Ester Ried Part 5

"Mother," said Sadie, appearing in the dining-room one morning, holding Julia by the hand, "did you ever hear of the fish who fell out of the frying-pan into the fire?" Which question her mother answered by asking, without turning her eyes from the great batch of bread which she was molding: "What mischief are you up to now, Sadie?"

"Why, nothing," said Sadie; "only here is the very fish so renowned in ancient history, and I've brought her for your inspection."

This answer brought Mrs. Ried's eyes around from the dough, and fixed them upon Julia; and she said, as soon as she caught a glimpse of the forlorn little maiden: "O, my _patience_!"

A specimen requiring great patience from any one coming in contact with her, was this same Julia. The pretty blue dress and white ap.r.o.n were covered with great patches of mud; morocco boots and neat white stockings were in the same direful plight; and down her face the salt and muddy tears were running, for her handkerchief was also streaked with mud.

"I should _think_ so!" laughed Sadie, in answer to her mother's exclamation. "The history of the poor little fish, in brief, is this: She started, immaculate in white ap.r.o.n, white stockings, and the like, for the post-office, with Ester's letter. She met with temptation in the shape of a little girl with paper dolls; and, while admiring them, the letter had the meanness to slip out of her hand into the mud!

That, you understand, was the frying-pan. Much horrified with this state of things, the two wise young heads were put together, and the brilliant idea conceived of giving the muddy letter a thorough washing in the creek! So to the creek they went; and, while they stood ankle deep in the mud, vigorously carrying their idea into effect, the vicious little thing hopped out of Julia's hand, and sailed merrily away, down stream! So there she was, 'Out of the frying-pan into the fire,' sure enough! And the letter has sailed for Uncle Ralph's by a different route than that which is usually taken."

Sadie's nonsense was interrupted at this point by Ester, who had listened with darkening face to the rapidly told story:

"She ought to be thoroughly _whipped_, the careless little goose!

Mother, if you don't punish her now, I never would again."

Then Julia's tearful sorrow blazed into sudden anger: "I _oughtn't_ to be whipped; you're an ugly, mean sister to say so. I tumbled down and hurt my arm _dreadfully_, trying to catch your old _hateful_ letter; and you're just as mean as you can be!"

Between tears, and loud tones, and Sadie's laughter, Julia had managed to burst forth these angry sentences before her mother's voice reached her; when it did, she was silenced.

"Julia, I am _astonished_! Is that the way to speak to your sister?

Go up to my room directly; and, when you have put on dry clothes, sit down there, and stay until you are ready to tell Ester that you are sorry, and ask her to forgive you."

"_Really_, mother," Sadie said, as the little girl went stamping up the stairs, her face buried in her muddy handkerchief, "I'm not sure but you have made a mistake, and Ester is the one to be sent to her room until she can behave better. I don't pretend to be _good_ myself; but I must say it seems ridiculous to speak in the way she did to a sorry, frightened child. I never saw a more woeful figure in my life;"

and Sadie laughed again at the recollection.

"Yes," said Ester, "you uphold her in all sorts of mischief and insolence; that is the reason she is so troublesome to manage."

Mrs. Ried looked distressed. "Don't, Ester," she said; "don't speak in that loud, sharp tone. Sadie, you should not encourage Julia in speaking improperly to her sister. I think myself that Ester was hard with her. The poor child did not mean any harm; but she must not be rude to anybody."

"Oh, yes," Ester said, speaking bitterly, "of course _I_ am the one to blame; I always _am_. No one in this house ever does any thing wrong except _me_."

Mrs. Ried sighed heavily, and Sadie turned away and ran up stairs, humming:

"Oh, would I were a b.u.t.tercup, A blossom in the meadow."

And Julia, in her mother's room, exchanged her wet and muddy garments for clean ones, and _cried_; washed her face in the clear, pure water until it was fresh and clean, and cried again, louder and harder; her heart was all bruised and bleeding. She had not meant to be careless.

She had been carefully dressed that morning to spend the long, bright Sat.u.r.day with Vesta Griswold. She had intended to go swiftly and safely to the post-office with the small white treasure intrusted to her care; but those paper dolls were _so_ pretty, and of course there was no harm in walking along with Addie, and looking at them. How could she know that the hateful letter was going to tumble out of her ap.r.o.n pocket? Right there, too, the only place along the road where there was the least bit of mud to be seen! Then she had honestly supposed that a little clean water from the creek, applied with her smooth white handkerchief, would take the stains right out of the envelope, and the sun would dry it, and it would go safely to Uncle Ralph's after all; but, instead of that, the hateful, _hateful_ thing slipped right out of her hand, and went floating down the stream; and at this point Julia's sobs burst forth afresh. Presently she took up her broken thread of thought, and went on: How very, _very_ ugly Ester was; if _she_ hadn't been there, her mother would have listened kindly to her story of how very sorry she was, and how she meant to do just right. Then she would have forgiven her, and she would have been freshly dressed in her clean blue dress instead of her pink one, and would have had her happy day after all; and now she would have to spend this bright day all alone; and, at this point, her tears rolled down in torrents.

"Jule," called a familiar voice, under her window, "where are you?

Come down and mend my sail for me, won't you?"

Julia went to the window and poured into Alfred's sympathetic ears the story of her grief and her wrongs.

"Just exactly like her," was his comment on Ester's share in the tragedy. "She grows crosser every day. I guess, if I were you, I'd let her wait a spell before I asked her forgiveness."

"I guess I shall," sputtered Julia. "She was meaner than any thing, and I'd tell her so this minute, if I saw her; that's all the sorry I am."

So the talk went on; and when Alfred was called to get Ester a pail of water, and left Julia in solitude, she found her heart very much strengthened in its purpose to tire everybody out in waiting for her apology.

The long, warm, busy day moved on; and the overworked and wearied mother found time to toil up two flights of stairs in search of her young daughter, in the hope of soothing and helping her; but Julia was in no mood to be helped. She hated to stay up there alone; she wanted to go down in the garden with Alfred; she wanted to go to the arbor and read her new book; she wanted to take a walk down by the river; she wanted her dinner exceedingly; but to ask Ester's forgiveness was the one thing that she did _not_ want to do. No, not if she staid there alone for a week; not if she _starved_, she said aloud, stamping her foot and growing indignant over the thought. Alfred came as often as his Sat.u.r.day occupations would admit, and held emphatic talks with the little prisoner above, admiring her "pluck," and a.s.suring her that he "wouldn't give in, not he."

"You see I _can't_ do it," said Julia, with a gleam of satisfaction in her eyes, "because it wouldn't be true. I'm _not_ sorry; and mother wouldn't have me tell a lie for anybody."

So the sun went toward the west, and Julia at the window watched the academy girls moving homeward from their afternoon ramble, listened to the preparations for tea which were being made among the dishes in the dining-room, and, having no more tears to shed, sighed wearily, and wished the miserable day were quite done and she was sound asleep.

Only a few moments before she had received a third visit from her mother; and, turning to her, fresh from a talk with Alfred, she had answered her mother's question as to whether she were not now ready to ask Ester's forgiveness, with quite as sober and determined a "No, ma'am," as she had given that day; and her mother had gravely and sadly answered, "I am very sorry, Julia I can't come up here again; I am too tired for that. You may come to me, if you wish to see me any time before seven o'clock. After that you must go to your room."

And with this Julia had let her depart, only saying, as the door closed: "Then I can be asleep before Ester comes up. I'm glad of that.

I wouldn't look at her again to-day for anything." And then Julia was once more summoned to the window.

"Jule," Alfred said, with less decision in his voice than there had been before, "mother looked awful tired when she came down stairs just now, and there was a tear rolling down her cheek."

"There was?" said Julia, in a shocked and troubled tone.

"And I guess," Alfred continued, "she's had a time of it to-day. Ester is too cross even to look at; and they've been working pell-mell all day; and Minnie tumbled over the ice-box and got hurt, and mother held her most an hour; and I guess she feels real bad about this. She told Sadie she felt sorry for you."

Silence for a little while at the window above, and from the boy below: then he broke forth suddenly: "I say, Jule, hadn't you better do it after all--not for Ester, but there's mother, you know."

"But, Alfred," interrupted the truthful and puzzled Julia, "what can I do about it? You know I'm to tell Ester that I'm sorry; and that will not be true."

This question also troubled Alfred. It did not seem to occur to these two foolish young heads that she _ought_ to be sorry for her own angry words, no matter how much in the wrong another had been. So they stood with grave faces, and thought about it. Alfred found a way out of the mist at last.

"See here, aren't you sorry that you couldn't go to Vesta's, and had to stay up there alone all day, and that it bothered mother?"

"Of course," said Julia, "I'm real sorry about mother. Alfred, did I, honestly, make her cry?"

"Yes, you did," Alfred answered, earnestly. "I saw that tear as plain as day. Now you see you can tell Ester you're sorry, just as well as not; because, if you hadn't said any thing to her, mother could have made it all right; so of course you're sorry."

"Well," said Julia, slowly, rather bewildered still, "that sounds as if it was right; and yet, somehow----. Well, Alfred, you wait for me, and I'll be down right away."

So it happened that a very penitent little face stood at her mother's elbow a few moments after this; and Julia's voice was very earnest: "Mother, I'm so sorry I made you such a great deal of trouble to-day."

And the patient mother turned and kissed the flushed cheek, and answered kindly: "Mother will forgive you. Have you seen Ester, my daughter?"

"No, ma'am," spoken more faintly; "but I'm going to find her right away."

And Ester answered the troubled little voice with a cold "Actions speak louder than words. I hope you will show how sorry you are by behaving better in future. Stand out of my way."

"Is it all done up?" Alfred asked, a moment later, as she joined him on the piazza to take a last look at the beauty of this day which had opened so brightly for her.

"Yes," with a relieved sigh; "and, Alfred, I never mean to be such a woman as Ester is when I grow up. I wouldn't for the world. I mean to be nice, and good, and kind, like sister Sadie."

CHAPTER VI.

SOMETHING HAPPENS.

Now the letter which had caused so much trouble in the Ried family, and especially in Ester's heart, was, in one sense, not an ordinary letter. It had been written to Ester's cousin, Abbie, her one intimate friend, Uncle Ralph's only daughter. These two, of the same age, had been correspondents almost from their babyhood; and yet they had never seen each other's faces.