The Chevalier's daughter

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

"No, I have not read it, and shall not till I show it to maman," I answered.

"Then let me have it—do!" said Betty, turning it over with eager interest. "Or we will read it together. I am sure Aunt Jem would not give you a wicked book, though she may not be so strait-laced as my Aunt Margaret. Come, let us read it together. Your things are all put away, and my aunt is with my mother in the still-room, so she will not want you. Let us sit down in the window and read."

"I did not know Betty as well then as I came to know her afterward, and I really had some curiosity about the book, which was partly writ by that Mr. Dryden, who hath since made a great noise in the world. The first poem was certainly very beautiful, and innocent enough, so far as I understood it. The next was a play.

"Indeed I cannot read any more, Betty," said I; "and you ought not either, till you ask your mother."

"Well, let me take the book, then," said Betty. "I will not hurt it, and I don't believe it will hurt me."

I refused plumply, but at that moment my mother called me to come and see some curious ware which she had found in looking over the house with my aunt. When I returned Betty had taken away the book, and I could not get it of her again, though I had more than once asked her for it. It was now returned on my hands, with a witness.

A day before we left the Court, we were all sitting in the cedar parlor—that is, my mother, Meg, Rosamond, and I—busy in finishing a certain worked coverlet which my aunt had had in hand a long time, and which she wished to give my mother for a parting present. Andrew was reading to us out of an English chronicle, but I fear we young ones cared more about the flowers on our work than about the wars between the houses of York and Lancaster. I can see at this moment the daisy with pink edges and a yellow centre on which I was bestowing all my skill, when we were all startled by the entrance of Aunt Amy, evidently in a high state of excitement. I thought I should like to sink into the earth when I saw in her hand that identical red leather and gilded book which I had lent Betty, or rather which she had taken for herself.

"So, sister d'Antin!" said my aunt, in her rare tone of excitement. "This is the way your daughter rewards my hospitality—for I won't say you, though I must say, knowing what she was, I think you might have looked out for her—bringing her vile and corrupting books into a decent house, and lending them to my innocent maids. This is what one gets for one's goodness in taking in—"

"Mother!" said Andrew, more sternly than I ever heard him speak to her before or afterward.

"Oh, you may say mother as much as you please, son; but I wish your father had taken my advice and looked out a good honest Cornish maid for you, instead of betrothing you to a French mademoiselle whom none of us knew, to bring her corruptions in here. Just look at this book which she lent Betty, and told her not to tell her mother, and which the poor child just now came and brought me, confessing with shame and tears how wicked she had been. Just look at it, that is all!" And she flung it on the ground as if it had been a snake or spider.