Both Jessie and Bell noted the change in Dora, and Jessie asked her outright what it was that made her look so frightened, as if constantly in fear of something; but Dora could not tell what she feared, for she had scarcely dared to define to herself the meaning of Squire Russell’s manner toward her. A stranger would have perceived no difference in his treatment of her now and when his wife was living, but Dora felt the change, and it almost drove her wild, making her one day sharply rebuke the little Daisy for calling her mamma.
“I am not your mother,” she said fiercely. “Your mamma is dead, and I am only Auntie.”
The child looked up in surprise, but called her mamma just the same, while Dora’s eyelids closed tightly over the hot tears she thus kept from falling. That day when Johnnie came home from school at dinner-time he showed unmistakable marks of having been in a fight, and when questioned by his father as to the cause of his black eye, broke out furiously:
“I’ve been a lickin’ Bill Carter, and I’ll do it again if he ever tells such stuff about you! Why, he said you’re a going to get married to that ill-begotten, shoulder-shotten snap-dragon of a Miss Dutton! I told him ’twas the biggest lie, and then he said it wasn’t, that it was true, and she was coming here to be our step-mother; that she would cut off ’Tish’s curls, spank Ben and Burt twice a day, shake Daisy into shoe-strings, and make Jim and me toe the mark,—the hateful!”
“She ain’t, she shan’t,—old nasty Dutton,” and fiery Ben shook his tiny fist at an imaginary bugbear who was to spank him twice a day.
Jessie laughed aloud. Bell looked amused, Dora disturbed, and the Squire very red, as he said to his son:
“You should not mind such gossip, or allow yourself to get into a passion. Time enough to rebel when the step-mother comes. Now go to your room and bathe your eye.”
Johnnie obeyed, muttering as he went:
“There’s only one person I’d have for a step-mother any how, and that’s Aunt Dora. Guy, wouldn’t I raise hob with anybody else!”
“John, leave instantly!” the Squire said sternly, while his face colored crimson, as did Dora’s also, making Bell and Jessie glance curiously at each other, as both thought of the same thing.