A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia

by Amanda M. Douglas

"To a very far country, across the great sky. He was lost at sea."

Madam Wetherill sighed a little. How long ago it seemed, and yet, strange contradiction, it might have been not more than a month since Captain Wardour bade her good-by with the promise that it should be his last voyage and then he would come home for good and they would marry. This love and waiting had bound her to the New World. She had made many friends and prospered, and there had been a sweet, merry young girl growing up under her eye, which had been a rather indulgent one, and who had fallen in love with Philemon Henry, and perhaps coquetted a little until she had the Quaker heart in her net he did not care to break if she could come over to his faith. It had disappointed Madam Wetherill at first, but having had business dealings with him, she had learned to respect his integrity.

But as if there seemed a cruel fate following her loves, just as it was settled for Bessy to come back with her little Primrose, death claimed her. And Madam Wetherill had tried to keep a fair indifference toward the child since she could not have her altogether, but the little one had somehow crept into her heart. And now that there were two girls at James Henry's farm, the wife's own nieces, she could see they would the more readily relinquish her. The sending back of the child seemed to indicate that, though she had only gone for a visit.

"Art thou sad about Captain Wardour?" And the little maid looked up with lustrous and sympathetic eyes, wondering at the long silence. "And do you think he could find my mother and my father? It must be a beautiful world, that heaven, if it is so much finer and better than this, and flowers bloom all the time and the trees never get stripped by the cruel autumn winds and the birds go on singing. I shall love to listen to them. But, aunt, what will people do who are like Rachel and think listening idle and sinful, and that flowers are fripperies that spoil the hay and prevent the grass from growing in that space?"

"I am not sure myself." Madam Wetherill laughed at the quaint conceit.

There were many gay Friends in town whose consciences were not so exigent, who believed in education and leisure and certainly wore fine clothes, if one can trust the old diaries of the time. But the other branch, the people who thought society worldly and carnal, reduced life to the plainest of needs, except where eating was concerned. There they could not rail at their brethren.

"Do not bother thy small brain about this," the elder went on after a pause. "It is better to learn kindness to one's neighbor, and truth-telling that is not made a cloak for malicious temper. I am glad to have thee back, little one, and they will not be likely to need thee at the farm, nor perhaps care so much about thy faith."

The whole household rejoiced. They had grown very fond of Primrose. Often now in the late afternoon Madam Wetherill would mount her horse with the pillion securely fastened at the back, and Primrose quite as secure, and with a black attendant go cantering over the country roads, rough as they were, to Belmont Mansion with its long avenue of great branching hemlocks; or to Mount Pleasant, embedded in trees, that was to be famous many a long year for the tragedy that befell its young wife; and Fairhill, with English graveled walks and curious exotics brought from foreign lands where Debby Norris planted the willow wand given her by Franklin, from which sprang a numerous progeny before that unknown in the New World.

They would stop and take a cup of tea on the tables set under a tree. Or there would be ale or mead, or a kind of fragrant posset, with cloves and raisins and coriander seed, with enough brandy to flavor it, and a peculiar kind of little cakes to be eaten with it. Discussions ran high at times, and there was card-playing, or, if water was near, the young people went out rowing with songs and laughter. A lovely summer, and no one dreamed, amid the half fears, that from the town to Valley Forge was always to be historic ground.

"Madam Wetherill has grown wonderfully fond of that child," said Miss Logan. "And what eyes she hath! They begin to look at you in a shy way, as if begging your pardon for looking at all; then they go on like a sunrise until you are quite amazed, when the lids droop down like a network and veil the sweetness. And a skin like a rose leaf. It is said her mother had many charms."