Child Life in Prose Part 3

By and by Mrs. Parlin thought she would go and see what the children were doing; so she put on her bonnet and went over to the "new house."

Susy was still busy with her blocks, but she looked up at the sound of her mother's footsteps.

"Where is Prudy?" said Mrs. Parlin, glancing around.

"I'm 'most up to heaven," cried a little voice overhead.

They looked, and what did they see? Prudy herself standing on the highest beam of the house! She had climbed three ladders to get there.

Her mother had heard her say the day before that "she didn't want to shut up her eyes and die, and be all deaded up,--she meant to have her hands and face clean, and go up to heaven on a ladder."

"O," thought the poor mother, "she is surely on the way to heaven, for she can never get down alive. My darling, my darling!"

Poor Susy's first thought was to call out to Prudy, but her mother gave her one warning glance, and that was enough: Susy neither spoke nor stirred.

Mrs. Parlin stood looking up at her,--stood as white and still as if she had been frozen! Her trembling lips moved a little, but it was in prayer; she knew that only G.o.d could save the precious one.

While she was begging him to tell her what to do, a sudden thought flashed across her mind. She dared not speak, lest the sound of her voice should startle the child; but she had a bunch of keys in her pocket, and she jingled the keys, holding them up as high as possible, that Prudy might see what they were.

When the little one heard the jingling, she looked down and smiled. "You goin' to let me have some cake and 'serves in the china-closet,--me and Susy?"

Mrs. Parlin smiled,--such a smile! It was a great deal sadder than tears, though Prudy did not know that,--she only knew that it meant "yes."

"O, then I'm coming right down, 'cause I like cake and 'serves. I won't go up to heaven till _bime-by_!"

Then she walked along the beam, and turned about to come down the ladders. Mrs. Parlin held her breath, and shut her eyes. She dared not look up, for she knew that if Prudy should take one false step, she must fall and be dashed in pieces!

But Prudy was not wise enough to fear anything. O no. She was only thinking very eagerly about crimson jellies and fruit-cake. She crept down the ladders without a thought of danger,--no more afraid than a fly that creeps down the window-pane.

The air was so still that the sound of every step was plainly heard, as her little feet went pat,--pat,--on the ladder rounds. G.o.d was taking care of her,--yes, at length the last round was reached,--she had got down,--she was safe!

"Thank G.o.d!" cried Mrs. Parlin, as she held little Prudy close to her heart; while Susy jumped for joy, exclaiming, "We've got her! we've got her! O, ain't you so happy, mamma?"

"O mamma, what you crying for?" said little Prudy, clinging about her neck. "Ain't I your little comfort?--there, now, you know what you _speaked_ about! You said you'd get some cake and verserves for me and Susy."

"_Sophie May._"

MRS. WALKER'S BETSEY.

It is now ten years since I spent a summer in the little village of Cliff Spring, as teacher in one of the public schools.

The village itself had no pretensions to beauty, natural or architectural; but all its surroundings were romantic and lovely. On one side was a winding river, bordered with beautiful willows; and on the other a lofty hill, thickly wooded. These woods, in spring and summer, were full of flowers and wild vines; and a clear, cold stream, that had its birth in a cavernous recess among the ledges, dashed over the rocks, and after many windings and plungings found its way to the river.

At the foot of the hill wound the railroad track, at some points nearly filling the s.p.a.ce between the brook and the rocks, in others almost overhung by the latter. Some of the most delightful walks I ever knew were in this vicinity, and here the whole school would often come in the warm weather, for the Sat.u.r.day's ramble.

It was on one of these summer rambles I first made the acquaintance of Mrs. Walker's Betsey. Not that her unenviable reputation had been concealed from my knowledge, by any means; but as she was not a member of my department, and was a very irregular attendant of any cla.s.s, she had never yet come under my observation. I gathered that her parents had but lately come to live in Cliff Spring; that they were both ignorant and vicious; and that the girl was a sort of goblin sprite,--such a compound of mischief and malice as was never known before since the days of witchcraft. Was there an ugly profile drawn upon the anteroom wall, a green pumpkin found in the princ.i.p.al's hat, or an ink-bottle upset in the water-bucket? Mrs. Walker's Betsey was the first and constant object of suspicion. Did a teacher find a pair of tongs astride her chair, her shawl extra-bordered with burdocks, her gloves filled with some ill-scented weed, or her india-rubbers cunningly nailed to the floor? half a hundred juvenile tongues were ready to proclaim poor Betsey as the undoubted delinquent; and this in spite of the fact that very few of these misdemeanors were actually proved against her. But whether proved or not, she accepted their sponsors.h.i.+p all the same, and laughed at or defied her accusers, as her mood might be.

That the girl was a character in her way, shrewd and sensible, though wholly uncultured, I was well satisfied, from all I heard; that she was sly, intractable, and revengeful I believed, I am sorry to say, upon very insufficient evidence.

One warm afternoon in July, the sun, which at morning had been clouded, blazed out fiercely at the hour of dismissal. Shrinking from the prospect of an unsheltered walk, I looked around the shelves of the anteroom for my sunshade, but it was nowhere to be found. I did not recollect having it with me in the morning, and believed it had been left at the school-house over night. The girls of my cla.s.s const.i.tuted themselves a committee of search and inquiry, but to no purpose. The article was not in the house or yard, and then my committee resolved themselves into a jury, and, without a dissenting voice, p.r.o.nounced Mrs. Walker's Betsey guilty of cribbing my little, old-fas.h.i.+oned, but vastly useful sunshade. She had been seen loitering in the anteroom, and afterward running away in great haste. The charge seemed reasonable enough, but as I could not learn that Betsey had ever been caught in a theft, or convicted of one, I requested the girls to keep the matter quiet, for a few days at least: to which they unwillingly consented.

"Remember, Miss Burke," said Alice Way, as we parted at her father's gate, "you promised us a nice walk after tea, to the place in the wood where you found the beautiful phlox yesterday. We want you to guide us straight to the spot, please."

"Yes," added Mary Graham, "and we will take our Botanies in our baskets, and be prepared to a.n.a.lyze the flowers, you know."

My a.s.sent was not reluctantly given; and when the sun was low in the west we set forth, walking nearly the whole distance in the shade of the hill. We climbed the ridge, rested a few moments, and then started in search of the beautiful patch of Lichnidia--white, pink, and purple--that I had found the afternoon previous in taking a "short cut" over the hill to the house of a friend I was wont to visit.

"Stop, Miss Burke!" came in suppressed tones from half my little group, as, emerging from a thicket, we came in sight of a queer object perched upon a little mound, among dead stick and leaves. It was a diminutive child, who, judging from her face alone, might be ten or eleven years of age. A little brown, weird face it was, with keen eyes peering out from a stringy ma.s.s of hair, that straggled about distractedly from the confinement of an old comb.

"_There_," whispered Matty Holmes, "there's Mrs. Walker's Betsey, I do declare! She often goes home from school this way, which is shorter; and now she is playing truant. She'll get a whipping if her mother finds it out."

"Miss Burke, Miss Burke!" cried Alice, "see what she has in her hand!"

I looked, and there, to be sure, was my lost parasol.

"There, now! Didn't we say so!" "Don't she look guilty?" "Weren't we right?" "Impudent thing!" were the whispered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of my vigilance committee; but in truth the girl's appearance was unconcerned and innocent enough. She sat there, swaying herself about, opening and shutting the wonderful "instrument," holding it between her eyes and the light to ascertain the quality of the silk, and sticking a pin in the handle to try if it were real ivory or mere painted wood.

"Let's dash in upon her and see her scamper," was the next benevolent suggestion whispered in my ear.

"No," I said. "I wish to speak to her alone, first. All of you stay here, out of sight, and I will return presently." They fell back, dissatisfied, and contented themselves with peeping and listening, while I advanced toward the forlorn child. She started a little as I approached, thrust the parasol behind her, and then pleasantly made room for me on the little hillock where she sat.

"Well, this _is_ a nice place for a lounge," said I, dropping down beside her; "just large enough for two, and softer than any _tete-a-tete_ in Mrs. Graham's parlor. Now I should like to know your name?"--for I thought it best to feign ignorance of her antecedents.

"Bets," was the ready reply.

"Betsey what?"

"Bets Walker, mother says, but I say Hamlin. That was father's name.

'T ain't no difference, though; it's Bets any way."

"Well, Betsey, what do you suppose made this little mound we are sitting upon?" I asked, merely to gain time to think how best to approach the other topic.

"I don' know," she answered, looking up at me keenly. "Maybe a rock got covered up and growed over, ever so far down. Maybe an Injun's buried there."

I told her I had seen larger mounds that contained Indian remains, but none so small as this.

"It might 'a' ben a baby, though," she returned, digging her brown toes among the leaves and winking her eyelids roguishly. "A papoose, you know; a real little Injun! I wish it had 'a' ben me, and I'd 'a'

ben buried here; I'd 'a' liked it first-rate! Only I wouldn't 'a'

wanted the girls should come and set over me. If I didn't want so bad to get to read the books father left, I'd never go to school another day." And her brow darkened again with evil pa.s.sions.

"Did your own father leave you books?"

"Yes, real good ones; only they're old, and tore some. Mother couldn't sell 'em for nothin', so she lets me keep 'em. She sold everything else." Then suddenly changing her tone, she asked, slyly, "You hain't lost anything,--have you?"

"Yes," I answered; "I see you have my sunshade."

She held it up, laughing with boisterous triumph. "You left it hanging in that tree yonder," she said, pointing to a low-branching beech at a little distance. "It was kind o' careless, I think. S'posing it had rained!"