A Little Girl in Old Boston, Amanda Minnie Douglas [black authors fiction .TXT] 📗

bed at once."

"Couldn't I take her a little walk?" asked Doris.

"A walk! Why it is part of Sunday!"

"But I walk on Sunday with Uncle Winthrop."

"It's very wicked. We _do_ walk to church, but that isn't anything for pleasure."

"But uncle thinks one ought to be happy and joyous on Sunday. It is the day the Lord rose from the dead."

"It's the Sabbath. And you are to remember the Sabbath to keep it holy."

"What is the difference between Sabbath and Sunday?"

"There aint any," said James. "There's six days to work, and I wish there was two Sundays--one in the middle of the week. The best time of all is Sunday night. You don't have to keep so very still, and you don't have to work neither."

Elizabeth sighed. Then she said severely, "Do you know your catechism, James?"

"Well--I always have to study it Sunday morning," was the rather sullen reply.

"Maybe you had better go in and look it over."

"You never do want a fellow to take any comfort. Yes, I know it."

"Ruth, if you are getting sleepy go to bed."

Ruth had leaned her head down on Doris' shoulder.

"She's wide awake," and Doris gave her a little squeeze that made her smile. She would have laughed outright but for fear.

Elizabeth leaned her head against the door jamb.

"You look so tired," said Doris pityingly.

"I am tired through and through. I am always glad to have Saturday night come and no knitting or anything. Don't you knit when you are home?"

"I haven't knit--much." Doris flushed up to the roots of her fair hair, remembering her unfortunate attempts at achieving a stocking.

"What do you do?"

"Study, and read to Uncle Winthrop, and go to school and to writing school, and walk and take little journeys and drives and do drawing. Next year I shall learn to paint flowers."

"But you do some kind of work?"

"I keep my room in order and Uncle Win trusts me to dust his books. And I sew a little and make lace. But, you see, there is Miss Recompense and Dinah and Cato."

"Oh, what a lot of help! What does Miss Recompense do?"

"She is the housekeeper."

"Is Uncle Winthrop very rich?"

"I--I don't know."

"But there are no children and boys to wear out their clothes and stockings. There's so much knitting to be done. I go to school in winter, but there is too much work in summer. Doris Adams, you are a lucky girl if your fortune doesn't spoil you."

"Fortune!" exclaimed Doris in surprise.

"Yes. I heard father talk about it. And all that from England! Then someone died in Boston and left you ever so much. I suppose you will be a grand lady!"

"I'd like to be a lovely old lady like Madam Royall."

"And who is she?"

Doris was in the full tide of narration when Mrs. Manning came to the hall door. She caught some description of a party.

"Elizabeth, put Ruth to bed at once and go yourself. Doris, talking of parties isn't a very good preparation for the Sabbath. Elizabeth, when you say your prayers think of your sins and shortcomings for the week, and repent of them earnestly."

Ruth had fallen asleep and gave a little whine. Her mother slapped her.

"Hush, not a word. You deserve the same and more, Elizabeth! James, go in and study your catechism over three times, then go to bed."

Doris sat alone on the doorstep, confused and amazed. She was quite sure now she did not like Mrs. Manning, and she felt very sorry for Elizabeth. Then Betty came out and told her some odd Salem stories.

They all went to church Sabbath morning, in the old Puritan parlance. Doris found it hard to comprehend the sermon. Many of the people from the farms brought their luncheons, and wandered about the graveyard or sat under the shady trees. At two the children were catechised, at three service began again.

Mrs. King took Doris and Betty to dine with a friend of her youth, and then went back to the service out of respect to her sister and brother-in-law. Little Ruth fell asleep and was punished for it when she reached home. The children were all fractious and their mother scolded. When the sun went down there was a general sense of relief. The younger ones began to wander around. The two mothers sauntered off together, talking of matters they preferred not to have fall on the ears of small listeners.

Betty attracted the boys. Foster could talk to her, though he was much afraid of girls in general.

Doris and Elizabeth sat on the steps. Ruth was running small races with herself.

"Would you rather go and walk?" inquired Elizabeth timidly.

"Oh, no. Not if you like to sit still," cheerfully.

"I just do. I'm always tired. You are so pretty, I was afraid of you at first. And you have such beautiful clothes. That blue ribbon on your hat is like a bit of the sky. And God made the sky."

The voice died away in admiration.

"That isn't my best hat," returned Doris simply. "Cousin Betty thought the damp of the ocean and running out in the dust would ruin it. It has some beautiful pink roses and ever so much gauzy stuff and a great bow of pink satin. Then I have a pink muslin frock with tiny green and brown sprigs all over it, and a great sash of the muslin that comes down to the hem. The Chapman girls have satin ribbon sashes, but Miss Recompense said she liked the muslin better."

"Do you have to wear just what she says?"

"Oh, no. Madam Royall chooses some things, and Betty. And Cousin King brought me an elegant sash, white, with flowers all over it. I have ever so many pretty things."

"Oh, how proud you must feel!" said the Puritan maid half enviously.

"I don't know"--hesitatingly. "I think I feel just nice, and that is all there is about it. Uncle Win likes what they get for me--men can't buy clothes, you know, and if he is pleased and thinks I look well, that is the end of it."

"Oh, how good it must feel to be happy just like that. But are you quite sure," lowering her voice to a touch of awe, "that you will not be punished in the next world?"

"What for? Doesn't God mean us to be happy?"

"Well--not in this world, perhaps," answered the young theologian. "But you don't have anything in heaven except a white robe, and if you haven't had any pretty things in this world----"

"I wish I could give you some of mine." Doris slipped her soft warm hand over the other, beginning to grow bony and strained already.

"They wouldn't do me any good," was the almost apathetical reply. "I only go to church, and mother wouldn't let me wear them."

"Do you like to go to church?"

"I hate the long sermons and the prayers. Oh, that is dreadful wicked, isn't it? But I like to see the people and hear the talk, and they do have some new clothes; and the sitting still. When you've run and run all the week and are tired all over, it's just good to sit still. And it's different. I get so tired of the same things all the time and the hurry. Do you know what I am going to do when I am a woman?"

"No," replied Doris with a look of interested inquiry.

"I'm going to have one room like grandmother Manning, and live by myself. I shan't have any husband or children. I don't want to be sewing and knitting and patching continually, and babies are an awful sight of trouble, and husbands are just thinking of work, work all the time. Then I shall go visiting when I like, and though I shall read the Bible I won't mind about remembering the sermons. I'll just have a good time by myself."

Doris felt strangely puzzled. She always wanted a good time with someone. The great pleasure to her was having another share a joy. And to live alone was almost like being imprisoned in some dreary cell. Neither could she think of Helen or Eudora living alone--indeed, any of the girls she knew.

"Now you can go on about the wedding party," said Elizabeth after a pause. "And you really danced! And you were not afraid the ground would open and swallow you?"

"Why, no," returned Doris. "There are earthquakes that swallow up whole towns, but, you see, the good and the bad go together. And I never heard of anyone being swallowed up----"

"Why, yes--in the Bible--Korah, Dathan, and Abiram."

"But they were not dancing. I think,"--hesitatingly,--"they were finding fault with Moses and Aaron, and wanting to be leaders in some manner."

"Well--I am glad it wasn't dancing. And now go on quick before they come back."

Elizabeth had never read a fairy story or any vivid description. She had no time and there were no books of that kind about the house. She fairly reveled in Doris' brilliant narrative. She had seen one middle-aged couple stand up to be married after the Sunday afternoon service, and she had heard of two or three younger people being married with a kind of wedding supper. But that Doris should have witnessed all this herself! That she should have worn a wedding gown and scattered flowers before the bride!

Ruth was tired of running. "I'm sleepy," she said. "Unfasten my dress, I want to go to bed."

Betty and the boys were coming up the path, with the shadowy forms of the grown people behind them. Mr. Manning had been taking a nap on the rude kitchen settee, his Sunday evening indulgence. Now he came through the hall.

"Boys, children, it's time to go to bed. You are all sleepy enough in the mornin', but you would sit up half the night if someone did not drive you off."

"Oh, I wish you lived here, Aunt Betty," said Foster for a good-night.

Betty and Doris were almost ready for bed when there was a little sound at the door, pushed open by Elizabeth, who stood there in her plain, scant nightgown with a distraught expression, as if she had seen a ghost.

"Oh, Aunt Betty or Doris, _can_ you remember the text and what the sermon was about? We always say it to mother after tea Sabbath evening, and she'll be sure to ask me to-morrow morning. And I can't think! I never scarcely do forget. Oh, what shall I do!"

Her distress was so genuine that Betty folded her in her arms. Elizabeth began to cry at the tender touch.

"There, little Bessy, don't cry. Let me see--I remember I was preaching another sermon to myself. It was--'Do this and ye shall live.' And instead of all the hard things he put in, I thought of the kindly things father was always doing, and Uncle Win, and mother, and the pleasant things instead of the severe laws. And when he reached his lastly he said no one could keep all the laws, and because they could not the Saviour came and died, but he seemed to preach as if the old laws were still in force, and that the Saviour's death really had not changed anything. That was in