CHAPTER VIII.
TALK AT THE FARM-HOUSE—THREATS—THE NEW BEAU—LINDY.
Several days had elapsed since the morning conversation with Amy; meanwhile matters were jogging along in their usually dull way. Of late, since the flight of Mr. Jones, and the illness of Mr. Peterkin, there had been considerably less fighting; but the ladies made innumerable threats of what they would do, when their father should be well enough to allow a suspension of nursing duties.
My wounds had rapidly healed, and I had resumed my former position in the discharge of household duties. Lindy, my old assistant, still held her place. I always had an aversion to her. There was that about her entire physique which made her odious to me. A certain laxity of the muscles and joints of her frame, which produced a floundering, shuffling sort of gait that was peculiarly disagreeable, a narrow, soulless countenance, an oblique leer of the eye where an ambushed fiend seemed to lurk, full, voluptuous lips, lengthy chin, and expanded nostril, combined to prove her very low in the scale of animals. She had a kind of dare-devil courage, which seemed to brave a great deal, and yet she shrank from everything like punishment. There was a union of degrading passions in her character. I doubt if the lowest realm of hades contained a baser spirit. This girl, I felt assured from the first time I beheld her, was destined to be my evil genius. I felt that the baleful comet that presided over her birth, would in his reckless and maddening course, rush too near the little star which, through cloud and shadow, beamed on my destiny.
She was not without a certain kind of sprightliness that passed for intelligence; and she could by her adroitness of manœuvre amble out of any difficulty. With a good education she would have made an excellent female pettifogger. She had all of the quickness and diablerie usually summed up in that most expressive American word, "smartness."
I was a good deal vexed and grieved to find myself again a partner of hers in the discharge of my duties. It seemed to open my wounds afresh; for I remembered that her falsehood had gained me the severe castigation that had almost deprived me of life; and her laugh and jibe had rendered my suffering at the accursed post even more humiliating. Yet I knew better than to offer a demurrer to any arrangement that my mistress had made.
One day as I was preparing to set the table for the noon meal, Lindy came to me and whispered, in an under-tone, "You finish the table, I am going out; and if Miss Jane or Tildy axes where I is, say dat I went to de kitchen to wash a dish."
"Very well," I replied in my usual laconic style, and went on about my work. It was well for her that she had observed this precaution; for in a few moments Miss Tildy came in, and her first question was for Lindy. I answered as I had been desired to do. The reply appeared to satisfy her, and with the injunction (one she never failed to give), that I should do my work well and briskly, she left the room.
After I had arranged the table to my satisfaction, I went to the kitchen to assist Aunt Polly in dishing up dinner.
When I reached the kitchen I found Aunt Polly in a great quandary. The fire was not brisk enough to brown her bread, and she dared not send it to the table without its being as beautifully brown as a student's meditations.