THE next thing that I remember is being in a large city somewhere. We lived in a hotel. My father and mother were with me, and a great many men came to see my father, and talked with him about business things. I didn’t know then, but I think now that my father was engaged in some kind of speculation, and these men had something to do with it. At any rate, my father was a speculator always, and I think he sometimes gambled, for I heard some one say afterward that he would “gamble on anything from the turn of a card to the wrecking of a railroad.” That was long after, however, and I didn’t understand what the words meant. I reckon I don’t quite understand even now, but at any rate I know that my father was always busy; that he had something to do with a water-works, and some railroads, and some steamboats, and some stores, and many other things. Sometimes he seemed to have more money than he knew what to do with, and sometimes he was very poor. My mother used to cry a good deal, though I reckon my father never treated her badly, as I never heard him scold her in any way. When she would cry, it seemed to distress him terribly. He would go away, sometimes for days at a time, and when he came back he would put a large pile of money in her lap and beg her to cheer up and believe in him.
I didn’t know at that time what my father’s name was. Everybody called him “Jack,” and that was all I heard. I was a very little girl at that time, and if I ever heard his full name in those days, I can’t remember the fact. But I loved him very much. He was always very good to me, and he laughed a great deal in a way that I liked. I didn’t like to see my mother cry so much, so I loved my father far better than I did my mother.
Chapter the Third
THERE seems to be a gap in my memory at this point. I know I must have been a very little girl at the time I have spoken of—only four or five years old at most. The next thing I remember is that we landed from a big ship that had big sails, and a good many people and a cow on the top, and a great many pumps.
My father wasn’t with us, and as I can’t remember thinking about his absence, I suppose I hadn’t seen him for a long time. There were only my mother and my grandmother, and me—or should I say “I”?—I don’t know.
I reckon I must have been six or seven years old then.
When the ship landed, a man named Campbell met us at the landing. His name wasn’t really Campbell, as I have since found out, but he was called by that name. I remembered him in a vague way. He had been one of those who came to see my father when we lived in the hotel. My father called him his partner, and once, when my father suddenly became very poor, he called Campbell a swindler and a scoundrel, and said he had ruined all of us. I didn’t know at that time what the words “swindler” and “scoundrel” meant, but from the way in which my father spoke them I knew they were something very bad; so I hated Campbell.
That was the only time I ever heard my father and mother quarrel. I remember it, because it frightened me terribly. They seemed to be quarrelling about Campbell. When my father called him by bad names, my mother, as I now understand, seemed to defend him, and that made my father angrier than ever.
So, when Campbell met us at the ship and seemed so glad to see my mother, I thought of my father, and I hated Campbell. I remembered the names my father used to call him, though I still didn’t know what the words meant. So, when Campbell tried to pet me, I resented it in my childish fashion, saying:—