"At least I've tried to be!" my mother cried. "And now I am going to do
something that perhaps you won't like; but you may understand some day,
dear. I am going to put this book back into the bookcase, and I am going
to lock the door. It is not to be opened until I give you leave."
"It isn't my fault, is it, mother?" I asked, perplexed.
"No, it is not your fault. It's only that I want to keep my little girl
just the same in heart and mind as she has always been."
She put the book back on the shelf, and she locked the door; but she did
not take away the brass key. She knew and I knew that I would never
touch it.
But, oh, how I longed for my dear books! I used to creep to the door and
look in at them, and it seemed to me that they appeared lonesome. I
finished out the story of Cosette to suit myself, and I made stories
likewise for the books which I did not know. There was one remarkable
thing about my stories, and that was that nobody ever died; but they all
lived happy forever and ever. Even when my mother read the Bible to me
on Sunday nights after I was in bed I used to sit up anxiously, and pray
her to end the stories in my way.
"Oh, don't let the lions eat poor Daniel!" I would cry. "Oh, mother,
mother, don't let them eat him up!"
"Why it happened centuries ago, dear," my mother answered, half
laughing.
"But I can see it," I protested. "I can see it right now!"
It was so hard to see things going wrong, and not to be able to help!
It was about this time that my mother and I did a great many lessons
together, and she would offer me odd bits of useful information at
unexpected moments.
"Rhoda is not very well grounded," she told my father, "but I do think,
Robert, that she knows a great deal for a child of ten."
She was darning stockings as she spoke, and she turned over a very
ragged one of Dick's with a little sigh.
"I would like her to go to school. Not to the public school, but to a
young ladies' seminary as I did. Don't you think, Robert, if I were to
do without a new winter coat, and we made the old carpet on the stairs
last a little longer, that we might send Rhoda to Mrs. Garfield's?"
Her face was brightening as she thought it out.
"And there's the money in her bank," she cried, "her gold pieces that
dad has given her on her birthdays and on Christmas. I don't suppose,
Robert, you'd want dad to pay for it all? He would, willingly."
"No," my father answered.
My mother's face fell, and then lit up again.
"You are a ridiculously proud boy," she declared, fondly. "Well, at any
rate, we can save my coat and the carpet."
I wanted to go to school very badly. Every day at half past ten there
was a procession past our house of thirty little girls walking two and
two. They all looked happy and important, and I thought how wonderful it
might be if I should join their ranks.
Norah, who was always sympathetic, read my fortune in a teacup out in
the kitchen that night to see what might be going to happen.
"There's a change coming to you," she said, mysteriously. "There's a
fair woman, a widdy by the looks of her, and water to cross, and much
money. Sure you'll be gitting so grand that you'll be forgitting your
poor old Norah."