Then in the evenings (he slept at my father's) he would pick up my books and amuse himself with talking to me about them, laugh at my crude enthusiasms, clear up some difficult passage, prune away remorselessly the trash that had crept into my little collection, until, one day, returning from Cincinnati, where business had called him, he brought with him a store of books inexhaustible to my inexperienced eyes, and declared himself my teacher for the winter.
"Never mind Janet's knitting and mending, Mrs. Boarders," said he, in reply to my mother's complaints; "she is a smart girl, and may be a school-mistress yet, and earn more money than any woman on Sandy."
"But I am afraid," my step-mother answered, "that the books she reads are not godly, and have no grace in them. They look to me like players' trash. I've tried to do my duty to Janet," she continued, plaintively; "but I hope the Lord won't hold me accountable for her headstrong ways."
Meantime, as I read in one of my books, and repeated to myself over and over again in my fulness of content,—
"How happily the days
Of Thalaba went by!"
How rapidly fled that winter, and how soon came the spring, that would bring me, I thought, new hopes, new interests, new companions!
How changed a scene did I look upon, that bright April morning, when I went over the river to see that all was in readiness for the boats from below which were to bring Esther Hammond to her new home! She was to keep her brother's house; and furniture, books, and pictures, such as I had never dreamed of, had been sent up by the last-returning boatmen, all of which I had helped Mr. Hammond to arrange in the little two-story cottage which stood on the first rise of the hill behind the store.
A little plat of ground was hedged in with young Osage-orange shrubs, and within it one of the miners, who had formerly been an under-gardener in a great house in Scotland, had already prepared some flower-beds and sodded carefully the little lawn, laying down the walks with bright-colored tan, which contrasted pleasantly with the lively green of the grass. From the gate one might look up and down the road, bordered on one side by the trees that hung over the river, and on the other by the miners' houses, one-story cottages, each with its small inclosure, and showing every degree of cultivation, from the neat vegetable-patch and whitewashed porch of the Scotch families to the neglected waste ground and slovenly potato-patch of the Irishmen. There were some Sandians among the hands, but they never could be made to take one of the houses prepared for the miners. They lived back on the creeks, generally on their own lands, raised their corn and tobacco, cut their lumber, and hunted or rode the country, taking jobs only when they felt so inclined, but showing themselves fully able to compete with the best hands both in skill and in endurance, when they were willing to work.
On the side of the hill across the creek could be seen the entrance to the mines, and down that hill were passing constantly the cars, loaded with earth and stone taken from the tunnel, which fell with a thundering sound into the valley beneath. Below me was the store, gay with its multifarious goods, which supplied all the needs of the miners and their wives, from the garden-tools and seeds for the afternoon-work to the gay-colored dresses for the Sunday leisure,—where, too, on Saturday night, whiskey was to be had in exchange for the scrip in which their wages were paid, and where, sometimes, the noise waxed fast and furious, till Mr. Hammond would cut off the supply of liquor, as the readiest means of stilling the tumult.
On this side the river all was changed. But as I looked that morning across the stream towards my step-father's farm, my own home, everything there lay as wild and unimproved as I had known it since the first day my mother brought me there, comfortless and disorderly as it was when, child as I was, I could remember the tears of fatigue and discouragement which she dropped upon my face as she put me for the first time into my little crib; but there, too, were still (and my heart exulted as I saw them) the glorious water-maples, the giant sycamores, and the bright-colored chestnut-trees, which I had known and loved so long. Would Miss Hammond see how beautiful they were? would she praise them as her brother had done? would she listen as kindly to my rhapsodies about them? and would she say, as he had said, that I was a poet by nature, with a poet's quick appreciation of beauty and the poet's gift of enthusiastic expression? I could not tell whether Esther Hammond would be to me the friend her brother had been, with the added blessing, that, being a woman, I could go freely to her with my deficiencies in sure dependence upon her aid and sympathy,—or if she would come to stand between me and him, to take away from me my friend and teacher. Time alone would show; and meanwhile I must be busy with my preparations, for the boats were expected at noon, and Mr. Hammond, who had ridden down to Louisa to meet them, had said that he depended upon me to have things cheerful and in order when they arrived.