Outside a series of rude steps had been laid. Now and then they washed out in a heavy rain, but they could be relaid without much trouble, and sometimes the sticky clay hardened like stone and they remained for a long while. She liked to run up and down them, flying like a gull, stretching out her small arms, to the terror of Miss Holmes.
"You will slip some day and break your neck or some of your limbs, and your uncle will think I was careless about you," she said anxiously.
"Oh, I will tell him that you were always cautioning me. And I do not believe I shall break easily," laughing with a child's glee.
Every day changed her it seemed. Her eyes glowed with quivering lights like the bay, her cheeks rounded out, the dimple grew deeper and held a pink tint like the heart of a rose. Uncle Jason put uncounted kisses in it. She would be prettier than her mother, and that gave him a jealous pang. Her father had been esteemed good-looking, but really she was not like him. The coloring and hair resembled her mother's. Ah, if she could be here amid the splendor, and he shuddered, thinking of the bleak little town.
The housekeeping was not arduous. Even in those early days fruits were abundant and vegetables enough to surprise one. Then Jason Chadsey went away in the morning and oftener took his lunch at the Dawsons', not coming home until night. Everything in a business way rushed.
There were schools already, for the American plants his schoolhouse if there are a dozen children. They could see the one down on the Plaza. There were churches, too. Even in 1848 there had been Sunday worship established on the Plaza, and a year later, in spite of all the hubbub, churches were really organized. Then they erected a substantial tent on Dupont Street, until one of their members ordered a church ready to be put together, from New York. There was beside a Congregational Society and this attracted Miss Holmes, for she had always been "orthodox" in Boston. But the long sea voyage and the lawless life all about her were rather demoralizing.
Men and women broadened out, sharp corners of creeds were rubbed off. There was a very earnest endeavor among the better classes for the extension of higher moral purposes, and a purer rule, and all of that mind worked heartily together.
Marian Holmes was much interested in her friend's welfare. Miss Gaines, with true Yankee faculty, was meaning to make a place for herself and some money. Her heart yearned for the intelligence and order of her native city.
"I shall not spend all my life in this riotous, disorderly place where you cannot tell what will happen to you next. Like the men, I want to make some money. It doesn't take so very much to be comfortable in Boston, and there are all the appliances and enjoyments of civilization. I was talking to that Mrs. Latham who has come to the Dawsons for a few weeks while their house is being finished. And she recommends that I shall start an establishment at once, while I am new to the town."
Miss Gaines studied her compeer. She had been talking so rapidly she was out of breath.