Loveday's history

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

For myself, I went home with plenty of subject for thought, and the result of my cogitations was that the next morning I offered to teach Dolly's children to read. She was very thankful for the offer, and I began with them on the criss-cross row that very day. Afterward I set myself a task of music and Latin, and even got out my Greek books, but the last I had to give up, finding myself unequal to the hard work.

I soon discovered that my head would not bear much study, so I set myself to learning the mysteries of farm-work. I fed the chickens and the calves, learned to make cheese and butter, and, in turn, taught Dolly and her mother how to make conserves of gooseberries and plums, and other such things as I had learned in the convent. I had the art of distilling—then by no means as common as it has since become—at my finger's ends.

Finding that there was a great deal of ague about us, I begged Mistress Curtis to send me a small still, and busied myself in making a certain bitter cordial from cherry bark and herbs, which used to be esteemed a specific in such cases at Dartford. Also, I made cough-mixture and other simple medicines, and carried them myself to the poor sick folks, together with broth and such matters. I have heard say that folks forget their own troubles in those of other people. I did not forget mine, but I certainly found a good deal of the bitterness taken out of them.

I believe I have said that there was a certain ruined chapel or cell on Master Yates his farm, which bore no good name, and was indeed reputed to be haunted by evil spirits. Nobody willingly went near it even in broad day, and I don't think the boldest man in the neighborhood would have passed it after dark for any reward you could offer. Indeed Master Yates had strictly forbidden any of his own family to approach the place, saying that there was no knowing what might happen.

I had been to the little hamlet near the church to visit and comfort a poor young thing dying of a waste. My mind was so full of what I had seen that I took the wrong turning, and found myself all of a sudden close in front of the ruined cell, with the sun setting and a sudden hard shower beginning to fall.

Still I did not really take a sense of my position, but seeing that the deep porch was the only shelter near, I fled under it to avoid the rain which promised to be of short duration, as the sun was already shining.

I was never a coward, and the poor little chapel looked so peaceful in its green ivy shroud, that I could not make up my mind to be afraid, but stood quietly waiting for the rain to cease. I was listening to the twittering of a pair of robins who had built in one of the windows, and thinking that the place could not be so very bad, since these pretty innocent creatures had chosen it for a place of abode, when I started as I had never done in all my life before, for I heard my name called.

I turned round in a hurry, and there in the dim arched doorway stood my uncle.

I was like one who has seen the Gorgon's head for a moment. Then as he smiled in his old way, I flew to him—I would have fallen at his feet, but he drew me into the cell, and then clasping me in his arms, he kissed and blessed me, calling me his own, his precious child, and weeping over me, more like a mother over her babe than a bearded man.

"But how did you come here, and why do you stay in this wretched place?" I asked, when he had told me that my Aunt Joyce was still living and that the twins were well. "Come to the house where Mistress Yates will make you right welcome."