“Every family must have a black sheep,” she said to Annie, though where hers was she could not tell. It surely was not John, nor Eli, nor Isaac, so she guessed it must have been the girl baby that died before ’twas born, and for whom she shed so many tears. She shouldn’t do it again, she’d bet, for if it had lived, it would most likely have cut up some rusty or other, just as Jim Carleton had,—married Bill Baker, like as not; and with this consolatory reflection, the widow took up Isaac’s letter for a second time, resolving in her own mind that she would send that Captain Carleton something if she set up nights to make it.
“I’m glad my boy didn’t tell a lie,” she whispered softly to herself, as she came again to that part of the letter, poor, weak human nature creeping in with the same thought, and suggesting how grand it would be to have him “Sergeant Simms, with the increased wages per month it would have brought.” This was the old Adam counselling within her, while the new Adam said, “Better never to be promoted than lose his integrity,” and with a silent prayer for the boy who would not tell a lie, the widow folded up the letter, and then repeated to Annie the particulars of Jimmie Carleton in a much milder manner than she would have done an hour before. So much good little acts of kindness do, stretching on link after link, until they reach a point from which they recoil in blessings on the doer’s head. Thus Captain Carleton’s friendly words to Isaac Simms were the direct means of saving his mother and sister from the bitter prejudice the Rockland people, in their then excitable state, might have felt toward them, had Widow Simms told the story of Jimmie in the spirit she surely would have told it, had it not been for Isaac’s timely letter. This, together with a little judicious caution from Annie, changed her tactics, and though she, that very night, had several opportunities for telling how “Miss Martherses brother was a rebel, and that Miss Marthers couldn’t see the mighty harm in it if he was,” she kept it to herself, speaking only of the noble Tom, so kind to her boy Isaac.
CHAPTER VI.
FINDING SOMETHING TO DO FOR THE WAR.
The next morning the Mather carriage, containing both Mrs. Carleton and Rose, drove down the Hollow, and stopped in front of Annie’s gate. Mrs. Carleton’s business was with Widow Simms, who was mixing bread in the kitchen, and who experienced considerable trepidation when told “the grand Boston lady” had asked for her.
“I’m pesky glad I hain’t tattled about Jim,” she thought, as washing the flour from her hands and hooking her sleeves at the wrist she entered the sitting-room, and with a low courtesy, waited to hear the lady’s errand.
Mrs. Carleton had come with a request that the widow should not repeat what Rose had so heedlessly told her the previous night.
“You may think it strange that I care so much,” Mrs. Carleton said, “and until you are placed in similar circumstances you cannot understand how I shrink from having it known that my son could fall so low, or do so great injustice to his early training.”
If the widow had possessed one particle of prejudice against the Carletons, this would have disarmed her entirely, but she did not. Isaac’s letter had swept that all away, and she replied that “Jimmie’s secret was as safe with her as if locked up in an iron chest.”
“I did feel blazin’ mad at you, though, for a spell,” she said, “for I thought you might have brung him up better; but this cured me entirely,” and she handed Isaac’s letter to Rose, bidding her read it aloud.