orderly,” began Mrs. Sleeper.
“Now what’s the use of your talking so? You know you’re not willing to do anything of the kind. You’re all bound up in your sorrows. You won’t think of the matter again when I’m gone – you know you won’t. If you cared for their bringing up, you’d have that boy at school, instead of letting him fatten on other folks’s property, and bring that girl up to work, instead of lettin’ her go galloping all over creation on other folks’s horses. I tell you, Delia Sleeper, you don’t know how to bring up young ones!”
The captain, in his warmth, braced himself against the door sills so energetically that they cracked, and a catastrophe, something like that which occurred when Samson played with the pillars of the temple, seemed imminent.
“P’raps she’d better turn ’em over to you, Cap’n Thompson,” growled Aunt Hulda; “you’re such a grand hand at bringin’ up!”
“Hulda Prime, you jest attend to your own affairs. This is none of your business; so shet up!” shouted the more plain than polite captain.
“Shut up!” retorted Aunt Hulda. “Wal, I never! Ain’t you gettin’ a leetle obstroperlous, cap’n? This here’s a free country, and nobody’s to hinder anybody’s freein’ their mind to anybody, even if they are a little up in the world. Shut up, indeed!” And Aunt Hulda, in her indignation, rose from her chair, walked round it, and plumped down again in her old position.
“I don’t want any of your interference, Hulda Prime.”
“I know you don’t. But it’s enough to make a horse laugh to see you comin’ here tellin’ about bringin’ up young uns! Brought up your Harry well – didn’t yer?”
“Hush, Aunt Hulda; don’t bring up that matter now,” said Mrs. Sleeper.
“Why not?” said Aunt Hulda, whose neuralgia was working her temper up to a high pitch. “When folks come to other folks’s houses to tell ’em how to train up their children, it’s high time they looked to home.”
“I brought up my son to obey his father in everything, and there wasn’t a better boy in the town.”
“I want to know! He was dreadful nice when you had him under your thumb, for you was so strict with him he darsn’t say his soul was his own; but he made up for it when he got loose. Sech capers! He made a tom-boy of our Becky, and was jest as full of mischief as he could stick.”
“No matter about my son, Hulda Prime; he’s out of the way now.”
“Yes; cos you wanted to put him to a trade after he’d been through the academy. He didn’t like that, and started off to get a college education, and you shut the door agin him, and you locked up your money, and vowed he should starve afore you’d help him. But they do say he’s been through Harvard College in spite of yer.”
“Hulda Prime, you’re a meddlin’ old woman,” roared the captain, thoroughly enraged, “and it’s a pity somebody didn’t start you off years ago – hangin’ round where you ain’t wanted.”
“I never hung round your house much – did I, cap’n?” cried Aunt Hulda, with a triumphant grin, which evidently started the neuralgic pains, for she sank back with a groan.
While this passage of tongues was going on inside the house, Miss Becky appeared in the road, mounted on Uncle Ned, who looked rather jaded, as though he had been put to a hard gallop. Flinging herself from his back she entered the door, when the form of Captain Thompson, braced in the kitchen door-way, – which position he had not forsaken even in the height of debate, – met her eyes. Her first thought was to regain the safe companionship of Uncle Ned; but a desire to know what was going on overcame her sense of danger, and she gently lifted the latch of the door which opened to the garret stairs, and stepped inside. The warlike parties in the kitchen covered her retreat with the clamor of their tongues.
“Now, Delia, I want you to listen to reason,” continued the captain, turning from the vanquished spinster to the silent woman, who had kept busily at work during the combat. “You’re too easy with them children. They want a strong hand to keep them in line. Now you know I’m a good friend to you and yours; and though Cyrus Sleeper treated me rather shabbily – ”
“My gracious! hear that man talk!” blurted out Aunt Hulda. “It’s no such thing, and you know it. You made more money out of his Californy speculation with that air ship than you ever made afore in your life.”
“Will you be quiet, woman?” roared the captain. “I ain’t talkin’ to you, and don’t want any of your meddlin’.”
“Aunt Hulda, don’t interrupt, please,” said Mrs. Sleeper; “let’s hear what the captain has to say.”
“Then let him talk sense. The idea of Cyrus Sleeper’s ever treating anybody shabby! It’s ridikerlous!” growled Aunt Hulda, as she returned to her neuralgic nursing.
“The young ones want a strict hand over ’em,” continued the captain, when quiet was restored again. “I’m willing to take part charge of them, if you’ll let me. They must be sent to school.”
“I can’t afford it, captain. I couldn’t send ’em last year. You know the money’s most gone,” said Mrs. Sleeper.
“I know its all gone, Delia. What you’ve been drawing the last year is from my own pocket. But no matter for that. Drinkwater opens the school Monday. I’ll send the children there, and pay the bills. It’s time something was done for their education; and I’ll be a father to them, as they’re not likely to have another very soon.”
“Don’t say that, don’t say that! Cyrus will come back – I know he will.”
“If he’s alive. But don’t be too hopeful. There’s been a heap of mortality among the miners; and if he’s alive, we should have heard from him afore this. Chances are agin him. So you’d better be resigned. Yes, you’d better give him up, put on mourning for a year, and then look round, for the money’s gone.”
“Give up my husband!” cried Mrs. Sleeper, with energy. “No, no. He will come back; I feel, I know he will. He would never desert me; and if he died, – O, Heaven, no, no! – if he died, he would find some way to send his last words to me. No, no, don’t say give him up. I cannot, I cannot!” and the poor woman burst into tears.
“Wal, I never!” cried Aunt Hulda. “Look round, indeed! Why, it’s bigamy, rank bigamy!”
“Well, well,” said the captain, quickly, anxious to avoid another battle, “do as you please about that; but let’s give the children a good bringing up. They’ve got to earn their own living, and the sooner they get a little learning the better.”
“The children should go to school, captain, I know,” said Mrs. Sleeper; “but I’m afraid they will not take kindly to the change.”
“I’ll make ’em, then. It’s time they were broke, and I flatter myself I’m able to bring ’em under control. But make no interference with my plans. Once begun, they must stick to school. It’s for their good, you know.”
“Very well, captain; I consent; only be easy with them at first.”
“O, I’ll be easy enough, never fear, if they mind me; if not, they must take the consequences. So, next Monday fix ’em up, and I’ll take ’em over, and talk to Drinkwater.”
“I’ll
