“Yes, sir. I should have had it if you had only made this end the head.” A burst of laughter from the teacher and all the pupils followed this view of the case, and the echoes, more and more subdued, continued when we were dismissed to our seats, I hugging the precious prize, which was a red morocco bound copy of The Vicar of Wakefield, and Dan chuckling over the success of his humor. He had consoled and vindicated all the orthographical blockheads, and he was happy. But I am letting my pen run wild, as I like to do when answering your letters.
While I stood watching Dan’s manœuvres with his wiggling angle-worms and hooks and sinkers, I asked him if he did not think that the twins were perfectly lovely.
“No, I don’t,” he replied, impatiently. “I was going to have two months of fun before school commenced, and now I shan’t have any. I shall have to run everywhere for them nasty twins; and then the crackers I shall have to pound! Mother didn’t have half milk enough for Arthur, and it would take a whole cow for these. Girls, too, both of them!” he added, with great contempt. Here, in fact, was the sore point with Dan. While the baby Arthur lived, he was very fond of him, in his way, and would probably have been gracious over the advent of a new brother; possibly would have pardoned our mother in time for presenting us one baby of either sex; but two at a time, and both girls at that! This was too much for Dan’s patience, or for his confidence in the discretion of mothers. I was surprised at his cool prediction about the supply of milk, but I deferred to his superior experience and years. He gave me another piece of recondite information just as he started for the river, threatening to kill my pet kitten if I dared to even hint where he had gone. This information was that these particular babies would be “awful cross patches; girls always were.”
In time I myself grew to qualify my ecstasy over the double blessing; for they certainly proved “awful cross patches,” and the sacrifices I was obliged to make to them as a child, only a child I think could fully appreciate. * * * *
Do you remember the skeleton in the garret—the memento mori of our play-house banquets? * * * *
C. F.
“C. F.” is my old friend Clara Forest, and I am one of the characters, but it does not matter which one. I shall not appear again in the first person after I have described my first acquaintance with her. It is a long time since I determined to weave the events of her life into a story, and coming across this old letter the other day turned the balance of motives for and against the effort, and I set myself deliberately to work collecting and arranging materials; for this novel is by no means a structure evolved from the depths of my own consciousness. The groundwork is a simple narration of fact, and even the superstructure is real to a great extent.
In my early days, Clara was my heroine, my princess, but I worshipped her silently, and she never took any special notice of me until years after our first meeting.
I saw her first in a village graveyard one Sunday, between the morning and afternoon services. That was the cheerful spot where the congregations of the different churches walked during the noon recess, discussed funereal subjects, and ate “sweet cake,” to use the New England term of that time. Clara was accompanied by her Sunday-school teacher, named Buzzell—a grim and forbidding woman, I thought. Everybody called her “Miss Buzzell,” though she was a widow; but at that time, among the rural people of New England, it was very common to call married ladies Miss; unmarried ones received no title at all. Clara on this day wore a broad-brimmed white straw hat, with wide rose-colored streamers, a white dress and embroidered tunic of the same, and bronzed gaiters, or boots, as we now call them. She was a solid little girl, with a face round and very freckled, a broad, full brow, full pouting rosy lips, radiant blue-grey eyes, with thick, long lashes, and a nose that was pretty, though a little after the rétroussé order.