A Little Girl in Old Salem by Amanda Minnie Douglas (well read books TXT) 📕

Iridescent flies were skimming about, now and then a fish made a stir and dazzle. Squirrels ran up and down the trees and chattered, robins were singing joyously, the thrush with her soft, plaintive note. She glanced up now and then and caught his eye, and he felt she was happy. It was a delightful thing, after all, to render some one truly happy. Perhaps children were more easily satisfied, more responsive.

"Oh," he said presently, "we must go back or we will lose our supper, and Cousin Elizabeth will scold."

"I shouldn't think she would dare to scold you;" raising wondering eyes.

"Why not?" He wondered what reason she would give.

"Because you are a man."

"She scolds Silas."

"Oh, that is different."

"How--different? We are both men. He is quite as tall as I."

"But you see--well, he is something like a servant. She tells him what to do, and if he doesn't do it right she can find fault with it. But you are--well, the house is yours. You can do what pleases you."

"Quite reasoned out, little one;" and he laughed with an approving sound.

"It's curious that you scold people you like, and other people may do the same thing and--is it because you don't dare to? If it is wrong in the one place, why not in the other?"

"Perhaps politeness restrains us."

"I don't like people to scold. Miss Eunice never does."

"Eunice has a sweet nature. Doesn't Miss Winn ever scold you?"

"Well--I suppose I am bad and wilful sometimes, and then she has the right. But when you do things that do not matter----"

Miss Winn was walking in the garden. Cynthia waved her hand, but walked leisurely forward.

"I couldn't imagine what had become of you."

"It was my fault," interposed Chilian. "I met her at the gate and asked her to go for a walk."

"And with that soiled apron!"

"That came off the slate. I hadn't any desk. It was hard to hold it on my knee."

"You might have come in for a clean one. Run upstairs and change it."

But she was destined to meet Cousin Elizabeth in the hall. The elder caught her arm roughly.

"Where have you been gadding to, bad girl? Didn't you know you must come straight home from school? Here we have been worried half to death about you, and I'm tired as a dog, trotting 'round all day. You deserve a good whipping;" and she shook her. She would have enjoyed slapping her soundly. But Chilian entered at that instant.

"She is going upstairs for a clean apron," he said. "I took her off for a walk."

"She might have asked whether she could go or not," snapped Elizabeth. "She's the most lawless thing!"

"It was my place. Don't blame the child!"

"Well, supper's ready."

She didn't have her apron on quite straight and her hair was a little frowsy. Elizabeth had proposed it should be cut short on the neck for the summer, but Miss Winn had objected.

"Such a great mop! No child wears it!"

Cynthia came in quietly and took her place. After her first cup of tea Elizabeth thawed a little, enough to announce that two of the Appleton children were ill, they thought with scarlet fever.

Chilian expressed some sympathy.

"And how was the school, Cynthia? We thought you might have been kept in for some of your good deeds, as children are so seldom bad."

"I--I didn't like it," she answered simply.

"Children can't have just what they like in this world," was Elizabeth's rejoinder.

"Nor grown people either," was Chilian's softening comment. Then he changed the subject. He had seen Cousin Giles, who proposed to pay them a visit, coming on some Saturday.

"Have you any lesson to learn?" he asked of Cynthia. "If so, bring your book and come to my room."

"Oh, thank you!" Her face was radiant with delight.

Where had she left her book? Dame Wilby had told her to take it home and study. Surely she had brought it--oh, yes! she had put it just inside the gate under the great clump of ribbon grass. If only Cousin Elizabeth's sharp eyes had not seen it. But there it was, safe enough.

She was delighted to go to Cousin Chilian's room, though she never presumed. She seemed to have an innate sort of delicacy that he wondered at.

The spelling was soon mastered. It was the rather unusual words that puzzled her. Then they attacked the tables and he practised her in making figures. Like most children left to themselves, she printed instead of writing.

"Oh!" she cried with a wistful yet joyous emphasis, "I wish I could come to school to you. And I'd like to be the only scholar."

"But you ought to be with little girls."

"I don't like them very much."

Then Miss Winn came for her. "You are very good to take so much trouble," she said.

"Oh, I like you so much, so much!" she exclaimed with her sweet eyes as well as her lips.

He recalled then the day on board the vessel, when she had besought in her impetuous fashion that he should kiss her. She had never offered the caress since. She was not an effusive child.

Her position at school was rather anomalous. A younger woman might have managed differently. There was a new scholar that rather crowded them on the bench. And the boy back of her did some sly things that annoyed her. He gave her hair a twitch now and then. One day he dropped a little toad on her book, at which she screamed, though an instant after she was not at all afraid. Of course, he was whipped for that, and for once she did not feel sorry.

"You're a great ninny to be afraid of a toad not bigger than a button," he said scornfully. "I'll get you whipped some day to make up for it, see if I don't."

Thursday was unfortunate and she was kept in for some rather saucy replies. When she returned they were in the sitting-room and had been discussing some household matters. She surveyed them with a courageous but indignant air.

"I've quit," she exclaimed. "I'm not going there to school any more."

She stood up very straight, her eyes flashing.

"What!" ejaculated Cousin Elizabeth.

"Why, I've quit! She wanted to make me say I was sorry and beg her pardon, and she threatened to keep me all night, but I knew some of you would come, at least Rachel."

"And I suppose you were a saucy, naughty girl!"

"What happened?" asked Chilian quietly.

"Why, you see--I went up to her table with the figures I had been making on my slate. I'd done some of them over three times, for Tommy Marsh joggled my elbow. Then I went back to my seat. We're crowded now, and I went to sit down and sat on the floor. I do believe Sadie Green did it on purpose--moved so there wasn't room enough for me to sit. And Tom laughed, then all the children laughed, and Dame Wilby said, 'Get up, Cynthy Leverett,' and I said 'My name isn't Cynthy, if you please, and I haven't any seat to sit on if I do get up.' And then the children laughed again, and I don't quite know what did happen, but I was so angry. Then she said all the children should stay in for laughing. She called me to the desk and I went. The slate was broken and I laid it on the table. Then she said wasn't I sorry for being saucy, and I said I wasn't. It was bad enough to fall on the floor, for I might have hurt myself. Then she took up her switch, and I said: 'You strike me, if you dare!' Then she pushed me in a little closet place, and there I staid until after school was out. Then she said, 'Would I tell Miss Leverett to come over?' and I said Mr. Leverett was my guardian and I would tell him, but I wasn't coming to school any more, and that Tommy Marsh pinched me and pulled my hair, and called me wild Indian. And so--I've quit. You can't make me go again. I'll run away first and go on some of the boats."

There was a blaze of scarlet on her cheeks and her eyes flashed fire, but she stood up straight and defiant, when another child might have broken down and cried. Chilian Leverett always remembered the picture she made--small, dark, and spirited.

"No," he exclaimed, "you need not go back." Then he rose and took her hand that was cold and trembling. "You will not go back. Let us find Miss Winn----"

"Chilian!" warned Elizabeth.

He led Cynthia from the room, up the stairs. Miss Winn sat there sewing. She clasped her arms about him, he could fairly feel the throb in them.

"Oh," she cried with a strange sort of sweetness. "I love you. You are so good to me, and I have told you just the truth."

Then she buried her face on Miss Winn's bosom.

Chilian went downstairs. He laughed, yet he was deeply touched by her audacity and bravery.

"Elizabeth," he announced; "I will see Mrs. Wilby. Let the matter die out, do not refer to it. I did not think it quite the school for her. We will find something else."

"Chilian, I must make one effort for you and her. Going on this way will be her ruin. I should insist upon her going back to school and apologizing to Mrs. Wilby. I wouldn't let a chit like that order what a household of grown people should do and make them bow down to her. You will be sorry for it in the end. You have had no experience with children, you have seen so few. And a man hasn't the judgment----"

His usually serene temper was getting ruffled, and with such characters the end is often obstinacy.

"If she is to make a disturbance here, become a bone of contention with us, I will send her away. Cousin Giles is taking a great interest in her. There are good boarding-schools in Boston, or she and Miss Winn could have a home together under his supervision. There is enough to provide for them."

"And you would turn her over to that half-heathen woman!" in a horrified tone. "Then I wash my hands of the matter. Send her to perdition, if you will."


CHAPTER VII

CHANGEFUL LIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD

Elizabeth Leverett busied herself about the supper. She felt as one does in the threatening of a thunderstorm, when the clouds roll up and the rumbling is low and distant and one studies the sky with presentiments. Then it comes nearer, flirts a little with the elements, breaks open and shows the blue that the scurrying wind soon hides and the real storm bursts. She had believed all along that it must come.

She was not an ungracious or a selfish woman outside of her own home. She was good to the sick and the needy, she gave of her time and strength. In the home there was a sense of ownership, of the self-appropriation so often termed duty. Everything had gone on smoothly for years. She had settled that Chilian would not marry. Such a bookish man, whose interests lay chiefly with men, did not need a wife