Lizzy Glenn; Or, The Trials of a Seamstress Part 12

"She would have had to work a little harder to have done that. No doubt she was glad enough to get rid of the burden of supporting him."

"Well, all that I can say is, that any mother who is not willing to work to take care of her children, don't deserve to see them."

"So say I," returned the husband.

"And as to Henry's going home, I wouldn't hear to any such thing.

He'd not be a bit too good to trump up any kind of stories about not being treated well, so as to prevails upon her not to let him come back. I know just how boys like him talk when they get a chance to run home. Even when they do come back, they're never worth a cent afterward."

"Oh, no! As to his going home, that is out of the question this winter," replied Sharp. "If his mother cares about seeing him, she'll find her way out here."

With a sadder heart than ever did poor Henry grope his way up into the cold garret that night, with but one thought and one image in his mind, the thought of home and the image of his mother. He dreamed of her all night. He was at home. Her tender voice was in his ear, and his head rested on her bosom. She clothed him in warmer garments, and set him beside her at the table, upon which was tempting food. But morning came at last, and he was awakened from visions of delight to a more painful consciousness of his miserable condition by the sharp, chiding voice of his cruel mistress. Slowly, with stiffened limbs and a reluctant heart did he arise, and enter upon the repulsive and hard duties of another day.

As he had not been permitted to go home, his next consolatory thought was that his mother would come out at once to see him. This hope he clung to day after day, but he clung to it in vain. It mattered not that, every-time the shop-door opened when he was in it, he turned with a quickened pulse to see if it were not his mother, or that he would pause and listen, when back in the house, to hear if the strange voice that came suddenly from the shop, were not the voice of her he so longed to see. She came not; nor was any word from her brought to him.

And thus pa.s.sed the whole of the severe month of January, the long and cold winter adding greatly to his other causes of suffering.

CHAPTER VIII.

HENRY GASTON'S TREATMENT BY SHARP.

A BOY of more robust const.i.tution and fuller of blood than Henry Gaston, with that activity which a fine flow of animal spirits and a high degree of health give, would have cared little for the exposure to which he was subjected at Sharp's, even if clad no more comfortably. But Henry had little of that healthy warmth natural to the young. He was const.i.tutionally delicate, and this caused him to feel more keenly the chilling intensity of the cold to which he was frequently exposed without sufficient clothing. His whole dress, intended to protect him from the cold of a remarkably severe and trying winter, was a thin shirt, the remains of one worn for nearly a year; the jacket and trowsers, thin and threadbare, that Mrs.

Sharp had made for him out of some worn-out garment which her husband had thrown aside, and which were now rent in many places; a pair of dilapidated yarn stockings, with feet like a honey-comb. His shoes, the pair given him by his mother, had been half-soled once, but were again so far gone that his stockings protruded in several places, and yet neither his master nor mistress seemed to take any notice of their condition, and he was afraid to ask for a new pair.

When it rained or snowed, or, worse, when it rained with or after the snow, as it had done several times within a week, his shoe were but a poor protection for his feet. The snow and water went through them as through a sieve.

Before the first of February, the poor boy was almost crippled with the chilblains. Through the day, he hobbled about as best he could, often in great pain; and at night the tender skin of his feet, irritated by the warmth of the bed, would keep him awake for hours with a most intolerable burning and itching.

"Why don't you walk straight? What do you go shuffling along in that kind of style for?" said Sharp to him one day, toward the last of January.

"My feet are so sore," replied Henry, with a look of suffering, blended with patient endurance.

"What's the matter with them, ha?" asked his master glancing down at the miserable apologies for shoes and stockings that but partially protected the child's feet front the snow whenever he stepped beyond the threshold.

"They're frosted, sir," said Henry.

"Frosted, ha? Pull off your shoes and stockings, and let me see."

Henry drew off an old shoe, tied on with various appliances of twine and leather strings; and then removed a stocking that, through many gaping holes, revealed the red and shining skin beneath. That little foot was a sight to pain the heart of any one but a cruel tyrant.

The heel, in many places, was of a dark purple, and seemed as if mortification were already begun. And in some places it was cracked open, and exhibited running sores.

"Take off your other shoe and stocking," said Sharp, in authoritative tone.

Henry obeyed, trembling all the while. This foot exhibited nearly the same marks of the progress of the painful disease.

"What have you done for it?" asked Sharp, looking Henry in the face with a scowl.

"Nothing but to put a little candle-grease on it at night before I went to bed," replied the child.

"Come out here with me. I'll doctor you," said his master, turning away and disappearing through the back door. Henry followed as quickly as he could walk on his bare feet, that seemed ready to give way under him at ever step. When he got as far as the kitchen, he found Sharp waiting for him in the door.

"Here, jump out into that snow-bank!" said he, pointing to a pile of snow that had been shoveled up only that morning, after a fall through the night, and lay loose and high.

The poor boy looked down at his crippled, and, indeed, bleeding feet, and, as may well be supposed, hesitated to comply with the peremptory order.

"Do you hear, sir?" exclaimed his master, seizing him by the collar, and pushing him out into the yard. Then catching him by one arm, he set him in the centre of the snow-bank, his naked feet and legs going down into it some twelve or eighteen inches.

"Now stand there until I tell you to come out!"

The child did not scream, for he had already learned to bear pain without uttering even the natural language of suffering; although the agony he endured for the next minute was terrible. At the end of that time, a motion of the head of his master gave him to understand that the ordeal was over.

"Now take that bucket of cold water, and let him put his feet into it," said he to a little girl they had just taken to raise, and who stood near the kitchen window, her heart almost ready to burst at the cruelty inflicted upon the only one in the house with whom she had a single feeling in common.

The girl quickly obeyed, and sat down on the floor beside the bucket of water. She handled tenderly the blood-red feet of the little boy, ever and anon looking up into his face, and noting with tender solicitude, the deep lines of suffering upon his forehead.

"There, that will do," said Sharp, who stood looking on, "and now run up stairs and get a better pair of stockings for Henry."

"What do you want with a better pair of stockings?" said Mrs. Sharp, a few moments after, bustling down into the kitchen.

"Why, I want them for Henry," replied her husband.

"Want them for Henry!" she exclaimed, in surprise. "Where's the ones he had on?"

"There are some old rags in the shop that he had on; but they won't do now, with such feet as he's got."

"What's the matter with his feet, I'd like to know," inquired Mrs.

Sharp.

"Why, they're frosted."

"Let him put them in snow, then. That'll cure 'em. It's nothing but a little snow-burn, I suppose."

"It's something a little worse than that," replied Sharp, "and he must have a comfortable pair of stockings. And here, Anna, do you run around to Stogies, and tell him to send me three or four pairs of coa.r.s.e shoes, about Henry's size."

Anna, the little girl, disappeared with alacrity, and Mr. Sharp, turning to his wife, said:

"Henry must have a good, warm pair of stockings, or we shall have him sick on our hands."

"Well, I'll find him a pair," replied Mrs. Sharp, going off up stairs. In the mean time, Henry still sat with his feet in the cold water. But the pain occasioned by the snow was nearly all gone. Mrs.

Sharp came down with the stockings, and Anna came in with the shoes at the same moment. On lifting the child's feet from the water, the redness and inflammation had a good deal subsided. Mrs. Sharp rubbed them with a little sweet oil, and then gave him the stockings to put on. He next tried the shoes; and one pair of them fitted him very well. But his feet were too sore and tender for such hard shoes; and when they were on, and tied up around the ankles, he found that after getting up they hurt him most dreadfully in his attempt to walk. But he hobbled, as best he could, into the shop.

"Throw them dirty things into the street!" were the only words addressed to him by Sharp, who pointed at his wet apologies for shoes and stockings, still lying upon the floor.

Henry did as directed, but every step he took was as if he were treading upon coals of fire. His feet, now enveloped in a closely fitting pair of woolen stockings, and galled by the hard and unyielding leather of the new shoes, itched and burned with maddening fervor.

"Here, carry this hat home," said his master, as he came in from the street, not seeming to notice the expression of suffering that was on his face, nor the evident pain with which he walked.