hal, of their own training. He had come to them from a rival school, and they were secretly ill pleased to find in him a dangerous competitor with their best scholar. But before six months were over they were obliged to recognize his claims, and had even come to heartily like him. And, indeed, he was a fellow, as Edmund Sparkler would have said, with no nonsense about him, and likely to make his own way anywhere.
Whenever he had the opportunity to show his skill he was found to excel in all athletic sports; but this was not often, for the boys rather shunned him, and if there were enough for an undertaking without him he was usually left out of it. He had one friend, however,—a poor little weakling of a fellow, named Molyneux Bell, who had been friendless before Max came. Hal Somers and his roystering set had always shoved poor little "Miss Molly," as they called young Bell, to the wall; and it opened paradise to him when great, strong, bright, cheery Max Grenoble took him under his protecting wing. He gave as much as he received too; for Max had a strongly affectionate nature, and would have found himself desolate enough without some one to be fond of. Only "Miss Molly" knew the secret of his friend's non-resistance. One day Max had carried him in his arms across a stream they came to in one of their walks, and set him gently down on the other side. Molyneux looked up gratefully.
"What great strong arms you have, Max! Why, you carry me as gently as a cradle. I believe you could whip Hal Somers himself, just as easy as nothing. Honest, now, don't you think you could? O, I wish you would! The boys wouldn't dare then to call us 'Miss Molly and her sister.'"
Max laughed heartily.
"I shouldn't be much afraid to try it," he said. "The truth is, I have been awfully tempted to pitch in, sometimes. But last year I made up my mind that the Bible meant what it said when it forbade us to return evil for evil and railing for railing. It comes tough on human nature, though, boy human nature at any rate; but there'd be no merit if there was no struggle, and we're put here to fight with the old man in us, as my father calls it."
"But if you'd tell 'em why you never knock a fellow down when he sauces you."
Max's face crimsoned like a girl's.
"Don't you understand that a fellow couldn't tell such things? at least, I couldn't. I should feel like the Pharisee in the Bible."
At the end of the school year there was to be a competitive examination. The credits for conduct and for recitations were to be taken into account, and the boy who stood highest on the books, and passed the best examination also, was to be the head boy of the school for the next year. From the first the field was abandoned to two competitors,—Hal Somers and Max Grenoble. All Hal's emulation was aroused. He would succeed. He even forsook his old ways, and for weeks together engaged in nothing that was contraband. He had really fine abilities. He learned some things more readily than Max himself, and he felt that all his prestige depended on his securing this leadership. Max took the matter more coolly, but still he worked with all diligence. And so, till within ten days of the examination, they were neck and neck.
Just then there came a dark night,—a warm, tempting June night,—when the moon was old, and only the stars shone, like very far-away lamps indeed, through the dusk. A friend of Hal Somers was night monitor, and doubtless the temptation afforded by such apparent security was too much for mischief-loving Hal. It chanced that Max Grenoble had received permission from one of the tutors to go to the neighboring village of an errand, and this fact was known only to his own room-mate, Molyneux Bell. About half-past nine he was returning, and for greater speed crossed a lot belonging to the president of the institution, which saved him an extra quarter of a mile of road. Half way across the lot he met Hal Somers with three other boys behind him, face to face. Hal carried a small lantern, and a great pair of shears such as are used to shear sheep. The light from the lantern struck upon the shears with a glitter which led Max to notice them. In the hands of one of Hal's followers he saw the long, silvery tail of a white horse, and another carried a bunch of hair of a similar hue, evidently the mane of the same animal.
"Hal Somers!"
He spoke in his first moment of surprise, without consideration; but there came no answer. The lantern was blown out in a moment, and the boys made the best of their way toward Eagleheight. As Max walked on more slowly he heard a pitiful neigh, and following the sound, he found President King's pet horse, utterly denuded of mane and tail. It was a joke carried a little too far even for Hal Somers's effrontery, he thought to himself. If there was any thing outside of his school that President King loved and prided himself on more than another, it was Snowflake. He gave her something of the fond care a family man bestows upon his children. Every afternoon she was the companion of his solitude, to whom he talked, with a sort of grave humor of his own, as he took his constitutional upon her back. He would not be likely to have much toleration for the young rascals who had shorn her of all her glory. Max went on, reported himself to Professor Vane, from whom he had obtained his leave of absence, and went to bed without hinting what he had seen, even to his room-mate.
The next morning when the school went to chapel, there was a sense of thunder in the air. President King had seen his favorite, as those who were guilty did not need to be told, after one look at his lowering face. He conducted the devotions with more than his usual solemnity, and then detained the school a little longer.
He uttered a few withering sentences, setting forth what had been done, and commenting satirically upon the invention, the gentlemanliness, the good sense of young men whose brains could originate nothing more brilliant or entertaining than the disfigurement of an unlucky quadruped, and an annoyance and insult to a teacher who had at least this claim upon their respect, that their parents had put them under his charge. Then he gave them the opportunity to confess their folly, assuring them that confession was good for the soul, and adding that he should take it as a favor if any one who knew any thing of the affair, whether personally concerned in it or not, would give him all the information in his power. It was not the practice at Eagleheight to ask any individual boy whether or not he had been guilty. It was one of President King's notions that to ask such a question of any one who had not manliness enough to confess his fault voluntarily was only leading him into temptation, offering safety as a premium for lying.
As the fellows filed out of chapel, Hal Somers said to his chum,—
"It's all up with me about the leadership. Of course Grenoble will tell, especially now the Prex makes a merit of it."
"Fool if he wouldn't," was the reply, "after the way we fellows have all treated him, too."
All day Hal was in hourly expectation of being sent for to an interview solemn and awful in the president's room. But the hours went on and no summons came. About four o'clock he saw Max Grenoble go into the dreaded chamber of audience. Now, he thought, all would come out. Of course Max had gone to tell all he knew. Would he be suspended, or expelled, he wondered, or would the Prex be satisfied with giving him black marks enough to put the leadership altogether beyond his reach? Then a plan came to him. The president's room was on the lower floor, and over one of its windows grew a grape vine large enough to conceal him from observation. He would go there and listen. That it was a very mean thing to do he knew as well as any body, but temptation was too strong for him, and giving one look to make sure that he was not observed he hid himself away under the open window. The first words he heard were in the voice of the president:
"As soon as Vane told me you were out last evening, it occurred to me that you would know who was at the bottom of the affair, and it seems you do."
"Yes, sir," firmly and quietly.
"Then there can be no possible doubt that it is your duty to tell."
"It cannot be my duty, sir, to be a sneak. This secret came into my hands by accident. If I had been monitor for the evening, it would, of course, be my duty to make it known. Not having been in any such capacity, I think were I to turn telltale I should be no gentleman."
"It's a new order of things when fifty must come to fifteen to be told what it is to be a gentleman," the president said, hotly. "Perhaps you don't know, sir, that if you persist in your resolution you lose all hope of the leadership? You will be considered an accessory in the crime, and you will lose as many credit marks as would be taken from the ringleader were he detected."
"I can afford to lose those better than my own self-respect," Max said, stoutly, and then added, "I think you would have done the same, President King, when you were at my age."
Hal waited to hear no more, but edged cautiously from his place of concealment. He thought he was not above profiting by Max's generosity. He tried to think Max was a fool, but there was an inner voice in his heart which whispered that there was something sublime in such folly, and, try as he might, this inner voice would not altogether be silenced.
The days went on swiftly. Max kept his scholarship up to the highest standard, but the twenty credit marks taken from his list put all hope of his attaining the leadership out of the question.
It was the very night before the examination when President King answered a tap on his door with his well known, resonant "Come in." His visitor was Hal Somers.
The next morning, after prayers, the president said, very quietly,—
"Young gentlemen, before the examination commences I have to detain you long enough to perform a simple act of justice. I acquit Max Grenoble of all complicity in the misdemeanor committed on the night of the 14th of June; the entire burden of the same having been assumed by Henry Somers, in behalf of himself, William Graves, George Saunders, and John Morse. And as this confession was voluntary, I shall visit upon the offenders no severer penalty than the loss of all their credit marks for the last quarter."
Poor little Molyneux Bell forgot time and place, and threw his handkerchief into the air with one glad shout:—
"I knew Max would come out right at last; I knew he would."
So Max went back the next year to Eagleheight, as the head boy; and under his leadership a new state of affairs was brought about. He led them not only in class, and in athletic exercises, but in all true manliness. They had found out at length that he had plenty of "pluck and grit," even though he might not emulate Sayers or Heenan. One of his warmest friends was Hal Somers, in whose character enough nobility was latent to recognize at last the sterling worth even of his rival.
AGATHA'S LONELY DAYS.
They had buried Agatha's mother,—put her away under a sheltering tree, beloved of bird and breeze, which waved its boughs between her and the bending, changeful summer sky. Agatha thought no other spot in the world could be so pleasant or so dear; and she longed, from the depths of her little, ten-years-old heart, to stay there with bird, and breeze, and tree, and the buried mother, who must hear her voice, she thought, even though she could never reply to it again in all the years.
Her father, pale with sorrow himself, had never come near enough to his child to be her comforter now. He talked little to any one of either his joys or his sorrows. Agatha loved him, partly because she had always been taught to love and have faith in him; and, partly, too, because she knew well, with that childish and intuitive perception which discovers every thing, how dear he was to her mother; but she did not feel near to him, and she could not possibly have told him how she longed to stay there beside that grave. She made no protest when he took her hand to lead her away, though it seemed to her that she left her heart behind her, and that the lump in her breast was a cold stone to which warmth would never come back any more.
She went home, and some one took off her little black hat, and put on an apron over her mourning gown, and then she was left in peace to sit at the window, and look out toward the spot where they had laid her mother, and wonder what was to become of her. They called her to supper, but she was not hungry,—she thought she never should be again,—and there was no mother to beguile her with dainty morsels. When they found she did not want to come they let her alone, and still she sat there and wondered.
At last the twilight fell, and in the dusk her father came to her. He loved her very dearly; and especially now, that her mother was gone, and only she was left to him, he felt for her an unspeakable tenderness; literally unspeakable, for he did not know how to utter one word of it to his child. He longed to comfort her,—to tell her how dear she was to him,—but he could not. He sat down beside her, and looked at her little pale face, outlined against the western window, with such a depth of pity that it seemed to make his voice quieter and colder than ever when he spoke, because it required such an effort to speak at all.
"To-morrow, Agatha, I shall take you to your Aunt Irene. Every girl needs a woman's care, and she will watch over you as faithfully as if you were her own."
Agatha never dreamed of objecting. She tried to think that she might as well be in one place as another, for she shouldn't live long anywhere without her mother. But she dreaded Aunt Irene's watching, as she dreaded few things in the world. She had made visits now and then at the quiet old homestead of which this aunt was mistress, and it seemed to her, on such occasions, that Aunt Irene did nothing but watch her from the time she entered the house; and in those days it had taken all the sunshine of her mother's joyous nature to gild the visits into some substitute for the pleasures other children took in their vacations. Now, to go without her mother—all alone—and be "watched over" by her aunt! She began to know that she had a heart, after all, by its frightened fluttering.
Aunt Irene was her father's sister, with all the Raymond peculiarities of pride, and reserve, and silence, which made him half a stranger to his own child, intensified in her by her life of seclusion and of absolute authority over herself and her possessions. Her experiences had been narrow, and her aims had been narrow also. Mr. Raymond saw this, his one sister, always at her best; and, through long knowledge of her, he understood her really trustworthy and excellent qualities. He felt that he was doing for Agatha the best which fate now permitted him to do, in confiding her to this guidance, so sure to be wise, as he believed, even if not loving.
The long car-ride next day was almost a silent one. Agatha would have rejected with hot juvenile scorn, the idea that the presence or absence of any material comforts could affect her grief; and yet she would have felt a little less desolate, I think, if the heat had not been so intense, the dust so choking, and the seat so hard and straight.
When she had made the journey in other years with her mother, how much shorter the way had seemed. The fresh linen frocks she used to wear were so much easier and cooler than the stifling black gown she had on to-day; and somehow her mother knew just when to open the windows and when to shut them, and if the seat was straight and hard, there was always mamma's lap or shoulder to lean against; and she forgot to be weary when mamma beguiled the time by poem or story. But her father rode silently, looking into vacancy for a face he would never see again; and after he had once bought Agatha's ticket, and seated her beside him, it did not occur to him to do any thing to relieve the monotony of the long, dusty ride.
It was dusk when the stage from the railway station set them down at Aunt Irene's door. Agatha walked up the path timidly. It was a long, straight path, and either side of it grew thoroughly well-disciplined flowers; a rosebush on one side, just opposite to a rosebush on the other,—Agatha wondered if either of them would have dared to bear one rose more than the other did,—a peony on one side and its mate opposite; so of a syringa bush, a flowering almond, and a root of lilies. Between the well-marshalled ranks of flowers, which somehow made the child think of soldiers on guard, she followed her father up to the door, where Aunt Irene waited, grim chatelaine.
Mr. Raymond shook hands with his sister, and then said gravely,—
"Irene, I have brought you my poor, motherless little girl," and Aunt Irene put out her firm, strong, unyielding hand and took the child's into it, then bent and—not kissed her, kisses belonged to the dead days—but laid her lips on her cheek, and so Agatha went in.
Every thing was good and substantial in Aunt Irene's house. You found there no frail stands which a careless touch might throw over, no brittle ornaments, no egg-shell china. The carpets were dark and rich and sombre. The tables and chairs were all of solid wood, and stood high and square. The sofas were heavy and firm, and the whole air of the place was grave and respectable, as Aunt Irene's surroundings should have been. I am not sure that any light, modern, fancy articles, suggestive of elegant idleness, had they been placed in her rooms, would not themselves have perceived their unsuitableness, and trundled off on their own castors.
The supper which awaited the travellers followed the prevailing fashion of the house. The biscuits were three times as large as the biscuits on other tea-tables. There were no frisky rolls, no light-minded whips or wafers. But there were good old-fashioned preserve, serious-looking cake, and substantial slices of cold meat.
Aunt Irene herself, sitting behind the tea-urn—solid silver, of course—comported with all the rest. She was a solid woman, with no superfluous flesh, and yet with a well-fed, well-to-do aspect, which was unmistakable. Her head was high and narrow, her features good, her strong hair had disdained to turn gray, and her eyes were keen if cold. Her lips, which had never cooed over babies, or soothed the sorrows of little children, or talked nonsense to any listener, were thin, as to such seldom-used lips seemed natural. They shut tightly over all her secrets.
Agatha's head began to ache furiously, and she could not eat. The room swam round and round till she felt as if she were the centre of a rolling ball, and her chair rocked, she thought, and she was slipping off it, when her father saw her white, strange face and wavering figure, and sprang up just in time to catch her in his arms.
"She is sick, Irene," he said. "Where is her room? Let me carry her there."
While he went upstairs with her she revived, and lifted her tired head from his shoulder to look into his eyes.
"I wish you were not going away, papa," she ventured to say.
"I can't stay on in the old places, where I have lived with your mother, without her," was the answer which came, and which was like giving her a key wherewith to unlock her father's heart, and so made the two nearer to each other than they had ever been before.
"Some time will you come back, and let me live with you?" she whispered, wondering at her own rashness.
"If you are good, dear, and learn to be womanly and helpful, and to take care of yourself, I will come back for you, or you shall come to me, and we will be together always."
No one knew with what passionate yet timid hope Agatha's little heart beat as she lay there alone on her strange, high bed. Womanly and helpful,—that was what he had said, and she would be just that. She would do all Aunt Irene said, and never mind how much she was watched, since watching might help to make her nearer right, and get her ready all the sooner to go to her father and be his comfort.
The very next day he left her. The death of his wife had seemed to sweep away all his old landmarks. He had been, hitherto, a quiet unadventurous man contented with his narrow routine of daily duty, which always brought him back to the tenderness of her welcoming smile. Now that smile was frozen for ever on her cold lips, and a strange restlessness possessed him. He had meant to stay a few days with Agatha in her new home, but he felt as if the inaction would drive him mad, so he hurried away; and a week afterward Aunt Irene showed Agatha his name in the passenger list of a European steamer.
It was June then, and the gay summer went on working its daily miracles round Agatha's quiet home. Bright birds sang to her, and gay flowers bloomed for her picking; and nature ran riot in a wood a quarter of a mile away, where the flowers asked no leave of Aunt Irene to blow, or the birds to sing. The child used to go there when her daily tasks were done, but she carried with her so sad a heart that nothing seemed to cheer her. She wondered what all the growing things were so glad about, in the summer weather, and, remembering an old phrase she had heard, she concluded it was because nature was their mother, and nature never died.
"Oh, Mother Nature, I wish you were a relative of mine!" she used to cry, sometimes, with unconscious quaintness; but before the summer was over, leaning her head so much on the mosses, a sense of kinship began to thrill in her pulses, and before she knew it the pain in her heart was eased a little, and she began to think of her mother, not as buried up and hidden away from her, but as near to her and waiting for her.
Meantime she never forgot her father's words,—"Womanly and helpful,"—they were the keynote of her life. Aunt Irene wondered at her. She had thought her a mischievous little elf in the old days, but there was no mischief in her now. She herself respected no more religiously the rules of the household than did this little quiet child.
As for trouble, why the creature gave none,—she was learning to do every thing for herself. At last even Aunt Irene grew half frightened at this still patience, which she felt must be unnatural to childhood. She began to wish that she could hear Agatha laugh or shout,—that sometimes the child would tear her gowns, when she had on her oldest ones, at least,—that she would show some self-will, some little trace of her descent from apple-eating Adam of the old time.
She wrote to her brother how good and quiet his little girl was; but her heart misgave her. She did not know what more she could do to make her small inmate comfortable, but she had a vague sense that Agatha was living an unchildlike life, and was less happy than in the old days when the little girl and her mother came there together.
Mother Nature has her own methods of exacting compensation, and for Agatha's overstrained and unnatural life pay-day came in the autumn. It had grown too cold to lie with her ear on the mosses, listening to the earth's pulse-beats, and the child sat quietly within doors, until one day she turned very pale and rolled off her stiff, straight chair to the carpet, and Aunt Irene picked her up, a lighter weight now than in the spring-time, and carried her to her room.
Dr. Greene was sent for at once, and he looked at his little patient very gravely, and then whispered "typhoid" to her aunt.
Aunt Irene wrote a hurried line to Agatha's father, and then took up her post at the bedside, which for five weeks she scarcely left. She had a heart, only long ago she had concluded it was an inconvenience and locked it up; but now it broke loose from its confinement and half frightened her by its throbbings.
Her brother was very dear to her. She had loved him all his life, after the deep, silent, undemonstrative fashion of those who love but few; and now if this fresh grief was to come upon him how could she bear to see him suffer? But she did not allow these thoughts to interfere with her usefulness at Agatha's bedside. Day and night she watched over the child, who never once knew her, but who constantly mistook her for her mother, and clung to her passionately in the delirium of her fever.
"O mother!" she would say, "I thought I never, never should see you again. No one was cross to me, mamma darling; but no one loved me since you went away. I've been trying to grow womanly and helpful, so papa would be glad to have me with him by and by; but now you've come and you'll love me whether I'm good or not."
Then again she seemed roaming through the woods.
"Hark," she would say, "hear how the birds sing, and see the gay flowers swing in the wind! Their mother doesn't die, and they have no aunts. O birdies! you don't know how cold Aunt Irene's lips are."
And Aunt Irene, listening, bent over the bed with tears blinding her eyes. Had her life been all a failure? she asked herself. She had tried to do her duty: was it all nothing, because she hadn't loved? Oh! if Agatha would but get well she would find some way to make her happy.
Before the crisis of the child's fever came, her father had arrived. The letter found him in Paris, and he had set out in twenty-four hours upon his homeward journey.
"Is she alive?" he asked, when his sister met him at the door, and started back, shocked by his haggard face.
"Yes, she lives, and the doctor says her fever must turn soon. Come and see her."
The little flushed face had never been so beautiful in its brightest days of health and joy, as now, with the clustering rings of hair framing in scarlet cheeks and large, strangely brilliant eyes. The father's heart almost broke as he stood there, unable to make her recognize his presence. While he watched, she said what she had said so often during the hours of that wasting sickness,—
"I have tried to be womanly and helpful. I think papa will want me after awhile. I hope so for Aunt Irene's lips are cold."
How keenly he reproached himself then for having left her, only God knew. He was a silent man, as I have said, and silently he shared Aunt Irene's vigil without even thinking of rest after his journey.
The next night Dr. Greene waited also by that bedside for the crisis he foresaw. At last the child slept.
"When she wakes we shall know what to expect," he said, and went away into the next room for a little rest. But the father and the aunt never moved. It was midnight, and every thing was strangely, unnaturally still, as it always seems to watchers in the middle of the night, when they heard Agatha call out of the hush and the stillness, with a sudden, glad cry of recognition,—
"O mamma! mamma!"
"Is she dying?" Mr. Raymond's look asked, for his lips refused to speak, and his sister's face made answer, "Not yet."
The hours, the long, slow hours went on. The night grew darker and deeper. Then above the hills there stretched a faint line of dawn-light which deepened at length to rose, and then was shot through by a golden arrow from the rising sun. And then, as the dawning glory touched the little white, still face upon the pillows, the eyes opened, and a voice—Agatha's own natural voice, but oh, so faint and low!—said, softly but gladly,—
"I have seen mamma. I wanted to go with her, but she said papa and Aunt Irene both needed me, and I was to stay here and grow well and happy. And so I shall."
"And so, please God, you shall," Dr. Greene said, cheerily, having come in from the next room; and the father sank upon his knees by the bedside, with some murmured words, which only the Father in heaven understood, upon his lips; and Aunt Irene hurried off, she said, to get something for the child to take, but she stopped a long time upon the way.
"I knew you were here, papa," and Agatha reached out her thin little fingers to touch the bowed head beside her. "I knew, because mamma told me."
Strangely enough, all her timidity had vanished. Mamma had said that papa and Aunt Irene needed her, and that was enough. Soon her aunt came in, and she looked up, gratefully.
"You have been so good to me, Aunt Irene," she said, "so good that I thought it was mamma who was tending me, but I know now it was you, and I think you must love me, because you have kept me alive."
And so my story of Agatha's lonely days ends; for after this she never was lonely any more. Her father and aunt had learned that little hearts need something more than to be clothed and fed; and Agatha had learned, by their care for her, their love for her, and never doubted again that she had her own place in their hearts.
But had she seen her own mamma? you ask. Ah, who knows the mysteries of the border land between life and death? Some of you will believe that she but dreamed a dream; and others, perchance, will think the Father, who has so often sent His angels to comfort His earthly children, sent to her the home-faced angel whom her heart loved. I cannot tell. I only know that Agatha believed always that a beloved voice not of this world had spoken to her.
THIN ICE.
The little village of Westbrook seemed to have been standing still, while all the rest of the world had gone on. The people lived very much as their fathers and grandfathers had lived before them. They were all farmers except the doctor and the minister.
The doctor was a very skilful man; but he had been reared on a Westbrook farm, and when he went out into the world to get his medical education he had brought back with him, to quiet Westbrook, only the knowledge he sought, and none of the airs and graces of town life.
The minister, too, was Westbrook born and bred, and his wife had scarcely ever been outside the town in all her days, so that there was no one in the simple community to set extravagant fashions, or turn foolish heads by gayety or splendor.