Who Spoke Next

by Eliza Lee Cabot Follen

"One day," says she, "my little boy, only four years old, did not, as usual, come in at supper time. I went out to look for him in the wood where he goes to play; but he was not there. Night came on, and no Willie. I was half crazy with fear. I was at my wits' ends. I had forbidden him to go to the village, but I concluded he had disobeyed me; and so, at last, I sot out in that direction, though I'm so lame I can't walk fast.

Well, she said she hadn't gone far before she met Mr. Scrimp leading her little boy home. He had found the child, after dark, crying in the street. He knew who was his mother, and where she lived, and he took hold of the little fellow's hand, carried him to the bakers, bought him a roll for supper, and was leading him home to his mother. He insisted upon the poor widow's taking his arm, and he went back with her to her cottage, and left a quarter of a dollar on her table when he went away."

"Now," said Miss Dolly, as she finished, "hain't Mr. Scrimp got a heart? and, as for his living on samples, I don't believe a word of such a ridiculous story. You see he's got a kind of habit o' saving, and he's so thin he don't want much, and he's nobody to spend for; but I tell you he has got a heart, and a good one, when you come at it."

This was a specimen of the conversations at the rag parties. At five o'clock in the afternoon, the tea table was spread, and such loads of bread and butter, cake, cheese, and what they called sweet sarse and apple trade you never saw. The farmers and their sons, as many as could be spared from work, put on their best coats, and helped hand about the tea and good things. At nine exactly, they all went home, leaving many large balls, nicely sewed, of filling for the intended new carpet.

Early in the morning of the next day, I was brightened up again, and sent home, when my dear mistress saw me put up on a high shelf among valuable things not often used, but always well cared for. As I said before, she seemed really to love me, and often said, as she looked at me, "I hope no harm will come to, my precious old tea-kettle."

Now I come to the painful part of my story, of which, even now, I hate to think. With all this love and consideration for me, my mistress made one fatal mistake. She allowed those same boys, who used the curling tongs to get a bone out of the pig's throat, to take me with them when they went into the woods to pass a day and night, and have a frolic, as they called it.

The boys made a huge fire, and put me on it, and I boiled some water for them, and did my duty well. But, after they had satisfied their thirst with the good tea I had enabled them to make, they forgot your humble servant, and left me on the coals.

The water all evaporated, and I was left to the fury of the fire; my pleasant song turned into a groan, a scream, in fact; my nose could not stand the fire; it dropped into the ashes; and here I am, the wreck of what I was, with this ghastly hole in me which you see.

To be sure, the boys were sorry enough for their carelessness; but that did not mend my nose. I am kept here by my mistress for the same reason that she keeps the old pitcher and other useless things, as memorials of happy days past and gone."

The tea-kettle was silent. Without any preface, the spinning wheel began to whirl and whiz, and whiz and whirl, and grumble and rumble, and buzz and buzz, and made altogether such a sleepy sound, as she told her story, which was, I guess, what the sailors call a long yarn, that she put me into such a sound sleep, that I could no longer hear any thing distinctly, and lost her story altogether."