A Little Girl in Old Salem, Amanda Minnie Douglas [the snowy day read aloud .TXT] 📗

about like an unquiet spirit. It was cold up in their room. Chilian had proposed a fire, but Elizabeth had negatived it sharply.

"There ought to be room enough in the dining-room and keeping-room for two extra people," she said decidedly.

He felt sorry for the little girl with her downcast face, as he met her on the landing.

"Don't you want to come and visit me?" he asked, in an inviting tone.

"Oh, yes!" and the grave little face lightened.

The blaze was brighter here than downstairs, she felt quite sure. And the room had a more cheerful look. The table was spread with books and papers, and, oh, the books that were on the shelves! The curious things above them suggested India. There really was the triple-faced god she had seen so often, carved in ivory, and another carving of a temple. She walked slowly round and inspected them. Then she paused at a window.

"How much it rains!" she began. "I don't see how so much rain can be made. When is it going to stop?"

"I think it will hold up this afternoon and be clear to-morrow, clear and sunny."

"I like sunshine best. And little rains. This has been so long."

"And we haven't much to amuse a child. When it clears up we must find some little folks. Does it seem very strange to you?"

"I haven't lived with big women much, except Rachel. And the houses are so different. You get things about, and the servants pick them up. There are so many servants. Sometimes there are white children, but not many. Their mothers take them back to England. Or they die."

She uttered the last sadly, and her long lashes drooped.

He wondered a little how she had stood the climate. She looked more like a foreigner than a native of Salem town.

"What did you do there?" He hardly knew how to talk to a little girl.

"Oh, a great many things. I went to ride in a curious sort of cart--the natives pulled it. Then the children came and played in the court. They threw up balls and caught them, ever so many, and they played curious games on the stones, and acrobatic feats, and sung, and danced, and acted stories of funny things. Then father read to me, and told me about Salem when he was a little boy. You can't really think the grown-up people were little, like you."

"And that one day you will be big like them."

She pushed up her sleeve. They were large and made just big enough for her hand at the wrist, not at all like the straight, small sleeves of the Puritan children. After surveying it a moment, she said gravely:

"I can't understand _how_ you grow. You must be pushed out all the time by something inside."

"You have just hit it;" and he smiled approvingly. "It is the forces inside. There is a curious factory inside of us that keeps working, day and night, that supplies the blood, the warmth, the strength, and is always pushing out; it even enlarges the bones until one is grown and finished, as one may say. And the food you eat, the air you breathe, are the supplies."

"But you go on eating and breathing. Why don't you go on growing?"

There was a curious little knot in her forehead where the lines crossed, and she raised her eyes questioningly to him. What wonderful eyes they were!

"I suppose it is partly this: You employ your mind and your body and they need more nourishment. Then--well, I think it is the restraining law of nature, else we should all be giants. In very hot countries and very cold countries they do not grow so large."

He could not go into the intricacies of physiology, as he did with some of the students.

"You did not go to school?"

"Oh, no!" She laughed softly. "The native schools were funny. They sat on mats and did not have any books, but repeated after the teacher. And, sometimes, he beat them dreadfully. There were some English people had a school, but it was to teach the language to the natives. And then Mr. Cathcart came to stay with father. He had been the chaplain somewhere and wasn't well, so they gave him a--a----"

"Furlough?" suggested Chilian.

"Yes; father sent him out in one of the boats. He began to teach me some things. I could read, you know. And I could talk Hindostani some--with the children. Then I learned to spell and pronounce the words better. He had a few books of verses that were beautiful. I learned some of them by heart. And Latin."

"Latin!" in surprise.

"He had some books and a Testament. It was grand in the sound, and I liked it. There were many things, cases and such, that I couldn't get quite straight, but after a little I could read, and then make it over into English."

When he was eight he was reading Latin and beginning French. Some of the Boston women he knew were very good French scholars, though education was not looked upon as a necessity for women. It seemed odd to him--this little girl in Calcutta learning Latin.

"Let us see how far you have gone." Teaching never irked him when he once set about it.

He hunted up a simple Latin primer.

"Come around this side;" and he drew her nearer to him. There had been no little girls to train and teach, and for a moment he felt embarrassed. But she took it as a matter of course, and he could see she was all interest.

It had been, as he supposed, rather desultory teaching. But she took the corrections and explanations with a sweetness that was quite enchanting. And she could translate quite well, in an idiomatic fashion. Really, with the right kind of training she would make a good scholar.

"Oh, you must be tired of standing," he said presently. "How thoughtless of me. I have no little chairs, so I must hunt one up, but this will have to do now. That will be more comfortable. Now we can go on."

She laughed at her own little blunders in a cheerful fashion, and made haste to correct them. And then he found that she knew several of the old Latin hymns by heart, as they had been favorites of the English clergyman.

They were interrupted by a light tap at the door. He said "Come"; and turned his head.

It was Miss Winn.

"Pardon me. We couldn't imagine where Cynthia was. Hasn't she been an annoyance?"

"Oh, no; we have had a very nice time."

"But--had you not better come downstairs. Miss Eunice is sewing her pretty patchwork again."

"Oh, let me stay," she pleaded. "Do I bother you?"

It crossed his mind just then that in the years to come more than one man would yield to the sweet persuasiveness of those eyes.

"Yes, let her stay. She is no trouble. Indeed, we are studying."

Miss Winn was glad of his indorsement. Miss Elizabeth had been "worrying" for the last ten minutes. She had crept softly up to the garret, quite sure she should find the child in mischief. Then she had glanced into the "best chamber," but there was no sign of her there.

"Very well," replied Miss Winn.

Cynthia drew a long breath presently.

"Oh, you are tired!" he exclaimed. "Run over to the window and tell me how the sky looks. I think it doesn't rain now."

She slipped down, stood still for a moment, then turned and clapped her hands, laughing deliciously.

"Oh, there is blue sky, and a great yellow streak. The clouds are trying to hide the sun, but they can't. Oh, see, see!"

She danced up and down the room like a fairy in the long ray of sunshine that illumined the apartment.

"Oh, are you not glad!" She turned such a joyous face to him that he smiled and came over to the window that nearly faced the west.

"Better than the Latin?"

"Well--I like both;" archly.

He raised the window. A warm breath of delightful air rushed in, making the room with the fire seem chilly by contrast. He drew in long reviving breaths. Spring had truly come. To-morrow the swelling buds would burst.

"We must have a little Latin every day. And occasionally a walk in the sunshine. Twice a week I go down to Boston, but the other days will be ours."

"I like your room," she said frankly. "But what sights of books! Do you read them all?"

"Not very often. I do not believe I have read them all through. But I need them for reference, and some I like very much."

He wanted to add, "And some were a gift from your dear father," but he could not disturb her happy mood.

"Suppose we go down on the porch. It is too wet to walk anywhere."

"Oh, yes;" delightedly. "And to-morrow I will go down to the vessel again and see Captain Corwin. I do not want it to rain any more for weeks and weeks."

"No, for days and days. Weeks would dry us all up, and we would have no lovely spring flowers."

"And a famine maybe. Do the very poor people sometimes starve?"

"I do not think we have any very poor people, as they do in India. We are not overcrowded yet."

The rain had beaten the paths and the street hard, and it looked as if it had been swept clean. In spite of it all there were cheering evidences of spring.

"There are some children in that house," she exclaimed, nodding her head.

"Yes, the Uphams. There are two girls and two boys, the oldest and the youngest, who isn't much more than a baby. Bentley Upham must be about twelve. Polly is next, but she is a head taller than you. Then there's Betty. I am glad there will be some little girls for you to play with."

She looked eager and interested.

"Will you come in to supper? Chilian, you ought to know better than to be standing in this damp air. And that child with nothing around her!"

"The air is reviving, after having been housed for two days." But he turned and went in, leading the child by the hand.

The long, bleak New England coast winter was over, though it had lingered as if loath to go. Springs were seldom early, no one expected that. But this one came on with a rush. The willows donned their silver catkins and then threw them off for baby leaves, the lilac buds showed purple, the elms and maples came out in bloom, and the soft ones drew crowds of half-famished bees to their sweet tassels. The grass was vividly green, iridescent in the morning sun, with the dew still upon it. Snowdrop, crocus, hepatica, and coltsfoot, wild honeysuckle, were all about, the forsythia flared out her saucy yellow, the fruit buds swelled. Parties were out in the woods hunting trailing arbutus that has been called the darling of northern skies, that lies hidden in its nest of green leaves, silent, with no wind tossing it to and fro, but betrayed by its sweetness.

There were other signs of spring at Salem. The whole town seemed to burst out in house-cleaning. Parlor shutters were thrown open and windows washed. Carpets were beaten, blankets hung out to air, those