style="font-size:15px;"> “Just as you say, Paul,” said Mrs. Thompson, with a sigh. “How is Delia? looking well?”
“No; she looks bad. Think she might, with that grumbling old crone fastened on to her.”
“Old crone! Why, Paul, whom do you mean?”
“Hulda Prime. She’s dropped in there to ‘help!’ Help make her miserable; that’s all she’ll do. Plaguy old busybody, meddling in other people’s affairs! I wish the town was well rid of her.”
“She is rather an encumbrance – that’s a fact,” quietly replied Mrs. Thompson. “But we are never troubled with her.”
“She knows better than to come near me,” said the captain, with a wise shake of the head. “Why, she had the impudence to taunt me with having turned my own son out of doors!”
“Indeed!” said his wife, hardly able to conceal a smile.
“Yes, she did; and she’d heard that, spite of me, the boy had gone through college. Plague take her!”
“Indeed! Well, Aunt Hulda never picks her words. She is sometimes very aggravating.”
“Aggravating! She’s insolent. The idea of her daring to talk so to me! O, if there was only a law to shut the mouths of such meddling old tattlers, I’d spend every cent I have but what I’d lock her up where her voice could never be heard!”
The captain, unable longer to keep quiet, here rose, dashed about the room two or three times, then darted out, and his angry tirade died away in the distance as he made his way to the barn.
Mrs Thompson sat quiet a moment, then burst into such a merry peal of laughter that the Canary in the cage above her head was inspired, and burst into a torrent of song. The audacity of Aunt Hulda seemed to affect Mrs. Thompson far less severely than it did her husband, for that was the cause of her mirth.
Had Captain Thompson really been a bad man, his frequent outbursts of passion might have terrified, and his fierce threats have pained her; but a long acquaintance with the defect in his otherwise good disposition had made these stormy passages too familiar to be dreaded. His one defect – Mrs. Thompson’s cross – was obstinacy. Give the man his own way, and he was ready for any good act or work: thwart him in the slightest particular, and he was immovable. And so Mrs. Thompson, like a wise woman, never openly arrayed herself against his wishes or opinions. And yet the captain would have been astonished, had he calmly investigated the matter, to find how seldom he really had his own way. This shrewd woman knowing it was useless to combat his stubborn spirit, was continually setting up safety-rods to attract this destructive fluid where it could do no harm; contriving plans for him to combat, herself triumphing in their downfall, while he exulted in his supposed victory.
Miss Becky’s career was a case in point. She had been pained to see and hear of the girl’s wild, mischievous pranks, and felt it was time she should be sent to school. She took occasion one day when, in sight of the window, Becky had climbed up the lightning-rod on the church, and seated herself in a window over the door, to call her husband’s attention to the fact, with the remark that “such exercise must be excellent for a girl’s constitution.” The captain fired up at once, denounced such tomboy tricks, and declared the girl should go to school, or he’d know the reason why.
And so thanks to Mrs Thompson, and not her husband, Becky was to be turned from the error of her ways. The captain was a liberal man; his purse was always open to the demands of his wife. She might cover every bed in the parish with comforters, clothe the poor, and feed the hungry, to her heart’s content; he would never stop to count the cost. And so she often managed to repair damages his temper had caused, out of his own purse.
But the man’s obstinacy had brought one serious disaster, which she found all her woman’s wit necessary to repair. It had driven their only child from his home, and made a breach between father and son which might never be healed.
Harry Thompson, at the age of fifteen, was a leader among the boys of Cleverly. He was brave, skilful, and mischievous. He was looked upon as a hero by his playfellows, whom he could incite to the performance of wonderful gymnastic feats, or to the perpetration of boyish tricks hardly as creditable. Among his enthusiastic admirers was Becky Sleeper, then ten years of age, whom, being a special favorite of his, he took pains to train in all the sports with which he was familiar. He was then attending the school; no interested student, but very quick and apt to learn, standing fair in his class. The next year he was sent to the academy; and a suddenly-acquired taste for learning so fired his ambitious spirit that at the end of the second year he graduated at the head of his class, with the reputation of being a remarkable scholar. Then, hungry for knowledge, he wanted to go to college. But Captain Thompson had already planned a course for his son. He had book-learning enough; he wanted him to be a practical man. He should go into the yard and learn the trade of a ship-carpenter; in time he could be a builder; and then the son could build, and the father would fit out and send his ships abroad.
The son demurred. The father’s obstinacy asserted itself; he could not be made to listen to reason; and the matter ended by the boy’s proclaiming his determination to go through college, if he had to scrub the floors to get through, and the father’s threat that, if he left home, the doors should be closed against his return.
The boy went. The mention of his name was forbidden in his home by the angry father. He had been gone four years, and the captain seemed as insensible to his welfare as he did when he pronounced his dictum.
But the mother, she had not held her peace for four long years without knowledge of her boy. Snugly tucked away among her treasures were weekly records of her son’s progress, in his own handwriting – tender, loving epistles, such as make a mother’s heart warm and happy, telling of true growth in manhood’s noblest attributes, and showing in every line the blessed power of a mother’s influence.
Despite her cross, Mrs. Thompson was a happy woman, and the championship of her son by Aunt Hulda was a power to make her merry; for she knew how her Harry got through college. He didn’t scrub the floors to get through. O, no! Captain Thompson’s purse paved the way for a more stately march through the halls of learning.
And so, having had her laugh, Mrs. Thompson called, in a loud voice, —
“Silly!”
Silly, somewhere down in the tale of the kite, answered the summons with a shrill “Yes, marm,” and in a few minutes entered the room.
Priscilla York was one of Mrs. Thompson’s charity patients – a tall, ungainly, awkward girl, whom, from pity, the good woman had taken into her house, with a desire to teach her a few of the rudiments of housekeeping.
Silly was by no means a promising pupil, her “breaking in” requiring the breaking up of many dishes and the exercise of much patience.
She was abrupt and jerking in her motion, except when she walked; then she seemed afraid of damaging carpets, not having been accustomed to them, and walked on tiptoe, which peculiar footfall caused the heels of her slip-shod shoes to drop with a “clap-clap-clap,” as she crossed the oil-cloth on the floor of the dining-room. Her clothes hung loosely on her, and as she entered the room her arms were stuck stiff at her side, her mouth wide open, and her eyes staring as though she expected to hear some dreadful news.
“Silly,” said Mrs. Thompson, “get the covered basket.”
“Yes, marm,” said Silly, and darted for the door.
“Stop, stop, child; I’ve not finished.”
Silly
