Sam loved nothing so much as to “‘kind o’ go along and sort o’ see how things turn out’” with the boys. He told them tales that made their eyes stand out, constantly interspersing the incidents with moral persuasions and advice. “‘So, boys,’” he would say, “‘you just mind and remember and allers see what there is in a providence afore you quarrel with it.’” With this lofty moral altitude, an intellectual superiority in Sam combined to make him a popular favorite. For forty years in the village there had not been a marriage or a birth or a burial or a slight beginning of a love-making which he did not know all about. This knowledge made his charm and also his power. A great intellect had been really wasted in this shiftless fellow. The variety of his accomplishments was amazing. His work shop was filled with cracked china, lame tea-pots, rickety tongs and decrepit andirons, and any one of these would afford opportunity for hours of conversation if a neighbor came in and if—important consideration!—the sharp, black eyes of Hepsy, his wife, were not at the minute upon him. Hepsy was a “gnarly, compact, efficient little pepper-box of a woman.” Of course if she came in his fun was over. “‘You’re always everywhere but where you’ve business to be,’” her scolding voice would cry out, “‘helpin’ and doin’ for everybody but your own. For my part, I think that charity ought to begin at home.’” Hepsy was a “great talker.” She frequently was so bad in this respect that Sam, who was not a specially silent person, could not “get in a word edgeways, nor crossways, nor noways.” At such times no one could blame Sam if he did “‘go Indianing around the country a spell till she kind o’ come to.’”
The main interest in “Oldtown Folks” is, however, in a little boy and girl, Henry and Eglantine Percival, or Harry and Tina for short, who are left orphaned and are distributed among the homes in the Calvinistic and theological town. As Sam Lawson said, they “‘was real putty children, as putty behaved as ever he see.’” Harry Percival is a fine, manly little boy and Tina, his sister, is the little witch whose buoyancy and charm can never be crushed out of her even by a Miss Asphyxia. Ah, Miss Asphyxia! Every creature in her service—horse, cow and pig—knew at once the touch of Miss Asphyxia; and when it was she that said, “Get up!” the beast would make the wagon spin. Into her hands fell the hapless and whimsical Tina. Miss Asphyxia was past fifty and her hair was well streaked with gray; but this would not matter only that when she did it up, she tied it in a very tight knot and fastened it with a horn comb; then she gave it a shake to see if it would certainly stay all day and went about her work. Her one idea in regard to the little fairy Tina was to give her efficient discipline. She put a brown towel into her hands and said, “‘There, keep to work.’” And when Tina’s fingers refused to bend to the unusual task, Miss Asphyxia rapped her promptly on the head with the thimble, saying, “‘Keep to work.’” When Tina began to cry Miss Asphyxia displayed a long birch rod. At night when deluged with soapy water and rubbed with bony hands, Tina was so suppressed that she could only breathe out long sighs and whisper “‘Oh, dear!’” But she was helpless in the hands of Miss Asphyxia. Having despoiled the bright little head of its curls by means of her great shears, she rubbed some camphor on vigorously to keep the child from taking cold; then, after dropping the golden curls on the fire, she opened the door into a small bedroom and, pointing, said to the child, “‘Now go to bed.’” Tina crept in under the blue checked coverlet, thankful to be free of the dreadful woman. In a moment, however, her tormentor opened the door again. Miss Asphyxia had forgotten something. “‘Can you say your prayers?’ she demanded. ‘Yes, ma’am,’ faltered the child. ‘Say ’em, then,’ said Miss Asphyxia; and bang went the door again. ‘There, now, if I h’ain’t done up my duty to that child, then I don’t know,’ said Miss Asphyxia.”
Miss Asphyxia and her contemporaries thought that a child was “‘pretty much dead loss the first three or four years; but after that they’d more’n pay, if they’s fetched up right.’” Miss Asphyxia intended that Tina should be “‘fetched up right.’” Good old Sol, her hired man, suggested that perhaps Tina cried at night because she was lonesome. “‘All sorts of young critters is,’” he argued; “‘Puppies is; kittens mew when ye take ’em from the cats. Ye see they’s used to other critters; and it’s sort o’ cold like, bein’ alone is.’” Miss Asphyxia gave a sniff of contempt. “‘Well, she’ll have to get used to it. I guess ’twon’t kill her.’”
When poor Tina broke a saucer and failed to make quick confession, that is, to speak with accuracy, when she did really and truly let a lie slip over her lips, we can imagine what an awful thing it seemed to Miss Asphyxia. She proceeded to cure her of lying by scouring out her mouth. Putting some soap and sand on a rag and grasping the child’s head under her arm, she rubbed the mixture through her mouth with the energy of an insulted prophetess. “‘See now if you will tell me another lie,’” she said, pushing the child from her, and feeling that her own conscience was quite clear, whatever might be the spiritual condition of the culprit.
But things were coming to a crisis. Explaining the final fuss, Sam said: “‘Wal, ye see, the young un was spicy; and when Miss Sphyxy was down on her too hard, the child, she fit her,—ye know a rat’ll bite, a hen will peck, and a worm will turn,—and finally it come to a fight between ’em.’”
Tina’s brother did not fare much better than did the little girl. His cruel master would not allow him to go to visit his sister any more than Miss Asphyxia would have allowed him to come in if he had arrived, for she would “‘Just as soon have the red dragon in the Revelations come into her house as a boy!’” Finally Harry ran away, went to Tina’s window in the night and told her to come with him. They went off together, wandering in search of some good people to give them a home, an event in which they had a firm faith. They went along the roads and through the fields, playing that they were Hansel and Gretel in the story. They had the adventure of coming upon an Indian encampment with a little tent and an old woman weaving baskets. With her they dipped succotash with a clean clam-shell from a wooden trough and were content and comforted. Harry knelt in prayer before lying down in the tent and this act made the eyes of the Indian woman shine, for she, it seems, was the relic of a long since Christianized tribe. When he was through she said: “‘Me praying Indian; me much love Jesus.’” The next morning, however, the heathen husband came and drove the children away.
The children took up their wandering and soon came to an old stately mansion with an avenue of majestic trees. This, we were told, was the Dench House, home of a Tory family of pre-revolutionary days and now deserted with all its furnitures and its mysteries until it could be decided properly to whom, under the new order, it really belonged. In this beautiful place they found no giant waiting to execute fell purpose upon them, so they built a fire, gathered berries, and slept, until a very human and kind-hearted giant came along in the form of Sam Lawson himself, who bore them to Oldtown, where the home and the loving hearts they had had faith would appear, were awaiting them.
So Tina and Harry came to the home of Horace Henderson, the writer, as Mrs. Stowe portrays it, of these annals. Horace and Harry became the friends of a lifetime. Tina was passed into the care of Miss Mehitable Rossiter, a plain-faced and true-hearted old maid. When Tina stood at her knee and looked up into her homely face, Miss Mehitable said: “‘Well, how do you like me?’” Tina considered attentively, looking long into the honest, open eyes. “‘I do like you,’ she said, putting out her hands; ‘I think you are good.’” Miss Mehitable said that it was well that she did, for otherwise, as she was a fairy, she might turn her into a mouse or a kitten. “‘I like you, and I will be your kitten,’” said Tina. That night Tina slept in a big four-poster bed with hangings of India linen, on which Oriental pagodas and peacocks and mandarins mingled together like the phantasms of a dream. In this pretty little bit of description we have a memory of Mrs. Stowe’s own childhood when she visited the old Foote homestead at Nut Plains, and went to sleep behind the famous bed-hangings that her Uncle Samuel Foote had brought home, and wondered why the mandarins on the printed India linen did not ring the little bells in the pagodas and why the birds did not pick off the golden fruits and eat them.
Thus the children were safely landed on the shores of “quality,” where they belonged. They became a part of that best of New England connections, the Rossiter family. They came to know Parson Lothrop, his wig and cocked hat and, above all, his old shay. They paid reverence to his wife also, the great lady, and to her lady’s maid, who had “grown up and dried in all the most sacred and sanctified essences of genteel propriety.” Everywhere Tina went she did more good than harm. Even to Lady Lothrop’s lonely grandeur she was a blessing. Tina had been told that in the presence of that great personage she must not talk. So the active child sat still as long as she could keep the dismal silence and then burst forth in several long, loud sighs.
“‘What’s the matter, little dear?’ said Lady Lothrop.