CHAPTER II.
AUNT ELOISE.
Harriet was busy with her composition, when her aunt, who was on a visit to Mrs. Carlton, entered the room. Aunt Eloise was a weak minded and weak hearted lady of a very uncertain age—unhappily gifted with more sensibility than sense. She really had a deal of feeling—for herself—and an almost inexhaustible shower of tears, varied occasionally by hysterics and fainting-fits, whenever any pressing exigency in the fate of her friends demanded self-possession, energy, or immediate assistance. If, too, there happened, as there will sometimes, in all households, to be an urgent necessity for instant exertion by any member of the family, such as sewing, watching with an invalid, shopping with a country cousin, poor Aunt Eloise was invariably and most unfortunately seized with a sudden toothache, headache, pain in the side, strange feelings, dreadful nervousness, or some trouble of the kind, which quite precluded the propriety of asking her aid.
Every morning at breakfast Aunt Eloise edified the family with a wonderful dream, which the breakfast-bell had interrupted, and every evening she grew sentimental over the reminiscences which the twilight hour awakened. It was then that innumerable shades of former admirers arose. Some doubted if they had ever been more than shades; but Aunt Eloise certainly knew best about that, and who had a right to deny, that Mr. Smith had knelt to her for pity; that Colonel Green had vowed eternal adoration; and that Lawyer Lynx had laid his heart, his hand, and his fees, which were not quite a fortune, at her feet?
Aunt Eloise had been—at least she hinted so—a beauty and a blue, in her day; and, to maintain both characters, she rouged, wore false ringlets, and scribbled love-verses, which she had a bad habit of leaving, by accident, between the leaves of books in every frequented room of the house.
She thought and avowed herself extravagantly fond of her niece, during her early childhood, and imagined that she displayed a graceful enthusiasm in exclaiming, every now and then, in her presence, and in that of others, “Oh! you angel child! I do think she is the sweetest creature! Come here and kiss me, you beauty!” &c. &c. But no one ever saw Aunt Eloise taking care of the child, attending to its little wants, or doing any thing for its benefit. The only tangible proof of her affection for her niece, was in the shape of bonbons and candy, which she was in the habit of bringing home from her frequent walks in Tremont street. Harriet regularly handed these forbidden luxuries to her mother, and Mrs. Carlton as regularly threw them in the fire.
“Isn’t it a pity to waste such nice things, mother? Why not give them to some poor child in the street?” asked the little girl one day, as she watched, with longing eyes, a paper full of the tempting poison, which her mother was quietly emptying into the grate.
Mrs. Carlton did not disdain to reason with her child—
“That would be worse than wasted, dear. It would be cruel to give to another what I refuse to you on account of its unwholesomeness.”
But Harriet had now been for a long time out of the spinster’s books—as the saying is—and this misfortune occurred as follows—
One morning, when she was about six years old, the child came into her mother’s room from her aunt’s, where she had been alternately pelted, scolded, and teased, till she was weary, and, seating herself in a corner, remained for some time absorbed in thought. She had been reading to her mother that morning, and one sentence, of which she had asked an explanation, had made a deep impression upon her. It was this—“God sends us trials and troubles to strengthen and purify our hearts.” She now sat in her corner, without speaking or stirring, until her mother’s voice startled her from her reverie.
“Of what are you now thinking, Harriet?”
“Mother, did God send Aunt Eloise to strengthen and purify my heart?”
“What do you mean, my child?”
“Why, the book says he sends trials for that, and she is the greatest trial I have, you know.”
The indignant maiden was just entering the room as this dialogue began, and hearing her own name, she had stopped, unseen, to listen. Speechless with rage, she returned to her chamber, and was never heard to call Harriet an angel child again.
But we have wasted more words on the fair Eloise’s follies than they deserve. Let us return to Harriet’s all-important composition.
The maiden-lady, selfish and indolent as she was, took it into her head sometimes to be exceedingly inquisitive; and officious too, particularly where she thought her literary talents could come into play. She walked up to Harriet and looked over her shoulder.
“What’s this, hey? oh! a story! That’s right, Harriet, I am glad to see you taking to literary pursuits. Come, child! give me the pen and I will improve that sentence for you.”
“Thank you, aunt! but I don’t want it improved.”
“Not want it improved! There’s vanity!”
“Indeed, aunt, I am not vain about it, and I would like you to help me, if it were not to be shown as mine. It wouldn’t be fair, you know, to pass off another’s as my own. I am writing for a prize.”
“For a prize! So much the more reason that you should be assisted. There, dear, run away to your play and I will write it all for you. You’ll be sure to win the prize.”
With every word thus uttered, Harriet’s eyes had grown larger and darker, and at the close, she turned them, full of astonishment, from her aunt’s face to her mother’s. Reassured by the expression of the latter, she replied,
“But, Aunt Eloise, that would be a falsehood, you know.”
“A falsehood, miss!” cried the maiden, sharply, “It is a very common thing, I assure you!”
“But not the less false for being common, Eloise,” said Mrs. Carlton; “pray let Harriet have her own way about it. It would be far better to lose the prize, than to gain it thus dishonestly.”
Aunt Eloise, as usual, secretly determined to have her own way; but she said no more then, and Harriet pursued her employment without further interruption.
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