“Just like Mittie,” cried Miss Thusa, “she’s always doing something to spite Helen. I heard her say myself once, that she despised her, because everybody took her part. Take her part—sure enough. The Lord Almighty knows that a person has to be abused before we can take their part.”
“Hush!” exclaimed Mr. Gleason, mortified as this disclosure of Mittie’s unamiable disposition, and shocked at the instance first made known to him. “This is not a proper time for such remarks; I don’t wish to hear them.”
“You ought to hear them, whether you want to or not,” continued the indomitable spinster, “and I don’t see any use in palavering the truth. Master Hightower and Mr. Arthur knows it by this time, and there’s no harm in talking before them. Helen’s an uncommon child. She’s no more like other children, than my fine linen thread is like twisted tow. She won’t bear hard pulling or rough handling. Mittie isn’t good to her sister. You ought to have heard Helen’s mother talk about it before she died. She was afraid of worrying you, she was so tender of your feelings. ‘But Miss Thusa,’ says she, ‘the only thing that keeps me from being willing to die, is this child;’ meaning Helen, to be sure. ‘But, oh, Miss Thusa,’ says she, and her eyes filled up with tears, ‘watch over her, for my sake, and see that she is gently dealt by.’”
A long, deep sigh burst from the heart of the widower, sacred to the memory of his buried wife. Another heaved the ample breast of the master for the disclosure of his favorite pupil’s unamiable traits.
The young doctor sighed, for the evils he saw by anticipation impending over his little favorite’s head. He thought of his gentle mother, his lovely blind sister, of his sweet, quiet home, and wished that Helen could be embosomed in its hallowed shades. Young as he was, he felt a kind of fatherly interest in the child—she had been so often thrown upon him for sympathy and protection. (His youth may be judged by the epithet attached to his name. There were several young physicians in the town, but he was universally known as the young doctor.) From the first, he was singularly drawn towards the child. He pitied her, for he saw she had such deep capacities of suffering—he loved her for her dependence and helplessness, her grateful and confiding disposition. He wished she were placed in the midst of more genial elements. He feared less the unnatural unkindness of Mittie, than the devotion and tenderness of Miss Thusa—for the latter fed, as with burning gas, her too inflammable imagination.
“The next time I visit home,” said the young doctor to himself, “I will speak to my mother of this interesting child.”
When Mittie was brought face to face with her father; he upbraided her sternly for her falsehood, and for making use of his name as a sanction for her cruelty.
“You did say so, father!” said she, looking him boldly in the face, though the color mounted to her brow. “You did say so—and I can prove it.”
“You know what I said was uttered in jest,” replied the justly incensed parent; “that it was never given as a message; that it was said to her, not you.”
“I didn’t give it as a message,” cried Mittie, undauntedly; “I said that I had heard you say so—and so I did. Ask Master Hightower, if you don’t believe me.”