That was the first day of that wonderful summer, and most of the days
which followed were like it. Every morning Hannah rose early, made a
little open fire, cooked their breakfast, and was off to her spinning.
Just as her first employer had said, there was no lack of work for a
spinner who worked as fast and yet as carefully as if it were for herself.
In Hannah's thread there were never any thin places which broke as soon as
the weaver stretched it on the loom, nor yet any thick lumps where the
wool had insisted, in grandmother's phrase, "on going all kim-kam."
At first, she went about to people's houses; but, seeing her so neat and
careful, the minister's wife loaned her one of her own wheels, and the
minister had an old granary cleared out for her workroom. Here, day after
day, the wheel whirred unceasingly, like a great bee, and Hannah stepped
back and forth, back and forth, on her tireless young feet, only glancing
out through the big door at the bright glories of the summer weather, and
never once regretting her imprisonment.
Indeed, she said, all her life afterward, that she was so happy, that
summer, it seemed heaven itself could hold no greater joy for her. Of
course, first always in her thoughts was Ann Mary, pulling weeds and
tending her witch garden, and growing plump and rosy, and so strong that
she laughed and ran about and sang as never in her life before.
Hannah put very little faith in the agricultural part of the cure. She
thought that very probably it was nothing more than a blind, and that
Master Necronsett came out at night and said charms and things over Ann
Mary as she slept. However that might be, she could have kissed his funny,
splay feet every time she looked at her sister's bright eyes and red lips;
and when she thought of the joy it would be to her father, she could have
kissed his ugly, wrinkled old face.
But, besides her joy over her sister's health, the summer was for Hannah
herself a continual feast of delight Captain Winthrop, the minister's
young cousin, was staying in Heath Falls to recover from an arrow-wound
got in a skirmish with the Indians in Canada. He was very idle, and very
much bored by the dullness of the little town, which seemed such a
metropolis to the two girls from Hillsboro. One day, attracted by Hannah's
shining face of content, he lounged over to the step of her granary, and
began to talk to her through the open doorway.
It happened to come out that the little spinner, while she knew her
letters from having worked them into a sampler, and could make shift to
write her name, could not read or write, and had never had the slightest
instruction in any sort of book-learning. Thereupon the young officer
good-naturedly proposed to be her teacher, if Hannah would like.
Would she _like_! She turned to him a look of such utter ecstasy that he
was quite touched, and went off at: once to get an old "A-B, ab" book.
That was the beginning of a new world to Hannah. She took her young
instructor's breath away by the avidity with which she devoured the
lessons he set her. By the rapt air of exultation with which Hannah
recited them, stepping back and forth by her wheel, you would have
thought that "c-a-t, cat; r-a-t, rat," was the finest poetry ever written.
And in no time at all it was no longer "c-a-t, cat," but "parallel,"
and "phthisis," and such orthographical atrocities, on which the eager
scholar was feeding; for, Hannah's mind was as fresh as her round, rosy
face, and as vigorous as her stout little body.
Captain Winthrop had several reasons for being interested in Hannah; and
when he found her so quick at her spelling, he said he was willing to
occupy some of his enforced leisure in giving her instruction in other
branches. Hannah fell to at this feast of knowledge like a young bear in a
bee-tree.
But there were some difficulties. Like the spelling, arithmetic was all
very well, since she could do that in her head while she spun; but reading
and writing were different. She would not stop her work for them, and so
Captain Winthrop fell into the habit of going over to Master Necronsett's
house in the afternoon with his books, and being there, all ready for a
lesson, when Hannah came hurrying back after she had finished her day's
"stint." As long as there was light to see, she pored over her writing and
reading, while the young officer sat by, ready to help, and talking in a
low tone to Ann Mary.
After a time there grew up a regular routine for Captain Winthrop. In the
mornings he went out to the granary and read aloud to Hannah from a book
called "The Universal Preceptor; being a General Grammar of Art, Science,
and Useful Knowledge." Out of this he taught her about "mechanical powers"
and "animated nature" and astronomy and history and geography--almost
anything that came to his hand.
Up in our garret we have the very book he used, and modern research and
science have proved that there is scarcely a true word in it. But don't
waste any pity on Hannah for having such a mistaken teacher, for it is
likely enough, don't you think, that research and science a hundred years
from now will have proved that there is scarcely a word of truth in our
school-books of to-day? It really doesn't seem to matter much.
At any rate, those were the things of which Captain Winthrop talked to
Hannah in the mornings. In the afternoon, he went over to an apple-tree by
the edge of the witch garden, and there he found Ann Mary; and what he
talked to her about nobody knew but herself, although Master Necronsett
passed back and forth so often in his herb-gathering that it is likely he
may have caught something. It seems not improbable, from what happened
afterward, that the young man was telling the young girl things which did
not come out of a book, and which are consequently safe from science and
research, for they are certainly as true to-day as they were then.
Once, in her anxiety to have everything exactly right for her sister,
Hannah asked Master Necronsett about Captain Winthrop's being there so
much.
"Master Doctor, will not Captain Winthrop absorb, perchance, some of the
great virtue of the plant away from Ann Mary? Will he not hurt her cure?"
Grandmother never says so, but I have always imagined that even that
carven image of an old aborigine must, have smiled a little as he told
her:
"Nay, the young man will not hurt your sister's cure."
At the end of September, something tremendously exciting happened to
Hannah. She had been so busy learning the contents of that old calf-bound
book that she had never noticed how a light seemed to shine right through
Ann Mary's lovely face every time Captain Winthrop looked at her. The
little student was the most surprised girl in the world when the young
soldier told her, one morning in the granary, that he wanted her sister
to marry him, and that Ann Mary wanted it, too, if Hannah would allow it.
He laughed a little as he said this last, but he looked anxiously at her,
for Ann Mary, who was as sweet as she was pretty and useless, had felt it
to be a poor return for Hannah's devotion, now after all, just to go off
and desert her. She had said that, if Hannah thought she ought to, she
would go back to Hillsboro, and they would have to wait ever so long. So
now Captain Winthrop looked very nervously at Ann Mary's little sister.
But he did not know Hannah. She gave a little cry, as if someone had
stabbed her, turned very pale, and, leaving her wheel still whirling, she
ran like the wind toward Dr. Necronsett's. She wanted to see her sister;
she wanted to _see_ if this----
Close to the minister's house she met Ann Mary, who could not wait any
longer, and was coming to meet her. After one glimpse of that beautiful,
radiant face, Hannah fell a weeping for very joy that her dear Ann Mary
was so happy, and was to marry the grand and learned and goodly Captain
Winthrop.
There was not a thought in Hannah's mind, then or later, that she must
lose Ann Mary herself. Grandmother explains here that the truth is that a
heart like Hannah's cannot lose anything good; and perhaps that is so.
Thus, hand in hand, laughing and crying together, the two girls came back
to the granary, where Ann Mary's lover took her in his arms and kissed her
many times out of light-heartedness that Hannah would put no obstacle in
the way. This made little Hannah blush and feel very queer. She looked
away, and there was her wheel still languidly stirring a little. Dear me!
How many, many times have I heard the next detail in the story told!
"And, without really, so to speak, sensing what she was doing, didn't she
put her hand to the rim and start it up again? And when the other two
looked around at her, there she was, spinning and smiling, with the tears
in her eyes. It had all happened in less time than it takes a spin-wheel
to run down."
After that day things happened fast. Captain Winthrop rode off over the
mountains to Hillsboro, to ask John Sherwin if he might marry his
daughter; and when he came back, there was John Sherwin himself riding
along beside him, like an old friend. And when he saw his two dear
daughters--Ann Mary, who had gone away like a lily, now blooming like a
rose, and Hannah, stout little Hannah, with her honest blue eyes
shining--when he saw his two daughters, I say--well, I'm sure I have no
idea what happened, for at this point grandmother always takes off her
glasses, and sniffs hard, and wipes her eyes before she can go on.
So there was a wedding at the minister's house, and everybody in Heath
Falls was invited, because Hannah said they had been so good to her.
Everybody came, too, except old Master Necronsett, and that was nothing,
because he never went anywhere except to the woods.
I know just what the bride and Hannah wore, for we have pieces of the
material in our oldest cedar chest; but, of course, as they weren't your
own great-great-great-grandmother and aunt, perhaps you wouldn't care to
have me tell you all about their costumes. It was a grand occasion,
however--that you can take from me; and the family tradition is that Ann
Mary looked like a wonderful combination of an angel and a star.
And then Captain and Mrs. Winthrop rode off in one direction, and Hannah
and her father in another, and there were a great many tears shed, for all
everybody; was so happy.