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

the morning. And the afternoon was the miracle of the loaves and fishes."

"Yes--I could recall that. But I was sure mother would ask me the one I had forgotten. It always happens that way. Oh, I am so glad. Dear Aunt Betty! And if I was sometimes called Bessy, as you called me just now, or Betty, or anything besides the everlasting 'Lisbeth. Oh, Doris, how happy you must be----"

"There, dear," said Betty soothingly, "don't cry so. I will write out what I can recall on a slip of paper and you can look it over in the morning. I just wish you could come and make me a visit, and go over to Uncle Win's. Yes, Doris _is_ a happy little girl."

"But I have everything in the world," said Doris with a long breath. "I am afraid I could not be so happy here. Oh, can't we take Elizabeth home with us? Betty, coax her mother."

"It wouldn't do a bit of good. You can't coax mother. And there is always so much work in the summer. I am afraid she wouldn't like it--even if you asked her."

"But James came, and little Ruth----"

"They were too young to work. Oh, it would be like going to heaven!"

"It may be sometime, little Bessy. You can dream over it."

"Good-night. Would you kiss me, Doris?"

The happy girl kissed her a dozen times instead of once. But her deep eyes were full of tears as she turned to Betty when the small figure had slipped away.

"Yes, it is a hard life," said Betty. "It seems as if children's lives ought to be happier. I don't know what makes Mary so hard. I'm sure she does not get it from father or mother. She appears to think all the virtue of the world lies in work. I wonder what such people will do in heaven!"

"Oh, Betty, do try to have her come to Boston. I know Uncle Win will feel sorry for her."

Those years in the early part of the century were not happy ones for childhood in general. Too much happiness was considered demoralizing in this world and a poor preparation for the next. Work was the great panacea for all sorts of evils. It was seldom work for one's neighbors, though people were ready to go in sickness and trouble. It was adding field to field and interest to interest, to strive and save and wear one's self out and die.

Elizabeth was up betimes the next morning, and there lay the paper with chapter and verse and some "remarks." Her heart swelled with gratitude as she ran downstairs. Sarah had made the "shed" fire and the big wash kettle had been put over it. She was rubbing out the first clothes, the nicest pieces.

"Now fly round, 'Lisbeth," said her mother. "You've dawdled enough these few days back, and there'll be an account to settle presently. I suppose your head was so full of that bunch of vanity you never remembered a word of the sermon yesterday. What was the text in the morning?"

Elizabeth's pale face turned scarlet and her lip quivered; her slight frame seemed to shrink a moment, then in a gasping sort of way she gave chapter and verse and repeated the words.

"I don't think that was it," said her mother sharply. "Ruth was in a fidget just as the text was given out. Wasn't that last Sunday's text?"

"Some of the others may remember," the child said in her usual apathetical voice.

"Well, you needn't act as if you were going to have a hysteric! Hand me that dish of beans. Your father likes them warmed over. Quick, there he comes now. You stir them."

A trivet stood on the glowing coals, and the pan soon warmed through. Father and the men took their places. Foster came in sleepily.

"Where's James?" inquired his mother.

"I don't want him in the field to-day. He can weed in the garden. You send him with the dinners."

"Where was yesterday morning's text, Foster?" Mrs. Manning asked sharply.

The boy looked up blankly. As there was no Sunday evening examination it had slipped out of his mind.

"It was something about--keeping the law--doing----"

James entered at that moment and had heard the question and hesitating reply.

"I can't remember chapter and verse, but it was short, and I just rammed the words down in my memory box. 'Do this and ye shall live.'"

"James, no such irreverence," exclaimed his father.

Elizabeth in the kitchen drew a long breath of relief. She wondered whether his mother would have taken Aunt Betty's word.

Monday morning was always a hard time. Sarah required looking after, for her memory lapses were frequent. Mr. Manning said a good birch switch was the best remedy he knew. But though a hundred years before people had thought nothing of whipping their servants, public opinion was against it now. Mrs. Manning did sometimes box her ears when she was over-much tired. But she was a very faithful worker.

Elizabeth gave Ruth and baby Hester their breakfast. Then Betty came down, and insisted upon getting the next breakfast while Mrs. Manning hung up her first clothes. She had been scolding to Betty about people having no thought or care as to how they put back the work with their late breakfast. But when Betty cooked and served it, and insisted upon washing up the dishes; and Doris amused the baby, who was not well, and helped Ruth shell the pease for dinner; when the washing and churning were out of the way long before noon, and Elizabeth was folding down the clothes for ironing while Sarah and her mother prepared the dinner and sent it out to the men--the child couldn't see that things were at all behindhand.

Sarah and Elizabeth ironed in the afternoon. Mrs. Manning brought out her sewing and Betty helped on some frocks for the children. Two old neighbors came in to supper, bringing two little girls who were wonderfully attracted by Doris and delighted to be amused in quite a new fashion. But Elizabeth was too busy to be spared.

After supper was cleared away and the visitors had gone Elizabeth brought her knitting and sat on the stoop step in the moonlight.

"Oh, don't knit!" cried Doris. "You look so tired."

"I'd like to go to bed this minute," said the child. "But last week I fell behind. You see, there are so many to wear stockings, and the boys do rattle them out so fast. We try to get most of the new knitting done in the summer, for autumn brings so much work. And if you will talk to me--I like so to hear about Boston and Madam Royall's beautiful house and your Uncle Win. It must be like reading some interesting book. Oh, I wish I could come and stay a whole week with you!"

"A week!" Doris laughed. "Why, you couldn't see it all in a month, or a year. Every day I am finding something new about Boston, and Miss Recompense remembers so many queer stories. I'm going to tell her all about you. I know she'll be real nice about your coming. Everything is as Uncle Win says, but he always asks her."

Doris could make her little descriptions very vivid and attractive. At first Elizabeth replied by exclamations, then there was quite a silence. Doris looked at her. She was leaning against the post of the porch and her needles no longer clicked, though she held the stocking in its place. The poor child had fallen fast asleep. The moonlight made her look so ghostly pale that at first Doris was startled.

The three ladies came out, but Elizabeth never stirred. When her mother spied her she shook her sharply by the shoulder.

"Poor child!" exclaimed Mrs. King. "Elizabeth, put up your work and go to bed."

"If you are too sleepy to knit, put up your work and go out and knead on the bread a spell. Sarah always gets it lumpy if you don't watch her," said Mrs. Manning.

Elizabeth gathered up her ball and went without a word.

"I'll knit for you," said Betty, intercepting her, and taking the work.

"Mary, you will kill that child presently, and when you have buried her I hope you will be satisfied to give Ruth a chance for her life," exclaimed Mrs. King indignantly.

"I can't afford to bring my children up in idleness, and if I could, I hope I have too great a sense of responsibility and my duty toward them. I was trained to work, and I've been thankful many a time that _I_ didn't have to waste grown-up years in learning."

"We didn't work like that. Then father had given some years to his country and we _were_ poor. You have no need, and it is cruel to make such a slave of a child. She does a woman's work."

"I am quite capable of governing my own family, Electa, and I think I know what is best and right for them. We can't afford to bring up fine ladies and teach them French and other trumpery. If Elizabeth is fitted for a plain farmer's wife, that is all I ask. She won't be likely to marry a President or a foreign lord, and if we have a few hundred dollars to start her in life, maybe she won't object."

"You had better give her a little comfort now instead of adding farm to farm, and saving up so much for the woman who will come in here when you are dead and gone. Think of the men who have second and third wives and whose children are often turned adrift to look out for themselves. Hundreds of poor women are living hard and joyless lives just to save up money. And it is a shame to grind their children to the lowest ebb."

Mrs. Manning was very angry. She had no argument at hand, so she turned in an arrogant manner and said austerely:

"I had better go and look after my daughter, to see that she doesn't work herself quite to death. But I don't know what we should do without bread."

"Now you have done it!" cried Betty. "I only hope she won't vent her anger on the poor child."

"It is a curious thing," said Mrs. King reflectively, "that women--well, men too--make such a point of church-going on Sunday, and hardly allow the poor children to draw a comfortable breath, and on Monday act like fiends. Women especially seem to think they have a right to indulge in dreadful tempers on washing day, and drive all before them. Think of the work that has been done in this house to-day, and the picture of Elizabeth, worn out, falling asleep over her knitting. I should have sent her to bed with the chickens. I'd like to take her home with me, but it would spoil her for the farm."

Betty knit away on the stocking. "I can't see what makes Mary so hard and grasping," she said. "It troubles mother a good deal."

When they went in the house was quiet and the kitchen dark. Mrs. Manning sat sewing. Their candles were on the table. Betty and Mrs. King said a cordial good-night.

The sisters-in-law were to come the next day, and grandmother Manning, with an addition of four children. The Salem sister, Mrs. Gates, was stout and pleasant; the farmer sister thin and with a troublesome cough, and she had a young baby besides