Homestead on the Hillside

by Mary Jane Holmes

"I didn't do it," said Willie; "Leno did that."

"Be careful what you say," returned Mrs. Hamilton. "I can't believe Lenora would do so."

Ere Willie had time to repeat his assertion Lenora, who all the time had been standing by the door, appeared, saying, "You may believe him, for he has never been whipped to make him lie. I did do it, and I would do it again."

"Lenora," said Mr. Hamilton, rather sternly, "you should not interfere in that manner. You will spoil the child."

It was the first time he had presumed to reprove his stepdaughter, and as there was nothing on earth which Mrs. Hamilton so much feared as Lenora's tongue, she dreaded the disclosures which further remark from her husband might call forth. So, assuming an air of great distress, she said, "Leave her to me, my dear. She is a strange girl, as I always told you, and no one can manage her as well as myself." Then kissing Willie in token of forgiveness, she left the room, drawing Lenora after her and whispering fiercely in her ear, "How can you ever expect to succeed with the son, if you show off this way before the father."

With a mocking laugh Lenora replied, "Pshaw! I gave that up the first time I ever saw him, for of course he thinks me a second edition of Mrs. Carter, minus any improvements. But he's mistaken; I'm not half as bad as I seem. I'm only what you've made me."

Mrs. Hamilton turned away, thinking that if her daughter could so easily give up Walter Hamilton, she would not. She was resolved upon an alliance between him and Lenora. And who ever knew her to fail in what she undertook?

She had wrung from her husband the confession that "he believed there was a sort of childish affection between Walter and Kate Kirby, though 'twas doubtful whether it ever amounted to anything." She had also learned that he was rather averse to the match, and though Lenora had not yet been named as a substitute for Kate, she strove in many ways to impress her husband with a sense of her daughter's superior abilities, at the same time taking pains to mortify Margaret by setting Lenora above her.

For this, however, Margaret cared but little, and it was only when her mother ill-treated Willie, which she frequently did, that her spirit was fully roused.

At Mrs. Hamilton's first marriage she had been presented with a handsome glass pitcher, which she of course greatly prized. One day it stood upon the stand in her room, where Willie was also playing with some spools which Lenora had found and arranged for him. Malta, the pet kitten, was amusing herself by running after the spools, and when at last Willie, becoming tired, laid them on the stand, she sprang toward them, upsetting the pitcher, which was broken in a dozen pieces. On hearing the crash Mrs. Hamilton hastened toward the room, where the sight of her favorite pitcher in fragments greatly enraged her. Thinking, of course, that Willie had done it, she rudely seized him by the arm, administered a cuff or so, and then dragged him toward the china closet.