Part 42 (1/2)

”Finely, finely!” says he. ”Her little girl wrote me a letter yesterday. Ten years old! Image of her father, that child. You're as bad as Lisbet, though, that never would learn to change.”

”I'm sure I beg her pardon--Mrs. Weldon, of course, and her with a boy fourteen, too!” says I. ”How Miss Lisbet did take to her, surely! I always thought having her to help with Master Louis's children when they were so bad, just helped poor Miss Lisbet to bear with her sorrow at not starting the hospital, and all that.”

”Yes, yes,” he said and nodded.

”She was a fine woman, Jessop was. Best nurse I ever had. Yes, yes--Weldon's a lucky fellow.”

The cress smelled strong in the heat, then, and I couldn't but say:

”Do you remember when Miss Lisbet and I started the cress-bed, doctor, down in the Winthrop pond?”

At first he didn't answer, and I saw the old times in his face.

”How she did enjoy your cress-and-mustard salad!” he says, finally.

”Mrs. Stanchon spoke of it this morning--have you a little mess I could take up to the house?”

And so we pa.s.sed to talking about her, and it eased us both.

”It's like a sort of tale, sir, isn't it?” says I, thoughtful-like.

”Often and often when my niece has left everything tidy, and made my tea and cakes, and put away the wash, and watered the brick, and gone home, and I sit here while the pot draws and there's only the cat for company (not that I complain! I've my thoughts, and plenty of books, and all the old days to live over!) often and often, as I say, it'll come to me in a sort of tale, like, and I wish there was some one to take it down; it would read off like a book!”

”And why not take it down yourself, Rhoda, my girl?” says he. ”There's one, as I needn't tell you, would have no little pleasure reading it.”

And so I began. You'd be surprised at the many that's offered to help me, and piece out bits of her life that maybe I wouldn't know. But I knew enough for what I had in mind to show, namely, what Miss Lisbet was always planning to do--and what she really did do.

So now I'll begin at the beginning.

It was the morning of the day I was ten years old that I first saw her.

A Sat.u.r.day it was, and a holiday, and mother gave me a piece of currant bread, b.u.t.tered, for a treat, and the day free till sunset, after my morning tasks were through. I was all that was left her--five others buried, in fifteen years--and she was very easy with me, for which you could scarcely blame her, poor soul! Three lost in England, of the smallpox, and one that hardly opened his little eyes, and my sister of something that they had no name for rightly in those days, doctor says, but they call it appendicitis now. I was born over here, and never saw England, though I've always loved to read about it and always called it ”home,” not thinking, as one often will. Mother had black memories of the old country and was anxious for us to grow up little Americans, though I can see now that she went to work very wrong to bring that about, for we always curtseyed to the rector and old Madam Winthrop when she rode by in the coach, and never, in short, thought of looking higher than we were born.

So when I saw a lovely young lady drive up in a pony cart, hand the reins to the groom, get out, and walk through the gate toward me, I held the currant bread behind me and dropped a little curtsey.

”Is this Mrs. Pennyfield's house?” she says, stopping and staring at me.

”Yes, miss, she's my mother,” says I.

”What is your name?” says she.

”Rhoda Pennyfield, please, miss,” says I, and then, the goodness knows why, for I was a shy enough little thing commonly, ”It's my birthday!”

”Why, how funny!” she says, smiling the loveliest smile in the world.

”It's mine, too! How old are you, Rhoda Pennyfield?”

”Ten, miss.”

”Isn't that wonderful!” she cries out, blus.h.i.+ng like a rose peony. ”I am ten to-day, too! What were your presents? Mine were the pony phaeton and this gold watch (she held it out to me on a chain about her neck) and a macaw from South America from my Uncle Mather, on an ebony perch. And a French doll from my aunty in New York, but I don't care for dolls any more. What had you?”

Now, as you can see, if I had really been a little American, I should have been jealous and ashamed that things were so different between us, but such a notion never entered my head.