That first Sunday, also, became a halcyon one for her, for after chores, in the performance of which Chip made herself useful, Uncle Jud took his fish-pole, and giving her the basket to carry, led the way to the brook, and for four bright sunny hours, Chip knew not the lapse of time while she watched the leaping, laughing stream, and her second Old Cy pulling trout from each pool and cascade.
And so her new life began.
But the change was not made without some cost to her feelings, for heartstrings reach far, and Miss Phinney and her months of patient teaching were not forgotten.
Aunt Comfort and her benign face oft returned to Chip, “and dear Old Cy,” as she always thought of him, still oftener. Ray’s face also lingered in her heart. Now and then she caught herself humming some darky song, and never once did the moon smile into this quiet vale that her thoughts did not speed away to that wildwood lake, with its rippled path of silver, the dark bordering forest, and how she wielded a paddle while her young lover picked his banjo.
No word or hint of all this bygone life and romance ever fell from her lips. It was a page in her memory that must never be turned,–an idyl to be forgotten,–and yet forget it she could not, in spite of will or wishes.
And now as the summer days sped by, and Chip helping Uncle Jud in the meadows or Aunt Mandy about the house, and winning love from both, saw a new realm open before her. There was in the sitting room of this quaint home a tall bookcase, its shelves filled with a motley collection of books: works on science, astronomy, geology, botany, and the like; books of travel and adventure; stories of strange countries and people never heard of by Chip; and novels by Scott, Lever, Cooper, and Hardy. These last, especially Scott and Cooper, appealed most to Chip, and once she began them, every spare hour, and often until long past midnight, she became lost in this new world.
“I know all about how folks live in the woods,” she said one Sunday to Uncle Jud, when half through “The Deerslayer.” “I was brought up there. I know how Injuns live and what they believe. I had an old Injun friend once. I’ve got the moccasins and fur cape he gave me now. His name was Tomah, ’n’ he believed in queer things that sometimes creep an’ sometimes run faster’n we can.”
It was her first reference to her old life, but once begun, she never paused until all her queer history had been related.
“I didn’t mean to tell it,” she explained in conclusion, “for I don’t want nobody to know where I came from, an’ I hope you won’t tell.”
How near she came to disclosing what was of far more importance to herself and these people than old Tomah’s superstition she never knew, or that all that saved her was her reference to Old Cy by that name only.