She was clever, as Arthur Dudley had truly observed; that is, she was not clever in accomplishments, nor as regarded solid learning, but rather socially and conversationally.
She was no linguist, not much of a musician, nothing of an artist; she had not read much, but she could guess what people were thinking of; she could piece this and that together, and tell what motives influenced them, what were their purposes, by what considerations they were swayed. For this reason, many persons had an objection to very intimate association with the girl; she never rested content with words—she went straight back to the thoughts words concealed.
The young folks at Berrie Down Hollow, however, who had no secrets and no plans, found her capital company. Even Lally was not more tireless than she. Ever ready to go out to walk, to inspect the poultry-yard, to try her hand at butter-making, to gather flowers and group them into bouquets, to shake the cherry-trees, to carry Lally into the Hollow and hide her among the blackberry bushes, to smother the child in armfuls of freshly-mown grass, to lead the way, fleet of foot, to the meadows, where the haymakers were at work, to don with demurest air a snowy apron, and help Mrs. Piggott whisk eggs, or prepare her fruit for preserving!
Even Mrs. Piggott, who entertained a most cordial dislike for Bessie’s maternal parent, brightened up when she saw that pretty roguish face peeping in at the door of kitchen, larder, and dairy.
Of severe, not to say despotic, principles, inclined to resent intrusions into her domains as acts of revolt against a legally-constituted authority, Mrs. Piggott, nevertheless, not merely tolerated Bessie’s visits, but rejoiced in them, and few things delighted the beauty more than a forenoon with “that delightfully respectable old wonder,” as she called the housekeeper.
It was a sight to see Mrs. Piggott and Bessie employed in making red-currant jelly—Mrs. Piggott arrayed in a clean cotton gown, and a cap with many borders, looking sharply after her assistant to see that she religiously removed every stem, while Lally, perched on the table, superintended the work, and ate whole handsful of the fruit, in gleeful defiance of Bessie’s threats of executing condign punishment upon her.
“Dear, dear Miss,” observed Mrs. Piggott on one occasion, surveying Bessie over her spectacles, “who would ever think you were your mamma’s daughter?”
“No one, Mrs. Piggott,” was the young lady’s prompt reply. “Don’t you think it a pity mothers so seldom take after their children?” which inversion of the usual proposition so utterly astonished Mrs. Piggott’s understanding, that she was glad to direct Bessie’s attention to “that blessed child who has eaten a quart of picked fruit, Miss, if she has eaten a currant;” whereupon Bessie placed Lally on the dresser, where, in the midst of plates and dishes, the little girl sat as if on a throne, exchanging saucy speeches with Miss Ormson, till it pleased that young lady to lift her down from her perch and take her away to the hay-field, or out into the croft, to see Alick breaking-in Nellie.
It was wonderful to observe the way in which Bessie and the child agreed; more wonderful still, perhaps, to notice the manner in which the former wound all the household round her finger.
It was Bessie this, and Bessie that. She retrimmed the girls’ bonnets; she taught them the latest mode of dressing hair; she could change old garments into new by some dexterous sleight-of-hand. Ribbons and laces, deemed useless before her arrival, and cast aside, as tossed and torn, reappeared after her advent in forms that delighted the hearts of Arthur Dudley’s sisters.