Family Pride; Or, Purified by Suffering. Mary Jane Holmes
should take so much oversight of her uncle's affairs. It was natural, too, that he should, she knew, for, widely different as were their tastes and positions in life, there was a strong liking between the old man and the young, who, from having lived nine years in the family, took a kindly interest in everything pertaining to them.
"Uncle Ephraim did not pay the bills," Mrs. Lennox faltered at last, feeling intuitively how Morris' delicate sense of propriety would shrink from her next communication. "Mrs. Woodhull wrote that the expense should be nothing to me, and as she is fully able, and makes so much of Katy, I did not think it wrong."
"Lucy Lennox! I am astonished!" was all Morris could say, as the tinge of wounded pride dyed his cheek.
Kate was a connection—distant, it is true; but his blood was in her veins, and his inborn pride shrank from receiving so much from strangers, while he wondered at her mother, feeling more and more convinced that what he had so long suspected was literally true. Mrs. Lennox was weak, Mrs. Lennox was ambitious, and for the sake of associating her daughter with people whom the world had placed above her she would stoop to accept that upon which she had no claim.
"Mrs. Woodhull was so urgent and so fond of Katy; and then, I thought it well to give her the advantage of being with such people as compose that party, the very first in Canandaigua, besides some from New York," Mrs. Lennox began in self-defense, but Morris did not stop to hear more, and hurried off a second time, while Mrs. Lennox looked after him, wondering at the feeling which she called pride, and which she could not understand. "If Katy can go with the Woodhulls and their set, I certainly shall not prevent it," she thought, as she continued her arrangement of the parlor, wishing so much that it was more like what she remembered Mrs. Woodhull's to have been, fifteen years ago.
Of course that lady had kept up with the times, and if her old house was finer than anything Mrs. Lennox had ever seen, what must her new one be, with all the modern improvements? and, leaning her head upon the mantel, Mrs. Lennox thought how proud she would be could she live to see her daughter in similar circumstances to the envied Mrs. Woodhull, at that moment in the crowded car between Boston and Silverton, tired, hot, and dusty, worn out, and as nearly cross as a fashionable lady can be.
A call from Uncle Ephraim aroused her, and going out into the square entry she tied his gingham cravat, and then handing him the big umbrella, an appendage he took with him in sunshine and in storm, she watched him as he stepped into his one-horse wagon and drove briskly away in the direction of the depot, where he was to meet his niece.
"I wish Cousin Morris had offered his carriage," she thought, as the corn-colored and white wagon disappeared from view. "The train stops five minutes at West Silverton, and some of those grand people will be likely to see the turnout," and with a sigh as she doubted whether it were not a disgrace as well as an inconvenience to be poor, she repaired to the kitchen, where sundry savory smells betokened a plentiful dinner.
Bending over the sink, with her cap strings tucked back, her sleeves rolled up, and her short, purple calico shielded from harm by her broad, motherly check apron, Aunt Betsy stood cleaning the silvery onions, and occasionally wiping her dim old eyes as the odor proved too strong for her. At another table stood Aunt Hannah, deep in the mysteries of the light, white crust which was to cover the tender chicken boiling in the pot, while in the oven bubbled and baked the custard pie, remembered as Katy's favorite, and prepared for her coming by Helen herself—plain-spoken, blue-eyed Helen—now out in the strawberry beds, picking the few luscious berries which almost by a miracle had been coaxed to wait for Katy, who loved them so dearly. Like her mother, Helen had wondered how the change would impress her bright little sister, for she remembered well that even to her obtuse perceptions there had come a pang when, after only three months abiding in a place where the etiquette of life was rigidly enforced, she had returned to their homely ways, and felt that it was worse than vain to try to effect a change. But Helen's strong sense, with the help of two or three good cries, had carried her safely through, and her humble home amid the hills was very dear to her now. But she was Helen, as the mother had said; she was different from Katy, who might be lonely and homesick, sobbing herself to sleep in her patient sister's arms, as she did on that first night in Canandaigua, which Helen remembered so well.
"It's better, too, now, than when I came home," Helen thought, as with her rich, scarlet fruit she went slowly to the house. "Morris is here, and the new church, and if she likes she can teach in Sunday school, though maybe she will prefer going with Uncle Ephraim. He will be pleased if she does," and, pausing by the door, Helen looked across Fairy Pond in the direction of Silverton village, where the top of a slender spire was just visible—the spire of St. John's, built within the year, and mostly, as it was whispered, at the expense of Dr. Morris Grant, who, a zealous churchman himself, had labored successfully to instill into Helen's mind some of his own peculiar views, as well as to awaken in Mrs. Lennox's heart the professions which had lain dormant for as long a time as the little black-bound book had lain on the cupboard shelf, forgotten and unread.
How the doctor's views were regarded by the deacon's family we shall see, perhaps, by and by. At present our story has to do with Helen, holding her bowl of berries by the rear door and looking across the distant fields. With one last glance at the object of her thoughts she re-entered the house, where her mother was arranging the square table for dinner, bringing out the white stone china instead of the mulberry set kept for everyday use.
"We ought to have had some silver forks before Katy came home," she said, despondingly, as she laid by each plate the three-lined forks of steel, to pay for which Helen and Katy had picked huckleberries on the hills and dried apples from the orchard.
"Never mind, mother," Helen answered, cheerily; "if Katy is as she used to be, she will care more for us than for silver forks, and I guess she is, for I imagine it would take a great deal to make her anything but a warmhearted, merry little creature."
This was sensible Helen's tribute of affection to the little, gay, chattering butterfly, at that moment an occupant of Uncle Ephraim's corn-colored wagon, and riding with that worthy toward home, throwing kisses to every barefoot boy and girl she met, and screaming with delight as the old familiar waymarks met her view.
"There are the oxen, the darling oxen, and that's Aunt Betsy, with her dress pinned up as usual," she cried, when at last the wagon stopped before the door; and the four women stepped hurriedly out to meet her, almost smothering her with caresses, and then holding her off to see if she had changed.
She was very stylish in her pretty traveling dress of gray, made under Mrs. Woodhull's supervision, and nothing could be more becoming than her jaunty hat, tied with ribbons of blue, while the dainty kids, bought to match the dress, fitted her fat hands charmingly, and the little high-heeled boots of soft prunella were faultless in their style. She was very attractive in her personal appearance, and the mental verdict of the four females regarding her intently was something as follows: Mrs. Lennox detected unmistakable marks of the grand society she had been mingling in, and was pleased accordingly; Aunt Hannah pronounced her "the prettiest creeter she had ever seen;" Aunt Betsy decided that her hoops were too big and her clothes too fine for a Barlow; while Helen, who looked beyond dress, or style, or manner, straight into her sister's soft, blue eyes, brimming with love and tears, decided that Katy was not changed for the worse. Nor was she. Truthful, loving, simple-hearted and full of playful life she had gone from home, and she came back the same—never once thinking of the difference between the farmhouse and Mrs. Woodhull's palace, or if she did, giving the preference to the former.
"It was perfectly splendid to get home," she said, handing her gloves to Helen, her sunshade to her mother, her satchel to Aunt Hannah, and tossing her bonnet in the vicinity of the water pail—from which it was saved by Aunt Betsy, who, remembering the ways of her favorite child, put it carefully in the press, examining it closely first and wondering how much it cost.
Deciding that "it was a good thumpin' price," she returned to the kitchen, where Katy, dancing and curveting in circles, scarcely stood still long enough for them to see that in spite of boarding school fare, of which she had complained so bitterly, her cheeks were rounded, her eyes brighter, and her lithe little figure fuller than of old. She had improved in looks, but she did not appear to know it, or to guess how beautiful she