A Little Girl in Old Salem Part 12

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 ent.i.tled 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 cla.s.ses. 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 cla.s.s;" 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s."

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 coa.r.s.e, 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?"