Marion Harland

“ My father walked between Mary 'Liza and myself, each of us holding to one of his arms, as gentlemen and ladies in the country walked together then. He was a well-built, clear-eyed, clean-lived, upright gentleman, whom God had made and whom the world had not spoiled. My cousin and I were dressed exactly alike. Into every detail of daily life my mother carried her principle of treating the orphan as her own child. ”

“ The frank brutality of school children of both sexes, as contrasted with the unselfish forbearance (or the show of it) and the suave courtesy of well-bred men and women, is an instructive study in the evolution of ethics. The youngest boy or girl in class or college is the weakest wolf in the pack, the under dog in the fight. I had all of a little girl's natural desire for new playfellows and the dreamer's passion for more material for castle-building. ”

“ She gathered her skirts tightly and high above her ankles with both hands, letting the green parasol tumble, head foremost, to the ground, and screeched as if she had trod upon a yellow-jacket's nest. She was going to have Nerves again, with no hartshorn, or burnt feathers, or turkey-tail fan, or Cousin 'Ratio near. I started to run to the house for help, but she grabbed my frock frantically.
"If you budge one inch you are a dead child!" she wheezed, her pale eyes bulging from the sockets. "Cap'n Gates and the overseer came out here last night and just sowed all this patch with side-blades!" ”

“ Cousin Molly Belle swooped down upon Bud, and had him upon her shoulder before I could join my piping cry to her shout that rang out like a silver trumpet. The huge beast halted, made as though she would turn, then gave an angry, squealing grunt, and lunged toward us. Not a loose stick or stone [Pg 42] was within reach. If there had been, there was not time to pick it up.
"Run for the fence! Run!" called the brave girl to me, and met the voracious brute with a kick, so well aimed that the high heel of her shoe struck full upon the eye next to her. ”

“ Mary 'Liza and I had outgrown the trundle-bed, and had a room to ourselves upstairs. Into this I surreptitiously conveyed the improvised cage that night and hid it under the bed. When my bedfellow had fallen asleep, I got up softly, lighted a candle, and took a peep at my pet. He had gone regularly to bed after disposing of some of the nuts and scattering the remnants in every direction, and now lay curled up in the cotton-wool in the prettiest, most homelike way imaginable, fast asleep. ”

“ Paulina caught at the fence for support as she laughed; Madeline bent double and reeled sideways.
I clutched my father's hand, drowning and suffocating in the waves of despairing agony; I shook my tight fist at the insulting quartette.
"They—they—took it! It was here this morning. It was here just after dinner to-day!"
"Be quiet, girls!" ordered my judge-advocate. "Molly! I want the exact truth. If you accuse them, you must prove what you say. Things have gone too far to stop here. Didn't you say that Spotswoode knew something about the affair?" ”

“ Mr. Owen, the overseer, had laid me down on the grass, and I heard him say, "She's all right now." I sat up and stared around me. Cousin Nancy, still in a dead faint, was stretched upon the ground a little way off, a fluttering swarm of women about her, with water, brandy, hartshorn, cologne, fans, and burning feathers, and Cousin 'Ratio, kneeling over her, was calling in her ear, the tears running down his bristly cheeks.
"Miss Nancy! honey! sugar-lump! wake up! it's me, dearie! The danger is all over. What a doggoned fool I was to put the side-blades there!" ”

“ Cousin Molly Belle put her arms around the wee old lady and hugged her hard—the honeysuckles and catalpas falling to the floor.
"All this is the loveliest thing I ever heard!" laughing to keep from crying. "I hope you will live to be a hundred years old, and give the lie to or-nith-ol-o-gists every day you live. And Molly and I will come to see you, often and often, whenever she is at our house. You dear, brave, sensible, lion-hearted, royal Queen Mab!" ”

“ At this juncture, when my misery was at its height, I heard Mary 'Liza in the chamber behind me, cooing to, and hushing her doll-baby, with tones and words copied faithfully from my mother's talk over my brother's cradle.
"Wouldn't you like to rock her a little while?" she called presently. "I wouldn't mind if you'd promise not to touch her. Sometimes your hands are not clean, you know." [Pg 22]
I set my jaws savagely outside of my leaping tongue, not moving or looking up when I felt her standing close by me. Musidora had dropped from my lap, and lay, face downward, on the step. ”

“ If I smile quietly in telling over to myself the simple elements and few, out of which the good times were made, and how tame the happenings would be to modern young folk, I cannot gainsay the truth that my daily life was full and rich, and that every hour had a peculiar interest.
For one thing, there was a baby at Oakholme, a bouncing boy, sturdy of limb and of lung, and so like both his parents in all the good qualities possible to a baby, as to leave nothing to be desired by the best friends aforesaid, and no room for criticism on the part of the malcontents. ”

“ I had read that wild creatures physic themselves if allowed to seek such plants as instinct tells them are specifics for their ailments. Lifting Caspar Hauser from his woolly bed, I stroked him and called him by name. He was so tame by now that he did not struggle upon my palm. Only the rise and fall of his furry sides showed that he was alive. He was limp and helpless, and to me very lovable. I laid him upon a strip of turf hot with the sunshine that had steeped it for five hours. ”

“ Ah, blessèd mother of mine! for so many years beyond the sight and hearing of the [Pg 167] vicissitudes of that life, then new and all untried—yours was but a partial prophecy. Against the sorrows born of "taking things so much to heart," I set a wealth of joy and beauty and love that have been made mine own by the same nature and habit.
What she said or meant was little to me at that moment, for as I blinked confusedly about me, I saw Mary 'Liza, neat and upright, in her own especial chair by the window, and Preciosa was on her lap. ”

“ Lucy and her mother and the tiny scrap of a baby had died, and been laid under the snow in the Burwell burying-ground on the hillside beyond the Old Orchard. Mr. Bray had gone to Ohio along with the big covered wagon. Alexander the Great went with him in the carriage. With tears in her sweet eyes, my mother told me how fond the father was of Lucy's pet, and how strangely the cat had acted in staying on Lucy's grave all the time until Mr. Bray took him away by force and carried him off in the carriage with him. ”

“ I chose four boys of uniform size for pall-bearers; Barratier was to have a spade ready and to dig the grave, and when it was filled in we would sing a hymn. Mourning garments were the knotty point. I, as Musidora's mother, could not appear at her funeral in the crimson circassian frock I wore at present. That would upset everything.
A happy thought struck me. I recollected to have seen in the lumber-room, hanging upon some pegs high upon the wall, a row of old bonnets, and a black one among them. Other black things could be had for the hunting. ”

“ I classed Mary 'Liza with the grown-uppers. She loved cats, adopting two when they were blind kittens, and bringing them up in just such staid habits as made her incomparable among children. At six months of age they would doze at her feet on the rug while she studied, or ciphered, or read aloud, or stitched upon those everlasting chemises. When she took a walk for exercise (she never ran, or hopped, or skipped) they trotted demurely in the path, beside or behind her, indifferent to butterflies and grasshoppers, and as intent upon Behavior as their mistress. ”

“ Her eyes were full of laughter and laziness; the color in her cheeks was that of a velvet perpetual rose, shading into peach-blow, then into pure white that never took freckle or tan from the hottest sun.
Have I said that her hair was auburn, and curled like grape tendrils, from the nape of the neck to the forehead? The color was singular. In the shade it was that of a perfectly groomed bay horse. When the sun struck it, it got all alive, as if there were light under it, as well as over it, and was, [Pg 34] unmistakably, red. ”

“ The lash had drawn sawdust at every blow. One arm and both legs were torn off and weltered in the scattered stuffing beneath; the crop of black curls was tangled in the topmost limb of the sapling. The blue silk gown would never fit the pliant waist again. Rozillah was beyond the possibility of reconstruction.
I threw my arms around Cousin Molly Belle's neck, and burst into a torrent of childish tears. ”

“ But it seems a pity that, in this pretty place, with so many peaches and watermelons and flowers—and pigeons—and chickens—and all that—there are not any children to eat, and to play with them—and keep you company. I've heard mother say, 'Home wouldn't be Home without the babies.'"
"Your mother is right, child! Your mother is right!"
The words seemed to stick in her throat, and to scrape it as she got them out. Then, to my horror, she sank into a rocking-chair, and, throwing her hands over her face, began to cry, with queer little squeals between the sobs that shook her all over. ”

“ The right time in this instance was one moonlight September night, soon after Mary 'Liza and I had gone to bed. My mother had a habit of coming up to our room, and sitting down by the bed in the dark, or without other light than the moon, to have a little talk with us. "To give us a good appetite for our dreams," she would say in her merry way. We dearly enjoyed these visits, especially on Sunday nights, when we told her what we had been reading and thinking that day, and repeated the hymns we loved best. ”

“ The next I knew a pair of cool, white arms closed about me and the whip together, and Cousin Molly Belle's voice, half-laughing, half-horrified, cried through the roaring in my ears:—
"Dear little Namesake! what has got into you?"
All at once, red mists parted and rolled away from my eyes, and I became conscious that Mary 'Liza was jumping up and down and screaming piteously, that everybody was on the spot—my father and mother and all the dinner company, and Mam' Chloe with the baby in her arms, and a ring of my small black servitors on the outside of the group ”

“ Adventure No. 1 befell us one forenoon, as Cousin Molly Belle and I were topping and tailing gooseberries for tarts, on the side porch. Baby Carter was on the mat at our feet, bulging his eyes and swelling his cheeks in futile efforts to extort a squeak from a chinquapin whistle his father had made for him. The kind that, as you may recollect, kept the whistle in them over night, and did not shrivel up.
"It's there, old fellow, if you really know how to get it out," Cousin Frank told his son and heir. "Everything depends upon yourself." ”

“ I was up and out early next morning and "found her indeed, but it made my heart bleed," for a field mouse—with six acres of roasting-ears to choose from—had made his supper on the bran that served my poor Musidora for brains, nibbling a hole in the exact region of the medulla oblongata. My mother plugged the cranium with raw cotton and stitched up the wound, and the dear patient was doing better than could be expected, when there was a thunder-storm and Musidora was on a bench in the summer-house. ”

“ Mary 'Liza was amused, in an amiable way, when she saw the bundle done up in red flannel—Musidora's rheumatism was awful!—that I hugged up to me.
"I never let Dorinda sleep with me," she observed. "I am afraid of hurting her. But I suppose you can't hurt Musidora. Why don't you give her to one of the colored children? She is really a sight."
"Nobody asked you to look at her!" retorted I, crossly, putting my hand over the unfeatured face. "Mam' Chloe says, 'Handsome is as handsome does.' Anyhow, my doll-baby doesn't say mean things to folks." ”

“ It was a ghastly and a grotesque spectacle, and I behaved as any other nine-year-old would—jumped up and down and screamed, beating my palms together, and calling alternately for "Father!" and "Cousin 'Ratio!"
Since that horrible moment I have believed stories read and heard of people being scared to death, or into insanity. In the great, round world, there was nothing present to me but a cruel expanse of green below, a white-hot sky above, and at my feet a dead woman, killed [Pg 255] by the razor-like blades thick-set under every leaf, and guarding every melon. ”

“ Mary 'Liza picked her up, and brushed the dust from her inexpressive visage.
"Poor thing!" purred she. "I hope nothing will ever happen to Rozillah. Isn't that a love-el-ly? I made it out of my own head from Rosa and Zillah, two love-el-ly girls I read of in a book." ”

“ The finest Lombardy poplars in Powhatan County bordered it; sheep mint, pennyroyal, sweetbrier, and wild thyme grew up close to the wheel-track and gave out a goodly smell as we brushed by and trod upon them. I was in a high gale [Pg 117] of spirits, and prattled as fast as my tongue could run, flattered beyond expression by the choice of myself as an accomplice in the frolic.
"It's a pity you can't change places with Cousin Burwell!" I regretted. "You'd be a heap handsomer gentleman than he is. ”

“ Always thinking of other people, and never of yourself!" he said admiringly.
She thought a great deal of me for the rest of my visit, ordering Malviny to cut out and make a doll's pelisse for me of a lovely piece of red silk, saying that she would have done it herself if sewing did not make her so nervous.
"I haven't darned a sock or hemmed a pocket-handkerchief for Cap'n Gates in ten years. If he were not the best man on earth, he would have sent me packing long ago." ”