REBELLION.
But the poor, perhaps fortunately, have little time for mourning. As the first hint of the long winter came in on the September's equinox, poor Sara had to rouse herself, and she began to look about her with despairing eyes. Friends, so far, had been most kind, and the little family had never actually suffered; but now that the few summer resources for picking up an occasional dollar were ended, what had they to look forward to in the long months to come?
Reuben Olmstead had owned the poor little cottage in which they lived, so a roof over their heads might be counted on, but not much besides; for his share in the last fishing-expedition, promptly paid over by Jasper, had soon been swallowed up by the family's needs, so greatly reduced had they become before it arrived.
Sara was not, perhaps, a good financier,—few girls of barely eighteen are,—but she had done her best, and her feeling had often been that of a mother-bird, wearied by a long day's search for worms, who always finds the mouths stretched wide as ever, clamoring for more. The task of filling those mouths seemed a hopeless one.
"What can I do?" she thought, as she sat huddled over the tiny fire one day, waiting for the children to come home from school. "The flour is all gone, and the potatoes nearly, and so little wood!"
She shivered, then turned to see if the sleeping baby were well covered, and resumed her dreary musing.
"I don't wonder our people almost welcome a wreck when they are so poor. Of course it's wicked; but if there must be storms, and ships have got to go to pieces—God forgive me! I believe I was almost wishing for one, myself! If there were only something I could do; but what can I? Here are the children; they must be cared for, and the baby above all,—what can one do when there's a baby to look after? I suppose some would say, ask her people to take him; but who is there? Her mother is dead, and her father a deaf old man who can't live long; she had no sisters, and her brothers are sailors who are off all the time. There's only her cousin 'Liza, and I couldn't give the poor little fellow up to that hard, coarse woman; besides, I promised her and I promised father to care for him myself. If I could go out into the world, it seems as if I might find a place; I am strong and young, and not afraid to work, but here there is no opportunity."
Then, after a long, silent gaze into the fire,—
"God certainly knows all about it; he could help me if he would; I wonder why he doesn't? Does he treat us as I sometimes do baby—corner us all up till there's only one way to go, and so make us walk straight? But to walk straight now looks as if it led to starvation."
Her head drooped lower, and her thoughts grew too roving and uncontrolled for connected expression; in fact, her brooding had become almost actual dreaming, when the door swung back with a bang, and the two children rushed in, Molly screaming with laughter and resistance as she fled before Morton, who was close at her heels.