“Does she? Then I’ll stay away! And if I did put a period after ‘Miss’ it was a mistake. But I’ve no respect for people that read other people’s private journals!”
“Hope you don’t call that private. Why, I thought ’twas a Sabbath-school book, or I wouldn’t have touched it.” And whether she would or not, Fanny was obliged to laugh; so the breach was healed for the time. But after this Mary began a new journal, which she conducted on different principles, trying moreover to keep it in its proper place in her writing-desk.
There were secret signs and mysterious allusions in this new journal, however, the letters “C. C.” recurring again and again in all sorts of places, without any apparent meaning or connection. She evidently enjoyed scribbling them, and no harm was done, since nobody but “we girls” knew what they meant. “C. C.” was a precious secret, which we may pry into for ourselves by-and-by.
Mary was now in her thirteenth year, and though she still enjoyed hanging May-baskets, driving hoops, skipping the rope, and even playing dolls, her growing mind was never idle. She enjoyed her lessons at school, for she memorized with ease; she liked to draw; but sitting at the piano was a weariness; and she considered it a trial that, in addition to her own practising, she should be expected to teach and superintend Ethel. She was strict with her little pupil, and found frequent occasion for sermonettes, but Ethel got on famously, and Mary received and deserved high praise as teacher.
She missed her cousin Fred when he went home at last, not to return, but she told Lady Fotheringay (Blanche Jones) in confidence that she “could improve her mind better when he was gone.” Moreover, Preston would soon be home for his summer vacation.
She was beginning to question what she was made for. Something grand and wonderful, no doubt; something much better than studying, reading, sewing, and doing errands. There were times when this favored child of fortune even said to herself that life was hard, and that her mother was over-strict in requiring her to mend her clothes and do a stint of some sort of sewing on Saturdays. Wasn’t she old enough yet to have outgrown stints?
“Why can’t pillow-cases be hemmed by machine?” complained she to Ethel. “And there you are,—almost six years old, with not a thing to do! I can tell you I used to sew patchwork at your age by the yard! C. C. I keep saying that over to comfort myself, Ethel, but you don’t know what it stands for. Oh no, not chocolate candy; better than that!—Wish I lived at the south, where colored servants do everything. There’s Grandma Hyde now; if we had her black Venus, and her black Mary, and her yellow Thomas, I shouldn’t have to dust parlors and run of errands! Mamma is always talking to me about being useful. Little girls are never talked to in that way; it’s we older girls who have to bear all the brunt. It tires me to death to sew, sew, sew! Now it’s such fun to run in the woods. Mr. Lee says we ought to admire nature, and I’m going after flag-root this afternoon instead of mending my stockings—I think it’s my duty!”
As Mary rattled on in this way, little Ethel listened most attentively. Her sister Flaxie stood as a pattern to her of all the virtues,—ah, if Flaxie had but known it!—and she looked forward to the time when she should be exactly like her, with just such curls, and just that superior way of lecturing little people. It was not worth while to be any better than Flaxie. If Flaxie objected to sewing and mending, Ethel would object to it also.
“If my mamma ever makes me sit on a chair to sew patchwork, I’ll go South! If she makes me mend stockings, I’ll go in the woods! I won’t be useful if Flaxie isn’t; no indeedy!”
Thus while Flaxie’s sermonettes were forgotten, her chance words and her example took deep hold of the little one’s mind.