A Little Girl in Old Salem Part 11

He wanted to add, "And some were a gift from your dear father," but he could not disturb her happy mood.

"Suppose we go down on the porch. It is too wet to walk anywhere."

"Oh, yes;" delightedly. "And to-morrow I will go down to the vessel again and see Captain Corwin. I do not want it to rain any more for weeks and weeks."

"No, for days and days. Weeks would dry us all up, and we would have no lovely spring flowers."

"And a famine maybe. Do the very poor people sometimes starve?"

"I do not think we have any very poor people, as they do in India. We are not overcrowded yet."

The rain had beaten the paths and the street hard, and it looked as if it had been swept clean. In spite of it all there were cheering evidences of spring.

"There are some children in that house," she exclaimed, nodding her head.

"Yes, the Uphams. There are two girls and two boys, the oldest and the youngest, who isn't much more than a baby. Bentley Upham must be about twelve. Polly is next, but she is a head taller than you. Then there's Betty. I am glad there will be some little girls for you to play with."

She looked eager and interested.

"Will you come in to supper? Chilian, you ought to know better than to be standing in this damp air. And that child with nothing around her!"

"The air is reviving, after having been housed for two days." But he turned and went in, leading the child by the hand.

The long, bleak New England coast winter was over, though it had lingered as if loath to go. Springs were seldom early, no one expected that. But this one came on with a rush. The willows donned their silver catkins and then threw them off for baby leaves, the lilac buds showed purple, the elms and maples came out in bloom, and the soft ones drew crowds of half-famished bees to their sweet ta.s.sels. The gra.s.s was vividly green, iridescent in the morning sun, with the dew still upon it. Snowdrop, crocus, hepatica, and coltsfoot, wild honeysuckle, were all about, the forsythia flared out her saucy yellow, the fruit buds swelled. Parties were out in the woods hunting trailing arbutus that has been called the darling of northern skies, that lies hidden in its nest of green leaves, silent, with no wind tossing it to and fro, but betrayed by its sweetness.

There were other signs of spring at Salem. The whole town seemed to burst out in house-cleaning. Parlor shutters were thrown open and windows washed. Carpets were beaten, blankets hung out to air, those that had been in real use washed. Women were out in gardens with sunbonnets and gloves, a coat of tan not being held in much esteem, and snipped at roses and hardy plants. Men were spading and planting the vegetable gardens, painting or white-was.h.i.+ng fences. All was stir and bustle, and tired folk excused themselves if they nodded in church on Sunday.

Cynthia made pilgrimages to the _Flying Star_ that had been her home for so long. The storm had wrought great havoc with some of the s.h.i.+pping, and big boys were out gathering driftwood. The _Gazette_ had some melancholy news of "lost at sea." But Captain Corwin thought he had weathered worse storms.

"She is picking up mightily," he said to Miss Winn, nodding toward Cynthia. "Shouldn't be surprised if she favored her mother, after all.

Only them eyes ain't neither Orne nor Leverett. Don't let her grieve too much when the bad news comes."

Eunice and Chilian had taken her to call on the Uphams. And though she was quite familiar at home, here she shrank into painful shyness and would not leave Eunice's sheltering figure.

"Children get soonest acquainted by themselves," declared Mrs. Upham. "I suppose you will send her to school. If she's not very forward, Dame Wilby's is best. She and Betty can go together. Why, she isn't as tall as Betty--and nine, you said? Granny was talking the other day about the time she was born. She's a real little Salem girl after all, though she's got a foreign skin, and what odd-colored hair! We've started Polly to Miss Betts. I want her to learn sewing and needlework, and she's too big now to company with such children. Why, I was almost a woman at twelve, and could spin and knit with the best of them. Miss Eunice, I wish you'd teach her that pretty openwork st.i.tch you do so handy.

Imported stockings cost so much. They say there's women in Boston doing the fancy ones for customers. But I tell Polly if she wants any she must do them herself."

Mrs. Upham had a tolerably pleasant voice. She always talked in monologues. Betty edged around presently and would have taken Cynthia's hand, but the child laid it in Miss Eunice's lap, and looked distrustful.

Chilian was as glad as she when the call ended. He did not seek the society of women often enough to feel at home with them, though he was kindly polite when he did meet them.

"Did you ask about the school?" was the inquiry of Elizabeth that evening.

"Yes; she thinks Dame Wilby's the best for small children. And Cynthia knows so little that is of real importance, though she reads pretty well," said Eunice.

"Yes, she must get started. I shall be glad when the _Flying Star_ is off and she isn't running down there with the men. I don't see what's got into Chilian to think of teaching her Latin. It had enough sight better be the multiplication table."

So she proposed the school to Chilian. She had a queer feeling about his fancy for the child. She would have scouted the idea of jealousy, but she would have had much the same feeling if he had "begun to pay attention" to some woman. The other matters had reached a pa.s.sable settlement. The "best chamber" was tidily kept, the little girl well looked after to see that she troubled no one. Miss Winn kept her clothes in order, but they had a decidedly foreign look, and of materials no one would think of buying for a child. But the goods were here, and might as well be used.

Miss Winn had made a few alterations in the room--softened the aspect of it. She longed to take out the big carved bedstead, but she knew that would never do. She made herself useful in many un.o.btrusive ways, gardened a little, was neighborly yet reserved.

"I don't know what we would do if she were a gossip," Elizabeth commented.

She broached the subject of the school to Chilian.

"Why, yes," he answered reluctantly. "I suppose she ought to go. She's curiously shy with other children."

"She talks enough about that Nalla, as if they had been like sisters."

"You can notice that she always preserves the distinction, though."

"There's no use bothering with that Latin, Chilian. Next thing it will be French. And she won't know enough figuring to count change. Girls don't need that kind of education."

"But some of them have to be Presidents' wives. And some of them wives to men who have to go abroad. French seems to be quite general among cultivated people."

"It's hardly likely she'll go abroad. And she needs to be like other people. I don't see what you find so entertaining about her. And you couldn't bear children in your room!"

"She isn't any annoyance. Then she is so deft, so dainty. She touches books with the lightest of fingers. She will sit and look at pictures, and it quite surprises me how much she knows about geography."

"And nothing much about her native country. She can't tell the difference between Pilgrims and Puritans. And she didn't know why we came over here, and why it was not the same G.o.d in England, and if all the G.o.ds in India were idols. Chilian, you shouldn't encourage her irreverence. It looks pert in a child."

"She will get over these ways as she grows older and mingles with other children."

"That is what I am coming to. She ought to begin at once. Betty Upham goes to Dame Wilby. Her mother considers it excellent for small children. She could go with Betty and there would be no fear of her trailing off no one knows where."

Of course, she ought to go to school. He could manage a big boy on the verge of manhood very well. But this woman-child puzzled him. She seemed very tractable, obedient in a certain sense, yet in the end she seemed to get, or to take, her own way. Suppressing one train of action opened another. She had a sweet way of yielding, but a strong way of holding on. A little thing made her happy, yet in her deepest happiness there was much gravity. His theories were that certain qualities brought to pa.s.s certain results. He forgot that there were no such things as pure temperaments, and that environments made second nature different from what the first might have been. The child puzzled him by her contrariety, yet she was not a troublesome child.

"Well;" reluctantly.

"I'll see the Dame. And we will start her on Monday."

He nodded.

Elizabeth had another point to gain. She looked over her trunk of pieces. Here were several yards of brown and white gingham, quite enough for a frock without any furbelows. With the roll in her hand she tapped at the partly open door. Rachel had laid out on the bed several white frocks, plain enough even for Salem tastes.

"Cynthia's going to school on Monday," she announced. "And I thought this would make her a good school frock. It won't be dirtysome. You see children here _do_ dress differently. You'll get into the ways."

Rachel looked at the gingham. "I shouldn't like it for her," she said quietly. "Her father always wanted to see her in white. That is new every time it is washed. These things fade and then look so wretched.

Beside she will only outgrow these frocks."

"Children here keep their white frocks for Sundays," was the decisive reply.

"She may as well wear these out. They were made last summer. She has not grown much meanwhile. I should like to keep her in the way her father desired."

"Then she must have a long-sleeved ap.r.o.n to cover her up. This will make two. For those white things make an endless sight of was.h.i.+ng."

"I have been considering that," said Rachel Winn quietly. "I wear white a good deal myself. I noticed a small house on Front Street where there were nearly always clothes on the lines, and I stopped in to inquire. I felt it was too much laundry-work for your woman through the summer.

This Mrs. Pratt is very reasonable and does her work nicely. So I have made arrangements with her. Captain Leverett made a generous allowance for incidental expenses."