If she had not been, the entrance of Elizabeth and Miss Winn would have checked the garrulity of Eunice. Cynthia had been laying down the small diamond-shaped pieces, making a block.

"Why do you let the child muddle over those pieces, Eunice? The carpet may not be clean," said Elizabeth sharply.

"And it is getting dark, so we had better put them all up. Mercy! how it still rains. Why, it seems as if there would be another flood."

"That can never happen. We have the promise."

"That the whole world will not be destroyed. But parts of it may suffer. You and Cynthia are fortunate not to be in it;" and Eunice raised her eyes to them, with a certain thankfulness.

It had not stopped yet in the morning, but the wind was veering to the south, the air was not so cold and the rain much gentler. Cynthia wandered about like an unquiet spirit. It was cold up in their room. Chilian had proposed a fire, but Elizabeth had negatived it sharply.

"There ought to be room enough in the dining-room and keeping-room for two extra people," she said decidedly.

He felt sorry for the little girl with her downcast face, as he met her on the landing.

"Don't you want to come and visit me?" he asked, in an inviting tone.

"Oh, yes!" and the grave little face lightened.

The blaze was brighter here than downstairs, she felt quite sure. And the room had a more cheerful look. The table was spread with books and papers, and, oh, the books that were on the shelves! The curious things above them suggested India. There really was the triple-faced god she had seen so often, carved in ivory, and another carving of a temple. She walked slowly round and inspected them. Then she paused at a window.

"How much it rains!" she began. "I don't see how so much rain can be made. When is it going to stop?"

"I think it will hold up this afternoon and be clear to-morrow, clear and sunny."

"I like sunshine best. And little rains. This has been so long."

"And we haven't much to amuse a child. When it clears up we must find some little folks. Does it seem very strange to you?"

"I haven't lived with big women much, except Rachel. And the houses are so different. You get things about, and the servants pick them up. There are so many servants. Sometimes there are white children, but not many. Their mothers take them back to England. Or they die."

She uttered the last sadly, and her long lashes drooped.

He wondered a little how she had stood the climate. She looked more like a foreigner than a native of Salem town.

"What did you do there?" He hardly knew how to talk to a little girl.

"Oh, a great many things. I went to ride in a curious sort of cart—the natives pulled it. Then the children came and played in the court. They threw up balls and caught them, ever so many, and they played curious games on the stones, and acrobatic feats, and sung, and danced, and acted stories of funny things. Then father read to me, and told me about Salem when he was a little boy. You can't really think the grown-up people were little, like you."

"And that one day you will be big like them."

She pushed up her sleeve. They were large and made just big enough for her hand at the wrist, not at all like the straight, small sleeves of the Puritan children. After surveying it a moment, she said gravely:

"I can't understand how you grow. You must be pushed out all the time by something inside."

"You have just hit it;" and he smiled approvingly. "It is the forces inside. There is a curious factory inside of us that keeps working, day and night, that supplies the blood, the warmth, the strength, and is always pushing out; it even enlarges the bones until one is grown and finished, as one may say. And the food you eat, the air you breathe, are the supplies."

"But you go on eating and breathing. Why don't you go on growing?"

There was a curious little knot in her forehead where the lines crossed, and she raised her eyes questioningly to him. What wonderful eyes they were!

"I suppose it is partly this: You employ your mind and your body and they need more nourishment. Then—well, I think it is the restraining law of nature, else we should all be giants. In very hot countries and very cold countries they do not grow so large."

He could not go into the intricacies of physiology, as he did with some of the students.

"You did not go to school?"

"Oh, no!" She laughed softly. "The native schools were funny. They sat on mats and did not have any books, but repeated after the teacher. And, sometimes, he beat them dreadfully. There were some English people had a school, but it was to teach the language to the natives. And then Mr. Cathcart came to stay with father. He had been the chaplain somewhere and wasn't well, so they gave him a—a——"

"Furlough?" suggested Chilian.

"Yes; father sent him out in one of the boats. He began to teach me some things. I could read, you know. And I could talk Hindostani some—with the children. Then I learned to spell and pronounce the words better. He had a few books of verses that were beautiful. I learned some of them by heart. And Latin."

"Latin!" in surprise.

"He had some books and a Testament. It was grand in the sound, and I liked it. There were many things, cases and such, that I couldn't get quite straight, but after a little I could read, and then make it over into English."

When he was eight he was reading Latin and beginning French. Some of the Boston women he knew were very good French scholars, though education was not looked upon as a necessity for women. It seemed odd to him—this little girl in Calcutta learning Latin.

"Let us see how far you have gone." Teaching never irked him when he once set about it.

He hunted up a simple Latin primer.

"Come around this side;" and he drew her nearer to him. There had been no little girls to train and teach, and for a moment he felt embarrassed. But she took it as a matter of course, and he could see she was all interest.

It had been, as he supposed, rather desultory teaching. But she took the corrections and explanations with a sweetness that was quite enchanting. And she could translate quite well, in an idiomatic fashion. Really, with the right kind of training she would make a good scholar.

"Oh, you must be tired of standing," he said presently. "How thoughtless of me. I have no little chairs, so I must hunt one up, but this will have to do now. That will be more comfortable. Now we can go on."

She laughed at her own little blunders in a cheerful fashion, and made haste to correct them. And then he found that she knew several of the old Latin hymns by heart, as they had been favorites of the English clergyman.

They were interrupted by a light tap at the door. He said "Come"; and turned his head.

It was Miss Winn.

"Pardon me. We couldn't imagine where Cynthia was. Hasn't she been an annoyance?"

"Oh, no; we have had a very nice time."

"But—had you not better come downstairs. Miss Eunice is sewing her pretty patchwork again."

"Oh, let me stay," she pleaded. "Do I bother you?"

It crossed his mind just then that in the years to come more than one man would yield to the sweet persuasiveness of those eyes.

"Yes, let her stay. She is no trouble. Indeed, we are studying."

Miss Winn was glad of his indorsement. Miss Elizabeth had been "worrying" for the last ten minutes. She had crept softly up to the garret, quite sure she should find the child in mischief. Then she had glanced into the "best chamber," but there was no sign of her there.

"Very well," replied Miss Winn.

Cynthia drew a long breath presently.

"Oh, you are tired!" he exclaimed. "Run over to the window and tell me how the sky looks. I think it doesn't rain now."

She slipped down, stood still for a moment, then turned and clapped her hands, laughing deliciously.

"Oh, there is blue sky, and a great yellow streak. The clouds are trying to hide the sun, but they can't. Oh, see, see!"

She danced up and down the room like a fairy in the long ray of sunshine that illumined the apartment.

"Oh, are you not glad!" She turned such a joyous face to him that he smiled and came over to the window that nearly faced the west.

"Better than the Latin?"

"Well—I like both;" archly.

He raised the window. A warm breath of delightful air rushed in, making the room with the fire seem chilly by contrast. He drew in long reviving breaths. Spring had truly come. To-morrow the swelling buds would burst.

"We must have a little Latin every day. And occasionally a walk in the sunshine. Twice a week I go down to Boston, but the other days will be ours."

"I like your room," she said frankly. "But what sights of books! Do you read them all?"

"Not very often. I do not believe I have read them all through. But I need them for reference, and some I like very much."

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 tassels. The grass 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-washing 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 shipping, 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 stitch 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 passable 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 unobtrusive 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 God in England, and if all the gods 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 pass 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 apron to cover her up. This will make two. For those white things make an endless sight of washing."

"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."

What Elizabeth termed Miss Winn's "independence" grated sorely upon her ideas of what was owing to the head of the house, which was herself. It was always done so quietly and pleasantly one could hardly take umbrage. Cynthia was not exactly a child of the house. She was in no wise dependent on her newly found relatives. Chilian had made that understood in the beginning, when he had chosen the best chamber for them.

"You don't need to take boarders," she had replied tartly.

"I don't know as we are to call it that. I am the child's guardian and answerable for her comfort and her welfare. The perfect trust confided in me has touched me inexpressibly. I didn't know that Anthony Leverett held me in such high esteem. And if I choose to put this money by until she is grown—it will make such a little difference in our living——"

"Chilian Leverett, you are justly entitled to it," she interrupted with sharp decision. "He's right enough in making a fair provision for them—no doubt he has plenty. But I don't quite like the boarder business, for all that."

"We must get some one to help you with the work."

"I don't want any more help than I have. Land sakes! Eunice and I have plenty of leisure on our hands. I wouldn't have a servant around wasting things, if she paid me wages."

They had gone on very smoothly. Eunice had found her way to the child's heart. But then Eunice had lived with her dream children that might have been like Charles Lamb's "Children of Alice." Elizabeth might have married twice in her life, but there was no love in either case, rather a secret mortification that such incapables should dare to raise their thoughts to her. But she had some strenuous ideas on the rearing of children, quite of the older sort. Life was softening somewhat, even for childhood, but she did not approve of it.



CHAPTER VI

GOING TO SCHOOL

Elizabeth Leverett interviewed Dame Wilby beforehand. The woman came half a day on Monday to wash and she hardly knew how to spend half an hour, but when she found Miss Winn was going, she loftily relegated the whole business to her.

Dame Wilby lived in an old rambling house, already an eyesore to the finer houses in Lafayette Street, but the Dame was obstinate and would not sell. "It was going to last her time out. She was born here when it was only a lane, and she meant to be buried from here." Once it had been quite a flourishing school; but newer methods had begun to supersede it. It was handy for the small children about the neighborhood, it took them over the troublesome times, it gave their mothers a rest, and kept them out of mischief. And the old dames were thorough, as far as they went. Indeed, some of the mothers had never gone any farther. They could cast up accounts, they could weigh and measure, for they had learned all the tables. They could spell and read clearly, they knew all the common arts of life, and how to keep on learning out of the greater than printed books—experience.

Dame Wilby might have been eighty. No one remembered her being young. Her husband was lost at sea and she opened the school, worked in her garden, saved until she had cleared her small old home, and now was laying up a trifle every year. She was tall and somewhat bent in the shoulders, very much wrinkled, with clear, piercing light blue eyes and snowy hair. She always wore a cap and only a little line of it showed at the edge of her high forehead. Her frocks were made in the plainest style, skirts straight and narrow, and she always wore a little shoulder shawl, pinned across the bosom—white in the summer, home-dyed blue in the winter.

Some children were playing tag in the unoccupied lot next door. The schoolroom door opened at the side. There were two rows of desks, with benches for the older children, two more with no desks for the A B C and spelling classes. The rest they learned in concert, orally. The dame had a table covered with a gray woollen cloth, some books, an inkstand, a holder for pens and pencils, and the never-failing switch.

"Yes," she answered to Miss Winn's explanation. "Miss Leverett was telling about her. I was teaching school here when she was born, and then the captain took her away to the Ingies again." Most folks pronounced it that way. "Rather meachin' little thing—I s'pose it was the climate over there. They say it turns the skin yellow. Let's see how you read, sissy?"

She read several verses out of the New Testament quite to the dame's satisfaction. Then about spelling. The second word, in two syllables, floored her. Had she ciphered? No. Did she know her tables? No. The capital of the state? That she could answer. When the war broke out? When peace was declared?

"I'll ask Cousin Leverett," she answered, in nowise abashed by her ignorance. "He tells me a great many things."

"You must study it out of books. I s'pose she's going to live here? She's not going back to the Ingies? I heard the captain was coming home."

"He is settling up his affairs," was the quiet answer.

Dame Wilby looked the child all over.

"You'll sit on that bench," she said. Then she rang the bell and the children trooped in, staring at her. The little boys—four of them—were on the seat back of her, on her seat she made the fifth. Betty Upham was in the desk contingent.

They repeated the Lord's prayer in concert. Then lessons were given out. The larger girls read.

"You can come and read with this class;" nodding to Cynthia.

She was not a regularly bashful child, but she flushed as the children stared at her. They sometimes wore their Sunday white frock one or two days at school. Cynthia was so used to her clothes, cared so little about them that they were rarely in her mind. But this universal attention annoyed her.

"'Tend to your books, children."

Cynthia acquitted herself finely, rather too much so, the dame thought. She would talk to her about it. A girl didn't want to read as if she was a minister preaching a sermon.

Then she was given a very much "dog's-eared" spelling-book to study down a column. Another class read some easy lesson; a story about a dog that interested her so much that she forgot to study. While the older children were doing sums one little boy after another came up to the desk and spelled from a book. One's attention wandered and the dame hit him a sharp rap. Tables followed, eight and nine times; dry measure, and then questions were asked singly. Some few missed. Cynthia followed the spelling where they went up and down. Then the larger ones were dismissed for recess.

"Cynthy Leverett, come up here and see how many words you can spell. You ought to be ashamed, a big girl like you staying behind in next to the baby class."

Cynthia's face was scarlet. Alas! She had been so interested watching and listening she had not studied at all. But the words were rather easy and she did know all but two.

"Now you take the next line and those two over again. See if you can't get them all learned by noon."

The next little girl, who could not have been more than six, missed a number. She had a queer drawl in her voice.

"What did I tell you, Jane Mason? And you have missed more than two. Hold out your hand!"

The switch came down on the poor little hand with an angry swish. Cynthia winched.

"Now you go back and study. No going out to play for you this morning. Jane Mason, you're the biggest dunce in school."

The two other girls did better. Then the bell rang and the girls came in with flushed and laughing faces.

Cynthia studied her two words over until they ceased to have any meaning. At twelve they were all dismissed.

"Isn't she a hateful old thing?" said Janie Mason, when they were outside of the door. "I wish I was big enough to strike back. I don't like school anyhow. Do you?"

"I—I don't know. I have never been before."

Several of the other girls swarmed around her with curious eyes.

"What a pretty frock!" began Betty Upham. "I suppose it's your Sunday best, with all that work."

"Betty said you were an Injun," said another. "I never saw an Injun who didn't have coarse, straight, black hair, and yours is lightish and curls. I'd so love to have curly hair."

"I'm not the kind of Indians you have here," she returned indignantly. "I was born right here in Salem. I've lived in Calcutta and in China, and been to Batavia, and ever so many places."

"Then you ain't an Injun at all! Betty, how could you?"

"Well, that's what some of them said. Maybe your mother was an Injun!" looking as if she had fixed the uncertain suspicion.

"No, she wasn't. She lived here part of the time. She was born in Boston."

They glanced at each other in a kind of upbraiding fashion.

"And you had to be put with the little children! Aren't there any schools in that place you came from? It's a heathen country. Our minister prays for it. Don't you have any churches either? What do people do when they are grown up if they never go to school?"

"Are you coming stiddy?"

"Is Mr. Chilian Leverett your real relation?"

"Oh, tell me—have you any other frock as pretty as this? My sister Hetty has a beautiful one, all lace and needlework. She's saving it to be married in."

"Martha, I dare you to a race!"

Two girls ran off as fast as they could. Betty Upham caught Cynthia's arm.

"I didn't say you were a real Injun. Debby Strang always gets things mixed up. But it is something queer——"

"East India;" in a tone of great dignity.

"Where the ships are coming from all the time? Is it prettier than Salem?"

"It's so different you can't tell. We do not have hardly any winter. And there are vines and flowers and temples to heathen gods, and the people are yellow and brown."

"Do you suppose you will ever grow clear white?"

Cynthia had half a mind to be angry. Even Miss Elizabeth was fair, and Miss Eunice had such a soft, pretty skin.

"There, that's your corner. You're coming this afternoon?"

"Oh, I suppose so."

Miss Elizabeth was all bustle and hurry. It was clouding up a little. It hadn't been a real fair day, and the hot sun had dried the clothes too quick. She liked them to bleach on the line, it was almost as good as the grass. And Miss Drake couldn't stay and iron, they had sickness over to the Appletons and she had to go there. Everything was out of gear.

"I'd help with the ironing, if you would like," said Miss Winn.

"Well, the ironing isn't so much;" rather ungraciously. "You see, there were four blankets. I never touch an iron to them, but shake them good and fold them, and let them lay one night, then hang them on the line in the garret. The bulk of it was large. And a good stiff breeze blows out wrinkles. The wind hasn't blown worth a Continental;" complainingly.

"Did you like the school?" Miss Winn inquired in the hall.

"No, I didn't. And I don't seem to know anything;" in a discouraged tone.

"Oh, you will learn."

It was warm in the afternoon. Two of the boys were decidedly bad and were punished. They positively roared. Cynthia spelled, and spelled, and studied—"One and one are two," "one and two are three," and after a while it dawned on her that it was just one more every time. Why, she had known that all the time, only it hadn't been put in a table.

It grew very tiresome after a while. She asked if she couldn't have recess with the big girls, but was sharply refused. In truth the good dame grew very weary herself, and was glad when five o'clock came and she could go out in the garden and recruit her tired nerves.

The stage was stopping at the door. Oh, how glad she was to see Cousin Leverett. He smiled down in the flushed face.

"How did the school go?" he asked.

She hung her head. "I don't like it. I have to be with the little class because I don't know tables, but I learned all the one times. That was easy enough when you came to see into it. But—nine and nine?"

"Eighteen," he answered promptly.

"And you answered it right offhand!" She gave a soft, cheerful laugh. "Oh, do you suppose I shall ever know so much?"

"There was a time when I didn't know it."

"Truly?" She looked incredulous.

"Truly. And I had quite hard work remembering to spell correctly."

"I studied two lines. This morning I missed two words, but this afternoon I knew them all. And I can't write on the slate. The pencil wabbles so, and then it gives an awful squeak that goes all over you. And I can't do sums. And there's all the tables to learn. And I don't like the teacher. I wish Miss Eunice could teach me. Or maybe Rachel might."

"I might help you a little. But you read well?"

"She said it was too—too"—she wrinkled up her forehead—"too affected, like a play-actor."

"Nonsense!" he cried disapprovingly. "We will see about some other school presently. Would you like to take a walk with me? I'm tired of the long stage-ride."

"Oh, so much!" She caught one hand in both of hers and gave a few skips of joy.

"Let us go over to the river."

Of course, he should have gone in and announced their resolve. But he was so used to considering only himself, and he realized that it must have been a tiresome day to her. They went over Lafayette Street, which was only a lane, and then turned up the stream.

Oh, how sweet the air was with the odorous dampness and the smell of new growths, tree and grass. The sun, low in the west, slanted golden gleams through the tree branches which chased each other over the grassy spaces, as if they were quite alive and at merry-making. There were sedgy plants in bloom, jack-in-the-pulpit, and what might have been a lily, with a more euphonious name. Iridescent flies were skimming about, now and then a fish made a stir and dazzle. Squirrels ran up and down the trees and chattered, robins were singing joyously, the thrush with her soft, plaintive note. She glanced up now and then and caught his eye, and he felt she was happy. It was a delightful thing, after all, to render some one truly happy. Perhaps children were more easily satisfied, more responsive.

"Oh," he said presently, "we must go back or we will lose our supper, and Cousin Elizabeth will scold."

"I shouldn't think she would dare to scold you;" raising wondering eyes.

"Why not?" He wondered what reason she would give.

"Because you are a man."

"She scolds Silas."

"Oh, that is different."

"How—different? We are both men. He is quite as tall as I."

"But you see—well, he is something like a servant. She tells him what to do, and if he doesn't do it right she can find fault with it. But you are—well, the house is yours. You can do what pleases you."

"Quite reasoned out, little one;" and he laughed with an approving sound.

"It's curious that you scold people you like, and other people may do the same thing and—is it because you don't dare to? If it is wrong in the one place, why not in the other?"

"Perhaps politeness restrains us."

"I don't like people to scold. Miss Eunice never does."

"Eunice has a sweet nature. Doesn't Miss Winn ever scold you?"

"Well—I suppose I am bad and wilful sometimes, and then she has the right. But when you do things that do not matter——"

Miss Winn was walking in the garden. Cynthia waved her hand, but walked leisurely forward.

"I couldn't imagine what had become of you."

"It was my fault," interposed Chilian. "I met her at the gate and asked her to go for a walk."

"And with that soiled apron!"

"That came off the slate. I hadn't any desk. It was hard to hold it on my knee."

"You might have come in for a clean one. Run upstairs and change it."

But she was destined to meet Cousin Elizabeth in the hall. The elder caught her arm roughly.

"Where have you been gadding to, bad girl? Didn't you know you must come straight home from school? Here we have been worried half to death about you, and I'm tired as a dog, trotting 'round all day. You deserve a good whipping;" and she shook her. She would have enjoyed slapping her soundly. But Chilian entered at that instant.

"She is going upstairs for a clean apron," he said. "I took her off for a walk."

"She might have asked whether she could go or not," snapped Elizabeth. "She's the most lawless thing!"

"It was my place. Don't blame the child!"

"Well, supper's ready."

She didn't have her apron on quite straight and her hair was a little frowsy. Elizabeth had proposed it should be cut short on the neck for the summer, but Miss Winn had objected.

"Such a great mop! No child wears it!"

Cynthia came in quietly and took her place. After her first cup of tea Elizabeth thawed a little, enough to announce that two of the Appleton children were ill, they thought with scarlet fever.

Chilian expressed some sympathy.

"And how was the school, Cynthia? We thought you might have been kept in for some of your good deeds, as children are so seldom bad."

"I—I didn't like it," she answered simply.

"Children can't have just what they like in this world," was Elizabeth's rejoinder.

"Nor grown people either," was Chilian's softening comment. Then he changed the subject. He had seen Cousin Giles, who proposed to pay them a visit, coming on some Saturday.

"Have you any lesson to learn?" he asked of Cynthia. "If so, bring your book and come to my room."

"Oh, thank you!" Her face was radiant with delight.

Where had she left her book? Dame Wilby had told her to take it home and study. Surely she had brought it—oh, yes! she had put it just inside the gate under the great clump of ribbon grass. If only Cousin Elizabeth's sharp eyes had not seen it. But there it was, safe enough.

She was delighted to go to Cousin Chilian's room, though she never presumed. She seemed to have an innate sort of delicacy that he wondered at.

The spelling was soon mastered. It was the rather unusual words that puzzled her. Then they attacked the tables and he practised her in making figures. Like most children left to themselves, she printed instead of writing.

"Oh!" she cried with a wistful yet joyous emphasis, "I wish I could come to school to you. And I'd like to be the only scholar."

"But you ought to be with little girls."

"I don't like them very much."

Then Miss Winn came for her. "You are very good to take so much trouble," she said.

"Oh, I like you so much, so much!" she exclaimed with her sweet eyes as well as her lips.

He recalled then the day on board the vessel, when she had besought in her impetuous fashion that he should kiss her. She had never offered the caress since. She was not an effusive child.

Her position at school was rather anomalous. A younger woman might have managed differently. There was a new scholar that rather crowded them on the bench. And the boy back of her did some sly things that annoyed her. He gave her hair a twitch now and then. One day he dropped a little toad on her book, at which she screamed, though an instant after she was not at all afraid. Of course, he was whipped for that, and for once she did not feel sorry.

"You're a great ninny to be afraid of a toad not bigger than a button," he said scornfully. "I'll get you whipped some day to make up for it, see if I don't."

Thursday was unfortunate and she was kept in for some rather saucy replies. When she returned they were in the sitting-room and had been discussing some household matters. She surveyed them with a courageous but indignant air.

"I've quit," she exclaimed. "I'm not going there to school any more."

She stood up very straight, her eyes flashing.

"What!" ejaculated Cousin Elizabeth.

"Why, I've quit! She wanted to make me say I was sorry and beg her pardon, and she threatened to keep me all night, but I knew some of you would come, at least Rachel."

"And I suppose you were a saucy, naughty girl!"

"What happened?" asked Chilian quietly.

"Why, you see—I went up to her table with the figures I had been making on my slate. I'd done some of them over three times, for Tommy Marsh joggled my elbow. Then I went back to my seat. We're crowded now, and I went to sit down and sat on the floor. I do believe Sadie Green did it on purpose—moved so there wasn't room enough for me to sit. And Tom laughed, then all the children laughed, and Dame Wilby said, 'Get up, Cynthy Leverett,' and I said 'My name isn't Cynthy, if you please, and I haven't any seat to sit on if I do get up.' And then the children laughed again, and I don't quite know what did happen, but I was so angry. Then she said all the children should stay in for laughing. She called me to the desk and I went. The slate was broken and I laid it on the table. Then she said wasn't I sorry for being saucy, and I said I wasn't. It was bad enough to fall on the floor, for I might have hurt myself. Then she took up her switch, and I said: 'You strike me, if you dare!' Then she pushed me in a little closet place, and there I staid until after school was out. Then she said, 'Would I tell Miss Leverett to come over?' and I said Mr. Leverett was my guardian and I would tell him, but I wasn't coming to school any more, and that Tommy Marsh pinched me and pulled my hair, and called me wild Indian. And so—I've quit. You can't make me go again. I'll run away first and go on some of the boats."

There was a blaze of scarlet on her cheeks and her eyes flashed fire, but she stood up straight and defiant, when another child might have broken down and cried. Chilian Leverett always remembered the picture she made—small, dark, and spirited.

"No," he exclaimed, "you need not go back." Then he rose and took her hand that was cold and trembling. "You will not go back. Let us find Miss Winn——"

"Chilian!" warned Elizabeth.

He led Cynthia from the room, up the stairs. Miss Winn sat there sewing. She clasped her arms about him, he could fairly feel the throb in them.

"Oh," she cried with a strange sort of sweetness. "I love you. You are so good to me, and I have told you just the truth."

Then she buried her face on Miss Winn's bosom.

Chilian went downstairs. He laughed, yet he was deeply touched by her audacity and bravery.

"Elizabeth," he announced; "I will see Mrs. Wilby. Let the matter die out, do not refer to it. I did not think it quite the school for her. We will find something else."

"Chilian, I must make one effort for you and her. Going on this way will be her ruin. I should insist upon her going back to school and apologizing to Mrs. Wilby. I wouldn't let a chit like that order what a household of grown people should do and make them bow down to her. You will be sorry for it in the end. You have had no experience with children, you have seen so few. And a man hasn't the judgment——"

His usually serene temper was getting ruffled, and with such characters the end is often obstinacy.

"If she is to make a disturbance here, become a bone of contention with us, I will send her away. Cousin Giles is taking a great interest in her. There are good boarding-schools in Boston, or she and Miss Winn could have a home together under his supervision. There is enough to provide for them."

"And you would turn her over to that half-heathen woman!" in a horrified tone. "Then I wash my hands of the matter. Send her to perdition, if you will."



CHAPTER VII

CHANGEFUL LIGHTS OF CHILDHOOD

Elizabeth Leverett busied herself about the supper. She felt as one does in the threatening of a thunderstorm, when the clouds roll up and the rumbling is low and distant and one studies the sky with presentiments. Then it comes nearer, flirts a little with the elements, breaks open and shows the blue that the scurrying wind soon hides and the real storm bursts. She had believed all along that it must come.

She was not an ungracious or a selfish woman outside of her own home. She was good to the sick and the needy, she gave of her time and strength. In the home there was a sense of ownership, of the self-appropriation so often termed duty. Everything had gone on smoothly for years. She had settled that Chilian would not marry. Such a bookish man, whose interests lay chiefly with men, did not need a wife when there was some one at hand to make him comfortable. And that he surely was. He understood and enjoyed it. He had only to suggest to have. Her affection for him was like that for a younger brother. Even Eunice could not minister so well for his comfort, though, like Mary of Bible lore, she often added a delicate pleasure in listening to matters or incidents that interested him.

Elizabeth had settled to the idea of a little heathen soul that she was to lead aright. Missionary work in godless lands had not made much advance and, having no mother, who was there to warn her of the great peril of her soul? Seafaring men were not much given to thought of the other world. Perhaps there was some grace for them in the hours of peril, she had heard they prayed to God in an extremity; and there was the dying thief. But on land no one had a right to count on this.

The child had changed everything. Even Eunice seemed to have lost the sharp distinction. Miss Winn belonged to the ungodly, that was clear—though she was upright, honest, neat, and in some ways sensible. But her ideas about the child were foreign and reprehensible—dangerous even. The child was no worse than others, not as bad as some, for she had either by nature or training a delicate respect for the property of others. She never meddled. She asked few questions even when she stood by the kitchen table and watched the mysteries of cake and pie making and the delicacies of cooking. It was the right to herself that annoyed Elizabeth. People had hardly begun to suspect that children had any rights.

"But if she went away? If she was swallowed up in the vortex of the more populous city"—greater, Salem would not have admitted. "If the child's soul was finally lost, would she be quite clear? Would she have done all that she could for her salvation?"

She thought of it as she prepared the supper. She surveyed the inviting-looking table and then rang the bell. Eunice brought in a handful of flowers. Chilian came—and Miss Winn.

"Cynthia has gone to bed, she does not want any supper," was her quiet announcement.

Elizabeth would have sent her to bed supperless, and approved of a severer punishment.

Miss Winn asked some questions about Boston.

"I have quite a desire to see it," she added.

Yes, she would no doubt plan for a removal. Then the child would be forever lost. And a Leverett, too, come of a strong God-fearing family!

The child, when she had hidden her face on Rachel's bosom, gave some dry, hard sobs that shook her small frame. Rachel smoothed her hair, patted the shoulder softly, and said "Dear" in a caressing tone. Then had come a torrent of tears, a wild hysterical weeping. She did not attempt to check it, but took Cynthia in her arms as if she had been a baby.

"I'm not going to that school any more," she said brokenly, after a while.

"What happened, dear?"

Cynthia raised her head. "It was very mean, as if I had done it on purpose! Why, I might have hurt myself;" indignantly.

"How was it?" gently.

And then the story came tumbling out. She saw a certain ludicrous aspect in it now, and laughed a little herself. "I couldn't help being saucy. And I thought she was going to strike me. Tommy Marsh began to laugh first. The slate broke——"

"Are you quite sure you were not hurt?"

"Well, my arm hurt a little at first, but it is all well now. But I shan't go back to school,—no, not even to please Cousin Leverett, and I like him best of any one."

"I'm going down to supper, dear. Shall I bring up yours?"

"I don't want any. I couldn't eat anything. And I can't have Cousin Elizabeth's sharp eyes looking at me. Oh, I'm glad I am not her little girl! I like you a million times better, Rachel;" hugging her rapturously. "I think I'd like to have a glass of milk. And may I lie on your little bed?"

"Yes, dear."

She was asleep when Rachel came up and it was past nine when she woke, drank her milk, and went to bed for the night.

How gaily the birds were singing the next morning, and the sunbeams were playing hide-and-seek through the branches that dance in the soft wind. All the air was sweet and the little girl couldn't help being light-hearted. She sang, too; not measured hymns of sorrow and repentance, but a gay lilt that followed the bird voices. And she went down to breakfast and said her good-morning cheerfully.

"That child has the assurance of the Evil One," Elizabeth thought.

Cynthia waylaid Cousin Chilian as he was going down the path.

"I meant what I said yesterday. I won't go to that school any more. If there was some other—only—only I wish you could teach me until I could get up straight in all the things, so the other children wouldn't laugh when I made blunders. I suppose it does sound funny;" and a smile hovered about the seriousness.

"We will consider another school," he returned kindly, smiling himself at the remembrance of the tempest of yesterday.

She persuaded Rachel to go out to walk and they went over to the bridge. She had been so interested in the story of it. Before it had faded from the minds of men it was to be splendidly commemorated as a point of interest in the old town.

"I like real stories," she said. "I don't understand about the war, but it is fine to think the Salem men made the British soldiers go back when all the while the cannon and other arms were hidden away. You don't mind, Rachel, if the Colonists did beat England, do you? I'm a Colonist, you know."

"That is long ago, and we are all friends now. I think the Colonists were very brave and persevering and they deserved their liberty. I have heard your father talk about the war."

"Oh, when do you suppose he will come? It seems so long to wait."

Rachel smiled to keep the tears out of her eyes.

Chilian Leverett made a call and a brief explanation to Dame Wilby. She admitted she had been hasty, but the children were unusually trying. She was getting to be an old body and maybe she hadn't as much patience as years ago. Cynthia said so many odd things that the children would giggle. She was slow in some things, and it seemed hard for her to learn tables, but she was not a bad child.

So the tempest blew over. Elizabeth preserved a rather injured silence, but Eunice was cheerful and ready to entertain Cynthia with stories of the time when she was a little girl. Chilian arranged for her to spend most of the mornings with him when he was at home. She liked so very much to hear him read. The histories of that time were rather dry and long spun out, but he had a way of skipping the moralizing and the endless disquisitions and adding a little more vividness to people and incidents. It inspired him to watch her face changing with every emotion, her eyes deepening or brightening, and the slight mark in her forehead where lines of perplexity crossed. Then they would talk it all over. Often he was puzzled with her endless "whys" that he could not rightly explain to a child's limited understanding. Sometimes she would say, "Why, I would have done so," and he found her course would be on the side of the finest right, if not what was considered feasible.

The spelling was a trial when the words were a little obscure. And though she had a wonderful knack of guessing at things, she surely was not born for a mathematician. He had a fine, quick mind in that respect. But the Latin was a delight to her and she delved away at the difficult parts for the sake of what she called the grand and beautiful sound. His rendering of it enchanted her.

"I don't see any sense in educating her like a boy," declared Elizabeth. "And she can't do a decent bit of hemming. She ought to work a sampler and learn the letters to mark her own clothes. We did it before we were her age. Chilian thinks you can hire people to do these things for you, but it seems so helpless not to be able to do them for yourself. Housekeeping is of more account than all this folderol. She can never be a college professor."

"But women are keeping schools," interposed Eunice.

"They don't teach Latin and all kinds of nonsense. That Miss Miller was here a few days ago to see if we didn't want our niece—folks are beginning to call her that—to see if we did not want her to take lessons on the spinet. I was so glad she did not appeal to Chilian, though he was out. I said, 'No,' very decidedly, 'that she had a good many things to learn before she tackled that.' And she said she ought to be trained while her fingers were flexible, and I said I thought washing would make them flexible enough. And there's fine ironing."

"There's no need of either for her," protested Eunice.

"Oh, you don't know. There might be a war again. And a trouble about money. I'm sure there is talk enough and the country raising loans all the time, one party pulling one way, one the other. People are getting awfully extravagant nowadays. Patty Conant gave seven dollars a yard for her new black silk, and there were twelve yards. It broke pretty well into a hundred, and there was some fancy gimp and fringe and the making. Of course, there's going to be two weddings in the family, and I don't suppose Patty will ever buy another handsome gown at her time of life. Abner brought her home that elegant crape shawl, with the fringe and netting nearly half a yard deep. Maybe 'twas a present, she let it go that way."

"Of course, there's money enough among the Conants," Eunice commented gently.

"As I said—one can't always tell what will come to pass, nor how much need you may have for your money. But I'm thankful my heart is not set on the pomps and vanities of this world. And children ought to be brought up to some useful habits."

It was a fact that Cynthia did not take to the useful branches of womanly living. She abhorred hemming—and such work as she made of it! Miss Eunice groaned over it.

"But you ought to have seen what I did two or three weeks ago," and she laughed with a gay ring. "Such stitches! When I made them nice on the top, they were dreadful underneath, and the cotton thread was almost black. What is the use of taking such little bits of stitches?"

"Why—they look prettier. And—it is the right thing to do."

"But you know Rachel can hem all the ruffles. And Cousin Elizabeth said ruffles were vanity. I'd like my frocks just as well to be plain."

"There would have to be nice stitches in the hem."

"Rachel didn't sew when she was little. A great lady took her to Scotland, to wait on her, to get her shawl when she was a little cool, and fan her when she was warm, and carry messages, and drive out in the carriage with her. They had servants for everything. And then—she was ten years old—she sent her to a school, where she learned everything. But she doesn't know all the tables and a great many other things."

"But she knows what fits her for her station in life."

Cynthia looked puzzled. "What is your station in life?" she asked with an accent of curiosity.

"Oh, child, it is where you are placed; and the work of life is the duties that grow out of it—and your duty towards God."

Cynthia dropped into thought.

"Then my duty now is to study. I like it; that is, I like a good many things in it. And when my father comes home it will be changed, I suppose. You can't stay a little girl always."

"But you will have to learn to keep house," returned Eunice.

"Oh, I'll have some one to do that. Men never have to cook or keep house. Oh, yes; all the cooks on the ship were men. Wasn't that funny!" she continued.

She laughed with so much innocent merriment that Miss Eunice laughed too.

"I suppose you have to do various things in your life," she sagely remarked, after a pause.

"Then you must learn to do the various things now."

"I believe I won't ever get married. I'll live with father always, and we will have some one to keep the house, and Rachel will make the clothes. And I'll read aloud to father. We'll have a carriage and go out riding, and talk about India. I remember so many things just by thinking them over. Isn't it queer, when for a long time they have gone out of your mind? Oh, dear Cousin Eunice, what makes you sigh?"

Cousin Eunice took off her glasses, wiped them vigorously, and then wiped her eyes.

"It is a bad habit I have." But she was thinking of the dream of the little girl that could never come true.

The two days in the week that Chilian went into Boston were long to Cynthia. She sat in his room and studied. He had given her a small table to herself and a shelf in a sort of miscellaneous bookcase. He found that she never trespassed and that she did really study her two hours, sometimes longer when the task was not so easily mastered. There was some of the old Leverett blood in her, but it had a picturesque strain. She placed every book at its prettiest, and her papers were gathered up and taken down to the kitchen when she was done with them. She was beginning to write quite well.

Then in the afternoon she went to walk with Rachel to show her the curious places Cousin Leverett had told her about. And there were still beautiful woods around the town, where they found wild flowers and sassafras buds.

Elizabeth was very much engrossed. She had cleared the garret spick and span, scrubbed up the floor, wiped off her quilting frames, and put in her white quilt, rolling up both sides so she could get at the middle. There was to be a circle, with clover leaves on the outside. Then long leaves rayed off from the exact middle. She had all the patterns marked out. When that was done a wreath went around next—oak leaves and acorns.

She had groaned over the time the little girl devoted to Latin, but she never thought all this a waste of precious hours. She would never need it and she could not decide upon any relative she would like to leave it to. There was one quilt of this pattern in Salem and, though white quilts were made, few could afford to spend so much time over them. There were knitted quilts, with ball fringe around four sides, and the tester fringed the same way. Old ladies kept up their habits of industry in this manner when they were past hard work.

Eunice had finished her basket quilt and it was really a work of art. But she was out in the flower garden a good deal in the early morning and late afternoon. Cynthia sometimes kept her company, but she was not an expert in gardening science. In the evening they sat out on the porch, and a neighbor called perhaps. Or she walked over to South River if it was moonlight. And, oh, how beautiful everything was!

But it was not all quilting with Miss Elizabeth. In July wild green grapes were gathered for preserves. Cynthia thought it quite fun to help "pit" them. You cut them through the middle and with a small pointed knife took out the seeds. She tired of it presently and did not cut them evenly, beside she was afraid of cutting her thumb.

Cousin Elizabeth went about getting dinner, which was quite a simple thing when Chilian was away, and at night they had a high tea.

"I'll cut them," said Eunice, "and you can pick out the seeds. But maybe you are tired;" with a glance of solicitude.

"Yes, I'm tired, but I'm going to keep straight on until dinner-time," she answered pluckily.

"You are a brave little girl."

But Cousin Elizabeth said, "Well, for once you have made yourself useful."

There was a great point of interest just then for the people on this side of the town. Front Street was the old river path that had followed the shore line. One end was known now as Wharf Street, and was beginning to be lined with docks. Up farther to what is now Essex Street there had stood a house with a history. Its owner had been a Tory, and just before the war broke out he entertained Governor Gage and the civil and military staff. Timothy Pickering had been summoned to the Governor's presence, but he kept his Excellency so long in an indecent passion that the town-meeting had to be adjourned. Troops were ordered up from the Neck and for a while an encounter seemed imminent. Later, when the Colonists were in the ascendency, Colonel Browne's estate was confiscated, and after the close of the war it was turned over to Mr. Elias Derby. Now he was removing it to make way for a much finer residence and, being a notably patriotic citizen, he did not enjoy the stigma of a Tory house. Parts were carried away as curiosities, and there were some beautiful carvings and fine newel posts that found a place in new homes as mementoes. Afterward, Mr. Derby built the handsomest and costliest house in Salem, with grounds laid out magnificently.

Then came a very busy time. There was preserving that every housewife attended to for winter use, pickling of various kinds, for there was no canning stock in those days to eke out. There were some queer fruits from India, and preserved ginger in curious jars that are highly esteemed to this day, but they were luxuries. Then a house-cleaning season, not as bad as the spring, but still bad enough. And flower seeds to be saved, garden seeds to be dried, so the beautiful quilt was rolled up in a thick sheet and put away for the present.

The little girl had made quite friends with the Upham children and went over there to tea all alone, but she felt very strange. They played tag and blind-man's buff, but Cynthia thought puss in the corner the most fun. Bentley was a nice big boy and very well mannered. Polly talked over her school and brought out her needlework, which was to be the bottom of a white frock. It would be only two yards round and she had almost a yard worked. Then she was making a sampler, with an oak and acorn vine around it, and it was to have four different kinds of lettering on it.

"I don't know when I shall get it done," she said with a sigh.

Betty declared Dame Wilby was crosser than ever and Priscilla Lee wasn't coming back, nor Margaret Rand, and she was coaxing mother to let her go elsewhere.

After a while Cynthia declared she must go home. Cousin Chilian had said he would come for her, but the clock was striking nine and he had not come. He sometimes did forget.

Bentley took his hat and walked beside her in quite a mannish way.

"I do hope you will come again," he said. "You were so pleasant when you were caught, and I do hate to have girls saying all the time, 'Now that isn't fair,' and squirming out."

"But if you're playing you must take the best and the worst. I liked puss in the corner and didn't mind being the left-out pussy. I thought it was quite fun to hunt a corner again."

Then they met Cousin Chilian, who had been playing a rather prolonged game of chess with a visitor. But Bentley kept on with them, and said good-night with a polite bow, adding, "She must come again, Mr. Leverett, we had such a very nice time."

"And wasn't he nice!" exclaimed the child eagerly. "He is like some of the grown-up men. I like big boys much better than the little ones."

He smiled to himself at that.

Now there came cool nights and mornings, but the world was beautiful in its turning leaves, the fragrance of ripening fruit, and the late gorgeous-colored flowers. They took delightful walks and found so many curious places. Sometimes Bentley Upham met them and joined in their walks and talks. He thought the little girl knew a great deal. And that she had been in India, and China, and ever so many of the islands, was wonderful.

"Don't you ever sew?" he asked one afternoon, as they were rambling about.

"I don't like it much;" and she glanced up with fascinating archness. "I suppose I shall have to some day, but Cousin Leverett thinks there is time enough."

"I'm glad you don't," in a hearty tone. "I don't have any good of Polly any more. What with her white frock, and some lace she is making for a cape, and forty other things, she never has time for a game of anything, or a nice walk. And she doesn't care about study, though her lessons are so different. I don't know another girl who studies Latin, and it's so nice to talk it over. How rapidly you must have learned."

He looked at her in admiration.

"Oh, I knew some of it before I came here. There was a chaplain in Calcutta who was—well, not exactly ill, but not well; and father took him with us on the vessel when he went for certain things, and he staid with us afterward. He used to read aloud, and it sounded so splendid! Then he taught me. But Cousin Leverett said it wasn't quite right, so I am going over it. And he is teaching me a little French."

"You know they think women don't need to know much beside housekeeping and sewing. I just hate to hear about ruffles cut on the straight or bias, and I couldn't tell what Dacca muslin, or jaconet, or dimity was to save myself. And eyelet work and French knots and run lace—that's what the big girls who come to see Polly talk about. But I like books, and studies, and different countries. I'd like to travel. But I don't know that I want to be a sea captain."

They found some queer old houses that were odd enough. Mr. Leverett said they were almost two hundred years old, and that at first the place kept the old Indian name, Naumkeag. But the Reverend Francis Higginson gave it a new name out of the Bible—"In Salem also is His tabernacle." The early pilgrims built a chapel at once.

"How close the houses are!"

It was a row that had survived the hand of improvement. There was a huge central chimney-stack, big enough for a modern factory, and the house seemed built around it. The second story overhung the first, and in some of them were small dormer windows looking like bird houses. And the little panes of greenish glass seemed to make windows all framework.

Cynthia was much interested in the Roger Williams house, and the story of the old minister.

"Why, I thought religion made people good and pleasant——" Then she checked herself, for often Cousin Elizabeth was not pleasant. And she seemed more religious than Cousin Eunice. And Cousin Chilian rarely scolded or said a cross word—he never talked about religion, but he went to church on Sunday; they all did. She studied the Catechism, she could learn easily when she had a mind to, but she didn't understand it at all. She shocked Elizabeth by her irreverent questions. There was the old horn-book primer with—

"In Adam's fall We sinned all."

"I don't see how that could be when we were not there!" she said almost defiantly.

"It means the nature we inherited."

"But I don't think that fair!"

"You don't know, you never can understand until you are in a state of grace. Don't ask such impertinent questions. You are a little heathen child."

Then she asked Cousin Chilian what "a state of grace" meant.

"I think it is the willingness to do right, to be truthful, kindly, obliging. It is all comprised in the Golden Rule—to love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, not to do anything to him that you would not like to have done to yourself, and to do to him whatever you would like him to do for you. That is enough for a little girl."

"That sounds like Confucius," she said thoughtfully.

But she went back to Roger Williams when Bentley said he was one of his heroes.

"What did he do?" she asked, interested.

"Well, he founded the City of Providence. And if William Penn is to be honored for founding a city of brotherly love, Roger Williams deserves it for establishing a city where different sects should agree without persecuting each other. You see, they banished him from Salem back to England because he thought a man had some right to his own opinions, so long as he worshipped God. So he went to Providence instead. He walked all the way with just his pocket compass to guide him, and how he must have worked to make a dwelling-place for himself and his friends in the dead of winter! There were some Quakers already there, who had been banished from other settlements, and they all resolved to be friendly. Yes, I call him a hero!"

Cynthia studied the house with the little courtyard and the great tree shading it.

"Polly said it was the Witch House," she remarked.

"That was because there were trials for witchcraft. You are too young to hear about that," Chilian said decisively, with a glance at Bentley.



CHAPTER VIII

SORROW'S CROWN OF SORROW

Occasionally they went down to the warehouse, and while Chilian was busy some of the captains or mates would speak to her. They knew about her father and one sad fact she did not know. For she had settled in her mind that Captain Corwin would bring him back and that it would take a long, long while. So she tried to be content and if not teasing or fretting was one of the ways of being good, she tried her utmost to keep to that. She was too brave to tell falsehoods to shield herself from any inadvertent wrongdoing, even if Cousin Elizabeth did sometimes say:

"You ought to be soundly whipped. To spare the rod is to spoil the child."

She thought if anybody ever did whip her she should hate him all the rest of her life. Servants and workmen were beaten in India, and it seemed degrading. She did not know that Cousin Chilian had insisted that she should never be struck. He was understanding more every day how her father had loved her, and finding sweet traits in her unfolding.

She liked these rough bronzed men to touch their odd hats to her and call her Missy. Some of them had seen her in Calcutta and knew her father. And when she said, "It takes a long, long while to go there and come back, but when Captain Corwin brings him he is going to live here and will never go to sea any more"—"No, that he never will, missy;" and the sailor drew his hand across his eyes.

Oh, how full the wharves were with shipping! Flags and pennons waved, and white sails; others, gray with age and weather, flapped in the wind. She liked to see them start out; she always sent a message by them in the full faith of childhood. And there were the fishermen in the cove lower down. Fishing was quite a great business.

Cousin Giles had made his visit and spent two whole days down in the warehouse, when they had not taken her. But she helped Cousin Eunice cut the stems of the sweet garden herbs for drying, and the others for perfumery. There was lavender, the blossoms had been gathered long ago, and sweet marjoram and sweet clover. She always gathered the full-blown rose leaves and sewed them up in little bags and laid them among the household stores. Everything was so fragrant. Cynthia thought she liked it better than sandalwood and the pungent Oriental perfumes.

Then came the autumnal storms, when the vessels hugged the docks securely at anchor. The house was chilly all through and fires were in order. Some two or three miles below there was a wreck of an East Indiaman, and for days fragments floated around. Some lives were lost, and the little girl shuddered over the accounts.

All the foliage began to turn and fall. The late flowers hung their heads. It had been a beautiful autumn, people said to pay up for the late spring.

There had been a little discussion about a school again.

"She seems so small, and in some things diffident," Chilian said. "The winters are long and cold, and she has not been used to them. Cousin Giles thinks her very delicate."

"She isn't like children raised here, but she's quite as strong as common. She oughtn't be pampered and made any more finicking than she is. A girl almost ten. What is she going to be good for, I'd like to know?"

Cousin Giles had not made much headway with her. He was large and strong with an emphatic voice, and a head of thick, strong white hair, a rather full face, and penetrating eyes. He had advised about investments, though he thought no place had the outlook of Boston. But Salem was ahead of her in foreign trade.

Chilian Leverett felt very careful of the little girl. For if she died a large part of her fortune came to him. He really wished it had not been left that way. There was an East India Marine Society that had many curiosities—stored in rooms on the third floor of the Stearns building. It had a wider scope than that and was to assist widows and orphans of deceased members, who were all to be those "who had actually navigated the seas beyond Cape of Good Hope, or Cape Horn, as masters or supercargoes of vessels belonging to Salem." To this Anthony had bequeathed many curiosities and a gift. There was talk of enlarging its scope, which was begun shortly after this.

Matters had settled to an amicable basis in the Leverett house. Rachel had won the respect of Elizabeth, who prayed daily for her conversion from heathendom and that she might see the claims the Christian religion had upon her. Eunice and she were more really friendly. She made some acquaintances outside and most people thought she must be some relation of the captain's. She had proved herself very efficient in several cases of illness, for in those days neighbors were truly neighborly.

Cynthia did shrink from the cold, though there were good fires kept in the house. This winter Chilian had a stove put up in the hall, very much against Elizabeth's desires. Quite large logs could be slipped in and they would lie there and smoulder, lasting sometimes all night. It was a great innovation and extravagance, though wood seemed almost inexhaustible in those days. And it was considered unhealthy to sleep in warm rooms, though people would shut themselves up close and have no fresh air.

Then the snow came, but it was a greater success in the inland towns, and there were sledding and sleigh-riding. The boys and girls had great times building forts and having snowballing contests. But the little girl caught a cold and had a cough that alarmed her guardian a good deal and made him more indulgent than ever, to Elizabeth's disgust.

She was not really ill, only pale and languid and seemed to grow thinner. She was much fairer than any one could have supposed and her eyes looked large and wistful. Chilian put some pillows in the big rocking-chair and tilted it back so that she could almost lie down on it.

"You are so good to me," she would say with her sweet, faint smile.

Bentley came in now and then of an evening, and she liked to hear what they were doing at school. Polly, too, made visits; they had a half-holiday on Saturday. She always brought some work, and Elizabeth considered her a very industrious girl. She was going to a birthday party of one of her mates.

"What do they do at parties?" inquired the little girl.

"Oh, they play games. There's stagecoach. Everybody but one has a seat. He blows a horn and sings out, 'Stage for Boston,' or any place. Then every one has to change seats. Such a scrambling and scurrying time! and the one who gets left has to take the horn."

"It's something like puss in the corner."

"Only ever so many can play this. Then there's 'What's my thought like?' That's rather hard, but funny. I like twirling the platter. If you don't catch it when it comes near you, you must pay a forfeit. And redeeming them is lots of fun, for you are told to do all sorts of ridiculous things. Then there's some goodies and mottoes and you can exchange with a boy. But Kate Saltonstall's big sister had a party where they danced. Eliza wanted some dancing, but her mother said so many people did not approve of it for children."

"And don't you have some one to come and dance for you?"

"Oh, what a queer idea! The fun is in dancing yourself with a real nice boy. Some people think it awfully wrong. Do you, Miss Winn?"

"No, indeed. When I was a child in England we went out and danced on the green. Everybody did. And when there were doings at the great houses—like Christmas, and weddings, and coming of age—the ladies, in their silks and satins and laces, came down in the servants' hall and danced with the butler and the footmen, and my lord took out some of the maids. I don't think dancing hurts any one."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Miss Winn. They are talking of having a dancing-class in school. I hope mother will let me join it."

"And they teach it in schools there."

"And why shouldn't they here?" said Polly.

To be sure. Cynthia was much interested and made Polly promise to come again and tell her all about it. Old Salem was awakening rapidly from her rigid torpor.

"I wonder if I could ever have a party," she said to Cousin Leverett that evening. "When father comes home we might have what they did at the Perkinses when they went in their new place—a house-warming. Is that like a party?"

"About the same thing."

"Cousin Elizabeth thinks it wicked. Wouldn't she think dancing wicked?"

"I am afraid she would."

Cynthia sighed. No, she couldn't have a party here.

She waited quite eagerly for Polly's account. The little girl was in her own room. Miss Winn had gone out to get some medicine. Cynthia tried to be well sometimes, so she would not have to take the nauseous stuff. No one had invented medicated sugar pills at that time. She liked Cousin Elizabeth's cough syrup.

Polly was overflowing with spirits.

"Oh, I want to be big, right away. Bella Saltonstall was there and she's going into company next winter, she says. And she showed us some of the dancing steps and they just bewitch you. It's like this"—and Polly picked up her frock in a dainty manner and whirled about the vacant spaces in the room.

"But doesn't it tire you dreadfully? The girls in India stand still a great deal more and just sway about. They come in and dance for you."

"Tire you! Oh, no. That's the great fun, to do it yourself. Bella said it was—ex—something, and the word is in the spelling-book, but I never can remember the long words. Oh, I just wish I was fifteen and wasn't going to school any more. And then there's keeping company and getting married, and having your setting out. School seems stupid. There were two boys who wanted to come home with me, but mother said Ben must. Then I wished—well, I wished he was in college. He wants to go. Father says Mr. Leverett has infected him with the craze."

"If I was a boy, I'd like to go. Cousin Leverett is going to take me to Harvard next summer when they have their grand closing time."

"I'd rather be a girl and have a nice beau."

Plainly Polly had been saturated with dissipation.

Spring was suggesting her advent. The days were longer. The snow was disappearing.

"Oh, Cousin Leverett, look—there are some buds on the trees!" she cried.

"Yes. You can see them at intervals through the winter. They are wise little things, and swell and then shrink back in the cold."

"I'm so glad. I can soon go out. I get very tired some days. I like summer best."

"Yes. I do hope we shall have an early spring."

She looked up with smiling gladness.

That afternoon she had fallen asleep in the big chair. How almost transparent she was. The long lashes lay on the whiteness of her cheek—yes, it was really white. And there was very little color in her lips.

Abner Hayes came up from the warehouse with some papers the Ulysses had just brought in.

"That the captain's poor little girl?"

"Yes; she's asleep. She hasn't been very well this winter, but the first nice balmy day I shall take her out driving. I've been almost afraid to have the air blow on her."

"Yes, she ought to live and enjoy all that big fortune. It's a thousand pities the captain couldn't have come back and enjoyed it with her. But we must all go when our time comes. You never hear a hard word said about him, and sure's there's a heaven he is in it."

Chilian held up his finger. Then he signed a paper that had to go back, and asked if the cargo of the Ulysses was in good shape.

Elizabeth called him downstairs after that. There was a poor man wanting some sort of a position and Chilian promised to look out for him. He had been porter in a store, but the heavy lifting made him cough. He would have to get something lighter.

When he returned Cynthia was standing by his table, white as a little ghost. He almost dropped into the chair.

"Was I dreaming, or did that man say my father couldn't come back to Salem, that he—that he was——"

She swayed almost as if she would fall. He drew her down on his knee and her head sank on his shoulder. She was so still that he was startled. How many times he had wondered how he would get her told. Perhaps it had been wrong to wait.

"My little girl! My little Cynthia——"

"Wait," she breathed, and he held her closer. He had come to love her very much, though he had taken her unwillingly.

"Is it true? But no one would say such a thing if it were not. I had been asleep. I woke just as he said that. Perhaps I had been dreaming about our being together. And it seemed at first as if my tongue was stiff and I couldn't even make a sound. Did he go to heaven without me?"

Oh, what should he say to comfort her! She had so many feelings far under the surface.

"My little dear," and his voice was infinitely fond, "I want to tell you that he loved your mother tenderly. No one could have been better loved. In the course of a few hours she was snatched away from him. You were so little—five years ago. I doubt if there was ever a day in which he did not think of her. When you are grown and come to love some one with the strength of your whole heart, you will understand how great it is. And when the summons came for him his first thought was that he should see her, and with the next he must find a new home for his little girl, so he gave you to me. It is very hard just now, but you must think how happy they are together. Perhaps they both know you are here, where you will be cared for and made happy, for we all love you. Every one has not the same way of showing love, but Cousin Elizabeth has done everything she could for you this winter. And we don't want to lose you. You won't grudge them a few years together in that happy place?"

"Oh, are you quite sure there is a heaven?"

Oh, Cynthia, you are not the first one who has asked to have it certified.

"Yes, dear; very sure," in the tone of faith.

"He loved mother very much?"

"Yes."

There was a long silence. He felt the slow beating of her little heart.

"Then I ought to be content, since he gave me to you, when he knew he was going away."

"It would have been very sad if you had been left alone there. Out of his great love he planned it this way, thinking the tidings would not come so hard after a while. And now you can always recall him as you saw him last and just think, in a moment of time God called and he stepped over the narrow space that seems such a mystery to us and met her. I wish we didn't invest death with so much that is painful, for it is God's way of calling us to a better land where there are no more partings. Sometime you and I will go over to them."

"I shouldn't feel afraid with you," she commented simply.

When the tea bell rang she asked to be carried to her room and laid on Rachel's little bed. He kissed her gently and turned away.

The next was his day in Boston. But late in the afternoon, after Miss Eunice had been visiting her an hour or so, she went to the study and sat by the window, where she could see him come. He glanced up and she waved her hand daintily. All day he had been wondering how he should find her.

"I haven't coughed but a very little to-day," she exclaimed. "Cousin Elizabeth made some new syrup. And the doctor was in. He said I was a little lazy, that I must be more energetic."

"I've been ordering a new carriage to-day. The old one was hardly worth repairing. And when you are stronger I think I'll buy a gentle pony and we can go out riding. You would not be afraid after a little?"

"Not with you."

Her confidence was very sweet.

"I'm going down to tea to-night. I was down at noon."

"Oh, you are improving. I hope there will come some warm weather and balmy airs."

"It was beautiful last spring. You know I never saw a real spring before."

She was bearing her loss and her sorrow beautifully. All day she had been thinking of the joy of those two when they met on the confines of that beautiful world. It made heaven seem so near, so real. Sometimes the tears came to her eyes. She was Cousin Chilian's little girl, so why should she feel lonely!

Once in a number of years spring comes early. It did this time, at the close of the century. People shook their heads and talked about "weather-breeders," and mentioned snow as late as May, when fruit trees had been in bloom. But nature had turned over a bright, clear leaf, that made the book of time fairly shine.

The carriage came and Cynthia was taken out. Miss Elizabeth wrapped her up like a mummy, and would put a brick, swathed in coverings, in the bottom for her feet. He had taken the ladies out occasionally, but of late years the sisters had been so busy they had little time for pleasure, they thought.

They crossed North Bridge and went up Danvers way. Oh, how lovely it was with the trees in baby leaf, and some wild things blossoming. And even then industry had planted itself. There on the farther bank of Waters River was the iron mill, where Dr. Nathan Read invented his scheme for cut nails. And he built a paddle-wheel steamboat that was a success before Robert Fulton tried his. And they passed the Page house, where General Gage had his office, and Madam Page had tea on the roof, because they had promised not to use tea in the house.

That amused Cynthia and he also told her of the woman, when tea first came to the country, who boiled the leaves and seasoned them, passing them around to her guests, who didn't think they were anything much in the vegetable line and too expensive ever to become general.

Birds sang about them, flocks of wild geese had started on their northward journey. What a wonderful world it was! And her father had been a boy here in Salem village, had lived in Cousin Chilian's house in the father's time, and her mother had been married in the stately parlor. Why, she could dream of their being real guests of the place. How odd she should come to live here. The life in India would be the dream presently.

She was very tired when Chilian lifted her out of the carriage and took her upstairs. Rachel put her to bed for a while and gave her a cup of hot tea—mint and catnip—which was a great restorer, or so considered, in those days. She came down to supper and was quite bright.

Every day she improved a little. Eunice said she was getting 'climated.

Elizabeth wondered if she had any deep feeling. She had expected to see her "take on" terribly. Chilian begged her not to disturb the child's faith that both parents were in heaven.

"Letty Orne, that was, might have been one of the elect, but sea captains are seldom considered safe in the fold, as children of grace. I never heard that he had any evidence. And 'tisn't safe to count on meeting them unless you've had some sign."

"We must leave a good many of these things to God. His ways are better than our short-sighted wisdom."

Elizabeth was never quite sure of Chilian. So much study, and reading, and college talk, and the new theories, and what they called discoveries, were enough to unsettle one's faith, and she feared for him. Younger children than Cynthia had gone through the throes of conviction—she had herself, and she longed to see her in this state.

But the child was quite her olden self. What with the change of climate and her illness she was many shades fairer, and her hair was losing its queer sunburned color. Her thin frame began to fill out, her face grew rounder, and her smile was sweetness itself.

"But she hasn't grown a mite since she came. Leverett people are all of a fair size. I don't know a little runt among them," persisted Elizabeth.

"I wish I could grow," she sighed in confidence to Chilian.

"Never mind. Then you will always be my little girl," he would answer consolingly.



CHAPTER IX

LESSONS OF LIFE

Even Chilian wondered that the little girl took the death of her father so calmly. Elizabeth called it unnatural and questioned whether the child had any deep feeling.

"I don't believe she's shed a tear. And, Eunice, the child ought to go in black."

The child was trying to get used to changed ideas. If her mother was glad and happy, now that they were again united, why should she be sorry? It seemed selfish to her as if she grudged them the joy. And Cousin Chilian was trying every way to entertain her, to help her on to perfect recovery. Sometimes, when she sat alone in the study, the soft eyes would overflow and the tears course silently down her cheeks. She never cried in the tempestuous way of some children. But she knew now she had counted a good deal on their having a home together. Rachel would keep the house and she and her father would take walks and have a garden, where she could cut flowers and have them in the house. Cousin Elizabeth said they made a litter. And now she should never go down to the wharf and see him standing on the deck, and wave her hand to him, as she used when he went on short journeys in India. They would have a low carry-all and ride around, as she would tell him all she had learned about Salem. And they would have people in to drink tea and have pretty dishes on the table. Perhaps he would give her a party. But she didn't know any children, except the Uphams. It might be better to go to school so that she could get acquainted.

Chilian was a good deal startled about the black garments.

"She is so little and thin," he objected. "I never did like children in black; it seems as if you weighted them down with woe. And he has been dead so many months now."

"But one ought to pay decent respect to a custom sanctioned by all civilized people. There will be a talk about it. Folks may think it our fault."

"I do not believe half a dozen people would notice it. It's only a custom after all. I never did like it. We will see how she feels about it."

"Chilian, you make that child of as much importance as if she was a woman grown. You will have your hands full by and by. She will think every one must bow down to her and consult her whims and fancies."

"We will see;" nodding indifferently.

He didn't want her around in garments of woe. Very gently he mentioned the subject.

She glanced up out of sweet, entreating eyes. She had been standing by him, looking over a very choice book of engravings.

"Yes," she returned. "Rachel spoke of it. And you know there are some people who wear white, and some who put on yellow. Black isn't a nice color. Do you like it?"

He shook his head.

"It is the inside of me that aches now and then, when I think I shall never see him come sailing back, that I must be a long while without him until I go to their land. But he must be very happy with mother, and that is what I think of when I feel how hard it is;" and the tears stole softly down her cheeks. "I have Rachel and you, and he said you would always love me and care for me. But I try not to feel sorry, and if I had on a black frock I couldn't help but think of it all the time. Then I should be sorry inside and outside both, and is it right to make yourself unhappy when you believe people have gone to heaven?"

She said it so simply that he was deeply moved. She had been alone with her sorrow all this time, when they had thought her indifferent.

"You need not wear black—I wish you would not. I want you to get real well and happy. And you are a brave little girl to think of them and refrain from grief."

She wiped away the tears lest they should fall on the book.

"At first it was quite dreadful to me. I couldn't say anything. Then I remembered how we used to talk of mother, as if she was only in the next room. And then I sit here and think, when the sky is such a splendid blue and there come little white rifts in it, as if somewhere it opened, I can almost see them. Can't people come back for a few moments?"

"Only in dreams, I imagine."

"I can almost see them. And they are so glad to be together. And I know father says, 'Cynthia will come by and by.' But twenty years, or thirty years, is a long while to wait."

Perhaps she wouldn't need to wait so long, he thought, as he noted the transparent face.

"And now I should be sorry to go away from you," she said, with grave sweetness.

"I think your father meant you should stay a long while with me when he gave you to me;" and he pressed her closer to his heart.

So she did not wear mourning, to Elizabeth's very real displeasure. There was no further talk about the school, but she did try to sew a little and began the sampler. Cousin Eunice was her guide here. She brought out hers that was over fifty years old, and all the colors were fading.

"I wonder if I shall live fifty years," she mused.

Driving about was her great entertainment. You could go to Marblehead, which was a peninsula. There were the fishery huts and the men curing and drying fish. Sometimes they took passage in one of the numerous sailing vessels and went in and out the irregular shore, and saw Boston from the bay. It seemed in those times as if it might get drowned out, there was so much water around it.

"And if it should float off out to sea, some day," she half inquired, laughingly.

He was glad to hear her soft, sweet laugh again.

She thought she liked Salem best, and even now people began to talk of old Salem, there had been so many improvements since the time Governor Bradford had written:

"Almost ten years we lived here alone,— In other places there were few or none; For Salem was the next of any fame That began to augment New England's name."

And then it went by the old Indian name and was called Naumkeag. And she found that it was older than Boston, and had been the seat of government twice, and that Governor Burnett, finding Boston unmanageable, had convened the General Court here for two years. That was in 1728, and now it was 1800.

"But no one lives a hundred years," she said.

"Oh, yes; there are a number of persons who have lived that long. Now and then a person lives in three centuries, is born the last year of one, goes through a whole century, and dies in the next one."

"What a long, long while!" she sighed.

And there was the old Court House where the Stamp Act was denounced. She wanted to know all about that, and he was fond of explaining things, the sort of teacher habit, but there was nothing dogmatic about it. Here were houses where the Leveretts had lived, third or fourth cousins who had married with the Graingers, and the Lyndes, and the Saltonstalls, and the Hales. It is so in the course of a hundred or two years, when emigration does not come in to disturb the purity of the blood.

The little girl really began to improve. Her hair was taking on a brighter tint and in the warm weather the uneven ends curled about her forehead in dainty rings, her complexion was many shades fairer, her cheeks rounded out, and her chin began to show the cleft in it. She was more like her olden self, quite merry at times.

The summer went on as usual. Gardening, berry-picking, and she helped with the gooseberries, the briery vines she did not like. There were jars of jam and preserves, rose leaves to gather, and all the mornings were crowded full. Often in the afternoon she went up in the garret to see Miss Eunice spin—sometimes on the big wheel, at others with flax on the small wheel. She liked the whirring sound, and it was a mystery to her how the thread came out so fine and even.

Elizabeth had taken the white quilt out of its wrappings, it did not get finished the summer before. A neighbor had let her copy a new pattern for the border that had come from New York. And she heard there had been imported white woven quilts with wonderful figures in them.

"Then one wouldn't have to quilt any more. Shan't you be glad, Cousin Elizabeth?"

"Glad!" She gave a kind of snort and pushed the needle into her finger, and had to stop lest a drop of blood might mar the whiteness. "Well, I'm not as lazy as that comes to, and I don't see how they can put much beauty in them. You can change blue and white and show a pattern, but where it is all white! Why, you couldn't tell it from a tablecloth."

It was warm up in the garret, and what with drying herbs, and the sun pouring on the shingles, there was a rather close, peculiar air. Cynthia stood by the open window, where the sweet summer wind went by, laden with the fragrance of newly cut grasses and the silk of the corn that was just tasselling out. The hills rose up, tree-crowned; white clouds floated by overhead, and out beyond was the great ocean that led to other countries—to India she thought of so often.

Oh, how the birds sang! She was so sorry Cousin Eunice had to sit and spin, when there was such a beautiful world all around, and Cousin Elizabeth pricked her fingers quilting. She heard her sigh, but she did not dare look around. She had that nice sense of delicacy, rather unusual in a child. But then she wasn't an everyday child.

"Cynthia," called Rachel from the foot of the stairs, "don't you want to go out for a walk? They've been unloading the Mingo, and they have a store of new things at the Merrits'."

That was the great East India emporium.

"Oh, yes!" She skipped across the floor and ran downstairs lightly.

"That child's like a whirlwind," exclaimed Elizabeth crossly.

"But we ought to be glad she's so much better. I was really afraid in the spring we wouldn't have her long."

"Oh, the Leverett stock is tough."

"But her mother died young."

"Of that horrid India fever. No, I didn't truly think she would die. If she had, I wonder where all the money would go? Chilian is awful close-mouthed about it. But it would have to go somewhere. 'Tisn't at all likely he'd leave word for it to be thrown back in the sea."

"No; oh, no."

"There's some talk about missionaries going out to try to convert the heathen. But Giles thinks it would cost more than it would amount to. Giles has got way off; seems to me religion's dying out since they've begun to preach easy ways of getting to heaven and letting the bars down here and there. There's no struggle and sense of conviction nowadays; you just take it up as a business. And that child talks about heaven as if she'd had a glimpse of it and saw her father and mother there. Letty Orne was a church member in her younger days, but I don't believe the captain ever was. And they who don't repent will surely perish."

Eunice sighed. She could never get used to the thought that thousands of souls were brought into the world to perish eternally.

Cynthia tied on her Leghorn hat. It did have some black ribbon on it, and the strings were passed under her chin and tied at one side. That and her silken gown gave her a quaint appearance, rather striking as well.

They walked down the street and turned corners. There was quite a procession of ladies bound for the same place. If they had been all buyers, Mr. Merrit would have made quite a fortune. But he was glad to have them come. They would describe the stock to their neighbors, and perhaps decide on what they wanted for themselves.