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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, An Arrow in a Sunbeam, by Various
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: An Arrow in a Sunbeam
+       and Other Tales
+
+
+Author: Various
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 23, 2008  [eBook #26407]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ARROW IN A SUNBEAM***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+AN ARROW IN A SUNBEAM
+
+And Other Tales.
+
+[Illustration: cover art]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "MOVE ANOTHER INCH AND I'LL FIRE!" CRIED AL, POINTING
+THE MUSKET AT THE MAN'S BREAST.--P. 48.]
+
+
+
+London:
+William Nicholson and Sons,
+20, Warwick Square, Paternoster Row, E.C.,
+and Albion Works, Wakefield.
+188-
+
+
+
+
+AN ARROW
+
+IN A SUNBEAM;
+
+AND OTHER TALES.
+
+
+
+
+  The golden sunshine, vernal air,
+  Sweet flowers and fruits, thy love declare;
+  When forests ripen Thou art there,
+        Who givest all.
+
+
+
+
+London:
+William Nicholson and Sons,
+20, Warwick Square, Paternoster Row, E.C.,
+and Albion Works, Wakefield.
+188-
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+AN ARROW IN A SUNBEAM  . . . . . . Sarah Orne Jewett
+
+MISS SYDNEY'S FLOWERS  . . . . . . Sarah Orne Jewett
+
+A BRAVE BOY  . . . . . . . . . . . C. S. Sleight
+
+LADY FERRY . . . . . . . . . . . . Sarah Orne Jewett
+
+A BIT OF SHORE LIFE  . . . . . . . Sarah Orne Jewett
+
+HOW LILY GOT THE CAT . . . . . . . Frances Lee
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+
+AN ARROW IN A SUNBEAM.
+
+The minister of a fashionable church had noticed Sunday after Sunday a
+little old lady with a sad, patient face, dressed in very shabby
+mourning, sitting in the strangers' pew.
+
+Like Job this good man could say, "The cause that I knew not, I sought
+out."  He soon learned from the sexton her name and residence, and was
+surprised to find her in the very topmost room of a house, amid
+evidences of real poverty.
+
+In the one little window bloomed a monthly rose and a vigorous
+heliotrope, and beside the pots lay half-a-dozen books, such as are
+rarely seen in the homes of the very poor.  On the wall hung two fine
+engravings, and an old fashioned gold watch was suspended from a faded
+velvet case over the mantel piece.
+
+Her story, when she was induced to tell it, was neither new nor
+startling.  She had long been a widow.  Her children had been called
+from her, till now she had but one, and he, being a cripple, could do
+little more than supply his own absolute wants by his work as a
+repairer of watches.
+
+The pastor was charmed with her patient endurance of what others would
+call the hard discipline of life, and when he left her he felt that he
+had been a learner instead of a teacher in that poor room.
+
+Being too delicate to allude to her apparent poverty, he said at
+parting, "As you are a stranger among us, I will send some of the
+visitors of the church to cheer and comfort you."
+
+He selected two bright, rosy girls, full of life and happiness, of
+whose visits among the poor he had often heard.
+
+They came to the widow like sunbeams through a storm.  They talked
+cheerily, and did not appear to notice the bareness of the room.  They
+asked something of her history, and told of their grandmothers, who
+also had seen much sorrow; and in this way drew her out till she told
+of her former competency, of her early advantages in England, and of
+all the misfortunes which had brought her to her present position.
+"And yet," she said, "I have little to complain of while I have the
+love and tender care of such a son as Walter."
+
+Little by little, without a complaint from her, they found that the old
+lady lacked many things for her comfort.  Their sympathies were
+aroused.  It would be a delight to make her happy by gifts that would
+be of service to her.
+
+Lucy Grey, a girl full of fun as well as of kindness, said, "I wish you
+would let me make you a bonnet; I make lovely ones.  Grandma won't wear
+a milliner's bonnet, she likes mine so much better."
+
+Grace Wheeler volunteered to make a dress and caps, adding, playfully,
+"As my dear grandma is gone, you must let me adopt you and do all I can
+for you.  There are four of us girls always looking round for somebody
+to help.  You can call on us for anything you want."
+
+Four young girls, who laughingly styled themselves "The Quartette of
+Mercy," met at Grace Wheeler's house with materials for a dress, and a
+bonnet and caps.  The old lady was coming two hours afterward to be
+fitted, having being measured before they left her house.
+
+The girls were in a perfect gala of joy that bright afternoon.  They
+chatted merrily while working, and one would have thought they were
+making costumes for comic tableaux rather than the garb of a sorrowful
+widow.
+
+"I'll tell you, girls," said Lucy Grey, "the old dowager will shine
+when she gets my bonnet on!" and trying it on over her chestnut curls,
+she added, "I half-wish I was a downfallen lady myself,--a
+haberdasher's daughter from England!  Oh, I hope I shall be a widow
+some time!  Widows' caps are so becoming!"
+
+"Well," replied Grace, laughing, "do your best for Goody Horn, and
+maybe she'll let you have 'dear Walter.'  Then you'll be a widow
+soon,--he's so feeble."
+
+"Oh, I wish I had the dressing of her!  'She'd surprise herself,' as
+the Dutchman said.  I'd put a canary-coloured pompon and a white
+aigrette in that bonnet, and"--here she slipped a scarlet bird out of
+her own hat and stuck it into a fold of the crape Lucy was laying on to
+the old fashioned close frame--"I'd make her an upper skirt with a
+tie-back, get scarlet stockings and low shoes, and"----
+
+"Pho! you'd make the dear old soul look like Mother Hubbard!" cried
+another.
+
+"No," said Grace; "but she looks now like
+
+   "Little Dame Crump, with her brand-new broom;"
+
+and no doubt Walter looks either like Mother Hubbard's dog, or--or I
+don't know what."
+
+"Oh, by-the-way, did you notice a violin on the bureau?  Whoever gets
+'dear Walter' will have a chance to do all the family dancing.  The
+dowager's too old, and Walter's too lame; but there, what stuff I'm
+talking; it's well mother isn't within hearing.  She won't let me have
+any sport.  But I do think old folks are so comical!  I'll do anything
+in the world to help them, though."
+
+They worked on some time, and in the real kindness which was hidden
+under this nonsense they laid plans for the dear old stranger's future
+comfort.
+
+"Why, girls, it's time she was here now!"
+
+"Nora," called Grace, as a girl passed the door, "when an old lady
+comes, send her right up stairs."
+
+"There was an old person here an hour ago, and as you told me not to
+let any one in who asked for you for an hour, I told her to sit down in
+the hall.  I suppose she's there now.  I forgot all about her," was the
+reply.
+
+Grace flew down, but there was no one there.
+
+"That was some old beggar who got tired of waiting.  I'm sure she'll be
+here soon," said Lucy.
+
+But she did not come, and they grew tired of waiting to try on the
+dress and hat.  So they resolved to go, all four together, the next
+day, to the "opening at Madam Horn's," and carry the things themselves.
+
+They did so; but when the "dowager" opened the door at their knock,
+they hardly knew her.  She looked straight, and solemn, and cold.  She
+did not even ask them in; but they went in and seated themselves.
+
+Grace said, "You didn't come yesterday to try on the dress, and
+thinking you might be ill, we brought it here."
+
+"But I did go, ladies.  I went an hour earlier than you asked me, to
+beg that the dress might be cut perfectly plain, without upper skirt or
+flounce.  The girl seated me in the hall, and while I sat there, I was
+forced to hear myself and my son ridiculed and turned to scorn in a way
+I could not believe possible.
+
+"I have done nothing to merit this.  I never begged of you, nor sought
+your sympathy in my sorrows, and I cannot understand why I am made the
+butt of your scorn."
+
+"Oh, Mrs. Horn," cried Lucy, "we were only in sport!  I hope you will
+forgive us."
+
+"Is it sport to cast contempt on an aged woman who has been walking for
+years in a fiery furnace upheld and comforted by God?  Is it sport to
+ridicule an unfortunate boy who has a continual warfare with pain to
+keep up this poor home?"
+
+"Oh, don't speak of it again!" said Grace blushing deeply and
+half-ready to cry, as she untied the package in her hand, while Lucy
+unpinned the paper that held the bonnet.
+
+"Put them up, please, young ladies.  I cannot look on them, and I never
+could wear them.  When you first came, I told Walter that I felt as if
+a sunbeam had come into the house and remained behind you.  Last night
+I told him that my new sunbeam had an arrow concealed in it."
+
+"But you _will_ take the things, after all our trouble?" implored
+Grace, with tears dropping from her eyes.
+
+"No, never;  I can hear the Gospel in my old clothes.  I should take no
+pleasure in these; they are associated with too painful thoughts.  I
+hope God will bless you, children, and save you from an old age of
+poverty, and give you what He has given me,--a full trust in His love
+and tenderness.  Good-by."
+
+You can imagine the feelings of those young girls when they left that
+poor room in tears.
+
+Respectful treatment is more to the sensitive poor than gifts of food,
+garments or money; and nothing is so likely to harden the hearts of the
+young as the habit of getting sport out of the sorrows and infirmities
+of others.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+
+MISS SYDNEY'S FLOWERS.
+
+However sensible it may have been considered by other people, it
+certainly was a disagreeable piece of news to Miss Sydney, that the
+city authorities had decided to open a new street from St. Mary Street
+to Jefferson.  It seemed a most unwarrantable thing to her that they
+had a right to buy her property against her will.  It was so provoking,
+that, after so much annoyance from the noise of St. Mary Street during
+the last dozen years, she must submit to having another public
+thoroughfare at the side of her house also.  If it had only been at the
+other side, she would not have minded it particularly; for she rarely
+sat in her drawing-room, which was at the left of the hall.  On the
+right was the library, stately, dismal, and apt to be musty in damp
+weather; and it would take many bright people, and a blazing wood-fire,
+and a great deal of sunshine, to make it pleasant.  Behind this was the
+dining-room, which was really bright and sunny, and which opened by
+wide glass doors into a conservatory.  The rattle and clatter of St.
+Mary Street was not at all troublesome here; and by little and little
+Miss Sydney had gathered her favourite possessions from other parts of
+the house, and taken one end of it for her sitting-room.  The most
+comfortable chairs had found their way here, and a luxurious great sofa
+which had once been in the library, as we'll as the bookcase which held
+her favourite books.
+
+The house had been built by Miss Sydney's grandfather, and in his day
+it had seemed nearly out of the city: now there was only one other
+house left near it; for one by one the quiet, aristocratic old street
+had seen its residences give place to shops and warehouses, and Miss
+Sydney herself had scornfully refused many offers of many thousand
+dollars for her home.  It was so changed!  It made her so sad to think
+of the dear old times, and to see the houses torn down, or the
+small-paned windows and old-fashioned front-doors replaced with French
+plate-glass to display better the wares which were to take the places
+of the quaint furniture and well-known faces of her friends!  But Miss
+Sydney was an old woman, and her friends had diminished sadly.  "It
+seems to me that my invitations are all for funerals in these days,"
+said she to her venerable maid Hannah, who had helped her dress for her
+parties fifty years before.  She had given up society little by little.
+Her friends had died, or she had allowed herself to drift away from
+them, while the acquaintances from whom she might have filled their
+places were only acquaintances still.  She was the last of her own
+family, and, for years before her father died, he had lived mainly in
+his library, avoiding society and caring for nothing but books; and
+this, of course, was a check upon his daughter's enjoyment of visitors.
+Being left to herself, she finally became content with her own society,
+and since his death, which followed a long illness, she had refused all
+invitations; and with the exception of the interchange of occasional
+ceremonious calls with perhaps a dozen families, and her pretty
+constant attendance at church, you rarely were reminded of her
+existence.  And I must tell the truth: it was not easy to be intimate
+with her.  She was a good woman in a negative kind of way.  One never
+heard of any thing wrong she had done; and if she chose to live alone,
+and have nothing to do with people, why, it was her own affair.  You
+never seemed to know her any better after a long talk.  She had a very
+fine, courteous way of receiving her guests,--a way of making you feel
+at your ease more than you imagined you should when with her,--and a
+stately kind of tact that avoided skilfully much mention of
+personalities on either side.  But mere hospitality is not attractive,
+for it may be given grudgingly, or, as in her case, from mere habit;
+for Miss Sydney would never consciously be rude to any one in her own
+house--or out of it, for that matter.  She very rarely came in contact
+with children; she was not a person likely to be chosen for a
+confidante by a young girl; she was so cold and reserved, the elder
+ladies said.  She never asked a question about the winter fashions,
+except of her dressmaker, and she never met with reverses in
+housekeeping affairs, and these two facts rendered her unsympathetic to
+many.  She was fond of reading, and enjoyed heartily the pleasant
+people she met in books.  She appreciated their good qualities, their
+thoughtfulness, kindness, wit or sentiment; but the thought never
+suggested itself to her mind that there were living people not far
+away, who could give her all this, and more.
+
+If calling were not a regulation of society, if one only went to see
+the persons one really cared for, I am afraid Miss Sydney would soon
+have been quite forgotten.  Her character would puzzle many people.
+She put no visible hinderance in your way; for I do not think she was
+consciously reserved and cold.  She was thoroughly well-bred, rich, and
+in her way charitable; that is, she gave liberally to public
+subscriptions which came under her notice, and to church contributions.
+But she got on, somehow, without having friends; and, though the loss
+of one had always been a real grief, she learned without much trouble
+the way of living the lonely, comfortable, but very selfish life, and
+the way of being the woman I have tried to describe.  There were
+occasional days when she was tired of herself, and life seemed an
+empty, formal, heartless discipline.  Her wisest acquaintances pitied
+her loneliness; and busy, unselfish people wondered how she could be
+deaf to the teachings of her good clergyman, and blind to all the
+chances of usefulness and happiness which the world afforded her; and
+others still envied her, and wondered to whom she meant to leave all
+her money.
+
+I began by telling you of the new street.  It was suggested that it
+should bear the name of Sydney; but the authorities decided finally to
+compliment the country's chief magistrate, and call it Grant Place.
+Miss Sydney, did not like the sound of it.  Her family had always been
+indifferent to politics, and indeed the kite of the Sydney had flown
+for many years high above the winds that affect commonplace people.
+The new way from Jefferson Street to St. Mary was a great convenience,
+and it seemed to our friend that all the noisiest vehicles in the city
+had a preference for going back and forth under her windows.  You see
+she did not suspect, what afterwards became so evident; that there was
+to be a way opened into her own heart also, and that she should confess
+one day, long after that she might have died a selfish old woman, and
+not have left one sorry face behind her, if it had not been for the
+cutting of Grant Place.
+
+
+The side of her conservatory was now close upon the sidewalk, and this
+certainly was not agreeable.  She could not think of putting on her big
+gardening-apron, and going in to work among her dear plants any more,
+with all the world staring in at her as it went by.  John the coachman,
+who had charge of the greenhouse, was at first very indignant; but,
+after she found that his flowers were noticed and admired, his anger
+was turned into an ardent desire to merit admiration, and he kept his
+finest plants next the street.  It was a good thing for the greenhouse,
+because it had never been so carefully tended; and plant after plant
+was forced into luxuriant foliage and blossom.  He and Miss Sydney had
+planned at first to have close wire screens made to match those in the
+dining-room; but now, when she spoke of his hurrying the workmen, whom
+she supposed had long since been ordered to make them, John said,
+"Indeed, mum, it would be the ruin of the plants shutting put the
+light; and they would all be rusted with the showerings I gives them
+every day."  And Miss Sydney smiled, and said no more.
+
+The street was opened late in October, and, soon after, cold weather
+began in real earnest.  Down in that business part of the city it was
+the strangest, sweetest surprise to come suddenly upon the long line of
+blooming plants and tall green lily-leaves under a roof festooned with
+roses and trailing vines.  For the first two or three weeks, almost
+everybody stopped, if only for a moment.  Few of Miss Sydney's own
+friends even had ever seen her greenhouse; for they were almost
+invariably received in the drawing-room.  Gentlemen stopped the thought
+of business affairs, and went on down the street with a fresher,
+happier feeling.  And the tired shop-girls lingered longest.  Many a
+man and woman thought of some sick person to whom a little handful of
+the green leaves and bright blossoms, with their coolness and
+freshness, would bring so much happiness.  And it was found, long
+months afterward, that a young man had been turned back from a plan of
+wicked mischief by the sight of a tall green geranium, like one that
+bloomed in his mother's sitting-room way up in the country.  He had not
+thought, for a long time before, of the dear old woman who supposed her
+son was turning his wits to good account in the city.  But Miss Sydney
+did not know how much he wished for a bit to put in his buttonhole when
+she indignantly went back to the dining-room to wait until that
+impertinent fellow stopped staring in.
+
+
+II.
+
+It was just about this time that Mrs. Marley made a change in her place
+of business.  She had sold candy round the corner in Jefferson Street
+for a great many years; but she had suffered terribly from rheumatism
+all the winter before.  She was nicely sheltered from too much sun in
+the summer; but the north winds of winter blew straight toward her; and
+after much deliberation, and many fears and questioning as to the
+propriety of such an act she had decided to find another stand.  You or
+I would think at first that it could make no possible difference where
+she sat in the street with her goods; but in fact one has regular
+customers in that business, as well as in the largest wholesale
+enterprise.  There was some uncertainty whether these friends would
+follow her if she went away.  Mrs. Marley's specialty was
+molasses-candy; and I am sure, if you ever chanced to eat any of it,
+you would look out for the old lady next time you went along the
+street.  Times seemed very hard this winter.  Not that trade had
+seriously diminished; but still the outlook was very dark.  Mrs. Marley
+was old, and had been so for some years, so she was used to that; but
+somehow this fall she seemed to be getting very much older all of a
+sudden.  She found herself very tired at night, and she was apt to lose
+her breath if she moved quickly; besides this, the rheumatism tortured
+her.  She had saved only a few dollars, though she and her sister had
+had a comfortable living,--what they had considered comfortable, at
+least, though they sometimes had been hungry, and very often cold.
+They would surely go to the almshouse sooner or later,--she and her
+lame old sister Polly.
+
+It was Polly who made the candy which Mrs. Marley sold.  Their two
+little rooms were up three flights of stairs; and Polly, being too lame
+to go down herself, had not been out of doors in seven years.  There
+was nothing but roofs and sky to be seen from the windows; and, as
+there was a manufactory near, the sky was apt to be darkened by its
+smoke.  Some of the neighbours dried their clothes on the roofs, and
+Polly used to be very familiar with the apparel of the old residents,
+and exceedingly interested when a strange family came, and she saw
+something new.  There was a little bright pink dress that the trig
+young French woman opposite used to hang out to dry; and somehow poor
+old Polly used always to be brightened and cheered by the sight of it.
+Once in a while she caught a glimpse of the child who wore it.  She
+hardly ever thought now of the outside world when left to herself, and
+on the whole she was not discontented.  Sister Becky used to have a
+great deal to tell her sometimes of an evening.  When Mrs. Marley told
+her in the spring twilight that the grass in the square was growing
+green, and that she had heard a robin, it used to make Polly feel
+homesick; for she was apt to think much of her childhood, and she had
+been born in the country.  She was very deaf, poor soul, and her world
+was a very forlorn one.  It was nearly always quite silent, it was very
+small and smoky out of doors, and very dark and dismal within.
+Sometimes it was a hopeless world, because the candy burnt; and if
+there had not been her Bible and hymn-book, and a lame pigeon that lit
+on the window-sill to be fed every morning, Miss Polly would have found
+her time go heavily.
+
+One night Mrs. Marley came into the room with a cheerful face, and said
+very loud, "Polly, I've got some news!"  Polly knew by her speaking so
+loud that she was in good-humour.  When any thing discouraging had
+happened, Becky spoke low, and then was likely to be irritated when
+asked to repeat her remark.
+
+"Dear heart!" said Mrs. Marley, "now I am glad you had something hot
+for supper.  I was turning over in my mind what we could cook up, for I
+feel real hollow.  It's a kind of chilly day."  And she sat down by the
+stove, while Polly hobbled to the table, with one hand to her ear to
+catch the first sound of the good news, and the other holding some
+baked potatoes in her apron.  That hand was twisted with rheumatism,
+for the disease ran in the family.  She was afraid every day that she
+should have to give up making the candy on the next; for it hurt her so
+to use it.  She was continually being harrowed by the idea of its
+becoming quite useless, and that the candy might not be so good; and
+then what would become of them?  Becky Marley was often troubled by the
+same thought.  Yet they were almost always good-natured, poor old
+women; and, though Polly Sharpe's pleasures and privileges were by far
+the fewest of anybody's I ever knew, I think she was as glad in those
+days to know the dandelions were in bloom as if she could see them; and
+she got more good from the fragments of the Sunday-morning sermon that
+sister Becky brought home than many a listener did from the whole
+service.
+
+The potatoes were done to a turn, Mrs. Marley shouted; and then Polly
+sat down close by her to hear the news.
+
+"You know I have been worrying about the cold weather a-coming, and my
+rheumatics; and I was afeared to change my stand, on account of losing
+custom.  Well, to-day it all come over me to once that I might move
+down a piece on Grant Place,--that new street that's cut through to St.
+Mary.  I've noticed for some time past that almost all my reg'lar
+customers turns down that way, so this morning I thought I'd step down
+that way too, and see if there was a chance.  And after I gets into the
+street I sees people stopping and looking at something as they went
+along; and so I goes down to see; and it is one of them hothouses, full
+of plants a-growing like it was mid-summer.  It belongs to the big
+Sydney house on the corner.  There's a good place to sit right at the
+corner of it, and I'm going to move over there to-morrow.  I thought as
+how I wouldn't leave Jefferson Street to-day, for it was too sudden.
+You see folks stops and looks at the plants, and there wasn't any wind
+there to-day.  There!  I wish you could see them flowers."
+
+Sister Polly was very pleased, and, after the potatoes and bread were
+eaten, she brought on an apple pie that had been sent up by Mrs. Welch,
+the washerwoman who lived on the floor next but one below.  She was
+going away for three or four days, having been offered good pay to do
+some cleaning in a new house, and her board besides, near her work.  So
+you see that evening was quite a jubilee.
+
+The next day Mrs. Marley's wildest expectations were realized; for she
+was warm as toast the whole morning, and sold all her candy, and went
+home by two o'clock.  That had never happened but once or twice before.
+"Why, I shouldn't wonder if we could lay up considerable this winter,"
+said she to Polly.
+
+Miss Sydney did not like the idea of the old candy-woman's being there.
+Children came to buy of her, and the street seemed noisier than ever at
+times.  Perhaps she might have to leave the house, after all.  But one
+may get used to almost any thing; and as the days went by she was
+surprised to find that she was not half so much annoyed as at first;
+and one afternoon she found herself standing at one of the dining-room
+windows, and watching the people go by.  I do not think she had shown
+so much interest as this in the world at large for many years.  I think
+it must have been from noticing the pleasure her flowers gave the
+people who stopped to look at them that she began to think herself
+selfish, and to be aware how completely indifferent she had grown to
+any claims the world might have upon her.  And one morning, when she
+heard somebody say, "Why, it's like a glimpse into the tropics!  Oh!  I
+wish I could have such a conservatory!"  She thought, "Here I have kept
+this all to myself for all these years, when so many others might have
+enjoyed it too!"  But then the old feeling of independence came over
+her.  The greenhouse was out of people's way; she surely couldn't have
+let people in whom she didn't know; however, she was glad, now that the
+street was cut, that some one had more pleasure, if she had not.  After
+all it was a satisfaction to our friend; and from this time the seeds
+of kindness and charity and helpfulness began to show themselves above
+the ground in the almost empty garden of her heart.  I will tell you
+how they grew and blossomed; and as strangers came to see her real
+flowers, and to look in at the conservatory windows from the cold city
+street, instead of winter to see a bit of imprisoned summer, so friend
+after friend came to find there was another garden in her own heart,
+and Miss Sydney learned the blessedness there is in loving and giving
+and helping.
+
+For it is sure we never shall know what it is to lack friends, if we
+keep our hearts ready to receive them.  If we are growing good and kind
+and helpful, those who wish for help and kindness will surely find us
+out.  A tree covered with good fruit is never unnoticed in the fields.
+If we bear thorns and briers, we can't expect people to take very great
+pains to come and gather them.  It is thought by many persons to be not
+only a bad plan, but an ill-bred thing, to give out to more than a few
+carefully selected friends.  But it came to her more and more that
+there was great selfishness and shortsightedness in this.  One
+naturally has a horror of dragging the secrets and treasures of one's
+heart and thought out to the light of day.  One may be willing to go
+without the good that may come to one's own self through many
+friendships; but, after all, God does not teach us, and train our
+lives, only that we may come to something ourselves.  He helps men most
+through other men's lives; and we must take from him, and give out
+again, all we can, wherever we can, remembering that the great God is
+always trying to be the friend of the least of us.  The danger is, that
+we oftenest give our friendship selfishly; we do not think of our
+friends, but of ourselves.  One never can find one's self beggared;
+love is a treasure that does not lessen, but grows, as we spend it.
+
+The passers-by seemed so delighted with some new plants which she and
+John had arranged one day, that as she was going out in the afternoon
+to drive, she stopped just as she was going to step into the carriage
+and said she thought she would go round and look at the conservatory
+from the outside.  So John turned the horses, and followed.  It was a
+very cold day, and there were few people in the street.  Every thing
+was so cheerless out of doors, and the flowers looked so summer-like!
+No wonder the people liked to stop, poor souls!  For the richer, more
+comfortable ones lived farther up town.  It was not in the shopping
+region; and, except the business-men who went by morning and evening,
+almost every one was poor.
+
+Miss Sydney had never known what the candy-woman sold before, for she
+could not see any thing but the top of her rusty black bonnet from the
+window.  But now she saw that the candy was exactly like that she and
+her sister used to buy years upon years ago; and she stopped to speak
+to the old woman, and to buy some, to the utter amazement of her
+coachman.  Mrs. Marley was excited by so grand a customer, and was a
+great while counting out the drumsticks, and wrapping them up.  While
+Miss Sydney stood there a thin, pitiful little girl came along,
+carrying a clumsy baby.  They stopped, and the baby tried to reach down
+for a piece.  The girl was quite as wistful; but she pulled him back,
+and walked on to the flowers.  "Oh! pitty, pitty!" said the baby, while
+the dirty little hands patted the glass delightedly.
+
+"Move along there," said John gruffly; for it was his business to keep
+that glass clean and bright.
+
+The girl looked round, frightened, and, seeing that the coachman was
+big and cross-looking, the forlorn little soul went away.  "Baby want
+to walk?  You're so heavy!" said she in a fretful, tired way.  But the
+baby was half crying, and held her tight.  He had meant to stay some
+time longer, and look at those pretty, bright things, since he could
+not have the candy.
+
+Mrs. Marley felt as if her customer might think her stingy, and
+proceeded to explain that she couldn't think of giving her candy away.
+"Bless you, ma'am, I wouldn't have a stick left by nine o'clock."
+
+Miss Sydney "never gave money to street-beggars."  But these children
+had not begged, and somehow she pitied them very much, they looked so
+hungry.  And she called them back.  There was a queer tone to her
+voice; and she nearly cried after she had given the package of candy to
+them, and thrown a dollar upon the board in front of Mrs. Marley, and
+found herself in the carriage, driving away.  Had she been very silly?
+and what could John have thought?  But the children were so glad; and
+the old candy-woman had said, "God bless you, mum!"
+
+After this, Miss Sydney could not keep up her old interest in her own
+affairs.  She felt restless and dissatisfied, and wondered how she
+could have done the same things over and over so contentedly for so
+many years.  You may be sure, that, if Grant Place had been unthought
+of, she would have lived on in the same fashion to the end of her days.
+But after this she used to look out of the window; and she sat a great
+deal in the conservatory, when it was not too warm there, behind some
+tall callas.  The servants found her usually standing in the
+dining-room; for she listened for footsteps, and was half-ashamed to
+have them notice that she had changed in the least.  We are all given
+to foolish behaviour of this kind once in a while.  We are often
+restrained: because, we feel bound to conform to people's idea of us.
+We must be such persons as we imagine our friends think us to be.  They
+believe that we have made up our minds about them, and are apt to show
+us only that behaviour which they think we expect.  They are afraid of
+us sometimes.  They think we cannot sympathize with them.  Our friend
+felt almost as if she were yielding to some sin in this strange
+interest in the passers-by.  She had lived so monotonous a life, that
+any change could not have failed to be somewhat alarming.  She told
+Bessie Thorne afterward, that one day she came upon that verse of
+Keble's Hymn for St. Matthew's Day.  Do you remember it?--
+
+  "There are, in this loud, stunning tide
+    Of human care and crime,
+  With whom the melodies abide
+    Of the everlasting chime;
+  Who carry music in their heart
+  Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
+    Plying their daily task with busier feet
+    Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat."
+
+
+It seemed as if it were a message to herself, and she could not help
+going to the window a few minutes afterward.  The faces were mostly
+tired-looking and dissatisfied.  Some people looked very eager and
+hurried, but none very contented.  It was the literal daily bread they
+thought of; and, when two fashionably-dressed ladies chanced to go by
+the window, their faces were strangely like their poorer neighbours in
+expression.  Miss Sydney wondered what the love for one's neighbour
+could be; if she could ever feel it herself.  She did not even like
+these people whom she watched, and yet every day, for years and years,
+she had acknowledged them her brothers and sisters when she said, "Our
+Father who art in heaven."
+
+It seemed as if Miss Sydney, of all people, might have been independent
+and unfettered.  It is so much harder for us who belong to a family,
+for we are hindered by the thought of people's noticing our attempts at
+reform.  It is like surrendering some opinion ignominiously which we
+have fought for.  It is kind of "giving in."  But when she had
+acknowledged to herself that she had been in the wrong, that she was a
+selfish, thoughtless old woman, that she was alone, without friends,
+and it had been her own fault, she was puzzled to know how to do
+better.  She could not begin to be very charitable all at once.  The
+more she realized what her own character had become, the more hopeless
+and necessary seemed reform.
+
+Such times as this come to many of us, both in knowing ourselves and
+our friends.  An awakening, one might call it,--an opening of the blind
+eyes of our spiritual selves.  And our ears are open to some of the
+voices which call us; while others might as well be silent, for all the
+heed we give them.  We go on, from day to day, doing, with more or less
+faithfulness, that part of our work we have wit enough to comprehend;
+but one day suddenly we are shown a broader field, stretching out into
+the distance, and know that from this also we may bring in a harvest by
+and by, and with God's help.
+
+Miss Sydney meant to be better,--not alone for the sake of having
+friends, not alone to quiet her conscience, but because she knew she
+had been so far from living a Christian life, and she was bitterly
+ashamed.  This was all she needed,--all any of us need,--to know that
+we must be better men and women for God's sake; that we cannot be
+better without his help, and that his help, may be had for the asking.
+But where should she begin?  She had always treated her servants
+kindly, and they were the people she knew best.  She would surely try
+to be more interested in the friends she met; but it was nearly
+Christmas time, and people rarely came to call.  Every one was busy.
+Becky Marley's cheery face haunted her; and one day after having looked
+down from the window on the top of her bonnet, she remembered that she
+did not get any candy, after all, and she would go round to see the old
+lady again, she looked poor, and she would give her some money.  Miss
+Sydney dressed herself for the street, and closed the door behind her
+very carefully, as if she were a mischievous child running away.  It
+was very cold, and there were hardly a dozen persons to be seen in the
+streets, and Mrs. Marley had evidently been crying.
+
+"I should like some of your candy," said our friend.
+
+"You know I didn't take any, after all the other day."  And then she
+felt very conscious and awkward, fearing that the candy woman thought
+she wished to remind her of her generosity.
+
+"Two of the large packages, if you please.  But, dear me! aren't you
+very cold, sitting here in the wind?" and Miss Sydney shivered, in
+spite of her warm wrappings.
+
+It was the look of sympathy that was answered first, for it was more
+comforting than even the prospect of money, sorely as Mrs. Marley
+needed that.
+
+"Yes, mum, I've had the rheumatics this winter awful.  But the wind
+here!--why, it ain't nothing to what it blows round in Jefferson
+Street, where I used to sit.  I shouldn't be out to-day, but I was
+called upon sudden to pay my molasses bill, when I'd just paid my rent;
+and I don't know how ever I can.  There's sister Polly--she's dead lame
+and deaf.  I s'pose we'll both be in the almshouse afore spring.  I'm
+an old woman to be earning a living out 'o doors in winter weather."
+
+There is no mistaking the fact that Miss Sydney was in earnest when she
+said, "I'm so sorry!  Can't I help you?"
+
+Somehow she did not feel so awkward, and she enjoyed very much hearing
+this bit of confidence.
+
+"But my trade has improved wonderful since I came here.  People mostly
+stops to see them beautiful flowers; and then they sees me, and stops
+and buys something.  Well, there's some days when I gets down-hearted,
+and I just looks up there, and sees them flowers blooming so cheerful,
+and I says, 'There! this world ain't all cold and poor and old, like I
+be; and the Lord he ain't never tired of us, with our worrying about
+what He's a-doing with us; and heaven's a-coming before long anyhow!'"
+And the Widow Marley stopped to dry her eyes with the corner of her
+shawl.
+
+Miss Sydney asking her to go round to the kitchen, and warm herself;
+and, on finding out more of her new acquaintance's difficulties, she
+sent her home happy, with money enough to pay the dreaded bill, and a
+basket of good things which furnished such a supper for herself and
+sister Polly as they had not seen for a long time.  And their fortunes
+were bettered from that day.  "If it hadn't been for the flowers, I
+should ha' been freezing my old bones on Jefferson Street this minute,
+I s'pose," said the Widow Marley.
+
+Miss Sydney went back to the dining-room after her _protegee_ had gone,
+and felt a comfortable sense of satisfaction in what she had done.  It
+had all come about in such an easy way too!  A little later she went
+into the conservatory, and worked among her plants.  She really felt so
+much younger and happier and once, as she stood still, looking at some
+lilies-of-the-valley that John had been forcing into bloom, she did not
+notice that a young lady was looking through the window at her very
+earnestly.
+
+
+III.
+
+That same evening Mrs. Thorne and Bessie were sitting up late in their
+library.  It was snowing very fast, and had been since three o'clock;
+and no one had called.  They had begun the evening by reading and
+writing, and now were ending with a talk.
+
+"Mamma," said Bessie, after there had been a pause, "whom do you
+suppose I have taken a fancy to?  And do you know, I pity her so
+much!--Miss Sydney."
+
+"But I don't know that she is so much to be pitied," said Mrs. Thorne,
+smiling at the enthusiastic tone.  "She must have everything she wants.
+She lives all alone, and hasn't any intimate friends, but, if a person
+chooses such a life, why, what can we do?  What made you think of her?"
+
+"I have been trying to think of one real friend she has.  Everybody is
+polite enough to her, and I never heard that any one disliked her; but
+she must be forlorn sometimes.  I came through that new street by her
+house to-day: that's how I happened to think of her.  Her greenhouse is
+perfectly beautiful, and I stopped to look in.  I always supposed she
+was cold as ice (I'm sure she looks so); but she was standing out in
+one corner, looking down at some flowers with just the sweetest face.
+Perhaps she is shy.  She used to be very good-natured to me when I was
+a child, and used to go there with you.  I don't think she knows me
+since I came home; at any rate, I mean to go to see her some day."
+
+"I certainly would," said Mrs. Thorne.  "She will be perfectly polite
+to you, at all events.  And perhaps she may be lonely, though I rather
+doubt it; not that I wish to discourage you, my dear.  I haven't seen
+her in a long time, for we have missed each other's calls.  She never
+went into society much; but she used to be a very elegant woman, and is
+now, for that matter."
+
+"I pity her," said Bessie persistently.  "I think I should be very fond
+of her if she would let me.  She looked so kind as she stood among the
+flowers to-day!  I wonder what she was thinking about.  Oh! do you
+think she would mind if I asked her to give me some flowers for the
+hospital?"
+
+Bessie Thorne is a very dear girl.  Miss Sydney must have been
+hard-hearted if she had received her coldly one afternoon a few days
+afterward, she seemed so refreshingly young and girlish a guest as she
+rose to meet the mistress of that solemn, old-fashioned drawing-room.
+Miss Sydney had had a re-action from the pleasure her charity had given
+her, and was feeling bewildered, unhappy, and old that day.  "What can
+she wish to see me for, I wonder?" thought she, as she closed her book,
+and looked at Miss Thorne's card herself, to be sure the servant had
+read it right.  But, when she saw the girl herself, her pleasure showed
+itself unmistakably in her face.
+
+"Are you really glad to see me?" said Bessie in her frankest way, with
+a very gratified smile.  "I was afraid you might think it was very odd
+in me to come.  I used to like so much to call upon you with mamma when
+I was a little girl!  And the other day I saw you in your conservatory,
+and I have wished to come and see you ever since."
+
+"I am very glad to see you, my dear," said Miss Sydney, for the second
+time.  "I have been quite forgotten by the young people of late years.
+I was sorry to miss Mrs. Thorne's call.  Is she quite well?  I meant to
+return it one day this week, and I thought only last night I would ask
+about you.  You have been abroad, I think?"
+
+Was not this an auspicious beginning?  I cannot tell you all that
+happened that afternoon, for I have told so long a story already.  But
+you will imagine it was the beginning of an intimacy that gave great
+pleasure, and did great good, to both the elder woman and the younger.
+It is hard to tell the pleasure which the love and friendship of a
+fresh, bright girl like Bessie Thorne, may give an older person.  There
+is such a satisfaction in being convinced that one is still interesting
+and still lovable, though the years that are gone have each kept some
+gift or grace, and the possibilities of life seem to have been realized
+and decided.  There are days of our old age when there seems so little
+left in life, that living is a mere formality.  This busy world seems
+done with the old, however dear their memories of it, however strong
+their claims upon it.  They are old: their life now is only waiting and
+resting.  It may be quite right that we sometimes speak of second
+childhood, because we must be children before we are grown, and the
+life to come must find us, ready for service.  Our old people have
+lived in the world so long; they think they know it so well: but the
+young man is master of the trade of living, and the man only his
+blundering apprentice.
+
+
+Miss Sydney's solemnest and most unprepared servant was startled to
+find Bessie Thorne and his mistress sitting cosily together before the
+dining-room fire.  Bessie had a paper full of cut flowers to leave at
+the Children's Hospital on her way home.  Miss Sydney had given
+liberally to the contribution for that object; but she never had
+suspected how interesting it was until Bessie told her, and she said
+she should like to go some day, and see the building and its occupants
+for himself.  And the girl told her of other interest that were near
+her kind young heart,--not all charitable interests,--and they parted
+intimate friends.
+
+
+"I never felt such a charming certainty of being agreeable," wrote
+Bessie that night to a friend of hers.  "She seemed so interesting in
+every thing, and, as I told you, so pleased with my coming to see her.
+I have promised to go there very often.  She told me in the saddest way
+that she had been feeling so old and useless and friendless, and she
+was very confidential.  Imagine her being confidential with me!  She
+seemed to me just like myself as I was last year,--you remember--just
+beginning to realize what life ought to be, and trying, in a
+frightened, blind kind of way to be good and useful.  She said she was
+just beginning to understand her selfishness.  She told me I had done
+her ever so much good; and I couldn't help the tears coming into my
+eyes.  I wished so much you were there, or some one who could help her
+more; but I suppose God knew when he sent me.  Doesn't it seem strange
+that an old woman should talk to me in this way, and come to me for
+help?  I am afraid people would laugh at the very idea.  And only to
+think of her living on and on, year after year, and then being changed
+so!  She kissed me when I came away, and I carried the flowers to the
+hospital.  I shall always be fond of that conservatory, because if I
+hadn't stopped to look in that day, I might never have thought of her.
+
+"There was one strange thing happened, which I must tell you about,
+though it is so late.  She has grown very much interested in an old
+candy-woman, and told me about her; and do you know that this evening
+uncle Jack came in, and asked if we knew of anybody who would do for
+janitress--at the Natural History Rooms, I think he said.  There is
+good pay and she would just sell catalogues, and look after things a
+little.  Of course the candy-woman may not be competent; but, from what
+Miss Sydney told me, I think she is just the person."
+
+The next Sunday the minister read this extract from "Queen's Gardens"
+in his sermon.  Two of his listeners never had half understood its
+meaning before as they did then.  Bessie was in church, and Miss Sydney
+suddenly turned her head, and smiled at her young friend, to the great
+amazement of the people who sat in the pews near by.  What could have
+come over Miss Sydney?
+
+"The path of a good woman is strewn with flowers; but they rise
+_behind_ her steps, not before them.  'Her feet have touched the
+meadow, and left the daisies rosy.'  Flowers flourish in the garden of
+one who loves them.  A pleasant magic it would be if you could flush
+flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them; nay, more, if a
+look had the power not only to cheer, but to guard them.  This you
+would think a great thing?  And do you think it not a greater thing
+that all this, and more than this, you can do for fairer flowers than
+these,--flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and will
+love you for having loved them,--flowers that have eyes like yours, and
+thoughts like yours, and lives like yours?"
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+
+A BRAVE BOY.
+
+"Speaking of courage," said my friend Tom Barton, as we met one day
+after a long separation, "reminds me of an incident that happened at
+the doctors' school the first winter after you left.
+
+"It was during the Christmas holidays, and all of the boys had gone
+home except two brothers, named Fred and Albert Kobb, and myself.  They
+were obliged to stay during the vacation because their parents were
+spending the season in Florida, and I,--well, as you know, my home was
+at a distance, and we were poor, so I remained at school.
+
+"The brothers were very unlike, both in appearance and character.
+Fred, the elder of the two, was a large, muscular, ruddy-faced boy, not
+much in love with books.  He was of an over-bearing disposition, and
+had a great deal of conceit.
+
+"Albert, on the contrary, was pale and slender.  He was very quiet and
+studious, and had such a love of honesty and truth, and such
+detestation of meanness and wrong, that we boys had dubbed him the
+'Parson.'
+
+"It was the Saturday night between Christmas and New Year's.  We three
+boys were hugging the stove in the little room adjoining the doctor's
+study.  Doctor was in the study writing a sermon for the following day,
+as he had to preach at Milltown.
+
+"We could hear his pen scratching over the paper during the lulls in
+our conversation.  Occasionally that 'ahem!' of his would come through
+the partially opened door; but somehow his 'ahems' seemed to lose their
+ominous character during holidays.
+
+"The subject of our conversation was a robbery that had been
+perpetrated at Squire Little's store the previous night.
+
+"Robberies, as you know, were unusual occurrences in the little village
+of Acme.  Of course this one furnished a topic for abundance of talk.
+
+"Wherever we had been that day we had found some groups of men and boys
+talking about robberies in general, and this one in particular.
+
+"It was but natural that in the evening we boys should discuss the same
+subject, and each of us offered various speculations as to who the
+robber was, where he had gone, and whether he would be captured or not.
+
+"Then we told stories of all the daring burglaries of which we had ever
+heard or read, and finally described such as had happened in our own
+houses.
+
+"In the descriptions of our personal experiences Fred gave a glowing
+account of an incident that had occurred in his father's family.  One
+night he said the coachman thought he saw a man prowling in the
+chicken-yard.  He fired a pistol at him, and had summoned the other
+servants to go in pursuit of the robber.  He told us how the brave men,
+armed with lanterns, pokers, and blunderbusses, had reached the
+chicken-yard, and there found traces of blood, which they followed up
+for a few yards, and found, lying in the last throes of death, the
+victim of the coachman's prowess,--a fine black Spanish rooster!
+
+"At length said I, 'What would you do if you should hear a burglar some
+night trying to enter your house?'
+
+"Fred straightened himself and squared his shoulders.  'I wouldn't
+hesitate a moment to shoot him,' said he, valiantly.  'I tell you, it
+would be a good burglar that could get away from me.'
+
+"Al rested his chin in his hands, and gazed thoughtfully into the
+glowing coals.
+
+"'Well,' said he slowly, 'it is hard to tell what a fellow might do
+under such circumstances.  I rather believe, though, I would take good
+care to keep out of his way.  What would you do, Tom?'
+
+"'Me?" I exclaimed.  'Very likely I'd cover my head with the bedclothes
+and leave him to carry off house and all if he could.'
+
+"Fred was about to make another remark, but was prevented by the
+doctor, who appeared in the doorway.  'Well, boys,' said he, 'don't you
+think we've had enough talk about robberies for one evening?  It is
+getting late now, and your continual talking has bothered me so that I
+have only written one page during the last half hour, and on that page
+I have written four times the word "burglar" instead of "bravery."'
+
+"Bidding him good-night we went up stairs, and were soon fast asleep.
+
+"About midnight I awoke with the consciousness of having been aroused
+by some unusual noise.  Slightly raising my head I listened, and heard
+a scraping sound at the back hall window.
+
+"We three boys occupied the front room on the third floor, the same
+that you and Atkinson had at one time.  It was a bright moonlight
+night.  Glancing towards the Kobbs' bed, I saw them both sitting up.
+The noise had aroused them also.
+
+"'There's some one trying to get in that hall window,' said Al, in a
+whisper.  'I'm going to see.'
+
+"'Wait and listen awhile,' urged Fred.
+
+"'And give the fellow a chance to get in?' exclaimed Al.  'No; we
+better stop him where he is.'
+
+"'Let's call the doctor,' said Fred.
+
+"'There isn't time for that.  Don't you hear him unfastening the
+window-bolt?  Come, hurry!  I'm going to take the old-musket; you take
+the bat.'
+
+"'The gun isn't loaded,' said Fred; and his voice actually trembled.
+Whether he was shivering from cold or fright, I don't know.
+
+"'It will scare him just the same,' said Al; and taking down the rusty
+firearm, he hurried out into the hall, followed at a little distance by
+his brother, armed with the base-ball bat.
+
+"I was never very brave, and therefore I took good care to keep as far
+behind Fred as he was behind his brother; in fact to be more honest, I
+merely ventured as far as the door, and there peeped into the hall.
+
+"A man's form was crawling through the window, but he seemed to be so
+occupied by keeping the sash up that he had not as yet noticed the two
+boys.  As he threw one leg over the sill, he thrust his hand into his
+breast pocket and drew out a small, dark object.
+
+"'Murder! he's drawing a pistol!' roared Fred in terror; and turning
+hastily to fly, he ran against me in the doorway, and we both fell
+sprawling upon the floor.
+
+"'Robbers! fire!' shrieked Fred.  'Here's another one!' and darting
+into an opposite room, he crawled under the bed there.
+
+"'Move another inch and I'll fire!' cried Al, pointing the musket at
+the man's breast.
+
+"Och!--murther!  Masther Al, don't be afther a-shootin' me!' came a
+familiar voice in broad Hibernian accents.
+
+"It was Pat, the doctor's man.
+
+"'What! is that you, Pat?' exclaimed Al, lowering the weapon.
+
+"'Sorra the day for me an' it wur,' said the Irishman, as he carefully
+deposited on the floor the pistol Fred had seen him draw, which was
+simply a small, flat bottle.  He then leisurely lifted his other
+ponderous foot over the window-sill, shook himself, as if to ascertain
+whether he had a whole skin, and shut the window.  Then he picked up
+the bottle, and carefully replaced it in his coat pocket.
+
+"Meanwhile, Al had been quietly laughing, and I was still on the floor
+laughing and rubbing the bruises on my legs, which had been caused by
+Fred's collision.
+
+"'What's the meaning of this?' whispered Al.  'How is it, Pat, that you
+come into the house in this way instead of by the door?"
+
+"'Well, you see,' said Pat, 'I just wint the night to say me cousin,
+who is a-workin' at the Smit's, an' not moindin' to disturb the docther
+an' his wife, sure didn't I put the long laddher forninst the windew,
+intindin' to tak out that new pane of glass that was raycintly tacked
+in, an' inter in as nate an' quiet as ye plaze: but the lad was scared
+a bit.  Where is he?'
+
+"'Who?  Fred?' asked Al.
+
+"'Ay, it's Fred I mane,' said Pat.
+
+"Having by this time rubbed my bruises sufficiently and picked myself
+up, I led them to Fred's place of concealment.  His feet and legs were
+in plain sight, for, ostrich-like, he seemed to have imagined that if
+his head alone were covered, he was perfectly safe.  Pat grasped him by
+the ankle, and despite of his kicking hauled him out.
+
+"'Oh,' cried Fred, in abject terror, supposing it was the burglar who
+had caught him, 'don't kill me! don't kill me!  My money is all in the
+trunk in the opposite room!'
+
+"'Do keep still, and don't make such a fool of yourself!  It's only
+Pat,' said Al, with suppressed laughter, while Pat and I indulged in
+laughter that was far from suppressed.
+
+"In the midst of this racket we heard a door open below, and the
+doctor's voice called,--
+
+"'What is the matter up there?'
+
+"'Nothin', sur,' replied Pat, with Irish readiness, 'only the lads got
+freighted as I was comin' to bed.'
+
+"'Tell them to be quiet, or I shall come up,' said doctor.
+
+"'D'ye hear that, b'ys?' said Pat.  'Get to bed now; ye'll tak' your
+death runnin' round in the cowld widout your clothes on.'
+
+"In our excitement we had forgotten that the mercury outside was nearly
+down to zero, and had not noticed the cold;  but Pat's words quickened
+our sensitiveness, so we hastened shivering to bed, and the house was
+again quiet.
+
+"Monday morning the doctor summoned us all to his study, and there
+instituted one of his usual courts of inquiry.  He was judge, jury and
+counsel.  Pat was the principal witness, and we boys were there in
+order to corroborate or refute Pat's testimony, and also to sustain
+somewhat the respectability of the court I suppose.
+
+"'Patrick,' said the doctor, in opening the case, 'what was the cause
+of that noise up stairs Saturday night?'
+
+"'Well, Your Riverence,' began Pat, and his small gray eyes twinkled as
+he cast a sly glance at me, 'Sathurday noight I fought I'd call on me
+cousin, who has just coom from the ould counthry, an' is workin' in the
+village'--
+
+"'At Smith's,' put in Al, by way of explanation."
+
+The doctor was not very strict when he held court during holidays,
+otherwise he might have told Al to remain silent until he was
+questioned.
+
+"'At Smit's,' repeated Pat, 'an' moindin' not to disturb yez by comin'
+in late, sure I just climbed up to the hall winder, an' as I wur half
+t'rough, an' wur' takin' somethin' from me pocket'--
+
+"'A flat bottle,' interposed Al.
+
+"'A bottle, eh?  And what was in it?' asked the doctor, suspiciously,
+in an unprecedented manner beginning the cross-examination before the
+direct was concluded.
+
+"'Only a wee dhrap of medicine, sur,' said Pat.  'Me cousin was afeared
+I had the influenzys, an' gave it to me for it.'
+
+"'Go on,' said doctor, with a smile.
+
+"'As I wur a-sayin', sur, I dhrew forth the bottle, whin there came wan
+yell from Masther Fred in the back part of the hall, an' says he, "Och!
+murther! he's dhrawin' his pistol!" an' thin' he run like--like'--
+
+"'Ay, ay!' exclaimed doctor, warningly.
+
+"'Like a deer,' said Pat; 'an' as I wur a-sayin', sur, I looked up and
+saw Masther Al fornist me, with a gun dhrawed up to his shoulder an'
+pintin' at me, an' says I, "Don't murther me!"
+
+"'An' sure, sir, he did not, an' thin we wint an' pullt Fred out from
+under the bed, where he'd crawled wid his two legs stickin' out in the
+moonlight, an' Tam an' messel' wur smilin' quiet like, an' Your
+Riverence towld us to shut up, an' we wint to bed, sur.'
+
+"'And how did Tom act?' said the doctor.  'Eh, Tom, you young rogue,
+what are you snickering and giggling at behind Pat's back?  Are you
+laughing at him or me?'
+
+"'Neither,' I replied; 'but the truth is, doctor, that Pat told me he
+might be out late Saturday night, and that I needn't be frightened if I
+heard any unusual noise.  But I forgot to tell the boys, and was so
+startled and confused in waking from a sound sleep, that I at first
+thought it was a burglar, and after I did recollect that it was only
+Pat, I concluded not to say anything, but test their courage, as I
+supposed there was no danger in it.'
+
+"'Well, Pat,' said doctor, 'when you visit your cousin again, don't
+climb through the window on your return.  And, boys, the next time you
+hear any suspicious sound at midnight, come and call me the first thing
+you do.'
+
+"So having brought in a verdict of 'not guilty of any evil intentions,'
+the doctor adjourned the court.
+
+"Poor Fred was never heard to boast of his bravery, or even to mention
+the word 'burglar,' after that.  So true it is that boasters usually
+prove cowards when put to the test."
+
+C. S. SLEIGHT.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+
+LADY FERRY.
+
+We have an instinctive fear of death; yet we have a horror of a life
+prolonged far beyond the average limit: it is sorrowful; it is pitiful;
+it has no attractions.
+
+This world is only a schoolroom for the larger life of the next.  Some
+leave it early, and some late: some linger long after they seem to have
+learned all its lessons.  This world is no heaven: its pleasures do not
+last even through our little lifetimes.
+
+There are many fables of endless life, which in all ages have caught
+the attention of men; we are familiar with the stories of the old
+patriarchs who lived their hundreds of years; but one thinks of them
+wearily, and without envy.
+
+
+When I was a child, it was necessary that my father and mother should
+take a long sea-voyage.  I never had been separated from them before;
+but at this time they thought it best to leave me behind, as I was not
+strong, and the life on board ship did not suit me.  When I was told of
+this decision, I was very sorry, and at once thought I should be
+miserable without my mother; besides, I pitied myself exceedingly for
+losing the sights I had hoped to see in the country which they were to
+visit.  I had an uncontrollable dislike to being sent to school, having
+in some way been frightened by a maid of my mother's, who had put many
+ideas and aversions into my head which I was very many years in
+outgrowing.  Having dreaded this possibility, it was a great relief to
+know that I was not to be sent to school at all, but to be put under
+the charge of two elderly cousins of my father,--a gentleman and his
+wife whom I had once seen, and liked dearly.  I knew that their home
+was at a fine old-fashioned country-place, far from town, and close
+beside a river, and I was pleased with this prospect, and at once began
+to make charming plans for the new life.
+
+I had lived always with grown people, and seldom had had any thing to
+do with children.  I was very small for my age, and a strange mixture
+of childishness and maturity; and, having the appearance of being
+absorbed in my own affairs, no one ever noticed me much, or seemed to
+think it better that I should not listen to the conversation.  In spite
+of considerable curiosity, I followed an instinct which directed me
+never to ask questions at these times; so I often heard stray sentences
+which puzzled me, and which really would have been made simple and
+commonplace at once, if I had only asked their meaning.  I was, for the
+most of the time, in a world of my own.  I had a great deal of
+imagination, and was always telling myself stories; and my mind was
+adrift in these so much, that my real absent-mindedness was mistaken
+for childish unconcern.  Yet I was a thoroughly simple unaffected
+child.  My dreams and thoughtfulness gave me a certain tact and
+perception unusual in a child; but my pleasures were as deep in simple
+things as heart could wish.
+
+It happened that our cousin Matthew was to come to the city on business
+the week that the ship was to sail, and that I could stay with my
+father and mother to the very last day, and then go home with him.
+This was much pleasanter than leaving sooner under the care of an utter
+stranger, as was at first planned.  My cousin Agnes wrote a kind letter
+about my coming, which seemed to give her much pleasure.  She
+remembered me very well, and sent me a message which made me feel of
+consequence; and I was delighted with the plan of making her so long a
+visit.
+
+One evening I was reading a story-book, and I heard my father say in an
+undertone, "How long has madam been at the ferry this last time?  Eight
+or ten years, has she not?  I suppose she is there yet?"--"Oh, yes!"
+said my mother, "or Agnes would have told us.  She spoke of her in the
+last letter you had, while we were in Sweden."
+
+"I should think she would be glad to have a home at last, after her
+years of wandering about.  Not that I should be surprised now to hear
+that she had disappeared again.  When I was staying there while I was
+young, we thought she had drowned herself, and even had the men search
+for her along the shore of the river; but after a time cousin Matthew
+heard of her alive and well in Salem; and I believe she appeared again
+this last time as suddenly as she went away."
+
+"I suppose she will never die," said my mother gravely.  "She must be
+terribly old," said my father.  "When I saw her last, she had scarcely
+changed at all from the way she looked when I was a boy.  She is even
+more quiet and gentle than she used to be.  There is no danger that the
+child will have any fear of her; do you think so?"--"Oh, no! but I
+think I will tell her that madam is a very old woman, and that I hope
+she will be very kind, and try not to annoy her; and that she must not
+be frightened at her strange notions.  I doubt if she knows what
+craziness is."--"She would be wise if she could define it," said my
+father with a smile.  "Perhaps we had better say nothing about the old
+lady.  It is probable that she stays altogether in her own room, and
+that the child will rarely see her.  I never have realized until lately
+the horror of such a long life as hers, living on and on, with one's
+friends gone long ago: such an endless life in this world!"
+
+Then there was a mysterious old person living at the ferry, and there
+was a question whether I would not be "afraid" of her.  She "had not
+changed" since my father was a boy: "it was horrible to have one's life
+endless in this world!"
+
+The days went quickly by.  My mother, who was somewhat of an invalid,
+grew sad as the time drew near for saying good-by to me, and was more
+tender and kind than ever before, and more indulgent of every wish and
+fancy of mine.  We had been together all my life, and now it was to be
+long months before she could possibly see my face again, and perhaps
+she was leaving me forever.  Her time was all spent, I believe, in
+thoughts for me, and in making arrangements for my comfort.  I did see
+my mother again; but the tears fill my eyes when I think how dear we
+became to each other before that first parting, and with what a
+lingering, loving touch, she herself packed my boxes, and made sure,
+over and over again, that I had whatever I should need; and I remember
+how close she used to hold me when I sat in her lap in the evening,
+saying that she was afraid I should have grown too large to be held
+when she came back again.  We had more to say to each other than ever
+before, and I think, until then, that my mother never had suspected how
+much I observed of life and of older people in a certain way; that I
+was something more than a little child who went from one interest to
+another carelessly.  I have known since that my mother's childhood was
+much like mine.  She, however, was timid, while I had inherited from my
+father his fearlessness, and lack of suspicion;  and these qualities,
+like a fresh wind, swept away any cobwebs of nervous anticipation and
+sensitiveness.  Every one was kind to me, partly, I think, because I
+interfered with no one.  I was glad of the kindness, and, with my
+unsuspected dreaming and my happy childishness, I had gone through life
+with almost perfect contentment, until this pain of my first real
+loneliness came into my heart.
+
+It was a day's journey to cousin Matthew's house, mostly by rail;
+though, toward the end, we had to travel a considerable distance by
+stage, and at last were left on the river-bank opposite my new home,
+and I saw a boat waiting to take us across.  It was just at sunset, and
+I remember wondering if my father and mother were out of sight of land,
+and if they were watching the sky; if my father would remember that
+only the evening before we had gone out for a walk together, and there
+had been a sunset so much like this.  It somehow seemed long ago.
+Cousin Matthew was busy talking with the ferry-man; and indeed he had
+found acquaintances at almost every part of the journey, and had not
+been much with me, though he was kind and attentive in his courteous,
+old-fashioned way, treating me with the same ceremonious politeness
+which he had shown my mother.  He pointed out the house to me: it was
+but a little way from the edge of the river.  It was very large and
+irregular, with great white chimneys; and, while the river was all in
+shallow [Transcriber's note: shade?], the upper windows of two high
+gables were catching the last red glow of the sun.  On the opposite
+side of a green from the house were the farm-house and buildings; and
+the green sloped down to the water, where there was a wharf and an
+ancient-looking storehouse.  There were some old boats and long sticks
+of timber lying on the shore; and I saw a flock of white geese march
+solemnly up toward the barns.  From the open green I could see that a
+road went up the hill beyond.  The trees in the garden and orchard were
+the richest green; their round tops were clustered thickly together:
+and there were some royal great elms near the house.  The fiery red
+faded from the high windows as we came near the shore, and cousin Agnes
+was ready to meet me; and when she put her arms round me as kindly as
+my mother would have done, and kissed me twice in my father's fashion,
+I was sure that I loved her, and would be contented.  Her hair was very
+gray; but she did not look, after all, so very old.  Her face was a
+grave one, as if she had had many cares; yet they had all made her
+stronger, and there had been some sweetness, and something to be glad
+about, and to thank God for, in every sorrow.  I had a feeling always
+that she was my sure defence and guard.  I was safe and comfortable
+with her: it was the same feeling which one learns to have toward God
+more and more, as one grows older.
+
+We went in through a wide hall, and up stairs, through a long passage,
+to my room, which was in a corner of one of the gables.  Two windows
+looked on the garden and the river; another looked across to the other
+gable, and into the square, grassy court between.  It was a rambling,
+great house, and seemed like some English houses I had seen.  It would
+be great fun to go into all the rooms some day soon.
+
+"How much you are like your father!" said cousin Agnes, stooping to
+kiss me again, with her hand on my shoulder.  I had a sudden
+consciousness of my bravery in having behaved so well all day; then I
+remembered that my father and mother were at every instant being
+carried farther and farther away.  I could almost hear the waves dash
+about the ship; and I could not help crying a little.  "Poor little
+girl!" said cousin Agnes:  "I am very sorry."  And she sat down, and
+took me in her lap for a few minutes.  She was tall, and held me so
+comfortably, and I soon was almost happy again; for she hoped I would
+not be lonely with her, and that I would not think she was a stranger,
+for she had known and loved my father so well: and it would make cousin
+Matthew so disappointed and uneasy if I were discontented; and would I
+like some bread and milk with my supper, in the same blue china bowl,
+with the dragon on it, which my father used to have when he was a boy?
+These arguments were by no means lost upon me, and I was ready to smile
+presently; and then we went down to the dining room, which had some
+solemn-looking portraits on the walls, and heavy, stiff furniture; and
+there was an old-fashioned woman standing ready to wait, whom cousin
+Agnes called Deborah, and who smiled at me graciously.
+
+Cousin Matthew talked with his wife for a time about what had happened
+to him and to her during his absence; and then he said, "And how is
+madam to-day? you have not spoken of her."--"She is not so well as
+usual," said cousin Agnes.  "She has had one of her sorrowful times
+since you went away.  I have sat with her for several hours to-day; but
+she has hardly spoken to me."  And then cousin Matthew looked at me,
+and cousin Agnes hesitated for a minute.  Deborah had left the room.
+
+"We speak of a member of our family whom you have not seen, although
+you may have heard your father speak of her.  She is called Lady Ferry
+by most people who know of her; but you may say madam when you speak to
+her.  She is very old, and her mind wanders, so that she has many
+strange fancies; but you must not be afraid, for she is very gentle and
+harmless.  She is not used to children; but I know you will not annoy
+her, and I dare say you can give her much pleasure."  This was all that
+was said; but I wished to know more.  It seemed to me that there was a
+reserve about this person, and the old house itself was the very place
+for a mystery.  As I went through some of the other rooms with cousin
+Agnes in the summer twilight, I half expected to meet Lady Ferry in
+every shadowy corner; but I did not dare to ask a question.  My
+father's words came to me,--"Such an endless life," and "living on and
+on."  And why had he and mother never spoken to me afterward of my
+seeing her?  They had talked about it again, perhaps, and did not mean
+to tell me, after all.
+
+I saw something of the house that night, the great kitchen, with its
+huge fireplace, and other rooms up stairs and down; and Cousin Agnes
+told me, that by daylight I should go everywhere, except to Madam's
+rooms: I must wait for an invitation there.
+
+The house had been built a hundred and fifty years before, by Colonel
+Haverford, an Englishman, whom no one knew much about, except that he
+lived like a prince, and would never tell his history.  He and his sons
+died; and after the Revolution the house was used for a tavern for many
+years,--the Ferry Tavern,--and the place was busy enough.  Then there
+was a bridge built down the river, and the old ferry fell into disuse;
+and the owner of the house died, and his family also died, or went
+away; and then the old place, for a long time, was either vacant, or in
+the hands of different owners.  It was going to ruin at length, when
+cousin Matthew bought it, and came there from the city to live years
+before.  He was a strange man; indeed, I know now that all the
+possessors of the Ferry farm must have been strange men.  One often
+hears of the influence of climate upon character; there is a strong
+influence of place; and the inanimate things which surround us indoors
+and out make us follow out in our lives their own silent
+characteristics.  We unconsciously catch the tone of every house in
+which we live, and of every view of the outward, material world which
+grows familiar to us, and we are influenced by surroundings nearer and
+closer still than the climate or the country which we inhabit.  At the
+old Haverford house it was a mystery which one felt when one entered
+the door; and when one came away, after cordiality, and days of
+sunshine and pleasant hospitality, it was still with a sense of this
+mystery, and of something unseen and unexplained.  Not that there was
+any thing covered and hidden necessarily; but it was the quiet
+undertone in the house which had grown to be so old, and had known the
+magnificent living of Colonel Haverford's time, and afterward the
+struggles of poor gentlemen and women, who had hardly warmed its walls
+with their pitiful fires, and shivering, hungry lives; then the long
+procession of travellers who had been sheltered there in its old tavern
+days; finally, my cousin Matthew and his wife, who had made it their
+home, when, with all their fortune, they felt empty-handed, and as if
+their lives were ended, because their only son had died.  Here they had
+learned to be happy again in a quiet sort of way, and had become older
+and serener, loving this lovable place by the river, and keepers of its
+secret--whatever that might be.
+
+I was wide awake that first evening: I was afraid of being sent to bed,
+and, to show cousin Agnes that I was not sleepy, I chattered far more
+than usual.  It was warm, and the windows of the parlour where we sat
+looked upon the garden.  The moon had risen, and it was light out of
+doors.  I caught every now and then the faint smell of honeysuckle, and
+presently I asked if I might go into the garden a while; and cousin
+Agnes gave me leave, adding that I must soon go to bed, else I would be
+very tired next day.  She noticed that I looked grave, and said that I
+must not dread being alone in a strange room, for it was so near her
+own.  This was a great consolation; and after I had been told that the
+tide was in, and I must be careful not to go too near the river wall, I
+went out through the tall glass door, and slowly down the wide
+garden-walk, from which now and then narrower walks branched off at
+right angles.  It was the pride of the place, this garden; and the
+box-borders especially were kept with great care.  They had partly been
+trimmed that day; and the evening dampness brought out the faint,
+solemn odour of the leaves, which I never have noticed since without
+thinking of that night.  The roses were in bloom, and the snow-ball
+bushes were startlingly white, and there was a long border filled with
+lilies-of-the-valley.  The other flowers of the season, were all there
+and in blossom; yet I could see none well but the white ones, which
+looked like bits of snow and ice in the summer shadows,--ghostly
+flowers which one could see at night.
+
+It was still in the garden, except once I heard a bird twitter
+sleepily, and once or twice a breeze came across the river, rustling
+the leaves a little.  The small-paned windows glistened in the
+moonlight, and seemed like the eyes of the house watching me, the
+unknown new-comer.
+
+For a while I wandered about, exploring the different paths, some of
+which were arched over by the tall lilacs, or by arbors where the
+grape-leaves did not seem fully grown.  I wondered if my mother would
+miss me.  It seemed impossible that I should have seen her only that
+morning; and suddenly I had a consciousness that she was thinking of
+me, and she seemed so close to me, that it would not be strange if she
+could hear what I said.  And I called her twice softly; but the sound
+of my unanswered voice frightened me.  I saw some round white flowers
+at my feet, looking up mockingly.  The smell of the earth and the new
+grass seemed to smother me.  I was afraid to be there all alone in the
+wide open air; and all the tall bushes that were so still around me
+took strange shapes, and seemed to be alive.  I was so terribly far
+away from the mother whom I had called; the pleasure of my journey, and
+my coming to cousin Agnes, faded from my mind, and that indescribable
+feeling of hopelessness and dread, and of having made an irreparable
+mistake, came in its place.  The thorns of a straying slender branch of
+a rose bush caught my sleeve maliciously as I turned to hurry away, and
+then I caught sight of a person in the path just before me.  It was
+such a relief to see some one, that I was not frightened when I saw
+that it must be Lady Ferry.
+
+She was bent, but very tall and slender, and was walking slowly with a
+cane.  Her head was covered with a great hood or wrapping of some kind,
+which she pushed back when she saw me.  Some faint whitish figures on
+her dress looked like frost in the moonlight: and the dress itself was
+made of some strange stiff silk, which rustled softly like dry rushes
+and grasses in the autumn,--a rustling noise that carries a chill with
+it.  She came close to me, a sorrowful little figure very dreary at
+heart, standing still as the flowers themselves; and for several
+minutes she did not speak, but watched me, until I began to be afraid
+of her.  Then she held out her hand, which trembled as if it were
+trying to shake off its rings.  "My dear," said she "I bid you welcome:
+I have known your father.  I was told of your coming.  Perhaps you will
+walk with me?  I did not think to find you here alone."  There was a
+fascinating sweetness in Madame's voice, and I at once turned to walk
+beside her, holding her hand fast, and keeping pace with her feeble
+steps.  "Then you are not afraid of me?" asked the old lady, with a
+strange quiver in her voice.  "It is a long time since I have seen a
+child."--"No," said I, "I am not afraid of you.  I was frightened
+before I saw you, because I was all alone, and I wished I could see my
+father and mother;" and I hung my head so that my new friend could not
+see the tears in my eyes, for she watched me curiously.  "All alone:
+that is like me," said she to herself.  "All alone? a child is not all
+alone, but there is no one like me.  I am something alone: there is
+nothing else of my fashion, a creature who lives forever!" and Lady
+Ferry sighed pitifully.  Did she mean that she never was going to die
+like other people?  But she was silent, and I did not dare to ask for
+any explanation as we walked back and forward.  Her fingers kept moving
+round my wrist, smoothing it as if she liked to feel it, and to keep my
+hand in hers.  It seemed to give her pleasure to have me with her, and
+I felt quite at my ease presently, and began to talk a little, assuring
+her that I did not mind having taken the journey of that day.  I had
+taken some long journeys: I had been to China once, and it took a great
+while to get there; but London was the nicest place I had ever seen;
+had Lady Ferry even been in London?  And I was surprised to hear her
+say drearily that she had been in London; she had been everywhere.
+
+"Did you go to Westminster Abbey?" I asked, going on with the
+conversation childishly.  "And did you see where Queen Elizabeth and
+Mary Queen of Scots are buried?  Mamma had told me all about them."
+
+"Buried, did you say?  Are they dead too?" asked Madam eagerly.  "Yes,
+indeed!" said I: "they have been dead a long time."--"Ah!  I had
+forgotten," answered my strange companion.  "Do you know of any one
+else who has died beside them?  I have not heard of any one's dying and
+going home for so long!  Once every one died but me--except some young
+people; and I do not know them."--"Why, every one must die," said I
+wonderingly.  "There is a funeral somewhere every day, I
+suppose."--"Every one but me," Madam repeated sadly,--"every one but
+me, and I am alone."
+
+Just now cousin Agnes came to the door, and called me.  "Go in now,
+child," said Lady Ferry.  "You may come and sit with me to-morrow if
+you choose."  And I said good-night, while she turned, and went down
+the walk with feeble, lingering steps.  She paced to and fro, as I
+often saw her afterwards, on the flagstones: and some bats flew that
+way like ragged bits of darkness, holding somehow a spark of life.  I
+watched her for a minute: she was like a ghost, I thought but not a
+fearful ghost,--poor Lady Ferry!
+
+"Have you had a pleasant walk?" asked cousin Matthew politely.
+"To-morrow I will give you a border for your own, and some plants for
+it, if you like gardening."  I joyfully answered that I should like it
+very much, and so I began to feel already the pleasure of being in a
+real home, after the wandering life to which I had become used.  I went
+close to cousin Agnes's chair to tell her confidentially that I had
+been walking with Madam in the garden, and she was very good to me, and
+asked me to come to sit with her the next day: but she said very odd
+things.
+
+"You must not mind what she says," said cousin Agnes; "and I would
+never dispute with her, or even seem surprised, if I were you.  It
+hurts and annoys her, and she soon forgets her strange fancies.  I
+think you seem a very sensible little girl, and I have told you about
+this poor friend of ours as if you were older.  But you understand do
+you not?"  And then she kissed me good-night, and I went up stairs,
+contented with her assurance that she would come to me before I went to
+sleep.
+
+I found a pleasant-faced young girl busy putting away some of my
+clothing.  I had seen her just after supper, and had fancied her very
+much, partly because she was not so old as the rest of the servants.
+We were friendly at once, and I found her very talkative; so finally I
+asked the question which was uppermost in my mind,--Did she know
+anything about Madam?
+
+"Lady Ferry, folks call her," said Martha, much interested.  "I never
+have seen her close to, only from the other side of the garden, where
+she walks at night.  She never goes out by day.  Deborah waits upon
+her.  I haven't been here long; but I have always heard about Madame,
+bless you!  Folks tell all kinds of strange stories.  She's fearful
+old, and there's many believes she never will die; and where she came
+from nobody knows.  I've heard that her folks used to live here; but
+nobody can remember them, and she used to wander about; and once before
+she was here,--a good while ago; but this last time she came was nine
+years ago; one stormy night she came across the ferry, and scared them
+to death, looking in at the window like a ghost.  She said she used to
+live here in Colonel Haverford's time.  They saw she wasn't right in
+her head--the ferry-men did.  But she came up to the house, and they
+let her in, and she went straight to the rooms in the north gable, and
+she never has gone away: it was in an awful storm she came, I've heard,
+and she looked just the same as she does now.  There!  I can't tell
+half the stories  I've heard, and Deborah she most took my head off,"
+said Martha, "because, when I first came, I was asking about her; and
+she said it was a sin to gossip about a harmless old creature whose
+mind was broke, but I guess most everybody thinks there's something
+mysterious.  There's my grandmother--her mind is failing her; but she
+never had such ways!  And then those clothes that my lady in the gable
+wears:  they're unearthly looking; and I heard a woman say once, that
+they come out of a chest in the big garret, and they belonged to a
+Mistress Haverford who was hung for a witch, but there's no knowing
+that there is any truth in it."  And Martha would have gone on with her
+stories, if just then we had not heard cousin Agnes's step on the
+stairway, and I hurried into bed.
+
+
+But my bright eyes and excited look betrayed me.  Cousin Agnes said she
+had hoped I would be asleep.  And Martha said perhaps it was her fault;
+but I seemed wakeful, and she had talked with me a bit, to keep my
+spirits up, coming to a new, strange place.  The apology was accepted,
+but Martha evidently had orders before I next saw her; for I never
+could get her to discuss Lady Ferry again; and she carefully told me
+that she should not have told those foolish stories, which were not
+true: but I knew that she still had her thoughts and suspicions as well
+as I.  Once, when I asked her if Lady Ferry were Madam's real name, she
+answered with a guilty flush, "That's what the folks hereabout called
+her, because they didn't know any other at first."  And this to me was
+another mystery.  It was strongly impressed upon my mind that I must
+ask no questions, and that Madam was not to be discussed.  No one
+distinctly forbade this; but I felt that it would not do.  In every
+other way I was sure that I was allowed perfect liberty, so I soon
+ceased to puzzle myself or other people, and accepted Madam's presence
+as being perfectly explainable and natural,--just as the rest of the
+household did,--except once in a while something would set me at work
+romancing and wondering; and I read some stories in one of the books in
+the library,--of Peter Rugg the missing man, whom one may always meet
+riding from Salem to Boston in every storm, and of the Flying Dutchman
+and the Wandering Jew, and some terrible German stories of doomed
+people, and curses that were fulfilled.  These made a great impression
+upon me; still I was not afraid, for all such things were far outside
+the boundaries of my safe little world; and I played by myself along
+the shore of the river and in the garden; and I had my lessons with
+cousin Agnes, and drives with cousin Matthew who was nearly always
+silent, but very kind to me.  The house itself was an unfailing
+entertainment, with its many rooms, most of which were never occupied,
+and its quaint, sober furnishings, some of which were as old as the
+house itself.  It was like a story-book; and no one minded my going
+where I pleased.
+
+I missed my father and mother; but the only time I was really unhappy
+was the first morning after my arrival.  Cousin Agnes was ill with a
+severe headache; cousin Matthew had ridden away to attend to some
+business; and, being left to myself, I had a most decided re-action
+from my unnaturally bright feelings of the day before.  I began to
+write a letter to my mother; but unluckily I knew how many weeks must
+pass before she saw it, and it was useless to try to go on,  I was
+lonely and homesick.  The rain fell heavily, and the garden looked
+forlorn, and so unlike the enchanting moonlighted place where I had
+been in the evening!  The walks were like little canals; and the
+rose-bushes looked wet and chilly, like some gay young lady who had
+been caught in the rain in party-dress.  It was low tide in the middle
+of the day, and the river-flats looked dismal.  I fed cousin Agnes'
+flock of tame sparrows which came around the windows, and afterward
+some robins.  I found some books and some candy which had come in my
+trunk, but my heart was very sad; and just after noon I was overjoyed
+when one of the servants told me that cousin Agnes would like to have
+me come to her room.
+
+She was even kinder to me than she had been the night before; but she
+looked very ill, and at first I felt awkward, and did not know what to
+say.  "I am afraid you have been very dull, dearie," said she, reaching
+out her hand to me.  "I am sorry, and my headache hardly lets me think
+at all yet.  But we will have better times to-morrow--both of us.  You
+must ask for what you want; and you may come and spend this evening
+with me, for I shall be getting well then.  It does me good to see your
+kind little face.  Suppose you make Madam a call this afternoon.  She
+told me last night that she wished for you, and I was so glad.  Deborah
+will show you the way."
+
+Deborah talked to me softly, out of deference to her mistress's
+headache, as we went along the crooked passages.  "Don't you mind what
+Madam says, least ways don't you dispute her.  She's got a funeral
+going on to-day;" and the grave woman smiled grimly at me.  "It's
+curious she's taken to you so; for she never will see any strange
+folks.  Nobody speaks to her about new folks lately," she added
+warningly, as she tapped at the door, and Madam asked, "Is it the
+child?"  And Deborah lifted the latch.  When I was fairly inside, my
+interest in life came back redoubled, and I was no longer sad, but
+looked round eagerly.  Madam spoke to me, with her sweet old voice, in
+her courtly, quiet way, and stood looking out of the window.
+
+There were two tall chests of drawers in the room, with shining brass
+handles and ornaments; and at one side, near the door, was a heavy
+mahogany table, on which I saw a large leather-covered Bible, a
+decanter of wine and some glasses, beside some cakes in a queer old
+tray.  And there was no other furniture but a great number of chairs
+which seemed to have been collected from different parts of the house.
+
+With these the room was almost filled, except an open space in the
+centre, toward which they all faced.  One window was darkened; but
+Madam had pushed back the shutter of the other, and stood looking down
+at the garden.  I waited for her to speak again after the first
+salutation, and presently she said I might be seated; and I took the
+nearest chair, and again waited her pleasure.  It was gloomy enough,
+with the silence and the twilight in the room; and the rain and wind
+out of doors sounded louder than they had in cousin Agnes's room; but
+soon Lady Ferry came toward me.
+
+"So you did not forget the old woman," said she, with a strange
+emphasis on the word old, as if that were her title and her chief
+characteristic.  "And were not you afraid?  I am glad it seemed worth
+while; for to-morrow would have been too late.  You may like to
+remember by and by that you came.  And my funeral is to be to-morrow at
+last.  You see the room is in readiness.  You will care to be here, I
+hope.  I would have ordered you some gloves if I had known; but these
+are all too large for your little hands.  You shall have a ring; I will
+leave a command for that;" and Madam seated herself near me in a
+curious, high-backed chair.  She was dressed that day in a maroon
+brocade, figured with bunches of dim pink flowers; and some of these
+flowers looked to me like wicked little faces.  It was a mocking,
+silly, creature that I saw at the side of every prim bouquet, and I
+looked at the faded little imps, until they seemed as much alive as
+Lady Ferry herself.
+
+Her head nodded continually, as if it were keeping time to an inaudible
+tune, as she sat there stiffly erect.  Her skin was pale and withered;
+and her cheeks were wrinkled in fine lines, like the crossings of a
+cobweb.  Her eyes might once have been blue; but they had become nearly
+colourless, and, looking at her, one might easily imagine that she was
+blind.  She had a singularly sweet smile, and a musical voice, which
+though sad, had no trace of whining.  If it had not been for her smile
+and her voice, I think madam would have been a terror to me.  I noticed
+to-day, for the first time, a curious fragrance, which seemed to come
+from her old brocades and silks.  It was very sweet, but unlike any
+thing I had ever known before; and it was by reason of this that
+afterward I often knew, with a little flutter at my heart, she had been
+in some other rooms of the great house beside her own.  This perfume
+seemed to linger for a little while wherever she had been, and yet it
+was so faint!  I used to go into the darkened chambers often, or even
+stay for a while by myself in the unoccupied lower rooms, and I would
+find this fragrance, and wonder if she were one of the old time
+fairies, who could vanish at their own will and pleasure, and wonder,
+too why she had come to the room.  But I never met her at all.
+
+
+That first visit to her and the strange fancy she had about the funeral
+I have always remembered distinctly.
+
+
+"I am glad you came," Madam repeated: "I was finding the day long.  I
+am all ready, you see.  I shall place a little chair which is in the
+next room, beside your cousin's seat for you.  Mrs. Agnes is ill, I
+hear; but I think she will come to-morrow.  Have you heard any one say
+if many guests are expected?"--"No, Madam," I answered, "no one has
+told me;" and just then the thought flitted through my head that she
+had said the evening before that all her friends were gone.  Perhaps
+she expected their ghosts: that would not be stranger than all the rest.
+
+
+The open space where Lady Ferry had left room for her coffin began to
+be a horror to me, and I wished Deborah would come back, or that my
+hostess would open the shutters; and it was a great relief when she
+rose and went into the adjoining room, bidding me follow her, and there
+opened a drawer containing some old jewelry; there were also some queer
+Chinese carvings, yellow with age,--just the things a child would
+enjoy.  I looked at them delightedly.  This was coming back to more
+familiar life; and I soon felt more at ease, and chattered to Lady
+Ferry of my own possessions, and some coveted treasures of my mother's,
+which were to be mine when I grew older.
+
+
+Madam stood beside me patiently, and listened with a half smile to my
+whispered admiration.  In the clearer light I could see her better, and
+she seemed older,--so old, so old! and my father's words came to me
+again.  She had not changed since he was a boy; living on and on, and
+'the horror of an endless life in this world!'  And I remembered what
+Martha had said to me, and the consciousness of this mystery was a
+great weight upon me of a sudden.  Why was she living so long? and what
+had happened to her? and how long could it be since she was a child?
+
+There was something in her manner which made me behave, even in my
+pleasure, as if her imagined funeral were there in reality, and as if,
+in spite of my being amused and tearless, the solemn company of funeral
+guests already sat in the next room to us with bowed heads, and all the
+shadows in the world had assembled there materialized into the tangible
+form of crape.  I opened and closed the boxes gently, and, when I had
+seen everything, I looked up with a sigh to think that such a pleasure
+was ended, and asked if I might see them again some day.  But the look
+in her face made me recollect myself, and my own grew crimson, for it
+seemed at that moment as real to me as to Lady Ferry herself that this
+was her last day of mortal life.  She walked away, but presently came
+back, while I was wondering if I might not go, and opened the drawer
+again.  It creaked, and the brass handles clacked in a startling way,
+and she took out a little case, and said I might keep it to remember
+her by.  It held a little vinaigrette,--a tiny silver box with a gold
+one inside, in which I found a bit of fine sponge, dark brown with age,
+and still giving a faint, musty perfume and spiciness.  The outside was
+rudely chased, and was worn as if it had been carried for years in
+somebody's pocket.  It had a spring, the secret of which Lady Ferry
+showed me.  I was delighted, and instinctively lifted my face to kiss
+her.  She bent over me, and waited an instant for me to kiss her again.
+"Oh!" said she softly, "it is so long since a child has kissed me!  I
+pray God not to leave you lingering like me, apart from all your
+kindred, and your life so long that you forget you ever were a
+child."--"I will kiss you every day," said I, and then again remembered
+that there were to be no more days according to her plan; but she did
+not seem to notice my mistake.
+
+And after this I used to go to see Madam often.  For a time there was
+always the same gloom and hushed way of speaking, and the funeral
+services were to be on the morrow; but at last one day I found Deborah
+sedately putting the room in order, and Lady Ferry apologized for its
+being in such confusion; the idea of the funeral had utterly vanished,
+and I hurried to tell cousin Agnes with great satisfaction.  I think
+that both she and cousin Matthew had a dislike for my being too much
+with Madam.  I was kept out of doors as much as possible because it was
+much better for my health; and through the long summer days I strayed
+about wherever I choose.  The country life was new and delightful to
+me.  At home Lady Ferry's vagaries were carelessly spoken of, and often
+smiled at; but I gained the idea that they disguised the truth, and
+were afraid of my being frightened.  She often talked about persons who
+had been dead a long time,--familiar characters in history, and though
+cousin Agnes had said that she used to be fond of reading, it seemed to
+me that Madam might have known these men and women after all.
+
+Once a middle-aged gentleman, an acquaintance of cousin Matthew's, came
+to pass a day and night at the Ferry, and something happened then which
+seemed wonderful to me.  It was early in the evening after tea, and we
+were in the parlour; from my seat by cousin Agnes I could look out into
+the garden, and presently, with the gathering darkness, came Lady
+Ferry, silent as a shadow herself, to walk to and fro on the
+flagstones.  The windows were all open, and the guest had a clear, loud
+voice, and pleasant, hearty laugh; and, as he talked earnestly with
+cousin Matthew, I noticed that Lady Ferry stood still, as if she were
+listening.  Then I was attracted by some story which was being told,
+and forgot her, but afterward turned with a start, feeling that there
+was some one watching; and, to my astonishment, Madam had come to the
+long window by which one went out to the garden.  She stood there a
+moment, looking puzzled and wild; then she smiled, and, entering,
+walked in most stately fashion down the long room, toward the
+gentlemen, before whom she courtesied with great elegance, while the
+stranger stopped speaking, and looked at her with amazement, as he
+rose, and returned the greeting.
+
+"My dear Captain Jack McAllister!" said she; "what a surprise! and are
+you not home soon from your voyage?  This is indeed a pleasure."  And
+Lady Ferry seated herself, motioning to him to take a chair beside her.
+She looked younger than I had ever seen her; a bright colour came into
+her cheeks; and she talked so gayly, in such a different manner from
+her usual mournful gentleness.  She must have been a beautiful woman;
+indeed she was that still.
+
+"And did the good ship Starlight make a prosperous voyage?  And had you
+many perils?--Do you bring much news to us from the Spanish Main?  We
+have missed you sadly at the assemblies; but there must be a dance in
+your honour.  And your wife; is she not overjoyed at the sight of you?
+I think you have grown old and sedate since you went away.  You do not
+look the gay sailor, or seem so light-hearted."
+
+"I do not understand you, madam," said the stranger.  "I am certainly
+John McAllister; but I am no captain, neither have I been at sea.  Good
+God! is it my grandfather whom you confuse me with?" cried he.  "He was
+Jack McAllister, and was lost at sea more than seventy years ago, while
+my own father was a baby.  I am told that I am wonderfully like his
+portrait; but he was a younger man than I when he died.  This is some
+masquerade."
+
+Lady Ferry looked at him intently, but the light in her face was fast
+fading out.  "Lost at sea,--lost at sea, were you, Jack McAllister,
+seventy years ago?  I know nothing of years; one of my days is like
+another, and they are gray days, they creep away and hide, and
+sometimes one comes back to mock me.  I have lived a thousand years; do
+you know it?  Lost at sea--captain of the ship Starlight?  Whom did you
+say?--Jack McAllister, yes, I knew him well--pardon me; good-evening;"
+and my lady rose, and with her head nodding and drooping, with a
+sorrowful, hunted look in her eyes, went out again into the shadows.
+She had had a flash of youth, the candle had blazed up brilliantly; but
+it went out again as suddenly, with flickering and smoke.
+
+"I was startled when I saw her beside me," said Mr. McAllister.  "Pray,
+who is she? she is like no one I have ever seen.  I have been told that
+I am like my grandfather in looks and in voice; but it is years since I
+have seen any one who knew him well.  And did you hear her speak of
+dancing?  It is like seeing one who has risen from the dead.  How old
+can she be?"--"I do not know," said cousin Matthew, "one can only guess
+at her age."--"Would not she come back?  I should like to question
+her," asked the other.  But cousin Matthew answered that she always
+refused to see strangers, and it would be no use to urge her, she would
+not answer him.
+
+"Who is she?  Is she any kin of yours?" asked Mr. McAllister.
+
+"Oh, no!" said my cousin Agnes: "she has had no relatives since I have
+known her, and I think she has no friends now but ourselves.  She has
+been with us a long time, and once before this house was her home for a
+time,--many years since.  I suppose no one will ever know the whole
+history of her life; I wish often that she had power to tell it.  We
+are glad to give shelter, and the little care she will accept, to the
+poor soul.  God only knows where she has strayed and what she has seen.
+It is an enormous burden,--so long a life, and such a weight of
+memories; but I think it is seldom now that she feels its
+heaviness.--Go out to her, Marcia my dear, and see if she seems
+troubled.  She always has a welcome for the child," cousin Agnes added,
+as I unwillingly went away.
+
+I found Lady Ferry in the garden;  I stole my hand into hers, and,
+after a few minutes of silence, I was not surprised to hear her say
+that they had killed the Queen of France, poor Marie Antoinette!  she
+had known her well in her childhood, before she was a queen at all--"a
+sad fate, a sad fate," said Lady Ferry.  We went far down the gardens
+and by the river-wall, and when we were again near the house, and could
+hear Mr. McAllister's voice as cheery as ever, madam took no notice of
+it.  I had hoped she would go into the parlour again, and I wished over
+and over that I could have waited to hear the secrets which I was sure
+must have been told after cousin Agnes had sent me away.
+
+One day I thought I had made a wonderful discovery.  I was fond of
+reading, and found many books which interested me in cousin Matthew's
+fine library; but I took great pleasure also in hunting through a
+collection of old volumes which had been cast aside, either by him, or
+by some former owner of the house, and which were piled in a corner of
+the great garret.  They were mostly yellow with age, and had dark brown
+leather or shabby paper bindings; the pictures in some were very
+amusing to me.  I used often to find one which I appropriated and
+carried down stairs; and on this day I came upon a dusty, odd shaped
+little book, for which I at once felt an affection.  I looked at it a
+little.  It seemed to be a journal, there were some stories of the
+Indians and next I saw some reminiscences of the town of Boston, where,
+among other things, the author was told the marvellous story of one
+Mistress Honor Warburton, who was cursed, and doomed to live in this
+world forever.  This was startling.  I at once thought of Madam, and
+was reading on further to know the rest of the story, when some one
+called me, and I foolishly did not dare to carry my book with me.  I
+was afraid I should not find it if I left it in sight; I saw an opening
+near me at the edge of the floor by the eaves, and I carefully laid my
+treasure inside.  But, alas!  I was not to be sure of its safe
+hiding-place in a way that I fancied, for the book fell down between
+the boarding of the thick walls, and I heard it knock as it fell, and
+knew by the sound that it must be out of reach, I grieved over this
+loss for a long time; and I felt that it had been most unkindly taken
+out of my hand.  I wished heartily that I could know the rest of the
+story; and I tried to summon courage to ask Madam, when we were by our
+selves, if she had heard of Honor Warburton, but something held me back.
+
+There were two other events just at this time which made this strange
+old friend of mine seem stranger than ever to me.  I had a dream one
+night, which I took for a vision and a reality at the time.  I thought
+I looked out of my window in the night, and there was bright moonlight,
+and I could see the other gable plainly;  and I looked in at the
+windows of an unoccupied parlour which I never had seen open before,
+under Lady Ferry's own rooms,  The shutters were pushed back, and there
+were candles burning; and I heard voices, and presently some tinkling
+music, like that of a harpsichord I had once heard in a very old house
+where I had been in England with my mother.  I saw several couples go
+through with a slow, stately dance; and, when they stopped and seated
+themselves, I could hear their voices; but they spoke low, these
+midnight guests.  I watched until the door was opened which led into
+the garden, and the company came out and stood for a few minutes on the
+little lawn, making their adieus, bowing low, and behaving with
+astonishing courtesy and elegance: finally the last good-nights were
+said, and they went away.  Lady Ferry stood under the pointed porch,
+looking after them, and I could see her plainly in her brocade gown,
+with the impish flowers, a tall quaint cap, and a high lace frill at
+her throat, whiter than any lace I had ever seen, and with a glitter on
+it, and there was a glitter on her face too.  One of the other ladies
+was dressed in velvet, and I thought she looked beautiful: their eyes
+were all like sparks of fire.  The gentlemen wore cloaks and ruffs, and
+high-peaked hats with wide brims, such as I had seen in some very old
+pictures which hung on the walls of the long west room.  These were not
+pilgrims or Puritans, but gay gentlemen; and soon I heard the noise of
+their boats on the pebbles as they pushed off shore, and the splash of
+the oars in the water.  Lady Ferry waved her hand, and went in at the
+door; and I found myself standing by the window in the chilly, cloudy
+night: the opposite gable, the garden, and the river, were
+indistinguishable in the darkness.  I stole back to bed in an agony of
+fear; for it had been very real, that dream.  I surely was at the
+window, for my hand had been on the sill when I waked; and I heard a
+church-bell ring two o'clock in a town far up the river.  I never had
+heard this solemn bell before, and it seemed frightful; but I knew
+afterward that in the silence of a misty night the sound of it came
+down along the water.
+
+In the morning I found that there had been a gale in the night; and
+cousin Matthew said at breakfast time that the tide had risen so that
+it had carried off two old boats that had been left on the shore to go
+to pieces.  I sprang to the window, and sure enough they had
+disappeared.  I had played in one of them the day before.  Should I
+tell cousin Matthew what I had seen or dreamed?  But I was too sure
+that he would only laugh at me: and yet I was none the less sure that
+those boats had carried passengers.
+
+When I went out to the garden, I hurried to the porch, and saw, to my
+disappointment, that there were great spiders' webs in the corners of
+the door, and around the latch, and that it had not been opened since I
+was there before.  But I saw something shining in the grass, and found
+it was a silver knee-buckle.  It must have belonged to one of the
+ghostly guests, and my faith in them came back for a while, in spite of
+the cobwebs.  By and by I bravely carried it up to Madam, and asked if
+it were hers.  Sometimes she would not answer for a long time, when one
+rudely broke in upon her reveries, and she hesitated now, looking at me
+with singular earnestness.  Deborah was in the room; and, when she saw
+the buckle, she quietly said that it had been on the window-ledge the
+day before, and must have slipped out.  "I found it down by the
+doorstep in the grass," said I humbly; and then I offered Lady Ferry
+some strawberries which I had picked for her on a broad green leaf, and
+came away again.
+
+A day or two after this, while my dream was still fresh in my mind, I
+went with Martha to her own home, which was a mile or two distant,--a
+comfortable farmhouse for those days, where I was always made welcome.
+The servants were all very kind to me: as I recall it now, they seemed
+to have pity for me, because I was the only child perhaps.  I was very
+happy, that is certain, and I enjoyed my childish amusements as
+heartily as if there were no unfathomable mysteries or perplexities or
+sorrows anywhere in the world.
+
+I was sitting by the fireplace at Martha's, and her grandmother, who
+was very old, and who was fast losing her wits, had been talking to me
+about Madam.  I do not remember what she said, at least, it made little
+impression; but her grandson, a worthless fellow, sauntered in, and
+began to tell a story of his own, hearing of whom we spoke.  "I was
+coming home late last night," said he, "and, as I was in that dark
+place along by the Noroway pines, old Lady Ferry she went by me, and I
+was near scared to death.  She looked fearful tall--towered way up
+above me.  Her face was all lit up with blue light, and her feet didn't
+touch the ground.  She wasn't taking steps, she wasn't walking, but
+movin' along like a sail-boat before the wind.  I dodged behind some
+little birches, and I was scared she'd see me; but she went right out
+o' sight up the road.  She ain't mortal."
+
+"Don't scare the child with such foolishness," said his aunt
+disdainfully.  "You'll be seein' worse things a-dancin' before your
+eyes than that poor, harmless old creatur' if you don't quit the ways
+you've been following lately.  If that was last night, you were too
+drunk to see anything;" and the fellow muttered, and went out banging
+the door.  But the story had been told, and I was stiffened and chilled
+with fright; and all the way home I was in terror, looking fearfully
+behind me again and again.
+
+When I saw cousin Agnes, I felt safer, and since cousin Matthew was not
+at home, and we were alone, I could not resist telling her what I had
+heard.  She listened to me kindly, and seemed so confident that my
+story was idle nonsense, that my fears were quieted.  She talked to me
+until I no longer was a believer in there being any unhappy mystery or
+harmfulness; but I could not get over the fright, and I dreaded my
+lonely room, and I was glad enough when cousin Agnes, with her
+unfailing thoughtfulness, asked if I would like to have her come to
+sleep with me, and even went up stairs with me at my own early bedtime,
+saying that she should find it dull to sit all alone in the parlour.
+So I went to sleep, thinking of what I had heard, it is true, but no
+longer unhappy, because her dear arm was over me, and I was perfectly
+safe.  I waked up for a little while in the night, and it was light in
+the room, so that I could see her face, fearless and sweet and sad, and
+I wondered, in my blessed sense of security, if she were ever afraid of
+Lady Ferry.
+
+I will not tell other stories: they are much alike, all my memories of
+those weeks and months at the ferry, and I have no wish to be
+wearisome.  The last time I saw Madam she was standing in the garden
+door at dusk.  I was going away before daylight in the morning.  It was
+in the autumn: some dry leaves flittered about on the stone at her
+feet, and she was watching them.  I said good-by again, and she did not
+answer me: but I think she knew I was going away, and I am sure she was
+sorry, for we had been a great deal together; and, child as I was, I
+thought to how many friends she must have had to say farewell.
+
+Although I wished to see my father and mother, I cried as if my heart
+would break because I had to leave the ferry.  The time spent there had
+been the happiest time of all my life, I think.  I was old enough to
+enjoy, but not to suffer much, and there was singularly little to
+trouble one.  I did not know that my life was ever to be different.  I
+have learned, since those childish days, that one must battle against
+storms if one would reach the calm which is to follow them.  I have
+learned also that anxiety, sorrow, and regret fall to the lot of every
+one, and that there is always underlying our lives, this mysterious and
+frightful element of existence; an uncertainty at times, though we do
+trust every thing to God.  Under the best-loved and most beautiful face
+we know, there is hidden a skull as ghastly as that from which we turn
+aside with a shudder in the anatomist's cabinet.  We smile, and are gay
+enough; God pity us!  We try to forget our heart-aches and remorse.  We
+even call our lives commonplace, and, bearing our own heaviest burdens
+silently, we try to keep the commandment, and to bear one another's
+also.  There is One who knows: we look forward, as He means we shall,
+and there is always a hand ready to help us, though we reach out for it
+doubtfully in the dark.
+
+
+For many years after this summer was over, I lived in a distant,
+foreign country; at last my father and I were to go back to America.
+Cousin Agnes and cousin Matthew, and my mother, were all long since
+dead, and I rarely thought of my childhood, for in an eventful and
+hurried life the present claims one almost wholly.  We were travelling
+in Europe, and it happened that one day I was in a bookshop in
+Amsterdam, waiting for an acquaintance whom I was to meet, and who was
+behind time.
+
+The shop was a quaint place, and I amused myself by looking over an
+armful of old English books which a boy had thrown down near me,
+raising a cloud of dust which was plain evidence of their antiquity.  I
+came to one, almost the last, which had a strange familiar look, and I
+found that it was a copy of the same book which I had lost in the wall
+at the ferry.  I bought it for a few coppers with the greatest
+satisfaction, and began at once to read it.  It had been published in
+England early in the eighteenth century, and was written by one Mr.
+Thomas Highward of Chester,--a journal of his travels among some of the
+English colonists of North America, containing much curious and
+desirable knowledge, with some useful advice to those persons having
+intentions of emigrating.  I looked at the prosy pages here and there,
+and finally found again those reminiscences of the town of Boston and
+the story of Mistress Honor Warburton, who was cursed, and doomed to
+live in this world to the end of time.  She had lately been in Boston,
+but had disappeared again; she endeavoured to disguise herself, and
+would not stay long in one place if she feared that her story was
+known, and that she was recognized.  One Mr. Fleming, a man of good
+standing and repute, and an officer of Her Majesty Queen Anne, had
+sworn to Mr. Thomas Highward that his father, a person of great age,
+had once seen Mistress Warburton in his youth; that she then bore
+another name, but had the same appearance.  "Not wishing to seem unduly
+credulous," said Mr. Highward, "I disputed this tale; but there was
+some considerable evidence in its favour, and at least this woman was
+of vast age, and was spoken of with extreme wonder by the town's folk."
+
+I could not help thinking of my old childish suspicions of Lady Ferry,
+though I smiled at the folly of them and of this story more than once.
+I tried to remember if I had heard of her death; but I was still a
+child when my cousin Agnes had died.  Had poor Lady Ferry survived her,
+and what could have become of her?  I asked my father, but he could
+remember nothing, if indeed he ever had heard of her death at all.  He
+spoke of our cousins' kindness to this forlorn soul, and that, learning
+her desolation and her piteous history (and being the more pitiful
+because of her shattered mind), when she had last wandered to their
+door, they had cared for the old gentlewoman to the end of her
+days--"for I do not think she can be living yet," said my father, with
+a merry twinkle in his eyes: "she must have been nearly a hundred years
+old when you saw her.  She belonged to a fine old family which had gone
+to wreck and ruin.  She strayed about for years, and it was a godsend
+to her to have found such a home in her last days."
+
+
+That same summer we reached America, and for the first time since I had
+left it I went to the ferry.  The house was still imposing, the
+prestige of the Haverford grandeur still lingered; but it looked
+forlorn and uncared for.  It seemed very familiar; but the months I had
+spent there were so long ago, that they seemed almost to belong to
+another life.  I sat alone on the doorstep for a long time, where I
+used often to watch for Lady Ferry; and forgotten thoughts and dreams
+of my childhood came back to me.  The river was the only thing that
+seemed as young as ever.  I looked in at some of the windows where the
+shutters were put back, and I walked about the garden, where I could
+hardly trace the walks, all overgrown with thick, short grass though
+there were a few ragged lines of box, and some old rose-bushes; and I
+saw the very last of the flowers,--a bright red poppy, which had
+bloomed under a lilac-tree among the weeds.
+
+Out beyond the garden, on a slope by the river, I saw the family
+burying-ground, and it was with a comfortable warmth at my heart that I
+stood inside the familiar old enclosure.  There was my Lady Ferry's
+grave; there could be no mistake about it, and she was dead.  I smiled
+at my satisfaction and at my foolish childish thoughts, and thanked God
+that there could be no truth in them, and that death comes surely,--say
+rather that the better life comes surely--though it comes late.
+
+The sad-looking, yellow-topped cypress, which only seems to feel quite
+at home in country burying-grounds, had kindly spread itself like a
+coverlet over the grave, which already looked like a very old grave;
+and the headstone was leaning a little, not to be out of the fashion of
+the rest.  I traced again the words of old Colonel Haverford's pompous
+epitaph, and idly read some others.  I remembered the old days so
+vividly there; I thought of my cousin Agnes, and wished that I could
+see her; and at last, as the daylight faded, I came away.  When I
+crossed the river, the ferry-man looked at me wonderingly, for my eyes
+were filled with tears.  Although we were in shadow on the water, the
+last red glow of the sun blazed on the high gable-windows, just as it
+did the first time I crossed over,--only a child then, with my life
+before me.
+
+I asked the ferry-man some questions, but he could tell me nothing: he
+was a new-comer to that part of the country.  He was sorry that the
+boat was not in better order; but there were very seldom any
+passengers.  The great house was out of repair: people would not live
+there, for they said it was haunted.  Oh, yes! he had heard of Lady
+Ferry.  She had lived to be very ancient; but she was dead.
+
+"Yes," said I, "she is dead."
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+
+A BIT OF SHORE LIFE.
+
+I often think of a boy with whom I made friends last summer, during
+some idle, pleasant days that I spent by the sea.  I was almost always
+out of doors, and I used to watch the boats go out and come in; and I
+had a hearty liking for the good-natured fishermen, who were lazy and
+busy by turns, who waited for the wind to change, and waited for the
+tide to turn, and waited for the fish to bite, and were always ready to
+gossip about the weather, and the fish, and the wonderful events that
+had befallen them and their friends.
+
+Georgie was the only boy of whom I ever saw much at the shore.  The few
+young people living there all went to school through the hot summer
+days at a little weather-beaten schoolhouse a mile or two inland.
+There were few houses to be seen, at any rate, and Georgie's house was
+the only one so close to the water.  He looked already nothing but a
+fisherman; his clothes were covered with an oil-skin suit, which had
+evidently been awkwardly cut down for him from one of his father's, of
+whom he was a curious little likeness.  I could hardly believe that he
+was twelve years old, he was so stunted and small; yet he was a strong
+little fellow; his hands were horny and hard from handling the clumsy
+oars, and his face was so brown and dry from the hot sun and chilly
+spray, that he looked even older when one came close to him.  The first
+time I saw him was one evening just at night fall.  I was sitting on
+the pebbles, and he came down from the fish-house with some
+lobster-nets, and a bucket with some pieces of fish in it for bait, and
+put them into the stern of one of the boats which lay just at the edge
+of the rising tide.  He looked at the clouds over the sea, and at the
+open sky overhead, in an old wise way, and then, as if satisfied with
+the weather, began to push off his boat.  It dragged on the pebbles; it
+was a heavy thing, and he could not get it far enough out to be floated
+by the low waves, so I went down to help him.  He looked amazed that a
+girl should have thought of it, and as if he wished to ask me what good
+I supposed I could do, though I was twice his size.  But the boat
+grated and slid down toward the sand, and I gave her a last push as the
+boy perched with one knee on her gunwale and let the other foot drag in
+the water for a minute.  He was afloat after all; and he took the oars,
+and pulled manfully out toward the moorings, where the whale-boats and
+a sail-boat or two were swaying about in the wind, which was rising a
+little since the sun had set.  He did not say a word to me, or I to
+him.  I watched him go out into the twilight,--such a little fellow,
+between those two great oars!  But the boat could not drift or loiter
+with his steady stroke, and out he went, until I could only see the
+boat at last, lifting and sinking on the waves beyond the reef outside
+the moorings.  I asked one of the fishermen whom I knew very well, "Who
+is that little fellow?  Ought he to be out by himself, it is growing
+dark so fast?"
+
+"Why, that's _Georgie_!" said my friend, with his grim smile.  "Bless
+ye! he's like a duck; ye can't drown him.  He won't be in until ten
+o'clock, like's not.  He'll go way out to the far ledges when the tide
+covers them too deep where he is now.  Lobsters he's after."
+
+"Whose boy is he?" said I.
+
+"Why, Andrer's, up here to the fish-house.  _She's dead_, and him and
+the boy get along together somehow or 'nother.  They've both got
+something saved up, and Andrer's a clever fellow; took it very hard,
+losing his wife.  I was telling of him the other day: 'Andrer,' says I,
+'ye ought to look up somebody or 'nother, and not live this way.
+There's plenty o' smart, stirring women that would mend ye up, and cook
+for ye, and do well by ye.'--'No,' says he; 'I've hed my wife, and I've
+lost her.'--'Well, now,' says I, 'ye've shown respect, and there's the
+boy a-growin' up, and if either of you was took sick, why, here ye
+be.'--'Yes,' says he, 'here I be, sure enough;' and he drawed a long
+breath, 's if he felt bad; so that's all I said.  But it's no way for a
+man to get along, and he ought to think of the boy.  He owned a good
+house about half a mile up the road; but he moved right down here after
+she died, and his cousin took it, and it burnt up in the winter.  Four
+year ago that was.  I was down to the Georges Banks."
+
+Some other men came down toward the water, and took a boat that was
+waiting, already fitted out with a trawl coiled in two tubs, and some
+hand-lines and bait for rock-cod and haddock, and my friend joined
+them; they were going out for a night's fishing.  I watched them hoist
+the little sprit-sail, and drift a little until they caught the wind,
+and then I looked again for Georgie, whose boat was like a black spot
+on the water.
+
+I knew him better soon after that.  I used to go out with him for
+lobsters, or to catch cunners, and it was strange that he never had any
+cronies, and would hardly speak to the other children.  He was very
+shy; but he had put all his heart into his work,--a man's hard work,
+which he had taken from choice.  His father was kind to him; but he had
+a sorry home, and no mother,--the brave, fearless, steady little soul!
+
+He looked forward to going one day (I hope that day has already dawned)
+to see the shipyards at a large seaport some twenty miles away.  His
+face lit up when he told me of it, as some other child's would who had
+been promised a day in fairy-land.  And he confided to me that he
+thought he should go to the Banks that coming winter.  "But it's so
+cold!" said I; "should you really like it?"--"Cold!" said Georgie.
+"Ho! rest of the men never froze."  That was it,--the "rest of the
+men;" and he would work until he dropped, or tend a line until his
+fingers froze, for the sake of that likeness,--the grave, slow little
+man, who has so much business with the sea, and who trusts himself with
+touching confidence to its treacherous keeping and favour.
+
+Andrew West, Georgie's father, was almost as silent as his son at
+first, but it was not long before we were very good friends, and I went
+out with him at four o'clock one morning, to see him set his trawl.  I
+remember there was a thin mist over the sea, and the air was almost
+chilly: but, as the sun came up, it changed the colour of everything to
+the most exquisite pink,--the smooth slow waves, and the mist that blew
+over them as if it were a cloud that had fallen down out of the sky.
+The world just then was like the hollow of a great pink sea-shell; and
+we could only hear the noise of it, the dull sound of the waves among
+the outer ledges.
+
+We had to drift about for an hour or two when the trawl was set; and
+after a while the fog shut down again gray and close, so we could not
+see either the sun or the shore.  We were a little more than four miles
+out, and we had put out more than half a mile of lines.  It is very
+interesting to see the different fish that come up on the
+hooks,--worthless sculpin and dog-fish, and good rock-cod and haddock,
+and curious stray creatures which often even the fishermen do not know.
+We had capital good luck that morning, and Georgie and Andrew and I
+were all pleased.  I had a hand-line, and was fishing part of the time,
+and Georgie thought very well of me when he found I was not afraid of a
+big fish, and, besides that, I had taken the oars while he tended the
+sail, though there was hardly wind enough to make it worth his while.
+It was about eight o'clock when we came in, and there was a horse and
+wagon standing near the landing; and we saw a woman come out of
+Andrew's little house.  "There's your aunt Hannah a'ready," said he to
+Georgie; and presently she came down the pebbles to meet the boat,
+looking at me with much wonder as I jumped ashore.
+
+"I sh'd think you might a' cleaned up your boat, Andrer, if you was
+going to take ladies out," said she graciously.  And the fisherman
+rejoined, that perhaps she would have thought it looked better when it
+went out than it did then; he never had got a better fare o' fish
+unless the trawls had been set over night.
+
+There certainly had been a good haul; and, when Andrew carefully put
+those I had caught with the hand-line by themselves, I asked his sister
+to take them, if she liked.  "Bless you!" said she, much pleased, "we
+couldn't eat one o' them big rock-cod in a week--I'll take a little
+ha'dick if Andrer 'll pick me one out."
+
+She was a tall, large woman, who had a direct, business-like
+manner,--what the country people would call a master smart woman, or a
+regular driver,--and I liked her.  She said something to her brother
+about some clothes she had been making for him or for Georgie, and I
+went off to the house where I was boarding for my breakfast.  I was
+hungry enough, since I had had only a hurried lunch a good while before
+sunrise.  I came back late in the morning, and found that Georgie's
+aunt was just going away.  I think my friends must have spoken well of
+me, for she came out to meet me as I nodded in going by, and said, "I
+suppose ye drive about some?  We should be pleased to have ye come up
+to see us.  We live right 'mongst the woods; it ain't much of a place
+to ask anybody to."  And she added that she might have done a good deal
+better for herself to have staid off.  But there! they had the place,
+and she supposed she and Cynthy had done as well there as anywhere.
+Cynthy--well, she wasn't one of your pushing kind; but I should have
+some flowers, and perhaps it would be a change for me.  I thanked her,
+and said I should be delighted to go.  Georgie and I would make her a
+call together some afternoon when he wasn't busy; and Georgie actually
+smiled when I looked at him, and said, "All right," and then hurried
+off down the shore.  "Ain't he an odd boy?" said Miss Hannah West, with
+a shadow of disapproval in her face.  "But he's just like his father
+and grandfather before him;  you wouldn't think they had no gratitude
+nor feelin', but I s'pose they have.  They used to say my father
+never'd forgit a friend, or forgive an enemy.  Well, I'm much obliged
+to you, I'm sure, for taking an interest in the boy."  I said I liked
+him: I only wished I could do something for him.  And then she said
+good-day, and drove off.  I felt as if we were already good friends.
+"I'm much obliged for the fish," she turned round to say to me again,
+as she went away.
+
+One morning, not long afterward, I asked Georgie if he could possibly
+leave his business that afternoon, and he gravely answered me that he
+could get away just as well as not, for the tide would not be right for
+lobsters until after supper.
+
+"I should like to go up and see your aunt," said I.  "You know she
+asked me to come the other day when she was here.
+
+"I'd like to go," said Georgie sedately.  "Father was going up this
+week; but the mackerel struck in, and we couldn't leave.  But it's
+better'n six miles up there."
+
+"That's not far," said I.  "I'm going to have Captain Donnell's horse
+and wagon;" and Georgie looked much interested.
+
+I wondered if he would wear his oil-skin suit; but I was much amazed,
+and my heart was touched, at seeing how hard he had tried to put
+himself in trim for the visit.  He had on his best jacket and trousers
+(which might have been most boys' worst), and a clean calico shirt; and
+he had scrubbed his' freckled, honest little face and his hard little
+hands, until they were as clean as possible; and either he or his
+father had cut his hair.  I should think it had been done with a knife,
+and it looked as if a rat had gnawed it.  He had such a holiday air!
+He really looked very well; but still, if I were to have a picture of
+George, it should be in the oil-skin fishing-suit.  He had gone out to
+his box, which was anchored a little way out in the cove, and had
+chosen two fine lobsters which he had tied together with a bit of
+fish-line.  They were lazily moving their claws and feelers; and his
+father, who had come in with his boat not long before, added from his
+fare of fish three plump mackerel.
+
+"They're always glad to get new fish," said he.  "The girls can't abide
+a fish that's corned, and I haven't had a chance to send 'em up any
+mackerel before.  Ye see, they live on a cross-road, and the fish-carts
+don't go by."  And I told him I was very glad to carry them, or any
+thing else he would like to send.  "Mind your manners, now, Georgie,"
+said he, "and don't be forrard.  You might split up some kindlin's for
+y'r aunts, and do whatever they want of ye.  Boys ain't made just to
+look at, so ye be handy, will ye?"  And Georgie nodded solemnly.  They
+seemed very fond of each other, and I looked back some time afterward
+to see the fisherman still standing there to watch his boy.  He was
+used to his being out at sea alone for hours; but this might be a great
+risk to let him go off inland to stay all the afternoon.
+
+The road crossed the salt-marshes for the first mile, and, when we had
+struck the higher land, we soon entered the pine-woods, which cover a
+great part of that country.  It had been raining in the morning for a
+little while; and the trunks of the trees were still damp, and the
+underbrush was shining wet, and sent out a sweet, fresh smell.  I spoke
+of it, and Georgie told me that sometimes this fragrance blew far out
+to sea, and then you knew the wind was north-west.
+
+"There's the big pine you sight Minister's Ledge by," said he, "when
+that comes in range over the white schoolhouse, about two miles out."
+
+The lobsters were clashing their pegged claws together in the back of
+the wagon, and Georgie sometimes looked over at them to be sure they
+were all right.  Of course I had given him the reins when we first
+started, and he was delighted because we saw some squirrels, and even a
+rabbit, which scurried across the road as if I had been a fiery dragon,
+and Georgie something worse.
+
+We presently came in sight of a house close by the road,--an
+old-looking place, with a ledgy, forlorn field stretching out behind it
+toward some low woods.  There were high white-birch poles holding up
+thick tangles of hop-vines, and at the side there were sunflowers
+straggling about as if they had come up from seed scattered by the
+wind.  Some of them were close together, as if they were whispering to
+each other; and their big, yellow faces were all turned toward the
+front of the house, where people were already collected as if there was
+a funeral.
+
+"It's the auction," said Georgie with great satisfaction.  "I heard 'em
+talking about it down at the shore this morning.  There's Lisha Downs
+now.  He started off just before we did.  That's his fish-cart over by
+the well."
+
+"What is going to be sold?" said I.
+
+"All the stuff," said Georgie, as if he were much pleased.  "She's
+going off up to Boston with her son."
+
+"I think we had better stop," said I, for I saw Mrs. 'Lisha Downs, who
+was one of my acquaintances at the shore, and I wished to see what was
+going on, besides giving Georgie a chance at the festivities.  So we
+tied the horse, and went toward the house, and I found several people
+whom I knew a little.  Mrs. Downs shook hands with me as formally as if
+we had not talked for some time as I went by her house to the shore,
+just after my breakfast.  She presented me to several of her friends
+with whom she had been talking as I came up.  "Let me make you
+acquainted," she said: and every time I bowed she bowed too,
+unconsciously, and seemed a little ill at ease and embarrassed, but
+luckily the ceremony was soon over.  "I thought I would stop for a few
+minutes," said I by way of apology.  "I didn't know why the people were
+here until Georgie told me."
+
+"She's going to move up to Boston 'long of her son," said one of the
+women, who looked very pleasant and very tired.  "I think myself it is
+a bad plan to pull old folks up by the roots.  There's a niece of hers
+that would have been glad to stop with her, and do for the old lady.
+But John, he's very high-handed, and wants it his way, and he says his
+mother sha'n't live in any such place as this.  He makes a sight o'
+money.  He's got out a patent, and they say he's just bought a new
+house that cost him eleven thousand dollars.  But old Mis' Wallis,
+she's wonted here; and she was telling of me yesterday she was only
+going to please John.  He says he wants her up there, where she'll be
+more comfortable, and see something."
+
+"He means well," said another woman whom I did not know; "but folks
+about here never thought no great of his judgment.  He's put up some
+splendid stones in the burying-lot to his father and his sister Miranda
+that died.  I used to go to school 'long of Miranda.  She'd have been
+pleased to go to Boston; she was that kind.  But there! mother was
+saying last night, what if his business took a turn, and he lost every
+thing!  Mother's took it dreadfully to heart; she and Mis' Wallis were
+always mates as long ago as they can recollect."
+
+It was evident that the old widow was both pitied and envied by her
+friends on account of her bettered fortunes, and they came up to speak
+to her with more or less seriousness, as befitted the occasion.  She
+looked at me with great curiosity, but Mrs. Down told her who I was,
+and I had a sudden instinct to say how sorry I was for her, but I was
+afraid it might appear intrusive on so short an acquaintance.  She was
+a thin old soul who looked as if she had had a good deal of trouble in
+her day, and as if she had been very poor and very anxious.  "Yes,"
+said she to some one who had come from a distance, "it does come hard
+to go off.  Home is home, and I seem to hate to sell off my things; but
+I suppose they would look queer up to Boston.  John says I won't have
+no idea of the house until I see it:" and she looked proud and
+important for a minute, but, as some one brought an old chair out at
+the door, her face fell again.  "Oh, dear!" said she, "I should like to
+keep that! it belonged to my mother.  It's most wore out anyway.  I
+guess I'll let somebody keep it for me;" and she hurried off
+despairingly to find her son, while we went into the house.
+
+There is so little to interest the people who live on those quiet,
+secluded farms, that an event of this kind gives great pleasure.  I
+know they have not done talking yet about the sale, of the bargains
+that were made, or the goods that brought more than they were worth.
+And then the women had the chance of going all about the house, and
+committing every detail of its furnishings to their tenacious memories.
+It is a curiosity one grows more and more willing to pardon, for there
+is so little to amuse them in everyday life.  I wonder if any one has
+not often been struck, as I have, by the sadness and hopelessness which
+seems to overshadow many of the people who live on the lonely farms in
+the outskirts of small New-England villages.  It is most noticeable
+among the elderly women.  Their talk is very cheerless, and they have a
+morbid interest in sicknesses and deaths; they tell each other long
+stories about such things; they are very forlorn; they dwell
+persistently upon any troubles which they have; and their petty
+disputes with each other have a tragic hold upon their thoughts,
+sometimes being handed down from one generation to the next.  Is it
+because their world is so small, and life affords so little amusement
+and pleasure, and is at best such a dreary round of the dullest
+housekeeping?  There is a lack of real merriment, and the fun is an
+odd, rough way of joking: it is a stupid, heavy sort of fun, though
+there is much of a certain quaint humour, and once in a while a flash
+of wit.
+
+I came upon a short, stout old sister in one room, making all the
+effort she possibly could to see what was on the upper shelves of a
+closet.  We were the only persons there, and she looked longingly at a
+convenient chair, and I know she wished I would go away.  But my heart
+suddenly went out toward an old dark-green Delft bowl which I saw, and
+I asked her if she would be kind enough to let me take it, as if I
+thought she were there for a purpose.  "I'll bring you a chair," said
+I; and she said, "Certain, dear."  And I helped her up, and I'm sure
+she had the good look she had coveted while I took the bowl to the
+window.  It was badly cracked, and had been mended with putty; but the
+rich, dull colour of it was exquisite.  One often comes across a
+beautiful old stray bit of china in such a place as this, and I
+imagined it filled with apple-blossoms or wild roses.  Mrs. Wallis
+wished to give it to me, she said it wasn't good for any thing; and,
+finding she did not care for it, I bought it; and now it is perched
+high in my room, with the cracks discreetly turned to the wall.  "Seems
+to me she never had thrown away nothing," said my friend, whom I found
+still standing on the chair when I came back.  "Here's some pieces of a
+pitcher: I wonder when she broke it!  I've heard her say it was one her
+grandmother gave her, though.  The old lady bought it at a vandoo down
+at old Mis' Walton Peters's after she died, so Mis' Wallis said.  I
+guess I'll speak to her, and see if she wants every thing sold that's
+here."
+
+There was a very great pathos to me about this old home.  It must have
+been a hard place to get a living in, both for men and women, with its
+wretched farming-land, and the house itself so cold and thin and worn
+out.  I could understand that the son was in a hurry to get his mother
+away from it.  I was sure that the boyhood he had spent there must have
+been uncomfortable, and that he did not look back to it with much
+pleasure.  There is an immense contrast between even a moderately
+comfortable city house and such a place as this.  No wonder that he
+remembered the bitter cold mornings, the frost and chill, and the dark,
+and the hard work, and wished his mother to leave them all behind, as
+he had done!  He did not care for the few plain bits of furniture: why
+should he? and he had been away so long, that he had lost his interest
+in the neighbours.  Perhaps this might come back to him again as he
+grew older; but now he moved about among them, in his handsome but
+somewhat flashy clothes, with a look that told me he felt conscious of
+his superior station in life.  I did not altogether like his looks,
+though somebody said admiringly, as he went by, "They say he's worth as
+much as thirty thousand dollars a'ready.  He's smart as a whip."
+
+But, while I did not wonder at the son's wishing his mother to go away,
+I also did not wonder at her being unwilling to leave the dull little
+house where she had spent so much of her life.  I was afraid no other
+house in the world would ever seem like home to her: she was a part of
+the old place: she had worn the doors smooth by the touch of her hands,
+and she had scrubbed the floors, and walked over them, until the knots
+stood up high in the pine boards.  The old clock had been unscrewed
+from the wall, and stood on a table; and when I heard its loud and
+anxious tick, my first thought was one of pity for the poor thing, for
+fear it might be homesick, like its mistress.  When I went out again, I
+was very sorry for old Mrs. Wallis; she looked so worried and excited,
+and as if this new turn of affairs in her life was too strange and
+unnatural; it bewildered her, and she could not understand it; she only
+knew every thing was going to be different.
+
+Georgie was by himself, as usual, looking grave and intent.  He had
+gone aloft on the wheel of a clumsy great ox-cart in which some of the
+men had come to the auction, and he was looking over people's heads,
+and seeing every thing that was sold.  I saw he was not ready to come
+away, so I was not in a hurry.  I heard Mrs. Wallis say to one of her
+friends, "You just go in and take that rug with the flowers on't, and
+go and put it in your wagon.  It's right beside my chest that's packed
+ready to go.  John told me to give away any thing I had a mind to.  He
+don't care nothing about the money.  I hooked that rug four year ago;
+it's most new; the red of the roses was made out of a dress of
+Miranda's.  I kept it a good while after she died; but it's no us to
+let it lay.  I've given a good deal to my sister Stiles: she was over
+here helping me yesterday.  There! it's all come upon me so sudden; I
+s'pose I shall wish, after I get away, that I had done things
+different; but, after I knew the farm was goin' to be sold, I didn't
+seem to realize I was goin' to break up, until John came, day before
+yesterday."
+
+She was very friendly with me, when I said I should think she would be
+sorry to go away: but she seemed glad to find I had been in Boston a
+great deal, and that I was not at all unhappy there.  "But I suppose
+you have folks there," said she, "though I never supposed they was so
+sociable as they be here, and I ain't one that's easy to make
+acquaintance.  It's different with young folks; and then in a case o'
+sickness I should hate to have strange folks round me.  It seems as if
+I never set so much by the old place as I do now I'm goin' away.  I
+used to wish 'he' would sell, and move over to the Port, it was such
+hard work getting along when the child'n was small.  And there's one of
+my boys that run away to sea, and never was heard from.  I've always
+thought he might come back, though everybody gave him up years ago.  I
+can't help thinking what if he should come back, and find I wa'n't
+here!  There; I'm glad to please John: he sets everything by me, and I
+s'pose he thinks he's going to make a spry young woman of me.  Well,
+it's natural.  Every thing looks fair to him, and he thinks he can have
+the world just as he wants it; but _I_ know it's a world o' change,--a
+world o' change and loss.  And you see, I shall have to go to a strange
+meetin' up there.  Why, Mis' Sands!  I am pleased to see you.  How did
+you get word?"  And then Mrs. Wallis made another careful apology for
+moving away.  She seemed to be so afraid some one would think she had
+not been satisfied with the neighbourhood.
+
+The auctioneer was a disagreeable-looking man, with a most unpleasant
+voice, which gave me a sense of discomfort, the little old house and
+its surroundings seemed so grave and silent and lonely.  It was like
+having all the noise and confusion on a Sunday.  The house was so shut
+in by the trees, that the only outlook to the world beyond was a narrow
+gap in the pines, through which one could see the sea, bright, blue and
+warm with sunshine, that summer day.
+
+There was something wistful about the place, as there must have been
+about the people who had lived there; yet, hungry and unsatisfied as
+her life might have been in many ways, the poor old woman dreaded the
+change.
+
+The thought flashed through my mind that we all have more or less of
+this same feeling about leaving this world for a better one.  We have
+the certainty that we shall be a great deal happier in heaven; but we
+cling despairingly to the familiar things of this life.  God pity the
+people who find it so hard to believe what he says, and who are afraid
+to die, and are afraid of the things they do not understand!  I kept
+thinking over and over of what Mrs. Wallis had said: 'A world of change
+and loss!'  What should we do if we did not have God's love to make up
+for it, and if we did not know something of heaven already?
+
+It seemed very doleful that  everybody should look on the dark side of
+the Widow Wallis's flitting, and I tried to suggest to her some of the
+pleasures and advantages of it, once when I had a chance.  And indeed
+she was proud enough to be going away with her rich son; it was not
+like selling her goods because she was too poor to keep the old home
+any longer.  I hoped the son would always be prosperous, and that the
+son's wife would always be kind, and not ashamed of her, or think she
+was in the way.  But I am afraid it may be a somewhat uneasy idleness,
+and that there will not be much beside her knitting-work to remind her
+of the old routine.  She will even miss going back and forward from the
+old well in storm and sunshine; she will miss looking after the
+chickens, and her slow walks about the little place, or out to a
+neighbour's for a bit of gossip, with the old brown checked
+handkerchief over her head; and, when the few homely, faithful old
+flowers come up next year by the door-step, there will be nobody to
+care any thing about them.
+
+I said good-by, and got into the wagon, and Georgie clambered in after
+me with a look of great importance, and we drove away.  He was very
+talkative: the unusual excitement of the day was not without its
+effect.  He had a good deal to tell me about the people I had seen,
+though I had to ask a good many questions.
+
+"Who was the thin old fellow, with the black coat, faded yellow-green
+on the shoulders, who was talking to Skipper Down about the dog-fish?"
+
+"That's old Cap'n Abiah Lane," said Georgie; "lives over toward Little
+Beach,--him that was cast away in a fog in a dory down to the Banks
+once; like to have starved to death before he got picked up.  I've
+heard him tell all about it.  Don't look as if he'd ever had enough to
+eat since!" said the boy grimly.  "He used to come over a good deal
+last winter, and go out after cod 'long o' father and me.  His boats
+all went adrift in a big storm in November, and he never heard nothing
+about 'em; guess they got stove against the rocks."
+
+We had still more than three miles to drive over a lonely part of the
+road, where there was scarcely a house, and where the woods had been
+cut off more or less, so there was nothing to be seen but the uneven
+ground, which was not fit for even a pasture yet.  But it was not
+without a beauty of its own; for the little hills and hollows were
+covered thick with brakes and ferns and bushes, and in the swamps the
+cat-tails and all the rushes were growing in stiff and stately ranks,
+so green and tall; while the birds flew up, or skimmed across them as
+we went by.  It was like a town of birds, there were so many.  It is
+strange how one is always coming upon families and neighbourhoods of
+wild creatures in the unsettled country places; it is so much like
+one's going on longer journeys about the world, and finding town after
+town with its own interests, each so sufficient for itself.
+
+We struck the edge of the farming-land again, after a while, and I saw
+three great pines that had been born to good luck in this world, since
+they had sprouted in good soil, and had been left to grow as fast as
+they pleased.  They lifted their heads proudly against the blue sky,
+these rich trees, and I admired them as much as they could have
+expected.  They must have been a landmark for many miles to the
+westward, for they grew on high land, and they could pity, from a
+distance, any number of their poor relations who were just able to keep
+body and soul together, and had grown up thin and hungry in crowded
+woods.  But, though their lower branches might snap and crackle at a
+touch, their tops were brave and green, and they kept up appearances,
+at any rate; these poorer pines.
+
+Georgie pointed out his aunt's house to me, after a while.  It was not
+half so forlorn-looking as the others, for there were so many flowers
+in bloom about it of the gayest kind, and a little yellow-and-white dog
+came down the road to bark at us; but his manner was such that it
+seemed like an unusually cordial welcome rather than an indignant
+repulse.  I noticed four jolly old apple-trees near by, which looked as
+if they might be the last of a once flourishing orchard.  They were
+standing in a row, in exactly the same position, with their heads
+thrown gayly back, as if they were dancing in an old-fashioned reel;
+and, after the forward and back, one might expect them to turn partners
+gallantly.  I laughed aloud when I caught sight of them: there was
+something very funny in their looks, so jovial and whole-hearted, with
+a sober, cheerful pleasure, as if they gave their whole minds to it.
+It was like some old gentlemen and ladies who catch the spirit of the
+thing, and dance with the rest at a Christmas party.
+
+Miss Hannah West first looked out of the window, and then came to meet
+us, looking as if she were glad to see us.  Georgie had nothing
+whatever to say; but, after I had followed his aunt into the house, he
+began to work like a beaver at once, as if it were any thing but a
+friendly visit that could be given up to such trifles as conversation,
+or as if he were any thing but a boy.  He brought the fish and lobsters
+into the outer kitchen, though I was afraid our loitering at the
+auction must have cost them their first freshness; and then he carried
+the axe to the wood-pile, and began to chop up the small white-pine
+sticks and brush which form the summer fire-wood at the
+farm-houses,--crow-sticks and underbrush, a good deal of it,--but it
+makes a hot little blaze while it lasts.
+
+I had not seen Miss Cynthia West, the younger sister, before, and I
+found the two women very unlike.  Miss Hannah was evidently the capable
+business-member of the household, and she had a loud voice, and went
+about as if she were in a hurry.  Poor Cynthia!  I saw at first that
+she was one of the faded-looking country-women who have a hard time,
+and who, if they had grown up in the midst of a more luxurious way of
+living, would have been frail and delicate and refined, and entirely
+lady-like.  But, as it was, she was somewhat in the shadow of her
+sister, and felt as if she were not of very much use or consequence in
+the world, I have no doubt.  She showed me some pretty picture-frames
+she had made out of pine-cones and hemlock-cones and alder-burs; but
+her chief glory and pride was a silly little model of a house, in
+perforated card-board, which she had cut and worked after a pattern
+that came in a magazine.  It must have cost her a great deal of work;
+but it partly satisfied her great longing for pretty things, and for
+the daintiness and art that she had an instinct toward, and never had
+known.  It stood on the best-room table, with a few books, which I
+suppose she had read over and over again; and in the room, beside, were
+green paper curtains with a landscape on the outside, and some chairs
+ranged stiffly against the walls, some shells, and an ostrich's egg,
+with a ship drawn on it, on the mantel-shelf, and ever so many rugs on
+the floor, of most ambitious designs, which they had made in winter.  I
+know the making of them had been a great pleasure to Miss Cynthia, and
+I was sure it was she who had taken care of the garden, and was always
+at much pains to get seeds and slips in the spring.
+
+She told me how much they had wished that Georgie had come to live with
+them after his mother died.  It would have been very handy for them to
+have him in winter too; but it was no use trying to get him away from
+his father; and neither of them were contented if they were out of
+sight of the sea.  "He's a dreadful odd boy, and so old for his years.
+Hannah, she says he's older now than I be," and she blushed a little as
+she looked up at me; while for a moment the tears came into my eyes, as
+I thought of this poor, plain woman, who had such a capacity for
+enjoyment, and whose life had been so dull, and far apart from the
+pleasures and satisfactions which had made so much of my own life.  It
+seemed to me as if I had had a great deal more than I deserved, while
+this poor soul was almost beggared.  I seemed to know all about her
+life in a flash, and pitied her from the bottom of my heart.  Yet I
+suppose she would not have changed places with me for any thing, or
+with anybody else, for that matter.
+
+Miss Cynthia had a good deal to say about her mother, who had been a
+schoolmate of Mrs. Wallis's--I had just been telling them what I could
+about the auction.  She told me that she had died the spring before,
+and said how much they missed her; and Hannah broke in upon her regrets
+in her brusque, downright way: "I should have liked to kep' her if
+she'd lived to be a hundred, but I don't wish her back.  She'd had
+considerable many strokes, and she couldn't help herself much if any.
+She'd got to be rising eighty, and her mind was a good deal broke," she
+added conclusively, after a short silence; while Cynthia looked
+sorrowfully out of the window, and we heard the sound of Georgie's axe
+at the other side of the house, and the wild sweet whistle of a bird
+that flew overhead.  I suppose one of the sisters was just as sorry as
+the other in reality.
+
+"Now I want you and Georgie to stop and have some tea.  I'll get it
+good and early," said Hannah, starting suddenly from her chair, and
+beginning to bustle about again, after she had asked me about some
+people at home whom she knew; "Cynthy!  Perhaps she'd like to walk
+round out doors a spell.  It's breezing up, and it'll be cooler than it
+is in the house.--No: you needn't think I shall be put out by your
+stopping; but you'll have to take us just as we be.  Georgie always
+calculates to stop when he comes up.  I guess he's made off for the
+woods.  I see him go across the lot a few minutes ago."
+
+So Cynthia put on a discouraged-looking gingham sun-bonnet, which
+drooped over her face, and gave her a more appealing look than ever,
+and we went over to the pine-woods, which were beautiful that day.  She
+showed me a little waterfall made by a brook that came over a high
+ledge of rock covered with moss, and here and there tufts of fresh
+green ferns.  It grew late in the afternoon, and it was pleasant there
+in the shade, with the noise of the brook and the wind in the pines,
+that sounded like the sea.  The wood-thrushes began to sing,--and who
+could have better music?
+
+Miss Cynthia told me that it always made her think of once when she was
+a little girl to hear the thrushes.  She had run away, and fallen into
+the marsh; and her mother had sent her to bed quick as she got home,
+though it was only four o'clock.  And she was so ashamed, because there
+was company there,--some of her father's folks from over to Eliot; and
+then she heard the thrushes begin to call after a while, and she
+thought they were talking about her, and they knew she had been whipped
+and sent to bed.  "I'd been gone all day since morning.  I had a great
+way of straying off in the woods," said she.  "I suppose mother was put
+to it when she see me coming in, all bog-mud, right before the company."
+
+We came by my friends, the apple-trees, on our return, and I saw a row
+of old-fashioned square bee-hives near them, which I had not noticed
+before.  Miss Cynthia told me that the bee money was always hers; but
+she lost a good many swarms on account of the woods being so near, and
+they had a trick of swarming Sundays, after she'd gone to meeting; and,
+besides, the miller-bugs spoilt 'em; and some years they didn't make
+enough honey to live on, so she didn't get any at all.  I saw some bits
+of black cloth fluttering over the little doors where the bees went in
+and out, and the sight touched me strangely.  I did not know that the
+old custom still lingered of putting the hives in mourning, and telling
+the bees when there had been a death in the family, so they would not
+fly away.  I said, half to myself, a line or two from Whittier's poem,
+which I always thought one of the loveliest in the world, and this
+seemed almost the realization of it.  Miss Cynthia asked me wistfully,
+"Is that in a book?"  I told her yes, and that she should have it next
+time I came up, or had a chance of sending it.  "I've seen a good many
+pieces of poetry that Mr. Whittier wrote," said she.  "I've got some
+that I cut out of the paper a good while ago.  I think everything of
+'em."
+
+"I put the black on the hives myself," said she.  "It was for mother,
+you know.  She did it when father died.  But when my brother was lost,
+we didn't, because we never knew just when it was; the schooner was
+missing, and it was a good while before they give her up."
+
+"I wish we had some neighbours in sight," said she once.  "I'd like to
+see a light when I look out after dark.  Now, at my aunt's, over to
+Eliot, the house stands high, and when it's coming dark you can see all
+the folks lighting up.  It seems real sociable."
+
+We lingered a little while under the apple-trees, and watched the wise
+little bees go and come; and Miss Cynthia told me how much Georgie was
+like his grandfather, who was so steady and quiet, and always right
+after his business.  "He never was ugly to us, as I know of," said she;
+"but I was always sort of 'fraid of father.  Hannah, she used to talk
+to him free's she would to me; and he thought, 's long's Hannah did any
+thing, it was all right.  I always held by my mother the most; and when
+father was took sick,--that was in the winter,--I sent right off for
+Hannah to come home.  I used to be scared to death, when he'd want any
+thing done, for fear I shouldn't do it right.  Mother, she'd had a
+fall, and couldn't get about very well.  Hannah had good advantages.
+She went off keeping school when she wasn't but seventeen, and she
+saved up some money, and boarded over to the Port after a while, and
+learned the tailoress trade.  She was always called very smart,--you
+see she's got ways different from me; and she was over to the Port
+several winters.  She never said a word about it, but there was a young
+man over there that wanted to keep company with her.  He was going out
+first mate of a new ship that was building.  But, when she got word
+from me about father, she come right home, and that was the end of it.
+It seemed to be a pity.  I used to think perhaps he'd come and see her
+some time, between voyages, and that he'd get to be cap'n, and they'd
+go off and take me with 'em.  I always wanted to see something of the
+world.  I never have been but dreadful little ways from home.  I used
+to wish I could keep school; and once my uncle was agent for his
+district, and he said I could have a chance; but the folks laughed to
+think o' me keeping school, and I never said any thing more about it.
+But you see it might 'a' led to something.  I always wished I could go
+to Boston.  I suppose you've been there?  There!  I couldn't live out
+o' sight o' the woods, I don't believe."
+
+"I can understand that," said I, and half with a wish to show her I had
+some troubles, though I had so many pleasures that she had not, I told
+her that the woods I loved best had all been cut down the winter
+before.  I had played under the great pines when I was a child, and I
+had spent many a long afternoon under them since.  There never will be
+such trees for me any more in the world.  I knew where the flowers grew
+under them, and where the ferns were greenest, and it was as much home
+to me as my own house.  They grew on the side of a hill, and the sun
+always shone through the tops of the trees as it went down, while below
+it was all in shadow--and I had been there with so many dear friends
+who have died, or who are very far away.  I told Miss Cynthia, what I
+never had told anybody else, that I loved those trees so much that I
+went over the hill on the frozen snow to see them one sunny winter
+afternoon, to say good-by, as if I were sure they could hear me, and
+looked back again and again, as I came away, to be sure I should
+remember how they looked.  And it seemed as if they knew as well as I
+that it was the last time, and they were going to be cut down.  It was
+a Sunday afternoon, and I was all alone, and the farewell was a reality
+and a sad thing to me.  It was saying good-by to a great deal besides
+the pines themselves.
+
+
+We stopped a while in the little garden, where Miss Cynthia gave me
+some magnificent big marigolds to put away for seed, and was much
+pleased because I was so delighted with her flowers.  It was a gorgeous
+little garden to look at, with its red poppies, and blue larkspur, and
+yellow marigolds, and old-fashioned sweet, stray things,--all growing
+together in a tangle of which my friend seemed ashamed.  She told me
+that it looked as orderly as could be, until the things begun to grow
+so fast she couldn't do any thing with 'em.  She was very proud of one
+little pink-and-white verbena which somebody had given her.  It was not
+growing very well; but it had not disappointed her about blooming.
+
+Georgie had come back from his ramble some time before.  He had cracked
+the lobster which Miss Hannah had promptly put on to boil, and I saw
+the old gray cat having a capital lunch off the shells; while the horse
+looked meeker than ever, with his headstall thrown back on his
+shoulders, eating his supper of hay by the fence; for Miss Hannah was a
+hospitable soul.  She was tramping about in the house, getting supper,
+and we went in to find the table already pulled out into the floor.  So
+Miss Cynthia hastened to set it.  I could see she was very much ashamed
+of having been gone so long.  Neither of us knew it was so late.  But
+Miss Hannah said it didn't make a mite o' difference, there was next to
+nothing to do, and looked at me with a little smile, which said, "You
+see how it is.  I'm the one who has faculty, and I favour her."
+
+I was very hungry; and, though it was not yet six, it seemed a whole
+day since dinner-time.  Miss Hannah made many apologies; and said, if I
+had only set a day, she would have had things as they ought to be.  But
+it was a very good supper and she knew it!  She didn't know but I was
+tired o' lobsters.  And when I had eaten two of the biscuits, and had
+begun an attack on the hot gingerbread, she said humbly that she didn't
+know when she had had such bad luck, though Georgie and I were both
+satisfied.  He did not speak more than once or twice during the meal.
+I do not think he was afraid of me, for we had had many a lunch
+together when he had taken me out fishing; but this was an occasion,
+and there was at first the least possible restraint over all the
+company, though I'm glad to say it soon vanished.  We had two kinds of
+preserves, and some honey besides, and there was a pie with a pale,
+smooth crust, and three cuts in the top.  It looked like a very good
+pie of its kind; but one can't eat every thing, though one does one's
+best.  And we had big cups of tea; and, though Miss Hannah supposed I
+had never eaten with any thing but silver forks before, it happened
+luckily that I had, and we were very merry indeed.  Miss Hannah told us
+several stories of the time she kept school, and gave us some
+reminiscences of her life at the Port; and Miss Cynthia looked at me as
+if she had heard them before, and wished to say, "I know she's having a
+good time."  I think Miss Cynthia felt, after we were out in the woods,
+as if I were her company, and she was responsible for me.
+
+I thanked them heartily when I came away, for I had had such a pleasant
+time.  Miss Cynthia picked me a huge nosegay of her flowers, and
+whispered that she hoped I wouldn't forget about lending her the book.
+Poor woman! she was so young,--only a girl yet, in spite of her having
+lived more than fifty years in that plain, dull home of hers, in spite
+of her faded face and her grayish hair.  We came away in the rattling
+wagon.  Georgie sat up in his place with a steady hand on the reins,
+and keeping a careful lookout ahead, as if he were steering a boat
+through a rough sea.
+
+We passed the house were the auction had been, and it was all shut up.
+The cat sat on the doorstep waiting patiently, and I felt very sorry
+for her; but Georgie said there were neighbours not far off, and she
+was a master hand for squirrels.  I was glad to get sight of the sea
+again, and to smell the first stray whiff of salt air that blew in to
+meet us as we crossed the marshes.  I think the life in me must be next
+of kin to the life of the sea, for it is drawn toward it strangely, as
+a little drop of quicksilver grows uneasy just out of reach of a
+greater one.
+
+"Good-night, Georgie!" said I; and he nodded his head a little as he
+drove away to take the horse home.  "Much obliged to you for my ride,"
+said he, and I knew in a minute that his father or one of the aunts had
+cautioned him not to forget to make his acknowledgments.  He had told
+me on the way down that he had baited his nets all ready to set that
+evening.  I knew he was in a hurry to go out, and it was not long
+before I saw his boat pushing off.  It was after eight o'clock, and the
+moon was coming up pale and white out of the sea, while the west was
+still bright after the clear sunset.
+
+I have a little model of a fishing dory that Georgie made for me, with
+its sprit-sail and killick and painter and oars and gaff all cleverly
+cut with the clumsiest of jackknives.  I care a great deal for the
+little boat; and I gave him a better knife before I came away, to
+remember me by; but I am afraid its shininess and trig shape may have
+seemed a trifle unmanly to him.  His father's had been sharpened on the
+beach-stones to clean many a fish, and it was notched and dingy; but
+this would cut; there was no doubt about that.  I hope Georgie was
+sorry when we said good-by.  I'm sure I was.
+
+A solemn, careful, contented young life, with none of the playfulness
+or childishness that belong to it,--this is my little fisherman, whose
+memory already fades of whatever tenderness his dead mother may have
+given him.  But he is lucky in this, that he has found his work and
+likes it; and so I say, "May the sea prove kind to him! and may he find
+the Friend those other fishermen found, who were mending their nets on
+the shores of Galilee! and may he make the harbour of heaven by and by
+after a stormy voyage or a quiet one, whichever pleases God!"
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+
+HOW LILY GOT THE CAT.
+
+When the twins were about as big as last year's chickens, they had the
+measles.
+
+It was in the month of May, and there was a great deal to be done just
+then.
+
+There was Celestia's flower-bed to dig into; there were Mary's chickens
+to kiss to death, and Aunt Ann's bowls of starch and gravy to upset.
+And in the shop there was the cinnamon-jar to be filled up with Scotch
+snuff, and the cream of tartar to mix with the soda, and the molasses
+to be set running.
+
+Besides these, there were a great many dry wells to be dug in the yard,
+and brick-paint to be pounded, and the gate to be pulled off its
+hinges, and as many more pieces of mischief as there were minutes in a
+day.
+
+It was Davie who had all these things to do, though.  Lily, sweet
+little blossom, only followed around after him and said "Yes."
+
+But as for Davie, he would willingly have done everybody's work all
+over the city, from the President of the University, wearing his
+four-cornered hat on Commencement Day, down to the charcoal man who
+went by a great many times a day making the prettiest noise you ever
+heard, and looking as though he were having the best time in the world,
+with nobody to worry him about washing his face or keeping his clothes
+clean.
+
+But the mischief had to wait now; for the twins were lying in the
+cradle all day long, with their faces as red as poppies, and their poor
+little eyes shut up and swollen.
+
+"It is as good as a poor play to see how beautifully the measles have
+come out.  Davie and Lily will get along all right now, as sure as A is
+apple-dumpling, only we must see to it that they don't take any cold,"
+said Aunt Ann, giving them a good drink of thoroughwort, and then
+hurrying off to attend to the duties of the shop, with her glasses in
+her hand and a pair of scissors dangling at her side by a long green
+braid.
+
+It didn't seem much like a poor play, or any kind of a play, though to
+the twins to lie there in a bed of nettles with their eyes full of hot
+cotton and their throats full of pepper, and the air full of people
+making up dreadful faces at them, all with sore eyes and horrid red
+noses.
+
+So there they lay in the cradle while a blue-bottle-fly buzzed shrilly
+from a dark corner where a fat gray spider had tied him up by his feet
+and was sharpening her bill ready to make chops of him.
+
+The milkman whopped at the back gate; the cracked school-bell around
+the corner rang out long and loud; somewhere a carpenter was pounding
+stroke upon stroke; and, as a background, beneath all came up the heavy
+grinding roll of wheels and the clashing beat of hoofs upon the rough
+pavement.
+
+The tall brass clock ticked and ticked and held up its hands in solemn
+surprise at finding it was only ten o'clock after all.  Why! it seemed
+already as long as a whole day since the bell on the First Baptist
+church had struck nine.
+
+Then Lily began to cry with a gentle little noise, about as though a
+humming-bird was fluttering his wings against the cup of a
+trumpet-flower.
+
+"What is the matter, Lily?" asked Davie, feebly.  "What you crying for?"
+
+What was the _matter_?  What _wasn't_ the matter, one would think!
+
+But Lily only whimpered, "I want the cat."
+
+"I'll get her for you, Lily," said Davie, trying to fumble his blind
+way out of the cradle and start in search of her.
+
+Fortunately for the ending of the story, somebody was in the room and
+was ready to pick Davie up when his weak little legs suddenly doubled
+up like a pocket-knife and dropped him on the nursery floor.  So,
+though Lily did not get the cat, neither did Davie get, what Aunt Ann
+called "his death o' cold."
+
+In due time, the measles turned and went their way wandering off around
+after other children, one generation and then another.  Lily's cat
+lived out her nine lives and then turned into sage and catnip in the
+back garden.
+
+And now, after a long, long while, Davie and Lily have a birthday.  Not
+the next one, nor the second, nor the third, nor, if the truth must be
+told, the fiftieth.  But a birthday that came running to meet them with
+glasses on and a flourishing of the almond-tree.
+
+This time the twins' birthday is not kept in the gray old mansion, with
+the shop below and the garden behind, where Aunt Ann rattled her keys
+and lived out her bustling life.  Nor does Aunt Ann come to help keep
+it.  Her hands have long been folded in quiet rest; and it is years,
+too, since Mary and Celestia went where the shining is brighter than
+the sunlight and softer than the moon.
+
+But the twins are not alone.  Bless you!  I should think not!  First,
+here is Amy Starbird, with a pair of pictures she has painted from the
+very paint-box Davie gave her on her own last birthday.  And here is
+Amy's daughter Rose, with twin marble babies tucked up in a marble crib
+on top of a marble match box; and Rose, all this time, is Davie's
+daughter as well as Amy's.
+
+And here is a bright bevy of boys and girls, some of them with Lily's
+blue eyes and Lily's fair hair, each bringing some double gift for
+their mother and Uncle Davie.
+
+There are pairs of wristings and pairs of neckties, books in two
+volumes, and double-frosted cakes; there is a pair of china slippers
+with a pair of babies on the toes; there is a crystal vase held up by
+two crystal swans, and a vase of silver in the form of a chariot drawn
+by two doves; for everything must be in pairs for the birthday of the
+twins.
+
+Then, last of all, Davie gave to Lily a covered box, and when she
+opened it she saw within an exquisitely embroidered velvet pen-wiper,
+with a beautiful tortoise-shell cat lying upon it, and, playfully
+jumping over her back, were two of the most charming tortoise-shell
+kittens ever seen.
+
+The mother-cat had around her neck a blue ribbon, and on the ribbon was
+written these words,--
+
+"Here is your cat, Lily,--after fifty years."
+
+
+FRANCES LEE.
+
+
+
+[Illustration: decoration]
+
+
+
+WILLIAM NICHOLSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, WAKEFIELD.
+
+
+
+
+VICTORIA SERIES.
+
+"These volumes afford excellent reading for young persons.  They are
+very well printed and tastefully bound."--Bookseller.
+
+
+NEW JUVENILE BOOKS.
+
+SQUARE 16mo.  HANDSOMELY BOUND.  1s. EACH.
+
+  BRAVE ANTHONY ARCHER.  By Emily Jane Moore.
+  A ROSE WITH TWO AND FIFTY THORNS.  By Emily Jane Moore.
+  SET IN GOLD AND SILVER.  By Emily Jane Moore.
+  THE FORTUNES OF BRIDGET MALLORIE.  By Emily Jane Moore.
+  THE ORPHAN OF LESSONTO, and other Tales.
+  THE BALLAD-SINGER OF THE BOULEVARD.  Translated from the French.
+  WILLIAM TELL, THE HERO OF SWITZERLAND, and other Legends.
+  OLD FRIENDS AND NEW.
+  AN ARROW IN A SUNBEAM, and other Tales.
+  THE FLOWER MISSION, and what grew out of it.
+  A CROWN OF GLORY.
+  THE FLOWERS OF THE FOREST.
+  CHARMING TALES FOR YOUTH.
+  THE LITTLE WOODMAN AND HIS DOG.
+  WENTIE ARMITAGE; or the Angel of the Hospital.
+  THE HONEST BOY, and his Reward.
+  THE SELF-DENIAL BOX, and other Stories.
+  IN THE BACKWOODS.
+
+
+LONDON: PUBLISHED BY W. NICHOLSON & SONS,
+
+20, Warwick Square, Paternoster Row, E.C., and Albion Works, Wakefield.
+
+
+The Wakefield Sixpenny Juvenile Series.
+
+Neatly Bound in Cloth, with Coloured Frontispiece and Picture outside.
+
+  The SNOW STORM, or the Providential Deliverance.
+  ROBERT JONES, or the Two Paths.
+  A BOOK ABOUT BOYS.
+  A BOOK ABOUT GIRLS.
+  The EIGHT BELLS, and their Voices.
+  The FOUR LITTLE CRUSOES.
+  The LITTLE HUNTER, and other Stories.
+  The BLUE SASH, and other Tales.
+  LITTLE SUSY'S SIX TEACHERS.
+  CHARLIE, the YOUNG CONQUEROR.
+  The BOY ADMIRAL, or What Will You Be?
+  The YOUNG QUEEN, or the Little Shoes.
+  YOUTH'S NATURAL HISTORY.  Illustrated.
+  RALPH and TOMMY, or I Wish I Wasn't Black.
+  KIT WEEDON, or the Little Trunkmaker.
+  JACKETS and TROUSERS, and other Tales.
+  HARRY and MAUDE, or the White Kitten.
+  CICELY and the City Girl.
+  The MOSS ROSE, and other Tales.
+  The RED SHOES, and other Stories.
+  A BLOSSOM in the DESERT, and other Tales.
+  HERMAN the CHARCOAL BURNER.  From the German.
+  The STORY of LITTLE PATCHY.
+  UNDER the APPLE TREE.
+  SUSIE and CLARENCE, or the New-Year's Gift.
+  EDA DARLING, the Little Flower Girl.
+  BIBLE BOYS.  A book for the Young.  With 7 full page Engravings.
+
+
+LONDON: PUBLISHED BY W. NICHOLSON & SONS,
+
+20, Warwick Square, Paternoster Row, E.C., and Albion Works, Wakefield.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN ARROW IN A SUNBEAM***
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