"Oh I can dispense with capability,—a little of it, at least,—if she will only not frighten me out of my wits with a vixen temper!"
"No fear of that, I assure you," said Ernestina, encouragingly.
Nor was there any cause for fear. During the five months the girl lived with me, I found her uniformly civil and amiable. I do not intend inflicting on my readers any more of my personal experience with Lucy; it is her own little history I wish to relate.
A few days after my return home, I noticed, that, when Lucy was left to herself, she seemed sad. I often observed her suppressing tears; and every little while she gave a heavy, long sigh, as if apprehensive of some trouble.
I am as unwilling to meddle with the affairs of inferiors as with those of equals; so I contented myself with speaking very gently, granting little unexpected indulgences, and smiling cheerfully at her. I knew she was married to a man who was many years her senior, and it was said they were much attached to each other. This husband had gone into the army, and Ernestina told me that Lucy and he were looking anxiously forward to the period of his return,—more than two years off,—when they hoped to take his bounty-money and savings, and buy therewith a little house and small "garden-patch" for a settled home.
One day I asked her if she could read or write.
"Neither," was the reply.
"How then, do you write to your husband?"
This question brought out the whole story of her anxiety. Hitherto her friends had written in her name, but her husband had received only three of the many letters she had sent him during the six months he had been gone. In his last letter he had complained bitterly of her silence.
"Oh, if he could only hear straight from me!" she exclaimed. "For he thinks, Ma'am, I don't write because I gets no money. 'T isn't the money I care for. I'd sooner never have a cent from him than have him keep a-thinkin' I don't send no letters."