Part 10 (1/2)

”'Men of the Lenni-Lenape,' he said, 'my race upholds the earth. Your feeble tribe stands on my sh.e.l.l. What fire that a Delaware can light would burn the child of my fathers?' he added, pointing proudly to the simple blazonry on his skin. 'The blood that came from such a stock would smother your flames!'”

Ah! and then the last speech, that she always spoke leaning against a tree, with her arms folded on her breast, and her gaze fixed haughtily on the awe-struck spectators: ”Pale-face! I die before my heart is soft!” and so on. They all said she did that splendidly--better than any one else.

What was Clarice saying?

”And I said to him, I said: 'I don't know what you mean,' I said. 'Oh, yes, you do,' he said. 'No, I don't,' I said. 'I think you're real silly,' I said. And he said: 'Oh, don't say that,' he said. 'Well, I shall,' I said. 'You're just as silly as you can be!'” And so on and so on, till Sue could have fallen asleep for sheer weariness, save for those merry voices in her ear and the pain at her heart.

But when Clarice was gone, Sue unlocked her journal and wrote:

”I am very unhappy, and no one cares. I am alone in the world, and I feel that I have not long to live. My cheek is hollow, and my eyes gleam with an unnatural light; but I shall rest in the grave and no one will morn for me. I hear the voices of my former friends, but they think no more of the lonely outcast. I do hope that if I should live to be fifteen I shall have more sense than some people have; but she is all I have left in the world, and I will be faithful to death. They have taken my sister from me--” But when she had written these last words Sue blushed hotly, and drew her pen through them; for she was an honest child, and she knew they were not true.

Then she went downstairs. Her room was too lonely, and everything in it spoke too plainly of Mary. She could not stay there.

Mrs. Penrose looked up as she entered the sitting-room. ”Oh! it is you, Sue,” she said, with her little weary air; ”I thought it was Lily.”

”Would you like me to read to you, Mamma?” asked Sue, with a sudden impulse.

”Thank you, my dear,” said Mrs. Penrose, doubtfully; ”isn't Clarice here? Yes, I should like it very much, Sue. My eyes are rather bad to-day.”

Sue read for an hour, and forgot the pain at her heart. When the reading was over, her mother said: ”Thank you, my dear; that was a real treat. How well you read, Sue!”

”Let me read to you every day, Mother,” said Sue. She kissed her mother warmly; and, standing near her, noticed for the first time how very pale and thin she was, how transparent her cheek and hands. Her heart smote her with a new pain. How much more she saw, now that she was unhappy herself! She had never thought much about her mother's ill health. She was an ”invalid,” and that seemed to account for everything. At least, she could be a better daughter while she lived, and could help her mother in the afternoon, as Lily did in the morning.

The day of the circus came. A week ago, how Sue had looked forward to it! It was to be the crowning joy of the season, the great, the triumphal day. But now all was changed. She had no thought of ”backing out”; an engagement once made was a sacred thing with Sue; but she no longer saw it wreathed in imaginary glories. The circus was fun, of course; but she was not going in the right way, she knew--in fact, she was going in a very naughty way; and Clarice was no longer the enchanting companion she had once seemed, who could cast a glamour over everything she spoke of. Sue even suggested their consulting Mr.

Packard; but Clarice raised a shrill clamor.

”Sue, don't speak of such a thing! Puppa would lock me up if he had any idea; he's awfully strict, you know. And we have both vowed never to tell; you know we have, Sue. You vowed on this sacred relic; you know you did!”

The sacred relic was a battered little medal that Clarice said had come from Jerusalem and been blessed by the Pope. As this was almost the only flight of fancy she had ever shown, Sue clung to the idea, and had made the vow with all possible solemnity, feeling like Hannibal and Robert of Normandy in one. This was not, however, until after she had told Mary of the plan; but, somehow, she had not mentioned that to Clarice. Mary would not tell, of course; perhaps, at the bottom of her heart, Sue almost wished she would.

The day was bright and sunny, and Sue tried hard to feel as if she were going to have a great and glorious time; yet when the hour came at which she had promised to go to the hotel, she felt rather as if she were going to execution. She hung round the door of her mother's room. Could this be Sue, the foundling, the deserted child of cloudy British princes?

”If you need me, Mamma, I won't go!” she said several times; but Mrs.

Penrose did not notice the wistful intonation in her voice, and she had not yet become accustomed to needing Sue.

”No, dear!” she said. ”Run along, and have a happy day. Lily and Katy will do all I need.” Then, with an impulse she hardly understood herself, for she was an undemonstrative woman, she added: ”Give me a kiss before you go, Susie!”

Sue hung round her neck in a pa.s.sionate embrace. ”Mamma!” she exclaimed, ”Mamma! if I were very, very wicked, could you forgive me?--if I were very dreadfully wicked?”

”I hope so, dear!” said Mrs. Penrose, settling her hair. She had pretty hair, and did not like to have it disarranged. ”But you are not wicked, Sue. What is the matter, my dear?”

But Sue, after one more almost strangling embrace, ran out of the room. She felt suffocated. She must have one moment of relief before she went. Das.h.i.+ng back to her room, she flung herself upon her journal.

”I go!” she wrote. ”I go because I have sworn it, and I may not break my word. It is a dreadful thing that I do, but it is my fate that bekons. I don't believe I am a foundling, after all, and I don't care if I am. Mamma is just perfectly sweet; and if I _should_ live, I should never, never, _never_ let her know that I had found it out.

Adieu!

”The unfortunate