Fanny Fern

It was a mad freak of dame Nature to fashion Mary Ford after so dainty a model, and then open her blue eyes in a tumble-down house in Peck-lane. But Mary cares little for that. Fortune has given her wheel a whirl since then, and Jacob Ford is now on the top. Mary sees the young and the old, the grave and the gay, the wise and the ignorant, smile on her sweet face; as she passes, men murmur “beautiful,” and women pick flaws in her face and figure. She can not sleep for serenades, and her little room is perfumed, from May to January, with the rarest of hot-house flowers. Lovers, too, come wooing by the score. And yet, Mary is no coquette; no more than the sweet flower, which nods, and sways, and sends forth its perfume for very joy that it blossoms in the bright sunshine, all unconscious how it tempts the passer-by to pluck it for his own wearing. A queenly girl was the tailor’s daughter, with her Juno-like figure, her small, well-shaped head, poised so daintily on the fair white throat; with her large blue eyes, by turns brilliant as the lightning’s flash, then soft as a moonbeam; with her pretty mouth, and the dimple which lay perdu in the corner, with the flossy waves of her dark brown hair; with her soft, white hands, and twinkling little feet; with her winsome smile, and floating grace of motion.

Percy Lee was conquered. Percy—who had withstood blue eyes and black, gray eyes and hazel. Percy—for whom many a fair girl had smiled and pouted in vain. Percy the bookworm. Percy—handsome as Apollo, cold as Mont Blanc. Percy Lee was fettered at last, and right merrily did mischievous Cupid forge, one by one, his chains for the stoic. No poor fish ever so writhed and twisted on the hook, till the little word was whispered which made him in lover’s parlance, “the happiest of men.”

Of course, distanced competitors wondered what Mary Ford could see to admire in that book-worm of a Percy. Of course, managing mammas, with marriageable daughters, were shocked that Miss Ford should have angled for him so transparently; and the young ladies themselves marveled that the aristocratic Percy should fancy a tailor’s daughter; of course the lovers, in the seventh heaven of their felicity, could afford to let them think and say what they pleased.

The torpid sexagenarian, or frigid egotist, may sneer; but how beautiful is this measureless first love, before distrust has chilled, or selfishness blighted, or the scorching sun of worldliness evaporated the heart’s dew; when we trust with childhood’s sweet faith, because we love; when care and sorrow are undiscernible shapes in the distance; when at every footstep we ring the chime of joy from out the flowers. What can earth offer after this sparkling draught has been quaffed? How stale its after spiritless effervescences!

Percy’s love for Mary was all the more pure and intense, that he had hitherto kept his heart free from youthful entanglements. Fastidious and refined to a degree, perhaps this with him was as much a matter of necessity as of choice. In Mary both his heart and taste were satisfied; true, he sometimes wondered how so delicate and dainty a flower should have blossomed from out so rude a soil; for her father’s money could neither obliterate nor gild over the traces of his innate vulgarity; in fact, his love for his daughter was his only redeeming trait—the only common ground upon which the father and lover could meet. The petty accumulation of fortune by the penny, had narrowed and hardened a heart originally good and unselfish; the love of gold for its own sake had swallowed up every other thought and feeling. Like many persons of humble origin, whose intellects have not expanded with their coffers, Jacob Ford overrated the accident of birth and position, and hence was well pleased with Mary’s projected alliance with Percy.

“Well, to be sure, Lucy, beauty is a great thing for a girl,” he one day said to his wife. “I did not dream of this when Mary used to climb up on the counter of my little dark shop in Peck-lane, and sit playing with the goose and shears.”

“Nor I,” replied Lucy, as she looked around their handsome apartment, with a satisfied smile; “nor I, Jacob, when, after paying me one Saturday night for my week’s work, you said, ‘Lucy, you can be mistress of this shop if you like.’ I was so proud and happy: for, indeed, it was lonesome enough, Jacob, stitching in that gloomy old garret I often used to think how dreadful it would be to be sick and die there alone, as poor Hetty Carr did. It was a pity, Jacob, you did not pay her more, and she so weakly, too. Often she would sit up all night, sewing, with that dreadful cough racking her.”

“Tut—tut—wife,” said Jacob; “she was not much of a seamstress; you always had a soft heart, Lucy, and were easily imposed upon by a whining story.”

“It was too true, Jacob; and she had been dead a whole day before any one found it out; then, as she had no friends, she was buried at the expense of the city, and the coffin they brought was too short for her, and they crowded her poor thin limbs into it, and carried her away in the poor’s hearse. Sometimes, Jacob, I get very gloomy when I think of this, and look upon our own beautiful darling; and, sometimes, Jacob—you won’t be angry with me?” asked the good woman, coaxingly, as she laid her hand upon his arm—“sometimes I’ve thought our money would never do us any good.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed Jacob, impatiently shaking off his wife’s hand; “pshaw, Lucy, you are like all other women, weak and superstitious. A man must look out for number one. Small profits a body would make to conduct business on your principles. Grab all you can, keep all you get, is every body’s motto; why should I set up to be wiser than my neighbors?”

Lucy Ford sighed. A wife is very apt to be convinced by her husband’s reasoning, if she loves him; and perhaps Lucy might have been, had she not herself known what it was to sit stitching day after day in her garret, till her young brain reeled, and her heart grew faint and sick, or lain in her little bed, too weary even to sleep, listening to the dull rain as it pattered on the skylight, and wishing she were dead.

A pressure of soft lips upon her forehead, and a merry laugh, musical as the ringing of silver bells, roused Lucy from her reverie.

“Good-by—mother dear,” said Mary; “I could not go to ride with Percy without a kiss from you. Come to the window—look! Are not those pretty horses of Percy’s? They skim the ground like birds! And see what a pretty carriage! Now acknowledge that my lover’s taste is perfect.”

“Yes—when he chose you,” said Jacob, gazing admiringly on Mary’s bright face and graceful form. “You would grace a court, Mary, if you are old Jacob Ford’s daughter.”

Mary threw her arms around the old man’s neck, and kissed his bronze cheek. To her the name of father was another name for love; nurtured in this kindly atmosphere, she could as little comprehend how a child could cease to worship a parent, as she could comprehend how a parent, when his child asked for bread, should mock his misery with a stone. Unspoiled by the world’s flatteries, she had not learned to undervalue her doting father’s love, that it was expressed in ungrammatical phrase; she had not yet learned to blush at any old-fashioned breach of etiquette (on his part), in the presence of her fastidious young friends; and by her marked deference to her parents in their presence, she in a measure exacted the same from them. It was one of the loveliest traits in Mary’s character, and one for which Percy, who appreciated her refinement, loved and respected her the more.

---

“Have your fortune told, lady?” asked a withered old woman, of Mary, as she tripped down the steps to join Percy.

“Of course,” said the laughing girl: “suppose you tell me whom I am to marry,” with a gay glance at Percy; and she ungloved her small white hand, while the dame’s withered fingers traced its delicate lines.

“Retribution is written here,” said the old woman, solemnly; “your sun will set early, fair girl.”

“Come away, Mary,” said Percy, with a frown, shaking his whip at the woman, “the old thing is becrazed.”

“Time will show,” muttered the beldame, pocketing the coin with which Mary had crossed her hand; “time will show; brighter eyes than yours, fair lady, have wept themselves dim.”

“What can she mean?” said Mary, drawing involuntarily close to the side of her lover. “I almost wish we had not seen her.”

The spirits of youth are elastic. The April cloud soon passed from Mary’s brow, and before the fleet horses had skimmed a mile, her laugh rang out as merrily as ever.

The lovers had both a trained eye for natural beauty, and the lovely road through which they passed, with its brown houses half hidden in foliage—the lazy grazing cattle—the scent of new-mown hay and breath of flowers—the rude song of the plowman and the delicate twitter of the bird—the far-off hills, with their tall trees distinctly defined against the clear blue sky—the silver stream and velvet meadows—the wind’s wild anthem, now swelling as if in full chorus, then soft and sweet as the murmur of a sleeping babe, all filled their hearts with a quiet joy.

“Life is very sweet,” said Mary, turning her lustrous eyes upon her lover. “People say that happiness and prosperity harden the heart; when I am most blest I feel most devotional. In vain might the infidel tell me ‘there is no God,’ with such a scene as this before me, or fetter my grateful heart-pulses as they adored the Giver.”

“You dear little saint,” said Percy, with a light laugh, “how well you preach. Well—my mother was neck-deep in religion; the prayers and hymns she taught me, stay by me now, whether I will or no. I often catch myself saying ‘Now I lay me,’ when I go to bed, from the mere force of habit; but your rosy lips were never made to mumble pater nosters, Mary: leave that to crafty priests, and disappointed nuns. Religion, my pet, is another name for humbug, all the world over; your would-be-saint always cheats in proportion to the length of his face and his prayers. Bah! don’t let us talk of it.”

“Don’t—dear Percy,” said Mary. “I like you less well when you talk so; religion is the only sure basis of character. Every superstructure not built on this foundation—”

“Must topple over, I suppose,” said Percy. “Don’t you believe it, my angel. I am a living example to the contrary; but Cupid knows I would subscribe to any article of faith emanating from your rosy lips;” and Percy drew rein at the door of his father-in-law’s mansion, and leaping out, assisted Mary to alight.

---

“Such a lovely drive as we have had, dear mother,” said Mary, throwing her hat upon the table. “Percy has just gone off with a client on business; he will be back presently. Dear Percy! he’s just the best fellow in the world—a little lax on religious points, but he loves me well enough to be influenced there. Now I will sit down at this window while I sew, and then I shall see Percy when he comes up the street.”

Nimbly her fingers moved; her merry song keeping time the while. Now a blush flitting over her cheek, then a smile dimpling it. She was thinking of their beautiful home that was to be, and how like a fairy dream her life would pass, with that deep, rich voice lingering ever in her ear; cares, if they came, lightened by each other’s presence, or turned to joys by mutual sympathy. And then, she was so proud of him; A woman’s love is so deepened by that thought.

God pity her, who, with a great soul, indissolubly bound, must walk ever backward with a mantle (alas! all too transparent), to cover her husband’s mental nakedness!

CHAPTER II.

“A gentleman, sir, to see you,” said a servant to Jacob Ford, as he ushered in his old friend, Mr. Trask.

“Ah, Trask, how are you? Glad to see you,” said Jacob, with one of his vice-like shakes of the hand. “Come for a rubber at whist? That’s right. I was thinking to-day, how long it was since you and I had a quiet hour together. How’s trade, Trask? You ought to be making money. Why, what’s the matter, man?” clapping him on the shoulder; “never saw you this way before; hang me if you don’t look as solemn as old Parson Glebe. Why don’t you speak? Why do you stare at me so?”

“Jacob,” replied Mr. Trask, and there he stopped.

“Well—that’s my name; Jacob Ford: as good a name as you’ll find on ’change. I never have done any thing to make me ashamed of it.”

“I wish every body could say as much,” said Trask, gravely.

“What are you driving at?” asked Jacob Ford; “don’t talk riddles to me—they get me out of temper. If you have any thing to tell, out with it. I’ve seen fifty years’ wear and tear; I’m not frightened by trifles.”

“But this is no trifle, Ford. I can’t do it,” said the soft-hearted Mr. Trask. “Jacob, my old friend—I—can’t do it,” and he sat down and covered his face with his hands.

“Come—come,” said Jacob; “take heart, man. If you have got into a scrape, Jacob Ford is not the man to desert an old friend; if a few hundreds or more will set it all right, you shall have it.”

“For God’s sake, stop,” said Trask; “the shadow has fallen on your threshold, not on mine.”

“Mine?” replied Jacob, with a bewildered look. “Mine? defalcations? banks broke? hey? Jacob Ford a beggar, after fifty years’ toil?”

“Worse—worse,” said Trask, making a violent effort to speak. “Percy Lee is arrested for embezzlement, and I have proofs of his guilt. There—now I’ve said it.”

“Man! do you know this?” said Jacob, in a hoarse whisper, putting his white lips close to his friend’s ear, as if he feared the very walls would tell the secret.

“Before God, ’tis true,” said Trask, solemnly.

“Then God’s curse light on the villain,” said Jacob Ford. “My Mary—my bright, beautiful Mary! Oh! who will tell her? Listen, Trask, that’s her voice—singing. Oh, God—oh God, this is too dreadful”—and the old man bowed his head upon his breast, and wept like a child.

“What does all this mean?” asked Lucy Ford, opening the door. “Jacob—husband—Trask—what is it?” and she looked from one to the other, in bewildered wonder.

“Tell her, Trask,” whispered Jacob.

“Don’t weep so, dear Jacob,” said Lucy; “if money has gone, we can both go to work again; we both know how. Mary will soon have a home of her own.”

Jacob sprang to his feet, and seizing Lucy by the arm, hissed in her ear, “Woman, don’t you name him. May God’s curse blight him. May he die alone. May his bones bleach in the winds of heaven, and his soul be forever damned. Lucy—Percy Lee is a—a—swindler! There—now go break her heart, if you can. Lucy?—Trask?”—and Jacob, overcome with the violence of his feelings, wept again like a child; while poor Lucy, good Lucy, hid her face on her husband’s breast, repressing her own anguish that she might not add to his.

“Who’s going to tell her, I say?” said Jacob. “May my tongue wither before I do it. My darling—my loving, beautiful darling—who will tell her?”

“I,” said the mother, with ashen lips, as she raised herself slowly from her husband’s breast, and moved toward the door.

Clutching at the balustrade for support, Lucy dragged herself slowly up stairs. Ah! well might she reel to and fro as she heard Mary’s voice:

A trembling hand was laid upon Mary’s shoulder. She shook back her long bright hair, and looked smilingly up into her mother’s face.

“Mary,” said Lucy, solemnly, “you will never marry Percy Lee.”

“Dead? Percy dead? Oh—no—no,” gasped the poor girl. “My Percy!—no—no!”

“Worse—worse,” said Lucy, throwing her protecting arms around her child. “Mary, Percy Lee is a swindler; he is unworthy of you; you must forget him.”

“Never,” said Mary—“never! Who dare say that? Where is he?—take me to him;” and she sunk fainting to the floor.

“I have killed her,” said the weeping mother, as she chafed her cold temples, and kissed her colorless lips. “I have killed her,” she murmured, bending over her, as Mary passed from one convulsive fit to another.

“Will she die, Jacob?” asked Lucy, looking mournfully up into her husband’s pallid face. “Will she die, Jacob?”

“Better so,” groaned the old man. “God’s curse on him who has done this. She was my all. What’s my gold good for, if it can not bring back the light to her eye, the peace to her heart? My gold that I have toiled for, and piled up in shining heaps: what is it good for?”

“The curse was on it, Jacob,” groaned Lucy. “Oh, Jacob, I told you so. God forgive us; it was cankered gold.”

“Why did the villain blast my home?” asked Jacob, apparently unconscious of what Lucy had said; “kill my one ewe lamb; all Jacob had to love—all that made him human? Lucy, I never prayed, but perhaps He would hear me for her;” and he knelt by his child. “Oh God, make my soul miserable forever, if thou wilt, but spare her—take the misery out of her heart.”

“If it be Thy will,” responded Lucy.

“Don’t say that, Lucy,” said Jacob. “I must have it so;—what has she done, poor lamb?”

CHAPTER III.

Percy Lee a defaulter—a swindler! The news flew like wildfire.

“No great catch, after all,” said a rival beauty, tossing her ringlets.

“I expected something of that sort,” said a modern Solomon.

“Hope he’ll be imprisoned for life,” said a charitable tailor, whom Jacob Ford had eclipsed, “this will bring Jacob’s pride down a trifle, I’m thinking.”

“How lucky you did not succeed in catching him,” said a mother, confidentially, to her daughter.

“I?” exclaimed the young lady. “I? Is it possible you can be so stupid, mamma, as to suppose I would waste a thought on Percy Lee! I assure you he offered himself to Mary Ford in a fit of pique at my rejection. Don’t imagine you are in all my secrets,” said the dutiful young lady, tossing her head. “Well—her disappearance from society is certain—thank goodness—not that she interferes with me; but her pretended simplicity is so disgusting! What the men in our set could see to admire in her, passes me; but chacun À son gout.”

---

“Of course, Lee will get clear,” said a rough dray-man to his comrade. “These big fish always flounder out of the net; it is only the minnows who get caught. Satan! it makes me swear to think of it. I will be sure to stand at the court-house door when he is brought for trial, and insult him if I can. I hope the aristocratic hound will swing for it.”

“Come, now, Jo,” said his friend, taking out his penknife, and sitting down on a stump to whittle. “You are always a railing at the aristocracy, as you call ’em. I never knew a man who talks as you do, who was not an aristocrat at heart, worshiping the very wealth and station he sneered at. Don’t be a fool, John. We are far happier, or might be, with our teams, plenty of jobs, and good health, than these aristocrats, as you call them, who half the time are tossing on their pillows, because this ship hasn’t arrived in port, or that land speculation has burst up, or stocks depreciated, or some such cursed canker at the root of all their gourds. Now there’s poor Jacob Ford; of what use are all his riches, now his daughter’s heart is broke? And Percy Lee, too—will his fine education and book learning get him out of the clutches of the law? Have a little charity, Jo. It hurts a man worse to fall from such a height into a prison, than it would you or me, from a dray-cart. Gad—I pity him; his worst enemy couldn’t pile up the agony any higher.”

“Pity him!” said Jo, mockingly—“a swindling rascal like that—to break a pretty girl’s heart!”

“Jo,” said his friend, shutting up his penknife, and looking him steadily in the eye, “have you always said no to the tempting devil in your heart? Did you never charge a stranger more than the law allows for a job? Did no poor girl ever curse the hour she saw the light, for your sake?”

“Well, Mr. Parson, what if all that were true?” asked Jo, with an abortive attempt at a laugh. “I can’t see what it has to do with what we are talking about; hang it.”

“Just this,” answered his friend. “He who is without sin, only, is to cast the first stone.”

“O, get out,” said Jo, cracking his whip over his horse’s head, and taking refuge, like many other cornered disputants, in flight.

---

And Percy Lee! From the hour in which he passed from the heaven of Mary’s smile, up to the present moment, in which he paced like a caged lion up and down his narrow bounds, what untold agonies were his! Why had he wrecked happiness, love, honor, all in one fatal moment? Why had he prostituted his God-given talents so madly to sin? Let those answer who have in like manner sinned, and who have expiated that sin, by a life-long brand upon the brow and a life-long misery in the heart. “Let him who thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”

CHAPTER IV.

“I can’t remember,” said Mary, two months after Percy’s arrest, “I can’t remember,” raising herself, and laying her emaciated hand upon her brow. “Have I been sick, mamma?”

“Yes, Mary,” replied her mother, repressing her tears of joy at the sound of her child’s voice.

“Where’s Percy, mamma?”

But before Lucy could answer, she again relapsed into stupor. Another hour passed—there was reason in her glance. “Mamma? Percy—take me to him”—said Mary, with a burst of tears, as she strove vainly to rise from her couch.

“By-and-by, darling,” said her mother, coaxingly, laying her gently back upon the pillow, as she would an infant, “by-and-by, Mary, when you are stronger.”

“No—now” she replied, a spasm of pain contracting her features. “Is he—is he—there? How long have I lain here?”

“Two months, Mary.”

“Two months,” exclaimed poor Mary, in terror, “two months. O, mamma, if you ever loved me, if you want me to live—take me to him. Two months! He will think!—O, dear, mamma, take me to Percy!”

“Yes—yes, you shall go,” said Jacob, “only don’t cry. I would shed my heart’s blood to save you one tear. You shall go, Mary, even to that curs—”

“Well—well, I won’t say it,” said the old man, kissing her forehead; “but mind, it is only for your sake—here—Lucy, quick, she is fainting.”

Another week passed by, poor Mary making superhuman efforts to sit up, to gain strength to accomplish her heart’s wish. Jacob would look at her wasted figure, till the curse rose to his lip, and then rush suddenly from her presence.

“I did not think I could do this, even for her,” muttered Jacob, on the morning of their visit to the prison. “I don’t know what has come over me, Lucy—sometimes I wonder if I am Jacob. I don’t care for any thing, so she don’t grieve.”

The carriage came—in silence the sad trio moved toward the prison.

“Can’t do it,” whispered Jacob to Lucy, as they stopped before the door; “I thought I could go in with her; but I can’t do it, not even for Mary. The old feeling has come back. I can’t look on that man’s face without crushing him as I would a viper;” and the old man left them in the turnkey’s office, returned to the carriage, twitched down the blinds, and threw himself back upon the seat.

Ah! how much the poor heart may bear! Mary sat in the prison office—still—motionless!—but a bright spot burned upon her cheek, and her tone was fearful in its calmness, and Lucy asked her again “if she were strong enough to go through with it.” How distinctly the turnkey’s clock ticked! What a quantity of false keys and other implements which had been taken from refractory prisoners, were on exhibition in the glass case! How the clerk stared at them as they registered their names in the book! What a mockery for that little bird to sing in his cage, over Mary’s head! How crushed and broken-hearted the poor woman looked in the black bonnet, on the bench, waiting to see her prodigal son! How sad his young wife beside her, with the unconscious baby sleeping on her breast! The room grew smaller—the air grew stifled.

“You can go now, ma’am,” said the turnkey, rattling his keys and addressing Lucy.

“In a moment, please,” said Lucy, with a quivering lip, as Mary fell from her chair:—“Some water quick, please, sir”—and she untied the strings of Mary’s hat.

“Now,” said Mary, after a pause. And again the bright spot burned upon her cheek—and as with faltering step, she followed the turnkey, the young wife’s tears fell on her baby’s face, while she murmured, “God help her, and it’s my own heart that has the misery, too.”

CHAPTER IV.

The huge key grated in the lock. In the further corner of the cell, crouched Percy—his chin in his palms, his eyes bloodshot, and his face livid as death.

As Mary tottered through the door, Percy raised his head, and, with a stifled groan, fell at her feet. Pressing his lips to the hem of her robe, he waved her off with one hand, as if his touch were contamination. Mary’s arms were thrown about his neck, and the words, “I love you,” fell upon his doomed ear, like the far-off music of heaven. When Percy would have spoken, Mary laid her hand upon his mouth—not even to her, should he humiliate himself by confession. And so, in tears and silence, the allotted hour passed—He only, who made the heart, with its power to enjoy or suffer, knew with what agonizing intensity.

“Well, I’ve seen a great many pitiful sights in my day,” said the old jailor, as the carriage rolled away with Mary; “but never any thing that made my eyes water like the sight of that poor young cretur. Sometimes I think there ain’t no justice up above there, when I see the innocent punished that way with the guilty. I hope these things will all be made square in the other world; I can’t say they are clear to my mind here. I get good pay here, but I’d rather scull a raft than stay here to have my feelin’s hurt all the time this way. If I didn’t go in so strong for justice, I should be tempted, when I think of that young woman, to forget to lock that fellow’s cell some night. ‘Five years’ hard labor!’ ’Tis tough, for a gentleman born—well, supposing he got out? if he is a limb of the devil, as some folks say, he will break her heart over again some day or other. It would be a shorter agony to let her weep herself dead at once. God help her.”

CHAPTER V.

The Bluff Hill penitentiary was called “a model prison.” A “modern Howard” was said to have planned it, and passed his oracular judgment, ratified by the authorities of the State in which it was located, upon its cells, prison-yards, work-shops, chapel, eating-rooms, and ingenious instruments of torture.

That the furnaces failed to keep the prisoners from freezing in winter, or that there was no proper ventilation in summer, was, therefore, nobody’s meddling business. Better that they should suffer, year in and year out, than that a flaw should be publicly picked in any scheme set afoot by the “modern Howard.” The officers elected to preside over Bluff Hill prison, were as stony as its walls, and showed curious visitors round the work-shops, amid its rows of pallid faces, pointing out here a disgraced clergyman, there a ruined lawyer, yonder a wrecked merchant, with as much nonchalance as a brutal keeper would stir up the caged beasts in a menagerie, for the amusement of the crowd; with as little thought that these fallen beings were men and brothers, as if the Omniscient eye noted no dark stain of sin, hidden from human sight, on their souls.

They gave you leave to stop as long as you pleased, and watch the muscles of your victim’s face, work with emotion under your gaze. You could take your own time to speculate upon the scowl of defiance, or the set teeth of hate, as you flaunted leisurely past their prison uniform, in your silk and broadcloth; or you could stand under the fair blue sky, in the prison-yard, when the roll beat for dinner, and see them in file, by twos—guarded—march with locked step and folded arms, to their eating-room. The beardless boy branded in your remembering eye for life, wherever you might hereafter meet him, for this his first crime, how hard soever against fearful odds, he might struggle upward to virtue and heaven. You might follow the sad procession to thair meals, where the fat, comfortably-fed chaplain craved a blessing over food, from which the very dog at his door would have turned hungry away; or you could go into the prison hospital, and view the accommodation (?) for the sick—the cots so narrow that a man could not turn in them; or you could investigate “The Douche,” which the keeper would tell you, with a bland smile, “conquered even old prison birds;” or you could peep into the cells (philanthropically furnished by this “modern Howard” with a Bible), so dark that at the brightest noonday no prisoner could read a syllable; or you could see the row of coffins standing on an end in the hall, kept on hand “for sudden emergencies;” or any other horrors of the place, for which your morbid curiosity was appetized.

Or, if you had a human heart beating within your breast, if you could remember ever kneeling to ask forgiveness of your God, you could turn away soul-sick from such unfeeling exhibitions, and refuse to insult their misery—fallen as they were—by your curious gaze. You could remember in your own experience, moments of fearful temptation, when the hot blood poured like molten lead through your veins. You could place in the balance, as God does—as man does not—neglected childhood—undisciplined youth. You could remember, that at a kindly word, whispered in those felon cars, the hardest rock might melt; and you could wish that if prisons must be, they who pass under their iron portals might pass unrecognizable in after life by the world’s stony eyes—you could wish that when freedom’s air again fanned their pallid temples, no cursed scornful finger might lash to fury the hydra-headed monster Sin, in their scarred hearts.

Heaven speed the day when the legislative heart, pitiful as God’s, shall temper this sword of justice with more mercy.

---

“Which is he?” asked an over-dressed, chubby, vulgar-looking fellow, to the keeper of Bluff Hill prison.

“That tall fellow yonder,” replied the keeper, “with the straight nose, and high forehead—that’s he—see? reefing off flax yonder.”

“Don’t say,” said the man, with his bloated eyes gloating over Percy. “How old is he?”

“Nineteen only,” said the keeper.

“Humph!” said the man, loud enough for Percy to hear—“Pre—co—cious; wasn’t intended for that sort of work, I fancy, by the look of his hands; they are as small and white as a woman’s. Ask him some question, can’t ye? I wish I was keeper here; I’d like to break his spirit,” said Mr. Scraggs, as Percy answered the keeper’s question without raising his eyes. “Bah! how these fuzzy bits of lint and flax fly about the room; my throat and nose are full. I should think this would kill a fellow off before long.”

“It does,” said the keeper, coolly.

“And what’s that horrible smell? Faugh—it makes me sick.”

“That? Oh, that’s the oil used in the machinery.”

“Why the fury don’t you ventilate, then?” asked Mr. Scraggs, thinking more of his own lungs than the prisoners’, adding, with a laugh, as he recollected himself, “I don’t suppose the Governor of your State is particular on that p’int;” then, with another stare at Percy, he said, “they say he seduced old Ford’s daughter before he stole the money.”

The words had hardly left his lips, when, with a bound like a panther, Percy instantly felled him to the earth, the blood spouting from his own mouth and nostrils with the violence of his passion.

Scraggs lay for some hours insensible, though not dangerously wounded, and Percy was led off in irons, to reflect on this new misery in solitary confinement.

CHAPTER VI.

“I stepped in to inquire after poor Mary, this morning,” said a neighbor of Lucy Ford. “Poor dear! she’s to be pitied!”

They who have suffered from the world’s malice, know that the most simple words may be made to convey an insult, by the tone in which they are uttered. Lucy Ford was naturally unsuspicious, but there was something in Miss Snip’s tone which grated harshly on her ear.

“I regret to say Mary is no better,” Lucy replied, with her usual gentle manner. “If I could persuade her to take more nourishment, I should be glad; but she sits rocking to and fro, seemingly unconscious of every thing.”

“I should like to see the poor dear,” said Miss Snip.

Lucy hesitated; then blushing, as if she felt ashamed of her doubts, she led the way to Mary’s room. Every thing about it bore marks of the taste of the occupant. There lay her silent guitar; there a half finished drawing; here a book with the pearl folder still between the leaves, where she and Percy had left it. The beautiful tea-rose he had given her, drooped its buds in the window, for want of care, and the canary’s cage was muffled, lest its song should quicken painful memories. And there sat Mary, as her mother had said, rocking herself to and fro, with her hands crossed listlessly on her lap, her blue-veined temples growing each day more startlingly transparent.

“Quite heart-rending, I declare,” said Miss Snip, “and as if the poor dear hadn’t enough to bear, just think of the malice of people. I said it was a shame and that of course nobody would believe it of Miss Mary, and I never spoke of it, except to lawyer Beadle’s wife, and one or two of our set; but a rumor is a rumor, and when it is once set rolling, it has got to go to the bottom of the hill; but nobody, I’m sure, that ever knew Miss Mary, would believe she would be seduced by Percy Lee!”

“Lord-a-mercy! you don’t suppose she heard me?” exclaimed Miss Snip, as Mary fell forward upon the floor.

“Cursed viper!” shouted Jacob Ford, emerging from the ante-room, and unceremoniously ejecting Miss Snip through the door. “Cursed viper!”

“That’s what I call pretty treatment, now,” muttered Miss Snip, as she stopped in the hall, to settle her false curls; “very pretty treatment—for a disinterested act of neighborly kindness. Philanthropy never is rewarded with any thing but cuffs in this world, but I shan’t allow it to discourage me. I know that I have my mission here below, whether I have the praise of men or not. All great reformers are abused—that’s one consolation. I’ll step over to Mrs. Bunce’s now, and see if it is true that her husband takes a drop too much. They do say so, but I don’t believe a word of it.”

---

“Lucy,” said Jacob—and the poor old man’s limbs shook beneath him—“this must be the last arrow in the quiver. Nothing can come after this. Let her be, Lucy,”—and he withdrew his wife’s hands, as she bathed Mary’s temples—“let her be: ’tain’t no use to rouse her up to her misery—to kill her by inches this way. I am ready to lie down side of her. Lucy—I couldn’t muster heart to tell you, till a worse blow came, that we are beggars. ’Tain’t no matter now.”

“God be merciful!” said Lucy, overwhelmed with this swift accumulation of trouble.

“Yes, you may well say that. Just enough left to keep us from starving. My heart has been with her, you see,” said Jacob, looking at Mary, “and my head hasn’t been clear about things, as it used to be, and so it has come to this. I wouldn’t mind it, if she only—” and Jacob dropped his head hopelessly upon his breast. Then raising it again, and wiping his eyes, as he looked at Mary, he said: “She never will look more like an angel than she does now. I thought she’d live to close these old eyes, and that my grand-children would play about my knee, but you see how it has gone, Lucy.”

---

The red flag of the auctioneer, so often the signal of distress, floated before Jacob Ford’s door. Strange feet roved over the old house; strange eyes profaned the household gods. Careless fingers tested the quality of Mary’s harp and guitar; and voices which in sunnier days had echoed through those halls in blandest tones, now fell upon the ear, poisonous with cold malice. When once the pursuit is started, and the game scented, every hound joins in the cry; each fierce paw must have its clutch at the quivering heart, each greedy tongue lap up the ebbing life-blood. Never was beauty’s crown worn more winningly, more unobtrusively, less triumphantly, than by Mary Ford; but to those whom nature had less favored, it was the sin never to be forgiven; and so fair lips hoped the stories were not true about her, while they reiterated them at every street corner; and bosom friends, when inquired of as to their truth, rolled up their eyes, sighed like a pair of bellows, and with a deprecating wave of the hand, replied, in melancholy tones, “don’t ask me,” thus throwing the responsibility upon the listener to construe it into little or much; pantomimic looks and gestures not yet having been pronounced indictable by the statute book; others simply nodded their heads, in a mysterious manner, as if they had it at their charitable option to send the whole family to perdition, with a monosyllable.

CHAPTER VII.

Jacob Ford’s new home was a little cottage, just on the outskirts of the city; for Lucy said, “maybe the flowers, and the little birds, and the green grass might tempt Mary out of doors, where the wind might fan her pale cheek.” It was beautiful to see Lucy stifling her own sorrow, while she moved about, performing uncomplainingly the household drudgery. Mary would sit at the window, twisting her curls idly over her fingers, or leaning out, as if watching for Percy. Sometimes she would sit on the low door-step, when the stars came out, with her head in Jacob’s lap, while his wrinkled fingers strayed soothingly over her temples. She seldom or never spoke; did mechanically what she was bid, except that she drew shuddering back, when they would have led her across the threshold. Once she wept when Jacob brought her a violet, which he found under the cottage window. Jacob said, “dear heart! why should a little blossom make the poor thing cry?” Lucy’s womanly heart better solved the riddle: it was Percy’s favorite flower.

Their rustic neighbors leaned over each other’s fences, and wondered “who on airth them Fords was,” and why “the old man didn’t take no interest in fixin’ his lot. The trees wanted grafting, the grass wanted mowing, the gooseberries were all over mildew, the strawberries, choked with weeds; and it did really ’pear to them as though the old fellow must be ’ither a consarned fool, or an idiot, to let things run out that way. And the poor sick girl, she looked like a water-lily—so white, so bowed down; why didn’t they put her into a shay, and drive her out, to bring a little color into her waxen cheeks?”

The thrifty housewives said, “it was clear to them that the old lady hadn’t her wits, narry more than the old man, for she left her clothes’-line out all night, when every body knew that dew and rain would rot it; but what could you expect from shiftless city folks?”

For all this the country people were kind-hearted. New neighbors did not grow on every bush. Topics were scarce in Milltown, and every new one was hunted down like a stray plum in a boarding-school pudding. Yes, you might have gone further, and found worse people than the Milltown-ites. The little sun-burnt children learned to loiter on their way to school, “to pick a nosegay for the pretty pale lady.” Widow Ellis, under the hill, picked her biggest strawberries, and put them in a tempting little basket, covered with green leaves, for her curly-pated Tommy to carry to “poor Miss Mary.” Miss Trodchom baked an extra loaf of ’lection-cake, “in hopes the Fords’ daughter might nibble a bit, poor thing.” And farmer Jolly dropped his whip on purpose, over Jacob’s fence, to get a chance to tell the old man “that he had a mare as was as easy as a cradle, and a prettyish side-saddle that the sick girl might have, and welcome, if she took a notion.” And Mr. Parish, the minister, came, but he could not make much of Jacob, who told him “that if it was religion to be willing to see one’s own flesh and blood suffer, he did not want it.”

Poor old Jacob! Every earthly reed had broken beneath him, his unsteady steps were tottering toward the grave, and yet he threw aside the only sure Staff. He did not know, poor old man, so gradually had his heart hardened by contact with the world, “that it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Through no rift in the dark cloud which shadowed him, could he see bright Mercy’s sunbeam. One by one the lights had gone out in his sky, and still he groped about, blind to the rays of Bethlehem’s star. Poor old Jacob!

---

It was Sabbath morning. Jacob stood at his cottage door, gazing out. Each tiny blade of grass bent quivering under its glistening dew-drop. The little ground-birds on the gravel walk were picking up their early breakfast; the robins were singing overhead. The little swallows flew twittering round the cottage eaves. The leaves were rustling with their mysterious music. The silver mist wreathed playfully over the hill-sides, whose summits lay bathed in sunshine. Every thing seemed full of joyous life. Where was the Master hand which regulated all that harmony? The birds sang—the leaves danced—the brooks sparkled—the bee hummed—why did He make man only to suffer? It was all a riddle to poor Jacob. He took his staff, and sauntered away under the drooping lindens. The Sabbath bell was calling the simple villagers to church. Across the meadows, down the grassy lane—the rosy maiden, the bent old man, and the lisping little child. Jacob looked after them as they went. Jacob never had been to church—not since he was a little child. Sunday he always posted his books, squared up his accounts, wrote business letters and the like of that; shortening the day at both ends by getting up later and going to bed earlier. Sunday to him was no different from any other day in the week—except that he transferred his business from his counting-room to his parlor; and yet—here he was, leaning on his staff, before the village church, almost wishing to go in with its humble people. He looked about as if he expected somebody to be astonished that Jacob Ford should be standing so near a church door; but nobody seemed to notice it, or look at all surprised. By-and-by he crept on a little further, and seated himself on a stone bench in the porch, with his chin upon his staff. The butterfly and the bee passed in and out; even the little birds flew in at the church door, and out at the open window; and still old Jacob sat there—he could scarcely have told why. Now he hears the choir sing,

“Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave, and follow Thee;
Naked—poor—despised—forsaken—
Thou from hence my all shalt be.

“Though the world despise and leave me,
They have left my Saviour too;
Human hearts and hopes deceive me,
Thou art not like them, untrue.”

As the song died away, old Jacob’s tears flowed down his cheeks; the words soothed his troubled spirit like a mother’s lullaby.

“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Who promised that?

How did the minister know how “heavy laden” was Jacob’s spirit?

How did he know that for sixty years he had been drawing water from broken cisterns? Chasing shadows even to the grave’s brink?

How did he know that on that balmy Sabbath morning, his heart was aching for something to lean on that would not pass away?

“Come unto me.”

Old Jacob took his staff, and tottered out into the little church-yard He did not know he was praying, when his soul cried out, “Lord help me;” but still his lips kept murmuring it, as he passed down the grassy road, and under the drooping lindens, for each time he said it, his heart seemed to grow lighter; each time it seemed easier for old Jacob to “come.” And so he entered his low doorway, and as he stooped to kiss his daughter’s cheek, the bitterness seemed to have gone from out his heart, and he felt that he could forgive even Percy, for His sake of whom he had just so recently craved forgiveness.

“What is it?” asked Lucy, awed by the strange expression of Jacob’s face, and laying her hand tenderly upon his arm; “what is it, Jacob?”

“Peace!” whispered the old man, reverently; “God’s peace—here Lucy;” and he laid his hand on his heart.

Lucy took old Jacob’s staff and set it in the corner. Good, kind Lucy! She did not think when she did so, that he would need it no more. She did not know when the sun went down that night, that death’s dark shadow fell across her cottage threshold. She did not know, poor Lucy, when she slumbered away the night hours so peacefully by his side, that, leaning on a surer Staff, old Jacob had passed triumphantly through the dark valley; and when at length the little twittering sparrows woke her with their morning song, and she looked into the old man’s cold, still face, the pale lips, though they moved not, seemed to whisper, “Peace, Lucy—God’s peace.”

CHAPTER VIII.

“Is it possible you care for that girl yet, Tom? A rejected lover, too? Where’s your spirit, man? Pshaw—there’s many a fairer face than Mary Ford’s; besides, she is more than half crazy. Are you mad, Tom? You wouldn’t catch me sighing for a girl who had cried her eyes out for the villainy of my rival.”

“Curse him!” said Tom Shaw, striking his boots with a light cane he held in his hand; “he is safe enough, at any rate, for some time to come; good for a couple more years, I hope, for striking that fellow in prison. When he comes out, if he ever does, he will find his little bird in my nest. Half-witted or whole-witted, it matters little to me. I am rich enough to please my fancy, and the girl’s face haunts me.”

“Pooh!” said Jack; “you are just like a spoiled child—one toy after another, the last one always the best. I know you—you’ll throw this aside in a twelvemonth; but marriage, let me tell you, my fine fellow, is a serious joke.”

“Not to me,” said Tom, “for the very good reason that I consider it dissolved when the parties weary—or at any rate, I shall act on that supposition, which amounts to the same thing, you know.”

“Not in law,” said Jack.

“Nonsense,” replied Tom; “I am no fool; trust me for steering my bark clear of breakers. At any rate, I’ll marry that girl, if perdition comes after it—were it only to spite Percy. How he will gnash his teeth when he hears of it, hey? The old man is dead, and the old woman is left almost penniless. I’ll easily coax her into it. In fact, I mean to drive out there this very afternoon. Mary Ford shall be Mrs. Tom Shaw, d’ye hear?”

---

“Good day, Pike! Haven’t got a pitchfork you can lend a neighbor, have ye? Ours is broke clean in two; I’m dreadful hard put to it for horseflesh, or I would drive to the village and buy a new one. You see that pesky boy of mine has lamed our mare; it does seem to me, Pike, that boys allers will be boys—the more I scold at him, the more it don’t do no good.”

“And the more it won’t,” said the good-natured farmer Rice. “Scolding never does any good no how—the boy is good enough by natur’—good as you was, I dare say, when you was his age. I wouldn’t give a cent for a boy that hain’t no friskiness about him, no sperrit like; but you see you don’t know how to manage him. You are allers scolding, just as you say. It’s ‘John, go weed those parsnips; ten to one, you careless dog, you’ll pull up the parsnips instead of the weeds;’—or, ‘John, go carry that corn to mill; ten to one, you’ll lose it out of the wagon going.’ I tell you, Pike, it is enough to discourage any lad, such a constant growling and pecking; now I want my boys to love me when they grow up. I don’t want them glad to see the old man’s back turned. I don’t want them happier any where than at their own home. That’s the way drunkards and profligates are made—that’s the way the village tavern thrives. I tell you, Pike, if you lace up natur too tight, she’ll bust out somewhere. Better draw it mild.”

“O, don’t talk to me, neighbor,” said Rice, impatiently. “Them’s modern notions; thrash children, I say. When I was a lad, if I did my duty, it was well; if I didn’t, I knew what to expect. It is well enough for your children to love you; of course they oughter, when you’ve brought them into the world; but I say they’ve got to mind, any how; ‘obey your parents;’ that’s it; plain as preaching.”

“Yes,” said farmer Rice, “I believe in that; but there’s another verse in the same book, that runs this way—‘Parents provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.’”

“Well—well,” said Mr. Pike, uneasily, “I hate argufying, as I do bad cider. Your neighbor, Mr. Ford, dropped off sudden like, didn’t he? What’s the matter of him?”

“Some say one thing—some another; but I think, neighbor, it was just here. That ere old man has been in harness these sixty years—it was a sort of second natur to him to be active. Well, he was taken right out of the whirl and hubbub of the city, where people can’t hardly stop long enough to bury one another, and sot right down in this quiet place, where there’s nothing a-going but frogs and crickets, with nothing to do but to brood over his troubles. Well, you see such a somerset at his time o’ life wan’t the thing; of course it upsot him. He’d lean over this fence, and lean over that, and put on his hat, and take it off, and walk a bit, and sit down a bit, and act just like an old rat in a trap, trying to gnaw his way out. It was just as if you should pull up that old oak-tree, that has grown in that spot till its roots strike out half a mile round, and set it out in some foreign sile; it wouldn’t thrive—of course not.”

“No,” said Mr. Pike, “I see, I see—it would be just so with me, if I was set down where he came from—that etarnal rumbling and whiz buzz would drive me clean distracted. The last time I staid in the city over night, I thought every minute the last day had come, there was such a tearin’ round. But what’s become of the old woman and her sick darter?”

“She took it hard—she did—but the girl is sort of image-like—don’t feel nothing, I reckon. Pretty, too—it’s a nation pity. They’ve got enough left to keep them alive, milk and fresh air, like the rest on us. I don’t want no better fare. There’s some talk, so my old woman says, about a fellow who drives out here, who is going to marry the girl;—nothing but woman’s gabble, I guess; you know if they didn’t talk they wouldn’t say nothing.”

“Fact,” said Mr. Pike, profoundly, “I often think on’t; but come, I can’t stay prating here all day—where’s the pitchfork you was going to lend me?”

“There it is,” said Mr. Rice; “and now remember what I told you about that boy of yourn; there’s more good in that Zekiel, than you think for;—remember now, a little oil makes machinery work easy, Pike.”

“Yes, oil of birch,” said farmer Pike, chuckling at his own wit, and cracking his horse-whip at a happy little vagrant robin, as he went through the gate and down the road.

CHAPTER IX.

Summer had danced by—the chill wind whistled through the trees—the nuts were dropping in showers, and the leaves rusted beneath the traveler’s foot; the golden-rod and barberry clusters alone remained to deck the hedges, and the striped snake crawled out on the rock to sun himself only at midday. Widow Ford’s cottage looked lonely and desolate, stripped of its leafy screen; but the squirrels might be seen leaping from tree to tree as merrily as if old Jacob still sat watching them in the door-way. Lucy moved about, sweeping, dusting, replenishing the fire—but the silver hair glistened on her temples, and her step was slow and weary. Now and then she would lean against the mantel, and look at Mary—and then wander restlessly into the little bedroom—then, back again to the mantel.

“You still think it best to consummate this marriage?” said the clergyman to Lucy, in a low voice.

“Only that I would not leave her alone,” said Lucy, tremulously. “I shall soon be in the church-yard by the side of Jacob. Mr. Shaw knows all—he loves her, and wishes to make her his wife. I believe he will be kind to her. As for Mary, poor thing, you see how it is,” and she glanced at her daughter, who sat with locked fingers—her long lashes sweeping her colorless cheek. One might have taken her for some beautiful statue, with those faultless marble features, and that motionless attitude.

Mr. Parish sighed, as he looked at Mary; but he had little time to discuss matters, if that were his intention, for the sound of approaching carriage-wheels announced Mr. Shaw.

“At twelve, then, to-morrow,” said he, as he took up his hat, “if you are of the same mind, I will perform the ceremony as you desire.”

Mr. Parish walked home in a very thoughtful mood. Through his acquaintances in the city, he had learned the history of the family. He knew the length and breadth of the shadow which had fallen across their hearth-stone. He saw that it was true, as Lucy had said, that her own strength was fast failing; still it seemed to him sacrilege to bestow Mary’s hand in marriage, when her heart was so benumbed and dead. He would have offered her a shelter in his own house, had he been master of it; but, unfortunately, he had married a lady who lost no opportunity to remind him that her dowry of twenty thousand dollars was payment in full for the total abnegation of his free will. This was not the first occasion on which the clanking of this gentleman’s golden fetters had sounded unmusically in his reverend ears; in truth, he would much have preferred his liberty, even at the expense of eking out a small salary by farming, as did the neighboring country clergy. Mrs. Parish lost no opportunity to remind her husband that he was sold, by such pleasant remarks as the following: That it was time her house was re-painted, or her barn re-roofed, or her carry-all re-cushioned. When she felt unusually hymeneal, she would say, “Mr. Parish, you can use my horses to-day, if you will drive carefully.” That she invariably and sweetly deferred to her husband’s opinion in company, was no proof of the absence of a private conjugal understanding, that he was to consider himself merely her echo.

Little did his brother clergymen who exchanged with him in their thread-bare suits of black, dream of the price at which his pleasant parsonage surroundings were purchased. Little did they dream, when they innocently brought along their wives and babies on such occasions, the suffering it entailed on “brother Parish.”

No, poor simple souls, they went home charmed with the hospitality of their host and hostess, charmed with their conjugal happiness, and marveling as they returned to their own houses, what made their rooms seem so much smaller, and their fare so much more frugal than before. Had they been clairvoyantly endowed, they might have seen brother Parish, after he had smilingly bowed them down the nicely rolled gravel walk to their wagons, return meekly to the parlor, to be reminded for the hundredth time, by Mrs. Parish, of that twenty thousand dollar obligation. Well might personal feelings come in, to strengthen his ministerial scruples, lest he should join carelessly in wedlock, hands which death only could unclasp.

---

“He oughter be ashamed of hisself marrying that poor crazed thing, even if the old lady is willing,” said farmer Jones’ wife, as Tom Shaw’s smiling face peered out of the carriage window, on his wedding day. “It hardens the heart awful to live in the city; riches can’t make that poor cretur happy; a pebble stun and a twenty dollar piece, are all one to her. Now my daughter Louizy is no beauty; she is clumsy and freckled, and brown as a butternut; but she is too fair in my eyes, to be sold that way. I wish I knew what crazed that Mary Ford. Ah—here comes parson Parish; maybe I’ll get it out of him.”

“Good day, sir—met the bridal carriage, I suppose, on the road—queer wedding that, of Miss Mary’s. Is it true, that Squire Ford’s house took fire, and Miss Mary lost her wits by the fright?”

“I never heard of it,” replied the parson—taking the Maltese cat in his lap, and manipulating her slate-colored back.

Mrs. Jones might have added, “Nor I either,” but nothing daunted, she tried another question.

“Scarlet fever p’rhaps, parson? that allers leaves suthing behind it, most commonly. My George would have been left blind, likely, if he hadn’t been left deaf. They say it was scarlet fever that done it.”

“Do they?” asked the parson.

“Confound it,” thought Mrs. Jones; “I’m sure the man knows, for he was very thick there at the cottage. I’ll see if my gooseberry wine won’t loosen his tongue a little;” and she handed the minister a glass.

“Sometimes I’ve wondered, parson, what made old Ford walk round so like an unquiet sperrit. He didn’t do nothing he hadn’t oughter, did he? It wasn’t that that crazed Miss Mary, I s’pose? That old man got up and sat down fifty times a minute.”

“So I have heard,” answered the impenetrable parson, sipping his wine.

“She wasn’t crossed in love nor nothing, was she?” asked the persevering querist; “that sometime plays witchwork with a woman.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” said the parson. “I hear Zekiel Jones is engaged to your Louisa.”

“My Louizy!” screamed Mrs. Jones, walking straight into the trap; “My Louizy engaged to Zekiel Jones! a fellow who don’t know a hoe-handle from a hay-cutter. I guess there’ll be a tornady in this house afore that marriage comes off. I do wish people would mind their own business, and not meddle with what don’t consarn ’em. Now who told you that, parson?”

“Well, I really don’t remember,” replied the minister; “but you know it matters little, so there’s no truth in it,” and dexterously escaping through the dust he had raised, he bowed himself down the garden walk; while Mrs. Jones stood with her arms a-kimbo, in the doorway, ejaculating: “Zekiel Jones and my Louizy—a fellow who goes to sleep in the middle of the day in haying time, and a gal who can churn forty pounds of butter a day! Gunpowder and milk! I guess so.”

CHAPTER X.

“How shall we manage to kill time to-day, Jack?” asked Tom Shaw; “race-course—billiards—club—pistol gallery?”

“Kill time! You—a bridegroom of six months! Well, you can’t say you weren’t warned. You remember I told you you would soon weary of your new toy. A six-months’ bridegroom!” and Tom laughed merrily.

“Long enough to make love to a statue, were it ever so faultless,” replied Tom, with a yawn. “I’m bored to death, Jack, and I don’t care who knows it. My mother-in-law, who, to do her justice, is clever enough, strolls over the house like a walking tomb-stone. My wife is as lifeless as if half the women in town were not dying for me. It’s cursed monotonous; hang me if I’m not sick of it.”

“Does your wife never speak to you?” asked Jack.

“Never,” said Tom; “there she sits in her chair, playing with her fingers, or else at the window, looking this way, and that, as if she were expecting somebody; when she does so, it seems to worry the old lady, who looks nervously at me, and tries to coax her away—the Lord only knows why; and two or three times I have seen her coax away a faded flower that Mary has a fancy for holding between her fingers. It’s all Greek to me. Confound it, I feel as if I were in a nest of lunatics. It makes me as nervous as the devil. Come, let’s be off. What has become of Susy, the little ballet-girl? Did she take my marriage to heart?”

“Not she, the delicious little monkey; she tossed her pretty head, and said with an arch smile: ‘Mark what I say: he’ll be back to me in six months.’”

“Pretty prophet!” replied Tom.

The two young men locked arms and sauntered down the crowded street, whiffing their cigars; now attracted by some brilliant shop-window, now bandying jests with those miserable women, who, but for just such as they, might have lifted their womanly brows to the starry sky—pure as when first kissed by a mother’s loving lips. Pale seamstresses glided by, unguarded, save by Him who noticeth the sparrow’s fall. Young men of their own age, weary of the slowly accumulating gains of honest toil, looked enviously upon their delicately kidded hands, fine apparel, and care-for-naught air. Passing, at length, the long line of carriages in front of the opera house, they disappeared under the lighted vestibule, and took possession of one of the boxes.

Fair young girls were there, unveiling to the libidinous eye, at Fashion’s bidding, charms of which they should have been chary to the moon. Faded belles throwing out bait at which nobody even nibbled. Married men groaned, looked at their watches, and leaning back in their seats, computed the rise and fall of stocks; married women gazed anxiously around to see if their laces, diamonds, or cashmeres were eclipsed by their neighbors’. Every body was bored to death, stifled by the heat, blinded, by the gas, and scientifically inappreciative of the music, but every body willing to endure ten times as much, rather than not be “in the fashion.” The moon, to be sure, silvered the pretty fountain in the park, close by, and the cool, sweet evening breeze played through the blossoming trees; but the “working people” were stretched upon its benches; the poor man’s child laid his soft cheek to the cool grass; the ragged little urchin, escaping from the stifled air of the noisome lane, threw up his brimless hat in the gravel walk. The parks were plebeian, opera boxes were beyond the reach of “the vulgar.”

But look! Now the audience show signs of animation. All is astir. See, the ballet! A fleecy cloud sails in, enveloping “Susy.” Susy, the favorite pro tem.—Susy, with her jetty locks, creamy skin, and dimpled shoulders. Susy, with her pretty ankles and rounded waist. Susy, with her jeweled arms and rose-banded hair. Susy, with her rounded bosom and twinkling feet. Young men and old men level their glasses in breathless admiration, as Susy languishingly twirls, and tip-toes, and pirouettes. Young girls, who have long since ceased blushing at such exhibitions, wish, for the nonce, that they were Susy, as bouquets and diamond rings are thrown upon the stage. Tom Shaw’s eyes sparkle, and relieving his enthusiasm by some expressive expletives, he leaves Jack for a behind-the-scene tÊte-À-tÊte with the danseuse.

CHAPTER XI.

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 motherly care 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 way he liked to see it, the book opened at the passage he liked best, the little flower pressed between its leaves, because he gave it. Then the little arbor in the garden—where they used to sit 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 he could have 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 which the pretty danseuse shortly 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 new rÉgime of servants. She bore every caprice of the tyrannical little danseuse. 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 from her.

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 the only tenants 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 a silvery 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 who blessed 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 then such a 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? love him 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 string of 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 harm you,” 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 not his child!—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 gladden even 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 should you think was a fair price for you to receive, if you had done that ’ere job?’ That’s it; no dodging behind that question. ’Specially when a man has been through the operative mill 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. That she should 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 needed no 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 her heart in its loneliness craved sympathy. “It is dull weather we have, sir; one don’t mind it when all is right here,” 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.”

“She forgave 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 cursed him;—he forgot business—every thing went wrong—one way and another our money went, and then Jacob died.”

“He forgave him—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 made you so 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 I alone mourned 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 for her sake,” 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 better speak 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 was dead? 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, for children 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 the tea-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, was such 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. Quip so much 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 but Mr. 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 had passed 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 flower Sunday! 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 a Sunday! 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 cost twenty-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 were duly 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’s young spring-time, and dressed in shepherdess style; nature, perhaps, suggesting the idea, by placing the crook in 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 the friendless only can 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 would leave 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 for her. Feet which had strayed into forbidden paths, would fain have found for her tiny 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 any modern school 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, and their unfathomable 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 my Cousin 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 wind your husband round your little finger, like a skein of silk.”

“With Cupid’s help,” replied Kate, with mock humility.

“Of course you will 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 very opposite of 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 “Dear Cousin 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 longer little Fanny,” she said, blushing slightly. “I have crammed a great many books 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 long tÊte-À-tÊte with 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 on Mr. 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 his cousin-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’t jealous of little Fanny. Of course he wasn’t!