“It is not such as you that are born to live alone,” said the spinster, passing her hand lovingly over Helen’s fair, warm cheek. “You are a love-vine that must have something to grow upon. No, no—don’t talk in that way. It don’t sound natural. It don’t come from the heart. Now I was made to be by myself. I never saw the man I wanted to live one day with—much less all the days of my life. They may say this is sour grapes, and call me an old maid, but I don’t care for that; I must have my own way, and I know it is a strange one; and there never was a man created that didn’t want to have his. You laugh, child. I hope you will never find it out to your cost. But you havn’t any will of your own; so it will be all as it should be, after all.”
“Oh, yes I have, Miss Thusa; I like to have my own way as well as any one—when I think I am right.”
“What makes your cheeks redden so, and your heart flutter like a bird caught in a snare?” cried the spinster, looking thoughtfully, almost sorrowfully, into Helen’s soft, loving, hazel eyes. “That step doesn’t cross my threshold so often for nothing. You would know it in an army of ten thousand.”
The door opened and Arthur Hazleton entered. The day was cold, and a comfortable fire blazed in the chimney. The fire-beams that were reflected from Helen’s glowing cheek might account for its burning rose, for it even gave a warmer tint to Miss Thusa’s dark, gray form. Arthur drew his chair near Helen, who as usual occupied a little stool in the corner.
“What magnificent strings of coral you have, Miss Thusa?” said he, looking up to a triple garland of red peppers, strung on some of her own unbleached linen thread, and suspended over the fire-place. “I suppose they are more for ornament than use.”
“I never had any thing for ornament in my life,” said Miss Thusa. “I supply the whole neighborhood with peppers; and I do think a drink of pepper tea helps one powerfully to bear the winter’s cold.”
“I think I must make you my prime minister, Miss Thusa,” said the young doctor, “for I scarcely ever visit a patient, that I don’t find some traces of your benevolence, in the shape of balmy herbs and medicinal shrubs. How much good one can do in the world if they only think of it!”
“It is little good that I’ve ever done,” cried the spinster. “All my comfort is that I havn’t done a great deal of harm.”
Opening the door of a closet, at the right of the chimney, she stooped to lift a log of wood, but Arthur springing up, anticipated her movement, and replenished the already glowing hearth.
“You keep glorious fires, Miss Thusa,” said he, retreating from the hot sparkles that came showering on the hearth, and the magnificent blaze that roared grandly up the chimney.