Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends

by Fanny Fern

But the light of Uncle Tim's eyes was his little daughter Kitty. Kitty was not a beauty. No—her little nose turned right up, like a little dogs; her hair was neither soft nor curly; and her little neck and arms were almost as brown as the leather in her father's shop,—still, everybody loved Kitty, because she had such a warm, good heart, and because she was so kind to her honest old father.

Uncle Tim had no wife. She had been dead many years. I shouldn't wonder if Uncle Tim didn't grieve any, for she was a very cross, quarrelsome, disagreeable person, and made him very unhappy.

Little Kitty was his housekeeper now, although she was only seven years old. She and her father lived in a room back of the shop, and Uncle Tim did the cooking, while Kitty washed the dishes, made the bed, and tidied up the small room with her own nimble little fingers. When she had quite done, she would run into the shop, steal behind her father, throw her chubby brown arms about his neck, and give him a kiss that would make him sing like a lark for many an hour after.

While his fingers were busy at his lap-stone he was thinking—not of the coarse boots and shoes he was making, but of little Kitty—how he meant to send her to school—how he meant she should learn to read and write, and know a great deal more than ever he did, when he was young—and how he meant to save up all his money in the old yarn stocking, till he got enough to put in the bank for Kitty,—so that when he died she needn't go drifting round the world, trying to earn her bread and butter among cold, stony-hearted strangers.

Uncle Tim found some time to play, too. When it came sundown, he and Kitty, and the old yellow dog Jowler, would start off on a stroll. It was very funny to see little Kitty fasten down the windows with an old nail, before she started, like some old housekeeper, and put the tea-kettle in the left-hand corner of the fire-place, and take such a careful look about to see if everything was right, before turning the key. When they got out into the fields they both enjoyed the fresh air as only industrious people can. Every breath they drew seemed a luxury; and as to Uncle Tim, I don't know which was the younger, he or Kitty. I am sure he went over fences and stone walls like a squirrel; and as to Kitty, her merry laugh would ring through the woods till the little birds would catch it up and echo it back again.

Then, when they reached home, they had such a good appetite for their brown bread and milk. Oh! I can tell you, Uncle Tim and Miss Kitty wouldn't have thanked Queen Victoria for the gift of her scepter, they were so happy.

One day Kitty asked Uncle Tim to let her go huckleberrying. She said she knew a field where they were "as thick as blades of grass." Uncle Tim couldn't go with her, because Sam Spike, the blacksmith, was in a hurry for a pair of boots to be married in, and of course Sam couldn't wait for all the huckleberries in creation; so Tim staid at home, humming and singing, and singing and humming, while Kitty tied on her calico sun-bonnet, slung her basket on her little brown arm, and trudged off with her dog Jowler.

Jowler was very good company. Kitty and he used to have long conversations about all sorts of things. Kitty always knew by the way he wagged his tail whether he agreed with her or not. When any other dog came up to speak to him, he'd look up into Kitty's little freckled face, to see if she considered the new dog a proper acquaintance, and if she shook her head, he'd give him a look out of his eyes, as much as to say, "It's no use," and trot demurely on after Kitty.

Well, Jowler and she picked a quart of huckleberries, and then Kitty started for home, Jowler carrying the basket in his mouth part of the way, when Kitty spied any flowers she wished to pick. When she had plucked all she wanted she concluded to take a shorter cut home across the fields, and down on the railroad track. So they trotted on, Kitty singing the while.

By and by they reached the track. Kitty looked,—there were no cars coming as far as she could see. To be sure there was a curve in the road just behind her, (round which the eye couldn't look,) but she wasn't afraid. Just then Jowler dropped the basket and spilt her huckleberries. Kitty was so sorry,—but she stooped down to gather them up, when a train of cars whisked like lightning round the curve on the road, and poor little Kitty was crushed to death in an instant!