with me and get a mug o’ cider?”
Of course we did, and took down a basket to bring up some apples to roast.
“Boys,” says Sam mysteriously, while he was drawing the cider, “you jest ask your Aunt Lois to tell you what she knows ‘bout Ruth Sullivan.”
“Why, what is it?”
“Oh! you must ask her. These ‘ere folks that’s so kind o’ toppin’ about sperits and sich, come sift ‘em down, you gen ‘lly find they knows one story that kind o’ puzzles ‘em. Now you mind, and jist ask your Aunt Lois about Ruth Sullivan.”
THE SULLIVAN LOOKING-GLASS
“AUNT LOIS,” said I, “what was that story about Ruth Sullivan?”
Aunt Lois’s quick black eyes gave a surprised flash; and she and my grandmother looked at each other a minute significantly.
“Who told you any thing about Ruth Sullivan,” she said sharply.
“Nobody. Somebody said you knew something about her,” said I.
I was holding a skein of yarn for Aunt Lois; and she went on winding in silence, putting the ball through loops and tangled places.
“Little boys shouldn’t ask questions,” she concluded at last sententiously. “Little boys that ask too many questions get sent to bed.”
I knew that of old, and rather wondered at my own hardihood.
Aunt Lois wound on in silence; but, looking in her face, I could see plainly that I had started an exciting topic.
“I should think,” pursued my grandmother in her corner, “that Ruth’s case might show you, Lois, that a good many things may happen, – more than you believe.”
“Oh, well, mother! Ruth’s was a strange case; but I suppose there are ways of accounting for it.”
“You believed Ruth, didn’t you?”
“Oh, certainly, I believed Ruth! Why shouldn’t I? Ruth was one of my best friends, and as true a girl as lives: there wasn’t any nonsense about Ruth. She was one of the sort,” said Aunt Lois reflectively, “that I’d as soon trust as myself: when she said a thing was so and so, I knew it was so.”
“Then, if you think Ruth’s story was true,” pursued my grandmother, “what’s the reason you are always cavilling at things just ‘cause you can’t understand how they came to be so?”
Aunt Lois set her lips firmly, and wound with grim resolve. She was the very impersonation of that obstinate rationalism that grew up at the New-England fireside, close alongside of the most undoubting faith in the supernatural.
“I don’t believe such things,” at last she snapped out, “and I don’t disbelieve them. I just let ‘em alone. What do I know about ‘em? Ruth tells me a story; and I believe her. I know what she saw beforehand, came true in a most remarkable way. Well, I’m sure I’ve no objection. One thing may be true, or another, for all me; but, just because I believe Ruth Sullivan, I’m not going to believe, right and left, all the stories in Cotton Mather, and all that anybody can hawk up to tell. Not I.” This whole conversation made me all the more curious to get at the story thus dimly indicated; and so we beset Sam for information.
“So your Aunt Lois wouldn’t tell ye nothin’,” said Sam. “Wanter know, neow! sho!”
“No: she said we must go to bed if we asked her.”
“That ‘are’s a way folks has; but, ye see, boys,” said Sam, while a droll confidential expression crossed the lack-lustre dolefulness of his visage, “ye see, I put ye up to it, ’cause Miss Lois is so large and commandin’ in her ways, and so kind o’ up and down in all her doin’s, that I like once and a while to sort o’ gravel her; and I knowed enough to know that that ‘are question would git her in a tight place.
“Ye see, yer Aunt Lois was knowin’ to all this ‘ere about Ruth, so there wer’n’t no gettin’ away from it; and it’s about as remarkable a providence as any o’ them of Mister Cotton Marther’s ‘Magnilly.’ So if you ‘ll come up in the barn-chamber this arternoon, where I’ve got a lot o’ flax to hatchel out, I ‘ll tell ye all about it.”
So that afternoon beheld Sam arranged at full length on a pile of top-tow in the barn-chamber, hatchelling by proxy by putting Harry and myself to the service.
“Wal, now, boys, it’s kind o’ refreshing to see how wal ye take hold,” he observed. “Nothin’ like bein’ industrious while ye’r young: gret sight better now than loafin off, down in them medders.
“‘In books and work and useful play
Let my fust years be past:
So shall I give for every day
Some good account at last.’”
“But, Sam, if we work for you, you must tell us that story about Ruth Sullivan.”
“Lordy massy! yis, – course I will. I’ve had the best kind o’ chances of knowin’ all about that ‘are. Wal, you see there was old Gineral Sullivan, he lived in state and grande’r in the old Sullivan house out to Roxberry. I been to Roxberry, and seen that ‘are house o’ Gineral Sullivan’s. There was one time that I was a consid’able spell lookin’ round in Roxberry, a kind o’ seein’ how things wuz there, and whether or no there mightn’t be some sort o’ providential openin’ or suthin’. I used to stay with Aunt Polly Ginger. She was sister to Mehitable Ginger, Gineral Sullivan’s housekeeper, and hed the in and out o’ the Sullivan house, and kind o’ kept the run o’ how things went and came in it. Polly she was a kind o’ cousin o’ my mother’s, and allers glad to see me. Fact was, I was putty handy round house; and she used to save up her broken things and sich till I come round in the fall; and then I’d mend ‘em up, and put the clock right, and split her up a lot o’ kindlings, and board up the cellar-windows, and kind o’ make her sort o’ comfortable, – she bein’ a lone body, and no man round. As I said, it was sort o’ convenient to hev me; and so I jest got the run o’ things in the Sullivan house pretty much as ef I was one on ‘em. Gineral Sullivan he kept a grand house, I tell you. You see, he cum from the old country, and felt sort o’ lordly and grand; and they used to hev the gretest kind o’ doin’s there to the Sullivan house. Ye ought ter a seen that ‘are house, – gret big front hall and gret wide stairs; none o’ your steep kind that breaks a feller’s neck to get up and down, but gret broad stairs with easy risers, so they used to say you could a cantered a pony up that ‘are stairway easy as not. Then there was gret wide rooms, and sofys, and curtains, and gret curtained bedsteads that looked sort o’ like fortifications, and pictur’s that was got in Italy and Rome and all them ‘are heathen places. Ye see, the Gineral was a drefful worldly old critter, and was all for the pomps and the vanities. Lordy massy! I wonder what the poor old critter thinks about it all now, when his body’s all gone to dust and ashes in the graveyard, and his soul’s gone to ‘tarnity! Wal, that are ain’t none o’ my business; only it shows the vanity o’ riches in a kind o’ strikin’ light, and makes me content that I never hed none.”
“But, Sam, I hope General Sullivan wasn’t a wicked man, was he?”
“Wal, I wouldn’t say he was railly wickeder than the run; but he was one o’ these ‘ere high-stepping, big-feeling fellers, that seem to be a hevin’ their portion in this life. Drefful proud he was; and he was pretty much sot on
