Chapter 8

I was very hungry; and, though it was not yet six, it seemed a whole day since dinner-time. Miss Hannah made many apologies; and said, if I had only set a day, she would have had things as they ought to be. But it was a very good supper and she knew it! She didn't know but I was tired o' lobsters. And when I had eaten two of the biscuits, and had begun an attack on the hot gingerbread, she said humbly that she didn't know when she had had such bad luck, though Georgie and I were both satisfied. He did not speak more than once or twice during the meal. I do not think he was afraid of me, for we had had many a lunch together when he had taken me out fishing; but this was an occasion, and there was at first the least possible restraint over all the company, though I'm glad to say it soon vanished. We had two kinds of preserves, and some honey besides, and there was a pie with a pale, smooth crust, and three cuts in the top. It looked like a very good pie of its kind; but one can't eat every thing, though one does one's best. And we had big cups of tea; and, though Miss Hannah supposed I had never eaten with any thing but silver forks before, it happened luckily that I had, and we were very merry indeed. Miss Hannah told us several stories of the time she kept school, and gave us some reminiscences of her life at the Port; and Miss Cynthia looked at me as if she had heard them before, and wished to say, "I know she's having a good time." I think Miss Cynthia felt, after we were out in the woods, as if I were her company, and she was responsible for me.

I thanked them heartily when I came away, for I had had such a pleasant time. Miss Cynthia picked me a huge nosegay of her flowers, and whispered that she hoped I wouldn't forget about lending her the book. Poor woman! she was so young,--only a girl yet, in spite of her having lived more than fifty years in that plain, dull home of hers, in spite of her faded face and her grayish hair. We came away in the rattling wagon. Georgie sat up in his place with a steady hand on the reins, and keeping a careful lookout ahead, as if he were steering a boat through a rough sea.

We passed the house were the auction had been, and it was all shut up. The cat sat on the doorstep waiting patiently, and I felt very sorry for her; but Georgie said there were neighbours not far off, and she was a master hand for squirrels. I was glad to get sight of the sea again, and to smell the first stray whiff of salt air that blew in to meet us as we crossed the marshes. I think the life in me must be next of kin to the life of the sea, for it is drawn toward it strangely, as a little drop of quicksilver grows uneasy just out of reach of a greater one.

"Good-night, Georgie!" said I; and he nodded his head a little as he drove away to take the horse home. "Much obliged to you for my ride," said he, and I knew in a minute that his father or one of the aunts had cautioned him not to forget to make his acknowledgments. He had told me on the way down that he had baited his nets all ready to set that evening. I knew he was in a hurry to go out, and it was not long before I saw his boat pushing off. It was after eight o'clock, and the moon was coming up pale and white out of the sea, while the west was still bright after the clear sunset.

I have a little model of a fishing dory that Georgie made for me, with its sprit-sail and killick and painter and oars and gaff all cleverly cut with the clumsiest of jackknives. I care a great deal for the little boat; and I gave him a better knife before I came away, to remember me by; but I am afraid its shininess and trig shape may have seemed a trifle unmanly to him. His father's had been sharpened on the beach-stones to clean many a fish, and it was notched and dingy; but this would cut; there was no doubt about that. I hope Georgie was sorry when we said good-by. I'm sure I was.

A solemn, careful, contented young life, with none of the playfulness or childishness that belong to it,--this is my little fisherman, whose memory already fades of whatever tenderness his dead mother may have given him. But he is lucky in this, that he has found his work and likes it; and so I say, "May the sea prove kind to him! and may he find the Friend those other fishermen found, who were mending their nets on the shores of Galilee! and may he make the harbour of heaven by and by after a stormy voyage or a quiet one, whichever pleases God!"

HOW LILY GOT THE CAT.

When the twins were about as big as last year's chickens, they had the measles.

It was in the month of May, and there was a great deal to be done just then.

There was Celestia's flower-bed to dig into; there were Mary's chickens to kiss to death, and Aunt Ann's bowls of starch and gravy to upset. And in the shop there was the cinnamon-jar to be filled up with Scotch snuff, and the cream of tartar to mix with the soda, and the molasses to be set running.

Besides these, there were a great many dry wells to be dug in the yard, and brick-paint to be pounded, and the gate to be pulled off its hinges, and as many more pieces of mischief as there were minutes in a day.

It was Davie who had all these things to do, though. Lily, sweet little blossom, only followed around after him and said "Yes."

But as for Davie, he would willingly have done everybody's work all over the city, from the President of the University, wearing his four-cornered hat on Commencement Day, down to the charcoal man who went by a great many times a day making the prettiest noise you ever heard, and looking as though he were having the best time in the world, with nobody to worry him about washing his face or keeping his clothes clean.

But the mischief had to wait now; for the twins were lying in the cradle all day long, with their faces as red as poppies, and their poor little eyes shut up and swollen.

"It is as good as a poor play to see how beautifully the measles have come out. Davie and Lily will get along all right now, as sure as A is apple-dumpling, only we must see to it that they don't take any cold," said Aunt Ann, giving them a good drink of thoroughwort, and then hurrying off to attend to the duties of the shop, with her glasses in her hand and a pair of scissors dangling at her side by a long green braid.

It didn't seem much like a poor play, or any kind of a play, though to the twins to lie there in a bed of nettles with their eyes full of hot cotton and their throats full of pepper, and the air full of people making up dreadful faces at them, all with sore eyes and horrid red noses.

So there they lay in the cradle while a blue-bottle-fly buzzed shrilly from a dark corner where a fat gray spider had tied him up by his feet and was sharpening her bill ready to make chops of him.

The milkman whopped at the back gate; the cracked school-bell around the corner rang out long and loud; somewhere a carpenter was pounding stroke upon stroke; and, as a background, beneath all came up the heavy grinding roll of wheels and the clashing beat of hoofs upon the rough pavement.

The tall brass clock ticked and ticked and held up its hands in solemn surprise at finding it was only ten o'clock after all. Why! it seemed already as long as a whole day since the bell on the First Baptist church had struck nine.

Then Lily began to cry with a gentle little noise, about as though a humming-bird was fluttering his wings against the cup of a trumpet-flower.

"What is the matter, Lily?" asked Davie, feebly. "What you crying for?"

What was the _matter_? What _wasn't_ the matter, one would think!

But Lily only whimpered, "I want the cat."

"I'll get her for you, Lily," said Davie, trying to fumble his blind way out of the cradle and start in search of her.

Fortunately for the ending of the story, somebody was in the room and was ready to pick Davie up when his weak little legs suddenly doubled up like a pocket-knife and dropped him on the nursery floor. So, though Lily did not get the cat, neither did Davie get, what Aunt Ann called "his death o' cold."

In due time, the measles turned and went their way wandering off around after other children, one generation and then another. Lily's cat lived out her nine lives and then turned into sage and catnip in the back garden.

And now, after a long, long while, Davie and Lily have a birthday. Not the next one, nor the second, nor the third, nor, if the truth must be told, the fiftieth. But a birthday that came running to meet them with glasses on and a flourishing of the almond-tree.

This time the twins' birthday is not kept in the gray old mansion, with the shop below and the garden behind, where Aunt Ann rattled her keys and lived out her bustling life. Nor does Aunt Ann come to help keep it. Her hands have long been folded in quiet rest; and it is years, too, since Mary and Celestia went where the shining is brighter than the sunlight and softer than the moon.

But the twins are not alone. Bless you! I should think not! First, here is Amy Starbird, with a pair of pictures she has painted from the very paint-box Davie gave her on her own last birthday. And here is Amy's daughter Rose, with twin marble babies tucked up in a marble crib on top of a marble match box; and Rose, all this time, is Davie's daughter as well as Amy's.

And here is a bright bevy of boys and girls, some of them with Lily's blue eyes and Lily's fair hair, each bringing some double gift for their mother and Uncle Davie.

There are pairs of wristings and pairs of neckties, books in two volumes, and double-frosted cakes; there is a pair of china slippers with a pair of babies on the toes; there is a crystal vase held up by two crystal swans, and a vase of silver in the form of a chariot drawn by two doves; for everything must be in pairs for the birthday of the twins.

Then, last of all, Davie gave to Lily a covered box, and when she opened it she saw within an exquisitely embroidered velvet pen-wiper, with a beautiful tortoise-shell cat lying upon it, and, playfully jumping over her back, were two of the most charming tortoise-shell kittens ever seen.

The mother-cat had around her neck a blue ribbon, and on the ribbon was written these words,--

"Here is your cat, Lily,--after fifty years."

FRANCES LEE.

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