Belle Powers' Locket

She was not at all a favorite with her school-mates, – this fractious and self-willed little child; and Belle had to "take her part" and coax a good deal before she could persuade them to regard her with any patience, or to feel willing to accept her as a member of their circle.

"What have you there?" asked Mabel one day, coming into Belle's nursery and finding her looking lovingly at some small object she held in her hand.

"It's my locket, – my new locket that papa gave me a few minutes ago," answered Belle.

"Let's see it," said Mabel, making a grasp at it; but Belle was too quick for her, and would not suffer her to seize her treasure.

"You can't have it in your own hands," she said; "for it was my own mamma's, and I don't want any one to touch it, 'cept they loved her. Only Maggie and Bessie," she added, remembering that they had never known her mother, but that she would by no means keep the choicest of her treasures from their hands, feeling sure as she did that they would guard what was precious to her with as much care as she would herself.

"I'll show it to you, Mabel. Isn't it pretty?" and Belle held up a small locket on a slight gold chain.

It was a little, old-fashioned thing, heart-shaped, and made of fretted gold with a forget-me-not of turquoises in the centre. It was very pretty, – in Belle's eyes, of the most perfect beauty; but its great value lay in that it had belonged, as she told Mabel, to her own mamma when she was a girl.

It was one of Belle's greatest pleasures to sit upon her papa's knee and turn over with loving, reverent fingers the various articles of jewelry which had once been her mother's, and which were to be hers when she should be of a proper age to have them and take care of them. "Mamma's pretty things" were a source of great enjoyment to her; and although Belle loved dress as much as any little girl of her age, it was with no thought of decking herself in them, but simply for their own beauty and the sake of the dear one who had once worn them, that they were so prized. And now and then when her papa gave her some trifle suitable for her, she seldom wore it, so fearful would she be of losing it, or lest other harm should come to it. So now, as things were apt to come to harm in Mabel's destructive fingers, she was very much afraid of trusting the precious locket within them; and stoutly, though not crossly, refused to let her have it.

Mabel begged and promised, whined and fretted; but the locket was still held beyond her reach, till at last she made a dive and had nearly snatched it from Belle's hold.

But Daphne's eye was upon her, and Daphne's hand pulled her back as the old woman said, —

"Hi! dere! none ob dat, Miss Mabel. I ain't goin fur see my ole missus' tings took from my young missus, and me by to help it. I ain't goin fur stan' dat, no way," and Daphne's grasp was rougher than it need to have been as she held back the angry, struggling Mabel.

The child was in a great passion: she struck wildly at the nurse, and screamed aloud, so that her mother came running to see what was the matter.

"There then, never mind," said Mrs. Walton, as Mabel, released from Daphne's hold, rushed to her and complained that Belle would not let her touch her new locket, – "never mind, I will give you something pretty to look at."

"I want a locket like Belle's to keep for my own," said Mabel; "and then I'll never let her see it."

"Pooh! I wouldn't look at it," said Belle, forgetting all her good resolves, "if you showed it to me. I'd just squeeze my eyes tight shut, and never open them till you took it away. And I don't b'lieve the man in the locket-store has any like this."

But Mabel had hardly left the room with her mother before Belle was sorry, as usual, for the anger she had shown, and said remorsefully to Daphne, —

"There now, I went and forgot the Bible proverb papa gave me, and didn't give 'a soft answer' to turn away Mabel's wrath, but just spoke as cross as any thing, and was real naughty. I'll just run after her, and let her touch my locket very carefully with her own hands."

And away she went, ready to make peace, even by doing that which was not pleasant to her; but the dear little thing was only partly successful, for as Maggie afterwards said, when Belle told her the story, "Mabel was of that kind of nature that if you gave her an inch she took an ell;" and no sooner did Belle let her have the locket in her own hands than she wanted to have it about her neck and wear it. This was too much, even for the little peace-maker: she could not make up her mind to give way in this, nor, indeed, could she have been expected to do so; and quiet was not restored till Mabel's mother was worried into taking her out at once in search of such a locket as Belle's.

But the search proved quite fruitless, for no locket exactly like Belle's could be found; and Mabel would not be satisfied with one that was different. In vain did she and her mother go from jeweller's to jeweller's; in vain did Mrs. Walton offer the spoiled child lockets far more showy and costly than the one on which she had set her heart; in vain did the shopman assure her that such as she desired were "quite out of the fashion," an argument which generally went a good way with Mabel: one just like Belle's she would have.

"Then we will have one made," said Mrs. Walton; and inquired when it could be finished. But when the jeweller said it would take a week or more, neither would this satisfy the naughty child, who was in a mood that was uncommonly perverse and obstinate even for her.

"I shall have one to-day," she repeated; and was so very troublesome that even the patience of her mistaken and spoiling mother at last gave way, and the jeweller heartily wished himself rid of such a noisy, ill-behaved customer.

However, Mrs. Walton gave the order, and promised to bring Belle's locket for the jeweller to see the pattern on Monday, this being Saturday; and then returned home with her naughty child.

Belle had gone out, – gone to Mrs. Bradford's to spend the day with Maggie and Bessie, as she always did on Saturday; and Mabel was left to whine and fret by herself till evening.

This gave her fresh cause of displeasure: she was vexed at her cousin for leaving her alone, and when Belle returned she was greeted with, —

"Mamma is going to take your locket away from you on Monday, and take it to the locket-man to make me one just like it."

"No," said Belle, backing from Mabel to her father's knee, and holding fast with one hand clasped over the other upon the beloved locket, as if she feared it was to be snatched from her at once.

"You'll let me take it to the jeweller for a pattern, dear: won't you?" said her aunt. "Mabel wants one just like it."

Belle shook her head.

"No, Aunt Fanny," she answered: "I couldn't. It was my own mamma's, and I couldn't let it go from me; and I don't want anybody to have one just like it."

She did not speak unkindly or pettishly, but with a quiet determination in her tone, such as she sometimes showed, and which in some cases might seem to be obstinacy. But it was not so now; and it was evident that the child had some deep and earnest reason for her refusal, – a feeling that the little treasure which had belonged to her mamma had something so dear and sacred about it, that it could not be suffered to pass into strange hands, even for a time; nor could she bear to have it copied.

"The locket-man didn't know my own mamma, Aunt Fanny," she answered again to her aunt's persuasions: "maybe he wouldn't be so very gently with it. I couldn't, – I really couldn't."

Tears gathered in the eyes of the sensitive little one as she spoke, and there was a piteous tremble of her lip which forbade her aunt to urge her farther; but Mabel was not to be so put off.

"You cannot have it, Mabel," said Mr. Powers. "I will not have Belle troubled in this matter."

"What is it?" asked Mr. Walton, looking up from his evening paper, to which he had until now given all his attention, too much accustomed to the fretful tones of his little daughter's voice to pay heed to them when he could avoid it.

The trouble was soon explained; and Mr. Walton, who had lately awakened to the fact that his Mabel had become a most troublesome and disagreeable child, and that it was time for her to learn that she must sometimes give up her own will and consider others, told her that she must think no more of this new whim; and that if she could not be contented with such a locket as he might choose for her on Monday, she should have none at all.

"Then I won't have any at all," said Mabel, passionately. "And I won't eat any breakfast or dinner or supper, not for any days."

"Just as you choose," said Mr. Walton, coolly taking up his paper and beginning to read again; while his wife looked pleadingly at him, but to no purpose; and Belle sat gazing in amazement at the child who dared to speak in such a way to her father. Indulgent as Mr. Powers always was to his motherless little girl, she knew very well that he never would have overlooked such disrespect as that, nor could she have believed it possible that she should ever be guilty of it.

Astonishment and indignation at this novel mode of treatment held Mabel speechless and quiet for a moment; then she set up a roar which would have been surprising as coming from so small a pair of lungs, to any one who had not known her powers in that particular.

But here again Mr. Walton, who, as Belle afterwards told her papa, seemed to be disposed to "turn over a new leaf about training up Mabel in the way she should go," interfered, and bade her go from the room, or be quiet.

She chose neither; and the matter ended by her father himself carrying her away, and giving orders that she should be put to bed.

Belle was very sorry for all this, and could not help feeling as if she somehow was to blame, although the matter of the locket was one too near her little heart to be given up. But she went to her uncle when her own bed-time came, and begged that she might go and wish Mabel good-night, and be friends with her once more.

But Mr. Walton thought it better, as did Belle's own papa, that the wilful child should be left to herself till the next day; and he dismissed Belle with a kind kiss, saying, —

"Mabel will feel better in the morning, dear, and then she will be ready to make friends with you; but just now I am afraid she is still too naughty to meet you pleasantly."

IX.

BELLE'S MISFORTUNE

Mr. Walton was sadly mistaken when he thought that his little girl would have forgotten her ill-temper and be ready to be pleasant and good-humored in the morning. Mabel awoke sulky and pouting, quite determined to believe that Belle had grievously injured her, and obstinately refusing to be reconciled unless she would consent to give up the locket.

Had Belle been willing to do this, her papa and uncle would not have permitted it; but, though Mabel was in a state of displeasure with the world in general that morning, she chose to consider Belle as chief offender, and treated her accordingly.

"But it's Sunday," said Belle, when she refused to kiss her for good-morning.

"Don't I know that?" snapped Mabel.

"But I don't like to be cross with any one on Sunday," pleaded Belle.