Tabitha at Ivy Hall

by Ruth Brown MacArthur

"Here, boy, take your berries and be off, but if I ever catch you hec—"

"Those are my berries," Tabitha found courage to say, suddenly remembering the pail heaped full of the fruit she had toiled all the morning to pick; and the man, glancing down at her bony hands, scratched and scarred by blackberry thorns, thrust the heavy pail into her arms and without a word followed her in the dusty march toward the house a quarter of a mile distant; nor did he once offer to help her with her load, though the way was rough, the day intensely hot, and the weight too much for the slender shoulders of the child. Once she stubbed her toe, and he pulled her roughly to her feet, but released his hold on her arm when she fixed her black eyes full of scorn and anger upon his face; and a grim smile played an instant about his lips, but was gone again before the child could see it.

The house was reached at last, and with a sigh of relief Tabitha dropped her burden in the doorway and sank down beside it.

At the sound of steps on the gravel walk, a fussy, fidgety little woman appeared from the room beyond, and stopped in astonishment at sight of the giant coming up the steps. Before she had a chance to express her surprise, however, he spoke, addressing the panting child fanning herself with her bonnet:

"Close that screen. Can't you see those flies coming in? Go to my room, I want to have an understanding with you. Maria, Tabitha isn't to have a taste of those berries. I just found her in the middle of the road down here fighting with a boy, like the rowdy she is."

Accustomed to obey this stern father, Tabitha had withdrawn into the house, and started for the room where punishment awaited her. At his command in regard to the berries, however, she paused; then turned to where the pail stood just inside the screen, seized it, and before either of the two spectators understood what she was about, she flung bucket, berries and all into the dooryard and ground the shining fruit into the sand with her bare feet.

"There, Manx Catt," she exclaimed, "I reckon you won't have a taste of them either!"

A gasp of dismay escaped the frightened woman, but again the grim smile flitted across the face of the father, though he looked like a thunder cloud as he roared at the child, "Go straight to your room and to bed! You shall not have a thing to eat today!"

With her feet stained a dirty purple, Tabitha marched into the house and upstairs, rushed to her little bed in the corner, and threw herself full length on the counterpane, regardless of the fact that drops of berry juice still dripped from her brown legs. For fully ten minutes she lay there, fighting back the angry tears and battling with the fierce rage against her father.

"I hate him, I hate him!" she told herself over and over again. "It's bad enough to have him name me Tabitha without his acting so hateful every time he comes home. I wish he would go off to the mines and stay forever. He might take Aunt Maria, too, though she ain't so bad. We could get along with her all right; sometimes she is splendid, even if she is so fussy. Oh, dear, why can't we have a nice mother like other children have? I reckon ours wouldn't have died if she had known Aunt Maria would have to take care of us and Dad would be so horrid."