“I don’t know that I ever did. But then, you know, dear, Laura Bridgeman was a decided brunette.”
“Pshaw!” said Dawson, laughing; “not jealous, I trust, Maria, of the remembrance of my old flirtation with Laura.”
“Not very, sir,” she added, looking down demurely, “for, you know, when it happened I was a little girl that had not yet come out.”
“What a fortunate escape Laura, and her mamma would think she had made, if they could only see me now busily engaged in my shirt-sleeves, planting, digging, weeding, raking, learning to mow, in fine, learning to earn my own bread and that of those dearer to me than life.”
“I don’t feel at all sentimental in connection with Laura Bridgeman; and so,” she added, turning to the piano and striking up a gallope, “here’s something that lady would prefer at any time to sentiment.”
The piece finished, she at once changed the measure, and in a few moments her rich, full voice was heard in a song which was a peculiar favorite of her husband’s. The sound of the music attracted the children, who now came in, the youngest in his young nurse’s arms, to kiss papa good-night, whilst Maria prepared her baby for bed.
Whilst our heroine was thus active within doors, it must not be supposed that her husband was supine without. He was industriously learning the practical parts of his new vocation. He was engaged, the dandy of the pavé, the saloons and the clubs, learning, in his shirt-sleeves, to plough, to harrow, to mow, to dig, and, in fine, to do all that a hard-working farmer is compelled to do. He was aware that the head as well as the hand is necessary to direct aright the art of tillage, as any other art, and that a man may learn every thing concerning the rotation of crops, and all the rest of the art, and yet be deficient in the skill of an ordinary hand in the manual operations; but he thought it best to learn all, in order that in future he might direct all; and so he worked away under the tuition of one of his hired men, and was rapidly becoming a proficient. The hands had lost the softness and whiteness of the city dandy, and had put on that covering of brown which he condemned on the cheek of his wife, only that the shade was darker, and the hardening process had been so gone through with that blisters no longer troubled him.
There was much to do, too, to the exterior of the place, in order to make it harmonize with the now refined interior; so the garden was enlarged, and fruit of various kinds set out at the proper time, and in another year or so they had reason to calculate upon a great improvement in every thing. Time never flew more rapidly with the subjects of our story, not even during the ever-memorable first summer after their wedding. It is true they had but little society, but the active discharge of their duties required the greater portion of their time, and the few occasional half hours of idleness in the day-time, were moments which required no foreign assistance to render them pleasant. After the children were dispatched for the night, and the supper things washed up, and the breakfast-table all set out to be ready for the morning, they would indulge themselves in some music, and then Dawson would read aloud, whilst Maria’s nimble fingers repaired some rent which the clothes of the children might have suffered, or prepared some necessary habiliment.
The neighborhood was thickly settled with a class of comfortable well-to-do farmers, almost exclusively the owners of the farms they occupied, whilst the village of Euston was only a little more than a mile distant. The good people had not, however, called much upon them. Some were restrained by one cause or another, although since rumors of their former position in life having got afloat, curiosity was largely on the tiptoe to see how they could bear their change and get along. The men formed a good opinion of him, when they saw him take off his coat and go to work, as they said, “like a man who wasn’t ashamed of his business;” and they prophesied he would get along. What the females thought may be judged by the following conversation.
“Well, I do declare this is very nice, comfortable,” said Miss Maggie Chatterton, as she undid her bonnet-strings and threw off her shawl amidst a female group of neighbors who were assembled in the best parlor of a certain Mrs. Holmes.