“Make up the bed in the north room, Hetty,” said my aunt; “it’s our turn
to board the schoolmaster this week. You needn’t put on the best sheets:
these book-learning folks are always wool-gathering. He never’ll know
the difference. What a hungry set these schoolmasters are, to be sure:
it keeps a body all the time cooking. A bushel of doughnuts is a mere
circumstance. When the last master was here, our winter barrel of cider
went off like snow in April. I hope Jonathan learned enough at school to
pay for it, but I have my doubts; he trips in the multiplication table
yet. Your uncle and I think that this boarding schoolmasters is a poor
business—a losing bargain. He says I must put less on the table, but it
is no use to try that game with George Grey. He’s as independent as Adam
in Eden, before the serpent and his wife got in. He’d just as lief call
for anything he wanted as not; and somehow or other, when he does, I
always feel as if I had no choice about bringing it. That eye of his
always makes me think of forked lightning; and yet he’s kindly spoken,
too. He is as much of a riddle to unravel, as one of Parson Jones’
doctrinal sermons. But, go make his bed, Hetty, and mind you stuff a few
rags in that broken pane of glass over it. I spoke to your uncle about
getting it mended, but he said warm weather would be along in three
months, and that’s very true, Hetty. Hist! your uncle is calling you. He
says he is going out in the barn to thresh, and if Peter Tay comes up
the road, and stops in here again, for him to subscribe towards the
minister’s new cloak, you must say that he has gone to Jifftown, and
will not be home for a week at least. Now don’t forget, Hetty; people
seem to think one earns money now-a-days on purpose to give away. A new
cloak! humph! I wonder if the Apostle Paul’s hearers ever gave him a new
cloak? I wonder if John the Baptist ever had a donation party? Don’t the
minister have his salary, two hundred dollars a year—part in produce,
part in money; paid regularly, when the times ain’t too hard? Go make
the schoolmaster’s bed now, Hetty. One pillow will do for him. Goodness
knows he carries his head high enough when he is awake. I shouldn’t
wonder if he had been captain or colonel, or something, some muster
day.”
The schoolmaster! Should I be permitted to go to school? or should I be
kept drudging at home? Would this Mr. Grey think me very ignorant? I
began to feel as if his forked-lightning eyes were already on me. My
cheeks grew hot at the idea of making a blunder in his awful presence.
What a miserable room my aunt had provided for him! If I could but put
up some nice white curtains at the window, or get him a cushioned chair,
or put in a bureau, or chest of drawers. It looked so comfortless—so
different from the welcome my dear old father was wont to give to “the
stranger within the gates;” and now memory pictured him, as he sat in
the old arm-chair, and I knelt again at the low footstool at his feet,
and his hand strayed caressingly over my temples, and I listened to old
continental stories, till the candle burned low in the socket, and only
the fire-light flickered dimly on the old portrait of General
Washington, and on my father’s time-worn face.
My aunt’s shrill voice soon roused me from my reverie. Dinnertime had
come, and with it Mr. Grey—a gentlemanly young man, of about two and
twenty, with a bright, keen, blue eye, and a frank, decided, off-hand
manner, that seemed to me admirably in keeping with his erect, imposing
figure and firm step. Even my uncle reefed in a sail or two in his
presence, and my aunt involuntarily qualified her usual bluntness of
manner. I uttered a heartfelt thanksgiving when dinner was over.