“I couldn’t help it,” said Helen, trying to pass her, “I fell down.”
“Oh! what nice strawberries!” exclaimed Mittie, “and so many of them. Give me some.”
“Don’t touch them, Mittie—they are for mother,” cried Helen, spreading her hand over the top of the bucket, as Mittie seized the handle and jerked it towards her.
“You little, stingy thing, I will have some,” cried Mittie, plunging her hand in the midst of them, while the sweet wild flowers which Arthur’s hand had scattered over them, and the shining leaves with which he had bordered them, all fell on the steps. Helen felt as if scalding water were pouring into her veins, and in her passion she lifted her hand to strike her, when a hollow cough, issuing from her mother’s room, arrested her. She remembered, too, what the young doctor had said, “that it was harder to keep from doing wrong, than to do what was right.”
“If he saw me strike Mittie, he would think it wrong,” thought she, “though if he knew how bad she treats me, he’d say ’twas hard to keep from it.”
Kneeling on one knee, she picked up the scattered flowers, and on every flower a dew drop fell, and sparkled on its petals.
They had a witness of whom they were not aware. The tall, gray figure of Miss Thusa, appeared in the opposite door, at the moment of Mittie’s rude and greedy act. The meekness of Helen exasperated her still more against the offender, and striding across the passage, she seized Mittie by the arm, and swung her completely on one side.
“Let me alone, old Madam Thusa,” exclaimed Mittie, “I’m not going to mind you. That I’m not. You always take her part against me. Every body does—that makes me hate her.”
“For shame! for shame!” cried the tall monitor, “to talk so of your little sister. You’re like the girl in the fairy tale, who was so spiteful that every time she spoke, toads and vipers crawled out of her mouth. Helen, I’ll tell you that story to-night, before you go to sleep.”
Helen could have told her that she would rather not hear any thing of vipers that night, but she feared Miss Thusa would be displeased and think her ungrateful. Notwithstanding Mittie’s unkindness and violence of temper, she did not like to have such dreadful ideas associated with her. When, however, she heard the whole story, at the usual witching hour, she felt the same fascination which had so often enthralled her. As it was summer, the blazing fire no longer illuminated the hearth, but a little lamp, whose rays flickered in the wind that faintly murmured in the chimney. Miss Thusa sat spinning by the open window, in the light of the solemn stars, and as she waxed more and more eloquent, she seemed to derive inspiration from their beams. She could see one twinkling all the time in the little gourd of water, swinging from her distaff, and in spite of her preference for the dark and the dreadful, she could not help stopping her wheel, to admire the trembling beauty of that solitary star.