Harriet half pouted; but she met her mother’s tranquil eye; the pout changed to a good-humored smile, and kissing her affectionately, she bounded off to do her bidding.
While she is gone, you would like—would you not, dear reader?—to ask a few questions about her. I can guess what they are, and will answer them, to the best of my knowledge.
Mrs. Carlton is a widow, with a moderate fortune, and a handsome house in Tremont street, Boston. She has been a star in fashionable life, but since the loss of her husband, whom she tenderly loved, she has retired from the gay world, and devoted herself to her child—a wild, frank, happy, generous and impetuous creature, with half a dozen glaring faults, and one rare virtue which nobly redeemed them all. That virtue, patient reader, you must find out for yourself. Perhaps you will catch a glimpse of it in
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CHAPTER II.
AUNT ELOISE.
Harriet was busy with her composition, when her aunt, who was on a visit to Mrs. Carlton, entered the room. Aunt Eloise was a weak minded and weak hearted lady of a very uncertain age—unhappily gifted with more sensibility than sense. She really had a deal of feeling—for herself—and an almost inexhaustible shower of tears, varied occasionally by hysterics and fainting-fits, whenever any pressing exigency in the fate of her friends demanded self-possession, energy, or immediate assistance. If, too, there happened, as there will sometimes, in all households, to be an urgent necessity for instant exertion by any member of the family, such as sewing, watching with an invalid, shopping with a country cousin, poor Aunt Eloise was invariably and most unfortunately seized with a sudden toothache, headache, pain in the side, strange feelings, dreadful nervousness, or some trouble of the kind, which quite precluded the propriety of asking her aid.
Every morning at breakfast Aunt Eloise edified the family with a wonderful dream, which the breakfast-bell had interrupted, and every evening she grew sentimental over the reminiscences which the twilight hour awakened. It was then that innumerable shades of former admirers arose. Some doubted if they had ever been more than shades; but Aunt Eloise certainly knew best about that, and who had a right to deny, that Mr. Smith had knelt to her for pity; that Colonel Green had vowed eternal adoration; and that Lawyer Lynx had laid his heart, his hand, and his fees, which were not quite a fortune, at her feet?
Aunt Eloise had been—at least she hinted so—a beauty and a blue, in her day; and, to maintain both characters, she rouged, wore false ringlets, and scribbled love-verses, which she had a bad habit of leaving, by accident, between the leaves of books in every frequented room of the house.
She thought and avowed herself extravagantly fond of her niece, during her early childhood, and imagined that she displayed a graceful enthusiasm in exclaiming, every now and then, in her presence, and in that of others, “Oh! you angel child! I do think she is the sweetest creature! Come here and kiss me, you beauty!” &c. &c. But no one ever saw Aunt Eloise taking care of the child, attending to its little wants, or doing any thing for its benefit. The only tangible proof of her affection for her niece, was in the shape of bonbons and candy, which she was in the habit of bringing home from her frequent walks in Tremont street. Harriet regularly handed these forbidden luxuries to her mother, and Mrs. Carlton as regularly threw them in the fire.