Nearly a year before she had been brought here, a weary, bedraggled, dusty, half-starved waif. Now Uncle Jud met her at the station, his face shining; Aunt Mandy clasped her close to her portly person; and as Chip looked around and saw what had been done in her honor and to make her welcome, her eyes filled.
“I never thought anybody would care for me like this,” she exclaimed, and then glancing at Uncle Jud, her eyes alight, she threw her arms about his neck and, for the first time, kissed him.
And never in all his life had he felt more amply paid for anything he had done.
Then and there, Chip resolved to do something that now lay in her power–to face shame and humbled pride and all the sacrifice it meant to her in the end, and reunite these two long-separated brothers. But not now, no, not yet.
Before her lay two golden joyous summer months. Aunt Abby was coming up later. She could not face her own humiliation now. She must wait until these happy days were past, then tell her wretched story, not sparing herself one iota, and then, if she must, go her way, an outcast into the world once more.
How utterly wrong she was in this conclusion, and how little she understood the broad charity of Uncle Jud, need not be explained. She was only a child as yet in all but stature. The one most bitter sneer of malicious Hannah still rankled and poisoned her common sense. Its effect upon Chip had been as usual on her nature and belief, and this waif of the wilderness, this gnome child, must not be judged by ordinary standards. Like reflections from grotesque mirrors, so had her ideas of right and duty been distorted by eerie influences and weird surroundings. There was first the unspeakable brutality of her father; then the menial years at Tim’s Place, with no more consideration than a horse or pig received, her only education being the uncanny teachings of Old Tomah. Under this baleful tuition, coupled with the ever present menace and mystery of a vast wilderness, she passed from childhood into womanhood, with the fixed belief that human kind were no better than brutes; that the forest was peopled by a nether world of spites, the shadowy forms of both man and beast; and worse than this, that all thought and action here must be the selfish ones of personal gain and personal protection. Like a dog forever expecting a blow, like any dumb brute ever on guard against superior force, so had Chip grown to maturity, a cringing, helpless, almost hopeless creature, and yet one whose inborn impulses and desires revolted at her surroundings.
Once removed from these, however, and in a purer atmosphere, she was like one born again. Her past impressions still remained, her queer belief of present and future conditions was still a motive force, and the cringing, blow-expecting nature was yet hers.
For this reason, and because this new world and these new people were so unaccountable and quite beyond her ken in tender influence and loving care, what they had done and for what purpose seemed all the more impressive. But it was in no wise wasted; instead, it was like God-given sunshine to a flower that has never known aught except the chilling shadow of a dense forest.
And now ensued an almost pathetic play of interest, for Chip set herself about the duty of giving instead of obtaining pleasure.
She became what she was at Tim’s Place,–a menial, so far as they would let her,–and from early morning until bedtime, some step, some duty, some kindly care for her benefactors, was assumed by her. She worked and weeded in the garden, she drove and milked the cows, she followed Uncle Jud to the hay-field, insisting that she must help, until at last he protested.