There was plenty to talk about over the brown bread and milk at the farmers’ tea-tables that night; the youngsters all made up their minds that if there was “a time to play,” it was not in Master Grey’s school-room; and the old farmers said they were glad the District had a schoolmaster at last that was good for something, and that they should think better of city chaps in future for his sake. Even Zeb himself acknowledged, over his father’s forge, as he mended his broken suspenders, that Master Grey was a “trump.”
The nine o’clock bell summoned again the Frog-town pupils to the District School. Master Grey in vain looked in Bessie’s face for any sign of submission. She had evidently made up her mind to brave him. After the usual preliminary exercises, she was called up to recite. Fixing her saucy black eyes upon him, she said, “I told you I would not learn that lesson, and I have not learned it.” “And I told you,” said Master Grey (a slight flush passing over his forehead), “that I should punish you if you did not learn it. Did I not?” Bessie’s red lip quivered, but she deigned him no reply.
“You will hold out your hand, Betsey,” said Mr. Grey, taking up a large ferule that lay beside him. The colour left Bessie’s cheek, but the little hand was extended with martyr-like determination; and amid a silence that might be felt, the ferule came down upon it, with justice as unflinching as if it were not owned by a woman. Betsey was not proof against this humiliation; she burst into tears, and the answering tear in Master Grey’s eye showed how difficult and repugnant had been the task.
From that day, Master Grey was “monarch of all he surveyed;” and truth compels me to own, by none better loved or more implicitly obeyed than by Miss Bessie.
Master Grey’s “boarding week” at my uncle’s had now expired. What a change had it effected in me! Life was no longer aimless: the old, glad sparkle had come back to my heavy eye; I no longer dreaded the solitude of my own thoughts. The dull rain dropping on my chamber roof had its music for my ears; the stars wore a new and a glittering brightness, and Winter, with his snowy mantle, frosty breath, and icicle diadem, seemed lovelier to me than violet-slippered Spring, with roses in her hair. I still saw Master Grey each day at school. How patiently he bore with my multiplied deficiencies, and with what a delicate and womanly appreciation of my extreme sensitiveness he soothed my wounded pride. No pale-eyed flower fainting beneath the garish noonday heat, ever so thirsted for the cool dews of twilight, as did my desolate heart for his soothing tones and kindly words.
CHAPTER V.
“Hetty,” said my uncle, “we shall want you at home now. It will be impossible for me to get along without you, unless I hire a hand, and times are too hard for that: so you must leave school. You’ve a good home here, for which you ought to be thankful, as I’ve told you before; but you must work, girl, work! Some how or other the money goes” (and he pulled out the old pocket-book). “Here’s my grocer’s bill—two shillings for tea, and three shillings for sugar; can’t you do without sugar, Hetty? And here’s a dollar charged for a pair of India rubbers. A dollar is a great deal of money, Hetty; more than you could earn in a month. And here’s a shilling for a comb; now that’s useless; you might cut your hair off. It won’t do—won’t do. I had no idea of the additional expense when I took you in. Josiah ought to have left you something; no man has a right to leave his children for other people to support; ’tis n’t Christian. I’ve been a professor these twenty years, and I ought to know. I don’t know as you have any legal claim on me because you are my niece. Josiah was thriftless and extravagant. I suppose ’tis in your blood, too, for I can’t find out that you have begun to pay your way by any chores you have done here. If you must live on us (and I can’t say that I see the necessity), I repeat, I wish you had been born a boy.”
“But as I am not a boy, uncle, and as I do not wish to be a burthen to you, will you tell me how to support myself?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m sure I don’t know. That is your business. I have my hands full to attend to my own affairs. I am deacon of the church, beside being trustee of the Sandwich Island Fund. I don’t get a copper for the office of deacon; nobody pays me for handing round the contribution box; not a cent of the money that passes through my hands goes into my till; not a mill do I have, by way of perquisite, for doling it out to bed-ridden Widow Hall, or asthmatic Mr. Price. Not a penny the richer was I, for that twenty dollars I collected in the contribution box at last communion: no, I am a poor man, comparatively speaking. I may die yet in the alms-house; who knows? You must work, girl, work; can’t have any drones in my hive.”
A shadow just then passed the window. I should know that retreating footstep! Could it be that Master Grey had come to the door with the intention of calling, and overheard my uncle? At least, then, I was spared the humiliation of exposing his parsimony.