The bringing up of agatha
Agatha Roland was a particularly well ordered young gentlewoman, at least during her long, half-yearly visits to her aunts at The Oaks. At home with her maternal grandfather, Colonel Archer, she was neither well nor ill ordered—she was not ordered at all. She gave orders instead, in a gentle way; and her word was law, by virtue of her grandfather's insistence that it should be so regarded, and still more by reason of something in herself that gently gave authority to her will.
Agatha had been born at The Oaks, and that plantation was to be her property at the death of her two elderly maiden aunts, her dead father's sisters. But she had been taken as a little child to the distant home of her grandfather, Colonel Archer, and after her mother's death she had lived there alone with that sturdy old Virginia gentleman.
She was less than seven years old when he installed her behind the tea-tray in her dead mother's stead, and made her absolute mistress of the mansion, issuing the order that "whatever Miss Agatha wants done must be done, or I will find out why." Her good aunts sought to interfere at first, but they soon learned better. They wanted the girl to come to them at The Oaks "for her bringing up," they said. Upon that plan Colonel Archer instantly put a veto that was not the less peremptory for the reason that he could not "put his foot down" just then, because of an attack of the gout. Then the good ladies urged him to take "some gentlewoman of mature years and high character" into his house, "to look after the child's bringing up, so that her manners may be such as befit a person of her lineage."
To this appeal the old gentleman replied:
"I'll look after all that myself. I don't want the child taught a lot of nonsense, and I won't have her placed under anybody's authority. She doesn't need control, any more than the birds do; she shall grow up here at Willoughby in perfect freedom and naturalness. I'll be responsible for the result. She shall wear bonnets whenever she wants to, and go without them whenever that pleases her best; when she wants to go barefoot and wade in the branches, as all healthy children like to do, she shall not be told that her conduct is 'highly improper,' and all that nonsense. O, I know," he said, in anticipation of a protest that he saw coming, "I know she'll get 'dreadfully tanned,' and become a tomboy—and all the rest of it. But I'll answer for it that when she grows up her perfectly healthy skin will bear comparison with the complexion of the worst house-burnt young woman in all the land, and as for her figure, nature will take care of that under the life of liberty that she's going to live, in the air and sunshine."
"But you'll surely send her to school?"
"Not if I retain my senses. I remember my humanities well enough to teach her all the Latin, Greek, and mathematics she needs. We'll read history and literature together, and as for French, I speak that language a good deal better than most of the dapper little dancing-masters do who keep 'young ladies' seminaries.' We'll ride horseback together every day, and I'll teach her French while I'm teaching her how to take an eight-rail fence at a gallop."
The remonstrances were continued for a time, until one day the old gentleman made an end of them by saying:
"I have heard all I want to hear on that subject. It is not to be mentioned to me again."