Chapter LXVI

That first miserable day at school! Who that has known it—even with a mother’s kiss burning on the cheek, a big orange bumping in the new satchel, and a promise of apple-dumplings for dinner, can review it without a shudder? Torturing—even when you can run home and “tell mother” all your little griefs; when every member of the home circle votes it “a shame” that Johnny Oakes laughed because you did not take your alphabet the natural way, instead of receiving it by inoculation, (just as he forgets that he did;) torturing—when Bill Smith, and Tom Simms, with whom you have “swapped alleys,” and played “hockey,” are there with their familiar faces, to take off the chill of the new schoolroom; torturing—to the sensitive child, even when the teacher is a sunny-faced young girl, instead of a prim old ogre. Poor little Katy! her book was before her; but the lines blurred into one indistinct haze, and her throat seemed filling to suffocation with long-suppressed sobs. The teacher, if he thought anything about it, thought she had the tooth-ache, or ear-ache, or head-ache; and Katy kept her own secret, for she had read his face correctly, and with a child’s quick instinct, stifled down her throbbing little heart.

To the doctor, and “Mis. Hall,” with their anti-progressive notions, a school was a school. The committee had passed judgment on it, and I would like to know who would be insane enough to question the decision of a School Committee? What did the committee care, that the consumptive teacher, for his own personal convenience, madly excluded all ventilation, and heated the little sheet-iron stove hotter than Shadrack’s furnace, till little heads snapped, and cheeks crimsoned, and croup stood ready at the threshold to seize the first little bare throat that presented its perspiring surface to the keen frosty air? What did they care that the desks were so constructed, as to crook spines, and turn in toes, and round shoulders? What did they care that the funnel smoked week after week, till the curse of “weak eyes” was entailed on their victims for a lifetime? They had other irons in the fire, to which this was a cipher. For instance: the village pump was out of repair, and town-meeting after town-meeting had been called, to see who shouldn’t make its handle fly. North Gotham said it was the business of East Gotham; East Gotham said the pump might rot before they’d bear the expense; not that the East Gothamites cared for expense—no; they scorned the insinuation, but they’d have North Gotham to know that East Gotham wasn’t to be put upon. Jeremiah Stubbs, a staunch North Gothamite, stopped buying molasses and calico at “Ezekial Tibbs’ East Gotham Finding Store;” and Ezekial Tibbs forbade, under penalty of losing his custom, the carpenter who was repairing his pig-sty, from buying nails any more of Jeremiah Stubbs, of North Gotham; matches were broken up; “own cousins” ceased to know one another, and the old women had a millenial time of it over their bohea, discussing and settling matters; no marvel that such a trifle as a child’s school should be overlooked. Meantime there stood the pump, with its impotent handle, high and dry; “a gone sucker,” as Mr. Tibbs facetiously expressed it.

“You can’t go to school to-day, Katy, it is washing-day,” said old Mrs. Hall; “go get that stool, now sit down on it, at my feet, and let me cut off those foolish dangling curls.”

“Mamma likes them,” said the child.

“I know it,” replied the old lady, with a malicious smile, as she gathered a cluster of them in one hand and seized the scissors with the other.

“Papa liked them,” said Katy, shrinking back.

“No, he didn’t,” replied the old lady; “or, if he did, ’twas only to please your foolish mother; any way they are coming off; if I don’t like them, that’s enough; you are always to live with me now, Katy; it makes no difference what your mother thinks or says about anything, so you needn’t quote her; I’m going to try to make a good girl of you, i. e. if she will let you alone; you are full of faults, just as she is, and I shall have to take a great deal of pains with you. You ought to love me very much for it, better than anybody else in the world—don’t you?”

(No response from Katy.)

“I say, Katy, you ought to love me better than anybody else in the world,” repeated the old lady, tossing a handful of the severed ringlets down on the carpet. “Do you, Katy?”

“No, ma’am,” answered the truthful child.

“That tells the whole story,” said the doctor, as he started up and boxed Katy’s ears; “now go up and stay in your room till I send for you, for being disrespectful to your grandmother.”

“Like mother—like child,” said the old lady, as Katy half shorn, moved like a culprit out of the room; then gathering up in her apron the shining curls, she looked on with a malicious smile, while they crisped and blackened in the glowing Lehigh fire.

But miserable as were the week-days—Sunday, after all, was the dreadful day for Katy; the long—long—long Sunday, when every book in the house was put under lock and key; when even religious newspapers, tracts, and memoirs, were tabooed; when the old people, who fancied they could not go to church, sat from sunrise to sunset in their best clothes, with their hands folded, looking speechlessly into the fire; when there was no dinner; when the Irish girl and the cat, equally lawless and heretical, went to see their friends; when not a sound was heard in the house, save the ticking of the old claw-footed-clock, that stood in the entry; when Katy crept up to her little room, and crouching in a corner, wondered if God was good—why he let her papa die, and why he did not help her mamma, who tried so hard to earn money to bring her home.

The last bright golden beam of the Sabbath sun had slowly faded away. One by one the stars came gliding out. He who held them all in their places, listening ever to the ceaseless music of their motion, yet bent a pitying ear to the stifled sob of a troubled child. Softly—sweetly—fell the gentle dew of slumber on weary eyelids, while angels came to minister. Tears glittered still on Katy’s long lashes, but the little lips parted with a smile, murmuring “Papa.” Sleep on—dream on—little Katy. He who noteth the sparrow’s fall, hath given his angels charge to keep thee.