Uncle Rutherford's Nieces Part 14

"But you would not say what is not true, even to save Matty's hair, would you?" said Miss Craven, unable to allow this more than doubtful morality to pa.s.s.

Again Johnny wagged his head, this time as one quite convinced that he was in the right, and answered: "If I tells shust one nice, leetle pit of a lie" (Johnny did not mince matters, even to his own conscience), "'tis for to keep away a great pig wrong; for if I tells dat mutter de s.h.i.+ld's head is vort so moosh, she put dat head in de scissors de negst minit."

The kindly old Dutchman was plainly convinced that the end justified the means, and cousin Serena felt that any further discussion of the question was useless, and that it would not tend to improve Matty's moral views or those of her brother Tony, who had just come in, as both were sure to side with their friend and benefactor.

"We will hope that no one will ever touch Matty's pretty hair," she said; and I, seized with a sudden inspiration, and still appealing to Matty's vanity, said,--

"I would like to see Matty's hair flowing over a dark-blue dress. How it would set it off! Would you like a blue dress, Matty? Your hair will look so pretty over it if you wear it down."

Matty looked rather askance at me. She evidently regarded me as a rival in the matter of hair, and was not inclined to accept any advances on my part; but friendly, jolly little Tony answered for her; while she hesitated, evidently meditating some ungracious answer.

"Oh, wouldn't she though, miss! I guess she would like it, an' her hair would look awful pooty on it, an' when we goes to the Sunday-school festival,--when it's Easter, ye know,--Matty'll wear the blue dress, an' her hair down on it, an' she'll look as good as any of the girls there, an' better, 'cause there isn't one of 'em has hair like Matty's.--An' I'll tell ye, Matty, if the lady,--she's one of Jim's young ladies,--if she gives ye the blue dress, we'll keep it to Mrs.

Petersen's if she'll let us, so ma can't get it for the drink.--Are ye goin' to give it to her, miss?"

"Indeed I am," I answered to the eager question. "Come now, Matty, stand up, and we'll measure you for the dress. Perhaps I can find one ready-made, and you shall have it to-morrow.--Johnny, can you lend me a yard-measure?"

Johnny produced one; and Matty, still half doubtful whether or no to be gracious, and eying me with a gaze which had some lingering viciousness in it, rose half reluctantly to her feet. Standing so, her deformity was even more visible than it was when she was seated; and it took all my nerve and power of will to take the measure of the mis-shapen shoulders without shrinking from the touch. And then I saw the improbability, I might say the impossibility, of finding in any ready-made-clothing store, a dress which would fit the twisted form.

One must be made on purpose; one which would set at defiance all rules of symmetry; and how to have it completed to-morrow, even late in the day to-morrow? Where should I go to have such an order filled by the time I desired it? And I believed from what I had seen of Matty that the non-fulfilment or postponement of my hasty, ill-considered promise would be enough to excite all her enmity again. However, I said nothing until we were out of the little shop, when I exclaimed at my own want of fore-thought, and asked where I could go to have my order fulfilled without delay.

"You can't do it," said Bessie. "Even at the stores where they profess to furnish costumes at twenty-four hours' notice, they would not agree to give you, in so short a time, a dress for which they can use no ordinary pattern. Amy,"--with what seemed to be a most irrelevant change of subject,--"is any one coming to your house to dinner to-night?"

"Cousin Serena, and yourself if you will," I answered.

"Yes, I intended to suggest that you should invite me," answered Bessie, "and, had you proved obdurate, should have appealed to Milly or your mother. Well, there will be four of us: yourself, cousin Serena, Milly, and myself; and we will press the mother and Mrs. Rutherford into the service. Let us go to Arnold's, buy some suitable material,--and we all know what cousin Serena is with scissors and thimble,--coax her to cut out a dress for Matty, and we will all devote the evening, perhaps the whole night, to it. By our united exertions, I think that we can surely accomplish it in time for you to take it to her to-morrow, and your credit will be saved."

"If we were not in the street, I should fall upon you with kisses and tears of grat.i.tude," I answered ecstatically; "as it is, consider yourself embraced.--Cousin Serena, will you help us?"

There was no question of that: cousin Serena was only too glad to give us her services; and although, as I have said, she needed to be guided and tyrannized over in the matter of style and fas.h.i.+on where her own dress was concerned, she was an expert in fas.h.i.+oning garments for the poor.

Bessie's idea was acted upon forthwith. We took our way down to Arnold's, purchased the necessary material, and, lest it should not be sent home in time, bid pride hide its head, and carried the parcels ourselves.

Jim beamed upon us when he gathered, from the conversation around the dinner-table, to what the evening was to be devoted, and became quite an overpowering nuisance with his pressing attentions to the young ladies.

The dress was so nearly completed that night that Milly and I had but little difficulty in finis.h.i.+ng it for the next afternoon.

Father and mother gave consent to my pursuing my benevolent intentions with regard to Matty, so far as I could do it without venturing into the abode of her wretched parents, but positively forbade my going there even under the guidance and protection of cousin Serena. Indeed, the fear of them which Tony and Matty showed augured little good or encouragement for those who would benefit these children, unless some profit therefrom, was to accrue to the elder Blairs themselves.

The dress was ready in good time, and supplemented by the addition of a warm sack of the same color from mother and a little cloth cap from aunt Emily. A hood had been in the thoughts of the latter, as warmer and more suitable; but I had begged for the cap as affording better opportunity for the display of Matty's hair. "Poor little object!" I pleaded: "why not allow her the gratification of this small vanity?"

and aunt Emily yielded, as she was sure to do when any one's small whims and fancies were to be satisfied.

Maria made the garments into a neat parcel for me; and I, thinking to give Jim a pleasure, summoned him on his return from school to be the bearer thereof, and to accompany me to Johnny's. That Jim was pleased, was an a.s.sured fact; and his tongue wagged incessantly though respectfully all the way until we arrived at our destination. Then while I opened the parcel, and presented Matty with the dress and other articles, he stood by in delighted contemplation, looking from me to Matty as if he would say to her, "This is my young mistress;" to me, "This is my _protegee_."

As for Matty, she appeared, so far as she showed any feeling at all, to consider that the gifts were altogether due to him; and she vouchsafed no word of thanks to me. Not that I cared for expressions of grat.i.tude; but I felt a little hopeless as I saw how entirely I had failed to make any impression on her.

Tony, however, who was present again, was profuse in his thanks, and really seemed to feel all that he said.

The s.h.i.+ning hair fell like a s.h.i.+elding veil over Matty's deformity again to-day; and after this it became her practice to wear it so when she was away from home. There she wore it tightly bound up, and kept it as much out of sight as possible; fearing, poor little creature, that she might be bereft of it, should any idea of its pecuniary value enter her mother's mind.

CHAPTER X.

A COLD BATH.

"Well, Jim," I said, as I returned home in the fast-gathering twilight, with my escort trotting beside me, "how are you getting on now at school? I have not heard lately."

"I'm havin' an awful hard time just now, Miss Amy," he answered, coming nearer,--"an awful hard time."

"How is that?" I asked. "Are they pressing you too much? Have they given you too many lessons, or are those you had before becoming harder?"

"Neither, miss," he answered. "'Tain't the lessons; I don't mind them.

Lessons ain't nothin'--I mean lessons ain't anything"--Jim was growing more choice in language, and taking infinite pains with his parts of speech--"when a feller has such good help as Miss Milly or Mr. Edward.

If they're too hard for me, one of 'em always helps me an' makes 'em plain, an' I keep along good enough in the cla.s.ses. But it's the keepin' cool, an' not flyin' out when I get provoked, 'specially with that Theodore Yorke. Miss Amy, you never saw the like of him. He's just the meanest chap ever breathed; and the way he finds out things you don't want him to know, an' keeps bringin' 'em up an' naggin' about 'em, is the worst."

"All the more credit to you, then, Jim, if you keep your temper under such provocation," I answered soothingly, "and you show yourself by far the better man of the two. You know the Bible says, 'Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.'"

"Well, Miss Amy," he said, "I guess it ain't no such rememberin' nor Bible texes that keeps me cool. It's lots of other things. First, I do want awful bad to do credit to Miss Milly; then I don't want to fight Theodore, nor have a real sharp fallin' out, on account of the captain an' Mrs. Yorke; then I'm thinkin', if I don't learn to hold my temper now, how will it be if I come to be President of these States? I s'pose there's lots of things that'll be provokin', an' hard to stand, when you're President; and if Congress don't want to mind you right spang off when you tell 'em to do a thing, an' goes to foolin' round about it, I s'pose it don't do to be flyin' out, 'cause then folks would think you wasn't fit to be President. Besides, when one's mad he can't think about the best way to do things, an' I might make foolish laws they wouldn't like. But most of all it will be a great deal better way to get even with Theodore if I come out first with Mr.----"

Here he suddenly checked himself, and even in the dim twilight I could see the color mounting to the roots of his carroty hair. He had evidently been on the verge of some disclosure which he would have regretted, and no questions succeeded in drawing forth any thing further from him.

He had been sufficiently candid, however, in admitting that he was not influenced, in the struggle with himself, by any abstract notions of right and wrong, or by any special desire to please a higher power. But that he had some motive still undeclared, and of greater weight with him than any of those he had mentioned, I was convinced; and why should he wish to keep it back?

However, my cogitations on the subject, and Jim's confidences, were now cut short by the appearance at the corner, of another escort, who took charge of me at once with a very decided remonstrance against my remaining out till this hour "with only the protection of that boy."

This was a slight which would have wounded Jim to the quick had he heard it, which he fortunately did not, as it was spoken in an undertone; and he was evidently pleased to be freed from an attendance which had become embarra.s.sing to him by his own indiscretion.

"What do you suppose he could have meant?" I asked of Milly that night, after I had rehea.r.s.ed to her, in the privacy of our own room, my conversation with Jim.

"I am sure I do not know," said my sister. "If it were possible, I should think he meant uncle Rutherford's prize; but as he does not and can not know of that, of course it cannot be. And while we must all wish that he were acting from a higher motive than any of these, still it is a great point gained, that he is so learning to control himself; the habit will be formed, and he will learn to be his own master. But I fear that Theodore Yorke is not a truthful or upright boy. Even our own boys, who see so little of him, call him a sneak; and although he has a bold, self-a.s.sertive manner, it has none of Jim's frankness. Oh, uncle Rutherford, I wish that you could have seen things differently!"

But as uncle Rutherford had not only seen things in his own light, but had acted thereon, there was nothing for us to do beyond giving Jim what help we could. There was little, however, a lady could do to help a boy in a public school in his struggle with adverse circ.u.mstances, save by advice and encouragement; and Milly did not fail him in these.

Taking a hint from what I had seen of Jim's influence over Matty, I now based my plans for her benefit and regeneration upon that, in addition to the play upon her vanity by means of that wonderful and much-prized hair. Jim, too, I knew would paint me and all my doings in glowing colors, making much of any little kindness I might do for her.

The blue dress and other decent clothes were kept at kind Mrs.

Petersen's "for fear of the drink," and Matty donned them there when she found occasion to wear them; and this led me to carry out the idea of rescuing the children, Matty and Tony, entirely from the intemperate wretches who dishonored the names of father and mother, and placing them under the care of Mrs. Petersen. So long as the two little cripples brought home such portion of their weekly earnings as Jim had agreed should be allowed to Blair and his wife, the latter cared little where or how the neglected children spent their time, especially as they were now provided with their dinner as a part of the price of their services at the peanut-stand.

The disapprobation in Milly's manner, which I had noticed and wondered at, when my new enterprise was under consideration, had altogether vanished after that first afternoon; and she had not only helped with all her might in the making of the blue dress, but she had ever since been interested and full of thoughtful suggestion.

"Milly," I said to her one day soon after, "why did you seem so unwilling to have me undertake to care for that little cripple? You surely had formed a precedent for such things in our family. I never could understand your objections; for, that you had objections, I could not help seeing."

Milly laughed.

"I find that such objections as I entertained were not well founded,"

she answered.

"Perhaps so, but that does not tell me what they were," I insisted.