Nathan inside of two hours departed by the way of the roof, washed and combed, mended and pressed, as well as Aunt Jane could have done it; but with more than he had had for years, a heart that was almost comforted. He felt that now he had at least one friend in the world who understood him, and meditated as he slid down the kitchen-shed roof, whether it might not be practicable for him to grow up fast and marry Miranda so no one else would carry her off. By the time he had scaled his own kitchen roof and cautiously removed his clothing, hung it up and crept to his own little bed, he had, it is true, quite forgotten this vague idea; but the comfort in his heart remained, and made it possible for him to waken cheerfully the next morning to his new world without that sinking feeling that had been in his heart and stomach ever since he knew that Maria Bent was to be his father's wife.
So that was how it all came about that Miranda Griscom became mother-confessor and chief-comforter to Nathan Whitney's second son, and Nathan became the slave and adorer of little Rose Schuyler Spafford when she was five-years-old-going-on-to-six; and it all began in the rear 1838.
Chapter III
There was a chapter in Miranda's life that she had never told to a living soul, and which only on rare occasions did she herself take out of her heart and look over. It was only when the wellsprings of her very being were deeply touched in some way as in the quiet and dark of her starlit window; or when she was on her knees at her queer devotions, that she let her mind dwell upon it.
Miranda was twenty-two years old, and entirely heart whole, yet there had been and still was a romance in her life as sweet and precious as any that more favored girls had experienced. That it had been sad and brief, and the hope of its ever coming to anything had long since departed from her heart, made it no less precious to her. It was on account of her strength and sweetness of character, her bubbling good nature and interest in others, and her keen sense of humor that her experience had not hardened or sharpened her one mite. She was one of those strong souls who through not having has learned to forget self, and be content in the joy of others. There was not a fibre of selfishness in the whole of her quaint, intense, delightful make-up. She lived her somewhat lonely life and picked up what crumbs of pleasure she could end; fought her merry, sometimes questionable, warfare for those she loved ; served them worshipfully; would give her life for theirs any day; yet kept in her heart one strong secret shrine for the love of her young heart, furnished royally with all the hopes and yearnings that any girl knows.
Years ago, it seemed centuries now, before David had brought his girl bride to the old house next door to Grandmother Heath's, when Miranda had been a school-girl, eleven—twelve—thirteen years old, there had been a hero in her life. No one had known it, not even the hero. But no knight of old ever was beloved or watched or exalted by fair lady more than was Allan Whitney, half brother of young Nathan—for Maria Bent was of course old Nathan Whitney's third wife.
Allan Whitney was tall and strong, with straight dark hair that fell over his forehead till he had continually to toss it back; a mouth that drooped pathetically above a strong purposeful chin; eyes that held depths of fierceness and sadness that only a passionate temperament knows how to combine; and a reputation altogether worse than any boy that had ever been brought up in the town.
Allan had been kind to his step-mother when his father was cold and hard, and had in some way cheered her last days; but she never had time or fortitude to do much in the way of bringing him up. In fact he never was brought up, unless he did it himself. If one might judge by his strong will, if it was his inheritance from his own mother, she alone might have been able to do something toward moulding him. Certainly his father never had the slightest influence with the boy. Nathan Whitney could make money and keep it, but he could not make boys into good men.
Allan Whitney had been quick and bright, but he would not study at school, and he would not go to work. He had been very much in his time as young Nathan was now, only more so, Miranda thought as she placed the facts honestly before her in the star-light, while she watched to see if there would be a light in the boy's window across the way.
Allan had been in continual rebellion against the universe. In school he was whipped whenever the teacher felt out of sorts with anybody, and he took it with the careless jocular air of one who knows he could "lick the teacher into the middle of next week” if he undertook the job. As it was he generally allowed the chastisement for the sake of the relief from monotony for the rest of the scholars. He would wink slyly at Miranda who sat down in a front seat demurely studying her spelling, as he lounged forward and held out his hand. By a sort of freemasonry he knew her to be of the same temper as himself, and that she both understood and sympathized with him. Five desks back Rowena Higginson was in tears on. account of his sufferings, and gentle Annetta Bloodgood turned pale with the sound of each blow from the ferrule, half shuddering in time to the chastisement; but Allan Whitney hugely enjoyed their sentimental sufferings. He knew that every boy in the room admired him for the way he took his whippings, and sought provocations for like martyrdom, that they might emulate his easy air of indifference. When his punishment was over Allan would seek his seat, lazily, a happy grimace on his face, another wink for Miranda, with sometimes a lollipop or some barley sugar laid surreptitiously on her desk as he passed by, and a knowing tweak of her red pigtails, which endearments were waited for on her part with a trembling eagerness that he never suspected. She was only a smart child who knew almost as much as a boy about a boy's code of life, and took his good-natured tormenting,s as well as a boy could have done; therefore he enjoyed tormenting her.
Nevertheless, though Miranda witnessed his punishments with outward serenity and gloried in his indifference to them, her young soul was filled with bitterness against the teachers for their treatment of her hero, and many a hard knock of discipline did she lay up in store for those same teachers in the future if ever it came her way to give it; and she generally managed sometime, somehow to give it.
"Miss Menchant, is this your hankercher?" she asked sweetly one day after Allan had retired indifferently from a whipping which Miranda knew must have hurt, given merely because Miss Menchant found a large drawing of herself in lifelike lines on the blackboard near Allan's desk, and couldn't locate the artist.
Miss Menchant said severely that it was—as if Miranda were in some way to blame for it's having been on the floor—as indeed she was, having filched it from her teacher's pocket in the coat-room and brought it into the school-room ready bated for her prey.
A moment later Miss Menchant picked up the handkerchief from where Miranda had laid it on the desk at her hand, and wiped her face, immediately thereafter dropping it in haste with aloud exclamations and putting her hand with pain to her nose, while a fine large honey-bee flew away through the open door of the school-house.
"Miranda!" called the suffering teacher. "Miranda Griscom!" But Miranda, like a good child, had taken her dinner pail and gone home. Her bright brown eye might have been seen taking observations through a knothole at the end of the school-house, but Miss Menchant didn't happen to be looking that way, and when the next morning the teacher asked the little girl if she noticed anything on the handkerchief when she picked it up, Miranda's eyes were sweetly unconscious of the large red knob on the teacher's nose as she answered serenely:
"I didn't take notice to nothin'."
The next time that Allan Whitney was called up for discipline the ruler which usually played a prominent part in the affair was strangely missing, and might have been found in Miranda Griscom's desk if anyone had known where to look for it. It met a. watery grave that night in the old mill stream down behind the mill wheel, in company with several of its successors of later years.
Time cures all things, and they
