The Wide, Wide World. Warner Susan
with her if she could help it, for then she was regularly called to the old lady's side and obliged to go through a course of kissing, fondling, and praising she would gladly have escaped. In her aunt's presence this was seldom attempted, and never permitted to go on. Miss Fortune was sure to pull Ellen away and bid her mother "stop that palavering," avowing that "it made her sick." Ellen had one faint hope that her aunt would think of sending her to school, as she employed her in nothing at home, and certainly took small delight in her company; but no hint of the kind dropped from Miss Fortune's lips, and Ellen's longing look for this as well as for a word from her mother was daily doomed to be ungratified and to grow more keen by delay.
One pleasure only remained to Ellen in the course of the day, and that one she enjoyed with the carefulness of a miser. It was seeing the cows milked, morning and evening. For this she got up very early, and watched till the men came for the pails; and then away she bounded out of the house and to the barn-yard. There were the milky mothers, five in number, standing about, each in her own corner of the yard or cow-house, waiting to be relieved of their burden of milk. They were fine gentle animals, in excellent condition, and looking every way happy and comfortable; nothing living under Mr. Van Brunt's care was ever suffered to look otherwise. He was always in the barn or barn-yard at milking time, and under his protection Ellen felt safe and looked on at her ease. It was a very pretty scene—at least she thought so. The gentle cows standing quietly to be milked as if they enjoyed it, and munching the cud; and the white stream of milk foaming into the pails; then there was the interest of seeing whether Sam or Johnny would get through first; and how near Jane or Dolly would come to rivalling Streaky's fine pailful; and at last Ellen allowed Mr. Van Brunt to teach herself how to milk. She began with trembling, but learnt fast enough; and more than one pailful of milk that Miss Fortune strained had been, unknown to her, drawn by Ellen's fingers. These minutes in the farm-yard were the pleasantest in Ellen's day. While they lasted every care was forgotten, and her little face was as bright as the morning; but the milking was quickly over, and the cloud gathered on Ellen's brow almost as soon as the shadow of the house fell upon it.
"Where is the post-office, Mr. Van Brunt?" she asked one morning, as she stood watching the sharpening of an axe upon the grindstone. The axe was in that gentleman's hand, and its edge carefully laid to the whirling stone, which one of the farm boys was turning.
"Where is the post-office? Why, over to Thirlwall, to be sure," replied Mr. Van Brunt, glancing up at her from his work. "Faster, Johnny."
"And how often do letters come here?" said Ellen.
"Take care, Johnny!—some more water—mind your business, will you!—Just as often as I go to fetch 'em, Miss Ellen, and no oftener."
"And how often do you go, Mr. Van Brunt?"
"Only when I've some other errand, Miss Ellen; my grain would never be in the barn if I was running to post-office every other thing, and for what ain't there too. I don't get a letter but two or three times a year, I s'pose, though I call, I guess, half-a-dozen times."
"Ah, but there's one there now, or soon will be, I know, for me," said Ellen. "When do you think you'll go again, Mr. Van Brunt?"
"Now if I'd ha' knowed that I'd ha' gone to Thirlwall yesterday—I was within a mile of it. I don't see as I can go this week anyhow in the world; but I'll make some errand there the first day I can, Miss Ellen, that you may depend on. You shan't wait for your letter a bit longer than I can help."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Van Brunt, you are very kind. Then the letters never come except when you go after them?"
"No—yes, they do come once in a while by old Mr. Swaim, but he ha'n't been here this great while."
"And who's he?" said Ellen.
"Oh, he's a queer old chip that goes round the country on all sorts of errands; he comes along once in a while. That'll do, Johnny. I believe this here tool is as sharp as I have any occasion for."
"What's the use of pouring water upon the grindstone?" said Ellen; "why wouldn't it do as well dry?"
"I can't tell, I am sure," replied Mr. Van Brunt, who was slowly drawing his thumb over the edge of the axe; "your questions are a good deal too sharp for me, Miss Ellen; I only know it would spoil the axe, or the grindstone, or both most likely."
"It's very odd," said Ellen thoughtfully; "I wish I knew everything. But, oh dear! I am not likely to know anything," said she, her countenance suddenly changing from its pleased inquisitive look to a cloud of disappointment and sorrow. Mr. Van Brunt noticed the change.
"Ain't your aunt going to send you to school, then?" said he.
"I don't know," said Ellen, sighing; "she never speaks about it, nor about anything else. But I declare I'll make her!" she exclaimed, changing again. "I'll go right in and ask her, and then she'll have to tell me. I will! I am tired of living so. I'll know what she means to do, and then I can tell you what I must do."
Mr. Van Brunt, seemingly dubious about the success of this line of conduct, stroked his chin and his axe alternately two or three times in silence, and finally walked off. Ellen, without waiting for her courage to cool, went directly into the house.
Miss Fortune, however, was not in the kitchen; to follow her into her secret haunts, the dairy, cellar, or lower kitchen, was not to be thought of. Ellen waited awhile, but her aunt did not come, and the excitement of the moment cooled down. She was not quite so ready to enter upon the business as she had felt at first; she had even some qualms about it.
"But I'll do it," said Ellen to herself; "it will be hard, but I'll do it!"
CHAPTER XIV
For my part, he keeps me here rustically
At home, or, to speak more properly, stays
Me here at home unkept.
—As You Like It.
The next morning after breakfast Ellen found the chance she rather dreaded than wished for. Mr. Van Brunt had gone out; the old lady had not left her room, and Miss Fortune was quietly seated by the fire, busied with some mysteries of cooking. Like a true coward, Ellen could not make up her mind to bolt at once into the thick of the matter, but thought to come to it gradually—always a bad way.
"What is that, Aunt Fortune?" said she, after she had watched her with a beating heart for about five minutes.
"What is what?"
"I mean, what is that you are straining through the colander into that jar?"
"Hop-water."
"What is it for?"
"I'm scalding this meal with it to make turnpikes."
"Turnpikes!" said Ellen; "I thought turnpikes were high, smooth roads with toll-gates every now and then—that's what mamma told me they were."
"That's all the kind of turnpikes your mamma knew anything about, I reckon," said Miss Fortune, in a tone that conveyed the notion that Mrs. Montgomery's education had been very incomplete. "And indeed," she added immediately after, "if she had made more turnpikes and paid fewer tolls, it would have been just as well, I'm thinking."
Ellen felt the tone, if she did not thoroughly understand the words. She was silent a moment; then remembering her purpose, she began again. "What are these, then, Aunt Fortune?"
"Cakes, child, cakes! turnpike cakes—what I raise the bread with."
"What, those little brown cakes I have seen you melt in water and mix in the flour when you make bread?"
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