Part 45 (2/2)
”Don't you think it a pleasant place out here?” said uncle Nathan, looking blandly down upon her.
”Oh! yes, very, very nice. I never saw so many things growing at once before.”
”No! Don't they have gardens in New York then?”
”Some persons do, but not with these things in them: but they have beautiful roses and honeysuckles, and sights of flowers; don't you like flowers, sir?”
”Like flowers? Why, yes. Didn't you see the c.o.xcombs and marigolds in the front garden?”
”Yes,” said Mary, a little disappointed; for, to say the truth, she found more beauty in the nicely arranged vegetable beds, with their rich variety of tints, just then bathed in the sunset; besides, a taste for rare flowers had been excited, by many a childish visit to those pretty angles and gra.s.s plats, bright with choice flowers, that beautify many of our up-town dwellings in New York. ”Yes, they are large and grand, but I like little tiny flowers, with stems that shake when you only touch them.”
”Oh, you'll find lots of flowers like that in the spring time, I can tell you. Among the rocks and trees up there, the ground is covered with them.”
”And can I pick them?” asked the child, lifting her brightening eyes on uncle Nathan, with a world of confiding earnestness in them, but still doubtful if she would dare to touch even a wild blossom without permission.
”Pick them!” repeated the old man, laughing till his double chin trembled like a jelly. ”Why the cattle tramp over thousands of them every day. You may pick ap.r.o.ns full, if you have a mind to.”
”I shouldn't like much to pick them in that way,” said the child, thoughtfully.
”Why not, ha?”
”I don't know, sir.”
”Call me uncle Nathan!”
”Well, I don't know, uncle Nathan,” repeated the child, blus.h.i.+ng, ”but it seems to me as if it must hurt the pretty flowers to be picked, as if they had feeling like us, and would cry out in my fingers.”
”That is a queer thought,” said uncle Nathan, and he looked curiously on the child.
”Is it? I don't know,” was the modest reply, ”but I always feel that way about flowers.”
”She is a strange little creature,” thought uncle Nathan, who had a world of sympathy for every generous emotion the human soul ever knew, ”what company she will be here in the old stoop nights like this.”
Then in a quiet, gentle way, uncle Nathan began to question the child, as his sister had done; but Mary did not shrink from him as she had from his relative; and the sunset gathered around them, while she was telling her mournful little history.
The old man's eyes filled with tears more than once, as he listened.
Mary saw it and drew close to him as she spoke, till her little clasped hands rested on his knees.
Just then aunt Hannah came into the porch with a pail in her hand, foaming over with milk.
”Oh!” exclaimed uncle Nathan, lifting himself from the arm-chair with a heavy sigh, ”I oughtn't to have been sitting here, in this way, while you are doing up the ch.o.r.es, Hannah. Give me the stool, little darter, I must do my share of the milking, any how.”
”Sit still! The child's strange yet; I can do up the ch.o.r.es for once, I suppose,” answered aunt Hannah, placing a bright tin pan on the dresser, and tightening a snow-white strainer over the pail. ”Sit down, I say.”
Uncle Nathan dropped into his capacious chair, with a relieving sigh, though half the authority in aunt Hannah's command was lost in the flow of a pearly torrent of milk which soon filled the pan.
”Can't I help?” inquired Mary, going up to aunt Hannah, as she lifted the br.i.m.m.i.n.g pan with both hands, and bore it toward a swinging shelf in the pantry.
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