"Well, you shall. It is better for him to have company."
Mara"s face brightened, and Miss Emily looked with a puzzled air at her brother.
"So," she said, when the children had gone home, "I thought you wanted me to take Mara under my care. I was going to begin and teach her some marking st.i.tches, and you put her up to studying Latin. I don"t understand you."
"Well, Emily, the fact is, the child has a natural turn for study, that no child of her age ought to have; and I have done just as people always will with such children; there"s no sense in it, but I wanted to do it.
You can teach her marking and embroidery all the same; it would break her little heart, now, if I were to turn her back."
"I do not see of what use Latin can be to a woman."
"Of what use is embroidery?"
"Why, that is an accomplishment."
"Ah, indeed!" said Mr. Sewell, contemplating the weeping willow and tombstone trophy with a singular expression, which it was lucky for Miss Emily"s peace she did not understand. The fact was, that Mr. Sewell had, at one period of his life, had an opportunity of studying and observing minutely some really fine works of art, and the remembrance of them sometimes rose up to his mind, in the presence of the _chefs-d"oeuvre_ on which his sister rested with so much complacency. It was a part of his quiet interior store of amus.e.m.e.nt to look at these bits of Byzantine embroidery round the room, which affected him always with a subtle sense of drollery.
"You see, brother," said Miss Emily, "it is far better for women to be accomplished than learned."
"You are quite right in the main," said Mr. Sewell, "only you must let me have my own way just for once. One can"t be consistent always."
So another Latin grammar was bought, and Moses began to feel a secret respect for his little companion, that he had never done before, when he saw how easily she walked through the labyrinths which at first so confused him. Before this, the comparison had been wholly in points where superiority arose from physical daring and vigor; now he became aware of the existence of another kind of strength with which he had not measured himself. Mara"s opinion in their mutual studies began to a.s.sume a value in his eyes that her opinions on other subjects had never done, and she saw and felt, with a secret gratification, that she was becoming more to him through their mutual pursuit. To say the truth, it required this fellowship to inspire Moses with the patience and perseverance necessary for this species of acquisition. His active, daring temperament little inclined him to patient, quiet study. For anything that could be done by two hands, he was always ready; but to hold hands still and work silently in the inner forces was to him a species of undertaking that seemed against his very nature; but then he would do it--he would not disgrace himself before Mr. Sewell, and let a girl younger than himself outdo him.
But the thing, after all, that absorbed more of Moses"s thoughts than all his lessons was the building and rigging of a small schooner, at which he worked a.s.siduously in all his leisure moments. He had dozens of blocks of wood, into which he had cut anchor moulds; and the melting of lead, the running and shaping of anchors, the whittling of masts and spars took up many an hour. Mara entered into all those things readily, and was too happy to make herself useful in hemming the sails.
When the schooner was finished, they built some ways down by the sea, and invited Sally Kittridge over to see it launched.
"There!" he said, when the little thing skimmed down prosperously into the sea and floated gayly on the waters, "when I"m a man, I"ll have a big ship; I"ll build her, and launch her, and command her, all myself; and I"ll give you and Sally both a pa.s.sage in it, and we"ll go off to the East Indies--we"ll sail round the world!"
None of the three doubted the feasibility of this scheme; the little vessel they had just launched seemed the visible prophecy of such a future; and how pleasant it would be to sail off, with the world all before them, and winds ready to blow them to any port they might wish!
The three children arranged some bread and cheese and doughnuts on a rock on the sh.o.r.e, to represent the collation that was usually spread in those parts at a ship launch, and felt quite like grown people--acting life beforehand in that sort of shadowy pantomime which so delights little people. Happy, happy days--when ships can be made with a jack-knife and anchors run in pine blocks, and three children together can launch a schooner, and the voyage of the world can all be made in one sunny Sat.u.r.day afternoon!
"Mother says you are going to college," said Sally to Moses.
"Not I, indeed," said Moses; "as soon as I get old enough, I"m going up to Umbagog among the lumberers, and I"m going to cut real, splendid timber for my ship, and I"m going to get it on the stocks, and have it built to suit myself."
"What will you call her?" said Sally.
"I haven"t thought of that," said Moses.
"Call her the Ariel," said Mara.
"What! after the spirit you were telling us about?" said Sally.
"Ariel is a pretty name," said Moses. "But what is that about a spirit?"
"Why," said Sally, "Mara read us a story about a ship that was wrecked, and a spirit called Ariel, that sang a song about the drowned mariners."
Mara gave a shy, apprehensive glance at Moses, to see if this allusion called up any painful recollections.
No; instead of this, he was following the motions of his little schooner on the waters with the briskest and most unconcerned air in the world.
"Why didn"t you ever show me that story, Mara?" said Moses.
Mara colored and hesitated; the real reason she dared not say.
"Why, she read it to father and me down by the cove," said Sally, "the afternoon that you came home from the Banks; I remember how we saw you coming in; don"t you, Mara?"
"What have you done with it?" said Moses.
"I"ve got it at home," said Mara, in a faint voice; "I"ll show it to you, if you want to see it; there are such beautiful things in it."
That evening, as Moses sat busy, making some alterations in his darling schooner, Mara produced her treasure, and read and explained to him the story. He listened with interest, though without any of the extreme feeling which Mara had thought possible, and even interrupted her once in the middle of the celebrated--
"Full fathom five thy father lies,"
by asking her to hold up the mast a minute, while he drove in a peg to make it rake a little more. He was, evidently, thinking of no drowned father, and dreaming of no possible sea-caves, but acutely busy in fashioning a present reality; and yet he liked to hear Mara read, and, when she had done, told her that he thought it was a pretty--quite a pretty story, with such a total absence of recognition that the story had any affinities with his own history, that Mara was quite astonished.
She lay and thought about him hours, that night, after she had gone to bed; and he lay and thought about a new way of disposing a pulley for raising a sail, which he determined to try the effect of early in the morning.
What was the absolute truth in regard to the boy? Had he forgotten the scenes of his early life, the strange catastrophe that cast him into his present circ.u.mstances? To this we answer that all the efforts of Nature, during the early years of a healthy childhood, are bent on effacing and obliterating painful impressions, wiping out from each day the sorrows of the last, as the daily tide effaces the furrows on the seash.o.r.e. The child that broods, day after day, over some fixed idea, is so far forth not a healthy one. It is Nature"s way to make first a healthy animal, and then develop in it gradually higher faculties. We have seen our two children unequally matched hitherto, because unequally developed. There will come a time, by and by in the history of the boy, when the haze of dreamy curiosity will steam up likewise from his mind, and vague yearnings, and questionings, and longings possess and trouble him, but it must be some years hence.
Here for a season we leave both our child friends, and when ten years have pa.s.sed over their heads,--when Moses shall be twenty, and Mara seventeen,--we will return again to tell their story, for then there will be one to tell. Let us suppose in the interval, how Moses and Mara read Virgil with the minister, and how Mara works a shepherdess with Miss Emily, which astonishes the neighborhood,--but how by herself she learns, after divers trials, to paint partridge, and checkerberry, and trailing arbutus,--how Moses makes better and better ships, and Sally grows up a handsome girl, and goes up to Brunswick to the high school,--how Captain Kittridge tells stories, and Miss Roxy and Miss Ruey nurse and cut and make and mend for the still rising generation,--how there are quiltings and tea-drinkings and prayer meetings and Sunday sermons,--how Zephaniah and Mary Pennel grow old gradually and graciously, as the sun rises and sets, and the eternal silver tide rises and falls around our little gem, Orr"s Island.
CHAPTER XVIII
SALLY
"Now, where"s Sally Kittridge! There"s the clock striking five, and n.o.body to set the table. Sally, I say! Sally!"
"Why, Mis" Kittridge," said the Captain, "Sally"s gone out more"n an hour ago, and I expect she"s gone down to Pennel"s to see Mara; "cause, you know, she come home from Portland to-day."
"Well, if she"s come home, I s"pose I may as well give up havin" any good of Sally, for that girl fairly bows down to Mara Lincoln and worships her."
"Well, good reason," said the Captain. "There ain"t a puttier creature breathin". I"m a"most a mind to worship her myself."
"Captain Kittridge, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, at your age, talking as you do."
"Why, laws, mother, I don"t feel my age," said the frisky Captain, giving a sort of skip. "It don"t seem more"n yesterday since you and I was a-courtin", Polly. What a life you did lead me in them days! I think you kep" me on the anxious seat a pretty middlin" spell."
"I do wish you wouldn"t talk so. You ought to be ashamed to be triflin"
round as you do. Come, now, can"t you jest tramp over to Pennel"s and tell Sally I want her?"