Jane's cap was slightly unsettled, causing its wearer to stop knitting now and then and pull it forward or push it back; and in one of these little feminine difficulties Susanna saw Sue reach forward and deftly transfer the cap to her own head. Jane was horrified, but rather slow to wrath and equally slow in ingenuity. Sue looked a delicious Shaker with her delicate face, her lovely eyes, and her yellow hair grown into soft rings; and quite intoxicated with her cap, her knitting, and the general air of holiness so unexpectedly emanating from her, she moved her little hands up and down, as the tune rose and fell, in a way that would have filled Eldress Abby with joy. Susanna's heart beat fast, and she wondered for a moment, as she went back to her room, whether she could ever give Sue a worldly childhood more free from danger than the life she was now living. She found letters from Aunt Louisa and Jack on reaching her room, and they lay in her lap under a pile of towels, to be read and reread while her busy needle flew over the coarse crash. Sue stole in quietly, kissed her mother's cheek, and sat down on her stool by the window, marveling, with every "under" of the needle and "over" of the yarn, that it was she, Sue Hathaway, who was making a real stocking.
Jack's pen was not that of an especially ready writer, but he had a practical way of conveying considerable news. His present contributions, when freed from their phonetic errors and spelled in Christian fashion, read somewhat as follows:—
Father says I must write to you every week, even if I make him do without, so I will. I am well, and so is Aunt Louisa, and any boy that lives with her has to toe the mark, I tell you; but she is good and has fine things to eat every meal. What did Sue get for her birthday? I got a book from father and one from Aunt Louisa and the one from you that you told her to buy. It is queer that people will give a boy books when he has only one knife, and that a broken one. There's a book prize to be given at the school, and I am pretty afraid I will get that, too; it would be just my luck. Teachers think about nothing but books and what good they do, but I heard of a boy that had a grand knife with five sharp blades and a corkscrew, and in a shipwreck he cut all the ropes, so the sail came down that was carrying them on to the rocks, and then by boring a hole with his corkscrew all the water leaked out of the ship that had been threatening to sink the sailors. I could use a little pocket money, as Aunt Louisa keeps me short.... I have been spending Sunday with father, and had a pretty good time, not so very. Father will take me about more when he stops going to the store, which will be next week for good. The kitchen floor is new painted, and Ellen says it sticks, and Aunt Louisa is going to make Ellen clean house in case you come home. Do you like where you are? Our teacher told the girls' teacher it seemed a long stay for any one who had a family, and the boys at school call me a half orphan and say my mother has left me and so my father has to board me in the country. My money is run out again. I sat down in a puddle this afternoon, but it dried up pretty quick and didn't hurt my clothes, so no more from your son
Jack.
This was the sort of message that had been coming to Susanna of late, bringing up little pictures of home duties and responsibilities, homely tasks and trials. "John giving up the store for good"; what did that mean? Had he gone from bad to worse in the solitude that she had hoped might show him the gravity of his offenses, the error of his ways? In case she should die, what then would become of the children? Would Louisa accept the burden of Jack, for whom she had never cared? Would the Shakers take Sue? She would be safe; perhaps she would always be happy; but brother and sister would be divided and brought up as strangers. Would little Sue, grown to big Sue, say some time or other, "My mother renounced the world for herself, but what right had she to renounce it for me? Why did she rob me of the dreams of girlhood and the natural hopes of women, when I was too young to give consent?" These and other unanswerable questions continually drifted through Susanna's mind, disturbing its balance and leaving her like a shuttlecock bandied to and fro between conflicting blows.
"Mardie," came a soft little voice from across the room; "Mardie, what is a backslider?"
"Where did you hear that long word, Sue?" asked Susanna, rousing herself from her dream.
"'Tisn't so long as 'regenerating' and more easier."
"Regenerating means 'making over,' you know."
"There'd ought to be children's words and grown-up words,—that's what I think," said Sue, decisively; "but what does 'backslider' mean?"