The little one was never allowed to go out of doors except on Sunday, when she was taken by her mother to church, or sent by herself to Sunday school. On all other days she was confined strictly to the housekeeper’s room, where, after learning one lesson, doing one sum, and writing one copy, she was kept stitching patch-work quilts from morning till night.
The Chief Justice, who was an awful myth to the little girl, had never once set eyes on her.
But old Mrs. Lyon, coming occasionally to the housekeeper’s room to give some orders, would see the demure little creature sitting on her low stool in the corner of the hearth, and stitching soberly at her patch-work, and she would say to the mother:
“Mrs. Sterling, why don’t you let that child run out into the garden and play in this fine, clear, frosty weather? The air would do her good.”
“Well, I don’t know, madam. You see how delicate she is; she might take cold.”
“Delicate, and no wonder, Mrs. Sterling; kept mewed up in this close room at needle-work all the time, as if she was sewing for her living—a babe of six years old! If you are afraid to let her go into the garden, let her run about the house; don’t keep her here always.”
“Thank you, madam; but I cannot let her do so. She might grow troublesome; and, besides, she will have to sew for a living some day or other if she doesn’t do it now. She can’t have me always to look to; she will have to take care of herself, and so she must learn to be patient and industrious by times.”
“Poor little thing,” murmured the old lady.
“Don’t pity her, if you please, madam, or put into her head that she is ill-used, for she isn’t. I do everything for her good, and it’s not likely that I would do any thing else, for I am her own mother,” said the housekeeper, respectfully but firmly.
“I don’t believe you know what is for her good, and if you are her own mother you treat her worse than any stepmother would,” the old lady thought and would have said, only that she was a little afraid of Mrs. Sterling.