I could not look up at Miss Rubie all the while she was talking, but I noticed Dunie Foster did. I was trying to rub that zigzag stream of sirup off my apron; and O, how sick I grew! Would she ever stop?
I knew God had seen me yesterday and day before, when I ate peach preserves, and I had no doubt it was to punish me that I had been allowed to swallow this bitter stuff to-day. But, O, if I could go home!
I never see that story of Adaline Singleton now among my books but it calls up a remembrance of guilt and nausea too. I would give a great deal, little Fly, if I hadn't so many bad things to remember. It is because I hope to do you good that I am willing to tell of them. May you have a purer childhood to look back upon!
Thankful was I when school was out that noon, but I wasn't able to go again in the afternoon; and my mother knew why!
It was the last time I was ever put in that cellar. Miss Rubie found another method of punishment; and I think I can say truthfully it was the last time I ever took sweetmeats without leave. I did other wrong things in plenty, but that I could never do again. When mother said I might go to the box and get "half a dozen raisins," I got half a dozen, and not a handful. Those solemn words rang in my ears,—"Thou, God, seest me,"—just as Miss Rubie had spoken them in her low, sweet tones.
For days I dared not meet aunt Persis's eye, but she treated me just the same, often loading me down with pennyroyal and spearmint to take home to mother. I did not know she was near-sighted, and had not seen me drinking her thoroughwort. It was the first medicine of hers I had ever taken, and that bitter taste in my mouth decided me, upon reflection, that she was crazy. As it proved, I was not very far wrong.
There had been something the matter with her wits for two or three years, and she was growing queerer and queerer. People began to wonder what made her want to look at their tongues so much. She said now if she met people on her way to church, "Please, put out your tongue;" and sometimes said it on the very church steps. This was queer; but they did not know how much queerer she was at home. We children could have told how she came into the school-room and felt all our pulses, but we thought Miss Rubie would be sorry to have us tell.
Her little boy Zed, about four years old, had to take her dreadful medicines, of course, for medicine was the very thing auntie was crazy about. He carried some of his doses into school to drink at recess, and we all pitied him. Sometimes he ate dry senna and raisins mixed on a plate, and we teased away the raisins, and he had to chew the senna "bare." He cried then, and said we ought to help eat that too, and we did. I thought it had a crazy taste, like the thoroughwort, and was sorry Zed had a liver inside him, and wished that his mother hadn't found it out.
Miss Rubie was very good and patient with us, but we began to dread to go to school. I overheard Tempy Ann say to Polly Whiting,—
"The story is, that Mrs. Adams (aunt Persis) steamed her own mother out of the world."