Young Lucretia and Other Stories Part 15

"Sha'n't never have such a chance again."

"Oh yes, you will; your grandfather'll let you have a dog some time."

"No; he won't never let me have nothing."

"Oh, don't you give up yet, Ben."

Benjamin shook his head like a discouraged old man, and turned to go home.

"Sammy'll feed him, and take real good care of him, and you can come over here and see him," Mr. Tucker called after him, as he went down the road.

Benjamin thought to himself that he should not want to, as he marched wearily homeward. His arms were lightened of the puppy, but his heart seemed heavy within him. Two boys whom he knew sang out to him from a load of hay, but he gave only a grim nod in response. "_They've_ got a dog," he muttered; and indeed the pretty shepherd dog was following after the load.

Benjamin, when he came in sight of home, thought he would take a short-cut through the orchard. He meditated stealing up the back stairs to his chamber, staying up there, and saying that he did not want any supper; he was not hungry. They had not cut the gra.s.s in the orchard, and he plunged through clover, feathery gra.s.s, and daisies to his waist.

He felt pleased to think how he was making a furrow through his grandfather's hay. He emerged from the orchard, and went on towards the barn; directly back of it was the old well. When he reached that he stopped short. There was Seventoes--beautiful great yellow cat--stretched in the sun, all his wonderful seven-toed paws spread out.

The ledge of the old well was a strange place for a cat, but Seventoes was fond of it, and stayed there much of the time when he was not on the shed roof.

Benjamin walked close to the well and looked at Seventoes. His small face was burning red with the heat; his blue eyes gleamed angrily. "You lazy old cat," said he. He stood a second longer; then he thrust out his right hand and gave Seventoes a push. There was a piteous yawl and a great clawing, and Seventoes was out of sight. Benjamin ran. He gasped; a white streak was settling around his mouth. He was well versed in Bible stories, and he thought of Cain. What had he done? What would happen to him? Could he ever get away from his guilt, run fast as he would? Benjamin ran as he had never run before, his heart pounding, although he did not know clearly what he was running for. He tore around the barn, through the pasture bars, towards the house. When he came in sight of the shed a great qualm of guilt and remorse forced him to glance up at the place where poor Seventoes had so loved to sit, and where he would sit no more. Benjamin glanced, then he stood stock-still, fairly aghast with awe and terror--_there sat Seventoes_!

All the red faded out of Benjamin's cheeks. He had never been encouraged in superst.i.tious beliefs, but he was an imaginative child, and just now bewildered and unstrung. He stared at the shed roof. Yes! he saw Seventoes there, and Seventoes was at the bottom of the old well. Had he not seen him fall, clawing, down?

Benjamin rushed staggering into the kitchen. "Oh, grandsir! oh, mother!"

he wailed--"oh, I've pushed Seventoes into the old well and drowned him, and his ghost's sitting on the shed roof! Oh, mother!"

Grandfather Wellman was confined to his chair with rheumatism, but he arose. "Pushed Seventoes into the well," he repeated, while Benjamin's mother turned as pale as her son.

"I have--I have," sobbed Benjamin. "I didn't know I was going to, but I have. And he's in the well, and he's sitting on the shed roof too. Oh!"

"What do you mean?" his mother gasped. "Stop acting so, and tell me what you've done."

"I pushed Seventoes into the old well. I didn't know I was going to, but I did; and he's dead in there, and he's on the shed roof. Oh, mother!"

"You 'ain't pushed that cat into the well?" groaned Grandfather Wellman.

"If you have--" He was trying to limp across the kitchen with his cane.

He, too, was pale, and trembling from head to foot. "Hannah," he said to Benjamin's mother, "you come right along quick, and see if we can't get him out. I wouldn't take a hundred dollars for that cat."

Benjamin's mother started. Benjamin, sobbing and trembling, was clinging to her. Just then _Seventoes walked in through the east door_, his splendid ringed tail waving a little uneasily, but not a hair of him was hurt. A frightened cat can run faster than a guilty little boy, and Seventoes had found his unusual number of claws of good service in climbing a well and r.e.t.a.r.ding his progress towards the bottom.

They all looked.

"Is it--Seventoes?" gasped Benjamin, with wild eyes.

"Of course it's Seventoes," growled his grandfather. "I'd like to know what you've been cutting up so for. p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y."

Benjamin's mother took him over to the sink, and put some water on his head, and made him drink some. "There's no such thing as a ghost, and you're acting very silly," said she; "but I don't wonder you are scared, when you've done such a dreadful thing. It scares me to think of it. It was 'most as bad as killing somebody. I never thought a boy of mine would do such a thing. Grandsir good as he is to you, too."

"I--won't ever do so--again," sobbed Benjamin, all trembling. "I'm sorry; I _am_ sorry."

Benjamin was not whipped, the scourging of his own conscience had been severe enough, but he sat pale and sober in the kitchen, while grandsir, with Seventoes on his knees, and his mother talked to him.

"If you ever do anything like this again, Benjamin," said his grandfather, "I shall be ha'sh with you, ha'sher than I've ever been, and you must remember it."

"I guess he must," said his mother. "It was a dreadful wicked thing, and he should be punished now if I didn't think he'd suffered enough from his own guilty conscience for this time, and would never as long as he lived do such a terrible thing again."

"I won't--I--won't!" choked Benjamin.

At supper-time, when the new milk was brought in from the barn, Benjamin filled a saucer with it and carried it to the door for Seventoes. He filled it so full that he spilled it all the way over the clean kitchen floor, but his mother said nothing. Seventoes lapped his milk happily; Benjamin, with his little contrite, tear-stained face, stood watching him, and grandsir sat in his arm-chair. Over in the fields the hay-makers were pitching the last loads into the carts; the east sky was red with the reflected color of the west. Everything was sweet and cool and peaceful, and the sun was not going down on Benjamin's childish wrath. His grandfather put out his hand and patted his little red cropped head, "You're always going to be a good boy after this, ain't you, sonny?"

"Yes, sir," said Benjamin, and he got down on his knees and hugged Seventoes.

LITTLE MIRANDY AND HOW SHE EARNED HER SHOES

By the 1st of June Mrs. Thayer had the sun-bonnets done. There were four of them, for the four youngest girls--Eliza, Mary Ann, Harriet, and Mirandy. She had five daughters besides these, but two were married and gone away from home, and the other three were old enough to make their own sun-bonnets.

There were four Thayer boys; one of them came next to Mirandy, the youngest girl, the others ranked upward in age from Harriet, who was eleven, to Sarah Jane, who was sixteen. There were thirteen sons and daughters in all in Josiah Thayer's family, and eleven were at home. It was hard work to get enough from the stony New England farm to feed them; and let Mrs. Thayer card and spin and dye and weave as she would, the clothing often ran short. And so it happened that little Mirandy Thayer, aged six, had no shoes to her feet.

One Sunday in June she cried because she had to go to meeting barefooted.

"Ain't you ashamed of yourself, a great big girl like you, crying?" said her mother, sternly. "You go right over there, and sit down on the settle till father gets. .h.i.tched up, and Daniel, you go and sit down 'side of her, and teach her the first question in the catechism. She'd ought to find out there's something else to be thought about on the Sabbath day besides shoes."

So Mirandy, sniffing between the solemn words, repeated them after Daniel, who was twelve years old, and knew his catechism quite thoroughly. And when the great farm wagon, with the team of oxen, stood before the door, she climbed in with the rest without a murmur.

But sitting in the meeting-house through the two hours' discourse, she drew up her little bare feet under her blue petticoat, and going down the aisle afterwards, she crouched, making it sweep the floor, until her mother dragged her up forcibly by one arm.

"Ain't you ashamed of yourself?" she whispered. "A great big girl like you!"

Mirandy was in reality very small for her age, and everybody called her "little;" but she got very few privileges on account of her youth and littleness. In those days, and especially in a family like Josiah Thayer's, where there were so many children that each had to scratch for itself at an early age or go without, six years was considered comparatively mature, and the child who had lived that long was not exempt from many duties.

So Mrs. Thayer did not think herself in the least severe when she said to Mirandy after meeting: "If you want some shoes so bad, you'll have to work an' earn 'em."

Mirandy looked up inquiringly at her mother.

"You can pick berries an' sell 'em," replied her mother. "You're plenty big enough to."

Mirandy said nothing, and soon her mother set her to rocking Jonathan in his red wooden cradle; but as she sat, with her small bare foot on the rocker, ambition expanded wider and wider in her childish soul, and she resolved that she would earn some shoes.

The berries were not ripe before the middle of July. She had some five weeks to wait before she could fairly begin work. But not a day pa.s.sed that she did not visit the pastures to see if the berries were ripe. She brought home so many partially ripe ones for samples that her brothers and sisters remonstrated. They, too, were vitally interested in the berry crop in behalf of shoes and many other things. "She won't leave any berries on the bushes to get ripe if she picks so many green ones,"

they complained, and her mother issued a stern decree that Mirandy should not go to the berry pasture until the berries were fairly ripe.

But at last, one hot morning in July, the squad of berry-pickers started. There were four Thayer girls and two Thayer boys, besides Jonathan, the baby, whom Eliza dragged in his little wooden wagon.

"If you go berrying this mornin', you've got to take Jonathan with you,"

Mrs. Thayer had said. "Dorcas is weaving, an' Lyddy an' I have got to dye. You'll have to take him out in the pasture with you, an' tend him."

The berry pasture whither they were bound was about a half-mile from home. The two boys scurried on ahead, the four yellow sun-bonnets marched bravely on, and Jonathan's wagon rattled behind.