The Old Homestead Part 6

But as she leaned her head gently on one side to listen, the smile left her face. There was something heavy and unnatural in her husband's tread that troubled her. She was turning toward the door, when Chester opened it and entered the room with his overcoat off, and bearing in his arms a mysterious burden.

"Why, Chester, how is this?--the night so cold, and your forehead all in a perspiration. What is this wrapped in your coat?"

As Mrs. Chester spoke, her husband sat down near the door, still holding the child. She took off his hat and touched her lips to his damp forehead, while he gently opened his overcoat and revealed the little thin face upon his bosom.

"See here, Jane, it is a poor little girl I found in the street freezing to death."

"Poor thing! poor little creature!" said Mrs. Chester, filled with compa.s.sion, as she encountered the glance of the great wild eyes that seemed to illuminate the whole of that miserable face, "here, let her sit in the rocking-chair close up to the fire--dear me!"

This last exclamation broke from Mrs. Chester, as she drew the great coat from around the child, and saw how miserably she was clad; but checking her astonishment, she placed her guest in the rocking-chair, took off the old cloak, and was soon kneeling on the carpet holding a saucer of warm tea to the pale lips of the child.

"Give me a piece of the toast, John," she said, holding the saucer in one hand, and reaching forth the other towards her husband, who had seated himself at the supper table. "This is all she wants--a good fire and something to eat. Please pour out your own tea, while I take care of her. She hasn't had a good warm drink before, this long time, I dare say--have you, little girl?"

"No," said the child, faintly, "I never tasted anything so good as that before in my life."

Mrs. Chester laughed, and the tears came into her eyes.

"Poor thing! it is only because she is starved, that this tea and toast seem so delicious," she said, looking at her husband; "a small piece more. I must be careful, you know, John, and not give her too much at once," and breaking off what she deemed a scant portion of the toast, the kind woman gave it into the eager hands of the child.

The little girl swallowed the morsel of toast greedily, and held out her hand again.

Mrs. Chester shook her head and smiled through the tears that filled her eyes. A look of meek self-denial settled on the child's face.

She dropped her hand, drew a deep breath, and tried to be content; but in spite of herself, those strange eyes wandered toward the food with intense craving.

"No," said Chester, answering the appealing glance of his wife, "it might do harm."

The little girl gently closed her eyes, and thus shut out the sight of food.

"Are you sleepy?" said Mrs. Chester.

"No," replied the child, almost with a sob. "I only would rather not look that way; it makes me long for another piece."

Tears gushed through her black eyelashes as she spoke, and rolled down her cheek.

"Wait a little while. In an hour--shall I say an hour, John?" said Mrs. Chester, deeply moved.

Chester nodded his head; he did not like to trust his voice just then.

"Well," said the generous woman; "in an hour you shall have something more; a cake, perhaps, and a cup of warm milk."

The child opened her eyes, and through their humid lashes flashed a gleam that made Mrs. Chester's heart thrill.

"Now," she said, rising cheerfully, "we must make up some sort of a nest for the little creature. Let me see, the bolster and pillows from our bed, with a thick blanket folded under them, and four chairs for a bedstead; that will do very nicely. You remember, Chester, when our Isabel was ill, she fancied that sort of bed before anything.

Would you like to sleep that way, my dear?"

"I don't know, ma'am; I ain't used to sleeping in a bed, lately,"

faltered the little girl, bewildered by all the gentle kindness that she was receiving.

"Not used to sleeping in a bed!" cried Mrs. Chester, looking at her husband; "just fancy our Isabel saying that, Chester."

And with fresh tears in her eyes the gentle housewife proceeded to make up the temporary couch, which she had so ingeniously contrived for her little beggar-guest. She entered her bed-room for the pillows.

The light in her hand shed its beams full upon a little girl, whose long raven curls lay in ma.s.ses over the pillow, and down upon her night-dress, till they were lost among the bed-clothes. The child might be ten years of age, and nothing more beautiful could well be imagined than the sweet and oval cast of her countenance. Color soft and rich as the downy side of a peach, bloomed upon her cheek, which rested against the palm of one plump little hand. Her chin was dimpled, and around her pretty mouth lay a soft smile that just parted its redness, as the too ardent sunbeam cleaves open a cherry.

"Isabel, bless the darling," murmured Mrs. Chester, as she bent over her child, pa.s.sing one hand under her beautiful head very carefully, that her fingers might not get entangled in those rich tresses and thus arouse the little sleeper.

She gently removed the pillow, and permitting the head to fall softly back, stole away. The child murmured in her sleep, and feeling the change of position, turned indolently. One hand and a portion of her tresses fell over the side of the bed, her curls sweeping downward half-way to the floor. When Mrs. Chester returned she found her child in this position, partly out of bed, and with the quilt thrown back.

With a kiss and a murmured thanksgiving for the rosy health so visible in that sleeping form, the happy mother covered up those little white shoulders.

The little miserable child seemingly about her own daughter's age, sat in the rocking-chair, following her with those singular eyes and with that wan smile upon her lips. The contrast was too striking--her own child so luxuriant in health and beauty--that little homeless being with cheeks so thin and eyes so full of intelligence. It seemed to her that moment as if the fate of these two children would be jostled together--as if they, so unlike, would travel the same path and suffer with each other. Nothing could be more improbable than this; but it was a pa.s.sing thought, full of pain, which the mother could not readily fling from her heart. For a moment it made her breathe quick, and she sat down gazing upon the strange child as if fascinated, holding the warm hand of Isabel with both of hers.

Chester wondered at the stillness and called to his wife. She came forth looking rather sad, but soon arranged the pillows, the blankets and snowy sheets, which she brought with her, into a most inviting little nest in one corner of the room. The little stranger watched her earnestly, with a wan smile playing about her mouth.

Mrs. Chester saw that the strange child, though thinly clad, was clean in her attire, and that some rents in her old calico frock had been neatly mended.

"What is your name?" she said, gently taking the child's hand and drawing her into the bed-room, "we have not asked your name yet, little girl."

"Mary Fuller, that is my name ma'am," replied the child, in her sweet, low voice.

"And have you got a mother?"

"I don't know," faltered the child, and a spot of crimson sprang into her pinched cheek.

"Don't know!"

"Please not to ask me about it," said the child, meekly. "I don't like to talk about my mother."

"But your father," said Mrs. Chester, remarking the color that glowed with such unnatural brightness on the child's face with a thrill of pain, for it seemed to her as if a corpse had blushed.

"My father! Oh, he is dead."

The color instantly went out from her cheek, like a flash of fire suddenly extinguished there, and the child clasped her hands in a sort of thoughtful ecstasy, as if the mention of her father's name had lifted her soul to a communion with the dead.

Mrs. Chester sat down by a bureau, and searched for one of Isabel's night-gowns in the drawer, now and then casting wistful glances on her singular guest.

"Come," she said, gently, after a few minutes had elapsed, "let me take off your frock, then say your prayers and go to bed."

"I have said my prayers," replied the child, lifting her eyes with a look that thrilled through and through Mrs. Chester. "When I think of my father, then I always say the prayers that he taught me, over in my heart."

"Then you loved your father?"

"Loved him!" replied the child, with a look of touching despondency.

"My dear dead father--did you ask me if I loved him? What else in the wide, wide world had I to love?"

"Your mother," said Mrs. Chester.

That flush of crimson shot over the child's face again, and bowing her head with a look of the keenest anguish, she faltered out,

"My mother!"