Read Ebook: Harper's Round Table May 26 1896 by Various

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Ebook has 328 lines and 27080 words, and 7 pages

casionally pull down the poles in steering through the fishermen's rows. Extra nets are always carried in the fishing-boats, and when a torn one is found it is taken ashore to be mended, and a whole net is put in its place.

The shad-fisherman's life is not an easy one. During the short season when his trade is profitable he works both night and day. He must live close by the water, and sleep only between the tides. When the boat first comes in after hauling the nets, the men must take out their fish and pack them for the market. Then there are the torn nets to be mended; and when all this is finished, and the meals are cooked and eaten, the fishermen may get a few hours' sleep, perhaps; but they never lie down without first setting an alarm-clock for an hour before the tide turns again. For, rain or shine, by night and by day, those nets must be hauled up at every turn of the tide, and the tide turns every six hours. "Time and tide wait for no man."

PARTS OF A FLOWER.

In early spring the big trees and little plants awake out of a long nap and bestir themselves to grow. They have a good deal to do, and they set to work very industriously. Ants and bees are not busier than plants in spring. At first the awakened plant thinks only of forming fresh branches and lovely expanding green leaves. But after a time it seems to say to itself, "I must not forget to make seed, so that if I should die in the autumn my race may not die with me, but live on and on."

AN "OLD-FIELD" SCHOOL-GIRL.

BY MARION HARLAND.

Felicia Grigsby sat alone by the fire in her room on the afternoon of December 24. A book was open upon her lap, but she was not reading. Her hands were thin and white; her gray eyes were unnaturally large and dark in a face that had wasted until it looked like an elf's. She had lain in bed for six weeks, and was still so weak that her father had carried her up and down stairs to her meals.

He had been very kind to her throughout her illness, but never tender, and he was always grave nowadays. Flea was thinking of these and other puzzling things this afternoon. While she thought, two tears arose and enlarged in her eyes, until their weight carried them over the lower lids, and they plashed down upon the book. The first snow-storm of the season was driving at a sharp slant past the windows; the wind cried in the chimney in a low-spirited, feeble-minded way; the fire kept up heart, and spat snappishly as stray hailstones and snowflakes flew down the throat of the chimney.

Flea kicked one foot out of the blanket shawl laid over her lap, and moaned fretfully: "I don't care for anything or anybody, and nobody cares whether I live or die!"

The door opened and her father came in. He looked unusually grave even for him. He laid more logs on the fire, and stirred the coals below the blazing fore-stick. "Is it too hot for you?" he asked, as the fire leaped up with a greedy roar.

"A little," Flea said, shielding her eyes with her hand.

Her father took hold of her rocking-chair with one hand, the cricket on which her feet rested with the other, and lifted her away from the flaring flames. Then he rearranged the covering over her knees and feet. It was a checked blanket shawl, red and green, that belonged to Mrs. Grigsby. It was always brought out when an invalid was able to sit up, or not quite ill enough to be put to bed. In Flea's mind it was joined with the remembered taste of jalap, Epsom-salts, castor oil, and tansy tea. The checks were just two inches square. She had measured them a hundred times. Her mother used to give her medicine; her father read aloud to her when she had the measles, and chills and fever after the measles.

She got hold of his hand and laid her face against it with a sob that seemed to bring her heart up with it.

"Father! you haven't called me 'lassie' all the time I've been sick. Don't you love me any more?"

He let her keep his hand, but he did not press hers. He stood bolt-upright, his eyes upon the driving snow; his tone was constrained: "A father never stops loving his children, my daughter, let them do what they may."

Flea twisted around to get a good view of his face.

"Have I done anything to displease you, father? Maybe 'twas some silly thing I said when I was out of my head. Mother says I talked dreadfully sometimes. You know I didn't mean it. Won't you forgive it, and let me be your own lassie again?"

She was crying fast, clinging to his hand and covering it with kisses. He drew it away gently, and put his thumb and finger into the pocket of his waistcoat, bringing out with them a paper, creased and worn by much handling.

"Look at that!" he said, in a tone that arrested her tears.

Flea unfolded it, and gave a cry of surprise.

"My report! Where did it come from?"

"You ought to know."

Her father drew up a chair and sat down beside her, a little back of her, so she could not study his face. He tried to speak carelessly.

"What was Mrs. Fogg doing there at that time of day?"

"I don't know, I am sure. She is a funny old woman, always turning up just where you wouldn't expect to see her."

"Did she go into the house?"

"Why, no, sir. It's nailed up, I think--windows and doors too. She said that she mistook me for a ghost--h'ant,' she called it. Father!"

She had his hand again, and again raised it to her cheek. Her voice was tremulous.

"Well?" watching her out of the corners of his eyes.

"I did something wrong and foolish that day. I told her once that I'd ask Major Duncombe to let her grandchildren go to school. I was sorry for the little fellows. I told her that day that she'd better send them to the Old Harry than to Mr. Tayloe. You see, I was as mad as fire about my report."

"And then?"

"I ran home, and left her there sitting on the step."

"Did you ever see her again?"

She hesitated visibly; the color came and went in the thin sensitive face. She dropped her voice:

"She came to the spring next day. Mr. Tayloe sent me for a bucket of water--after school, you know. He said you did help me with that awful sum, and made me stay in and do it all over again. I never felt so angry before. I wished that I could kill him. And Mrs. Fogg began palavering, and I tried to get away from her. She would help me up the hill with the bucket, and I wasn't decently polite to her. When I got into the school-house, there was my slate on the bench where Mr. Tayloe had put it while I was gone, and he had rubbed out the sum I had done. Then--I think it was like being possessed of a devil, for my head went round and round, and I got hot all over. For there he sat, with that horrid smile on his face, as if he were making fun of me, when I had done my very best, and been disgraced for nothing at all. I jumped up and threw the bucket on him, and ran away as fast as I could. That's all. Oh, father, please don't let us talk any more about that horrible day!" Her voice arose into a piteous cry.

"No, lassie, never again!"

He gathered her into his arms, and held her there as he had in that wonderful ride through the woods the night he found her asleep in the school-house, and she sobbed herself calm upon the heart where there was always love for his children, and where she knew at last the warmest place was for her.

When he appeared belowstairs he found his sister in the chamber alone, but for the sleeping baby whom she had offered to look after, while the other children in a gale of spirits superintended and hindered the frying of the doughnuts.

"Does that amuse you, David?" asked Mis. McLaren, smiling at the pains he took to tear a scrap of white paper into bits, all exactly the same size, and to throw them one by one into the fire. Each was seized by the hot draught and whirled up the chimney.

"It pleases me--mightily!" he rejoined, his face as sunny as hers. "I am disposing of the last objection I had to putting my bit lassie into your hands. I can trust her the world over now."

He sat down by his sister, stretching his long legs in front of him, and locking his hands at the back of his head, with the air of one who has shaken off a burden.

"I've had a long talk with the bairnie, Jean. I'm willing to trust her away from me. You'll do better for her than I can."

"It will be a trial to your mother and myself to let you go," he said to Flea on Christmas day, in telling her of Aunt Jean's wish to take her and Dee home with her. "We will bear it for the sake of the good you'll get."

What the trial was to himself nobody comprehended. All through the quiet winter that shut down upon the river-lands early in January the most momentous events to the father's heart were the weekly arrival of the letters from his daughter. They were long and, to him, wonderful. He was kept in touch with her home life, her school, her reading, her sight-seeing, her growth in knowledge and her burning thirst for more knowledge. She sent him books now and then; his sister provided him with two weekly papers and a monthly magazine, but the short days and long evenings wore away tediously.

The months seemed like as many years in looking back upon them on a certain June morning, when he and Flea set out for a ride on horseback. She had been at home but eighteen hours, and he had still to persuade himself from time to time that he was not dreaming.

He looked her over pridefully as they rode off from the house.

"You are more like yourself this morning, lassie. Last night you were paler and quieter than seemed just natural. I suppose you were tired after the journey."

Flea blushed and averted her face. "I feel beautifully rested out to-day," she said. Honest as ever, she could not say more without revealing what would have pained his loyal heart.

I have made no secret of her faults, and I do not excuse what her father was never allowed to guess. Her homecoming had been a dismay as well as a disappointment to her. Nothing had come to pass as she had expected and planned, except the look on her father's face when he had espied her on the deck of the boat, waving her hand to him on the wharf, and the long, silent hug she received as she sprang into his arms. She had never heard the word "disillusion," or she would have known better what the next few hours meant. Mr. Grigsby had come to the landing in a blue-bodied "carryall." A plank laid across the front served him for a seat. Two splint-bottomed chairs were set for the children, leaving room behind them for their trunks. It was not heroineic, but it was natural that, seeing her late fellow-passengers eying the equipage from the boat, Flea grew hot with embarrassment, and wished that her father had thought of borrowing a better-looking vehicle from Greenfield.

The road over which they jolted was rutty and straggling, the fences ungainly. Nothing was trimmed and well-kept to eyes used, for five months, to spick-and-span Philadelphia. Her own home was sadly unlike her recollection of it. It had been newly whitewashed in honor of her coming, but she had forgotten that there never were shutters at the windows. They stared at her like eyes without lids and lashes. The calico half-curtains were "poor-white-folksy," the furniture was scanty and common. Her mother wore a purple calico. She was "partial to purple calico"; it kept its color, did not show dirt, and looked so clean when it was clean. She did not bethink herself, or she had never known, that purple is, of all colors, most trying to women of no particular complexion. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her temples, and done at the back of her head in a knot that would not come undone of itself in a week. On her head was a cap of rusty black cotton lace. Bea had bedecked her fair self in a light blue lawn, short-sleeved, and low upon the shoulders. A double string of wax beads was about her neck, and a single string upon each wrist. Her yellow hair was braided and tucked up. Bea was fifteen, and quite the young lady now. About her head was a narrow band of black velvet, fastened above her forehead with a breast-pin containing a green glass stone. Bea thought it was an emerald. Flea knew that it was not, yet felt horribly ashamed that she could notice all these things and that they dampened her spirits.

They had a "big supper," to which Dee's boyish appetite did abundant justice. Flea berated and despised herself for seeing that the coffee-pot was tin and was the boiler in which the coffee had been made, and that the handles of the two-tined forks were of bone; that her mother poured her coffee into her saucer to cool before drinking it, and that everything--fried chicken, ham, fish, preserves, cake, pudding, pie, frozen custard, and waffles--was put on the table at once.

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