The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866

"You don't?" said grandmother, firing up. "I am glad you see fit to make one exception in the charge you bring against the household."

"O, very well. I suppose you think I ought to let it all go, and never open my lips about it. But that is not my way."

"No, it is not," said grandmother.

"If it were my own pin, I shouldn't care so much; but it is not. It belongs to Mrs. Perkinpine."

"And you borrowed it? borrowed jewelry? Well done, Lucretia! I would not have believed it of you. I call that folly and meanness."

"No," said Miss Stackpole, "I shall certainly replace it; I shall have to, if I don't find it. But I will find it. I'll tell you: that girl that dusts my room, Hepsy you call her, I'll be bound that she has it. Not that she would know its value; but she would think it a pretty thing to wear. Now, Aunt Margaret, don't you really think yourself it looks—"

"Lucretia Stackpole," interrupted grandmother, "if you care to know what I really think myself, I will tell you. Since you have lost the pin, and care so much about it, I am sorry. You can well enough afford to replace it, though. But if you want to make everybody in the neighborhood dislike and despise you, just accuse Hepsy of taking your trinkets. She was born and bred here, close by us, and we think we know her. For my part, I would trust her with gold uncounted. Everybody will think, and I think too, that it is far more likely you have lost or mislaid it than that any one here has stolen it."

Miss Stackpole had already opened her lips to reply; but what she would have said will never be known, for she was interrupted again,—this time by a terrible noise, as if half the house had fallen, and then piteous cries. The sounds came from the wood-shed, and thither we all hastened, fully expecting to find some one buried under a fallen wood-pile. It was not quite that, but there lay Rhoda, with her foot bent under her, writhing and moaning in extreme pain.

We were every one assembled there, grandmother, Miss Stackpole, Louise, and I, and Hepsy, Dorothy, and Will Bright. Dorothy would have lifted and carried her in, but Rhoda would not allow it. Will Bright did not wait to be allowed, but took her up at once, more gently and carefully than one would have thought, and deposited her in her own room. Then, at grandmother's suggestion, he set off directly on horseback for Dr. Butterfield, whom fortunately he encountered on the way.

The doctor soon satisfied himself that the extent of the poor girl's injuries was a bad sprain,—enough, certainly, but less than we had feared.

It would be weeks before she would be able to walk, and meantime perfect quiet was strictly enforced. Hepsy volunteered her services as nurse, and discharged faithfully her assumed duties. But Rhoda grew restless and feverish, and finally became so much worse that we began seriously to fear lest she had received some internal injury.

One afternoon I was sitting with her when the doctor came. He spoke cheeringly, as usual; but when I went to the door with him, he said the child had some mental trouble, the disposal of which would be more effective than all his medicines, and that I must endeavor to ascertain and remove it.

Without much difficulty I succeeded. She was haunted with the fear, that, in her present useless condition, she would be sent away. I convinced her that no one would do this during the absence of Uncle and Aunt Bradburn, and that before their return she would probably be able to resume her work.

"I know I'll sleep real good to-night," said Rhoda. "You see I'm awful tired of going round so from one place to another. It's just been from pillar to post ever since I can remember."

"Well," said I, "you may be sure that you will never be sent away from this house for sickness nor for accident. So now set your poor little heart at rest about it."

The blue eyes looked at me with an expression different from any I had seen in them before. They were soft, pretty eyes, too, now that the hair was suffered to lie around the face, instead of being stretched back as tightly as possible. One good result had come from the wood-shed catastrophe: the high comb had been shattered into irretrievable fragments. I inly determined that none like it should ever take its place.

Since Miss Stackpole said it was impossible for her to remain till the return of Uncle and Aunt Bradburn, I cannot say that, under the circumstances, we particularly desired her to prolong her visit. It may be that grandmother had too little patience with her; certainly they two were not congenial spirits. However, by means of taking her to see every relative we had in the vicinity, we disposed of the time very satisfactorily. She remained a few days longer than she had intended, so that Dorothy, who is unapproachable in ironing, might do up her muslin dresses.

"I have changed my mind about Hepsy," said she the night before she left. "I think now it is Rhoda."

"What is Rhoda?" asked grandmother.

"That has taken the coral pin."

Grandmother compressed her lips, but her eyes spoke volumes.

"Miss Stackpole," said I, "it is true that Rhoda has not been here long; still, I have a perfect conviction of her honesty."

"Very amiable and generous of you to feel so, Kate," said Miss Stackpole; "perhaps a few years ago, when I was of your age, I should have thought just the same."

"Kate is twenty next September," said grandmother, who could refrain no longer. "I never forget anybody's age. It is quite possible that she will change in the course of twenty-five or thirty years."

We all knew this to be throwing down the gauntlet. Miss Stackpole did not, however, take it up. She said she intended to lay the circumstances, exactly as they were, before Mrs. Perkinpine; and if that lady would allow her, she should pay for the pin. She thought, though, it might be her duty to talk with Rhoda; perhaps, even at the eleventh hour, the girl might be induced to give it up.

"I will take it upon me, Lucretia," said grandmother, "to object to your talking with Rhoda. Even if we have not among us penetration enough to see that she is honest as daylight, it does not follow that we should be excusable in doing anything to make that forlorn orphan child less happy than she is now. You visit about a great deal, Lucretia. I hope, for the sake of all your friends, that you don't everywhere scatter your suspicions broadcast as you have done here. I am older than you, as you will admit, and I have never known any good come of unjust accusations."

After Miss Stackpole went up stairs that night, she folded the black silk dress she had been wearing to lay it in her trunk; and in doing that, she found the missing pin on the inside of the waist-lining, just where she had put it herself. Then she remembered having stuck it there one morning in a hurry, to prevent any one being tempted with seeing it lie around.

And Rhoda never knew what an escape she had.

"I do wish there was something for me to do," said Rhoda; "I never was used to lying abed doing nothing. It most tuckers me out."

"Cannot you read, Rhoda?" I asked.

"Yes, I can read some. I can't read words, but I can tell some of the letters."

"Have you never gone to school?"

"No; I always had to work. Poor folks have got to work, you know."

"Yes, but that need not prevent your learning to read. I can teach you myself; I will, if you like."

"I guess your aunt won't calculate to get me to work for her, and then have me spend my time learning to read. First you know, she'll send me off."

"She will like it perfectly well. Grandmother is in authority here now; I will go and ask her." This I knew would seem to her decisive.

"What did she say?" said Rhoda, rather eagerly, when I returned.

"She says yes, by all means; and that if you learn to read before aunt comes home, you shall have a new dress, and I may choose it for you."

Now it was no sinecure, teaching Rhoda, but she won the dress,—a lilac print, delicate and pretty enough for any one. I undertook to make the dress, but she accomplished a good part of it herself. She said Miss Reeny used to show her about sewing. Whatever was to be done with hands she learned with surprising quickness. Grandmother suggested that the reading lessons should be followed by a course in writing. Before the lameness was well over, Rhoda could write, slowly indeed, yet legibly.

I carried her some roses one evening. While putting them in water, I asked what flowers she liked best.

"I like sweetbriers best," said she. "I think sweetbriers are handsome in the graveyard. I set out one over Jinny Collins's grave. For what I know, it is growing now."

"Who was Jinny Collins, Rhoda?"

"A girl that used to live over at the poor-house when I did. She was bound out to the Widow Whitmarsh, the spring that I went to live with Mrs. Amos Kemp. Jinny used to have sick spells, and Mrs. Whitmarsh wanted to send her back to the poor-house, but folks said she couldn't, because she'd had her bound. She and Mrs. Kemp was neighbors; and after Jinny got so as to need somebody with her nights, Mrs. Kemp used to let me go and sleep with her, and then she could wake me up if she wanted anything. I wanted to go, and Jinny wanted to have me come; she used to say it did her lots of good. Sometimes we'd pretend we was rich, and was in a great big room with curtains to the windows. We didn't have any candle burning,—Mrs. Whitmarsh said there wa'n't no need of one, and more there wa'n't. One night we said we'd take a ride to-morrow or next day. We pretended we'd got a father, and he was real rich, and had got a horse and wagon. Jinny said we'd go to the store and buy us a new white gown,—she always wanted a white gown. By and by she said she was real sleepy; she didn't have no bad coughing-spell that night, such as she most always did. She asked me if I didn't smell the clover-blows, how sweet they was; and then she talked about white lilies, and how she liked 'em most of anything, without it was sweetbriers. Then she asked me if I knew what palms was; and she said when she was dead she wanted me to have her little pink chany box that Miss Maria Elliot give her once, when she bought some blueberries of her. So then she dozed a little while; and I don't know why, but I couldn't get asleep for a good while, for all I'd worked real hard that day. I guess 'twas as much as an hour she laid kind of still; she never did sleep real sound, so but what she moaned and talked broken now and then. So by and by she give a start, and says she, 'I'm all ready.' 'Ready for what, Jinny,' says I. But she didn't seem to know as I was talking to her. Says she, 'I'm all ready. I've got on a white gown and a palm in my hand.' So then I knew she was wandering like, as I'd heard say folks did when they was very sick; for she hadn't any gown at all on, without you might call Mrs. Whitmarsh's old faded calico sack one, nor nothing in her hand neither. So pretty soon she dropped to sleep again, and I did too. And I slept later 'n common. The sun was shining right into my eyes when I opened 'em. I thought 't would trouble Jinny, and I was just going to pin her skirt up to the window, and I see that she looked awful white. I put my hand on her forehead, and it was just as cold as a stone. So then I knew she was dead. I never see her look so happy like. She had the pleasantest smile on her lips ever you see. I didn't know as Mrs. Kemp'd like to have me stay, but I just brushed her hair,—'t was real pretty hair, just a little mite curly,—and then I run home and told Mrs. Kemp. She said she'd just as lives I'd stay over to Mrs. Whitmarsh's as not that day, 'cause she was going over to Woodstock shopping. So I went back again, and Mrs. Whitmarsh she sent me to one of the selectmen to see if she'd got to be to the expense of the funeral, 'cause she said it didn't seem right, seeing she never got much work out of Jinny, she was always so weakly. And Mr. Robbins he said the town would pay for the coffin and digging the grave. That made her real pleasant; and I don't know what put me up to it, but I was real set on it that Jinny should have on a white gown in the coffin. And I asked Mrs. Whitmarsh if I mightn't go over to Miss Bradford's; and she let me, and Miss Bradford give me an old white gown, if I'd iron it; and Polly Wheelock, she was Miss Bradford's girl, she helped me put it on to Jinny. And then Polly got some white lilies, and I got some sweetbrier sprigs, and laid round her in the coffin. I've seen prettier coffins, but I never see no face look so pretty as Jinny's. Mrs. Whitmarsh had the funeral next morning. She said she wanted to that night, so she could put the room airing, but she supposed folks would talk, and, besides, they didn't get the grave dug quick enough neither. Mrs. Kemp let me go to the funeral. I thought they was going to carry her over to the poor-house burying-ground, but they didn't, 'cause 't would cost so much for a horse and wagon. The right minister was gone away, and the one that was there was going off in the cars, so he had to hurry. There wa'n't hardly anybody there, only some men to let the coffin down, and the sexton, and Mrs. Whitmarsh and Polly Wheelock and I. The minister prayed a little speck of a prayer and went right away. I heard Mrs. Whitmarsh telling Mrs. Kemp she thought she'd got out of it pretty well, seeing she didn't expect nothing but what she'd got to buy the coffin, and get the grave dug, and be to all the expense. She said she guessed nobody'd catch her having another girl bound out to her. Mrs. Kemp said she always knew 't was a great risk, and that was why she didn't have me bound.

"That summer, when berries was ripe, Mrs. Kemp let me go and pick 'em and carry 'em round to sell; and she said I might have a cent for every quart I sold. I got over three dollars that summer for myself."

"What did you do with it?"

"I bought some shoes, and some yarn to knit me some stockings. I can knit real good."

"How came you to leave Mrs. Kemp."

"Partly 't was 'cause she didn't like my not buying her old green shawl with my share of the money for the berries; and partly 'cause I got cold, and it settled in my feet so's I couldn't hardly go round. So she told me she'd concluded to have me go back to the poor-house. If she kept a girl, she said, she wanted one to wait on her, and not to be waited on. She waited two or three days to see if I didn't get better, so as I could walk over there; but I didn't. And one day it had been raining, but it held up awhile, and she see a neighbor riding by, and she run out and asked him if he couldn't carry me over to the poor-house. He said he could if she wanted him to; so I went. I had on my cape, and it wa'n't very warm. She asked me when I come away, if I wa'n't sorry I hadn't a shawl. I expect I did catch cold. I couldn't set up nor do nothing for more 'n three weeks. When I got so I could knit, my yarn was gone. I never knew what become of it; and one of the women used to borrow my shoes for her little girl, and she wore 'em out So, come spring, I was just where I was the year before, only lonesomer, cause Jinny was gone."

"And did you stay there?"

"To the poor-house? No; Betty Crosfield wanted a girl to come and help her. She took in washing for Mr. Furniss's hands. She said I wa'n't strong enough to earn much, but she would pay me in clothes. She give me a Shaker bonnet and an old gown that the soap had took the color out of, and she made a tack in it, so's it did. And I had my cape. When strawberries come, the hands was most all gone, and she let me sleep there, and go day-times after berries, and she to have half the pay. That's how I got my red calico and my shawl."