More Bed-Time Stories

by Louise Chandler Moulton

The minister, too, was Westbrook born and bred, and his wife had scarcely ever been outside the town in all her days, so that there was no one in the simple community to set extravagant fashions, or turn foolish heads by gayety or splendor.

THIN ICE.—Page 100.

It was, therefore, as much of an event as if Queen Victoria herself were to come and spend the winter in Boston, when it became generally known that a rich widow lady and her son were to come, the last of September, and very probably stay on through the winter under Dr. Simms's roof. A famous city physician, with whom Dr. Simms had studied once, had recommended him and Westbrook to Mrs. Rosenburgh, when it became necessary for her to take her puny boy into some still, country retreat.

They came during the last golden days of September, and all Westbrook was alive with interest about them. The lady looked delicate, but she was as pretty as she was pale, and her boy was curiously like her,—as pale, as pretty, almost as feminine.

There was plenty of opportunity to see them, for the city doctor had given orders that the young gentleman should keep out of doors all the time; so, mornings, he and his mother were always to be seen in their low, luxurious carriage, drawn by high-stepping bay horses, and driven by a faithful, careful, middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair and an impenetrable face.

Sometimes, in the afternoons, they would all be out again, but oftener Mrs. Rosenburgh remained at home, and her son drove, for himself, a pair of pretty black ponies, while the impenetrable, iron-gray man sat behind, ready to seize the reins in case of accident.

At first the boy's face seemed often drawn by pain, or white with weariness, and he would look round him listlessly, as he drove, with eyes that saw nothing, or at least failed to find any object of interest. But the clear autumn air proved invigorating, and when the glorious, prismatic days of late October came he looked as if, indeed, he had been re-created.

And now one could see that he began to take a natural, human interest in what went on around him. He would drive up his little pony carriage to the wall, and look over it to watch the apple-pickers and the harvesters. No one spoke to him, and he spoke to no one. The lads of his own age, who watched his ponies with boyish envy, never dreamed that the owner of these fairy coursers could be as shy as one of themselves, and, indeed, as much more shy as delicate weakness naturally is than rosy strength. They thought his silence was pride, and felt a half-defiant hatred of him accordingly.