HERE LIESHIS AFLICTEDMISS M. BURWELL'SFATHEFULL LITTLE FREND AND TAME PLAYFELOW ANDSUFFERERC. H.
HERE LIESHIS AFLICTEDMISS M. BURWELL'SFATHEFULL LITTLE FREND AND TAME PLAYFELOW ANDSUFFERERC. H.
There was not room for the whole name, but, as I told my fellow-mourners when I read the inscription to them, since we all knew it, the omission was of no consequence. I could have wished that the slate had broken straight, so that the inscription would have gone in better. However, one cannot control circumstance when it takes the shape of a fracture.
Within twenty-four hours after Caspar Hauser's decease he was succeeded by Bay. His name in its entirety, was Baffin's Bay. The alliterative unctuousness of the title pleased me, as Mary 'Liza pronounced it smoothly in her geography lesson, the day on which Hamilcar, the carriage driver, drove over a young "old hare" in the road, and knocked one of the poor thing's eyes out. It was taken up for dead, but presently began to kick, and the ownership reverted to me. It lived a week, and for hours at a time was so nearly comfortable as to eat sparingly of milk, lettuce, cabbage, and clover, with which I supplied it lavishly twice a day. I likewise treated the wounded eye with balsam-capeiva and balm of Gilead ointment, sovereign appliances for the bruises and cut fingers of that generation. A lemon box, with slats nailed across the front by faithful Barratier, was the hospital in which I laid Bay up for repairs. Him, too, I carried daily into the garden, for change of air. He condescended to approve of the parsley patch,limping through it as gracefully as the long tape tied to his right hind leg would allow.
When, upon the third day of his residence in civilized quarters, he had a convulsion in the very middle of the parsley patch, I thought it a playful antic, and was amused and gratified thereat. The second time this happened, James, the gardener, chanced to witness the performance and informed me, brutally, that "that old hyar had throwed a fit, and was boun' to die 'fore long.
"That 'ar lick on de side o' de hade done de bizness fur him, sure. De brain am injerred. Mighty easy thing fur to injer a Molly Cottontail's brain. He ain't got much, an' hit lies close to de top o' de hade."
For forty-eight hours before Bay died, the spasms were distressingly frequent, but I would not have him killed. James might be wrong. Good nursing and plenty of fresh air might bring my patient around. For fear my parents might insist that he should be put out of his misery, I removed the hospital to theplayhouse, and gave him the range of the place, forbidding the colored children to tell what was going on. His agonies were nearly over when, in the distraction of anxiety, I took Cousin Frank Morton into confidence. He had ridden over with a message from Cousin Molly Belle.
(Have I mentioned that they had been married for six months?)
The message was to the effect that I must spend the day and night with her. My mother gave ready consent.
"Molly has been too pale for several days, and has little or no appetite," she said, looking affectionately at me. "The change will do her good, and there is no other place where she enjoys a visit more than at your house. Molly! can't you thank Cousin Frank for taking the trouble to come for you?"
Strained by conflicting emotions, I fidgeted awkwardly about Cousin Frank's chair, pinching the hem of my apron into folds, and shifting from one foot to the other.
"I want to godreadfully!" I got out at length, almost ready to cry. "But—Cousin Frank—wouldn't you like to look at Bay? He's an old hare that I am taming."
While speaking, I started for the door, and he came after me. My mother exclaimed, provoked, yet laughing, that I was "getting more ridiculous every day," but I knew my man, and did not stop.
Bay was throwing a particularly hard fit when we got to him. His cries had something humanlike in them that pierced ears and heart.
"My dear child!" uttered the shocked visitor. "How long has this been going on?"
Upon hearing that the poor thing had never seemed really well from the day he was hurt, and had been "going on like this for four days, hand-running," he was quite angry—for him.
"I wonder that your mother let you keep him when he was in this state," he said seriously; and, seeing the tears I could not driveback, he sat down on my chair and drew me up to him. "It would be better to kill the poor creature, at once, dear. He can never be better."
I begged him not to tell my mother about Bay's sickness. I had become very fond of him, and he was so sweet and patient—and tame,—and I just couldn't bear to have him killed. Whether he would have granted my petition or not was not to be tested. While I was speaking, Bay uttered a shrill scream, leaped up high in the air, and fell over on his back, dead.
We hurried on the funeral that I might go home with Cousin Frank that evening. I pulled up the tombstone from the head of Caspar Hauser's grave and made an epitaph on the other side for Bay. There might not be another slate broken in the family for months. At the present rate of mortality among my pensioners, it behooved me to be economical. I had not time to indite such an elaborate testimonial to the worth of the deceased as graced Caspar Hauser's last resting-place. Yet I thought the tribute not amiss, and the drop into poetry elated me and electrified my audience. The lines were engraved perpendicularly upon the slate to give the rhyme effective room:—
"Alas! and Alack A DAY!Poor Litle BAFFINS BAY!"
My visit lasted three days instead of one and a half. I brought back with me something worthy of the pride that swelled my happy heart to aching. One of Cousin Frank's men had taken two young hares alive, and given them to his mistress a week ago, and she and Cousin Frank had arranged a pleasant surprise for me. Before I had been in the house an hour I was taken to the dining room to see the dear little things already housed in a cage, made by the plantation carpenter. None of your lemon-box makeshifts, but a strong case in the shape of a cottage, of planed wood, painted white on the outside.There were two rooms in it with a round door in the dividing wall. One was half full of soft, sweet-smelling hay for Darby and Joan to sleep upon. Their names were ready-made, too. The other room was a parlor where they were to eat and to live in the daytime. Broad leather straps by which the box could be carried were made to look like chimneys.
The whole family collected to admire my treasures when I got home, and Mary 'Liza was so much interested in Darby and Joan that she brought up her cats, Cinderella and Preciosa, to be introduced and make friends with "their new cousins"—so she said. Cinderella was black-and-white, Preciosa yellow-and-white, very large, and with long fur as soft and fine as raw silk. Mary 'Liza put them down close to the cottage.
"You must be very good and never hurt either of the beautiful hares—you hear?" she said, and we all looked on to see what they would do.
Bless your soul! they walked once aroundthe cottage in a lazy, indifferent, supercilious way, hardly glancing at their "new cousins," then Preciosa yawned, tiptoed back to her place on the rug, doubled her toes in under her, and half closed her "greenery-yallery" eyes in real, or simulated slumber. Cinderella purred about her mistress until she seated herself again to work upon her seventh chemise, then jumped up into her lap and composed herself to slumber.
After that, I had no fear that the well-fed, pampered creatures would molest my pets. Everybody sympathized in my good fortune. The weather was intensely warm, and Uncle Ike's own august hands rigged up a shelf against the garden fence, making what I called a "situation" for my cottage. Not even Argus could get at them there, had he been evilly disposed, and he had excellent principles for a puppy. Darby and Joan nibbled lettuce and cabbage from my fingers inside of three days, and if they were in the bedroom when I approached their dwelling, would bustle out to see if it were milk, or greens, or, maybe, clover blossoms that I had for them.
The happy, happy days went by, and I announced to my father one evening as we sat at supper that I really "began to believe the curse was lifted from my pets."
"The curse! Mary Hobson Burwell! what a word!" cried my mother.
My father held up his hand.
"One moment, if you please, mother! Explain yourself, Molly!"
"I mean," answered I, bravely, "that it used to seem as if a wicked fairy had cursed a curse upon anything I took a fancy to. Like the girl in the song, and her tree and flower, and dear gazelle, you know. But Darby and Joan make me hope—"
The words were blasted upon my tongue by a terrible scream.
HE garden gate was close to the dining-room windows, and the windows were not high above the ground. I rushed for the nearest. The moon was bright, and I was in time to see three cats jump down from the shelf on which the cottage was "situated," and dart away in as many different directions. One ran close along the wall of the house, and I recognized Preciosa. Hurling myself over the window-sill, I was the first of our startled party to reach the scene of the tragedy.
The attack had been made from the three exposed sides of the cottage, the cats thrusting their claws between the bars and dragging my darlings up against these.
My father opened the cottage door and took out the mangled, palpitating bodies.
"Oh, father!" I shrieked. "Are they killed?"
"Yes, my daughter."
Then I went crazy. So raging and raving crazy that when I came partially to my senses, I did not recollect what I had been saying or doing since I heard the awful truth. I had been removed from the dark and bloody ground in some way and by somebody, for I was lying on my mother's bed. The consciousness of where I was had in it some drops of the oil of consolation. Next to the close embrace of the mother's arms there is no other resting-place on earth that so aptly typifies the safety and healing grace of Heaven to the child of whatever age, as Mother's Bed.
In our house, to be laid upon that miracle of elastic fluffiness was to become, in fancy,a blessèd ghost, cradled upon a cloud. The sick child, the hurt child, the repentant child—were received into that holy asylum without other certificate than his or her need.
Finding myself there made me feel that there might still be something worth living for, and to care for. My mother was by me and her arm was under my head; my father stood at the foot of the bed, kind and compassionate; Mam' Chloe was putting a bottle of hot water to my feet, and there was a strong smell of cologne in the air. I was very weak; my head felt queer and light, and although I was not crying, something seemed to grab me inside and shake me every little while—a short, sharp shake that made me gasp. Before I could open my eyes I heard my mother's voice say:—
"I wish the dear child did not take things so much to heart. It will bring her a great deal of sorrow in her future life."
Ah, blessèd mother of mine! for so many years beyond the sight and hearing of thevicissitudes of that life, then new and all untried—yours was but a partial prophecy. Against the sorrows born of "taking things so much to heart," I set a wealth of joy and beauty and love that have been made mine own by the same nature and habit.
What she said or meant was little to me at that moment, for as I blinked confusedly about me, I saw Mary 'Liza, neat and upright, in her own especial chair by the window, and Preciosa was on her lap.
An electric bolt quivered through me. I started up and pointed at the placid pair, my hand shaking like a leaf, my voice thick with spluttering wrath:—
"Shedid it! I want her killed."
"Dear child, lie down, don't talk, you are dreaming," cooed my mother, trying to force me gently down to the pillow.
I put her aside, and tried to form articulate words.
"That, cat, did, it!I saw her. I'll kill her! Let me get up."
My father came to my mother's help.
"Take the cat out of the room, Mary Eliza," he ordered calmly. And to me—"Now, Molly, we will hear what you have to say."
He heard and weighed the evidence before I was put to bed in my own room. My head still went around queerly when I raised it, but my mind was clear. He sat by me and stroked my hand gently while he got my testimony. His kindness to his orphaned niece was unfailing, but he seldom caressed her, and nobody ever romped with her. He listened to my story first, and as patiently as if he were not to hear any other.
I was hotly positive that the big cat I had seen jump from the shelf and dash by the window so close to me that I could have touched her by leaning over the sill, was Preciosa. There was no other cat of her size and color on the plantation. Beyond this conviction the prosecution had not a scrap of testimony to offer. On the side of the accused werethe record of a blameless life; the lack of motive, inasmuch as the accused was fed abundantly with daily bread far more convenient for her than the raw flesh she had never desired before,—and, as a "clincher," an alibi was set up by Preciosa's mistress, who, coming into the chamber a few minutes after the disaster, had found the cat sleeping upon the rug just as she had left her when the supper bell rang,—and with never a speck of blood on her paws and fur.
"She had licked it off, then!" I stormed. "I tell you I did see her! I did! Idid! IDID! Father! you know I wouldn't tell a story about it—don't you?"
"I believe that you think you saw her, my daughter. We all believe that. But you may have been mistaken. You were very much excited, and the cat ran fast, and it was in the night, recollect, and the moon is not as bright as the day. Altogether, we must take it for granted that Preciosa is not guilty,and keep a sharp lookout for the strange cat that did the mischief."
"It was Preciosa—hateful old thing!" I insisted, angry and sullen. "She ought to be killed!"
My father arose with decision that showed the case was concluded.
"Mother! you will see that our little daughter does not talk any more about this to-night? She will, I hope, feel differently in the morning."
I did not. In saying my prayers at bedtime I pointedly omitted—"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." I did not mean to forgive Preciosa. Furthermore, I was not at peace with her mistress and advocate. The more I mused, the hotter the fire burned, until I was ready to convict my father of injustice, and my mother of rank favoritism for the alien. I sulked violently at breakfast, and as I was not reproved, grew so stubborn and disrespectful over my lessons that I was sent tomy room to stay there until dinner was ready. The term of banishment had still an hour to run, and I was leaning, listless and wretched, out of the window when Mam' Chloe and Uncle Ike met in the yard directly beneath, and part of the low dialogue reached me.
"Ef I could onct ketch that Precious-O-sir in some o' her tricks, you'd see the fur fly,—mind!" said the butler.
"I suttinly is mighty sorry for po' Miss Molly," answered his wife. "Looks-if hur heart is pretty nigh broke. It's right down pitiful to see how much sto' she sot by them young old hyars. You mus' see ef you can't get her some mo'."
I dropped my head on the window-sill and cried out the tears that scalded my lids at the unexpected touch of sympathy. Then I fell to thinking and with a purpose.
I went down to dinner with a tolerably composed countenance, a good appetite, and a well-digested scheme of vengeance in my mind. Uncle Ike was my only co-conspirator. I think I can see him now as he rolled back against the garden fence to laugh as I unfolded my design.
"Ef you ain't thebeater!" he chuckled, his pepper-and-salt poll tilted to one shoulder, and eyeing me with undisguised admiration. "An' you say nobody ain' put it into your hade?"
"I haven't said a word about it to anybody else, Uncle Ike. You'll help me,—won't you?"
He doubled himself up like a dyspeptic jack-knife, the ingenuity of the plot gaining upon his imagination.
I pressed my advantage:—
"And don't tell Mam' Chloe—please! She'll think it is cruel. But it isn't. It's just only justice. And it can't bringthemback."
I clenched my fists, and my eyes filled.
"That's so, Miss Molly, that's so," sobering instantly. "It is mighty hard on you—powerful hard."
"And, Uncle Ike,"—hurrying to get itout lest my voice should fail,—"please don't let anybody give me any more old hares, or any 'live things to keep. They'll just die, or be murdered by other folks' cats—or something. It's no use making myself happy for a little while just to be sorry for ever and ever so long afterward."
With which epigram I ran away, afraid to try to utter another word.
That evening we were all on the front porch. The air was breezeless, the moon as yellow as brass through sultry fogs. My mother, in a white dress, lay back in her rocking-chair and fanned herself languidly. My father smoked his Powhatan pipe upon the steps, leaning against one pillar of the roof. Mary 'Liza in pale-blue lawn, occupied the other end of the step. Her hands were in her lap. Cinderella dozed upon a fold of her skirt. Dorinda had been undressed and rocked to sleep at sunset. Preciosa had gone upstairs at the same time. I saw her lying upon the foot of our bed after supper,her eyes narrowed to slender slits with sleep or slyness. I had a shrewd impression that if I were to go upstairs now I should not find her in the same place. Instead of verifying the surmise in this way I stole noiselessly out of the family group, sauntering along carelessly until I turned the corner of the house, after which I ran like a lapwing to the garden gate, the rendezvous agreed upon between Uncle Ike and myself.
He was there with the various "properties" I had ordered.
Imprimis, a big dish-pan;second, a monstrous black pot from which steam arose into the hot night;third, a stout twine, to one end of which was attached a brick; a lump of raw liver dangled at the other. By my directions the pan was balanced upon the shelf where the cottage had stood, so that a slight pull would overset it, the brick was laid in the bottom, the string with the liver attachment hanging over the side. Lastly, Uncle Ike mounted upon the stool Iwas wont to use when I visited my murdered dears, and filled the pan from the pot. All being ready, we conspirators withdrew to the unlighted dining room, and stationed ourselves at a window.
Our watch was not tedious. I was the first to discern a moving speck in the dim vista of the walk leading from the gate far down the garden. It enlarged and assumed a definite form, slowly. Evidently it was a scout, and the advance a reconnoissance. Feline artifice was in every line and motion. A ray of misty moonlight lay athwart the entrance to the garden. The gate was propped open. As the cat crossed it, we recognized a wily and wicked old Tom from the stable, a disreputable plebeian prowler, never tolerated in the house grounds. I hardly smothered an ejaculation as dainty Preciosa glided into the illuminated area and took part in the furtive inspection of the preparations made for the reception of last night's marauders. A third, and yet a fourth, miscreant joined the first two, and heads were laid together in a council of war.
The liver hung high. Tom rose upon his hind feet, clawed the air futilely and came down sheepishly upon all fours. Next, a small, nimble black cat jumped and fell short of the bait. Uncle Ike snickered, and I drew in my breath excitedly, as the pampered exquisite, My Lady Preciosa, tripped mincingly into the open. The moon shone out obligingly to let us see her fall into position, her head upraised toward the tempting morsel—(pig's liver, and none too fresh at that)—her crouching body thrown well back upon the haunches, her tail, enlarged to double the usual size, waving sinuously from side to side in leisurely calculation of distance and chances. Suddenly she launched her supple body into space like a catapult, caught the meat between her claws, swung in the air for a victorious half-second—and then, the deluge!
A chorus of screeches, a frantic stampede inall directions, and the arena was clear of all except the home-made infernal machine,—the empty dish-pan upside down on the ground, the brick, the string, and the raw meat lying under it.
The caterwauling, Uncle Ike's "ky-yi!" and my scream of laughter, brought the porch-party to the spot. By previous agreement neither of us mentioned Preciosa's name. I had to pinch myself violently to contain the unseemly mirth bottled up in my wicked soul when Mary 'Liza was "so glad the horrible creatures were punished," and "hoped" gently "that Molly was convinced, now, that poor, dear Preciosa was innocent."
"By the way, whereisPreciosa?" asked my father.
"She seemed so sleepy that I gave her her supper, and put her to bed, when I took Dorinda upstairs," said her surety.
Perhaps my father partly interpreted the gleam in my eyes and the quivering muscles about my uncontrollable mouth, for he glancedkeenly at me and made as if he would let the inquiry drop. Not so my mother. She bade Mary 'Liza run upstairs and make sure that Preciosa was there.
"I want my dear little girl to be entirely satisfied that her cousin was right, and that she did the cat an injustice," she said with judicial mildness.
Preciosa was not in our room, and she stayed out all night, greatly to her owner's alarm and distress. Her habits were so regular, her deportment was always so impeccable that the circumstance assumed the proportions of an Event by breakfast time. My mother was anxious, Mary 'Liza sorrowful, and my father shook his head more gravely than the occasion seemed to warrant.
"Molly may not have been so far wrong after all," he observed to my mother, "in spite of the array of circumstantial evidence against her."
My mother was unconvinced.
"Previous good behavior should count formuch in such a case," she urged. "And our little Molly is too apt to jump at conclusions. We cannot be too careful how we accuse others of sins which they may never have committed."
I understood what they said perfectly. They never talked down to us. That was one reason we were called "old-fashioned" and "precocious" by people who had one set of words for their own use, and another for children. My parents considered, and I think rightly, that the best and most correct forms of speech should be taught to mere infants, that it is as easy to train a child to be grammatical as to let it lapse into all sorts of slovenly inaccuracies that must be unlearned at school, and in society. So, when they talked of "circumstantial evidence" I had a fair inkling of what the phrase conveyed. Preciosa was upon trial for misdemeanor, and I for backbiting.
I ate away industriously to keep from "answering back,"—a cardinal offence in nursery government. Mary 'Liza had no appetite, butshe, also, remained silent, and there was moisture under her eyelids.
"We will suspend judgment—" began my father, and interrupted himself to ask—"Whathaveyou got there, Ike?"
The butler grinned from ear to ear, and broke into uncontrollable cachinnations in depositing his burden upon the floor.
"One of the stable-boys foun' it in the lof', suh."
He could say no more, and would not have been heard had he gone on, for my father roared, my mother fairly shrieked with laughter, and I went into hysterics, while Mam' Chloe and Gilbert joined in the general racket from the doorway.
An abject nondescript cringed at Mary 'Liza's feet, whimpering piteously. The devil's broth concocted by Uncle Ike, according to my receipt, was warm starch, made blue with indigo. A few red peppers were boiled in it to dissuade the cats from licking it off before it could dry. It adhered to everyindividual hair of Preciosa's body. She looked like an azure porcupine. I had thought, at first, of using soot as coloring matter, but the thought of the blue appealed to my sense of the congruous ridiculous. I was more than content with the result. Why a blue cat should be more mirth-provoking than a yellow may not be explicable, but the fact remains. Even Mary 'Liza shrank from contact with the absurd object, and the moisture condensed into falling drops.
"Oh, Aunt Mary! do you think itcanbe Preciosa? It looks like a—monster!"
With tears running down his cheeks, and his sides shaking with gusts of merriment, my father took me upon his knee, and gave me the funniest kiss I ever had—a jerky kiss, as if a bee had bobbed against my mouth.
"You'll be the death of me yet, child!" And after another series of side-shakings—"So much for circumstantial evidence!"
Themorning was biting cold. A northwest wind had been busy for hours sweeping and dusting the sky until, now that it was resting from its labors, the blue vault was as clean and bright as our mahogany dining-table after Uncle Ike had polished it with beeswax and rosin.
At the breakfast-table the butter splintered off under the knife, and the milk was frozen so hard that Mary 'Liza and I sugared it and made believe it was ice-cream. When Gilbert, the under dining-room servant, brought in the buckwheat cakes and waffles from the kitchen, he had to cover them with a hot plate, and then run as hard as he could go across theyard to the house, to keep them from chilling on the way.
There are no buckwheat cakes nowadays, like those that Aunt 'Ritta made—glossy brown, all of a size, and porous as a sponge. It was great fun to butter them, and then press them with the flat of a knife-blade, to see spurts and spouts rise from the surface like so many hot oil geysers.
That was the morning when I made the eight-cakes-and-one-sausage speech that passed into a family proverb. The night before I had thrown a candle-end, four inches long, into the fire, and my mother had told me it was a Christian duty to be economical, defining the word for me. Bent, as usual, upon practising what I learned, I divided my sausage into eight bits, and ate one with each cake.
Cousin Molly Belle and Cousin Frank Morton had stayed all night with us, and the talk at table was so lively that nobody noticed what I was about. We were not allowed to chatter during meals when others than the family werepresent, or, indeed, at any other time if grown people were talking, until invited by them to take part in the conversation. So I waited for a lull in the chat to say aside to my mother at whose left hand I sat:—
"Mother! I have made one sausage do for eight buckwheat cakes. Wasn't that economical?"
Even Cousin Molly Belle laughed, the "aside" being more audible than I meant to have it. True, she hugged me the next minute, her chair being next to mine on the other side, but her eyes were lively with amusement, and I saw that she was ready to break out again.
My poor dainty mother actually blushed. It was not fashionable then for ladies, and little girls who were going to be ladies, to have hearty appetites. School-girls were instructed that no well-bred young lady ever ate more than two biscuits at breakfast or supper, and one was more refined than two. The pinion of a partridge sufficed the Lydia Languish ofthat day for the meat course of a dinner, and to be hungry was to be coarse. My mother was a sensible matron who did not lean to extreme views on any subject, but she did not rise superior to a mortification such as this. When she said distressfully:—
"Molly! Eight cakes! I am ashamed that you should be so greedy!" I comprehended that my offence was rank, and that not her taste alone, but her sensibilities, suffered.
I got hot all over, as was my custom when self-convicted of sin, and sat abashed, appetite and spirits put to flight together.
My father pulled his face straight.
"Never mind this time, mother! Better pay meat bills than doctor's bills. And, on a cold day, a restless little body like hers needs a great deal of carbon to keep the fires going. Eight buckwheat cakes and a thumping big sausage represent just so much animal heat."
By and by, when I got a chance to speak to him alone, I asked him what carbon was, and what he meant by the fires and animalheat. He was at work at his table in "the office" in the yard, the Mortons having gone home, but he put down his pen and talked to me for quite a while upon nutrition and food values. He did not use those terms. They had not come into vogue even with medical men and writers upon anatomy. Still, his simple lecture made me comprehend that what I ate kept me alive and warm and active, and how certain kinds of food made blood, and others, muscle, and others were of little or no use in keeping up animal heat, without which there could be no life.
I asked him if we could keep a dead thing warm if it would come to life again. I was thinking of all my dead pets. It was pathetic,—the familiarity of a seven-year-old with death and dissolution,—but of this I was not aware.
He answered very gravely:—
"We cannot keep dead things warm, daughter. When animal heat goes, life goes."
"And when animal heat comes, does lifecome?" I queried. "Is that what makes things alive?"
"Yes, dear. I have not time to explain it to you now. I am very busy. Some other time we will talk more about it."
I carried a spandy new idea, and a stirring, into the garden with me at noon, as a chicken runs away to a corner with a crumb. The sun shone brightly, and I easily kept comfortable by skipping up and down a long walk, bordered on the northern side by an arbor-vitæ hedge. I did not know that resinous evergreens really give out warmth, but I had found out, for myself, that this was the warmest nook of the grounds in winter, and haunted it exceedingly.
"When animal heat comes, life comes," I repeated aloud, in dancing along.
The sentence sounded important, and pleased my ears. Presently, I would set about getting all the meaning I could extract from it, and experiment upon my acquisition. All my mental currency went into active circulation.
An odd-looking thing lay in the middle of the path, that was not there when I came down awhile ago. I thought, at the first glance, that it was a hedgehog. I had seen pictures of the animal, and knew that when hunted so closely that it cannot escape it rolls itself into a prickly ball. This queer object was an oblong roll, about six inches in length and two inches thick, and covered with very coarse brown fur or wool. I picked it up. It was very cold. Then it could not be alive. It was light as a puffball. Then it was empty. For the rest it was a puzzle. I ran with it to Mam' Chloe, who was getting Bud to sleep in my mother's chamber.
She cast a look at my "find," and sniffed impatiently.
"Always huntin' and foolin' long some trash or nuther! Fetchin' er ole dade sunflower in ter show me when I'm doin' my bes' ter git this blessèd sugar-plum pie to sleep so's I ken git to my mendin'. Go 'long, Miss Molly!"
I was used to her moods, clement and adverse, and I stood my ground.
"Are yousureit's a sunflower, mammy?"
"What you take me fur, chile? Don' I know a sunflower that's run ter seed las' summer, an' is empty an' dade as Furious [Pharaoh] now? I got no time to steddy 'bout sech foolishness."
I walked off,—not crestfallen, but blithe. One word had shunted my ideas upon a new track. She called this nondescript—which might, or might not, be the dried and warped disk of a sunflower that had cast its seeds—"dead." What should hinder me from making it alive? It looked like a hedgehog, or some other animal. Itshouldbe an animal! Food of the right kind, and plenty of heat, were all it needed.
"Carbon and animal heat!" uttered I, consequentially, swelling with the prospective joy of creation.
Already I foresaw, in imagination, the tremor of the coming breath running throughthe uncouth body that would then put out, from mysterious hiding-places, head and limbs and tail, as buds unfold into flowers. I would confide to nobody what I was going to undertake. But I would do it! I would keep up animal heat, hour after hour, day after day, until my—Creature—breathed and moved and grew!
Without delay I hied me to the kitchen, and begged a cold sausage and a pone of corn-bread from Aunt 'Ritta. She made no objection beyond asking why I "wanted sassage 'n' corn-bread in de middle o' de mawnin', 'stead o' piece o' cake, or somethin' sweet."
"Because the weather is so cold," I replied briefly, and got what I wished with a grunt of "Dat's so, honey!" Negroes are constitutionally averse to winter and cold, and recognize, without knowing why, the carboniferous properties of pork and pone. I bore my treasures off to the dining room, shut the door, and began my experiment in the hottest flare of the fireshine.
Molly's Experiment. "I hied me to the kitchen and begged a cold sausage and a pone of corn-bread from Aunt 'Ritta."Molly's Experiment. "I hied me to the kitchen and begged a cold sausage and a pone of corn-bread from Aunt 'Ritta."
The sunflower disk was a curiosity to me. It had curled inward upon itself, leaving a considerable cavity within. I stuffed this with the bread and sausage, crumbled fine, ruminating, the while, upon the probability that the sausage and cakes I had devoured presented the like appearance by the time they reached my stomach. When the variegated and viscid compound was tucked away, I wound a soft string about the disk to keep it in shape, and enveloped it, first in raw cotton, then in a bit of red flannel. In my uncertainty as to which end would bourgeon into a head, and from which would be evolved the tail, I left both ends open thatITmight be able to breathe when breath came. Lastly, I secreted it under my cricket. It was what was known as "a box cricket," and the enclosing sides came to within three inches of the floor. It stood at the warmest corner of the hearth, and I was well-nigh roasted by the time I had sat upon it long enough to read the chapter inSandford and Mertonthat tells of poor soft Tommy'schoice of the shorter end of the pole on which the load was hung, as likely to be the lighter. I guessed that it was now time for me to expect to hear the birth-cry of my Creature, or at least to detect some thrill of life. Lifting a corner of the mufflings, I insinuated a tentative finger.
Itwas warm! And before I withdrew my finger from the rough brown coat I was confident that I felt a throb like a pulse heave ITS sides. It is not an exaggeration to say that I was faint with excitement as I replaced the wrappings. I had never heard of Pygmalion and his statue. It was thirty years thereafter before I read Mary Shelley'sFrankenstein. When I did read it I could not fail to recall the picture of the country-bred child, palpitating with awed delight in the belief that she had wrested Something from Nothing. Youth alone is absolutely fearless. The presumption of ignorance is akin to sublimity.
I sat down again to ecstatic dreamings. IT would be all my own whenITwas made—apet so much better worth the having and holding than any that had preceded it in my affections, that I thought of them—even of the ever-lamented Darby and Joan—with compassionate contempt. I pictured to myself the astonishment of the household, white and colored, in beholding the miracle; the sensation in the neighborhood and county when the news of what had come to pass was bruited abroad. From the outermost border of Powhatan, from Chesterfield, and mayhap from over the river separating Powhatan from Goochland, people would flock to see me and wonder. Grown-uppers, who had never heard my name until now, would tell other strangers what Mary Hobson Burwell, aged seven, had done. I should beCELEBRATED!
I sat and roasted, shifting my position occasionally that another side might get "done," and seemed to pore over my book until dinner was ready.
"You are eating next to nothing, Molly," remarked my mother, casually, during themeal. "Have you been to see 'Ritta since breakfast?"
"Yes, ma'am," I answered meekly; and she did not observe that I colored uneasily.
Back to my watch I went when the table was cleared, and the others had quitted the room. Uncle Ike replenished the fire, and commended my good sense in "huggin' the chimbley-corner in sech cole weather," before he left me to solitude, toSandford and Merton, and to "Frank." I had resolved to name him for my dear cousin-in-law. When I came to readFrankensteinI marvelled at the coincidence. Frank continued warm, as I ascertained by quarter-hourly pokes, but he did not stir. I must be patient. Precious things were slow of growth.
Full as my mind and heart were of thoughts and hopes too big for expression, my behavior was so nearly normal that no troublesome questions were propounded. I had no difficulty in keeping my secret. Imaginative children have more secrets to guard than adults ever think of harboring.
I took Frank to bed with me, smuggling him under my pillow, and going to sleep with my hand on him. He was getting warmer every hour.
At midnight a cry—a series of cries—aroused the slumbering household, and drew my father and mother to my room. I had been awakened from sleep too sound for dreams by the bite of sharp teeth upon the thick of my thumb. Even the certainty that Frank had evolved a mouth, and that it was in good working order, could not cheat me into forgetfulness of the terror and pain of that awakening. I jerked my hand from under the pillow and shook Something off upon the floor. I heard it fall, and I heard it run. Frankenstein could not have conceived more intense horror and loathing for his foul, misshapen offspring than overpowered me at that terrible instant. The light in my father's hand showed blood streamingfrom my thumb and dripping upon the coverlet.
"A mouse, or maybe a young rat, has bitten her," my mother pronounced without hesitation. "And no wonder! See how greasy her hand is! Faugh! How very careless in Chloe to put the child to bed in such a state! Be quiet, Molly! This should be a lesson to you not to go to bed again without washing your hands. You are old enough to think of such things for yourself. My dear child, can't you stop crying? It is not like you to make so much noise over a little hurt."
"She is frightened out of her senses," said my father. "And you must admit that it was rather startling to be aroused by feeling a mouse's teeth nibbling at her hand."
I clung to his neck, shivering with fright and cold. My sobs were uncontrollable.
"It wasn't a mo-use!" I got out, presently. "Nor a ra-at, either!"
"Not a mouse or a rat! How do you know? Did you see it?"
"It wasFra-a-nk!" I gulped. "Oh! I'm afraid to stay here! He is in the room somewhere! He will come after me again!"
The scene was ended by my going in my father's arms to my mother's bed for the rest of the night. My mother stayed upstairs with Mary 'Liza.
"But I did not sleep well," was her grieved report at breakfast. "The pillows smelled horribly of sausage, I suppose because Molly's hands were so greasy. Marthy! see that the pillow-cases are changed this morning."
Before Marthy got upstairs, I mustered and dragooned sufficient courage to enable me to visit the room. Still trembling and full of loathing at what I must see, I turned over the pillow. The red flannel was there—and the raw cotton—and inside of all,IT—Frank no longer—as cold as a stone!
I took it up with the tongs and threw it out of the window—and said never a word about it to anybody.