Oldfield: A Kentucky Tale of the Last Century

by Nancy Huston Banks

"And don't you think it would be a good idea to have Merica make a pig and a kitten out of gingerbread? They might perhaps amuse the child, and keep her from crying. A half pint of flour would be quite enough, and we have to have the fire anyway because it's ironing day. Then Merica picked up a big basket of chips behind the cabinet-maker's shop this morning."

"Just so, sister Judy," answered Miss Sophia, who left all provision for fire and for everything else wholly to her sister. "And she might make us some gingerbread too, while she's about it."

"To be sure!" exclaimed Miss Judy, looking at Miss Sophia in loving admiration. "So she can. How quick you are to see the right way, sister Sophia. I never seem to think of things as you do."

But even as she spoke, a thought flashed uneasily across her mind, causing her sweet old face to beam less brightly. What if the child would not sit on the home-made rug? She had never been used to carpets—poor little thing. What if she crumbled the gingerbread all over everything, as Miss Judy had seen children do, time and again! The thought of such desecration of the carpet that her mother had made, for which she had carded the wool and spun the warp and woven the woof, all with her own dear little hands, made Miss Judy feel almost faint. The risk of such danger threw her into more and more of a panic. She hardly slept that night, troubled by dread of what she had so thoughtfully undertaken. She was pale and trembling with fright when Sidney brought Doris and left her early on the following day.

But the child sat quite still on the rug where her mother had placed her; and she did not cry when Sidney went away, as Miss Judy feared she would, although her lips quivered. She soon turned to look at the doll, which Miss Judy hastened to give her to divert her attention,—looking at it as tender little mothers look at afflicted babies. Then she gave her attention to the gingerbread kitten, and, later, to the gingerbread pig; and Miss Judy was pleased, though she could hardly have told why, to notice that Doris ate the pig first and hesitated some time before eating the kitten.

Miss Judy gave an involuntary sigh of relief when both the pig and the kitten had disappeared without leaving a crumb. She instinctively turned toward Miss Sophia with a pardonable little air of triumph, and was disappointed to find her asleep in her chair. Thus Miss Judy and Doris were left alone together, and presently the quiet child lifted her grave brown eyes to the little lady's anxious blue ones and they exchanged a first long, bashful look. Doris was not old enough to remember what she thought of Miss Judy at that time; but Miss Judy always remembered how Doris looked—such a wonderfully beautiful, gentle little creature—as she sat there so gravely, looking up with her mites of hands folded on her lap. After a time, as Miss Sophia slumbered peacefully on, the shy child and the shyer old lady began to make timid advances to one another. Doris undressed the forlorn old doll with cautious delight, and Miss Judy dressed it again with exquisite care while Doris leaned on her knee, hardly knowing what she did, so intense was her breathless interest in what Miss Judy was doing. The shyest are always the most trusting, if they trust at all. When Sidney, returning from her rounds, came by at nightfall to take Doris home, the child was no longer in the least afraid of Miss Judy; and Miss Judy was not nearly so much frightened as she had been at first.

Yet it was, after all, surprising, considering how timid they both were, that they should so soon have become tenderly and deeply attached to each other. But every day that Sidney brought Doris and left her, she was happier to come and more willing to stay; and erelong the day on which she had not come would have been an empty one and dull indeed for Miss Judy. One bright morning they had been very, very happy together. Miss Sophia nodded as usual in her low rocking-chair, and Miss Judy was darning her sister's stockings while Doris played at her feet.

"Miss Dudy," the child said suddenly, raising her large, serious eyes to Miss Judy's sweet face with a puzzled look; "was it you or my mammy that borned me?"

Miss Judy started,—blushing, smiling, looking like a beautiful girl,—and bending down she gathered the little one in her arms and held her for a long time very, very close. From that moment her love for Doris assumed a different character.

It was a love which grew with the child's growth; which watched and fostered every new beauty of character as the girl blossomed into early womanhood, beautiful and sweet as a tall white flower. Gradually Doris became as the sun and the moon to Miss Judy, the first object when she arose in the morning, her last thought when she lay down at night. Yet this devotion to Doris, and absorption in the girl's interests and future, did not lessen in the least her devotion to Miss Sophia, her ceaseless watchfulness over her welfare, her tender care for her happiness. Her love for Doris never touched her love for her sister at any point. The two loves were so distinct, so unlike, so widely apart that there could be no conflict. It is true that Miss Judy's love for Miss Sophia was also strongly and tenderly maternal. But Miss Judy's gentle heart was so full of this mother-love—single and simple—that some of it might have been given to the whole human race. Her love for Doris was something much more exclusive, something infinitely more subtle than this, which is shared in a measure by every womanly woman. It was the romantic, poetic love which is given by loving age to lovable youth when it recalls life's dawn-light to the twilight of a life which has never known the full sunrise.