Mary sat upon a fragment of rock, gazing up the river, with a feeling of keen disappointment; she had hoped to see that stately white woman again, and to have said one more kindly word to the young Indian bride; but there was no chance of that left. Even as she gazed, those living waves swept over a curve of the hills, and were lost in the green west. The girl sighed heavily, and stood up to go.
They went silently down the mountain together, and then as silently floated with the current of the river till their little shallop once more shot into the cove at Monockonok Island.
Jane was still asleep when her sister entered their little room; but an angry frown gathered on her face, and she muttered discontentedly as Mary strove to arouse her. When they came forth, Mother Derwent had the breakfast ready, waiting before the kitchen fire. The spider was turned up before a bed of coals, and the johnnycake within rose round and golden to the heat; a platter of venison steaks stood ready on the hearth, and the potatoes she was slicing into the hot gravy which they had left in the long-handled frying-pan hissed and browned over the fire, while the old lady stood, with the handle in one hand and a dripping knife in the other, waiting for the family to assemble around the little pine table set out so daintily in the centre of the kitchen.
Jane came from her room sullen and angry. The old lady was a little cross because no one had volunteered to help her get breakfast, and, as the best of women in those olden times would, scolded generally as she proceeded with her work.
“It was very strange,” she said, “what had come over the young people of that day—the smartness had all gone out of them. When she was a girl, things were different—children were brought up to be useful then. They never thought of having parties, and dressing in chintz dresses—not they. An apple-cut or a log-rolling once a year, was amusement enough. True, some families did get up an extra husking, or quilting frolic, but when such excessive dissipation crept into a neighborhood, the minister took it up in his pulpit, and the sin was handled without mittens.”
Jane sat down by the window, moody and restless. At another time the old granddame might have croned on with her complaints, and the girl would scarcely have heard them, she was so used to this eternal exaltation of the past over the present, which always has been, and always will be, a pleasant recreation for old ladies; but now Jane was fractious, and disposed to take offense at everything; so she broke into these running complaints with a violent burst of weeping, which startled the old dame till she almost dropped the frying-pan. The dear soul was quite unconscious that she had been scolding all the morning, and Jane’s injured looks startled her.
“Are you sick, Janey dear?” she inquired kindly.
“No, Janey was not sick—but she wished she was dead—that she had never been born—in short, she didn’t know what people were born for at all, especially girls that couldn’t help being good-looking, and that nobody would let alone. If she had only been laid by her dear, dear father under the cedar trees the whole world wouldn’t have been bent on persecuting her, especially her grandmother!”
This touched the old lady’s heart to the centre. She forgot to stir the potatoes, and let them brown to a crisp in the pan. Indeed, she went so far as to rest that long handle on the back of a chair, and forsook her post altogether.
“Why, Janey, what is all this about, dear? Grandma wasn’t scolding you, only talking to herself in a promiscuous way about things in general. Don’t cry so—that’s a darling. Come, now, grandma will get you something nice for breakfast—some preserved plums.”