Ah! there is Mrs. Quip’s head, poked out of the north chamber window.
A sure sign that it is five o’clock to the minute. Now she scuds across
the yard, making a prodigious flutter with her flying calico long-short,
among the hens and chickens, who take refuge in an upturned old barrel.
Snatching some sticks from the wood-pile, she scuds back again to the
kitchen, twitches a match from the mantel, lights the fire, hangs on the
tea-kettle, jerks out the table, rattles on the cups and saucers,
plates, knives, forks, etc., and throws open every blind, door, and
window. This done, she flies up stairs, pokes Susan in the ribs, drags
Mary out on the floor, throws a mug of water in “that lazy John’s face,”
and intimates that “breakfast will be on the table in less than fifteen
minutes.”
John rubs the water out of his eyes, muttering a few unmentionable
words. Susan and Mary make a transient visit to the looking-glass, and
descend the stair’s just as the coffee smokes upon the table. Mrs. Quip
frightens the chickens into the barrel again with her calico long-short
and the great bell that she ring at the barn-door to “call the men folks
to breakfast,” and takes her accustomed seat at the table.
“Brown bread or white? baked beans or salt meat? doughnuts, cheese, or
apple-pie? which’ll you have?” said Mrs. Quip to little Fanny.
“Ma’am?” said Fanny, with a bewildered look.
“Oh, dear; Susan Quip, for gracious’ sake find out what that peddler’s
child wants; hurry, all of you. Baking to be done to-day; yesterday’s
ironing to finish; them new handkerchers to hem; John’s trowsers to
mend; buttery shelves to scour; brown bread sponge to set; yeast to
make; pickles to scald; head-cheese to fix: hurry, all of you. Susan
Quip, there’s the cat in the buttery, smack, and--scissors--right into
that buttermilk, arter a mouse. Scat--scat; Susan Quip, that’s your
doings--leaving the buttery door open. John Quip, do you drownd that cat
to-day. Don’t talk to me of kittens; kittens is as plenty as peddlers’
children. Hand me that coffee, Susan Quip. Lord-a-mercy, there’s the
fishman: run, John--two mackerel, not more than sixpence a-piece; pinch
’em in the stomach, to see if they are fresh. If they are flabby, don’t
take ’em; if they ain’t, do. Yes, every thing to do, to-day, and a
little more beside. Soft soap to----Heavens and earth, John Quip, that
mackerel man hasn’t given you the right change by two cents. Here, stop
him! John Quip--Susan--get out of the way, all of you; I’ll go myself,”
and the calico long-short started in full pursuit of the mackerel
defaulter.
Poor little Fanny! no Green Mountain boy, set down in the rush of the
city, ever felt half so crazy. Mrs. Quip, with her snap-dragon,
touch-me-not-manners, high-pitched voice, and heavy tramp, was such a
contrast to her dear grandmother, with her soft tones, noiseless step,
and gentle ways. Fanny was afraid to move for fear she should cross Mrs.
Quip’s track. She did not know whether she were hungry or thirsty. She
marveled at the railroad velocity with which the food disappeared, and
pitied Mrs. Quip _so_ much for having such a quantity of things to do
all in a minute!
The next day after Fanny’s arrival at Butternut farm, was Sunday. Mrs.
Quip was up betimes, as usual, but her activity took a devotional turn.
She was out to the barn fifty times a minute, to see “if the horse and
waggin was getting harnessed for meetin’,”--not but _Mr._ Quip was still
above ground, but as far as he had any voice in family matters, he might
as well have been under. Mrs. Quip was up in Susan’s room (or, as she
pronounced it, _Sew_san), to see if she was learning her catechise; she
was padlock-ing John Quip’s Sunday temptation, in the shape of the
“Thrilling Adventures of Jack Bowsprit;” she was giving the sitting-room
as Sabbatical and funereal an aspect as possible, by setting the chairs
straight up against the walls, shutting all the blinds, and putting into
the cupboard every thing that squinted secular-wise.
Fanny, oppressed by the gloom within doors, crept out into the warm
sunshine, and seating herself under a tree in the yard, was looking at a
few clover blossoms which she had plucked beside her. She was thinking
of the pleasant Sundays she had passed with her dear grandmother, and
how she used to sit on the door-step of the cottage, and tell her how
God taught the little birds to build their cradle nests, and find their
way through the air; and how He provided even for the little ants, who
so patiently, grain by grain, built their houses in the gravel walk; and
how He kept the grass green with the dew and showers, and ripened the
fruit, and opened the blossoms with the warm sunshine, and how He was
always watching over us, caring for our wants, listening to our cries,
pitying us for our sorrows, and making His sun to shine even on those
who forget to thank Him for it. But see--Fanny has dropped her clover
blossoms, for Mrs. Quip has seized her by the arm, and says,
“You wicked child, you! To think of picking a flower _Sunday_! What do
you expect will become of you when you die? What do you think the
neighbors will think? Sinful child! There”--slamming her down on a
cricket in the sitting-room--“sit down, and see if you can learn what
the chief end of man is, afore meeting time. Flowers of a _Sunday_! or
flowers any day, for the matter of that, I never could see the sense of
’em. Even the Bible says, ‘they toil not, neither do they spin.’
Gracious goodness--Sewsan Quip, Mrs. Snow’s kerriage has just started
for meetin’. Get your things, all of you. Sewsan, see to that peddler’s
child; mind that she don’t take no flowers to the Lord’s temple; John
Quip, you shan’t wear them gloves; they cost twenty-five cents at the
finding-store; and if you think that I bought ’em for you to drive in,
you are mistaken; now put ’em in your pocket till you get into the
meetin’-us porch; that will save ’em a sight; them leather reins will
wear ’em all threadbare in less than no time. Mercy on us, the string is
off my bunnet. Sewsan, that’s your doing. Run and bring me a pin off the
third shelf in the buttery, under the yellow quart bowl. I picked it up
and put it there this morning. Make haste, now. John Quip, stop cracking
your whip that way on the holy Sabbath day. What do you suppose your
dead grandpa would think, if he should hear it?”
The wagon was brought, and its living freight stowed carefully away in
the remote corners. The oil-cloth covering was buttoned carefully down
on all sides, as it had been during the winter; Mrs. Quip said it was
hot, but maybe it would crack the oil-cloth to roll it up for the breeze
to play through. Susan, Mary, and Fanny, therefore, took a vapor bath,
on the back seat. Mrs. Quip, seated at John’s side, excluded, with her
big black bonnet, any stray breeze which might have found entrance that
way, to the refreshing of the gasping passengers. Dobbin moved on; he
had been up that hot, dusty hill, many a Sunday before, and understood
perfectly well how to keep his strength in reserve for the usual
accession to his load on the village green, in the shape of the
Falstaffian Aunt Hepsibah, Miss Butts, the milliner, and Deacon Tufts,
who were duly piled in on the gasping occupants behind. Mrs. Quip being
also on the alert to fill up any stray chinks in the “waggin” with “them
children who stopped to rest in the road, when they oughter go straight
to meetin’.”
The unlading of Mrs. Quip’s wagon at the meeting-house door, was an
exhibition much “reckoned on” by the graceless young men of the village,
who always collected on the steps for the purpose, and with mock
gallantry assisted Mrs. Quip in clambering over the wheels, suppressing
their mirth at her stereotyped exhortation, as she glanced at Dobbin,
“to see that they didn’t start the critter.”
It was a work of time to draw out the unctuous Aunt Hepsibah; Deacon
Tufts, more wiry and agile, “helped hisself,” as Mrs. Quip remarked. The
crowning delight was the evacuation of the wagon, by Miss Butts--who,
with a mincing glance at the men, circumspectly extended one finger of
her right hand--gingerly exposed the tip of the toe of her slipper, and
with sundry little shrieks and exclamations, prolonged indefinitely the
delicious agony of her descent, as the young gentlemen by turns
profanely touched her virgin elbows. Thirty-nine years of single
blessedness had fully prepared her to appreciate these little masculine
attentions, of which she always made an exact memorandum in her
note-book (affixing the date) on reaching her seat in church. The
unappropriated Miss Butts wore rose-buds in her bonnet, as emblematical
of love’s young spring-time, and dressed in shepherdess style; nature,
perhaps, suggesting the idea, by placing the _crook_ in her back.
Poor little Fanny was as much out of her element at Butternut farm as
a humming-bird in a cotton-mill. She could not “heel a stocking,”
although Mrs. Quip “knew how as soon as she was born.” She could neither
chain-stitch, cross-stitch, button-hole-stitch, nor cat-stitch, though
she often got a stitch in her side trying to “get out of Mrs. Quip’s
way.” She did not know “whether her grandmother was orthodox or
Unitarian;” whether Cousin John “belonged to the church,” or not; in
fact, as Mrs. Quip remarked, the child seemed to her “not to have the
slightest idea what she was created for.”
“Cousin John” came at last! with an empty pack, a full purse, and a
fuller heart. Fanny flew into his outspread arms, and nestled into his
bosom, with a fullness of joy which the friendless only can feel. Out of
sound of Mrs. Quip’s trip-hammer tongue, out of sight of Mrs. Quip’s
omniscient eyes, Fanny whispered in “Cousin John’s” ear, crying,
laughing, and kissing the while, all her little troubles. Cousin John
did not smile, for he knew too well how keenly the little trusting
heart, which beat against his own, could suffer or enjoy; so he wiped
her tears away, and told her that she should say good-by to Butternut
farm, and accompany him on his next trip, as far as Canton, where he
would leave her with a nice old lady, who had a red and green parrot,
and who taught a school for the village children.
* * * * *
It was a pretty sight--Cousin John and Fanny; she, skipping on before
him to pluck a flower, then returning to glide her little hand in his,
and walk contentedly by his side; or, standing on some stile, waiting to
be lifted over, with her bonnet blown back, and her bright little face
beaming with smiles; Cousin John sometimes answering her questions at
random, as the tones of her voice, or the expression of her face,
recalled her lost mother; sometimes looking proudly upon the bud, as he
thought how sweet and fair would be the blossom, but more often gazing
at her tearfully, as Lucy’s last solemn words rang in his ears.
Percy was a riddle to himself. In the child’s pure presence, every
spot upon his soul’s mirror he would have wiped away. Lips which had
never framed a prayer for themselves, now murmured one for _her_. Feet
which had strayed into forbidden paths, would fain have found for _her_
tiny feet the straight and narrow path of life.
Insensibly “a little child was leading him”--nearer to Thee, O God,
nearer to Thee.
Little Fanny’s joy on this pedestrian tour was irrepressible; but the
journey was not all performed on foot: many a good-natured farmer gave
them a lift of a mile or two, and many a kind-hearted farmer’s wife
offered Fanny a cake, or a drink of milk, for the sake of her own
sun-burnt children, yet blessed in a mother’s love. Then there were
friendly trees to shade them from the scorching noon-day sun, where the
peddler could unstrap his pack, and Fanny throw off her bonnet and go to
sleep in his lap. Sparkling brooks there were, to lave their faces, or
quench their thirst, and flowers whose beauty might have tempted on
tardier feet than Fanny’s. Their only trouble was “Cousin John’s pack;”
and Fanny’s slender stock of arithmetic was exhausted in trying to
compute how many pieces of tape, how many papers of needles, how many
skeins of thread, must be sold before he could buy a horse and wagon to
help him to carry his load. The peddler, too, had his air-castles to
build, to which the afore-mentioned tape, needles, and thread were but
the stepping-stones. Fanny once placed where she could be contented, and
kindly treated, and Cousin John must leave her, to woo Dame Fortune, for
her sake, more speedily.
Fanny shed a few tears when she heard this, poor child! and wondered
if there were many Mrs. Quips in the world; but the motherly face of
Mrs. Chubbs, with her three chins, the queer gabble of the red and green
parrot, and more than all, the society of playfellows of her own age,
were no small mitigations of the parting with Cousin John.
Mrs. Chubbs would most decidedly have been turned out of office by any
MODERN school committee. When a little creature who should have been in
the nursery, was sent to her charge, “to be out of the way,” Mrs. Chubbs
oftener allowed it to stretch its little limbs on the grass-plat, front
of the door, than she set it poring over a spelling-book. She never
thumped geography or arithmetic into her pupils with a ferule. A
humming-top string, or a kite-tail fragment protruding from a childish
pocket, excited in her no indignation. A bit of gingerbread, or an
apple, munched by a little urchin who had made an early or an
indifferent breakfast, did not appear to her old-fashioned vision an
offense worthy of the knout or the guillotine. In fact, Mrs. Chubb’s
heart was as capacious as her pockets, and _their_ unfathomable depths
were a constant marvel to her pupils.
As to the parrot, he constituted himself “a committee” of one, and
called out occasionally, “Mind your lessons, I say,” to Fanny’s great
diversion. And Fanny did “mind” them; for she loved good Mrs. Chubb, and
then she had a little private plan of her own for astounding Cousin
John, one of these days, with her profound erudition.
And so time passed--the little homesick lump in her throat had quite
disappeared; she sang--she skipped--she laughed--a merrier little grig
never danced out a slipper.
* * * * *
Will my indulgent reader skip over ten years with me?--he might take a
more dangerous leap--and enter yonder substantial-looking building, in
which young ladies are “finished.” Passing by the long dining-hall, with
its bare tavern-y looking table, and rows of bamboo chairs, let us
ascend yonder marble stairs (for the school-house, let me tell you, was
once an aristocratic old mansion), and turn down that long passage to
the right. Now let us stop before No. 29. Remove your hat, if you
please, because I am about to usher you into the presence of two very
pretty girls, and though I do not approve of eaves-dropping, suppose we
just step behind that friendly screen, and listen to what they are
saying.