"A letter for me. How queer! I never had a letter before, that I remember. Why, it's from Wealthy! Papa, I wish you'd read it to me. It looks very hard to make out, Wealthy writes such a funny hand. Don't you recollect how she used to work over her copy-book, with her nose almost touching the paper, and how inky she used to get?"
It was the first time they had heard from Wealthy since they left Tunxet, more than eight months before. Wealthy wrote very few letters, and those few cost an amount of time, trouble, and ink-spots, which would have discouraged most people from writing at all.
This was the letter:—
Dear Eyebright : I take my pen in hand to tell you that I am well, and hope you are the same. All the friends here is well, except Miss Bury. She's down with intermitting fever, and old Miss Beadles is dead and buried. Whether that's being well or not I can't say. Some folks think so, and some folks don't. I haint written before. I aint much of a scribe, as you know, so I judge you haven't been surprised at not hearing of me. I might have writ sooner, but along in the fall my arm was kind of lamed with rheumatism, and when I got over that, there was Mandy Harmon's weddin' things to do,—Pelatiah Harmon's daughter, down to the corners, you know. What girls want so many clothes for when they get married, I cant for the life of me tell. The shops don't shut up for good just afterward, so far as anybody knows, but you'd think they did from the fuss some of them make. Mandy had five new dresses. They was cut down to Worcester, but I made them, besides two calikus and ten of every thing, and a double gown and an Ulster and the Lord knows what not. I've had to stick to it to put 'em through, but they're all done at last, and she got married last week and went off, and she'll spend the next few years a-alterin' of them things over, or I miss my guess. That Mather girl keeps asking me about you, but I tell her you haint wrote but twice, and I don't know no more than she does. Mr. Bury got your Pa's letter. We was glad to hear you liked it up there, but most places is pleasant enough in summer. Winter is the tug. I suppose it's cold enough where you are, sometimes, judging from Probbabillities. Mr. Asher has took the house. Tell your Pa. It dont look much like old times. He has put wooden points on top of the barn and mended the back gate, and he's got a nasty Newfoundland which barks most all the time. Now I must conclude.—Yours truly,
Wealthy A. Judson.
P. S.—My respects to your Pa and to all inquiring friends. I was thinking that that water-proof of your Ma's had better be cut over for you in the spring. What kind of help do you get up in Maine?
"Oh, how like dear, funny old Wealthy that is!" cried Eyebright, as between smiles and tears she listened to the reading of this letter. "Whom do you suppose she means by 'all inquiring friends'? And isn't it just like her to call Bessie 'that Mather girl'? Wealthy never could endure Bessie,—I can't imagine why. Well, this has been a real nice Christmas, after all. I'm glad you didn't go to the post-office last week, papa, for then we should have got the letter sooner, and shouldn't have had it for to-day. It was much nicer to have it now."
"Winter's the tug." Eyebright thought often of this sentence of Wealthy's as the long weeks went by, and still the cold continued and the spring delayed, till it seemed as though it were never coming at all, and papa grew thinner and more listless and discouraged all the time. The loneliness and want of occupation hurt him more than it did Eyebright, and when spring came, as at last it did, his spirits did not revive as she had hoped they would. Farming was trying and depressing work on Causey Island. The land was poor and rocky,—"out of heart," as the saying is,—and Mr. Bright had neither the spirit nor the money to bring it into condition. He missed his old occupation and his old neighbors more than he had expected; he missed newspapers; and a growing anxiety about the future, and about Eyebright,—who was getting no schooling of any kind,—combined to depress him and give him the feeling that he had dropped out of life, and there was no use in trying to make things better.
It was certainly a disadvantage to Eyebright, at her age, to be taken out of school; still life on the island was a schooling for all that, and schooling of a very useful kind. History and geography are excellent things, but no geography or history can take the place of the lessons which Eyebright was now learning,—lessons in patience, unselfishness, good-humor, and helpfulness. When she fought with her own little discontents and vexations, and kept her face bright and sunny for papa's sake, she was gaining more good than she could have done from the longest chapter in the best school-book ever printed. Not that the school-books are not desirable, too, or that Eyebright did not miss them. After the first novelty of their new life was over, she missed school very much,—not the fun of school only, but the actual study itself. Her mind felt as they say teething dogs do, as if it must have something to bite on. She tried the experiment of setting herself lessons, but it did not succeed very well. There was no one to explain the little difficulties that arose, and she grew puzzled and confused, and lost the desire to go on.
Another thing which she missed very much was going to church. There had never been either a church or a Sunday-school in Scrapplehead, and the people who made any difference for Sunday made it by idling about, which was almost worse than working. At first, Eyebright tried to observe the day after a fashion, by learning a hymn and studying a short Bible lesson, but such good habits drop off after a while, when there is nothing and nobody to remind or help us, and little by little she got out of the way of keeping it up, and sometimes quite forgot that it was Sunday till afterward. Days were much alike on the island, especially in winter, and it was not easy to remember, which must be her excuse; but it was a sad want in her week, and a want which was continually growing worse as she grew older.