“Day dawned—within a curtained room,Filled to faintness with perfume,A lady lay at point of doom.Morn broke—an infant saw the light,But for the lady, fair and bright,She slumbered in undreaming night.”Life and death had passed each other on the threshold! Lucy Ford’s tears were the baptism of Mary’s motherless babe. The poor weary heart, whose pulse had beat so unevenly above it, had ceased its flutterings. It was nothing new to see Mary lie with marble face, folded hands, and softly-fringed, closed eyes. But,sometimes, the thin hand had been kindly outstretched toward Lucy;sometimes, the glossy head had raised itself, and leaned tenderly on the maternal bosom;sometimes, the blue eye had lingered lovingly on her wrinkled face. Small comfort, God knows—and yet it was much to poor Lucy. She looked at the little gasping, helpless thing before her—a tenant already for her rifled heart—a new claimant for her love and care. Oh, how could she else but welcome it? With soft folds she wrapped its fragile limbs, with motherlycare she soothed it on her sunken breast, and with a prayer to God, as she pressed her lips to Mary’s brow, she promised Death to be faithful to the trust of Life.Days and nights—weeks, months and years came and went, blanching the prisoner’s lip and cheek, but failing to subdue a love which yet had not saved him from incurring a doom so terrible. Had Mary forgotten him? for, since that dreadful, happy day, when he clasped her in his cell, he had heard nothing save the damning sneer of the villain Scraggs. Perhaps she was dead—and his bloodless lip quivered at the thought. Nay—worse—perhaps they might have married her, in her despair, to another. Percy tossed on his narrow cot in agony.He even welcomed the day-light, which recalled him to his task. Oh, those long, long nights, when locked in his cell, remorse kept him silent company! or worse, the dreary, idle Sunday, when taken out once to chapel, then remanded back to his dark cell, he lay thinking of the pleasant Sabbaths he had passed with Mary, in the little parlor, on the sofa by her side. He could see her now, in the pretty blue dress she wore to please him; the ring he had given her, sparkling on her white hand—her glossy hair, worn the very wayheliked to see it, the book opened at the passageheliked best, the little flower pressed between its leaves, becausehegave it. Then the little arbor in the garden—where they used tosit the pleasant Sabbath evenings—the song Mary sang him there—with her head upon his breast. Oh, happiness—oh, misery!Percy knew it was summer, for as he passed through the prison-yard he saw that the green blades of grass were struggling up between the flag-stones, and now and then, he heard the chirp of a passing bird. The sky, too, was softly blue, and the breeze had been where clover and daisies had bloomed, and rifled their sweetness.Percy looked down on his shrunken limbs, clad in his felon garb—then on his toil-worn hands. He passed them slowly over his shaven crown. Merciful Heaven! he—Percy Lee—Mary’s lover! Fool—thrice-accursed fool; life—liberty—happiness—love—all laid at the feet of the tempting fiend—for this! No tears relieved the fierce fire, which seemed consuming his heart and brain. How long could he bear this? Was his cell to be his grave? Once, seized with a sudden illness, he had been taken to the prison hospital, where the doctor tried pleasant little experiments on the subjects who came under his notice. Around him were poor wretches, groaning under every phase of bodily and mental discomfort. Now roused out of some Heaven-sent slumber, when it suited the doctor to show them to visitors; or to descant upon the commencement and probable duration of their disease, coupled with accounts of patients who had died in those beds, and whom hecouldhave cured under different circumstances.It was here that Percy shed the only tears which had moistened his eyes since his incarceration. A party of visitors were passing through the wards, listening to the doctor’s egotistical details, and peeping into the different cots. A sweet little girl had strayed away from the rest of her party, and was making her tour of childish observation alone. Her eye fell upon Percy. She stood for a moment, gazing at him with the intensest pity written on her sweet face. Then gliding up to his side, she drooped her bright curls over his pillow, and placing a flower between his fingers, she whispered, “I’ll pray to God to make you well and let you go home.”“Mary! come here,” said a shrill female voice, recalling the child; “don’t you know that is a horrid bad man! he might kill you.”“No, he is not,” said the little creature, confidently, with a piteous glance of her soft, blue eyes at Percy; “no, he is not.”“What makes you think so?” asked one of the party.“I don’t know,” replied the child; “something tells me so—here;” and she laid her hand on her breast.“Won’t you please let him go home?” asked she of the doctor.“Home.”As the sweet pleader passed out, the room seemed to grow suddenly dark, and Percy turned his face to his pillow, and wept aloud.Heavenly childhood! that the world should ever chill thy Christ-like heart. That scorn should uproot pity. That suspicion should stifle love. That selfishness should dry up thy tears, and avarice lock thine open palm, with its vice-like grasp! Oh, weep not ye who straighten childhood for the grave; over whose household idols the green grass waves; heaven’s bright rain showers and spring flowers bloom. Let the bird soar, while his song is sweetest, before one stain soil his plumage, or with maimed wing he flutter helplessly. Let him soar. The cloud which hides him from thy straining eye, doth it not hide him from the archer?CHAPTER XII.“The top o’ the mornin’ to yez, Bridget,” said Pat, poking his head into the kitchen. “Is the ould lady up yet? Sorry a plight masther was in the night—dhrunk as a baste—and he cares no more for his own flesh and blood than I do for a Protestant—bad ’cess to ’em.”“Thrue for you, Patrick, and may I niver confess again to the praste, if his light o’ love is not misthress here before long; he is as bould-faced about it as if poor Misthress Mary wasn’t fresh under the sod. God rest her sowl.”Bridget’s prediction was not long being verified. Upholsterers were soon in attendance, re-modeling and re-furnishing poor Mary’s apartments, of whichthe prettydanseuseshortly took unblushing and triumphant possession. It was understood in the house, that her will was to be law; and implicit obedience to the same the surest passport to head-quarters. Poor Lucy, willing to bear any thing rather than separation from the child—chased from one room to another—finally took refuge with her charge in the attic, whither poor Mary’s portrait had long since been banished. For the little Fanny’s sake, she patiently endured every humiliation; she heeded not the careless insolence of the newrégimeof servants. She bore every caprice of the tyrannical littledanseuse. Patiently her feeble limbs tottered up stairs and down, performing the offices of nurse and servant to her grandchild; patiently she soothed it when ill, or amused it when fretful; uncomplainingly she bore from her son-in-law his maudling curses, when they passed each other on the stairs, or in the hall. Every thing—any thing, but separation from Mary’s child, which nestled every day closer to her heart; and whose soft eyes and glossy curls reminded her every day more forcibly of her lost daughter. Every day she prayed to God to spare the withered trunk till the vine which clambered round it should gather strength to brave the winds and storms. Fanny slept securely on her breast, while the bacchanalian song resounded through the house, and obscene jests, and curses loud and deep, made night hideous. And when the moonbeams penetrated the little window, and,falling upon Mary’s portrait, revealed her in all her beauty, before the shadow had fallen on her fair brow, or dimmed her lustrous eyes, or robbed that dimpled mouth of its sunny smile, poor Lucy would nestle closer to little Fanny, and pray God that so bitter a cup might pass fromher.Dear little Fanny! with her plump little arms thrown carelessly over her curly head, her pearly teeth just gleaming through her parted lips, as if some kind angel even then were promising her exemption from such a doom.Time crept on, blanching Lucy’s cheek to deadly paleness, tinting Fanny’s with a lovelier rose; thinning Lucy’s silver hair, piling the golden clusters round Fanny’s ivory brow; bending Lucy’s shrunken limbs, rounding Fanny’s into symmetry and grace.True, the child never left the attic; but what place, how circumscribed soever, will not Love beautify and brighten? True, “mamma’s” pictured semblance responded not to the little upturned face and lisping lips, but who shall say that age and infancy were theonlytenants of that lonely room?Fanny knew that she had a “papa” somewhere in the house, but “papa” was always “sick,” or “busy,” so grandmamma said; that must be the reason why he never came up to see his little girl. Sometimes Fanny amused herself by climbing up to the little window, overlooking the square where asilvery fountain tossed its sparkling diamonds to the sun, who turned them all sorts of pretty colors, and sent them quivering back again. Little Fanny liked that! Then she saw little children playing round the fountain, sailing their tiny boats on its bosom, and clapping their hands gleefully when they rode safely into port. Great shaggy Newfoundland dogs, too, jumped into the water, and swam, with their black noses just above the surface, and ever and anon sprang out upon the mossy bank, shaking their shaggy coats upon the more dainty ones of mamma’s little pets, quite regardless of lace, silk, or ribbon. It was a pretty sight, and little Fanny wanted to go to the fountain too; but grandmamma was so feeble, and she had so much running to do up and down stairs, that she had no strength left to walk; and then grandmamma had to make all Fanny’s little dresses, and keep them tidy and nice; and by the time the sun moved off of mamma’s picture in the afternoon, she was quite ready to go to bed with little Fanny.Poor old grandmamma! Fanny handed her her spectacles, and a cricket to put her poor tired feet upon, and picked up the spools of cotton when they rolled upon the floor, and learned too to thread her needles quite nicely, for grandmamma’s eyes were getting dim; and sometimes Fanny would try to make the bed, but her hand was so tiny that she could not even cover one of the small roses of its patch-work quilt. Dear little thing! He whoblessed little children, recorded of her, “She hath done what she could.”One day Fanny heard a great noise—a great bumping and tumbling, as if some heavy body were falling down the stairs. Then she heard a deep groan—and thensucha shriek! If she lived to be as old as grandma, that shriek would never go out of her ears; then there was a great running to and fro, Patrick and Bridget wrung their hands, and said ochone! ochone! and then grandmamma’s face grew very white, as she took Fanny by the hand and hurried down stairs; and when they got into the lower entry, there lay a gentleman very still on the floor. A beautiful lady was kneeling on the floor beside him, chafing his temples—but it was of no use; feeling of his pulse—but it was quite still. Then the beautiful lady shrieked again—oh, so dreadfully! and then she fell beside him like one dead.Fanny’s grandma whispered to her, that the gentleman “was her papa,” and that he had fallen down stairs and broken his neck—grandma did not say that he was drunk when he did it. Fanny crept up to him, for she had wanted so much to see her papa—so she put her little rosy face close to his, and said, “Wake up, please, papa, and see me.” But he did not open his eyes at all; then she put her hand on his face, and then she seemed frightened—her little lip quivered, and she clung to her grandmother’s dress—then some men came and carried papa up stairs, and the maid-servants laid the beautiful lady on the sofa, in the parlor; and she and grandma went back up into the attic—and all that day, grandma did not seem to see mamma’s picture at all; and when Fanny came up to her, she wept and said, “God help you—my poor lamb.”CHAPTER XIII.The bell sounded at Bluff Hill Prison, to call the prisoners to their tasks. They passed out from their cells and crossed, two by two, the prison-yard to their workshops. Percy and a stout negro were the last couple in the file. Just as they were about passing in, the African, who had received the punishment of the douche the day previous, for dilatoriness at his task, sprang upon the officer in waiting, and seized him by the throat. Percy, whose pugilistic science was a match for the African’s muscle, grappled with and secured him in an instant, receiving, as he did so, a severe bite from the fellow’s teeth, in his left shoulder. The negro was handcuffed, and Percy carried to the hospital, to have his wound dressed. The officer, in the flush of his gratitude, assured him, as he left, that the case should be laid before the governor, and would undoubtedly result in his pardon.Percy’s eye brightened, as he bowed his head in reply, but in truth he took no credit for the deed;it was only following an irresistible impulse to save the life of a fellow-creature.Liberty! it would be sweet! But, pshaw! why dream of it? Men were proverbially ungrateful. Ten to one, the officer would never think of his promise again; or if he did, the governor would lay it on the table, to be indefinitely postponed, or forgotten, or rejected, with a thousand other troublesome applications. No—suns would rise and set just as they had done, and time for him would be marked only by the prison-bell, with its clanging summons to labor. He should see, every day, as he had done, the poor lame prisoner sunning himself in his favorite corner in the yard—he should see the prisoners’ mattresses, hung on the rails to air—he should see the gleam of the blacksmith’s forge, and hear the stroke of the stonecutter’s hammer; the shuttle would fly, and the wheel turn round. He should sit down to his wooden plate, his square bit of salt meat, and his one potato, and drink water out of his rusty tin cup. He should gasp out the starry nights in his stifling cell; he should hear the rustling of silken robes, as ladies went the prison rounds, and his heart would beat quick as he thought of Mary; he should burn forever with the fire of remorse and shame—yet never consume; the taper would flicker and flicker—yet never go out.So Percy sat carelessly down on the hospital bench, to have his wound dressed; and listened to the asthmatic breathing of the sick man at his side,and saw the hospital cook stirring in a cauldron some diluted broth, and watched the doctor, as he compounded a plaster, and leisurely smoked a cigar; and looked at a green branch which the wind ever and anon swept across the grated window, showering its snowy blossoms, as if in mockery, on the prison floor.O, no—liberty was not for him—and why should it be? Had he not forfeited it by his own rash act?—was not his punishment just?—had he not lost the confidence of his fellow men?—crushed the noblest and purest heart that ever God warmed into life and love? It was all too true, and there had been moments when he meekly accepted his punishment, when he toiled in his prison uniform, not as if under the eye of a taskmaster, but willingly, almost cheerfully, as if by expiatory penance he could atone to himself for the wrong he had done that guileless heart. O, did it still beat? and for him? for the thousandth time he questioned. Could Mary look on him? smile on him?lovehim still? O, what mockery were liberty else! What mattered it how brightly the sun shone, if it shone not on their love purified and intensified by sorrow? What matter how green the earth, if they walked not through it side by side? What mattered it how fresh the breeze—how blue the sky—how soft the moonbeams—how sweet the flowers—how bright the stars—if day and night found not their twin hearts beating like one? Better his cell should be his tomb.CHAPTER XIV.“I like to live here,” said little Fanny, running up to Lucy, with her sun-bonnet hanging at the back of her neck; her cheeks glowing, and her apron full of acorns, pebbles, pine leaves, grasses and flowers; “see here, I tied them up with a blade of grass for you, and here’s a white clover; a great bumble bee wanted it, he buzzed and buzzed, but I ran off with it; won’t you go with me, grandmother, and help me find a four-leaved clover? Don’t sew any more on those old vests. Who taught you to make vests?” asked the little chatterbox.“O, I learned many—many—years ago,” replied Lucy, with a sigh, as she thought of Jacob; “and now you see, dear, what a good thing it is to learn something useful when one is young. If I did not know how to make these vests, I could not pay for this room we live in, you know; here, thread my needle, darling, either the eye is too small, or my eye is too dim; I can’t see as well as I used.”“I wish I could do something useful,” said Fanny, as she handed back the needle. “I can only brush up the hearth, and fill the tea-kettle, and pick up your spools, and thread your needle, and—what else, grandma?”“Make this lonely old heart glad, my darling,” said Lucy, pressing her lips to Fanny’s forehead.“Why didn’t my papa ever come kiss me?” asked Fanny. “Was I too naughty for my papa to love?”“No—no, my darling,” said Lucy, turning away her head to restrain her tears, “you are the best little girl that—but run away, Fanny,” said she, fearing to trust herself to speak. “Go find grandma a pretty four-leaved clover.”The child sprang up and bounded toward the door. Standing poised on one foot on the threshold, with her little neck bending forward, she exclaimed eagerly, “Oh, grandma, I dare not; there’s a man climbing over the stile into the meadow, with a pack on his back; won’t he hurt me?”“No,” said Lucy, peering over her spectacles at the man, and then resuming her seat, “it is only a peddler, Fanny; shops are scarce in the country, so they go round with tapes, needles, and things, to sell the farmers’ wives. I am glad he has come, for I want some more sewing-silk to make these button-holes.”“Good day, ma’am,” said the peddler, unlading his pack. “Would you like to buy any thing to-day? Combs—collars—needles—pins—tapes—ribbons—laces? buy any thing to-day, ma’am?”“May I look?” whispered Fanny to Lucy, attracted by the bright show in the box.“There’s a ribbon for your hair,” said the peddler, touching her curls caressingly; “and here is a stringof beads for your neck. You will let me give them to you, won’t you? because I have no little girl to love;” and his voice trembled slightly.“May I love him, grandma?” whispered Fanny, for there was something in the peddler’s voice that brought tears into her eyes. “May I give him some milk to drink, and a piece of bread?” and hardly waiting for an answer, she flew to the cupboard, and returned with her simple lunch.“Thank you,” said the peddler, in a low voice, without raising his eyes.The sewing-silk was purchased, and the box rearranged, and strapped up, but still the peddler lingered. Lucy, thinking he might be weary, invited him to stop and rest awhile.“I will sit here on the door-step awhile, if you please, with the little girl,” said the peddler. “Are you fond of flowers?” said he to Fanny, again touching her shining curls.“Oh, yes,” she replied; “only I don’t like to go alone to get them—the cows stare at me so with their great big eyes, and the little toads hop over my feet, and I am afraid they will bite; they won’t bite, will they?” asked Fanny, looking confidingly up in his face.“I should not think any thing could harmyou,” replied the peddler, drawing his fingers across his eyes.“What are you crying for?” asked Fanny, “’cause you haven’t any little girl to love you?”“The dust, dear, in the road, quite blinded me to-day,” replied the peddler.“I will bring you some water for them, in my little cup,” said Fanny. “Grandma bathes her eyes when they ache, sewing on those tiresome vests.”“No—no”—said the peddler, catching her by the hand as she sprang up—“don’t go away—sit down—here—close by me—I will make a wreath of flowers for your hair; your eyes are as blue as this violet.”“They are mamma’s eyes,” said Fanny. “Grandma calls them ‘mamma’s eyes.’ We have a pretty picture of mamma—see—that’s it,” and she bounded across the room and drew aside a calico curtain which screened it. “There, isn’t it pretty?—why don’t you look?”The peddler slowly turned his head, and replied, in a husky voice, “Yes, dear.”“Mamma is dead,” said Fanny, re-seating herself by his side. “What makes you shiver? are you cold?—he is sick, grandma,” said Fanny, running up to Lucy.“A touch of my old enemy, the ague, ma’am,” said the peddler, respectfully—and Lucy returned to her needle.“Yes, my mamma is dead,” said Fanny. “Are you sorry my mamma is dead? Sometimes I talk to her—grandma likes to have me; but mamma’s picture never speaks back. Don’t you wish my mamma would speak back?” said Fanny, looking up earnestly in his face.The peddler nodded—bending lower over the wreath he was twining.“My papa is dead, too,” said Fanny—“are you sorry my papa is dead? Nobody loves me but grandma and God.”“And I”—said the peddler, touching her curls again with his fingers.“Why do you keep touching my hair?” asked the little chatterbox.“Because it is so like—oh, well—I am sure I don’t know,” said the peddler, placing the wreath over her bright face, and touching his lips to her forehead. “Good-by, dear, don’t forget me. I will make you a prettier wreath sometime, shall I?”“O yes,” said Fanny; “let me tell grandma. Grandma is so deaf she can’t hear us;” and the child ran back into the room to tell the news.“I like peddlers,” said little Fanny, as she watched her new friend saunter slowly down the road. “He gave me this pretty wreath and this ribbon; I am sorry he didn’t like mamma’s picture; he hardly looked at it at all.”“The peddler never heard of your mamma, my darling; you must not expect strangers to feel as you and grandma do about it.”“Yes,” replied Fanny, in a disappointed tone;—“but it is a pity, because I like him. There he goes; now he has climbed the fence, and is crossing the meadow. Good by, Mr. Peddler.”Yes—across the meadow, down the little grassy lane, over the stile—far into the dim—dim woods, where no human eye could penetrate, prostrate upon the earth, shedding such tears as manhood seldom sheds, lay the peddler. Still in his ears lingered that bird-like voice, still in his veins thrilled the touch of that tiny hand, and those silken curls, in whose every glossy wave shone out Mary’s self. Mary—yet not Mary; Mary’s child—yet nothischild!—And Lucy, too;—O, the sorrow written in every furrow of that kindly face, and—O God—by whom?The stars glimmered through the trees, the night-winds gently rocked the little merry birds to sleep—midnight came on with its solemn spirit-whispers—followed the gray dawn with its misty tears, and still—there lay the peddler, stricken, smitten, on Nature’s kindly breast; for there, too (but all unconscious of his misery—deaf to his penitence), lay pillowed the dear head which had erst drooped so lovingly upon his breast.CHAPTER XV.“Very well done; button-holes strong and even, lining smooth; stitching, like rows of seed pearl. This is no apprentice work,” said Mr. John Pray, as he held Lucy’s vests up to the light for a more minute inspection. “That’s a vest, now, as is a vest; won’t disgrace John Pray’s shop; it would gladdeneven the eyes of my old boss, Jacob Ford; and mighty particular he was, too, and mighty small wages the old man paid, as I have occasion to know. Well, I made a vow then, and thank God I have had grace to keep it, that if ever John Pray became a master workman, he would do as he would be done by. So, I don’t ask what wages other tailors give; that don’t matter to me. I don’t want to die with any body’s groans in my ears. So, when a piece of work is finished and handed in, I say, ‘Now, John Pray, what shouldyouthink was a fair price foryouto receive, ifyouhad done that ’ere job?’ That’s it; no dodging behind that question. ’Specially when a man has been through the operativemill himself. So, there’s your pay, Zekiel, weighed out in that ere pair of Bible scales; and you may tell the old lady, as you call her, that if she had served a regular apprenticeship at the trade, she couldn’t have done better. What did you say her name was? However, that’s no consequence—as long as she does the work well. Here’s some more vests for her.”“Well, I really don’t know,” said Zekiel, “I never heern tell her name. She’s a bran new neighbor, and as I was coming into town every day with my cart, she axed me, civil like, if I’d bring these vests to you. So, I brung ’em. I don’t mind doing a good turn for a fellow creetur, now and then, specially when it ’taint no bother,” added Zekiel, with a grin.“What did you spoil it for by saying that?” said John Pray. “I was just going to clap you on the back for a clever fellow.”“You might go further, and clap a worse fellow on the back,” answered Zekiel. “But I never boasts, I don’t. ’Tain’t no use. If the ministers tell the truth, we’ve all got to be weighed in the big scales up above, where there ain’t no false weights—bad deeds agin good deeds. Farmer Reed, I’m thinking, will be astonished when the balance on his account is struck. But, good day; my parsnips and cabbages ought to be in the market, instead of wilting at your door—even though you city folks don’t know the taste of a fresh vegetable. Good day.”CHAPTER XVI.Rain—rain—rain; patter, patter. No sunshine to help Lucy’s purblind eyes in stitching the dark vests; no sunshine to kiss open the buttercups for Fanny. The birds took short and hasty flights from tree to tree; the farmers slouched their hats over their faces, and whipped up their teams; the little school children hurried back and forth with their satchels, without stopping to look for chipmunks or for ground-birds’ nests; the bells on the baker’s cart lost their usual merry tinkle, and the old fishman’s horn, as he went his Friday round, gave forth a discordant, spiritless whine.Little Fanny had righted her grandmother’s work-basket, read “Jack and his Bean-Stalk,” made houses on the slate, put the black kitten to sleep in the old barrel, blown soap bubbles, till she was tired, in the tin bowl, and had finally crept up on the little cot bed and fallen asleep.Lucy sat back in her chair, and began counting over the money Zekiel had brought her. It would relieve their present necessities. Fanny should have some new clothes out of it, when farmer Smith’s rent was paid. But the future? Lucy’s eyes were growing dimmer every day, and her limbs more feeble. She might drop off suddenly, and then who would befriend poor little Fanny? What lessons of sorrow had that loving little heart to learn? By what thorny path would she thread life’s toilsome journey?Dear little Fanny! She could no more live without love than flowers without sunshine. Thatsheshould ever weep tears, that no kindly hand should wipe away; that she should hunger or thirst—shiver with winter’s cold—faint under summer heat; that a harsh voice should ever drive the blood from her lip or cheek—that her round limbs should bend with premature toil—that sin should tempt her helplessness—that sorrow should invite despair—that wrong should ever seem right to Mary’s child! Poor Lucy bowed her head and wept.The peddler looked in through the little casement window. He saw the falling tears, he saw Lucy’s sorrowful gaze at the rosy little dreamer. He neededno explanation of the tableau. He knocked at the door; Lucy’s tones were tremulous, as she bade him come in.“I thought you might be wanting some more silk,” said he, respectfully, with his eyes fixed upon little Fanny.“Sit down—sit down,” said Lucy; for the tones of his voice were kindly,and herheart in its loneliness craved sympathy. “It is dull weather we have, sir; one don’t mind it when all is righthere,” and she laid her hand on her heart.“True,” said the peddler, in a low voice, still gazing at Fanny.“The child sleeps,” said Lucy. “It was of her I was thinking when you came in; it would be very bitter to die and leave her alone, sir;” and Lucy’s tears flowed again.“Have you no relatives—no friends, to whom you could intrust her?” asked the peddler, with his eyes bent on the ground.“None, God help us,” replied Lucy.“Sir,” and Lucy drew her chair nearer to the peddler, “a great sorrow may sometimes be in the heart, when smiles are on the face.”The peddler nodded, without trusting himself to speak.“This poor heart has borne up until now, with what strength it might; but now”—and she glanced at little Fanny—“O, sir—if I could but take her with me.”“God will care for her,” said the peddler, stooping to remove his hat, that Lucy might not see his emotion.“Sometimes I feel that,” replied Lucy; “and then again—O, sir, trouble makes the heart so fearful. My poor daughter—she was our idol, sir—the sunbeam in our home; so good—so beautiful—so light-hearted, till the trouble came. It was like a lightning bolt, sir—it scathed and withered in one moment what was before so fresh and fair; it blighted all our hopes, it blackened our hearth-stone, it killed my husband—poor Jacob. Pardon me, sir, I talk as if you had known our history. It was Mary’s lover, sir; he was taken up for swindling, at our very door;—and yet I loved the lad—for the ground she walked on he loved—for Mary’s sake.”“Sheforgave him?” asked the peddler, in a voice scarcely audible.“She?—poor dear—she? All the world could not have made her believe ill of him. She? Why, sir, she would sit at the window for hours, watching the way he used to come. It crazed her, poor thing; and then she would come and go just as she was bid. Her father saw her fade, day by day, and cursedhim;—he forgot business—every thing went wrong—one way and another our money went, and then Jacob died.”“He forgavehim—your daughter’s lover, before he died?” asked the peddler, tremulously.“You have a kind heart, sir,” said Lucy. “Yes,Jacob’s heart softened at the last;—he said we all needed God’s mercy. His last words were ‘Peace.’”“God be thanked,” murmured the peddler; then adding, quickly, “it must have madeyouso much happier; you say you loved the lad.”“Yes,” said Lucy, “even now. We all err, sir. He was only nineteen—young to marry; but Mary’s heart was bound up in him. He didn’t mean it, sir—I don’t know how it was. God help us all.“Well, we buried Jacob; then we had none to look to—Mary and I. We were poor. I was feeble. Then Mary’s lover came—the rich Mr. Shaw. You are ill, sir?”“No—no,” replied the peddler; “go on—your story interests me.”“Well, he wanted to marry Mary, although he saw how it was. It was all one to her, you know, sir. She was crazed like—though so sweet and gentle. I did it for the best, sir,” said Lucy, mournfully. “I thought when I died Mary would have a home.”“Go on,” said the peddler. “He treated her kindly?” he asked, with a dark frown.“For a little,” answered Lucy. “He wearied after a while. I might have known it—I was to blame, sir—her heart was broken. When the babe opened its eyes, she closed her’s, and Ialonemourned for her.”“O, God!” groaned the peddler.“It moves you, sir,” said Lucy; “perhaps you, too, have known trouble.”The peddler bowed his head without replying.“Then, sir, he brought a gay young thing into the house—his mistress—not his wife. He never looked upon his child; he cursed me and it. I gave it our name; I called it Fanny Ford; and we crept away, the babe and I, up in the attic;—then all was confusion—extravagance—ruin;—then he died, sir—and since—you see us here—you know now, sir, why I, leaning over the grave’s brink, yet shrink back and cling to life forhersake,” and she looked at Fanny.“Would you trust her with me?” asked the peddler, with his eyes bent upon the ground. “I am all alone in the world—I have none to love—none who love me—I am poor, but while I have a crust, she shall never want.”“It is a great charge,” replied Lucy. “If you should weary, sir?”“Then may God forget me,” said the peddler, earnestly, kneeling at Lucy’s feet.Lucy bent on him a gaze searching as truth, but she read nothing in that upturned face to give the lie to those solemn words. Pointing to Fanny, she said,“Before God—and as you hope for peace at the last?”The peddler bowed his head upon Lucy’s withered hand, and faltered out, “I promise.”CHAPTER XVII.“Good morning, Zekiel,” said John Pray. “Glad to see you—you must tell the old lady to go ahead and finish this pile of vests in a twinkling; business is brisk now. Why, what’s this?” said he. “These vests unfinished? How’s that? Don’t the pay suit? What’s the trouble now?”“Don’t,” said Zekiel—“don’t—stop a bit—I’m as tough as any man—but there’s some things I can’t stand;” and he dashed a tear away.“What’s the matter now?” asked John. “Is the old lady dissatisfied with her pay?”“Don’t—I say,” said Zekiel;—“hold up—don’t harrow a man that way—she’s dead—I tell you stone dead. She never’ll make no more vests for nobody. I never shall forget what I saw there this morning, never.“You see she was old and infirm, and wan’t fit to work for any body any how; but she had a little gran’child, fresh as a rose-bud, and she did it for her, you see. Well, this morning I harnessed the old gray horse—the black one is lame since Sunday—and reined up at her door, as usual, to get the bundle. I knocked, and nobody came; then I knocked again, then little rose-bud came tip-toeing to the door, with her finger on her pretty lip, so—and whispered, ‘grandma is asleep; she has not woke up this great while.’ So I said—‘You’d betterspeak to her and say, here’s Zekiel, come for the bundle, cause you know she is partiklar like about sending it.’ So the little rose-bud went up to the bed-side, and said—‘Grandma, here is Zekiel, come for the vests.’ The old lady didn’t say nothing, and rose-bud asked me to speak to her. I went up, and—John Pray—the old lady was stone dead, and how was I going to tell that to little rose-bud?”“You don’t mean to tell me that the child was all alone with the corpse—nobody to see to the poor thing?” asked John.“But I do, though,” said Zekiel; “it was enough to break a body’s heart, and she so innocent like. I never was so put to it in my life, to know what to do. There she had gone and tidied up the kitchen, hung the tea-kettle on the fire as well as she knew how, and sat waiting for her gran’mother to ‘wake up,’ as she called it. How could I tell her she wasdead? Blast me if I could, to this minute.”“But you didn’t come away and leave her so?” asked John.“No,” replied Zekiel, “for a peddler came in, and little rose-bud ran up, glad-like, to see him; then I beckoned him one side, and told him just how it was, and he turned as white as a turnip, and great big tears rolled down his face, as he took little rose-bud up in his arms and kissed her. Then he told me he was a kind of a relation like, and poor, but that he would take the child and do the best he could by her; and I knew he must be clever, forchildren are powerful ’cute, and never take to cranky folks, any how—and so I left them, and came blubbering into town. I vow it was enough to make the very stones cry, to see little rose-bud take on so, after the old lady.”There was no litigious will to be read, no costly effects to quarrel about, in Lucy Ford’s poor cottage, and yet Golconda’s mines were all too poor to buy the priceless treasures to which the peddler fell heir—Mary’s picture and Mary’s child!With such talismans, what should he fear? what could he not accomplish? He no longer walked with his head bowed upon his breast. The pure love of that sinless little one restored his long-lost self-respect. Life was dear to him. His eye regained its luster; his step its firmness. Even his humble calling, now more than ever necessary, became to him dignified and attractive. Fanny should have an education worthy of Mary’s child. For the present, till he had amassed a little capital, he must find her a home in some quiet farmer’s family, where he could oversee her, in his occasional visits.Dear little Fanny! with her smiles and tears, she had already twined herself round every fiber of his heart. “Cousin John,” as the peddler taught her to call him, “was to take care of her always, and she was to love him dearly—dearly—better than any body, but mamma and grandma.”CHAPTER XVIII.Ah! there is Mrs. Quip’s head, poked out of the north chamber window. A sure sign that it is five o’clock to the minute. Now she scuds across the yard, making a prodigious flutter with her flying calico long-short, among the hens and chickens, who take refuge in an upturned old barrel. Snatching some sticks from the wood-pile, she scuds back again to the kitchen, twitches a match from the mantel, lights the fire, hangs on thetea-kettle,jerks out the table, rattles on the cups and saucers, plates, knives, forks,etc., and throws open every blind, door, and window. This done, she flies up stairs, pokes Susan in the ribs, drags Mary out on the floor, throws a mug of water in “that lazy John’s face,” and intimates that “breakfast will be on the table in less than fifteen minutes.”John rubs the water out of his eyes, muttering a few unmentionable words. Susan and Mary make a transient visit to the looking-glass, and descend the stair’s just as the coffee smokes upon the table. Mrs. Quip frightens the chickens into the barrel again with her calico long-short and the great bell that she ring at the barn-door to “call the men folks to breakfast,” and takes her accustomed seat at the table.“Brown bread or white? baked beans or salt meat? doughnuts, cheese, or apple-pie? which’ll you have?” said Mrs. Quip to little Fanny.“Ma’am?” said Fanny, with a bewildered look.“Oh, dear; Susan Quip, for gracious’ sake find out what that peddler’s child wants; hurry, all of you. Baking to be done to-day; yesterday’s ironing to finish; them new handkerchers to hem; John’s trowsers to mend; buttery shelves to scour; brown bread sponge to set; yeast to make; pickles to scald; head-cheese to fix: hurry, all of you. Susan Quip, there’s the cat in the buttery, smack, and—scissors—right into that buttermilk, arter a mouse. Scat—scat; Susan Quip, that’s your doings—leaving the buttery door open. John Quip, do you drownd that cat to-day. Don’t talk to me of kittens; kittens is as plenty as peddlers’ children. Hand me that coffee, Susan Quip. Lord-a-mercy, there’s the fishman: run, John—two mackerel, not more than sixpence a-piece; pinch ’em in the stomach, to see if they are fresh. If they are flabby, don’t take ’em; if they ain’t, do. Yes, every thing to do, to-day, and a little more beside. Soft soap to——Heavens and earth, John Quip, that mackerel man hasn’t given you the right change by two cents. Here, stop him! John Quip—Susan—get out of the way, all of you; I’ll go myself,” and the calico long-short started in full pursuit of the mackerel defaulter.Poor little Fanny! no Green Mountain boy, set down in the rush of the city, ever felt half so crazy. Mrs. Quip, with her snap-dragon, touch-me-not-manners, high-pitched voice, and heavy tramp, wassuch a contrast to her dear grandmother, with her soft tones, noiseless step, and gentle ways. Fanny was afraid to move for fear she should cross Mrs. Quip’s track. She did not know whether she were hungry or thirsty. She marveled at the railroad velocity with which the food disappeared, and pitied Mrs. Quipsomuch for having such a quantity of things to do all in a minute!The next day after Fanny’s arrival at Butternut farm, was Sunday. Mrs. Quip was up betimes, as usual, but her activity took a devotional turn. She was out to the barn fifty times a minute, to see “if the horse and waggin was getting harnessed for meetin’,”—not butMr.Quip was still above ground, but as far as he had any voice in family matters, he might as well have been under. Mrs. Quip was up in Susan’s room (or, as she pronounced it,Sewsan), to see if she was learning her catechise; she was padlock-ing John Quip’s Sunday temptation, in the shape of the “Thrilling Adventures of Jack Bowsprit;” she was giving the sitting-room as Sabbatical and funereal an aspect as possible, by setting the chairs straight up against the walls, shutting all the blinds, and putting into the cupboard every thing that squinted secular-wise.Fanny, oppressed by the gloom within doors, crept out into the warm sunshine, and seating herself under a tree in the yard, was looking at a few clover blossoms which she had plucked beside her. She was thinking of the pleasant Sundays she hadpassed with her dear grandmother, and how she used to sit on the door-step of the cottage, and tell her how God taught the little birds to build their cradle nests, and find their way through the air; and how He provided even for the little ants, who so patiently, grain by grain, built their houses in the gravel walk; and how He kept the grass green with the dew and showers, and ripened the fruit, and opened the blossoms with the warm sunshine, and how He was always watching over us, caring for our wants, listening to our cries, pitying us for our sorrows, and making His sun to shine even on those who forget to thank Him for it. But see—Fanny has dropped her clover blossoms, for Mrs. Quip has seized her by the arm, and says,“You wicked child, you! To think of picking a flowerSunday! What do you expect will become of you when you die? What do you think the neighbors will think? Sinful child! There”—slamming her down on a cricket in the sitting-room—“sit down, and see if you can learn what the chief end of man is, afore meeting time. Flowers of aSunday! or flowers any day, for the matter of that, I never could see the sense of ’em. Even the Bible says, ‘they toil not, neither do they spin.’ Gracious goodness—Sewsan Quip, Mrs. Snow’s kerriage has just started for meetin’. Get your things, all of you. Sewsan, see to that peddler’s child; mind that she don’t take no flowers to the Lord’s temple; John Quip, you shan’t wear them gloves; they costtwenty-five cents at the finding-store; and if you think that I bought ’em for you to drive in, you are mistaken; now put ’em in your pocket till you get into the meetin’-us porch; that will save ’em a sight; them leather reins will wear ’em all threadbare in less than no time. Mercy on us, the string is off my bunnet. Sewsan, that’s your doing. Run and bring me a pin off the third shelf in the buttery, under the yellow quart bowl. I picked it up and put it there this morning. Make haste, now. John Quip, stop cracking your whip that way on the holy Sabbath day. What do you suppose your dead grandpa would think, if he should hear it?”The wagon was brought, and its living freight stowed carefully away in the remote corners. The oil-cloth covering was buttoned carefully down on all sides, as it had been during the winter; Mrs. Quip said it was hot, but maybe it would crack the oil-cloth to roll it up for the breeze to play through. Susan, Mary, and Fanny, therefore, took a vapor bath, on the back seat. Mrs. Quip, seated at John’s side, excluded, with her big black bonnet, any stray breeze which might have found entrance that way, to the refreshing of the gasping passengers. Dobbin moved on; he had been up that hot, dusty hill, many a Sunday before, and understood perfectly well how to keep his strength in reserve for the usual accession to his load on the village green, in the shape of the Falstaffian Aunt Hepsibah, Miss Butts, the milliner, and Deacon Tufts, who wereduly piled in on the gasping occupants behind. Mrs. Quip being also on the alert to fill up any stray chinks in the “waggin” with “them children who stopped to rest in the road, when they oughter go straight to meetin’.”The unlading of Mrs. Quip’s wagon at the meeting-house door, was an exhibition much “reckoned on” by the graceless young men of the village, who always collected on the steps for the purpose, and with mock gallantry assisted Mrs. Quip in clambering over the wheels, suppressing their mirth at her stereotyped exhortation, as she glanced at Dobbin, “to see that they didn’t start the critter.”It was a work of time to draw out the unctuous Aunt Hepsibah; Deacon Tufts, more wiry and agile, “helped hisself,” as Mrs. Quip remarked. The crowning delight was the evacuation of the wagon, by Miss Butts—who, with a mincing glance at the men, circumspectly extended one finger of her right hand—gingerly exposed the tip of the toe of her slipper, and with sundry little shrieks and exclamations, prolonged indefinitely the delicious agony of her descent, as the young gentlemen by turns profanely touched her virgin elbows. Thirty-nine years of single blessedness had fully prepared her to appreciate these little masculine attentions, of which she always made an exact memorandum in her note-book (affixing the date) on reaching her seat in church. The unappropriated Miss Butts wore rose-buds in her bonnet, as emblematical of love’syoung spring-time, and dressed in shepherdess style; nature, perhaps, suggesting the idea, by placing thecrookin her back.Poor little Fanny was as much out of her element at Butternut farm as a humming-bird in a cotton-mill. She could not “heel a stocking,” although Mrs. Quip “knew how as soon as she was born.” She could neither chain-stitch, cross-stitch, button-hole-stitch, nor cat-stitch, though she often got a stitch in her side trying to “get out of Mrs. Quip’s way.” She did not know “whether her grandmother was orthodox or Unitarian;” whether Cousin John “belonged to the church,” or not; in fact, as Mrs. Quip remarked, the child seemed to her “not to have the slightest idea what she was created for.”“Cousin John” came at last! with an empty pack, a full purse, and a fuller heart. Fanny flew into his outspread arms, and nestled into his bosom, with a fullness of joy which thefriendless onlycan feel. Out of sound of Mrs. Quip’s trip-hammer tongue, out of sight of Mrs. Quip’s omniscient eyes, Fanny whispered in “Cousin John’s” ear, crying, laughing, and kissing the while, all her little troubles. Cousin John did not smile, for he knew too well how keenly the little trusting heart, which beat against his own, could suffer or enjoy; so he wiped her tears away, and told her that she should say good-by to Butternut farm, and accompany him on his next trip, as far as Canton, where he wouldleave her with a nice old lady, who had a red and green parrot, and who taught a school for the village children.It was a pretty sight—Cousin John and Fanny; she, skipping on before him to pluck a flower, then returning to glide her little hand in his, and walk contentedly by his side; or, standing on some stile, waiting to be lifted over, with her bonnet blown back, and her bright little face beaming with smiles; Cousin John sometimes answering her questions at random, as the tones of her voice, or the expression of her face, recalled her lost mother; sometimes looking proudly upon the bud, as he thought how sweet and fair would be the blossom, but more often gazing at her tearfully, as Lucy’s last solemn words rang in his ears.Percy was a riddle to himself. In the child’s pure presence, every spot upon his soul’s mirror he would have wiped away. Lips which had never framed a prayer for themselves, now murmured one forher. Feet which had strayed into forbidden paths, would fain have found forhertiny feet the straight and narrow path of life.Insensibly “a little child was leading him”—nearer to Thee, O God, nearer to Thee.Little Fanny’s joy on this pedestrian tour was irrepressible; but the journey was not all performed on foot: many a good-natured farmer gave them a lift of a mile or two, and many a kind-hearted farmer’s wife offered Fanny a cake, or a drink of milk, for the sake of her own sun-burnt children, yet blessed in a mother’s love. Then there were friendly trees to shade them from the scorching noon-day sun, where the peddler could unstrap his pack, and Fanny throw off her bonnet and go to sleep in his lap. Sparkling brooks there were, to lave their faces, or quench their thirst, and flowers whose beauty might have tempted on tardier feet than Fanny’s. Their only trouble was “Cousin John’s pack;” and Fanny’s slender stock of arithmetic was exhausted in trying to compute how many pieces of tape, how many papers of needles, how many skeins of thread, must be sold before he could buy a horse and wagon to help him to carry his load. The peddler, too, had his air-castles to build, to which the afore-mentioned tape, needles, and thread were but the stepping-stones. Fanny once placed where she could be contented, and kindly treated, and Cousin John must leave her, to woo Dame Fortune, for her sake, more speedily.Fanny shed a few tears when she heard this, poor child! and wondered if there were many Mrs. Quips in the world; but the motherly face of Mrs. Chubbs, with her three chins, the queer gabble of the red and green parrot, and more than all, the society of playfellows of her own age, were no small mitigations of the parting with Cousin John.Mrs. Chubbs would most decidedly have been turned out of office by anymodernschool committee. When a little creature who should have been in the nursery, was sent to her charge, “to be out of the way,” Mrs. Chubbs oftener allowed it to stretch its little limbs on the grass-plat, front of the door, than she set it poring over a spelling-book. She never thumped geography or arithmetic into her pupils with a ferule. A humming-top string, or a kite-tail fragment protruding from a childish pocket, excited in her no indignation. A bit of gingerbread, or an apple, munched by a little urchin who had made an early or an indifferent breakfast, did not appear to her old-fashioned vision an offense worthy of the knout or the guillotine. In fact, Mrs. Chubb’s heart was as capacious as her pockets, andtheirunfathomable depths were a constant marvel to her pupils.As to the parrot, he constituted himself “a committee” of one, and called out occasionally, “Mind your lessons, I say,” to Fanny’s great diversion. And Fanny did “mind” them; for she loved good Mrs. Chubb, and then she had a little private plan of her own for astounding Cousin John, one of these days, with her profound erudition.And so time passed—the little homesick lump in her throat had quite disappeared; she sang—she skipped—she laughed—a merrier little grig never danced out a slipper.Will my indulgent reader skip over ten years with me?—he might take a more dangerous leap—and enter yonder substantial-looking building, in which young ladies are “finished.” Passing by the long dining-hall, with its bare tavern-y looking table, and rows of bamboo chairs, let us ascend yonder marble stairs (for the school-house, let me tell you, was once an aristocratic old mansion), and turn down that long passage to the right. Now let us stop before No. 29. Remove your hat, if you please, because I am about to usher you into the presence of two very pretty girls, and though I do not approve of eaves-dropping, suppose we just step behind that friendly screen, and listen to what they are saying.CHAPTER XIX.“Fanny, what pains you are taking with your hair to-day!” said Kate. “Is this Cousin John who has written you such interminable letters from ‘El-Dorado,’ to turn out, after all, your lover? I hope not, for I fancy him some venerable Mentor, with a solemn face, and oracular voice, jealous as Bluebeard of any young man who looks at you. How old is this paragon?—handsome or ugly? I am dying to know.”“Thirty-six,” replied Fanny; “and as I remember him, with dark, curling hair, a broad, expansive brow, eyes one would never weary looking into, a voice singularly rich and sweet, and a form perfect but for a trifling stoop in the shoulders. That is myCousin John,” said Fanny, drawing the comb through her ringlets.“Stoop in the shoulders! I thought as much,” mockingly laughed the merry Kate. “If he had ‘a stoop in the shoulders’ ten years ago, how do you suppose your Adonis looks now?”“It matters very little to me,” replied Fanny, with a little annoyance in her tone; “it matters very little to me, were he as ugly as Caliban.”“How am I to construe that?” asked Kate, crossing her two forefingers (“it matters very little to you”). “Does it mean that love is out of the question between you two, or that you would have him if Lucifer stood in your path?”“Construe it as it best suits you,” replied Fanny, with the most provoking nonchalance.“But ‘a stoop in the shoulders,’” persisted the tormenting Kate. “I don’t care to have a man’s face handsome, provided it is intelligent, but I do insist upon a fine form, correct morals, and a good disposition.”Fanny laughed—“I suppose you think to windyourhusband round your little finger, like a skein of silk.”“With Cupid’s help,” replied Kate, with mock humility.“Of courseyouwill be quite perfect;—never, for instance, appear before your husband in curl papers, or slip-shod?” asked Fanny; “never make him eat bad pies or puddings?”“That depends,” answered Kate, “if he is tractable—not; if not—why not?”“You will wink at his cigars?”“He might do worse.”“You will patronize his moustache?”“If he will my snuff-box,” said Kate, laughing. “Heigho—I feel just like a cat in want of a mouse to torment. I wish I knew a victim worthy to exercise my talents upon.”“Talons, you mean,” retorted Fanny—“I pity him.”“He would get used to it,” said Kate; “the mouse—the husband, you know—I should let him run a little way, and then clap my claws on him. I’ve seen it tried; it works like a charm.”“Kate, why do you always choose to wear a mask?” asked Fanny; “why do you take so much pains to make a censorious world believe you the veryoppositeof what you are?”“Because paste passes as current as diamond; because I value the world’s opinion not one straw; because if you own a heart, it is best to hide it, unless you want it trampled on. But I don’t ask you to subscribe to all this, Fanny, with that incomparable Cousin John in your thoughts; there he is—there’s the door-bell—Venus! how you blush! but ‘a stoop in the shoulders.’ How can you, Fanny? Thirty-six years old, too—Lord bless us!”CHAPTER XX.Was this “little Fanny?” this tall, graceful creature of seventeen, the little thing who bade him good-by at Mrs. Chubb’s door, ten years since, with her pinafore stuffed in the corner of her eye? “Little Fanny,” with that queenly presence? Cousin John almost felt as if he ought to ask leave to touch her hand; ah—she is the same little Fanny after all—frank, guileless, and free-hearted. She flies into his arms, puts up her rosy lips for a kiss, and says “DearCousin John.”“God bless you,” was all he could find voice to say, for in truth, she was Mary’s own self.Yes—Fanny was very lovely, with those rippling waves of silken hair, and the light and shadow, flitting like summer clouds over her speaking face. Cousin John held her off at arm’s length. Yes, she was very lovely. “How much she had changed!”“And you, too,” said Fanny, seating herself beside him. “You look so much better; the stoop in your shoulders is quite gone; you are bronzed a little, but all the better for that.”“Thank you,” said Cousin John, “more especially as I could not help it, not even to please ‘little Fanny.’”“Ah—but I am no longerlittleFanny,” she said, blushing slightly. “I have crammed a great manybooks into my head since I saw you, and done considerable thinking beside.”“And what has your thinking all amounted to?” asked Cousin John, half playfully, half seriously.“Just to this—that you are the very best cousin in the world, and that I never can repay you for all you have been to the poor, little friendless orphan,” said Fanny, with brimming eyes.“God bless you,” said Cousin John. “I am more than repaid in these last ten minutes.”Hours flew like seconds, while Percy narrated his adventures by sea and land, and listened to Fanny’s account of herself; the old duenna, meanwhile, walking uneasily up and down the hall, occasionally making an errand into the sitting-room, and muttering to herself as she went out, that she had heard before of boarding-school “cousins,” and that he was altogether too handsome a man to be allowed such a longtête-à-têtewith Miss Fanny; and so she reported at head-quarters, but the Principal being just then unfortunately engaged in examining a new French teacher, who had applied for employment, could not give the affair the attention Miss Miffit insisted upon.Mr. Thurston Grey, too, was on the anxious seat; for the mischievous Kate had informed him “that Fanny was holding a protracted meeting in the best parlor, with the handsomest man she ever saw.”Nothing like a rival to precipitate matters! The declaration which had so long been trembling onMr. Grey’s lips, found its way into a billet-doux, and was forwarded to Fanny that very night, and presented by Kate in the presence of Cousin John, “to test,” as she said, “the quality of hiscousin-ship.”Cousin John was not jealous of “little Fanny!” how absurd! Little Fanny! whom he had carried in his arms, who had slept on his breast. In fact he laughed quite merrily at the idea, louder than was at all necessary to convince himself of the nonsense of the thing, when he read Mr. Grey’s proposal; (for Fanny had no secrets from “Cousin John.”) True he wound up his watch twice that morning, and put on odd stockings, and found it quite impossible to decide which of his cravats he should wear that day, and looked in the glass very attentively for some time, and forgot to smoke, but he wasn’tjealousof little Fanny. Of course he wasn’t!
“Day dawned—within a curtained room,Filled to faintness with perfume,A lady lay at point of doom.Morn broke—an infant saw the light,But for the lady, fair and bright,She slumbered in undreaming night.”
Life and death had passed each other on the threshold! Lucy Ford’s tears were the baptism of Mary’s motherless babe. The poor weary heart, whose pulse had beat so unevenly above it, had ceased its flutterings. It was nothing new to see Mary lie with marble face, folded hands, and softly-fringed, closed eyes. But,sometimes, the thin hand had been kindly outstretched toward Lucy;sometimes, the glossy head had raised itself, and leaned tenderly on the maternal bosom;sometimes, the blue eye had lingered lovingly on her wrinkled face. Small comfort, God knows—and yet it was much to poor Lucy. She looked at the little gasping, helpless thing before her—a tenant already for her rifled heart—a new claimant for her love and care. Oh, how could she else but welcome it? With soft folds she wrapped its fragile limbs, with motherlycare she soothed it on her sunken breast, and with a prayer to God, as she pressed her lips to Mary’s brow, she promised Death to be faithful to the trust of Life.
Days and nights—weeks, months and years came and went, blanching the prisoner’s lip and cheek, but failing to subdue a love which yet had not saved him from incurring a doom so terrible. Had Mary forgotten him? for, since that dreadful, happy day, when he clasped her in his cell, he had heard nothing save the damning sneer of the villain Scraggs. Perhaps she was dead—and his bloodless lip quivered at the thought. Nay—worse—perhaps they might have married her, in her despair, to another. Percy tossed on his narrow cot in agony.
He even welcomed the day-light, which recalled him to his task. Oh, those long, long nights, when locked in his cell, remorse kept him silent company! or worse, the dreary, idle Sunday, when taken out once to chapel, then remanded back to his dark cell, he lay thinking of the pleasant Sabbaths he had passed with Mary, in the little parlor, on the sofa by her side. He could see her now, in the pretty blue dress she wore to please him; the ring he had given her, sparkling on her white hand—her glossy hair, worn the very wayheliked to see it, the book opened at the passageheliked best, the little flower pressed between its leaves, becausehegave it. Then the little arbor in the garden—where they used tosit the pleasant Sabbath evenings—the song Mary sang him there—with her head upon his breast. Oh, happiness—oh, misery!
Percy knew it was summer, for as he passed through the prison-yard he saw that the green blades of grass were struggling up between the flag-stones, and now and then, he heard the chirp of a passing bird. The sky, too, was softly blue, and the breeze had been where clover and daisies had bloomed, and rifled their sweetness.
Percy looked down on his shrunken limbs, clad in his felon garb—then on his toil-worn hands. He passed them slowly over his shaven crown. Merciful Heaven! he—Percy Lee—Mary’s lover! Fool—thrice-accursed fool; life—liberty—happiness—love—all laid at the feet of the tempting fiend—for this! No tears relieved the fierce fire, which seemed consuming his heart and brain. How long could he bear this? Was his cell to be his grave? Once, seized with a sudden illness, he had been taken to the prison hospital, where the doctor tried pleasant little experiments on the subjects who came under his notice. Around him were poor wretches, groaning under every phase of bodily and mental discomfort. Now roused out of some Heaven-sent slumber, when it suited the doctor to show them to visitors; or to descant upon the commencement and probable duration of their disease, coupled with accounts of patients who had died in those beds, and whom hecouldhave cured under different circumstances.
It was here that Percy shed the only tears which had moistened his eyes since his incarceration. A party of visitors were passing through the wards, listening to the doctor’s egotistical details, and peeping into the different cots. A sweet little girl had strayed away from the rest of her party, and was making her tour of childish observation alone. Her eye fell upon Percy. She stood for a moment, gazing at him with the intensest pity written on her sweet face. Then gliding up to his side, she drooped her bright curls over his pillow, and placing a flower between his fingers, she whispered, “I’ll pray to God to make you well and let you go home.”
“Mary! come here,” said a shrill female voice, recalling the child; “don’t you know that is a horrid bad man! he might kill you.”
“No, he is not,” said the little creature, confidently, with a piteous glance of her soft, blue eyes at Percy; “no, he is not.”
“What makes you think so?” asked one of the party.
“I don’t know,” replied the child; “something tells me so—here;” and she laid her hand on her breast.
“Won’t you please let him go home?” asked she of the doctor.
“Home.”
As the sweet pleader passed out, the room seemed to grow suddenly dark, and Percy turned his face to his pillow, and wept aloud.
Heavenly childhood! that the world should ever chill thy Christ-like heart. That scorn should uproot pity. That suspicion should stifle love. That selfishness should dry up thy tears, and avarice lock thine open palm, with its vice-like grasp! Oh, weep not ye who straighten childhood for the grave; over whose household idols the green grass waves; heaven’s bright rain showers and spring flowers bloom. Let the bird soar, while his song is sweetest, before one stain soil his plumage, or with maimed wing he flutter helplessly. Let him soar. The cloud which hides him from thy straining eye, doth it not hide him from the archer?
“The top o’ the mornin’ to yez, Bridget,” said Pat, poking his head into the kitchen. “Is the ould lady up yet? Sorry a plight masther was in the night—dhrunk as a baste—and he cares no more for his own flesh and blood than I do for a Protestant—bad ’cess to ’em.”
“Thrue for you, Patrick, and may I niver confess again to the praste, if his light o’ love is not misthress here before long; he is as bould-faced about it as if poor Misthress Mary wasn’t fresh under the sod. God rest her sowl.”
Bridget’s prediction was not long being verified. Upholsterers were soon in attendance, re-modeling and re-furnishing poor Mary’s apartments, of whichthe prettydanseuseshortly took unblushing and triumphant possession. It was understood in the house, that her will was to be law; and implicit obedience to the same the surest passport to head-quarters. Poor Lucy, willing to bear any thing rather than separation from the child—chased from one room to another—finally took refuge with her charge in the attic, whither poor Mary’s portrait had long since been banished. For the little Fanny’s sake, she patiently endured every humiliation; she heeded not the careless insolence of the newrégimeof servants. She bore every caprice of the tyrannical littledanseuse. Patiently her feeble limbs tottered up stairs and down, performing the offices of nurse and servant to her grandchild; patiently she soothed it when ill, or amused it when fretful; uncomplainingly she bore from her son-in-law his maudling curses, when they passed each other on the stairs, or in the hall. Every thing—any thing, but separation from Mary’s child, which nestled every day closer to her heart; and whose soft eyes and glossy curls reminded her every day more forcibly of her lost daughter. Every day she prayed to God to spare the withered trunk till the vine which clambered round it should gather strength to brave the winds and storms. Fanny slept securely on her breast, while the bacchanalian song resounded through the house, and obscene jests, and curses loud and deep, made night hideous. And when the moonbeams penetrated the little window, and,falling upon Mary’s portrait, revealed her in all her beauty, before the shadow had fallen on her fair brow, or dimmed her lustrous eyes, or robbed that dimpled mouth of its sunny smile, poor Lucy would nestle closer to little Fanny, and pray God that so bitter a cup might pass fromher.
Dear little Fanny! with her plump little arms thrown carelessly over her curly head, her pearly teeth just gleaming through her parted lips, as if some kind angel even then were promising her exemption from such a doom.
Time crept on, blanching Lucy’s cheek to deadly paleness, tinting Fanny’s with a lovelier rose; thinning Lucy’s silver hair, piling the golden clusters round Fanny’s ivory brow; bending Lucy’s shrunken limbs, rounding Fanny’s into symmetry and grace.
True, the child never left the attic; but what place, how circumscribed soever, will not Love beautify and brighten? True, “mamma’s” pictured semblance responded not to the little upturned face and lisping lips, but who shall say that age and infancy were theonlytenants of that lonely room?
Fanny knew that she had a “papa” somewhere in the house, but “papa” was always “sick,” or “busy,” so grandmamma said; that must be the reason why he never came up to see his little girl. Sometimes Fanny amused herself by climbing up to the little window, overlooking the square where asilvery fountain tossed its sparkling diamonds to the sun, who turned them all sorts of pretty colors, and sent them quivering back again. Little Fanny liked that! Then she saw little children playing round the fountain, sailing their tiny boats on its bosom, and clapping their hands gleefully when they rode safely into port. Great shaggy Newfoundland dogs, too, jumped into the water, and swam, with their black noses just above the surface, and ever and anon sprang out upon the mossy bank, shaking their shaggy coats upon the more dainty ones of mamma’s little pets, quite regardless of lace, silk, or ribbon. It was a pretty sight, and little Fanny wanted to go to the fountain too; but grandmamma was so feeble, and she had so much running to do up and down stairs, that she had no strength left to walk; and then grandmamma had to make all Fanny’s little dresses, and keep them tidy and nice; and by the time the sun moved off of mamma’s picture in the afternoon, she was quite ready to go to bed with little Fanny.
Poor old grandmamma! Fanny handed her her spectacles, and a cricket to put her poor tired feet upon, and picked up the spools of cotton when they rolled upon the floor, and learned too to thread her needles quite nicely, for grandmamma’s eyes were getting dim; and sometimes Fanny would try to make the bed, but her hand was so tiny that she could not even cover one of the small roses of its patch-work quilt. Dear little thing! He whoblessed little children, recorded of her, “She hath done what she could.”
One day Fanny heard a great noise—a great bumping and tumbling, as if some heavy body were falling down the stairs. Then she heard a deep groan—and thensucha shriek! If she lived to be as old as grandma, that shriek would never go out of her ears; then there was a great running to and fro, Patrick and Bridget wrung their hands, and said ochone! ochone! and then grandmamma’s face grew very white, as she took Fanny by the hand and hurried down stairs; and when they got into the lower entry, there lay a gentleman very still on the floor. A beautiful lady was kneeling on the floor beside him, chafing his temples—but it was of no use; feeling of his pulse—but it was quite still. Then the beautiful lady shrieked again—oh, so dreadfully! and then she fell beside him like one dead.
Fanny’s grandma whispered to her, that the gentleman “was her papa,” and that he had fallen down stairs and broken his neck—grandma did not say that he was drunk when he did it. Fanny crept up to him, for she had wanted so much to see her papa—so she put her little rosy face close to his, and said, “Wake up, please, papa, and see me.” But he did not open his eyes at all; then she put her hand on his face, and then she seemed frightened—her little lip quivered, and she clung to her grandmother’s dress—then some men came and carried papa up stairs, and the maid-servants laid the beautiful lady on the sofa, in the parlor; and she and grandma went back up into the attic—and all that day, grandma did not seem to see mamma’s picture at all; and when Fanny came up to her, she wept and said, “God help you—my poor lamb.”
The bell sounded at Bluff Hill Prison, to call the prisoners to their tasks. They passed out from their cells and crossed, two by two, the prison-yard to their workshops. Percy and a stout negro were the last couple in the file. Just as they were about passing in, the African, who had received the punishment of the douche the day previous, for dilatoriness at his task, sprang upon the officer in waiting, and seized him by the throat. Percy, whose pugilistic science was a match for the African’s muscle, grappled with and secured him in an instant, receiving, as he did so, a severe bite from the fellow’s teeth, in his left shoulder. The negro was handcuffed, and Percy carried to the hospital, to have his wound dressed. The officer, in the flush of his gratitude, assured him, as he left, that the case should be laid before the governor, and would undoubtedly result in his pardon.
Percy’s eye brightened, as he bowed his head in reply, but in truth he took no credit for the deed;it was only following an irresistible impulse to save the life of a fellow-creature.
Liberty! it would be sweet! But, pshaw! why dream of it? Men were proverbially ungrateful. Ten to one, the officer would never think of his promise again; or if he did, the governor would lay it on the table, to be indefinitely postponed, or forgotten, or rejected, with a thousand other troublesome applications. No—suns would rise and set just as they had done, and time for him would be marked only by the prison-bell, with its clanging summons to labor. He should see, every day, as he had done, the poor lame prisoner sunning himself in his favorite corner in the yard—he should see the prisoners’ mattresses, hung on the rails to air—he should see the gleam of the blacksmith’s forge, and hear the stroke of the stonecutter’s hammer; the shuttle would fly, and the wheel turn round. He should sit down to his wooden plate, his square bit of salt meat, and his one potato, and drink water out of his rusty tin cup. He should gasp out the starry nights in his stifling cell; he should hear the rustling of silken robes, as ladies went the prison rounds, and his heart would beat quick as he thought of Mary; he should burn forever with the fire of remorse and shame—yet never consume; the taper would flicker and flicker—yet never go out.
So Percy sat carelessly down on the hospital bench, to have his wound dressed; and listened to the asthmatic breathing of the sick man at his side,and saw the hospital cook stirring in a cauldron some diluted broth, and watched the doctor, as he compounded a plaster, and leisurely smoked a cigar; and looked at a green branch which the wind ever and anon swept across the grated window, showering its snowy blossoms, as if in mockery, on the prison floor.
O, no—liberty was not for him—and why should it be? Had he not forfeited it by his own rash act?—was not his punishment just?—had he not lost the confidence of his fellow men?—crushed the noblest and purest heart that ever God warmed into life and love? It was all too true, and there had been moments when he meekly accepted his punishment, when he toiled in his prison uniform, not as if under the eye of a taskmaster, but willingly, almost cheerfully, as if by expiatory penance he could atone to himself for the wrong he had done that guileless heart. O, did it still beat? and for him? for the thousandth time he questioned. Could Mary look on him? smile on him?lovehim still? O, what mockery were liberty else! What mattered it how brightly the sun shone, if it shone not on their love purified and intensified by sorrow? What matter how green the earth, if they walked not through it side by side? What mattered it how fresh the breeze—how blue the sky—how soft the moonbeams—how sweet the flowers—how bright the stars—if day and night found not their twin hearts beating like one? Better his cell should be his tomb.
“I like to live here,” said little Fanny, running up to Lucy, with her sun-bonnet hanging at the back of her neck; her cheeks glowing, and her apron full of acorns, pebbles, pine leaves, grasses and flowers; “see here, I tied them up with a blade of grass for you, and here’s a white clover; a great bumble bee wanted it, he buzzed and buzzed, but I ran off with it; won’t you go with me, grandmother, and help me find a four-leaved clover? Don’t sew any more on those old vests. Who taught you to make vests?” asked the little chatterbox.
“O, I learned many—many—years ago,” replied Lucy, with a sigh, as she thought of Jacob; “and now you see, dear, what a good thing it is to learn something useful when one is young. If I did not know how to make these vests, I could not pay for this room we live in, you know; here, thread my needle, darling, either the eye is too small, or my eye is too dim; I can’t see as well as I used.”
“I wish I could do something useful,” said Fanny, as she handed back the needle. “I can only brush up the hearth, and fill the tea-kettle, and pick up your spools, and thread your needle, and—what else, grandma?”
“Make this lonely old heart glad, my darling,” said Lucy, pressing her lips to Fanny’s forehead.
“Why didn’t my papa ever come kiss me?” asked Fanny. “Was I too naughty for my papa to love?”
“No—no, my darling,” said Lucy, turning away her head to restrain her tears, “you are the best little girl that—but run away, Fanny,” said she, fearing to trust herself to speak. “Go find grandma a pretty four-leaved clover.”
The child sprang up and bounded toward the door. Standing poised on one foot on the threshold, with her little neck bending forward, she exclaimed eagerly, “Oh, grandma, I dare not; there’s a man climbing over the stile into the meadow, with a pack on his back; won’t he hurt me?”
“No,” said Lucy, peering over her spectacles at the man, and then resuming her seat, “it is only a peddler, Fanny; shops are scarce in the country, so they go round with tapes, needles, and things, to sell the farmers’ wives. I am glad he has come, for I want some more sewing-silk to make these button-holes.”
“Good day, ma’am,” said the peddler, unlading his pack. “Would you like to buy any thing to-day? Combs—collars—needles—pins—tapes—ribbons—laces? buy any thing to-day, ma’am?”
“May I look?” whispered Fanny to Lucy, attracted by the bright show in the box.
“There’s a ribbon for your hair,” said the peddler, touching her curls caressingly; “and here is a stringof beads for your neck. You will let me give them to you, won’t you? because I have no little girl to love;” and his voice trembled slightly.
“May I love him, grandma?” whispered Fanny, for there was something in the peddler’s voice that brought tears into her eyes. “May I give him some milk to drink, and a piece of bread?” and hardly waiting for an answer, she flew to the cupboard, and returned with her simple lunch.
“Thank you,” said the peddler, in a low voice, without raising his eyes.
The sewing-silk was purchased, and the box rearranged, and strapped up, but still the peddler lingered. Lucy, thinking he might be weary, invited him to stop and rest awhile.
“I will sit here on the door-step awhile, if you please, with the little girl,” said the peddler. “Are you fond of flowers?” said he to Fanny, again touching her shining curls.
“Oh, yes,” she replied; “only I don’t like to go alone to get them—the cows stare at me so with their great big eyes, and the little toads hop over my feet, and I am afraid they will bite; they won’t bite, will they?” asked Fanny, looking confidingly up in his face.
“I should not think any thing could harmyou,” replied the peddler, drawing his fingers across his eyes.
“What are you crying for?” asked Fanny, “’cause you haven’t any little girl to love you?”
“The dust, dear, in the road, quite blinded me to-day,” replied the peddler.
“I will bring you some water for them, in my little cup,” said Fanny. “Grandma bathes her eyes when they ache, sewing on those tiresome vests.”
“No—no”—said the peddler, catching her by the hand as she sprang up—“don’t go away—sit down—here—close by me—I will make a wreath of flowers for your hair; your eyes are as blue as this violet.”
“They are mamma’s eyes,” said Fanny. “Grandma calls them ‘mamma’s eyes.’ We have a pretty picture of mamma—see—that’s it,” and she bounded across the room and drew aside a calico curtain which screened it. “There, isn’t it pretty?—why don’t you look?”
The peddler slowly turned his head, and replied, in a husky voice, “Yes, dear.”
“Mamma is dead,” said Fanny, re-seating herself by his side. “What makes you shiver? are you cold?—he is sick, grandma,” said Fanny, running up to Lucy.
“A touch of my old enemy, the ague, ma’am,” said the peddler, respectfully—and Lucy returned to her needle.
“Yes, my mamma is dead,” said Fanny. “Are you sorry my mamma is dead? Sometimes I talk to her—grandma likes to have me; but mamma’s picture never speaks back. Don’t you wish my mamma would speak back?” said Fanny, looking up earnestly in his face.
The peddler nodded—bending lower over the wreath he was twining.
“My papa is dead, too,” said Fanny—“are you sorry my papa is dead? Nobody loves me but grandma and God.”
“And I”—said the peddler, touching her curls again with his fingers.
“Why do you keep touching my hair?” asked the little chatterbox.
“Because it is so like—oh, well—I am sure I don’t know,” said the peddler, placing the wreath over her bright face, and touching his lips to her forehead. “Good-by, dear, don’t forget me. I will make you a prettier wreath sometime, shall I?”
“O yes,” said Fanny; “let me tell grandma. Grandma is so deaf she can’t hear us;” and the child ran back into the room to tell the news.
“I like peddlers,” said little Fanny, as she watched her new friend saunter slowly down the road. “He gave me this pretty wreath and this ribbon; I am sorry he didn’t like mamma’s picture; he hardly looked at it at all.”
“The peddler never heard of your mamma, my darling; you must not expect strangers to feel as you and grandma do about it.”
“Yes,” replied Fanny, in a disappointed tone;—“but it is a pity, because I like him. There he goes; now he has climbed the fence, and is crossing the meadow. Good by, Mr. Peddler.”
Yes—across the meadow, down the little grassy lane, over the stile—far into the dim—dim woods, where no human eye could penetrate, prostrate upon the earth, shedding such tears as manhood seldom sheds, lay the peddler. Still in his ears lingered that bird-like voice, still in his veins thrilled the touch of that tiny hand, and those silken curls, in whose every glossy wave shone out Mary’s self. Mary—yet not Mary; Mary’s child—yet nothischild!—And Lucy, too;—O, the sorrow written in every furrow of that kindly face, and—O God—by whom?
The stars glimmered through the trees, the night-winds gently rocked the little merry birds to sleep—midnight came on with its solemn spirit-whispers—followed the gray dawn with its misty tears, and still—there lay the peddler, stricken, smitten, on Nature’s kindly breast; for there, too (but all unconscious of his misery—deaf to his penitence), lay pillowed the dear head which had erst drooped so lovingly upon his breast.
“Very well done; button-holes strong and even, lining smooth; stitching, like rows of seed pearl. This is no apprentice work,” said Mr. John Pray, as he held Lucy’s vests up to the light for a more minute inspection. “That’s a vest, now, as is a vest; won’t disgrace John Pray’s shop; it would gladdeneven the eyes of my old boss, Jacob Ford; and mighty particular he was, too, and mighty small wages the old man paid, as I have occasion to know. Well, I made a vow then, and thank God I have had grace to keep it, that if ever John Pray became a master workman, he would do as he would be done by. So, I don’t ask what wages other tailors give; that don’t matter to me. I don’t want to die with any body’s groans in my ears. So, when a piece of work is finished and handed in, I say, ‘Now, John Pray, what shouldyouthink was a fair price foryouto receive, ifyouhad done that ’ere job?’ That’s it; no dodging behind that question. ’Specially when a man has been through the operativemill himself. So, there’s your pay, Zekiel, weighed out in that ere pair of Bible scales; and you may tell the old lady, as you call her, that if she had served a regular apprenticeship at the trade, she couldn’t have done better. What did you say her name was? However, that’s no consequence—as long as she does the work well. Here’s some more vests for her.”
“Well, I really don’t know,” said Zekiel, “I never heern tell her name. She’s a bran new neighbor, and as I was coming into town every day with my cart, she axed me, civil like, if I’d bring these vests to you. So, I brung ’em. I don’t mind doing a good turn for a fellow creetur, now and then, specially when it ’taint no bother,” added Zekiel, with a grin.
“What did you spoil it for by saying that?” said John Pray. “I was just going to clap you on the back for a clever fellow.”
“You might go further, and clap a worse fellow on the back,” answered Zekiel. “But I never boasts, I don’t. ’Tain’t no use. If the ministers tell the truth, we’ve all got to be weighed in the big scales up above, where there ain’t no false weights—bad deeds agin good deeds. Farmer Reed, I’m thinking, will be astonished when the balance on his account is struck. But, good day; my parsnips and cabbages ought to be in the market, instead of wilting at your door—even though you city folks don’t know the taste of a fresh vegetable. Good day.”
Rain—rain—rain; patter, patter. No sunshine to help Lucy’s purblind eyes in stitching the dark vests; no sunshine to kiss open the buttercups for Fanny. The birds took short and hasty flights from tree to tree; the farmers slouched their hats over their faces, and whipped up their teams; the little school children hurried back and forth with their satchels, without stopping to look for chipmunks or for ground-birds’ nests; the bells on the baker’s cart lost their usual merry tinkle, and the old fishman’s horn, as he went his Friday round, gave forth a discordant, spiritless whine.
Little Fanny had righted her grandmother’s work-basket, read “Jack and his Bean-Stalk,” made houses on the slate, put the black kitten to sleep in the old barrel, blown soap bubbles, till she was tired, in the tin bowl, and had finally crept up on the little cot bed and fallen asleep.
Lucy sat back in her chair, and began counting over the money Zekiel had brought her. It would relieve their present necessities. Fanny should have some new clothes out of it, when farmer Smith’s rent was paid. But the future? Lucy’s eyes were growing dimmer every day, and her limbs more feeble. She might drop off suddenly, and then who would befriend poor little Fanny? What lessons of sorrow had that loving little heart to learn? By what thorny path would she thread life’s toilsome journey?
Dear little Fanny! She could no more live without love than flowers without sunshine. Thatsheshould ever weep tears, that no kindly hand should wipe away; that she should hunger or thirst—shiver with winter’s cold—faint under summer heat; that a harsh voice should ever drive the blood from her lip or cheek—that her round limbs should bend with premature toil—that sin should tempt her helplessness—that sorrow should invite despair—that wrong should ever seem right to Mary’s child! Poor Lucy bowed her head and wept.
The peddler looked in through the little casement window. He saw the falling tears, he saw Lucy’s sorrowful gaze at the rosy little dreamer. He neededno explanation of the tableau. He knocked at the door; Lucy’s tones were tremulous, as she bade him come in.
“I thought you might be wanting some more silk,” said he, respectfully, with his eyes fixed upon little Fanny.
“Sit down—sit down,” said Lucy; for the tones of his voice were kindly,and herheart in its loneliness craved sympathy. “It is dull weather we have, sir; one don’t mind it when all is righthere,” and she laid her hand on her heart.
“True,” said the peddler, in a low voice, still gazing at Fanny.
“The child sleeps,” said Lucy. “It was of her I was thinking when you came in; it would be very bitter to die and leave her alone, sir;” and Lucy’s tears flowed again.
“Have you no relatives—no friends, to whom you could intrust her?” asked the peddler, with his eyes bent on the ground.
“None, God help us,” replied Lucy.
“Sir,” and Lucy drew her chair nearer to the peddler, “a great sorrow may sometimes be in the heart, when smiles are on the face.”
The peddler nodded, without trusting himself to speak.
“This poor heart has borne up until now, with what strength it might; but now”—and she glanced at little Fanny—“O, sir—if I could but take her with me.”
“God will care for her,” said the peddler, stooping to remove his hat, that Lucy might not see his emotion.
“Sometimes I feel that,” replied Lucy; “and then again—O, sir, trouble makes the heart so fearful. My poor daughter—she was our idol, sir—the sunbeam in our home; so good—so beautiful—so light-hearted, till the trouble came. It was like a lightning bolt, sir—it scathed and withered in one moment what was before so fresh and fair; it blighted all our hopes, it blackened our hearth-stone, it killed my husband—poor Jacob. Pardon me, sir, I talk as if you had known our history. It was Mary’s lover, sir; he was taken up for swindling, at our very door;—and yet I loved the lad—for the ground she walked on he loved—for Mary’s sake.”
“Sheforgave him?” asked the peddler, in a voice scarcely audible.
“She?—poor dear—she? All the world could not have made her believe ill of him. She? Why, sir, she would sit at the window for hours, watching the way he used to come. It crazed her, poor thing; and then she would come and go just as she was bid. Her father saw her fade, day by day, and cursedhim;—he forgot business—every thing went wrong—one way and another our money went, and then Jacob died.”
“He forgavehim—your daughter’s lover, before he died?” asked the peddler, tremulously.
“You have a kind heart, sir,” said Lucy. “Yes,Jacob’s heart softened at the last;—he said we all needed God’s mercy. His last words were ‘Peace.’”
“God be thanked,” murmured the peddler; then adding, quickly, “it must have madeyouso much happier; you say you loved the lad.”
“Yes,” said Lucy, “even now. We all err, sir. He was only nineteen—young to marry; but Mary’s heart was bound up in him. He didn’t mean it, sir—I don’t know how it was. God help us all.
“Well, we buried Jacob; then we had none to look to—Mary and I. We were poor. I was feeble. Then Mary’s lover came—the rich Mr. Shaw. You are ill, sir?”
“No—no,” replied the peddler; “go on—your story interests me.”
“Well, he wanted to marry Mary, although he saw how it was. It was all one to her, you know, sir. She was crazed like—though so sweet and gentle. I did it for the best, sir,” said Lucy, mournfully. “I thought when I died Mary would have a home.”
“Go on,” said the peddler. “He treated her kindly?” he asked, with a dark frown.
“For a little,” answered Lucy. “He wearied after a while. I might have known it—I was to blame, sir—her heart was broken. When the babe opened its eyes, she closed her’s, and Ialonemourned for her.”
“O, God!” groaned the peddler.
“It moves you, sir,” said Lucy; “perhaps you, too, have known trouble.”
The peddler bowed his head without replying.
“Then, sir, he brought a gay young thing into the house—his mistress—not his wife. He never looked upon his child; he cursed me and it. I gave it our name; I called it Fanny Ford; and we crept away, the babe and I, up in the attic;—then all was confusion—extravagance—ruin;—then he died, sir—and since—you see us here—you know now, sir, why I, leaning over the grave’s brink, yet shrink back and cling to life forhersake,” and she looked at Fanny.
“Would you trust her with me?” asked the peddler, with his eyes bent upon the ground. “I am all alone in the world—I have none to love—none who love me—I am poor, but while I have a crust, she shall never want.”
“It is a great charge,” replied Lucy. “If you should weary, sir?”
“Then may God forget me,” said the peddler, earnestly, kneeling at Lucy’s feet.
Lucy bent on him a gaze searching as truth, but she read nothing in that upturned face to give the lie to those solemn words. Pointing to Fanny, she said,
“Before God—and as you hope for peace at the last?”
The peddler bowed his head upon Lucy’s withered hand, and faltered out, “I promise.”
“Good morning, Zekiel,” said John Pray. “Glad to see you—you must tell the old lady to go ahead and finish this pile of vests in a twinkling; business is brisk now. Why, what’s this?” said he. “These vests unfinished? How’s that? Don’t the pay suit? What’s the trouble now?”
“Don’t,” said Zekiel—“don’t—stop a bit—I’m as tough as any man—but there’s some things I can’t stand;” and he dashed a tear away.
“What’s the matter now?” asked John. “Is the old lady dissatisfied with her pay?”
“Don’t—I say,” said Zekiel;—“hold up—don’t harrow a man that way—she’s dead—I tell you stone dead. She never’ll make no more vests for nobody. I never shall forget what I saw there this morning, never.
“You see she was old and infirm, and wan’t fit to work for any body any how; but she had a little gran’child, fresh as a rose-bud, and she did it for her, you see. Well, this morning I harnessed the old gray horse—the black one is lame since Sunday—and reined up at her door, as usual, to get the bundle. I knocked, and nobody came; then I knocked again, then little rose-bud came tip-toeing to the door, with her finger on her pretty lip, so—and whispered, ‘grandma is asleep; she has not woke up this great while.’ So I said—‘You’d betterspeak to her and say, here’s Zekiel, come for the bundle, cause you know she is partiklar like about sending it.’ So the little rose-bud went up to the bed-side, and said—‘Grandma, here is Zekiel, come for the vests.’ The old lady didn’t say nothing, and rose-bud asked me to speak to her. I went up, and—John Pray—the old lady was stone dead, and how was I going to tell that to little rose-bud?”
“You don’t mean to tell me that the child was all alone with the corpse—nobody to see to the poor thing?” asked John.
“But I do, though,” said Zekiel; “it was enough to break a body’s heart, and she so innocent like. I never was so put to it in my life, to know what to do. There she had gone and tidied up the kitchen, hung the tea-kettle on the fire as well as she knew how, and sat waiting for her gran’mother to ‘wake up,’ as she called it. How could I tell her she wasdead? Blast me if I could, to this minute.”
“But you didn’t come away and leave her so?” asked John.
“No,” replied Zekiel, “for a peddler came in, and little rose-bud ran up, glad-like, to see him; then I beckoned him one side, and told him just how it was, and he turned as white as a turnip, and great big tears rolled down his face, as he took little rose-bud up in his arms and kissed her. Then he told me he was a kind of a relation like, and poor, but that he would take the child and do the best he could by her; and I knew he must be clever, forchildren are powerful ’cute, and never take to cranky folks, any how—and so I left them, and came blubbering into town. I vow it was enough to make the very stones cry, to see little rose-bud take on so, after the old lady.”
There was no litigious will to be read, no costly effects to quarrel about, in Lucy Ford’s poor cottage, and yet Golconda’s mines were all too poor to buy the priceless treasures to which the peddler fell heir—Mary’s picture and Mary’s child!
With such talismans, what should he fear? what could he not accomplish? He no longer walked with his head bowed upon his breast. The pure love of that sinless little one restored his long-lost self-respect. Life was dear to him. His eye regained its luster; his step its firmness. Even his humble calling, now more than ever necessary, became to him dignified and attractive. Fanny should have an education worthy of Mary’s child. For the present, till he had amassed a little capital, he must find her a home in some quiet farmer’s family, where he could oversee her, in his occasional visits.
Dear little Fanny! with her smiles and tears, she had already twined herself round every fiber of his heart. “Cousin John,” as the peddler taught her to call him, “was to take care of her always, and she was to love him dearly—dearly—better than any body, but mamma and grandma.”
Ah! there is Mrs. Quip’s head, poked out of the north chamber window. A sure sign that it is five o’clock to the minute. Now she scuds across the yard, making a prodigious flutter with her flying calico long-short, among the hens and chickens, who take refuge in an upturned old barrel. Snatching some sticks from the wood-pile, she scuds back again to the kitchen, twitches a match from the mantel, lights the fire, hangs on thetea-kettle,jerks out the table, rattles on the cups and saucers, plates, knives, forks,etc., and throws open every blind, door, and window. This done, she flies up stairs, pokes Susan in the ribs, drags Mary out on the floor, throws a mug of water in “that lazy John’s face,” and intimates that “breakfast will be on the table in less than fifteen minutes.”
John rubs the water out of his eyes, muttering a few unmentionable words. Susan and Mary make a transient visit to the looking-glass, and descend the stair’s just as the coffee smokes upon the table. Mrs. Quip frightens the chickens into the barrel again with her calico long-short and the great bell that she ring at the barn-door to “call the men folks to breakfast,” and takes her accustomed seat at the table.
“Brown bread or white? baked beans or salt meat? doughnuts, cheese, or apple-pie? which’ll you have?” said Mrs. Quip to little Fanny.
“Ma’am?” said Fanny, with a bewildered look.
“Oh, dear; Susan Quip, for gracious’ sake find out what that peddler’s child wants; hurry, all of you. Baking to be done to-day; yesterday’s ironing to finish; them new handkerchers to hem; John’s trowsers to mend; buttery shelves to scour; brown bread sponge to set; yeast to make; pickles to scald; head-cheese to fix: hurry, all of you. Susan Quip, there’s the cat in the buttery, smack, and—scissors—right into that buttermilk, arter a mouse. Scat—scat; Susan Quip, that’s your doings—leaving the buttery door open. John Quip, do you drownd that cat to-day. Don’t talk to me of kittens; kittens is as plenty as peddlers’ children. Hand me that coffee, Susan Quip. Lord-a-mercy, there’s the fishman: run, John—two mackerel, not more than sixpence a-piece; pinch ’em in the stomach, to see if they are fresh. If they are flabby, don’t take ’em; if they ain’t, do. Yes, every thing to do, to-day, and a little more beside. Soft soap to——Heavens and earth, John Quip, that mackerel man hasn’t given you the right change by two cents. Here, stop him! John Quip—Susan—get out of the way, all of you; I’ll go myself,” and the calico long-short started in full pursuit of the mackerel defaulter.
Poor little Fanny! no Green Mountain boy, set down in the rush of the city, ever felt half so crazy. Mrs. Quip, with her snap-dragon, touch-me-not-manners, high-pitched voice, and heavy tramp, wassuch a contrast to her dear grandmother, with her soft tones, noiseless step, and gentle ways. Fanny was afraid to move for fear she should cross Mrs. Quip’s track. She did not know whether she were hungry or thirsty. She marveled at the railroad velocity with which the food disappeared, and pitied Mrs. Quipsomuch for having such a quantity of things to do all in a minute!
The next day after Fanny’s arrival at Butternut farm, was Sunday. Mrs. Quip was up betimes, as usual, but her activity took a devotional turn. She was out to the barn fifty times a minute, to see “if the horse and waggin was getting harnessed for meetin’,”—not butMr.Quip was still above ground, but as far as he had any voice in family matters, he might as well have been under. Mrs. Quip was up in Susan’s room (or, as she pronounced it,Sewsan), to see if she was learning her catechise; she was padlock-ing John Quip’s Sunday temptation, in the shape of the “Thrilling Adventures of Jack Bowsprit;” she was giving the sitting-room as Sabbatical and funereal an aspect as possible, by setting the chairs straight up against the walls, shutting all the blinds, and putting into the cupboard every thing that squinted secular-wise.
Fanny, oppressed by the gloom within doors, crept out into the warm sunshine, and seating herself under a tree in the yard, was looking at a few clover blossoms which she had plucked beside her. She was thinking of the pleasant Sundays she hadpassed with her dear grandmother, and how she used to sit on the door-step of the cottage, and tell her how God taught the little birds to build their cradle nests, and find their way through the air; and how He provided even for the little ants, who so patiently, grain by grain, built their houses in the gravel walk; and how He kept the grass green with the dew and showers, and ripened the fruit, and opened the blossoms with the warm sunshine, and how He was always watching over us, caring for our wants, listening to our cries, pitying us for our sorrows, and making His sun to shine even on those who forget to thank Him for it. But see—Fanny has dropped her clover blossoms, for Mrs. Quip has seized her by the arm, and says,
“You wicked child, you! To think of picking a flowerSunday! What do you expect will become of you when you die? What do you think the neighbors will think? Sinful child! There”—slamming her down on a cricket in the sitting-room—“sit down, and see if you can learn what the chief end of man is, afore meeting time. Flowers of aSunday! or flowers any day, for the matter of that, I never could see the sense of ’em. Even the Bible says, ‘they toil not, neither do they spin.’ Gracious goodness—Sewsan Quip, Mrs. Snow’s kerriage has just started for meetin’. Get your things, all of you. Sewsan, see to that peddler’s child; mind that she don’t take no flowers to the Lord’s temple; John Quip, you shan’t wear them gloves; they costtwenty-five cents at the finding-store; and if you think that I bought ’em for you to drive in, you are mistaken; now put ’em in your pocket till you get into the meetin’-us porch; that will save ’em a sight; them leather reins will wear ’em all threadbare in less than no time. Mercy on us, the string is off my bunnet. Sewsan, that’s your doing. Run and bring me a pin off the third shelf in the buttery, under the yellow quart bowl. I picked it up and put it there this morning. Make haste, now. John Quip, stop cracking your whip that way on the holy Sabbath day. What do you suppose your dead grandpa would think, if he should hear it?”
The wagon was brought, and its living freight stowed carefully away in the remote corners. The oil-cloth covering was buttoned carefully down on all sides, as it had been during the winter; Mrs. Quip said it was hot, but maybe it would crack the oil-cloth to roll it up for the breeze to play through. Susan, Mary, and Fanny, therefore, took a vapor bath, on the back seat. Mrs. Quip, seated at John’s side, excluded, with her big black bonnet, any stray breeze which might have found entrance that way, to the refreshing of the gasping passengers. Dobbin moved on; he had been up that hot, dusty hill, many a Sunday before, and understood perfectly well how to keep his strength in reserve for the usual accession to his load on the village green, in the shape of the Falstaffian Aunt Hepsibah, Miss Butts, the milliner, and Deacon Tufts, who wereduly piled in on the gasping occupants behind. Mrs. Quip being also on the alert to fill up any stray chinks in the “waggin” with “them children who stopped to rest in the road, when they oughter go straight to meetin’.”
The unlading of Mrs. Quip’s wagon at the meeting-house door, was an exhibition much “reckoned on” by the graceless young men of the village, who always collected on the steps for the purpose, and with mock gallantry assisted Mrs. Quip in clambering over the wheels, suppressing their mirth at her stereotyped exhortation, as she glanced at Dobbin, “to see that they didn’t start the critter.”
It was a work of time to draw out the unctuous Aunt Hepsibah; Deacon Tufts, more wiry and agile, “helped hisself,” as Mrs. Quip remarked. The crowning delight was the evacuation of the wagon, by Miss Butts—who, with a mincing glance at the men, circumspectly extended one finger of her right hand—gingerly exposed the tip of the toe of her slipper, and with sundry little shrieks and exclamations, prolonged indefinitely the delicious agony of her descent, as the young gentlemen by turns profanely touched her virgin elbows. Thirty-nine years of single blessedness had fully prepared her to appreciate these little masculine attentions, of which she always made an exact memorandum in her note-book (affixing the date) on reaching her seat in church. The unappropriated Miss Butts wore rose-buds in her bonnet, as emblematical of love’syoung spring-time, and dressed in shepherdess style; nature, perhaps, suggesting the idea, by placing thecrookin her back.
Poor little Fanny was as much out of her element at Butternut farm as a humming-bird in a cotton-mill. She could not “heel a stocking,” although Mrs. Quip “knew how as soon as she was born.” She could neither chain-stitch, cross-stitch, button-hole-stitch, nor cat-stitch, though she often got a stitch in her side trying to “get out of Mrs. Quip’s way.” She did not know “whether her grandmother was orthodox or Unitarian;” whether Cousin John “belonged to the church,” or not; in fact, as Mrs. Quip remarked, the child seemed to her “not to have the slightest idea what she was created for.”
“Cousin John” came at last! with an empty pack, a full purse, and a fuller heart. Fanny flew into his outspread arms, and nestled into his bosom, with a fullness of joy which thefriendless onlycan feel. Out of sound of Mrs. Quip’s trip-hammer tongue, out of sight of Mrs. Quip’s omniscient eyes, Fanny whispered in “Cousin John’s” ear, crying, laughing, and kissing the while, all her little troubles. Cousin John did not smile, for he knew too well how keenly the little trusting heart, which beat against his own, could suffer or enjoy; so he wiped her tears away, and told her that she should say good-by to Butternut farm, and accompany him on his next trip, as far as Canton, where he wouldleave her with a nice old lady, who had a red and green parrot, and who taught a school for the village children.
It was a pretty sight—Cousin John and Fanny; she, skipping on before him to pluck a flower, then returning to glide her little hand in his, and walk contentedly by his side; or, standing on some stile, waiting to be lifted over, with her bonnet blown back, and her bright little face beaming with smiles; Cousin John sometimes answering her questions at random, as the tones of her voice, or the expression of her face, recalled her lost mother; sometimes looking proudly upon the bud, as he thought how sweet and fair would be the blossom, but more often gazing at her tearfully, as Lucy’s last solemn words rang in his ears.
Percy was a riddle to himself. In the child’s pure presence, every spot upon his soul’s mirror he would have wiped away. Lips which had never framed a prayer for themselves, now murmured one forher. Feet which had strayed into forbidden paths, would fain have found forhertiny feet the straight and narrow path of life.
Insensibly “a little child was leading him”—nearer to Thee, O God, nearer to Thee.
Little Fanny’s joy on this pedestrian tour was irrepressible; but the journey was not all performed on foot: many a good-natured farmer gave them a lift of a mile or two, and many a kind-hearted farmer’s wife offered Fanny a cake, or a drink of milk, for the sake of her own sun-burnt children, yet blessed in a mother’s love. Then there were friendly trees to shade them from the scorching noon-day sun, where the peddler could unstrap his pack, and Fanny throw off her bonnet and go to sleep in his lap. Sparkling brooks there were, to lave their faces, or quench their thirst, and flowers whose beauty might have tempted on tardier feet than Fanny’s. Their only trouble was “Cousin John’s pack;” and Fanny’s slender stock of arithmetic was exhausted in trying to compute how many pieces of tape, how many papers of needles, how many skeins of thread, must be sold before he could buy a horse and wagon to help him to carry his load. The peddler, too, had his air-castles to build, to which the afore-mentioned tape, needles, and thread were but the stepping-stones. Fanny once placed where she could be contented, and kindly treated, and Cousin John must leave her, to woo Dame Fortune, for her sake, more speedily.
Fanny shed a few tears when she heard this, poor child! and wondered if there were many Mrs. Quips in the world; but the motherly face of Mrs. Chubbs, with her three chins, the queer gabble of the red and green parrot, and more than all, the society of playfellows of her own age, were no small mitigations of the parting with Cousin John.
Mrs. Chubbs would most decidedly have been turned out of office by anymodernschool committee. When a little creature who should have been in the nursery, was sent to her charge, “to be out of the way,” Mrs. Chubbs oftener allowed it to stretch its little limbs on the grass-plat, front of the door, than she set it poring over a spelling-book. She never thumped geography or arithmetic into her pupils with a ferule. A humming-top string, or a kite-tail fragment protruding from a childish pocket, excited in her no indignation. A bit of gingerbread, or an apple, munched by a little urchin who had made an early or an indifferent breakfast, did not appear to her old-fashioned vision an offense worthy of the knout or the guillotine. In fact, Mrs. Chubb’s heart was as capacious as her pockets, andtheirunfathomable depths were a constant marvel to her pupils.
As to the parrot, he constituted himself “a committee” of one, and called out occasionally, “Mind your lessons, I say,” to Fanny’s great diversion. And Fanny did “mind” them; for she loved good Mrs. Chubb, and then she had a little private plan of her own for astounding Cousin John, one of these days, with her profound erudition.
And so time passed—the little homesick lump in her throat had quite disappeared; she sang—she skipped—she laughed—a merrier little grig never danced out a slipper.
Will my indulgent reader skip over ten years with me?—he might take a more dangerous leap—and enter yonder substantial-looking building, in which young ladies are “finished.” Passing by the long dining-hall, with its bare tavern-y looking table, and rows of bamboo chairs, let us ascend yonder marble stairs (for the school-house, let me tell you, was once an aristocratic old mansion), and turn down that long passage to the right. Now let us stop before No. 29. Remove your hat, if you please, because I am about to usher you into the presence of two very pretty girls, and though I do not approve of eaves-dropping, suppose we just step behind that friendly screen, and listen to what they are saying.
“Fanny, what pains you are taking with your hair to-day!” said Kate. “Is this Cousin John who has written you such interminable letters from ‘El-Dorado,’ to turn out, after all, your lover? I hope not, for I fancy him some venerable Mentor, with a solemn face, and oracular voice, jealous as Bluebeard of any young man who looks at you. How old is this paragon?—handsome or ugly? I am dying to know.”
“Thirty-six,” replied Fanny; “and as I remember him, with dark, curling hair, a broad, expansive brow, eyes one would never weary looking into, a voice singularly rich and sweet, and a form perfect but for a trifling stoop in the shoulders. That is myCousin John,” said Fanny, drawing the comb through her ringlets.
“Stoop in the shoulders! I thought as much,” mockingly laughed the merry Kate. “If he had ‘a stoop in the shoulders’ ten years ago, how do you suppose your Adonis looks now?”
“It matters very little to me,” replied Fanny, with a little annoyance in her tone; “it matters very little to me, were he as ugly as Caliban.”
“How am I to construe that?” asked Kate, crossing her two forefingers (“it matters very little to you”). “Does it mean that love is out of the question between you two, or that you would have him if Lucifer stood in your path?”
“Construe it as it best suits you,” replied Fanny, with the most provoking nonchalance.
“But ‘a stoop in the shoulders,’” persisted the tormenting Kate. “I don’t care to have a man’s face handsome, provided it is intelligent, but I do insist upon a fine form, correct morals, and a good disposition.”
Fanny laughed—“I suppose you think to windyourhusband round your little finger, like a skein of silk.”
“With Cupid’s help,” replied Kate, with mock humility.
“Of courseyouwill be quite perfect;—never, for instance, appear before your husband in curl papers, or slip-shod?” asked Fanny; “never make him eat bad pies or puddings?”
“That depends,” answered Kate, “if he is tractable—not; if not—why not?”
“You will wink at his cigars?”
“He might do worse.”
“You will patronize his moustache?”
“If he will my snuff-box,” said Kate, laughing. “Heigho—I feel just like a cat in want of a mouse to torment. I wish I knew a victim worthy to exercise my talents upon.”
“Talons, you mean,” retorted Fanny—“I pity him.”
“He would get used to it,” said Kate; “the mouse—the husband, you know—I should let him run a little way, and then clap my claws on him. I’ve seen it tried; it works like a charm.”
“Kate, why do you always choose to wear a mask?” asked Fanny; “why do you take so much pains to make a censorious world believe you the veryoppositeof what you are?”
“Because paste passes as current as diamond; because I value the world’s opinion not one straw; because if you own a heart, it is best to hide it, unless you want it trampled on. But I don’t ask you to subscribe to all this, Fanny, with that incomparable Cousin John in your thoughts; there he is—there’s the door-bell—Venus! how you blush! but ‘a stoop in the shoulders.’ How can you, Fanny? Thirty-six years old, too—Lord bless us!”
Was this “little Fanny?” this tall, graceful creature of seventeen, the little thing who bade him good-by at Mrs. Chubb’s door, ten years since, with her pinafore stuffed in the corner of her eye? “Little Fanny,” with that queenly presence? Cousin John almost felt as if he ought to ask leave to touch her hand; ah—she is the same little Fanny after all—frank, guileless, and free-hearted. She flies into his arms, puts up her rosy lips for a kiss, and says “DearCousin John.”
“God bless you,” was all he could find voice to say, for in truth, she was Mary’s own self.
Yes—Fanny was very lovely, with those rippling waves of silken hair, and the light and shadow, flitting like summer clouds over her speaking face. Cousin John held her off at arm’s length. Yes, she was very lovely. “How much she had changed!”
“And you, too,” said Fanny, seating herself beside him. “You look so much better; the stoop in your shoulders is quite gone; you are bronzed a little, but all the better for that.”
“Thank you,” said Cousin John, “more especially as I could not help it, not even to please ‘little Fanny.’”
“Ah—but I am no longerlittleFanny,” she said, blushing slightly. “I have crammed a great manybooks into my head since I saw you, and done considerable thinking beside.”
“And what has your thinking all amounted to?” asked Cousin John, half playfully, half seriously.
“Just to this—that you are the very best cousin in the world, and that I never can repay you for all you have been to the poor, little friendless orphan,” said Fanny, with brimming eyes.
“God bless you,” said Cousin John. “I am more than repaid in these last ten minutes.”
Hours flew like seconds, while Percy narrated his adventures by sea and land, and listened to Fanny’s account of herself; the old duenna, meanwhile, walking uneasily up and down the hall, occasionally making an errand into the sitting-room, and muttering to herself as she went out, that she had heard before of boarding-school “cousins,” and that he was altogether too handsome a man to be allowed such a longtête-à-têtewith Miss Fanny; and so she reported at head-quarters, but the Principal being just then unfortunately engaged in examining a new French teacher, who had applied for employment, could not give the affair the attention Miss Miffit insisted upon.
Mr. Thurston Grey, too, was on the anxious seat; for the mischievous Kate had informed him “that Fanny was holding a protracted meeting in the best parlor, with the handsomest man she ever saw.”
Nothing like a rival to precipitate matters! The declaration which had so long been trembling onMr. Grey’s lips, found its way into a billet-doux, and was forwarded to Fanny that very night, and presented by Kate in the presence of Cousin John, “to test,” as she said, “the quality of hiscousin-ship.”
Cousin John was not jealous of “little Fanny!” how absurd! Little Fanny! whom he had carried in his arms, who had slept on his breast. In fact he laughed quite merrily at the idea, louder than was at all necessary to convince himself of the nonsense of the thing, when he read Mr. Grey’s proposal; (for Fanny had no secrets from “Cousin John.”) True he wound up his watch twice that morning, and put on odd stockings, and found it quite impossible to decide which of his cravats he should wear that day, and looked in the glass very attentively for some time, and forgot to smoke, but he wasn’tjealousof little Fanny. Of course he wasn’t!