I didn't say anything, I was so provoked.
"I don' b'lieve you know heow ter take the turns w'en yer mother a'n't by to help," she continued. "Can't ye take up the heel? Widden ev'ry fourth. Here, let me! You won't? Wal, I alluz knowed you wuz mighty techy, Emerline Ruggles, but ye no need ter fling away in thet style. Neow I'll advise ye ter let socks alone; they're tew intricate fur sech ez you. Mitt'ns is jest abeout 'ithin the compass uv your mind,mitt'ns, men's single mitt'ns, put up on needles larger 'n them o' yourn be, an' by this rule. Seventeen reounds in the wrist,tew an' one's the best seam"
"Now, Miss Jemimy, just as if I didn't know how to knit mittens!"
"Wal, it seems you don't," said she, "though I don' deny but you may know heow ter give 'em; an' ez I alluz like ter du w'at good I kin, I'm gwine ter show ye."
"Show away," says I; "but I'll be bound, I've knit and sold and eaten up more mittens than ever you put your hands in!"
"Du tell! I'm glad to ha' heern you've got sech a good digestion," says she, hunting up a piece of paper to light her pipe. "Wal, ez I wuz sayin'," says she, "tew an' one's the best seam, handiest an' 'lastickest; twenty stetches to a needle, cast up so loose thet the fust one's ter one eend uv the needle an' the last ter t'other eend,thet gives a good pull."
"I guess your smoke will hurt Stephen's head," said I, thinking to change her ideas.
"Oh, don't you bother abeout Stephen's head; ef it can't stan' thet,'t a'n't good fur much. Wal, an' then you set yer thumb an' knit plain, 'xcept a seam-stetch each side uv yer thumb; an' you widden tew stetches, one each side,s'pose ye know heow ter widden? an' narry?ev'ry third reound, tell yer 've got nineteen stetches acrost yer thumb; then ye knit, 'ithout widdenin', a matter uv seven or eight reounds more,you listenin', Emerline?"
"Lor', Miss Jemimy, don't you know better than to ask questions when I'm counting? Now I've got to go and begin all over again."
"Highty-tighty, Miss! You're a weak sister, ef ye can't ceount an' chat, tew. Wal, ter make a long matter short, then ye drop yer thumb onter some thread an' cast up seven stetches an' knit reound fur yer hand, an' every other time you narry them seven stetches away ter one, fur the gore."
"Dear me, Aunt Mimy! do be quiet a minute! I believe mother's a-calling."
"I'll see," said Aunt Mimy,and she stepped to the door and listened.
"No," says she, coming back on tiptoe,"an' you didn't think you heern any one neither. It's ruther small work fur ter be foolin' an old woman. Hows'ever, I don' cherish grudges; so, ez I wuz gwine ter say, ye knit thirty-six reounds above wheer ye dropped yer thumb, an' then ye toe off in ev'ry fifth stetch, an' du it reg'Iar, Emerline; an' then take up yer thumb on tew needles, an' on t'other you pick up the stetches I told yer ter cast up, an' knit twelve reounds, an' thumb off 'ith narryin' ev'ry third"
"Well, Miss Jemimy, I guess I shall know how to knit mittens, now!"
"Ef ye don't, 't a'n't my fault. When you've fastened off the eends, you roll 'em up in a damp towel, an' press 'em 'ith a middlin' warm iron on the wrong side. There!"
After this, Miss Mimy smoked awhile in silence, satisfied and gratified.
At last she knocked the ashes out of her pipe.
"Wal," says she, "I must be onter my feet. I'd liked ter seen yer ma, but I won't disturb her, an' you can du ez well. Yer ma promised me a mess o' tea, an' I guess I may ez well take it neow ez any day."
"Why, Miss Mimy," said I, "there a'n't above four or five messes left, and we can't get any more till I sell my socks."
"Wal, never mind, then, you can le' me take one, an' mebbe I kin make up the rest at Miss Smilers's."
So I went into the pantry to get it, and Aunt Mimy followed me, of course.
"Them's nice-lookin' apples," said she. "Come from Stephen's place? Poor young man, he won't never want 'em! S'pose he won't hev no objection ter my tryin' a dozen,"and she dropped that number into her great pocket.
"Nice-lookin' butter, tew," said she. "Own churnin'? Wal, you kin du sunthin', Emerline. W'en I wuz a heousekeeper, I used ter keep the femily in butter an' sell enough to Miss Smithshe thet wuz Mary Breownter buy our shoes, all off uv one ceow. S'pose I take this pat?"
I was kind of dumfoundered at first; I forgot Aunt Mimy was the biggest beggar in Rockingham County.
"No," says I, as soon as I got my breath, "I sha'n't suppose any such thing. You're as well able to make your butter as I am to make it for you."
"Wal, Emerline Ruggles! I alluz knowed you wuz close ez the bark uv a tree; it's jest yer father's narrer-contracted sperrit; you don' favor yer ma a speck. She's ez free ez water."
"If mother's a mind to give away her eye-teeth, it don't follow that I should," said I; "and I won't give you another atom; and you just clear out!"
"Wal, you kin keep yer butter, sence you're so sot on it, an' I'll take a leetle dust o' pork instead."
"Let's see you take it!" said I.
"I guess I'll speak 'ith yer ma. I shall git a consider'ble bigger piece, though I don't like ter add t' 'er steps."
"Now look here, Miss Mimy," says I,"if you'll promise not to ask for another thing, and to go right away, I'll get you a piece of pork."
So I went down cellar, and fished round in the pork-barrel and found quite a respectable piece. Coming up, just as my head got level with the floor, what should I see but Miss Jemimy pour all the sugar into her bag and whip the bowl back on the shelf, and turn round and face me as innocent as Moses in the bulrushes. After she had taken the pork, she looked round a minute and said,
"Wal, arter all, I nigh upon forgot my arrant. Here's a letter they giv' me fur Lurindy, at the post-office; ev'rybody else's afeard ter come up here";and by-and-by she brought it up from under all she'd stowed away there. "Thet jest leaves room," says she.
"For what?" says I.
"Fur tew or three uv them eggs."
I put them into her bag and said,
"Now you remember your promise, Aunt Mimy!"
"Lor' sakes!" says she, "you're in a mighty berry ter git me off. Neow you've got all you kin out uv me, the letter, 'n' the mitt'ns, I may go, may I? I niver see a young gal so furrard 'ith her elders in all my born days! I think Stephen Lee's well quit uv ye, fur my part, ef he hed to die ter du it. I don't 'xpect ye ter thank me fur w'at instruction I gi'n ye;there's some folks I niver du 'xpect nothin' from; you can't make a silk pus out uv a sow's ear. W'at ye got thet red flag out the keepin'-room winder fur? 'Cause Lurindy's nussin' Stephen? Wal, good-day!"
And so Aunt Mimy disappeared, and the pat of butter with her.
I called Lurindy and gave her the letter, and after a little while I heard my name, and Lurindy was sitting on the top of the stairs with her head on her knees, and mother was leaning over the banisters. Pretty soon Lurindy lifted up her head, and I saw she had been crying, and between the two I made out that Lurindy'd been engaged a good while to John Talbot, who sailed out of Salem on long voyages to India and China; and that now he'd come home, sick with a fever, and was lying at the house of his aunt, who wasn't well herself; and as he'd given all his money to help a shipmate in trouble, she couldn't hire him a nurse, and there he was; and, finally, she'd consider it a great favor, if Lurindy would come down and help her.
Now Lurindy'd have gone at once, only she'd been about Stephen, so that she'd certainly carry the contagion, and might be taken sick herself, as soon as she arrived; and mother couldn't go and take care of John, for the same reason; and there was nobody but me. Lurindy had a half-eagle that John had given her once to keep; and I got a little bundle together and took all the precautions Dr. Sprague advised; and he drove me off in his sleigh, and said, as he was going about sixteen miles to see a patient, he'd put me on the cars at the nearest station. Well, he stopped a minute at the post-office, and when he came out he had another letter for Lurindy. I took it, and, after a moment, concluded I'd better read it.
"What are you about?" says the Doctor; "your name isn't Lurindy, is it?"
"I wish it was," says I, "and then I shouldn't be here."
"Oh! you're sorry to leave Stephen?" says he. "Well, you can comfort yourself with reflecting that Lurindy's a great deal the best nurse."
As if that was any comfort! If Lurindy was the best nurse, she'd ought to have had the privilege of taking care of her own lover, and not of other folks's. Besides, for all I knew, Stephen would be dead before ever I came back, and here I was going away and leaving him! Well, I didn't feel so very bright; so I read the letter. The Doctor asked me what ailed John Talbot. I thought, if I told him that Miss Jane Talbot wrote now so that Lurindy shouldn't come, and that he was sick just as Stephen was, he wouldn't let me go. So I said I supposed he'd burnt his mouth, like the man in the South, eating cold pudding and porridge; men always cried out at a scratch. And he said, "Oh, do they?" and laughed.
After about two hours' driving, there came a scream as if all the panthers in Coos County were let loose to yell, and directly we stopped at a little place where a red flag was hung out. I asked the Doctor if they'd got the small-pox here, too; but before he could answer, the thunder running along the ground deafened me, and in a minute he had put me inside the cars and was off.
I was determined I wouldn't appear green before so many folks, though I'd never seen the cars before; so I took my seat, and paid my fare to Old Salem, and looked about me. Pretty soon a woman came bustling in from somewhere, and took the seat beside me. There she fidgeted round so that I thought I should have flown.
"Miss," says she, at length, "will you close your window? I never travel with a window open; my health's delicate."
I tried to shut it, but it wouldn't go up or down, till a gentleman put out his cane and touched it, and down it slid, like Signor Blitz. It did seem as if everything about the cars went by miracle. I thanked him, but I found afterward it would have been more polite not to have spoken. After that woman had done everything she could think of to plague and annoy the whole neighborhood, she got out at Ipswich, and somebody met her that looked just like our sheriff; and I shouldn't be a bit surprised to hear that she'd gone to jail. When she got out, somebody else got in, and took the same seat.
"Miss," says she, "will you have the goodness to open your window? this air is stifling."
And she did everything that the other woman didn't do. When she found I wouldn't talk, she turned to the young gentleman and lady that sat opposite, and that looked as if there was a great deal too much company in the cars, and found they wouldn't talk either, and at last she caught the conductor and made him talk.
AH this while we were swooping over the country in the most terrific manner. I thought how frightened mother and Lurindy'd be, if they should see me. It was no use trying to count the cattle or watch the fences, and the birch-trees danced rigadoons enough to make one dizzy, and we dashed through everybody's back-yard, and ran so close up to the kitchens that we could have seen what they had for dinner, if we had stayed long enough; and finally I made up my mind that the engine had run away with the driver, and John Talbot would never have me to tend him; and I began to wonder, as I saw the sparks and cinders and great clouds of steam and smoke, if those tornadoes that smash round so out West in the newspapers weren't just passenger-trains, like us, off the track,when all at once it grew as dark as midnight.
"Now," says I to myself, "it's certain. They've run the thing into the ground. However, we can't go long now."
And just as I was thinking about Korah and his troop, I remembered what the Doctor had told me about Salem Tunnel, and it began to grow lighter, and we began to go slower, and I picked up my wits and looked about me again. I had only time to notice that the young gentleman and lady looked very much relieved, and to shake my shawl from the clutch of the woman beside me, when we stopped at Salem, safe and sound.
I had a good deal of trouble to find Miss Talbot's house, but find it I did; and the first thing she gave me was a scolding for coming, thinking I was Lurindy, and her tongue wasn't much cooler when she found I wasn't; and then finally she said, as long as I was there, I might stay; and I went right up to see John, and a sight he was!
It was about three months I stayed and took the greater part of the care of him. Sometimes in the midnight, when he was quite beside himself, and dreaming out loud, it was about as good as a story-book to hear him. He told me of some great Indian cities where there were men in white, with skins swarthier than old red Guinea gold, and with great shawls all wrought in palm-leaves of gold and crimson bound on their heads, who could sink a ship with their lacs of rupees; and of islands where the shores came down to the water's edge and unrolled like a green ribbon, and brooks came sparkling down behind them, and great trees hung above like banners, and beautiful women came off on rafts and skiffs loaded with fruit,the islands set like jewels on the back of the sea, and the sky covered them with light and hung above them bluer than the hangings of the Tabernacle, and they sent long rivers of spice out on the air to entice the sailor back,islands where night never came. Sometimes, when he talked on so, I remembered that I'd felt rather touched up when I found that Lurindy'd had a sweetheart all this time, and mother knew it, and they'd never told me, and I wondered how it happened. Now it came across me, that, quite a number of years before, Lurindy had gone to Salem and worked in the mills. She didn't stay long, because it didn't agree with her,the neighbors said, because she was lazy. Lurindy lazy, indeed! There a'n't one of us knows how to spell the first syllable of that word. But that's where she must have got acquainted with John Talbot. He'd been up at our place, too; but I was over to Aunt Emeline's, it seems. But one night, about this time, I thought he was dying, he'd got so very low; and I thought how dreadful it was for Lurindy never to see him again, and how it was all my selfish fault, and how maybe he wouldn't 'a' died, if he'd had her to have taken care of him; and I suppose no convicted felon ever endured more remorse than I did, sitting and watching that dying man all that long and lonely night. But with the morning he was better,they always are a great deal worse when they are getting well from it; he laughed when the doctor came, and said he guessed he'd weathered that gale; and by-and-by he got well.
He meant to have gone up and seen Lurindy, after all, but his ship was ready for sea just as he was; and I thought it was about as well, for he wasn't looking his prettiest. And so he declared I was the neatest little trimmer that ever trod water, and he believed he should know a Ruggles by the cut of her jib, (I wonder if he'd have known Aunt Mimy,) and if ever he went master, he'd name his ship for me, and call it the Sister of Charity. And he kissed me on both cheeks, and looked serious enough when he sent his love to Lurindy, and went away; and no sooner was he gone than Miss Talbot said I'd better have the doctor myself; and I didn't sit up again for about three weeks.
All this time I hadn't heard a word from home, and, for all I knew, Stephen might be dead and buried. I didn't feel so very light-hearted, you may be sure, when one day Miss Talbot brought me a letter. It was from mother, and it seemed Stephen'd only had a bad fever, and had been up and gone home for more than a week. So I wrote back, as soon as I could, all about John, and how he'd gone to sea again, and how Miss Talbot, who set sights by John, was rather lonely, and I thought I'd keep her company a little longer, and try a spell in the mills, seeing that our neighbors didn't think a girl had been properly accomplished till she'd had a term or two in the factory. The fact was, I didn't want to go home just then; I thought, maybe, if I waited a bit, my face would get back to looking as it used to. So I worked in the piece-room, light work and good pay, sent mother and Lurindy part of my wages, and paid my board to Miss Talbot. She'd become quite attached to me, and I to her, for all she was such an old-maidish thing; but I'd got to thinking an old maid wasn't such a very bad thing, after all. Fourth of July came at last, and the mills were closed, and I went with some of the other girls on an excursion down the harbor; and when I got home, Miss Talbot told me my Cousin Stephen had been down to see me, and had been obliged to go home in the last train. I wondered why Stephen didn't stay, and then it flashed upon me that she'd told him all about it, and he didn't want to see me afterwards. I knew mother and Lurindy suspected why I didn't come home, and now, thinks I, they know; but I asked no questions.