“We!” repeated Miss Thusa, looking sternly at Mittie, “don’t say we. It is the first time Mittie ever set foot in my poor cabin, and I know she didn’t come now of her own good will. But never mind—sit down,” added she, drawing forward a wooden settee, equivalent to three or four chairs, and giving it a sweep with her handkerchief. “It is not often I have such fine company as this to accommodate.”
“Or you would have a velvet sofa for us to sit down upon,” cried Louis, laughing, while he occupied with the others the wooden seat; “but I like this better, with its lofty back and broad, substantial frame. Every thing around you is in keeping, Miss Thusa, and looks antique and majestic; the walls of gray stone, the old, moss-covered well-sweep, the dear old wheel, your gray colored dress, always the same, yet always looking nice and new. I declare, Miss Thusa, I am tempted to turn hermit myself, and come and live with you, if you would let me. I am beginning to be tired of the world.”
He laughed gayly, but a shade passed over his countenance, darkening its sunshine.
“And I am just beginning to be awake to its charms,” said Clinton, “just beginning to live. I would not now forsake the world; but if disappointment and sorrow be my lot, I must plead with Miss Thusa to receive me into her hermitage, and teach me her admirable philosophy.”
Though he addressed Miss Thusa, his glances played lambently on Mittie’s face, and told her the meaning of his words.
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Miss Thusa, “don’t try to make a fool of me, young gentleman. Louis, Master Louis, Mr. Gleason—what shall I call you now, since you’re grown so tall, and seem so much farther off than you used to be.”
“Call me Louis—nothing but Louis. I cannot bear the thought of being Mistered, and put off at a distance. Oh, there is nothing so sweet as the name a mother’s angel lips first breathed into our ears.”
“I’m glad you have not forgotten your mother, Louis,” said Miss Thusa, her countenance softening into an expression of profound sensibility; “she was a woman to be remembered for a life-time; though weak in body, she was a powerful woman for all that. When she died, I lost the best friend I ever had in the world, and I shall love you and Helen as long as I live, for her sake, as well as your own. I won’t be unjust to anybody. You’ve always been a good, respectful boy; and as for Helen, Heaven bless the child! she wasn’t made for this world nor anybody in it. I never see a young flower, or a tender green leaf, but I think of her, and when they fade away, or are bitten and shrivelled by the frost, I think of her, too, and it makes me melancholy. When is the dear child coming home?”
Before the conclusion of this speech, Mittie had risen and turned her burning cheek towards the window. She felt as if a curse were resting upon her, to be thus excluded from all participation in Miss Thusa’s blessing, in the presence of Bryant Clinton. Yes, at that moment she felt the value of Miss Thusa’s good opinion—the despised and contemned Miss Thusa. The praises of Helen sounded as so many horrible discords in her ears, and when she heard Louis reply that “Helen would return soon, very soon, with that divine little blind Alice,” she wished that years on years might intervene before that period arrived, for might she not supplant her in the heart of Clinton, as she had in every other?
While she thus stood, playing with a hop-vine that climbed a tall pole by the window, and shaded it with its healthy, luxuriant leaves, Clinton manifested the greatest interest in Miss Thusa’s wheel, and the manufacture of her thread. He praised the beauty of its texture, the fineness and evenness of its fibres.