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

strictly drawn then.

"Has Winthrop been over to see his charge? How does he feel about it? Now, if she had been a boy----"

"He was up to tea last night, and he and Foster have been arranging the business this morning. Foster is to be joint trustee, but Winthrop will be her guardian."

"What will he do with a girl! Why, she'll set Recompense crazy."

"She is not going to live there. For the present she will stay here. She will go to Mrs. Webb's school this winter. He has an idea of sending her to boarding school later on."

"Is she that rich?" asked Aunt Priscilla with a little sarcasm.

"She will have a small income from what her father left. Then there is the rent of the house in School Street, and some stock. Winthrop thinks she ought to be well educated. And if she should ever have to depend on herself, teaching seems quite a good thing. Even Mrs. Webb makes a very comfortable living."

"But we're going to educate the community for nothing, and tax the people who have no children to pay for it."

"Well," said Mrs. Leverett with a smile, "that evens up matters. But the others, at least property owners, have to pay their share. I tell Foster that we ought not grudge our part, though we have no children to send."

"How did people get along before?"

"I went to school until I was fifteen."

"And when I was twelve I was doing my day's work spinning. There's talk that we shall have to come back to it. Jonas Field is in a terrible taking. According to him war's bound to come. And this embargo is just ruining everything. It is to be hoped we will have a new President before everything goes."

"Yes, it is making times hard. But we are learning to do a great deal more for ourselves."

"It behooves us not to waste our money. But Winthrop Adams hasn't much real calculation. So long as he has money to buy books, I suppose he thinks the world will go on all right. It's to be hoped Foster will look out for the girl's interest a little. But you'll be foolish to take the brunt of the thing. Now it would be just like you 'Lizabeth Leverett, to take care of this child, without a penny, just as if she was some charity object thrown on your hands."

Mrs. Leverett did give her soft laugh then.

"You have just hit it, Aunt Priscilla," she said. "Winthrop wanted to pay her board, but Foster just wouldn't hear to it, this year at least. We have all taken a great liking to her, and she is to be our visitor from now until summer, when some other plans are to be made."

"Well--if you have money to throw away----" gasped Aunt Priscilla.

"She won't eat more than a chicken, and she'll sleep in Betty's bed. It will help steady Betty and be an interest to all of us. I really couldn't think of charging. It's like having one of the grandchildren here. And she needs a mother's care. Think of the poor little girl with not a near relative! Aunt Priscilla, there's a good many things money can't buy."

Aunt Priscilla sniffed.

"Take off your bonnet and have a cup of tea," Mrs. Leverett had asked her when she first came in. "It's such a long walk back to King Street on an empty stomach. The children are making cookies, but Betty shall brew a cup of tea at once, unless you'll wait till the men folks come in."

Aunt Priscilla sat severe and undecided for a moment. The laughing voices in the other room piqued and vexed and interested her all in a breath. She had come over to hear about Doris. There was so little interest in her methodical old life. Mrs. Leverett sincerely pitied women who had no children and no grandchildren.

"They're quite as queer as old maids without the real excuse," she said to her husband. "They've missed the best things out of their lives without really knowing they were the best."

And perhaps at this era more respect was paid to age. There were certain trials and duties to life that men and women accepted and did not try to evade. A modern happy woman would have been bored at the call of a dissatisfied old woman every few days. But since the death of Mehitable Doule, Priscilla's own cousin, who had been married from her house, she had clung more to the Leveretts. Foster was too easy-going, otherwise she had not much fault to find with him. He had prospered and was forehanded, and his married son and daughters had been fairly successful.

"Well, I don't care if I do," said Aunt Priscilla, with a half-reluctance. "Though I hadn't decided to when I came away, and Polly'll make a great hole in that cold roast pork, for I never said a word as to what she should have for supper. She's come to have no more sense than a child, and some things are bad to eat at night. But if she makes herself sick she'll have to suffer."

"I'll have some tea made----"

"No, 'Lizabeth, don't fuss. I shan't be in any hurry, if I do stay, and the men will be in before long. So Winthrop wasn't real put out when he saw the girl?"

"I think he liked her. He's not much hand to make a fuss, you know. He feels she must be well brought up. Her mother, it seems, was quite quality."

"Queer the mother's folks didn't look after her."

"Her mother was an only child. Winthrop has the records back several generations. And when _she_ died the father was alive, you know."

"Winthrop is a great stickler for such things. It's good to have folks you're not ashamed of, to be sure, but family isn't everything. Behaving counts."

Aunt Priscilla took off her bonnet and shawl, and hung them in the "best" closet, where the Sunday coats and cloaks were kept.

"You might just hand me that knitting, 'Lizabeth. I guess I knit a little tighter'n you do, on account of my hand being out. I've more than enough stockings to last my time out and some coarse ones for Polly. They spin yarn so much finer now. Footing many stockings this fall?"

"No. I knit Foster new ones late in the spring. He's easy, too. Warren's the one to gnaw out heels, though young people are so much on the go."

Aunt Priscilla took up the stocking and pinned the sheath on her side. How gay the voices sounded in the kitchen! Then the door opened.

"Just look, Aunt Elizabeth! Aren't they lovely! Betty let me cut them out and put them in the pans. Oh----"

Doris stood quite abashed, with a dish of tempting brown cookies in one hand. Her cheeks were like roses now, and Betty's kitchen apron made another frock over hers of gay chintz, that had been exhumed from the chest.

"Good-afternoon," recovering herself.

"The cookies look delightful. I must taste one," Mrs. Leverett said smilingly.

She handed the plate to Aunt Priscilla.

"It'll just spoil my supper if I eat one. But you may do up some in a paper, and I'll take them home. I'm glad to see you at something useful. Did you help about the house over there in England?"

"Oh, no. We had Barby," answered the child simply.

"Well, there's a deal for you to learn. I made bread just after I had turned ten years old. Girls in old times learned to work. It wasn't all cooky-making, by a long shot!"

Doris made a little courtesy and disappeared.

"I'd do something to that tousled hair, 'Lizabeth. Have her put it up or cut it off. It's good to cut a girl's hair; makes it thick and strong. And curls do look so flighty and frivolous."

"The new fashion is a wig with all the front in little curls. It's so much less trouble if it is made of natural curly hair."

"Are you going to set up for fashion in these hard times?" asked the visitor disdainfully.

"Not quite. But Betty Pickering is to be married in great state next month, and we have been invited already. I suppose I ought to consider her in some sort a namesake."

"I'm glad I haven't any fine relatives to be married," and the sniff was made to do duty.

Mrs. Leverett put down her sewing. She had drawn the threads and basted the wristbands and gussets for Betty to stitch, as they had come to shirt-making. The new ones of thick cotton cloth would be good for winter wear. One had always to think ahead in this world if one wanted things to come out even.

Then she went out to the kitchen, and there was a gay chattering, as if a colony of chimney swallows had met on a May morning. Aunt Priscilla pushed up nearer the window. She had good eyesight still, and only wore glasses when she read or was doing some extra-fine work.

Betty came in and rolled out the table as she greeted her relative. Aunt Priscilla had a curiously lost feeling, as if somehow she had gone astray. No one ever would know about it, to be sure. There were times when it seemed as if there must be a third power, between God and the Evil One. There were things neither good nor bad. If they were good the Lord brought them to pass,--or ought to,--and if they were bad your conscience was troubled. Aunt Priscilla had been elated over her idea all day yesterday. It looked really generous to her. Of course Cousin Winthrop couldn't be bothered with this little foreign girl, and the Leveretts had a lot of grandchildren. She might take this Dorothy Adams, and bring her up in a virtuous, useful fashion. She would go to school, of course, but there would be nights and mornings and Saturdays. In two years, at the latest, she would be able to take a good deal of charge of the house. All this time her own little fortune could be augmenting, interest on interest. And if she turned out fair, she would do the handsome thing by her--leave her at least half of what she, Mrs. Perkins, possessed.

And yet it was not achieved without a sort of mental wrestle. She was not quite sure it was spiritual enough to pray over; in fact, nothing just like this had come into her life before. She was not the kind of stuff out of which missionaries were made, and this wasn't just charitable work. She would expect the girl to do something for her board, but Polly would be good for a year or two more. Time did hang heavy on her hands, and this would be interest and employment, and a good turn. When matters were settled a little she would broach the subject to Elizabeth.

If Winthrop Adams meant to make a great lady out of her--why, that was all there was to it! Times were hard and there might be war. Winthrop had a son of his own, and perhaps not so much money as people thought. And it did seem folly to waste the child's means. If she had so much--enough to go to boarding school--she oughtn't be living on the Leveretts. Foster was having pretty tight squeezing to get along.

They all wondered what made Aunt Priscilla so unaggressive at supper time. She