"You must try and have patience, Flossy," said her brother, tenderly. "I know it is trying, but remember she has always been a good, kind mother to us, and I am sure she loved my father dearly and respects his memory. But I am going up to the mill now, and I will take my fishing-tackle along. Perhaps I can get a pickerel for supper. Don't go into the house just yet. Sit here and read, and let the old machine slide for the rest of the afternoon."
[CHAPTER II.]
EBEN FINDS SOMETHING TO DO.
EBEN FAIRCHILD was not Mrs. Fairchild's own son, as my readers will probably have understood from the last chapter. Those who have read the former volumes of "The Boonville Series" will recollect the little English boy whom Jeduthun Cooke, the miller, rescued from his cruel relatives. At that time Eben Wright, as he was then called, was only seven years old—a pretty, slender, delicate little fellow; too peaked, Grandma Badger said, ever to amount to much. After staying about for some time, now with one kind family and now with another, Eben was first apprenticed to, and then adopted by, a respectable farmer who lived between Boonville and the Springs. Mr. Fairchild had only one living child, a little girl named Flora, two years older than Eben.
A greater contrast could hardly be imagined than that between Flora Fairchild and her little adopted brother. Flora was as stout, bouncing, and healthy as Eben was the reverse: a well-grown girl, with black eyes, and somewhat scowling black brows above them, a dark but clear and healthy complexion, and abundant black hair. Flora was generous, truthful, and kind-hearted, but she had "a temper of her own," as the girls said, and was very much governed by her impulses, which, to do her justice, were usually good. Eben was small of his age, thin and pale, with light hair and wide, grave blue eyes. People wondered how Flora could relish having a strange child come into the family where she had so long reigned alone, and predicted that she would make that little fellow "see sights." For their part they thought it was a foolish move, and pitied the poor delicate boy.
The course of events, however, showed that the pity was thrown away; since, if Eben did see sights in his new home, they were certainly not disagreeable ones. Flora adopted her new brother into her heart at first sight, helped him with his lessons, fought his battles, and loved him with a vehement, patronizing fondness which might sometimes have had its inconveniences, but was anything but disagreeable to poor, down-trodden little Eben.
By degrees, however, a change came over the relations between Flora and her brother. In the genial, kindly atmosphere of the Fairchild house, Eben's heart and mind, crushed by long tyranny and ill-usage, expanded like a plant in sunshine. He began first to speak above his breath when questioned, then to volunteer little remarks of his own, and finally to talk freely at all proper times, and especially when alone with Flora. He soon outstripped Flora in his lessons, so that he was able to help her instead of being helped himself. Mrs. Fairchild said Eben was worth three of Flora to help about the house, and her husband declared that Eben had more judgment about work than any boy he ever saw.
"It isn't that the boy is so very smart," said the good farmer. "I have seen smarter boys where contrivance was wanted; but then Eben is so faithful. If I set him about anything, I am sure to find it done. He never disappoints me. If he undertakes to build a fire, he never leaves it till he sees it burning, and if I set him to shelling corn, he never leaves his job while there is a kernel left on the cob. Now, Flossy is fast enough to help—just as obliging as ever she can be, I will say that for her—but if a piece of work lasts more than half an hour, or if it don't go off just right the first time, she gets out of patience and goes off and leaves it. Flossy is a good girl as ever was, in the main, but she isn't the dependence that Eben is."
When Flora was sixteen and her brother fifteen, which is the time at which our story begins, the relations between the two were entirely reversed, so that it was Eben who led, helped, and governed Flora.
Eben could recollect very little of his former life in England, but one thing he always declared he knew for certain,—that Tom Collins was not really his uncle. He remembered his father hardly at all, his mother very clearly, but he could not tell the name of the place where he had lived. It was in the country, he was sure of that. There was a gray church with a very high tower, and bells that made music. The first time Eben went to Hobartown and heard the college chime, he burst out crying, and being at last persuaded to tell the cause of his grief, he said his mamma used to hold him up to the window to hear the bells make music at home. He remembered that he went to school every day in a house close by the church where there were boys and girls, and the girls wore red capes or cloaks. One day they told him his mamma was dead, and after that he could remember nothing distinctly till he found himself on the sea with Tom Collins and his wife, very sick, and crying for his mamma. Tom's wife had been kind to him at first, and saved him more than one beating, but after a while she got very queer. She used to keep a little bottle of something black, and drink it, and then she did not seem to care what happened to him. Mr. Fairchild wrote down carefully all the particulars he could collect from Eben respecting his early life at home, thinking that some time or other he might find out something regarding the boy's parentage.