Part 52 (1/2)

”Then, there is Frederick,” continued Mary, ”who loved his father so much, and who is so full of kindness to us both--he wishes to make up for the wrong his father did.”

”He has been kind to you, not to me; you are his pet, I am Mrs.

Farnham's,” said Isabel, a little petulantly. ”I shouldn't so much mind if I were in your place, but from her”--

”He has been very kind to you, Isabel; was it nothing to buy all the pretty things you have told me of in your chamber, out of his own pocket-money too?”

”What, my pretty bed, and the lace curtains, and that carpet, did he buy them?” exclaimed Isabel, eagerly.

”Yes, they were his choice, and for you.”

”Who told you this, Mary? I--I'm so surprised--so glad. Who told you about it, dear Mary?”

”Joseph Esmond. Fred made a confidant of him, and they went together to look at the things.”

”And that's what makes my room different from his mother's. Oh, Mary, I wish you could see it--so white, so fresh and breezy, and hers so hot looking and smothered up with silk. How I shall love that dear room after this.”

After a moment Isabel's face lost its sparkling expression. She was accusing herself of selfishness.

”But why did he get nothing of the kind for you, Mary!” she said very seriously.

”Oh, I'm to be brought up so differently, such things would look queer enough at the Old Homestead, you know,” answered Mary, laughing.

Isabel shook her head, but there was light in her eyes, and a rich color in her cheeks. She no longer felt it wicked to receive kindness from the Farnhams, and her little heart beat with grat.i.tude to them, the first she had ever felt, for the pretty things with which she was surrounded.

”Come,” she said cheerfully, gathering up her ap.r.o.n with its treasure of leaves. ”How long we have been sitting here. It is almost sun-down.”

Mary started up. True enough, the woods were flooded with a dusky purple, and the sunset was shooting its golden arrows everywhere among the trees around them.

It seemed as if some of the maple boughs had taken fire, they kindled up so like living flame. The fruit of a frost-grape vine that had clambered up one of the slender elms overhead, took a richness from the atmosphere and hung amid the leaves like cl.u.s.tering amethysts growing dusky in the shadow, and when they left it the hemlock log which they had occupied was flecked with gleams of light, that lay among its soft green like a delicate embroidery of gold.

”It is so very beautiful,” said Mary, looking around, ”I hate to go yet.”

”But it will be dark and the hill is steep,” persisted Isabel, less enthralled by the scene. ”Do hurry, the sun is sinking fast--we will come every day next week, just as soon as school is out.”

Mary drew a deep breath and followed. Isabel led the way out of the woods.

The next time Mary went there it was alone, for in the morning Mrs.

Farnham left for the city, with scarcely an hour's notice--and a week from that time Isabel Chester was entered as a scholar in one of the most fas.h.i.+onable boarding-schools in New York.

Mary Fuller continued in her school, pursuing a strangely desultory course of studies, but improving greatly both in intellect and health.

Where her heart urged the effort, her progress was wonderful, and it was not three months before the most neatly written letters that went out from the village post-office, were known to be in Mary Fuller's handwriting.

Joseph Esmond and Isabel Chester, these were her only correspondents, and she was indeed a proud girl when the answers came directed entirely to herself. That day was an epoch in Mary's life.

Sometimes Mary broke over the rules of the school by drawing profiles and rude landscapes in her copy-book and on the slate, till the teacher, detecting her one day, examined the productions with a smile, and gave her a few rudimental lessons in drawing. These rough efforts of her pencil happened to come under Judge Sharp's observation, and he who never forgot the smallest thing that could make others happy, brought her some brushes and a box of water-colors from the city.

True genius requires but little encouragement, and most frequently develops itself against opposition. This little box of paints and pencils was enough to bring forth a latent talent, and the enthusiasm that had exhausted itself in tears of delight on the hill-side, grew into a power of creation. This beautiful development became a strong bond of sympathy between her and the boy-artist, Joseph Esmond. In truth, Mary was drawing many sources of happiness around her, as the good can never fail of doing.