she seen better days, then?” asked Wynnie.
“She was a farmer’s daughter, and a farmer’s widow. I suppose the chief difference in her mode of life was that she lived in a cottage instead of a good-sized farmhouse.”
“But what is the story you have to tell us?”
“I’m coming to that when you have done with your questions.”
“We have done, papa.”
“After talking awhile, during which she went bustling a little about the cottage, in order to hide her feelings, as I thought, for she has a good deal of her mother’s sense of dignity about her,—but I want your mother to hear the story. Run and fetch her, Wynnie.”
“O, do make haste, Wynnie,” said Connie.
When Ethelwyn came, I went on.
“Miss Aylmer was bustling a little about the cottage, putting things to rights. All at once she gave a cry of surprise, and said, ‘Here it is, at last!’ She had taken up a stuff dress of her mother’s, and was holding it in one hand, while with the other she drew from the pocket—what do you think?”
Various guesses were hazarded.
“No, no—nothing like it. I know you could never guess. Therefore it would not be fair to keep you trying. A great iron horseshoe. The old woman of ninety years had in the pocket of the dress that she was wearing at the very moment when she died, for her death was sudden, an iron horseshoe.”
“What did it mean? Could her daughter explain it?”
“That she proceeded at once to do. ‘Do you remember, sir,’ she said, ‘how that horseshoe used to hang on a nail over the chimneypiece?’ ‘I do remember having observed it there,’ I answered; ‘for once when I took notice of it, I said to your mother, laughing, “I hope you are not afraid of witches, Mrs. Aylmer?” And she looked a little offended, and assured me to the contrary.’ ‘Well,’ her daughter went on, ‘about three months ago, I missed it. My mother would not tell me anything about it. And here it is! I can hardly think she can have carried it about all that time without me finding it out, but I don’t know. Here it is, anyhow. Perhaps when she felt death drawing nearer, she took it from somewhere where she had hidden it, and put it in her pocket. If I had found it in time, I would have put it in her coffin.’ ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘Do tell me the story about it, if you know it.’ ‘I know it quite well, for she told me all about it once. It is the shoe of a favourite mare of my father’s—one he used to ride when he went courting my mother. My grandfather did not like to have a young man coming about the house, and so he came after the old folks were gone to bed. But he had a long way to come, and he rode that mare. She had to go over some stones to get to the stable, and my mother used to spread straw there, for it was under the window of my grandfather’s room, that her shoes mightn’t make a noise and wake him. And that’s one of the shoes,’ she said, holding it up to me. ‘When the mare died, my mother begged my father for the one off her near forefoot, where she had so often stood and patted her neck when my father was mounted to ride home again.’”
“But it was very naughty of her, wasn’t it,” said Wynnie, “to do that without her father’s knowledge?”
“I don’t say it was right, my dear. But in looking at what is wrong, we ought to look for the beginning of the wrong; and possibly we might find that in this case farther back. If, for instance, a father isn’t a father, we must not be too hard in blaming the child for not being a child. The father’s part has to come first, and teach the child’s part. Now, if I might guess from what I know of the old lady, in whom probably it was much softened, her father was very possibly a hard, unreasoning, and unreasonable man—such that it scarcely ever came into the daughter’s head that she had anything else to do with regard to him than beware of the consequences of letting him know that she had a lover. The whole thing, I allow, was wrong; but I suspect the father was first to blame, and far more to blame than the daughter. And that is the more likely from the high character of the old dame, and the romantic way in which she clung to the memory of the courtship. A true heart only does not grow old. And I have, therefore, no doubt that the marriage was a happy one. Besides, I daresay it was very much the custom of the country where they were, and that makes some difference.”
“Well, I’m sure, papa, you wouldn’t like any of us to go and do like that,” said Wynnie.
“Assuredly not, my dear,” I answered, laughing. “Nor have I any fear of it. But shall I tell you what I think would be one of the chief things to trouble me if you did?”
“If you like, papa. But it sounds rather dreadful to hear such an if” said Wynnie.
“It would be to think how much I had failed of being such a father to you as I ought to be, and as I wished to be, if it should prove at all possible for you to do such a thing.”
“It’s too dreadful to talk about, papa,” said Wynnie; and the subject was dropped.
She was a strange child, this Wynnie of ours. Whereas most people are in danger of thinking themselves in the right, or insisting that they are whether they think so or not, she was always thinking herself in the wrong. Nay more, she always expected to find herself in the wrong. If the perpetrator of any mischief was inquired after, she always looked into her own bosom to see whether she could not with justice aver that she was the doer of the deed. I believe she felt at that moment as if she had been deceiving me already, and deserved to be driven out of the house. This came of an over-sensitiveness, accompanied by a general dissatisfaction with herself, which was not upheld by a sufficient faith in the divine sympathy, or sufficient confidence of final purification. She never spared herself; and if she was a little severe on the younger ones sometimes, no one was yet more indulgent to them. She would eat all their hard crusts for them, always give them the best and take the worst for herself. If there was any part in the dish that she was helping that she thought nobody would like, she invariably assigned it to her own share. It looked like a determined self-mortification sometimes; but that was not it. She did not care for her own comfort enough to feel it any mortification; though I observed that when her mother or I helped her to anything nice, she ate it with as much relish as the youngest of the party. And her sweet smile was always ready to meet the least kindness that was offered her. Her obedience was perfect, and had been so for very many years, as far as we could see. Indeed, not since she was the merest child had there been any contest between us. Now, of course, there was no demand of obedience: she was simply the best earthly friend that her father and mother had. It often caused me some passing anxiety to think that her temperament, as well as her devotion to her home, might cause her great suffering some day; but when those thoughts came, I just gave her to God to take care of. Her mother sometimes said to her that she would make an excellent wife for a poor man. She would brighten up greatly at this, taking it for a compliment of the best sort. And she did not forget it, as the sequel will show. She would choose to sit with one candle lit when there were two on the table, wasting her eyes to save the candles. “Which will you have for dinner to-day, papa, roast beef or boiled?” she asked me once, when her mother was too unwell to attend to the housekeeping. And when I replied that I would have whichever she liked best—“The boiled beef lasts longest, I think,” she said. Yet she was not only as liberal and kind as any to the poor, but she was, which is rarer, and perhaps more important for the final formation of a character, carefully just to everyone with whom she had any dealings. Her sense of law was very strong. Law with her was something absolute, and not to be questioned. In her childhood there was one lady to whom for years she showed a decided aversion, and we could not understand it, for it was the most inoffensive Miss Boulderstone. When she was nearly grown up, one of us happening to allude to the fact, she volunteered an explanation. Miss Boulderstone had happened to call one day when Wynnie, then between three and
