CHAPTER IX.
The Wizard in the Field Again.
“I’m glad they are gone, and yet I’m sorry. Em seemed sorry to go, and she cried when I kissed her good-by. I really think Em loves me after all; and if it wasn’t for that ugly Charlie, she would be a nice girl. But that Charlie! Oh dear! I don’t think there is another such boy anywhere. I don’t wonder my uncle compares him to a burr, a sting-nettle, and a hedgehog. I’m sure he’s been nothing but a plague to everybody, ever since he came here. I’m glad he’s gone, anyhow. And yet, poor fellow, I pity him. He must be miserable himself, or he wouldn’t torment everybody else so—but I must go to work, I s’pose.”
Thus did Jessie talk to herself, after seeing her cousins off. She had returned to the parlor, and seated herself in her small rocking-chair. She now drew the two pieces of cloth for her uncle’s slippers, from her work-basket, and after handling them awhile with a languid air, put them in her lap, sighed, and said—
“Oh dear! I do wish these slippers were done. This is a hard pattern, and it will take me ever so many days to finish it. Heigho! I ’most wish I hadn’t begun them. Let me see if I have worsted enough to finish them.”
Here Jessie leaned over and began to explore the tangled depths of her work-basket. It was a complete olio. Old letters, pieces of silk, velvet, linen, and woollen, scraps of paper, leaves of books, old cords and rusty tassels, spools of cotton, skeins of thread and knots,—in short, almost every thing that could by any sort of chance, or mischance, get into a young lady’s work-basket, was there in rare confusion. Jessie’s love of order was not very large. Her temper was often sorely tried by the trouble which her careless habit caused her when seeking a pair of scissors, or a spool of cotton. It was so to-day. She plunged her hand deep into the basket, in search of the colored worsteds required for her uncle’s slippers. After feeling round awhile, she drew forth a tangled mess, which she placed on her lap.
“Oh dear!” she said, in a complaining tone; “how these worsteds are tangled!”
Nimbly her fingers wrought, however, and very soon the skeins were all laid out on her knee.
“Let me see,” said she, looking at her pattern; “there are one, two, three, four—five—six colors, and I have only one, two, three, four, five. Which is missing? Ah, I see: there is no brown. Must I hunt that basket again? It’s a regular jungle—no, not a jungle—a jungle is a forest, mostly covered with reeds and bushes. This is a, a—a jumble. Uncle, would call it a basket of confusion. Ha! ha!”