A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia, Amanda Minnie Douglas [e novels to read txt] 📗

be suitable. And Madam Wetherill said I was divided, like my name. When will it be time to go to the farm?"

"Would it be a great disappointment if thou didst not go?" he asked gravely.

"What has happened, cousin?"

Her sweet face took instant alarm. The smiles shaped themselves to a sudden unspoken sympathy.

"A great many things have happened." He would have liked to draw her down to his knee as he had seen Penn hold his sister Faith and comfort her for the loss of their mother. But Primrose did not need comforting. He kept his arm about her and drew her nearer to him.

"Yes, a great many things. Mother's sister, Aunt Rachel Morgan, died in March, and grandmother and the three children have come to live with us. Grandmother is old and has mostly lost her mind. Penn is a large fellow of his age, almost grown up, and is of great service. Rachel is fourteen and is wise in the management of grandmother, who cannot tell one from another and thinks my mother the elder Rachel who died. And then there is little Faith."

"Faith? What is she like? Would you rather have her than--than me? Do you love her most?"

A sudden jealousy flamed up in the child's heart. Since her mother had gone she had really loved no one until she had met Andrew. Perhaps it was largely due to the fact that he was the only sympathetic one in a lonely life.

Andrew laughed, stirred by a sweet joy.

"I would a dozen times rather have thee, but Faith is nice and obedient and my mother has grown fond of her. But there is something about thee, Primrose--canst thou remember how the chickens followed thee, and the birds and the squirrels never seemed afraid? Thou didst talk to the robins as if thou didst understand their song. And the beady-eyed squirrels--how they would stop and listen."

"I made a robin's song on the spinet quite by myself, one afternoon. And the dainty Phoebe bird, and the wren with her few small notes. Do you know, I think the wren a Quaker bird, only her gown is not quite gray enough. We went out to great-aunt's farm one day, and oh, the birds! Some had on such dazzling plumage and flew so swiftly. We went to the woods and found trailing arbutus, that is so sweet, and hepatica, and oh! many another thing. I can't recall half the names. There was a tall, grave gentleman who talked much about them and said they were families. Are the little birds the babies, and are there cousins and aunts and grandmothers all faded and shriveled up? And can they talk to each other with those little nods and swinging back and forth?"

"Thou art a strange child, Primrose," and he smiled. "What were we talking of? Oh, the coming of the children. And then father hath had a bad fall and has to be kept in bed for weeks. So we seem full of trouble."

"Oh, I am so sorry, Andrew!" Her head was up by his shoulder and she leaned over and kissed him, and then he held her in a very close embrace and felt in some mysterious way that she belonged to him, rather than to his father or to her grand aunt.

"And you will hardly want me," with a slow half question answering itself.

"That is one of my errands. Father desires to see Madam Wetherill. He did not say--he wishes to follow out my uncle's will concerning you."

Then he looked her all over. Her eyes were cast down on the polished floor that had lately come in. Many people had them sanded; indeed, the large dining room here was freshly sanded every morning and drawn in waves and diamonds and figures of various sorts. The Friends used the sand, but condemned the figures as savoring of the world.

As Primrose stood there she was grace itself. Her head was full of loose curls that glinted of silver in the high lights and a touch of gold in the shade, deepening to a soft brown. Her skin was fine and clear, her brows and the long lashes were quite dark, the latter just tipped with gold that often gave the eyes a dazzling appearance. Her ear was like a bit of pinkish shell or a half crumpled rose leaf. And where her chin melted into her neck, and the neck sloped to the shoulder, there were exquisite lines. After the fashion of the day her bodice was cut square, and the sleeves had a puff at the shoulder and a pretty bow that had done duty in various places before. He did not understand that it was beauty that moved him so, for he had always been deeply sympathetic over the loss of her parents.

She was not studying the floor, or thinking whether she looked winsome or no, though Bella Morris would have done for an instructor on poses already, and was often saying, "Primrose, you must stand that way and turn your face so, and look as if you were listening to something," or "Bend your head a little."

"But I'm not listening, and I can't have my head bent over, it tires my neck," she would reply with a kind of gay decision.

She was wondering whether she wanted to go out to the farm or not. Would she be allowed to take her books along, or must she go on with the spinning and sewing? And she did love her pretty gowns and the ribbons, and the silver buckles on her shoes, and several times she had worn the gold beads that her mother had left behind for her. And there was the spinet, with its mysterious music, the drives about, and she was learning to ride on a pillion; and Patty knew so many stories about everything, merry and sad and awesome, for her grandmother's sister had been thrust into prison at Salem for being a witch. And Patty also knew some fairy stories, chief among them a version of "Cinderella," and that fascinating "Little Red Riding Hood."

"I think I shall want thee always," he began, breaking the silence. "I have missed thee so much, and counted on thy coming back to us. But you might find it dull after all the pleasure and diversion. There would be Faith----"

"Should I like her?"

"That I cannot tell," and he smiled gravely.

She did not altogether like Bella, but she did not want to say so. It was queer, but she was learning that you could not like everybody to order. There was something about kind, gentle Aunt Lois that held one at a distance, and she was always afraid of her Uncle James.

"Do you like her very much?" with a lingering intonation.

"We are commanded to love everyone, chiefly those of the household of faith."

"Cousin Andrew," very seriously, "I go to Christ Church now. I like the singing. And it says--in the Scriptures, I think--'Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord!'"

"One can praise in the heart."

"How should another know it? One might be thinking very naughty things in the heart, and keep silence."

"But the naughty and evil heart would not be likely to do good works."

Primrose was silent. The spiritual part of theology was quite beyond her.

Then there was a clang at the knocker and the small black boy in a bright turban went to answer.


CHAPTER VI.

TO THE RESCUE.

Primrose was dismissed, though she saw her Cousin Andrew again at dinner. Madam Wetherill had quite settled the question. She was going out to her own country estate, and Primrose would have a change of air and much more liberty, and under the circumstances it was altogether better that she should not go to her uncle's, and Madam Wetherill considered the matter as settled, though she promised to come out the next day.

The dream of William Penn had been a fair, roomy city, with houses set in gardens of greenery. There were to be straight, long streets reaching out to the suburbs and the one to front the river was to have a great public thoroughfare along the bank. Red pines grew abundantly, and many another noble tree was left standing wherever it could be allowed, and new ones planted. Broad Street cut the city in two from north to south, High Street divided it in the opposite direction.

But even now "The greene country towne" was showing changes. To be sure the house in Letitia Court was still standing and the slate-roof house into which Mr. Penn moved later on. But market houses came in High Street, the green river banks were needed for commerce, and little hamlets were growing up on the outskirts. There were neighborly rows of houses that had wide porches where the heads of families received their neighbors, the men discussing the state of the country or their own business, the women comparing household perplexities, complaining of servants, who, when too refractory, were sent to the jail to be whipped, and the complaints or the praises of apprentices who boarded in their master's houses, or rather, were given their board and a moderate yearly stipend to purchase clothes, where they were not made at home. Young people strolled up and down under the great trees of elm and sycamore, or lingered under the drooping willows where sharp eyes could not follow them so closely, and many a demure maiden tried her hand on her father's favorite apprentice, meaning to aim higher later on unless he had some unusual success.

Up to this time there had been a reign of quiet prosperity. The old Swedes had brought in their own faith; the church, so small at first as to be almost unnoticed, was winning its way. And though Whitfield had preached the terrors of the law, religious life was more tolerant. Natural aspects were more conciliatory. The Friends were peace-loving and not easily roused from placid methods of money-getting. There was nothing of the Puritan environment or the strenuous conscience that keeps up fanatics and martyrs. Witchcraft could not prosper here, there being only one trial on record, and that easily dismissed. The mantle of charity and peace still hovered over the place, and prosperity had brought about easy habits. Perhaps, too, the luxuriant growth and abundance of everything assisted. Nature smiled, springs were early, autumns full of tender glory.

And though the city was not crowded, according to modern terms, there were many who migrated up the Schuylkill every summer, who owned handsome farms and wide-spreading country houses. Chestnut Hill and Mount Airy, Stenton and the Chew House at Germantown, were the scene of many a summer festivity where Friends and world's people mingled in social enjoyment; pretty Quakeresses practiced the fine art of pleasing and making the most of demure ways and eyes that could be so seductively downcast, phraseology that admitted of more intimacy when prefaced by the term "Friend," or lingered in dulcet tones over the "thee and thou."

Madam Wetherill always made a summer flitting to her fine and profitable farm, and surrounded herself with guests. She was very fond of company and asked people of different minds, having a great liking for argument, though it was difficult to find just where she stood on many subjects, except the Church and her decided objection to many of the tenets of the Friends, though she counted several of her most intimate acquaintances among them. She had a certain graceful suavity and took no delight in offending anyone.

But she was moved to the