There was a little girl, Lucy Armstrong, who went to school with Clem when it was kept in David Montague's house, and they formed a childhood liking for each other which continued and strengthened as they grew older. Lucy was a girl of excellent abilities, the best scholar in the school, and as she grew up manifested qualities that are not often united. She possessed great energy of character, a robust constitution, and most affectionate disposition. Everybody loved and pitied Lucy; for her girlhood was embittered by many trials and sorrows.
Her father she never saw to recognize; he was killed by a bear when she was a babe, and her mother was taken away when she was four years old. Lucy, after her mother's death, went to live with an uncle—her father's brother. He was a hard, penurious man, and his wife resembled him, being a morose, griping woman, with no children of her own to draw out her affections and sweeten her disposition. She made poor Lucy serve with rigor. She was poorly clad, poorly fed, went barefoot in the summer and till late in the fall, was obliged to work both out doors and in. When dropping corn and potatoes in the spring, her feet were red as a pigeon's with cold, and in the fall they bled from being pricked with the stubble. In the cold nights of November she must sit in the barn and husk corn. The old folks did not intend to be cruel; but they had been hardly dealt by themselves in childhood and youth, and hard treatment renders people hard and callous in their treatment of others.
In one respect they faithfully discharged their duty—in sending her to school every day so long as it kept, which was at first but six weeks in the winter, but by the time Lucy was thirteen increased to fourteen weeks; and after the town was incorporated and the ordinances of the gospel established, she went to meeting every Sabbath. School days and Sundays were the green spots, and all the green spots, in Lucy's cheerless life of incessant toil, save the few moments when sent to hunt eggs; and hidden in the haymow from the eagle eye of her aunt, she read Clem's letters for the hundredth time. Clem seldom came to the house; a visit from him put her aunt into a perfect fury, as she was unwilling to lose so good a drudge.
"Get married!" she would say, "yes, that's all girls nowadays think of. Wonder what they expect to live on. Better get something ahead first."
Although how she was to get anything ahead while spending her youth and strength in their service did not appear, especially as her uncle had made his will, and left all his property to a nephew as close-fisted as himself. He often remarked "that he meant to leave what he had got by hard knocks to somebody who knew how to take kere of it."
"Clem," said Robert, when the time during which they had hired as journeymen had nearly expired, "if ever you mean to marry that girl, why don't you do it? What do you let her stay there for, suffer everything but death, slave herself, and dry up, working for that old skinflint and his woman? They'd move into a mustard seed, and then have rooms to let. If you don't, I'll go and court her myself."
"I mean to the moment I feel that I can support her comfortably. You know I'm like father—one of the kind to cut my garment according to the cloth. I don't want to make her worse off than she is now."
"That's impossible. Get along with you; go hire two rooms somewhere, and then go and get her. I'll board with you. Nothing comes amiss to her; she's a treasure of a girl, smart as steel, and pleasant as a May morning. What did father and mother have when they set up, and see where they are now."
Clem took his brother's advice. Lucy's aunt raved like a mad woman at first; but when she found that it was no use, and the neighbors were all against her, she calmed down, gave Lucy a bed and pillows stuffed with turkey feathers, and said they would be on the town before two years. She proved a false prophetess. In two years they were blessed with a nice baby. Clem and Robert had all the work they could do, the hammer going every evening till nine o'clock in the winter months, though they still lived in two rooms, with the privilege of another for occasional use. They continued to thrive till the war of 1812, when the brothers took a contract from the government to bore cannon, which, proving a very profitable job, left them with abundant means. Robert still continued to board with his brother, and, remaining single, put all his money into the firm.