Part 12 (1/2)
What Elizabeth termed Miss Winn's ”independence” grated sorely upon her ideas of what was owing to the head of the house, which was herself. It was always done so quietly and pleasantly one could hardly take umbrage.
Cynthia was not exactly a child of the house. She was in no wise dependent on her newly found relatives. Chilian had made that understood in the beginning, when he had chosen the best chamber for them.
”You don't need to take boarders,” she had replied tartly.
”I don't know as we are to call it that. I am the child's guardian and answerable for her comfort and her welfare. The perfect trust confided in me has touched me inexpressibly. I didn't know that Anthony Leverett held me in such high esteem. And if I choose to put this money by until she is grown--it will make such a little difference in our living----”
”Chilian Leverett, you are justly ent.i.tled to it,” she interrupted with sharp decision. ”He's right enough in making a fair provision for them--no doubt he has plenty. But I don't quite like the boarder business, for all that.”
”We must get some one to help you with the work.”
”I don't want any more help than I have. Land sakes! Eunice and I have plenty of leisure on our hands. I wouldn't have a servant around wasting things, if she paid me wages.”
They had gone on very smoothly. Eunice had found her way to the child's heart. But then Eunice had lived with her dream children that might have been like Charles Lamb's ”Children of Alice.” Elizabeth might have married twice in her life, but there was no love in either case, rather a secret mortification that such incapables should dare to raise their thoughts to her. But she had some strenuous ideas on the rearing of children, quite of the older sort. Life was softening somewhat, even for childhood, but she did not approve of it.
CHAPTER VI
GOING TO SCHOOL
Elizabeth Leverett interviewed Dame Wilby beforehand. The woman came half a day on Monday to wash and she hardly knew how to spend half an hour, but when she found Miss Winn was going, she loftily relegated the whole business to her.
Dame Wilby lived in an old rambling house, already an eyesore to the finer houses in Lafayette Street, but the Dame was obstinate and would not sell. ”It was going to last her time out. She was born here when it was only a lane, and she meant to be buried from here.” Once it had been quite a flouris.h.i.+ng school; but newer methods had begun to supersede it.
It was handy for the small children about the neighborhood, it took them over the troublesome times, it gave their mothers a rest, and kept them out of mischief. And the old dames were thorough, as far as they went.
Indeed, some of the mothers had never gone any farther. They could cast up accounts, they could weigh and measure, for they had learned all the tables. They could spell and read clearly, they knew all the common arts of life, and how to keep on learning out of the greater than printed books--experience.
Dame Wilby might have been eighty. No one remembered her being young.
Her husband was lost at sea and she opened the school, worked in her garden, saved until she had cleared her small old home, and now was laying up a trifle every year. She was tall and somewhat bent in the shoulders, very much wrinkled, with clear, piercing light blue eyes and snowy hair. She always wore a cap and only a little line of it showed at the edge of her high forehead. Her frocks were made in the plainest style, skirts straight and narrow, and she always wore a little shoulder shawl, pinned across the bosom--white in the summer, home-dyed blue in the winter.
Some children were playing tag in the unoccupied lot next door. The schoolroom door opened at the side. There were two rows of desks, with benches for the older children, two more with no desks for the A B C and spelling cla.s.ses. The rest they learned in concert, orally. The dame had a table covered with a gray woollen cloth, some books, an inkstand, a holder for pens and pencils, and the never-failing switch.
”Yes,” she answered to Miss Winn's explanation. ”Miss Leverett was telling about her. I was teaching school here when she was born, and then the captain took her away to the Ingies again.” Most folks p.r.o.nounced it that way. ”Rather meachin' little thing--I s'pose it was the climate over there. They say it turns the skin yellow. Let's see how you read, sissy?”
She read several verses out of the New Testament quite to the dame's satisfaction. Then about spelling. The second word, in two syllables, floored her. Had she ciphered? No. Did she know her tables? No. The capital of the state? That she could answer. When the war broke out?
When peace was declared?
”I'll ask Cousin Leverett,” she answered, in nowise abashed by her ignorance. ”He tells me a great many things.”
”You must study it out of books. I s'pose she's going to live here?
She's not going back to the Ingies? I heard the captain was coming home.”
”He is settling up his affairs,” was the quiet answer.
Dame Wilby looked the child all over.
”You'll sit on that bench,” she said. Then she rang the bell and the children trooped in, staring at her. The little boys--four of them--were on the seat back of her, on her seat she made the fifth. Betty Upham was in the desk contingent.
They repeated the Lord's prayer in concert. Then lessons were given out.
The larger girls read.