Her employer was more than pleased with her skill, for even at that early age she could be trusted to work without oversight, and resented any that was not strictly necessary.
She was glad when Horace was at last old enough to leave the asylum to learn the trade of carpenter and locksmith, and they never met during his apprenticeship that she did not urge him to be diligent in learning all that was possible that he, too, might be self-supporting and they could have a home together.
There were two subjects which all who were acquainted with Jerusha found it wise not to touch upon if not wishing to have a scathing retort from her satirical tongue.
One of these subjects was her early home and parentage, and the other the asylum which had fostered her helpless childhood, the home of which she grew more and more ashamed as time passed on. She never spoke of it of her own free will, and dreaded Saturday evening when she must go there to remain until Monday morning.
It was during one of these visits that her sixteenth birthday dawned, and the matron gave her the little ebony work-box.
Jerusha received it without betraying the least surprise and restrained her impatience to open it until she could be alone, and the matron was never rewarded for her care of it by being told what it contained. She did see, however, in the increased haughtiness and arrogance of Jerusha the influence exercised by its contents and wondered again and again what it held, which induced her to keep herself more than ever aloof from her and from every inmate of the asylum.
To Jerusha’s deep chagrin the ebony box held no money or valuables as she had hoped and expected from the moment it was put in her hands. It held neither more nor less than three letters, one of them written by Mrs. Flint to her father, and returned to her enclosed in his reply. The third letter was addressed to Jerusha, and was written by Mrs. Flint, telling her “poor, motherless little daughter, Jerusha,” of her ancestry on both sides of the house.
In this letter Jerusha was instructed to forward the other two letters to her grandfather at the address given, providing the time ever came that she desired to do so.
Dating from the perusal of these epistles, Jerusha refused to remain with the dressmaker, but making of necessity a home of the asylum, she commenced business for herself, finding no difficulty in obtaining patrons, some of them being the best customers of her former employer.
These ladies, appreciating her skill, solicited her oversight of their toilets, and she went from one aristocratic home to another, where her word was law in regard to costumes.