"Well, good morning, Miss Dolly; perhaps, after all, you will change your mind about the little girl."
"Good morning, Mr. Clifton," and Dolly bobbed a succession of little courtesys, and avoided answering his last remark. "Good morning, Mr. Clifton; thank you even for a short visit, but I don't complain. It is a poor place, after all, to invite a clergyman into."
"I think I see Rose going to Sabbath-school," said Dolly, as she folded up her finery, put it away, rolled up her sleeves and went back to the wash-tub; "I think I see her going off to Sunday-school and me doing up the work; visiting at the minister's house too; 'baby and flowers,' and all that: she'd be so set up in a fortnight that there would be no getting along with her: all sorts of notions put in her head, instead of thinking herself well off here as she is, with her head under shelter, ten to one she would imagine she was terribly abused. No—Rose don't make any acquaintances if I can help it, and as to Sunday-school, there's the Bible, she might as well study it in one place as another; there's something behind all this; I verily believe that child is going to bewitch folks, just as her mother did before her; the amount of it is, they took a fancy to her, Sunday, in meetin'; Rose is just like her mother exactly; she always looked just so innocent, as if she didn't know that she was—(Dolly couldn't say pretty even to herself, so she added—artful). No, that child shan't go any where, nor see any body, nor do any thing, but work for me;" and Dolly gave the towel she was wringing out, as vigorous a twist as if it had been Rose's neck.
The kind-hearted clergyman and his wife made many after attempts to show Rose some little kindness, but Dolly was always sure to out-general them, and fearing at last that the situation of the child might be made still more irksome by their persistence, they reluctantly confined themselves to sympathetic glances, and nods, when they met her; and this was much to poor Rose, for Dolly's voice grew each day harsher and colder, and Rose's future, hour by hour, looked more dark and rayless.
CHAPTER XIII.
And now the minister and his gentle wife had their own sorrow to bear.
The baby was dead.