Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends Part 15

One of the gentlemen who came in with the committee asked, "Who is that young girl who said her lessons so well?"

"Cicely Hunt?" he repeated, after the teacher,--"Cicely Hunt! _She_ was not lame; and then--why--no--it _can't_ be: the thing is quite impossible," and he leaned back in his chair, and looked at Cicely.

After school was over he said to her, "Do you sing, Cicely?"

"Not now," said Cicely, blus.h.i.+ng. "I used to sing, a long while ago, when I was little."

"When, Cicely?"

"I sang to--to--my papa," said Cicely--tears springing to her eyes. "I used to sing, 'Blue eyed Mary,' for the gentlemen who dined with papa."

Then the gentleman (pretending to look out the window) wiped his eyes, and turning to the teacher, they whispered a long while together, now and then looking at Cicely.

That evening, when Cicely and her mother were warming their fingers over a fire of shavings, somebody knocked at the door.

Cicely blushed, when she saw the same gentleman she had seen at the school coming in, and looked anxiously about the room.

But Mr. Raymond was not looking at the room. I doubt if he saw anything, his eyes were so full of tears; but he held Cicely's mother by the hand several minutes, without speaking, and led her back to the chair with as much deference as if she had been a d.u.c.h.ess; and then Cicely found out, as they talked, that he was one of her father's old friends, and that, as sometimes happens, even between friends, they had a quarrel, and that then they were both mistaken enough to think that the most gentlemanly way to settle it, was to fight a duel; and that Mr. Raymond wounded her father, and had to go away as fast as possible, because there was so much noise about it, and that he had been very unhappy ever since, and would have given all he had to have brought him to life again, and that when he returned to his native city he had searched everywhere for Mrs. Hunt and Cicely, without finding them.

Well, now he wanted to support Cicely and her mother, but Mrs. Hunt did not like that. She forgave him the sorrow he had brought upon her because he had suffered so much; but she did not wish to be supported by him. However, she allowed him to find her a better place to live in, and get her some scholars to teach, who paid her high prices, and by and by Cicely helped her, and so they supported _themselves_; which is a far pleasanter way of living than to be dependent.

Cicely was never entirely cured of her lameness; but a physician made her much more comfortable; so she could walk by herself, with the help of a crutch; and Mrs. Hunt's last days, after all, were her best days; for, we should never know, my dear little pets, how brightly the sun s.h.i.+nes, if it _were never clouded_.

THE LITTLE TAMBOURINE PLAYER.

I was sitting at my window one fine morning, at a farm house in the country, enjoying the sweet air, the soft blue clouds, and far-off hills, and watching the hay-makers in their large, straw hats, as they tossed the hay about, piled it upon the cart, or "raked after," or drove along home through the meadow, crus.h.i.+ng the sweet breath from the clover blossoms that lay scattered in their path; and enjoying the song of the little robin in the linden tree opposite, who was thrilling my heart with his gus.h.i.+ng notes.

A hand organ! What a nuisance! I fancied I had left them all behind me in the city, where one has such a surfeit of them. A hand organ in the _country_! where the little birds never make a discord, or charge us a fee, either! I'll get up and shut the window, or run off into the back woods, where such a thing as a hand organ was never heard of.

I got up to put my threat into execution, when my eye was attracted by the musicians. There was a coa.r.s.e, stout, sun-burned Irish woman, with an immense straw hat flapping over her freckled face, tied with a gaudy ribbon under her _three chins_, singing, "I'd be a b.u.t.terfly!" At her side, stood a little girl about six years old, holding an inverted tambourine, to catch windfalls in the shape of pennies.

The little creature was as delicate as a rose leaf; her eyes were large and of a soft hazel; her skin fair and white, and her hair waved over her graceful little head as sweetly as your own. Her hands were small and white, and her coa.r.s.e shoes could not hide her pretty little feet.

She was not _that_ woman's child; I was sure of if; for her voice was as sweet as a wind harp.

"How far have you come, to-day?" asked I of the Irish "b.u.t.terfly."

"From the city, sure," said she; "would your leddys.h.i.+p give me a saxpence?"

I'd have given her five times that amount, if she wouldn't have sung to me again. So I tossed her the "saxpence," and asked if the child had walked from the city (four miles) too?

"Sure," said the woman, looking a little confused. "Biddy would be afther going with her mother wheriver she went."

_Her_ mother? I didn't believe it. That child had been delicately brought up, as sure as my name was f.a.n.n.y. All my motherly feelings were roused in an instant.

"If that is the case," said I, carelessly, "I suppose she is hungry, and her mother, too; if you will let her go down in the orchard with me, I will bring you back some nice ripe apples."

The little girl looked timidly at the woman, who took a good look at me out of her bold, saucy, black eyes, and asked, "Is it far you'll be going?"

"Just to yonder tree," said I, pointing down the meadow; "but if you think it will weary her to go, I will bring them to her myself."

"You can go with the lady," said the woman, giving her a look that the child seemed to understand, "and I will just sit on the fence and look afther ye."

"Is that your mother?" said I, stooping to pluck a daisy at the little one's feet.

"Y-e-s," she said slowly, but without looking me in the face.

"_No she is not_," said I. "Don't be afraid of me; if you want to get away from her I can help you. Didn't she steal you away?"

The child nodded her head, without speaking, and looked timidly over her shoulder, to see if any one was near to hear me.

"Is your own mother alive?" I asked.

She nodded her head again, and her sweet little lip quivered.

"Hus.h.!.+" said I, "don't cry. I'll get you away from her. Keep quiet.

Don't talk any more now. Just pick up the pears in your ap.r.o.n, that I knock off this tree."

I climbed the pear tree and peeping over the fence, saw good honest "Jim," the "man of all work" at the farm, sitting down in the shade to rest, with old Bruno curled up at his feet.

I tossed a pear at his red head. Jim looked up. I put my finger on my lip, saying, "Creep round by the fence, Jim, and get up to the house; go in at the back door and wait till I come up. Don't say a word to anybody. I'll tell you why when I get back."

Jim gave me a sagacious nod, and commenced going on all fours behind the fence.

Little "Biddy," as her pretended mother called her, filled her ap.r.o.n with the pears and we started across the field to where Bridget still sat, perched upon the garden fence, with her hand organ unstrapped at her feet.

I emptied the pears in her lap, and she thanked me in her uncouth way, between the big mouthsful, and sat down on the gra.s.s with Biddy.

Presently I asked her if she would like some ginger beer; of course she said yes, and of course I had to go into the kitchen to get it, and of course I found Jim there, and telling him my story in a dozen words, he brought his hand down with a thump on his waistband, exclaiming,

"Je-ru-sa-lem!"

When Jim said _that_ you might know he was going to do something terrible!

Well, I went back with the beer, and just as Bridget was tipping the gla.s.s up to her thick lips, Jim bounded behind her like a panther, and held her arms tight while I took little Biddy and scampered into the house.

Having locked little Biddy safe in my chamber, I returned and picked up off the gra.s.s, two silver spoons of Jim's mother's, that Bridget had taken from the parlor closet while we were getting the pears.

That gave us a right to shut her up in jail--to say nothing of her carrying off poor little Biddy--and you may be sure that Jim was not long in sending her there, spite of her vociferations that, "If there was law in the counthry she'd have the right of him yet, for meddling with an honest woman like Bridget Fliligan."

"Thank you for telling us your name," said Jim, coolly; "it is just what we wanted to know."

But it is time I let out my little prisoner, poor little Edith, (that was her real name.)