Fresh Leaves. Fern Fanny
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when mother married him?” said the persistent Neddy, whirling off his top.
“I suppose so,” said Susy, with a sigh, “but it don’t seem as if he ever was. Where’s the Arabian Nights, Neddy, that you borrowed of Tom Hunt? let’s read a story.”
“Father made me carry it back,” said Neddy; “he said it was nonsense, and I shouldn’t read it.”
“That’s just why I like it,” said Susy; “of course, nobody believes it true – and I’m so tired of sense! Isn’t there any thing up in the book-rack there, Neddy?”
“I’ll see,” said Neddy, stretching his neck up out of his clean white collar – “I’ll see – here’s Moral Philosophy, Key to Daboll’s Arithmetic, Sermons by Rev. John Pyne, Essays by Calvin Croaker, Guide to Young Wives, Rules for Eating, Walking and Talking, Complete Letter Writer, Treatise on Pneumatics, Buchan’s Domestic Medicine. Which will you have?” asked Neddy, with a comical whine.
“Hush!” said Susy, “there’s father’s step.”
Mr. Wade had come up to get his soft lamb’s-wool slippers for Mr. Doe, that gentleman having experienced a chill in his left toe joint.
“Playing top,” said he, contemptuously, looking at Neddy; “at your age, sir, I was wheeling stone for a mason, in the day-time, and studying arithmetic evenings. Where’s your Daboll, sir? Study your pound and pence table; that’s what’s to be the making of you; how do you expect to become a man of business without that? You’ll never drive a good bargain – you’ll be cheated out of your eye-teeth. Get your Daboll, sir, and Susy, do you hear him say it. Tops are for babies, sir; a boy of your age ought to be almost as much a man as his father. How should I look playing top? God didn’t make the world to play in.” And Mr. Wade and his lamb’s-wool slippers slipped down stairs.
“He didn’t make it for a work-shop either,” thought Susy, as she took down the offensive Daboll.
They to whom the word father comprises all that is reverent, tender, companionable and sweet, may refuse to recognize the features of this portrait as a true likeness of the relation for which it stands; they may well doubt – they whose every childish hope and fear was freely confided to a pitying, loving, sympathizing heart – they whose generous impulses were never chilled by the undeserved breath of suspicion and distrust – they whose overflowing love was never turned back in a lava tide to devastate their fresh young hearts – happy they for whom memory daguerreotypes no such mournful picture! Still, let them not for that reason doubt, that through the length and breadth of the land, are men and women who look back sorrowing on what they might have been, but for their blighted childhood!
“Blessed night!” the words often fell from Mrs. Wade’s lips, as she closed her chamber-door, and, laying her weary head upon her pillow, sought oblivion in sleep.
“Blessed night;” the children did not hear it, for whose sakes she often repressed the rising sigh, and sent back to their fountain the scalding tears, and whose future, as her health and strength declined, she would have trembled to contemplate, but for her faith in God.
He did not hear it – one kind word from whom, one look, or smile, to say that he appreciated all her untiring efforts, would have brought back the roses of health to that faded cheek. He did not hear it, as he sat there over the midnight-fire, with groaning Mr. Doe, ringing the changes on dollars and cents, dollars and cents, which had come between him and the priceless love of those warm hearts.
Ay – Blessed night!
CHAPTER IV
“I think it must be time for Henry to come home,” and the speaker glanced at a little gold watch on the mantel. “What a noise those children are making. I told them to keep still, but after all, I’m glad that they didn’t mind me; the most pitiful sight on earth to me, is a child with a feeble body and a large head, who never plays. Let them romp – broken chairs are easier mended than broken spines; who would be a slave to an upholstery shop, or a set of porcelain; who would keep awake at night to watch the key which locks up a set of gold or silver? Who would mew children up in the nursery for fear of a parlor carpet? My parlor is not too good for my children to play in, and I hope it never will be. Now I will go down and take out some cake for tea; how glad I am Henry loves cake, because I know so well how to make it; who would have thought I should have had such a good husband, and such a happy home – poor mamma – and she deserves it so much better than I. Sometimes I think I ought never to have left home while she lived, but have staid to comfort her. Oh my children must be very – very happy; childhood comes but once – but once.”
So said Mary Hereford, Mr. Wade’s married daughter, as she picked up the toys, and picture-books, and strings, and marbles, with which her romping children had strewed her chamber floor.
Mary Hereford was no beauty. She had neither golden brown, nor raven hair; her skin was not transparently white, nor her eyes dazzlingly bright, nor her foot and hand miraculously small. She was simply a plump, healthy, rosy, cheerful little cricket of a woman – singing ever at her own hearth-stone – proud of her husband – proud of her children, knowing no weariness in their service. Many a beautiful woman has wrung her white hands in vain for the love which lent wings to this unhandsome, but still lovely little wife, dignified even the most common-place employment, and made her heart a temple for sweet and holy thoughts to gather.
“Yes, there comes Henry now,” said Mary, and before the words were well out of her mouth, her husband held her at arm’s length, and looked into her face.
“You have been sewing too steadily, little wife,” said he; “I must take you out for a walk after tea. I shall get a sempstress to help you if these children out-grow their clothes so fast.”
Mary laughed a merry little laugh; “No such thing – I am not tired a bit – at least not now you are here; beside, don’t you work hard down in that close counting-room, your poor head bothered with figures all day? Do you suppose a wife is to fold her hands idly, that her husband may get gray hairs? No – you and I will grow old together, but that is a long way off yet, you know,” and Mary shook her brown hair about her face. “Come – now for tea. I have such nice cakes for you; the children have been so good and affectionate; to be sure they tear their aprons occasionally, and perhaps break a cup or plate, but what is that, if we are only kind and happy? Oh, it is blessed to be happy!” And Mary would have thrown her arms around her husband’s neck, but unfortunately she was too short.
The smoking tea and savory cakes were set upon the table – Followed the children, bouncing and rosy – fairly brightening up the room like a gay bouquet. With one on either knee, Henry Hereford listened, well pleased, to tales of soaring kites, and sympathized with disastrous shipwrecks of mimic boats, nor thought his dignity compromised in discussing the question, whether black, blue, or striped marbles were prettiest, or whether a doll whose eyes were not made to open and shut, could, by any stretch of imagination, be supposed by its youthful mamma to go to sleep. How priceless is the balm of sympathy to childhood! The certainty that no joy is too minute, no grief too trivial to find an echo in the parental heart. Blessed they – who, like little children, are neither too wise, nor too old to lean thus on the Almighty Father!
“Where’s my umbrella, Susan?” said Mr. Wade, “it is raining, and I am in a hurry to go to my business.”
“It is Sunday, Mr. Wade; did you forget it was Sunday?”
“Sunday!” ejaculated Mr. Wade, in well-feigned surprise, “we didn’t have salt fish, I believe, for dinner yesterday.”
“No,” replied his wife, penitently, “but I believe it is the first time it has been omitted since our marriage.”
“It was an omission,” said Mr. Wade, solemnly, as he laid aside his hat and coat. “Sunday, is it, Mrs. Wade, I wish I hadn’t got up so early – I suppose you are going to take the children off to church, are you not? I’d like to be quiet, and go to sleep till dinner time.”
“Perhaps you would step over to Mary’s some part of the day,” suggested his wife. “She came here yesterday to leave some nice jelly that she had been