Chapter LXXXI

The rain had poured down without mitigation for seven consecutive days; the roads were in a very plaster-y state; dissevered branches of trees lay scattered upon the ground; tubs and hogsheads, which careful housewives had placed under dripping spouts, were full to overflowing; the soaked hides of the cattle looked sleek as their owners’ pomatum’d heads of a Sunday; the old hen stood poised on one leg at the barn-door, till even her patience had given out; the farmers had mended all the old hoe and rake handles, read the Almanac through and through, and worn all the newspapers and village topics threadbare, when the welcome sun at last broke through the clouds, and every little and big puddle in the road hastened joyfully to reflect his beams.

Old Doctor Hall started down cellar for his “eleven o’clock mug of cider;” to his dismay he found his slippered pedestals immersed in water, which had risen above the last step of the cellar-stairs.

“A pretty piece of work this rain has made, Mis. Hall,” said the doctor, stamping his wet feet and blowing his nose, as he returned from his visit to the lower regions; “the water has overflowed the cellar, and got most up to those hams that you set such store by. You’d better tell Bridget to climb over the heads of those barrels, and get the hams out before they are clean sp’iled.”

Before the last words had fairly left the doctor’s mouth the old lady’s cap-strings were seen flying towards the kitchen.

“I shan’t do it, for anybody,” exclaimed the new help, as she placed her red arms a-kimbo. “I’m not going to risk my neck going over those tittlish barrels in that dark cellar, for all the hams that was ever cured.”

“You can carry a lamp with you,” suggested the old lady.

“I shan’t do it, I tell you,” said the vixen; “help is skerse out here in the country, and I can get a new place before sundown, if I like.”

“Katy!” screamed the old lady, with a shrill voice, “Katy!”

Katy started from her corner and came out into the entry, in obedience to the summons.

“Come here, Katy; Bridget is as contrary as a mule, and won’t go into the cellar to get those hams. I cannot go in after ’em, nor the doctor either, so you must go in and bring them out yourself. Climb up on those barrel heads, and then feel your way along to the further corner; go right down the cellar-stairs now, quick.”

“Oh, I cannot! I dare not!” said Katy, trembling and shrinking back, as the old lady pushed her along toward the cellar-door.

“I’m so afraid,” said the child, peeping down the cellar-stairs, with distended eyes, “oh, don’t make me go down in that dark place, grandma.”

“Dark, pooh!” said the old lady; “what are you afraid of? rats? There are not more than half-a-dozen in the whole cellar.”

“Can’t Bridget go?” asked Katy; “oh, I’m so afraid.”

“Bridget won’t, so there’s an end of that, and I’m not going to lose a new girl I’ve just got, for your obstinacy; so go right down this minute, rats or no rats.”

“Oh, I can’t! if you kill me I can’t,” said Katy, with white lips, and clinging to the side of the cellar door.

“But I say you shall,” said the old lady, unclinching Katy’s hands; “don’t you belong to me, I’d like to know? and can’t I do with you as I like?”

“No!” said Ruth, receiving the fainting form of her frightened child; “no!”

“Doctor! doctor!” said the old lady, trembling with rage; “are you master in this house or not?”

“Yes—when you are out of it,” growled the doctor; “what’s to pay now?”

“Why, matter enough. Here’s Ruth,” said the old lady, not noticing the doctor’s taunt; “Ruth interfering between me and Katy. If you will order her out of the house, I will be obliged to you. I’ve put up with enough of this meddling, and it is the last time she shall cross this threshold.”

“You never spoke a truer word,” said Ruth, “and my child shall cross it for the last time with me.”

“Humph!” said the doctor, “and you no better than a beggar! The law says if the mother can’t support her children, the grand-parents shall do it.”

“The mother can—the mother will,” said Ruth. “I have already earned enough for their support.”

“Well, if you have, which I doubt, I hope you earned it honestly,” said the old lady.

Ruth’s heightened color was the only reply to this taunt. Tying her handkerchief over Katy’s bare head, and wrapping the trembling child in a shawl she had provided, she bore her to a carriage, where Mr. Walter and his brother-in-law, (Mr. Grey,) with little Nettie, awaited them; the door was quickly closed, and the carriage whirled off. The two gentlemen alternately wiped their eyes, and looked out the window as Katy, trembling, crying, and laughing, clung first to her mother, and then to little Nettie, casting anxious, frightened glances toward the prison she had left, as the carriage receded.

Weeping seemed to be infectious. Ruth cried and laughed, and Mr. Grey and Mr. Walter seemed both to have lost the power of speech. Little Nettie was the first to break the spell by offering to lend Katy her bonnet.

“We will do better than that,” said Ruth, smiling through her tears; “we will get one for Katy when we stop. See here, Katy;” and Ruth tossed a purse full of money into Katy’s lap. “You know, mother said she would come for you as soon as she earned the money.”

“Yes, and I knew you would, mother; but—it was so very—” and the child’s lips began to quiver again.

“She is so excited, poor thing,” said Ruth, drawing her to her bosom; “don’t talk about it now, Katy; lean your head on me and take a nice nap;” and the weary child nestled up to her mother, while Nettie put one finger on her lip, with a sagacious look at Mr. Walter, as much as to say, “I will keep still if you will.”

“She does not resemble you as much as Nettie does,” said Mr. Grey to Ruth, in a whisper.

“She is like her father,” said Ruth; the “resemblance is quite startling when she is sleeping; the same breadth of forehead, the same straight nose, and full lips.

“Yes, it has often been a great solace to me,” said Ruth, after a pause, “to sit at Katy’s bedside, and aid memory by gazing at features which recalled so vividly the loved and lost;” and she kissed the little nestler.

“Nettie,” said Mr. Walter, “is Ruth 2d, in face, form and feature.”

“I wish the resemblance ended there,” whispered Ruth, with a sigh. “These rose-tinted dawns too often foreshadow the storm-cloud.”