"Hersel'," said Jamie, meaning himself,—"hersel' may go to ta deevil if he wull; ta little lassie sall be a lady." (Jamie's Scotch always grew more Gaelic as he got excited.) It was evident that he regarded religion as a sort of ornament of superior breeding, that Mercedes must have, though he could do without it. And Mr. James Bowdoin looked in Jamie's eye, and held his peace. In those days deference was rigidly exacted in the divers relations of life: a disrespectful word would have caused McMurtagh's quick dismissal, and the Bowdoins, father and son, would have been made miserable thereby.
"The lad must have his way with the little girl," said Mr. Bowdoin (now promoted to that title by his father's recent death).
"It seems so," said Mr. James Bowdoin (our Mr. James), who by this time had his own little girls to look after.
"Bring the poor child down to Nahant next time you come to spend the day, and give her a chance to play with the children."
VII.
James McMurtagh, with "the old man" and "the mother," lived in a curious little house on Salem Street, at the North End. Probably they liked it because it might have been a little house in some provincial town at home. To its growing defects of neighborhood they were oblivious. It was a square two-story brick box: on the right of the entry, the parlor, never used before, but now set apart for Mercedes; behind, a larger square room, which was dining-room and kitchen combined, and where the McMurtaghs, father and son, were wont to sit in their shirt-sleeves after supper and smoke their pipes; above were four tiny bedrooms.
Within the parlor the little lady, as Jamie already called her, was given undisputed sway; and a strange transmogrification there she made. The pink shells were collected from the mantel, and piled, with others she had got, to represent a grotto, in one corner of the room; the worked samplers were thought ugly, and banished upstairs. In another corner was a sort of bower, made of bright-colored pieces of stuff the child had begged from the neighbors, and called by her the "Witch's Cave;" here little Mercedes loved to sit and tell the fortunes of her friends. These were mostly Jamie's horny-handed friends; the women neighbors took no part in all these doings, and gave it out loudly that the child was being spoiled. She went, with other boys and girls, to a small dame-school on the other side of Bowdoin Square; for Jamie would not hear of a public school. Here she learned quickly to read, write, and do a little embroidering, and gained much knowledge of human nature.
One thing that they would not allow the child was her outlandish name: Mercy she was called,—Mercy McMurtagh. Perhaps we may venture still to call her Mercedes. The child's hair and eyes were getting darker, but it was easy to see she would be a blonde d'Espagne. Jamie secretly believed she had a strain of noble blood, though openly he would not have granted such a thing's existence. We, with our wider racial knowledge, might have recognized points that came from Gothic Spain,—the deep eyes of starlight blue, so near to black, and hair that was a brown with dust of gold. But her feet and hands were all of Andalusia. Jamie had hardly spoken to a woman in his life,—he used to think of himself as deformed. And now this little girl was all his own!
So for a year or two the child was happy. Then came that day, never to be forgotten by her, of the visit to old Mr. Bowdoin at Nahant. They went down in a steamboat together,—two little Bowdoin girls, younger than Mercedes, a boy, Harley, and a cousin, who was Dorothea Dowse. At first Mercedes did not think much of the Bowdoin children; they wore plain dresses, alike in color, while our heroine had on every ribbon that was hers. They went down under care of Jamie McMurtagh, dismissed at the wharf by Mr. James Bowdoin, who had a stick of candy for each. Business was doing even then; but old Mr. Bowdoin was not too busy to spend a summer's day at home with the children. His favorite son, James, had married to his mind; and money came so easy in those times!