Hillsboro People Part 15

"The herb-doctor says that I have done well, and that I will finish the spading in a week, or perhaps even less," she said: "and I _like_ Master Necronsett! He is a good old man, and I know that he will cure me. He makes me feel very rested when he comes near."

Hannah felt a little pang to think that her sister should not miss her own brooding care, but when Ann Mary cried out joyfully at the sight of the food, "Oh, how hungry I am!" everything but pleasure was immediately swept away from the little sister's loyal heart.

They cooked their supper--Hannah still had some of the cornmeal and the flitch of bacon their Hillsboro friends had given them--and went to bed directly on the queer, hard bed, with a straw tick and no feathers, which Dr. Necronsett had prescribed, warmly wrapped up in the pair of heavy Indian blankets he had loaned them. They were so close to the house that they heard the old doctor moving around inside, and they could see the light of his candle, so they were not afraid.

Indeed, the two sisters were so sleepy that even if they had been timorous it could scarcely have kept them from the deep slumber into which they fell at once, and which lasted until the sun shone in on them the next morning.

IV.

That was the first day of that wonderful summer, and most of the days which followed were like it. Every morning Hannah rose early, made a little open fire, cooked their breakfast, and was off to her spinning.

Just as her first employer had said, there was no lack of work for a spinner who worked as fast and yet as carefully as if it were for herself.

In Hannah's thread there were never any thin places which broke as soon as the weaver stretched it on the loom, nor yet any thick lumps where the wool had insisted, in grandmother's phrase, "on going all kim-kam."

At first, she went about to people's houses; but, seeing her so neat and careful, the minister's wife loaned her one of her own wheels, and the minister had an old granary cleared out for her workroom. Here, day after day, the wheel whirred unceasingly, like a great bee, and Hannah stepped back and forth, back and forth, on her tireless young feet, only glancing out through the big door at the bright glories of the summer weather, and never once regretting her imprisonment.

Indeed, she said, all her life afterward, that she was so happy, that summer, it seemed heaven itself could hold no greater joy for her. Of course, first always in her thoughts was Ann Mary, pulling weeds and tending her witch garden, and growing plump and rosy, and so strong that she laughed and ran about and sang as never in her life before.

Hannah put very little faith in the agricultural part of the cure. She thought that very probably it was nothing more than a blind, and that Master Necronsett came out at night and said charms and things over Ann Mary as she slept. However that might be, she could have kissed his funny, splay feet every time she looked at her sister's bright eyes and red lips; and when she thought of the joy it would be to her father, she could have kissed his ugly, wrinkled old face.

But, besides her joy over her sister's health, the summer was for Hannah herself a continual feast of delight Captain Winthrop, the minister's young cousin, was staying in Heath Falls to recover from an arrow-wound got in a skirmish with the Indians in Canada. He was very idle, and very much bored by the dullness of the little town, which seemed such a metropolis to the two girls from Hillsboro. One day, attracted by Hannah's shining face of content, he lounged over to the step of her granary, and began to talk to her through the open doorway.

It happened to come out that the little spinner, while she knew her letters from having worked them into a sampler, and could make shift to write her name, could not read or write, and had never had the slightest instruction in any sort of book-learning. Thereupon the young officer good-naturedly proposed to be her teacher, if Hannah would like.

Would she _like_! She turned to him a look of such utter ecstasy that he was quite touched, and went off at: once to get an old "A-B, ab" book.

That was the beginning of a new world to Hannah. She took her young instructor's breath away by the avidity with which she devoured the lessons he set her. By the rapt air of exultation with which Hannah recited them, stepping back and forth by her wheel, you would have thought that "c-a-t, cat; r-a-t, rat," was the finest poetry ever written.

And in no time at all it was no longer "c-a-t, cat," but "parallel,"

and "phthisis," and such orthographical atrocities, on which the eager scholar was feeding; for, Hannah's mind was as fresh as her round, rosy face, and as vigorous as her stout little body.

Captain Winthrop had several reasons for being interested in Hannah; and when he found her so quick at her spelling, he said he was willing to occupy some of his enforced leisure in giving her instruction in other branches. Hannah fell to at this feast of knowledge like a young bear in a bee-tree.

But there were some difficulties. Like the spelling, arithmetic was all very well, since she could do that in her head while she spun; but reading and writing were different. She would not stop her work for them, and so Captain Winthrop fell into the habit of going over to Master Necronsett's house in the afternoon with his books, and being there, all ready for a lesson, when Hannah came hurrying back after she had finished her day's "stint." As long as there was light to see, she pored over her writing and reading, while the young officer sat by, ready to help, and talking in a low tone to Ann Mary.

After a time there grew up a regular routine for Captain Winthrop. In the mornings he went out to the granary and read aloud to Hannah from a book called "The Universal Preceptor; being a General Grammar of Art, Science, and Useful Knowledge." Out of this he taught her about "mechanical powers"

and "animated nature" and astronomy and history and geography--almost anything that came to his hand.

Up in our garret we have the very book he used, and modern research and science have proved that there is scarcely a true word in it. But don't waste any pity on Hannah for having such a mistaken teacher, for it is likely enough, don't you think, that research and science a hundred years from now will have proved that there is scarcely a word of truth in our school-books of to-day? It really doesn't seem to matter much.

At any rate, those were the things of which Captain Winthrop talked to Hannah in the mornings. In the afternoon, he went over to an apple-tree by the edge of the witch garden, and there he found Ann Mary; and what he talked to her about n.o.body knew but herself, although Master Necronsett pa.s.sed back and forth so often in his herb-gathering that it is likely he may have caught something. It seems not improbable, from what happened afterward, that the young man was telling the young girl things which did not come out of a book, and which are consequently safe from science and research, for they are certainly as true to-day as they were then.

Once, in her anxiety to have everything exactly right for her sister, Hannah asked Master Necronsett about Captain Winthrop's being there so much.

"Master Doctor, will not Captain Winthrop absorb, perchance, some of the great virtue of the plant away from Ann Mary? Will he not hurt her cure?"

Grandmother never says so, but I have always imagined that even that carven image of an old aborigine must, have smiled a little as he told her:

"Nay, the young man will not hurt your sister's cure."

At the end of September, something tremendously exciting happened to Hannah. She had been so busy learning the contents of that old calf-bound book that she had never noticed how a light seemed to shine right through Ann Mary's lovely face every time Captain Winthrop looked at her. The little student was the most surprised girl in the world when the young soldier told her, one morning in the granary, that he wanted her sister to marry him, and that Ann Mary wanted it, too, if Hannah would allow it.

He laughed a little as he said this last, but he looked anxiously at her, for Ann Mary, who was as sweet as she was pretty and useless, had felt it to be a poor return for Hannah's devotion, now after all, just to go off and desert her. She had said that, if Hannah thought she ought to, she would go back to Hillsboro, and they would have to wait ever so long. So now Captain Winthrop looked very nervously at Ann Mary's little sister.

But he did not know Hannah. She gave a little cry, as if someone had stabbed her, turned very pale, and, leaving her wheel still whirling, she ran like the wind toward Dr. Necronsett's. She wanted to see her sister; she wanted to _see_ if this----

Close to the minister's house she met Ann Mary, who could not wait any longer, and was coming to meet her. After one glimpse of that beautiful, radiant face, Hannah fell a weeping for very joy that her dear Ann Mary was so happy, and was to marry the grand and learned and goodly Captain Winthrop.

There was not a thought in Hannah's mind, then or later, that she must lose Ann Mary herself. Grandmother explains here that the truth is that a heart like Hannah's cannot lose anything good; and perhaps that is so.

Thus, hand in hand, laughing and crying together, the two girls came back to the granary, where Ann Mary's lover took her in his arms and kissed her many times out of light-heartedness that Hannah would put no obstacle in the way. This made little Hannah blush and feel very queer. She looked away, and there was her wheel still languidly stirring a little. Dear me!

How many, many times have I heard the next detail in the story told!

"And, without really, so to speak, sensing what she was doing, didn't she put her hand to the rim and start it up again? And when the other two looked around at her, there she was, spinning and smiling, with the tears in her eyes. It had all happened in less time than it takes a spin-wheel to run down."

After that day things happened fast. Captain Winthrop rode off over the mountains to Hillsboro, to ask John Sherwin if he might marry his daughter; and when he came back, there was John Sherwin himself riding along beside him, like an old friend. And when he saw his two dear daughters--Ann Mary, who had gone away like a lily, now blooming like a rose, and Hannah, stout little Hannah, with her honest blue eyes shining--when he saw his two daughters, I say--well, I'm sure I have no idea what happened, for at this point grandmother always takes off her gla.s.ses, and sniffs hard, and wipes her eyes before she can go on.

So there was a wedding at the minister's house, and everybody in Heath Falls was invited, because Hannah said they had been so good to her.

Everybody came, too, except old Master Necronsett, and that was nothing, because he never went anywhere except to the woods.

I know just what the bride and Hannah wore, for we have pieces of the material in our oldest cedar chest; but, of course, as they weren't your own great-great-great-grandmother and aunt, perhaps you wouldn't care to have me tell you all about their costumes. It was a grand occasion, however--that you can take from me; and the family tradition is that Ann Mary looked like a wonderful combination of an angel and a star.

And then Captain and Mrs. Winthrop rode off in one direction, and Hannah and her father in another, and there were a great many tears shed, for all everybody; was so happy.

VI.

Hannah went home with her head full of new ideas, and with four books in her saddle-bags--which, for those days, was a large library. These were the Bible, the "Universal Preceptor," a volume of the Shakespeare comedies, and Plutarch's "Lives." Armed with these weapons, how she did stir things up in Hillsboro! She got the children together into a school, and taught them everything she had learned in Heath Falls; and that was so much--what with the studying which she always kept up by herself--that from our little sc.r.a.p of a village three students went down to the college at William's Town, in Ma.s.sachusetts, the first year it was started, and there has been a regular procession of them ever since.

After a time she married Giles Wheeler, and began to teach her own children--she had nine--and very well instructed they were. She was too busy, then, to go into the schoolroom to teach; but never, then or later, even when she was an old, old woman, did she take her vigilant eyes and her managing hand off the schools of our county.

It was due to her that Hillsboro could boast for so long that its percentage of illiterates was zero. If, by chance, anyone grew up without knowing how to read, Aunt Hannah pounced on him and made him learn, whether he would or not. She loaned about, to anyone who would read them, the books she brought from Heath Falls; and in time she started a little library. Remembering the days when Captain Winthrop had read aloud to her in the granary, she had her children go about to read aloud to sick people, and to busy seamstresses or spinners who had no time for books.

And the number of girls in declines she cured by Master Necronsett's system! You would not believe it, if I told you. And she had our river named after that wise old heathen, and we think it the prettiest name possible for a river.

All this time, Ann Mary's position was getting grander and grander, for Captain Winthrop was on the American side when the Revolution came, and grew to be a very important man. Ann Mary dressed in brocade every day and all day, and went to Philadelphia, where she met General and Mrs.

Washington, and ever so many more famous people.

Wherever she went, she was admired and loved for her beauty and gentleness; but she did not forget Hannah. Nearly every traveler from the South brought a message or a present from Madam Winthrop to Mistress Wheeler, and once she and General Winthrop came and made a long visit in Hillsboro.

Grandmother's grandmother was old enough, by that time, to remember the visit very clearly; and it was from talk between the two sisters that she learned all about this story. She said she never saw a more beautiful woman than Madam Winthrop, nor heard a sweeter voice. But how Hannah had to hush the unmannerly surprise of her brood of quick-witted youngsters when they found out that elegant Aunt Ann Mary did not know her letters, and had never heard of Julius Caesar or Oliver Cromwell! For marriage did not change Ann Mary very much; but as her husband was perfectly satisfied with her, I dare say it was just as well.

However, when the Winthrop cousins begin to put on airs, and to talk about autograph letters from Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson addressed to their great-great-great-grandmother, and to show beautiful carved fans and lace handkerchiefs which she carried at State b.a.l.l.s in Philadelphia and New York, I have to bite my tongue to keep from reminding them that they have no autograph letters of _hers_!