After a while, Nelly leaned her head back against the wall, and stopped playing with her dolls. She looked at the snow-storm outside, and the bright fire in the grate, and exclaimed, "Oh, mamma! isn"t it nice here?"
There was something in Nelly"s tone which made her mother look up surprised.
"Why, yes, dear; of course it is nice here; it is always nice here; what made you think of it just now?"
Nelly March was one of the honestest little girls that ever lived.
Nothing seemed to her so dreadful as a lie; but she came very near telling one now.
"I don"t know, mamma," she said; but, almost before the words were out of her mouth, she added:--
"Yes, I do know, too; I meant I didn"t want to tell."
"Why not? my little daughter," said Mrs. March, looking much puzzled. "Surely it cannot be any thing you do not want mamma to know."
"Oh, no, mamma! it is something you didn"t want me to know," said Nelly hastily, turning very red.
"Something I didn"t want you to know, Nell," she said. "What do you mean? And how did you know it then?"
"She listened, she listened," cried Rob, throwing down his book, "and she wouldn"t tell me a thing either, and she was real mean."
The tears came into Nelly"s eyes, and Mrs. March looked very sternly at Rob.
"Rob," she said, "telling tales is as mean as listening: I"m ashamed of you. Nell, what does he mean?"
Poor Nelly was almost crying.
"Indeed, mamma," she exclaimed, "I didn"t listen; and I told Rob then I didn"t; he"s told a lie, a wicked lie, and he ought to be punished, mamma; he knows it"s a lie."
"It ain"t either," shouted Rob, "if you didn"t listen how"d you hear? She did listen, mamma, and now she"s told a lie too."
Mrs. March threw down her sewing, and walked quickly across the room to the table where the children were sitting. She put one hand on Nelly"s head, and one on Rob"s.
"My dear children," she said, "you shock me. Do think what you are saying: this is a bad beginning for the new year."
""Tain"t New Year yet for a week," muttered Rob. "This needn"t count."
Mrs. March laughed in spite of herself.
"Every thing counts, Rob, which we do, whether it is the beginning of a New Year or not. Mamma ought not to have spoken as if that made any odds. But you must not accuse each other of lying. That is a most dreadful thing. I know neither of you would tell a lie."
"Course we wouldn"t," cried both the children.
"Neither would Nelly listen, Rob, in any such sense as you meant,"
continued Mrs. March. "Sometimes we over-hear things when we do not mean to."
"That"s just the way it was, mamma," interrupted Nelly eagerly; "and I told Rob so: it was in the night, night before last, and you and papa were talking, and I was awake, and I could not help hearing, and I coughed as loud as I could for you to hear."
"Oh," said Mrs. March, "that is it, is it? I remember you coughed, and I shut the door. I did not think you were awake, but I was afraid we should waken you. We were talking about going away from this place."
"Yes, mamma," said Nelly, in a sad tone.
"Going away! Oh, mamma, are we really going away? oh, where? say where, mamma, say quick!" cried Rob, throwing down his "Cliff Climbers," and springing from the table to the floor at one bound.
"Gently, gently, wild boy," said Mrs. March, catching Rob by one arm and drawing him into her lap. In spite of all Rob"s ill temper and selfishness, I think Mrs. March loved him a little better than she loved Nelly. Neither Nelly nor Rob dreamed of this, and perhaps Mrs.
March never was conscious of it herself; but other people could see it.
"Why, Rob," she said, "would you be glad to go away from this house, and the grove, and the pond, and from all your friends, and go to live in a strange place where you didn"t know anybody?"
Rob"s face sobered.
"To stay, mamma?" he said, "to stay always?"
Nelly did not speak. She knew more about this matter than Rob did.
She watched her mother"s face very earnestly and sadly, and tears filled her eyes when Mrs. March answered:--
"I am afraid so, Rob: if we go I do not believe we shall ever come back. I didn"t mean to let you know any thing about it till it was all settled. But, since you have heard something about it, I will tell you all I know myself. Come here, Nelly; both of you sit down now at my feet, and I will talk to you about it."
Nelly and Rob sat down on two low crickets by their mother"s knee, and looked up in her face without speaking. They felt that something very serious was coming. Before Mrs. March began to speak, she kissed them both several times, then she said:--
"There is one thing I am very sure of: both my little children will be brave and good, if hard times come."
"Oh, mamma! tell us quick; don"t bother," interrupted impatient Rob, "let"s know what it is quick, mamma. Are we going to be awful poor, like the people in story books? I don"t care if we are, if that"s all. Let"s have it over."
Mrs. March laughed again: one reason she loved Rob so much was that his temper was so much like her own. It had been very hard for her herself to learn to be patient, and to be sufficiently moderate in her speech; and even now there was nothing in the world she disliked so much as suspense of any kind. She could make up her mind to endure almost any thing, if only it were fixed and settled. So when Rob burst out with impatient speeches like this one, she knew exactly how he felt. And sometimes when Nelly took things quietly and calmly, and was so deliberate in all her movements, Mrs. March misunderstood her, and thought she did not really care about any thing half as much as Rob did. But the truth was, Nelly really cared a great deal more about almost everything, than he did. He forgot things in a day, or an hour even; sad things, pleasant things, all alike: they blew away from Rob"s memory and Rob"s heart like leaves in a great wind, and he never thought much more about any thing than just whether he liked it or disliked it at the moment. The phrase he used to his mother just now was very often on his lips, "Oh, don"t bother!" Especially he used to say this to Nelly whenever she tried to reason with him about something which she thought not quite right or not quite safe. You would have thought to hear them talk that Nelly was at least five years older than he: she talked to him like a little mother. At this moment, when Rob was hurrying his mother so impatiently, Nelly exclaimed, "Oh, hush, Rob! do let mamma tell it as she wants to;" and Nelly drew up close to her mother"s side, and laid her cheek down on her mother"s hand. Nelly"s heart was as full as it could be of sympathy: she knew that her mother felt very unhappy about going away, and Nelly"s way of showing her sympathy was to be very loving and tender and quiet; but, strange as it may seem, this did not comfort and help Mrs. March so much as Rob"s off-hand and impatient way.
"Well, but she"s so slow: ain"t you slow, mamma? And it"s horrid to wait," replied Rob.
"Yes, Rob," laughed Mrs. March. "I am rather slow, and it is horrid to wait; but I won"t be slow any longer: this is what papa and I were talking about the other night,--about going out to Colorado to live."
"Colorado! where"s that? Is it anywhere near the Himalayas?" cried Rob. "If it is, I"d like to go; oh, I"d like to go ever so much."
Mrs. March laughed out loud. "Oh you droll Rob," she said. "No, it"s nowhere near the Himalayas; but there are mountains there about as high as the Himalayas,--higher than any other mountains in America."
"Are there elephants?" said Rob. "I wouldn"t mind about any thing if there are only elephants."
"Rob, how can you!" burst out Nelly, with a vehemence very unusual in her. "How can you! It"s because papa"s sick that we are going."
"Why, what"s the matter with papa?" said Rob, wonderingly.
Mr. March had been a sufferer from asthma for so many years that no one any longer thought of him as an invalid. He was very rarely confined to the house, and, except in the summer, his asthma did not give him a great deal of trouble; but in the summer it was so bad that for weeks he was not able to preach at all: I believe I have forgotten all this time to tell you that he was a minister. I have been so busy talking about Nelly and Rob, that I have hardly told you any thing about their papa and mamma.
Mr. March had been settled in this village of Mayfield for fifteen years, and the people loved him so much that they would not hear of having any other minister. When his asthma was so bad that he could not preach, they hired some one else; always in the summer they gave him a two-months" vacation; and, whenever any stranger said any thing unkind about his asthmatic voice, they always replied, "If Mr.
March couldn"t preach in any thing more than a whisper, we"d rather hear him than any other man living." The truth was, that they had grown so accustomed to the asthmatic, wheezy tone, that they did not notice it. It really was very unpleasant to a stranger"s ear, and everybody wondered how a whole congregation of people could endure it. But it is wonderful how much love can do to reconcile us to disagreeable things in the people we love; and not only to reconcile us to them, but to make us forget them entirely. Nelly and Rob never thought but that their father"s voice was as pleasant as anybody"s: when his breath came very short and quick, they knew he was suffering, but at other times they did not remember any thing about his having asthma; this was the reason that Rob said so wonderingly now:--
"Why, what is the matter with papa?"
Mrs. March"s voice was very sad as she replied:--
"Only his asthma, dear, which he has had so many years, but it is growing much worse; and we have seen a gentleman lately who has come from Colorado, and he says that people never have asthma at all there, and the doctor says if papa does not go to some such climate to live, he will get worse and worse, so that he will not be able to do any thing. You don"t know how much poor papa suffers, even here.