“I’ll never call you Clubs again,” she said, folding her arms around his neck. “I love your crooked feet; I love every speck of you, Oliver, and, if I could, I’d give you my feet, though they ain’t much handsomer than yours, they are so big!” and she stuck up a short, fat foot, which, to Oliver, seemed the prettiest he had ever seen.
“No, Milly,” he said, “I’d rather be the deformed one. I want you to grow up handsome, as I most know you will!” and, resuming his task, he looked proudly at the bright little face, which bade fair to be wondrously beautiful.
Mildred did not like to work if she could help it, and, climbing upon the bed, she lay there while Oliver stitched on industriously. But her thoughts were very busy, for she was thinking of the mysterious Richard, wondering if he were really dead, and if he ever had thought of her when afar on the Southern seas. Then, as she remembered having heard that his portrait hung in the drawing-room at Beechwood, she felt a strong desire to see it; and why couldn’t she? Wasn’t she going up there, some day, to ask the Judge if he were not her father? Yes, she was! and so she said again to Oliver, telling him how she meant to be real smart for ever so long, till his grandmother was good-natured and would let her go. She would wear her best calico gown and dimity pantalets, while Oliver should carry his grandfather’s cane, by way of imitating the Judge, who might thus be more impressed with a sense of his greatness.
Although he lived so near, Oliver had never had more than a passing glance of the inside of the great house on the hill, and now that the first surprise was over, he began to feel a pleasing interest in the idea of entering its spacious halls with Mildred. They would go some day, he said, and he tried to frame a good excuse to give the Judge, who might not be inclined to let them in. Mildred, on the contrary, took no forethought as to what she must say; her wits always came when needed, and, while Oliver was thinking, she fell away to sleep, resting so quietly that she did not hear him go below for the bit of tallow candle necessary to complete his task; neither did she see him, when his work was done, bend over her as she slept. Very gently he arranged her pillow, pushed back the hair which had fallen over her eyes, and then, treading softly on his poor warped feet, he left her room and sought his own, where his grandmother found him sleeping, when at nine o’clock she came home from Widow Simms’s.
Mildred’s chamber was visited next, the old lady starting back in much surprise, when, instead of the little figure bending over her bench, she saw the shoes all finished and put away, while Mildred, too, was sleeping,—her lips and hands stained with the berry pie, a part of which lay upon the chair.
“It’s Oliver’s doings,” old Hepsy muttered, while thoughts of his crippled feet rose up in time to prevent an explosion of her wrath.
She could maltreat little Mildred, who had no mar or blemish about her, but she could not abuse a deformed boy, and she went silently down the stairs, leaving Oliver to his dreams of Heaven, where there were no crippled boys, and Mildred to her dreams of Richard, and the time when she would go to Beechwood, and claim Judge Howell for her sire.
CHAPTER IV.
OLIVER AND MILDRED VISIT BEECHWOOD.
