The First Slide of the Season.
After Uncle Morris and Mrs. Carlton had consented to permit the
self-willed cousins to remain a week longer at Glen Morris, the good old
man led Emily into the library and talked with her for over half an hour,
about the meanness and wickedness of lying. I cannot tell you exactly what
he said to her, because I don't know. That his words were weighty and
solemn, I have no doubt; for when Emily left the library her eyes were red
with weeping, and she went directly to her room and staid there alone
until the bell called her to tea.
Before Emily slept that night, she did what she had not done before during
her stay at Glen Morris. She kneeled at the bedside to say her prayers.
When she arose, Jessie threw an arm around her waist and kissed her. This
was done with so much tenderness, that Emily felt it to be a sign of her
cousin's sympathy with the new feelings and thoughts which were springing
up within her heart. Returning the kiss, she said:
"I'm sorry I told that lie about you to-day, Jessie."
"So am I," replied the simple-hearted girl; "it is always best to tell the
truth, and I hope you will never tell another story as long as you live."
"I won't, I'm resolved I won't; I told Uncle Morris so this afternoon, and
(here she lowered her voice to a whisper) I've been asking God to help me
keep my promise."
"That's the way! That's the way!" replied Jessie. "Uncle Morris says if we
mean to be good we must go to school to the Great Teacher who will both
teach us, and help us do the lesson."
With such words as these did Jessie encourage her cousin to enter that
beautiful path in which all the pure, noble, and good children in the
world are found.
The next day Emily was very quiet. She spent the morning helping Jessie
work on her famous quilt. Charlie was as rude and as ugly as ever; having
teased his sister for a long time in vain, to play out of doors with him,
the spoiled boy hissed at her, and said, "You are an ugly old cat!" Then
slamming the door after him, he went into the barn-yard, where the
screaming of the pigs, the gabble of the geese, and the clucking of the
hens, soon proclaimed that he was venting his ill-temper on the dumb
creatures who had their home there. Poor Charlie! the indulgence of his
mother, and the almost constant absence of his father from home, had made
him a very unhappy, mischievous boy, if, indeed, it had not wholly spoiled
him. If Charlie had known what was best for him he would have said to his
friends,
"Please don't let me have my own way."
Emily needed to make the same request, for she too, had long done pretty
much as she pleased; and, as we have seen, she was _pleased_ to do some
very bad things.
Two days before the time set for the cousins to return home, they went to
spend the day with Carrie Sherwood. Jessie, who was to join them after her
morning's sewing was done, sat down to her work in high spirits. The quilt
had grown large within a few days, and as she took it up this morning, she
said:
"The little Wizard hasn't been able to catch me for ever so many days. I
guess he won't trouble me much more now. See my quilt! (here she stood up,
and drawing the quilt from the basket, spread it out.) Two more rows of
patchwork will finish it. Ha! ha! only two more; I'm so glad. And won't
Uncle Morris be pleased when he sees it spread over his bed some night!
ha! ha!"
Here Jessie sat down and began to make her bright little needle fly almost
as swiftly as if it had been in a sewing-machine. While she sewed she
hummed the following words, which, as Uncle Morris said, had more truth in
them than poetry:
"I love to do right,
And I love the truth,
And I'll always love them,
While in my youth.
"And when I grow old,
And when I grow gray,
I will love them still,
Do wrong who may."
Having finished her song, Jessie rested her hands on her lap a moment, and
said:
"I love those words, I do. When I grow _gray_! ha! ha! Jessie Carlton a
little old woman with _gray hair_! Won't it be funny? I wonder if
everybody will love me then as everybody loves Uncle Morris now. Why not?
Everybody?--no, not _everybody_, for Charlie don't love him, and our Hugh
don't love him much. That's because they are naughty, though. Well, every
good person loves Uncle Morris, because he is so good and kind; and so, if
I am good and kind, when I am a little, gray old woman, everybody will
love me. Ha! ha! Won't it be nice to be called Aunt Jessie, and to be
loved, oh, so well!--but I must go on with my sewing."
Tap, tap, tap, said somebody's knuckles on the door.
"Come in," cried Jessie.
The door opened. Carrie Sherwood's little, red, round, laughing face
peeped in.
"O Carrie! is that you? Come in."
Carrie tripped in, and while her eyes flashed with excitement, she said:
"O Jessie, we have found a nice slide out on the edge of the brook. It is
the first time the ice has frozen hard enough to bear this fall, and we
are having such a nice time. Come and see it, just for a moment."
"A slide!" exclaimed Jessie, who dearly loved sliding. "Oh, I'm so glad.
I'll go with you just to look at it. I can't stay, you know, because I
must come back and sew until twelve o'clock."
Dropping her sewing, Jessie ran to a closet, equipped herself in cloak and
hood and, taking Carrie's hand, trotted out to see this first slide of the
season.
A short distance from Glen Morris Cottage a broad, shallow brook crossed
the public highway. A bridge led over the brook. Along the sides of the
buttresses of this bridge, the water had flowed back for several yards
over the bottom of a ditch or hollow, and being only an inch or two in
depth, the sharp frosts of the early days of November had frozen it solid,
though the brook itself was still babbling as if in proud defiance of the
frost-king.
To this ditch Carrie led Jessie. Emily and Charlie were already there
enjoying themselves finely.
"Isn't it nice?" said Carrie when they had fairly reached the spot.
"You shan't come on to my slide," growled selfish Charlie.
"Nor on to mine," cried his sister.
"You will let us slide after you, won't you, Emily?" asked Jessie.
"No, I want this slide all to myself," replied Emily.
"You can go down the brook and find slides for yourselves. You shan't use
ours," cried Charlie, as shaking his fist at the two girls, he added,
"I'll lick you both if you don't keep off."
"Well, I never saw any thing so selfish as that before, I declare," said
Carrie Sherwood, striking the ground with her foot, and looking very angry
as she spoke. "The next time I invite them to spend the day at my house
they shall certainly know it."
"Oh, never mind, never mind," said Jessie. "We can look at them, and that
will be almost as good as sliding ourselves. Perhaps they will get tired
presently, and then we can slide while they rest."
"No, we shan't get tired either, Miss Jessie," retorted Charlie. "We mean
to slide until dinner-time."
"And then you expect to eat dinner at _my_ house, I suppose. Really, you
are a very generous boy!" replied Carrie, in a bitter tone of voice.
"'Taint _your_ house. It's your father's. He!" said the ugly boy, grinning
at his young hostess.
"Well, if you were not Jessie's cousins, you should never step inside of
my house again--but here comes my brother. He'll _make_ you let me
slide."
Walter Sherwood now came up to the spot where his sister and Jessie stood.
Carrie told him the story of the selfishness of the two cousins, and ended
by saying:
"Won't you compel them to let us slide too, Walter?"
"If he touches me, I'll throw this big stone at him," growled Charlie,
looking very ugly and holding up a large stone, which he had just taken up
from the side of the ditch. Wasn't he a selfish little fellow?
"Please don't touch him," entreated Jessie. "I don't care much about
sliding, and Carrie won't mind waiting until to-morrow. Will you, Carrie
dear. The weather is so cold, there will soon be plenty of ice. Please
don't hurt Charlie, Walter."
"Don't be alarmed, my sweet Jessie," replied Walter, laughing. "I don't
want to touch your sting-nettle of a cousin. I'd about as lief grapple a
hedgehog. Let him and his selfish sister have their slides all to
themselves. You come with me. I know where there is far better sliding
than this, and I came on purpose to tell you so. Come, let us go, and
leave them to enjoy their slides, if such selfish creatures can enjoy any
thing."
"Please Walter, let my cousins go with us," whispered Jessie in Walter's
ear, as he took her hand.
"No, no, Jessie, I can't consent to that. They won't be a whit happier
there than here, and if we do take them with us, they will only spoil our
fun. I never saw two such thorns in my life. You can't go near them, but
they scratch you right off."
"They are going home, the day after to-morrow, and I'm glad of it," cried
Carrie, as she stepped up the bank after her brother and Jessie.
"So am I," said Walter, "and I'm thinking there will be plenty of dry eyes
at Glen Morris Cottage, when they go away. What do you say to that,
Jessie?"
"I'm sorry my cousins are so selfish," replied Jessie, "but Charlie is the
worst. I think if Emily was here without him, she would soon be a good
girl."
"Perhaps so. Yet I'm inclined to think you'll see apples growing on that
old hickory yonder, before she becomes _good_, as you call it. But let us
hurry into the pasture. Here, Jessie, mount these bars?"
As he spoke, Walter leaped over the rail-fence of a pasture, and giving
his hand to Jessie, she mounted the top bar.
"Now jump!" cried Walter.
Jessie did as she was told. Carrie followed. Then Walter led them along
the pasture, until they struck a bend in the brook where the water having
flowed over a flat basin, was very shallow. Along the edge of this basin
the water was frozen hard.
"Isn't this nice?" shouted Jessie, as she slid over the glass-like
surface.
"It's perfectly beautiful," replied Carrie, gliding along in an opposite
direction.
Walter made a slide for himself, just in front of the girls, and being all
brim-full of good-nature, they enjoyed themselves finely. But there were
two shadows that flashed on Jessie's joy now and then. The first was the
image of the quilt she had left on the parlor-floor; the second was her
regret that her cousins were so ugly. When the former image flitted before
her, a little voice in her breast whispered,
"In the chains of the little wizard again, eh?"
[Illustration: Jessie and Carrie Enjoying a Slide. Page 105.]
Then Jessie would sigh, look very sober, and pause, saying to herself, "I
really must go home and sew."
Before her purpose was fairly formed, however, Walter or Carrie would cry
out, "What, getting tired already! You are not half a slider."
"Just once more, and then I'll go," Jessie would say to herself. But
before that one more slide was through, she would purpose to add yet
another. Thus time fled until the morning was almost gone, and the quilt,
the little wizard, Uncle Morris, and even the ugly cousins, were nearly
forgotten, in the excitement of this pleasant sport.
This delight was, however, brought to an end by a loud scream, followed by
a shrill voice crying, "Charlie! _Charlie!_ Charlie! You'll be drowned! Oh
dear! Oh dear!"
This was followed by another scream. Walter guessed what was the matter at
once. He knew that near where the cousins were sliding, the trunk of a
tree formed a sort of bridge over the brook, and enabled the cow-boys to
pass dry-shod in summer. When the brook was low, it was a safe enough
bridge, but when it was full as it was then, it was what the boys called
"a pokerish place to cross." He surmised at once, that Charlie was
frightening his sister, by attempting to walk across the brook on this
rough and narrow bridge. So he told the girls, and then they all ran
towards the spot from whence the cry came.
A few minutes' run brought them in sight of Master Charlie standing erect
on the tree, right over the middle of the brook. Emily was standing at the
water's edge, screaming, and begging him to come back.
"Stop your screaming, you coward, or I'll lick you till you are dumb,"
shouted the wilful boy, shaking his fist at his sister, as Walter and the
two girls came up, on the other side of the brook.
Emily seeing them approach, called out to Walter, and said:
"Do make him come off that dreadful log, will you?"
"I'd like to see anybody _make_ me come off," said Charlie. As he spoke,
he turned round to see who had come. In doing this his foot slipped, and
losing his balance, he fell backwards into the brook.
The girls both screamed, for they were in great terror. Walter, however,
laughed heartily, and said:
"Don't be frightened! The water isn't deep enough to drown the little
fury. I hope it's cold enough to cool his courage, though."
As he spoke, Walter rolled up his pants, and then kicking off his boots,
he waded into the brook and led Charlie ashore. The little fellow
spluttered and shivered, but said nothing. The water had cooled his
courage, and for the present, his ugliness had all subsided. They led him
back to Glen Morris as quickly as possible, to get a change of clothes.
This mishap broke up their plan of dining and spending the afternoon with
Carrie Sherwood. Thus the selfishness of the two cousins, again robbed
both themselves and their friends of a promised pleasure. As for poor
little Jessie, she drew down her face and looked very sad, as she put her
quilt into the basket, when the bell rung for dinner. Sighing deeply she
said half-aloud,
"Conquered again. It _is_ no use. The little wizard _is_ my master, and I
won't try to resist him any more. What's the use of trying?"
"Tut, tut, tut! No use in trying, eh? Who says so?"
Jessie looked up, and her eyes met the pleasant smile of Uncle Morris, who
had entered the room, in his usual quiet way, unobserved by the dispirited
girl. She gave him back no answering smile, but drooping her head, stood
silently before him. Seeing her sadness and knowing the cause, Uncle
Morris said:
"Jessie, will you please be a school-ma'am for a moment, and let me recite
my lesson to you?"
Jessie smiled a faint smile, but said nothing.
"Well, silence gives consent, I suppose. So I will recite my lesson. It is
a fable and runs thus:
"Two robin redbreasts built their nests
Within a hollow tree;
The hen sat quietly at home,
The male sang merrily;
And all the little robins said,
'Wee, wee, wee, wee, wee, wee.'
One day--the sun was warm and bright,
And shining in the sky--
Cock Robin said, 'My little dears,
'Tis time you learn to fly;'
And all the little young ones said,
'I'll try, I'll try, I'll try.'
"I know a child, and who she is
I'll tell you by and by,
When mamma says, 'Do this' or 'that,'
She says, 'What for?' and 'Why?'
She'd be a better child by far,
If she would say, 'I'LL TRY.'"
When Uncle Morris paused, tears stood in Jessie's eyes, and a bright smile
played round her lips. Putting her hand into his, she said:
"And I'll try, too, Uncle. I'll try till I conquer."