A Little Girl in Old Salem

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"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.

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