“Pshaw!” said John, but his brow grew dark, and snatching up his hat, he darted across the fields and plunged into the woods.
Maud’s mother stood in the door-way, looking after him and helplessly wringing her hands. When he disappeared she went back into the kitchen, and set the untasted dinner down to the fire, for John, and moved about here and there as if it were a relief to her not to sit still. Maud’s kitty came up and purred round her feet, and then Maud’s mother, unable to keep back the tears, bowed her head upon her hands and wept aloud.
The long afternoon crept slowly on; the sun stole in to the west sitting-room window; and still no tidings of little Maud or John. It was so weary waiting; if she had only gone with John to look for her child; but it was too late now. No, why should not she look too? any thing were better than sitting there, hour after hour, in such misery. Throwing a shawl over her head, Maud’s mother passed through the gate and out into the open fields. Oh, how desolate they looked to her now: and yet the ripe grain waved before the breeze, the trees bent to the ground with their golden fruit, and large fields of buckwheat waved their snowy blossoms, to reward the farmer’s industry and care. But what were rich crops to them if Maud were not found? Maud, for whom they toiled so gladly, early and late; Maud, the sunshine of their cottage home? and then the poor mother thought of all her pretty little winning ways; she remembered how that very morning, she had climbed upon a chair, when she was busy in the dairy-room, and put up her rosy mouth to kiss her. Oh, if harm should come to her! No, surely God would care for one so pure and innocent.
Hark, what is that? other footsteps beside hers are in the woods. Can it be John? John and Maud? No, it is an Indian; she sees the fluttering blanket, the red feather, ’tis the very woman who smoked the pipe in her own kitchen, but yesterday. Oh, surely she could not have stolen Maud, and the poor troubled mother strained her eyes and pressed her hand tightly over her heart. The Indian woman had something in her arms, but the blanket is wrapped about it, it is not her own baby, no, that is strapped as usual upon her back; now she lifts the blanket; ’tis Maud, Maud! and with a wild cry, the poor mother runs to the Indian woman, and clasping her feet, says, “I was kind to your child. Oh, give me mine.”
And then the Indian woman told her, partly by signs partly by words, that one of the tribe, to whom John had spoken about the trees, stole Maud, because he was angry with John, and brought her away to their encampment; but that when she saw the child she remembered her, and told the Indian (who was her own brother), that he must not harm Maud, but must give the child to her to take back, because its mother had fed her and lighted her pipe at her fire, and so Nemekee gave up Maud, and the good Indian woman was hurrying back with the child to her own home. Poor little Maud, she was too frightened to cry, but she reached out her little trembling hands to her mother, and nestled her head in her bosom, like a timid little dove when the hungry hawk is near.
At nightfall, John came slowly home; he looked a year older since morning; no tidings yet of the little wanderer. He had been to the spot of the Indian encampment, but the tents were gone, and only a blackened heap, where they had cooked their food, marked the spot. What should he tell his poor weeping wife?
Ah! there were tears and smiles under that little cot-roof, that night; nor did John and his wife forget to thank Him who noteth even the fall of the sparrow, and who had safely returned their little lost lamb.
JENNY AND THE BUTCHER.
Little Jenny was an only child. Now, I suppose you think she was a great, petted cry-baby. “Petted” she certainly was, but all the petting in the world could not spoil Jenny. If you should miss her from the parlor, ten to one she would be found binding a wet napkin round the forehead of her mother’s cook, to cure her headache, or applying a bit of court-plaster to her cut finger. Sally used to say that the dark, underground kitchen seemed to grow lighter whenever Jenny flitted through it with her sunshiny face. Now, perhaps you think that Jenny was a beauty; there, again, you are mistaken; for she had light-blue-gray eyes, a pug-nose, and a freckled skin. But what of that? Did it ever enter your head when you kissed your mamma whether she was handsome or not? Is not every person whom we love, handsome to us? Certainly. And I would defy any body to be with Jenny ten minutes, and not love her. Even the milkman, who brought such a wholesome odor of clover and hayfields into the city kitchens, always had a pretty little nosegay slyly tucked away among his milk-cans for Jenny. A ball-room belle might have turned up her nose at it; for often it was only a simple bunch of red and white clover, with one or two butter-cups to brighten it up; but to Jenny it was quite as beautiful as the scentless hot-house Camelia—yes—and more so; for a Camelia always reminds one of a beautiful woman without a soul.
Then—beside the milkman, there was Shagbark, the grocer’s boy, for whom Jenny had once opened the back gate, when Sally’s hands were in the dough; I should like to have counted the great three-cornered nuts he used to empty on the kitchen-table, from his pockets, for Jenny, every time he brought in a pound of tea or sugar. Oh, I can tell you that a good-humored, smiling face, and a voice made musical by a kind heart, are worth all the beautiful Camelia faces that ever peeped from under a green vail.