The unlading of Mrs. Quip’s wagon at the meeting-house door, was an exhibition much “reckoned on” by the graceless young men of the village, who always collected on the steps for the purpose, and with mock gallantry assisted Mrs. Quip in clambering over the wheels, suppressing their mirth at her stereotyped exhortation, as she glanced at Dobbin, “to see that they didn’t start the critter.”
It was a work of time to draw out the unctuous Aunt Hepsibah; Deacon Tufts, more wiry and agile, “helped hisself,” as Mrs. Quip remarked. The crowning delight was the evacuation of the wagon, by Miss Butts—who, with a mincing glance at the men, circumspectly extended one finger of her right hand—gingerly exposed the tip of the toe of her slipper, and with sundry little shrieks and exclamations, prolonged indefinitely the delicious agony of her descent, as the young gentlemen by turns profanely touched her virgin elbows. Thirty-nine years of single blessedness had fully prepared her to appreciate these little masculine attentions, of which she always made an exact memorandum in her note-book (affixing the date) on reaching her seat in church. The unappropriated Miss Butts wore rose-buds in her bonnet, as emblematical of love’s young spring-time, and dressed in shepherdess style; nature, perhaps, suggesting the idea, by placing the crook in her back.
Poor little Fanny was as much out of her element at Butternut farm as a humming-bird in a cotton-mill. She could not “heel a stocking,” although Mrs. Quip “knew how as soon as she was born.” She could neither chain-stitch, cross-stitch, button-hole-stitch, nor cat-stitch, though she often got a stitch in her side trying to “get out of Mrs. Quip’s way.” She did not know “whether her grandmother was orthodox or Unitarian;” whether Cousin John “belonged to the church,” or not; in fact, as Mrs. Quip remarked, the child seemed to her “not to have the slightest idea what she was created for.”
“Cousin John” came at last! with an empty pack, a full purse, and a fuller heart. Fanny flew into his outspread arms, and nestled into his bosom, with a fullness of joy which the friendless only can feel. Out of sound of Mrs. Quip’s trip-hammer tongue, out of sight of Mrs. Quip’s omniscient eyes, Fanny whispered in “Cousin John’s” ear, crying, laughing, and kissing the while, all her little troubles. Cousin John did not smile, for he knew too well how keenly the little trusting heart, which beat against his own, could suffer or enjoy; so he wiped her tears away, and told her that she should say good-by to Butternut farm, and accompany him on his next trip, as far as Canton, where he would leave her with a nice old lady, who had a red and green parrot, and who taught a school for the village children.
It was a pretty sight—Cousin John and Fanny; she, skipping on before him to pluck a flower, then returning to glide her little hand in his, and walk contentedly by his side; or, standing on some stile, waiting to be lifted over, with her bonnet blown back, and her bright little face beaming with smiles; Cousin John sometimes answering her questions at random, as the tones of her voice, or the expression of her face, recalled her lost mother; sometimes looking proudly upon the bud, as he thought how sweet and fair would be the blossom, but more often gazing at her tearfully, as Lucy’s last solemn words rang in his ears.
Percy was a riddle to himself. In the child’s pure presence, every spot upon his soul’s mirror he would have wiped away. Lips which had never framed a prayer for themselves, now murmured one for her. Feet which had strayed into forbidden paths, would fain have found for her tiny feet the straight and narrow path of life.
Insensibly “a little child was leading him”—nearer to Thee, O God, nearer to Thee.
Little Fanny’s joy on this pedestrian tour was irrepressible; but the journey was not all performed on foot: many a good-natured farmer gave them a lift of a mile or two, and many a kind-hearted farmer’s wife offered Fanny a cake, or a drink of milk, for the sake of her own sun-burnt children, yet blessed in a mother’s love. Then there were friendly trees to shade them from the scorching noon-day sun, where the peddler could unstrap his pack, and Fanny throw off her bonnet and go to sleep in his lap. Sparkling brooks there were, to lave their faces, or quench their thirst, and flowers whose beauty might have tempted on tardier feet than Fanny’s. Their only trouble was “Cousin John’s pack;” and Fanny’s slender stock of arithmetic was exhausted in trying to compute how many pieces of tape, how many papers of needles, how many skeins of thread, must be sold before he could buy a horse and wagon to help him to carry his load. The peddler, too, had his air-castles to build, to which the afore-mentioned tape, needles, and thread were but the stepping-stones. Fanny once placed where she could be contented, and kindly treated, and Cousin John must leave her, to woo Dame Fortune, for her sake, more speedily.
Fanny shed a few tears when she heard this, poor child! and wondered if there were many Mrs. Quips in the world; but the motherly face of Mrs. Chubbs, with her three chins, the queer gabble of the red and green parrot, and more than all, the society of playfellows of her own age, were no small mitigations of the parting with Cousin John.