Bessie struck into the woods instead of going down to the road, and was soon lost to view. Standing beside her little house, she had looked a tall, fairly-formed lassie; but with the great trunks of primeval forest-trees standing about her, and lifting their green pyramids and cones far into the air, she appeared slim and small enough for a fairy. Even the birds, chippering about full of business, seemed to flout her, as if she were of small consequence—not worth flying from.
She laughed at them, and whispered what she did not dare to say aloud: “Other people besides you can build nests!” then looked quickly around to see if any listener were in sight.
There was a slight, rustling sound, and an eavesdropping squirrel scampered up a tree and peered down with twinkling eyes from a safe height. She was just throwing one of the green twigs in her apron at him, when she heard her name spoken, and turned quickly to meet a pleasant-faced young man, who approached from an opposite direction. This was the white-faced boarder who had left the city to find health in this wild place.
The two walked on together, Bessie as shy as any creature of the woods, and her companion both pleased and amused at her shyness, and trying to draw her out. To his questioning, she told her little story. Her mother was Dennis Moran's youngest sister, her father had been a color-sergeant in the English army. There had been other children, all [pg 215] younger than she, but all had died, some in one country, some in another. For Sergeant Ware's family had followed the army, and seen many lands.
“I am an East Indian,” Bessie said naïvely. “I was born at Calcutta. The others were born in Malta, in England, and in Ireland. It didn't agree with them travelling about from hot to cold. My father died at Gibraltar, and my mother died while she was bringing me to Uncle Dennis Moran's. May God be merciful to them all!”
Mr. James Keene had heard this pious ejaculation many a time before from the lips of humble Catholics, and had found nothing in it to admire. But now, the thought struck him that this constant prayer for mercy on the dead, whenever their names were mentioned, was a beautiful superstition. Of course he thought it a superstition, for he was a New England Protestant of the most liberal sort—that is, he protested against being obliged to believe anything.
They reached the house, near which Dennis Moran and his wife stood watching complacently a brood of new chickens taking their first airing. The young gentleman joined them, and listened with interest to the farm talk of his host.
What had set Dennis Moran, one of the most rigid of Catholics, in a solitude where he saw none of his own country nor faith, and where no priest ever came, he professed himself unable to explain.
“I'm like a fly caught in a spider's web, sir,” he said. “When Norah and I came over, and I didn't just know what to do, except that I wanted to have a farm of my own some day, I hired out to do haying for John Smith's wife—John had died the very week he began to cut his grass, and Norah she helped Mrs. Smith make butter. Then they wanted me to get in the crops, and after that I had a chance to go into the woods logging. When I came out of the woods, Mrs. Smith wanted me to plough and plant for her. And one thing led to another, and there was always something to keep me. Norah had a young one, and Bessie came—a young witch, ten years old,” said Dennis, pulling his niece's hair, as she stood beside him. “So I had to take a house. And the long and short of the matter is, that I've been here going on ten years, when I didn't mean to stay ten weeks. But I shall pull up stakes pretty soon, sir,” says Dennis, straightening up. “I don't mean to stay where I have to go twenty miles to attend to my Easter duties, and where my children are growing up little better than Protestants (he called it Prodestant). I'm pretty sure to move next fall, sir.”
At this announcement, Mrs. Norah tossed up her head and uttered an unspellable, guttural “Oh!” brought from the old land, and preserved unadulterated among the nasal-speaking Yankees. “We hear ducks!”