"Rose," said Dolly, about half an hour after, "don't your hair trouble you when you are sewing?"

Rose looked up in astonishment at this demonstration of interest on the part of her tormentor.

"I don't know," she answered; "I never thought any thing about it."

("Now don't go to cutting it," whispered Daffy; "it looks so pretty.")

"I think it is spoiling her eyes," said Dolly; "bring me the scissors, Rose," and Dolly notched her locks in and out, in as jagged a manner as she knew how. As for the offending eyes which Miss Tufts had complimented, they were too useful to be extinguished, and as there was no helping the "bird in her mouth," or the "pretty way she had with her," Dolly resolved to keep Rose out of sight as much as possible, with her sewing in the attic, which she designated as Rose's bed-room; and, in pursuance of this determination, she was ordered up there.

Every body knows what a country attic is, with its hot, sloping, pitch-oozing roof, with its indescribable paraphernalia of dried mullen, elder-blow, thorough-wort, and tansy; with its refuse garden-tools, boxes, baskets, and chests of odds and ends; its spider-webs and its rat-holes.

A salamander could scarcely have endured Dolly's attic that hot August noon. Rose sat down on the rickety old bed, under the heated eaves, to ply her needle. There was an opening in the roof, but the breeze seemed to blow over it, not into it. Rose made little progress with her sewing, for her temples began to throb painfully, and her fingers almost refused their office. Now she rubs her forehead and eyes, for a mist seems to be gathering over them; now she pulls her needle slowly out again, and now dizziness overpowers her, and she falls forward upon the floor.

"Now just hear that noise," exclaimed Dolly; "hear that young one capering round that attic instead of doing her work. I'll soon settle that:" and taking her little riding-whip from behind the old-fashioned claw-footed clock in the corner, she mounted up stairs into the attic.

Phew! how hot it was--the perspiration started at every step, and this fact did not tend to the diminution of Dolly's rage.

"You needn't play asleep now, because it won't do," said she, laying the whip vigorously round the prostrate child. "I shall whip you till you get up and ask my pardon, d'ye hear?"

There is not much satisfaction in whipping a person who does not appear to feel it, and Dolly turned Rose over to see what was the cause of her obtuseness; the face was so ghastly white that even she was for a moment daunted.

But it is _only_ for a moment. Going to the head of the stairs, she calls, "Daffy?"

"Look here, now," said Dolly, "see what comes of that young one's going into grave-yards, where all those horrid dead people lie moldering; take her up, Daffy, and carry her down into your bed-room; there's a whole day's work lost now for that nonsense; she won't be able to do another st.i.tch to-day."

Days, weeks, and months pa.s.sed on, no lightening of the heavy load; but now the active spirit which seemed always devising fresh means of torture for the child, was itself prostrated by sickness. A fever had settled upon Dolly's strong frame and iron nerves, and reduced her to almost childish helplessness. Ah--who glides so gently, so tirelessly up stairs and down, bearing burdens under which her feeble frame totters?

Who runs to the doctor's, and the apothecary's, who spreads the napkin over the little light-stand, that no rattle of spoons, gla.s.ses, and phials, may disturb the chance naps or jar the nerves of the invalid?

And who, when she has done her best to please, bears the querulous fretfulness of disease and ill temper, with lamb-like patience?

Who but Rose?

"Why are you crying?" asked Daffy, as Rose stood by the kitchen table upon which she had just set down some gla.s.ses. "What is the matter with you?"

"I am so sorry that I can not please Aunt Dolly; she says I have not done a single thing right for her since she was sick; and indeed, Daffy, I have tried _very_ hard," and Rose sobbed again: "I thought perhaps--that--Aunt--Dolly--might love me a little when she got well."

"Never you mind, Rose," said the distressed Daffy, twitching at her thread, "never you mind, she's a--a--there's a six-pence for you Rose."

"No, I thank you," said Rose, returning it, "I don't want money--I want--I want--somebody to love me," said the poor tired child, hiding her face in her ap.r.o.n.

"Never you mind," said Daffy, again, rubbing her sleeve into her own eyes, "you shall--you shall--

"Lor', I don't know what to say to you--Dolly's a--a--well she's sick and childish," said Daffy, ending her sentence in a very different manner from what she had intended.

"Perhaps it _is_ that," said the good little creature, brightening up, "I did not think of that. How cruel it was for me to think her unkind, when she was only sick; I am glad you said that, Daffy," and Rose wiped her eyes and went back into the sick chamber.

"It's awful to hold in when a body's so rampageous mad," said Daffy, jumping up and oversetting her basket of spools, cotton, needles, pins, etc. "I shouldn't wonder if I burst right out some day, to think of that poor, patient little creature being snubbed so, after being on her tired little legs these six weeks, traveling up and down, here and there, and lying on the floor side of Dolly's bed, night after night, and all after the way she has been treated too (for I have eyes if I don't say nothing), and as long as n.o.body hears me, I'll just out with it; Dolly has no more heart than that pine table," and Daffy gave it a vindictive thump.

"There--now I feel better--I wish I dared tell her so to her face--but it isn't in me; she makes me shrivel all up, when she puts on one of her horrid looks, and I can't be looking out for a new place with this rheumatism fastening on me every time the wind blows; I don't know what is to become of the poor child, bless her sweet face."

CHAPTER XVII.

It is a long lane that has no turning, and Dolly now began to get about once more.

"Dear me"--she exclaimed one morning, as she crawled round the shop, enveloped in a woolen shawl--"how every thing _has_ gone to rack and ruin since I have been sick; one month more sickness and I should have had to fail. See that yellow ribbon, all faded out, a lying in that window; when I was about, I moved it from the show-case to the window, and from the window to the show-case, according to the sun; three shillings a yard too, bought of Bixby & Co., the last time I went to the city; and there's the dress-caps put into the bonnet-boxes, and the bonnets put into the dress-cap boxes. Whose work is that I'd like to know? And as I live, if there isn't a hole in the cushion of my rocking chair, and the ta.s.sel torn off the window shade. O--d-e-a-r--m-e!" and Dolly sank into a chair, and looked pins and needles at the helpless Daffy.

"You forget how much we have had to do, don't you, Dolly? I have hardly sat down half an hour at a time. What with waiting on customers, and looking after housekeeping matters, I am as tired as an old horse. I tried to do the best I could, Dolly."

"That's what people always say when they have left every thing at sixes and sevens; but that don't put the color back into Bixby & Co.'s yellow ribbon, nor mend the shade ta.s.sel, nor the hole in my chair cushion. For mercy's sake, didn't you have Rose to help you? You make such a fuss about being tired."

"It took about all Rose's time to wait on you," answered Daffy.

"That's a good one!" exclaimed Dolly; "all on earth I wanted was to be kept quiet, take my medicines, and have a little gruel now and then. You can't make me believe that."

"It takes a great many steps to do even that," said Daffy, meekly; "but you are weak yet, Dolly, and a little thing troubles you."

"Do you mean to tell me that sickness has injured my mind?" said the incensed milliner; "that's a pretty story to get about among my customers. I could trim twenty bonnets if I chose. I am not so far gone as you think for; perhaps you was looking forward to the time when Dolly Smith would be taken off the sign-board, and Daffodil put up instead; perhaps Rose was to be your head apprentice; perhaps so."

"Oh, Dolly," said Daffy, shrinking away from her cutting tone, "how can you?"

"Well, I'm good for a _little_ while longer," said Dolly, "any how; now see that child," said she, pointing to Rose, who had just entered the door, "I bought those shoes just before I was sick, and now her toes are all out of 'em. See there, now. Do you suppose I can afford to find you in shoes at that rate?" and she seized Rose by the shoulders, pressing her thumb into her arm-pit, in a way to make her wince.

"I'm very sorry, Aunt Dolly, but I had so much running to do. Had I thought of it, I would have taken off my shoes."

"And worn your stockings all out," said Dolly, "that would have been a great saving, indeed."

"I would have taken them off, too, had I thought you would have liked it, Aunt Dolly."

"And gone barefoot here, in my house, so that the neighbors might say I didn't half clothe you. You never will pay for what you cost," said Dolly, pushing her roughly away. "You are just like your mother--ex-actly. Now begin to cry--that's mother, too, all over."

"If I were only with her," thought Rose, as she seated herself at her work.

Daffy stooped near to Rose, ostensibly to pick up a spool of thread, but in fact to whisper, "Never you mind, Rose; it is always the darkest just before day."

A few weeks of returning health and successful bonnet-making made the amiable Dolly a little more endurable to every body but our heroine; for she had settled it in her mind that scant fare and harsh treatment were the only means to keep Maria's child where she should be.

It was Sat.u.r.day morning, or, in other words, Dolly's baking-day. You might have known it by the way the tables and chairs spun round, the window-sashes flew up and down, and by the pop-gun curtness of Dolly's questions and answers. Every body gave Dolly a wide berth on Sat.u.r.day; even the cat kept out of doors till the last smoking loaf was taken from the oven, and Dolly had reseated herself at her usual post behind the counter. Poor Daffy dodged round in the most diplomatic manner, and never ventured a disclaimer for any sin, how heinous soever, with which Dolly might wrongfully charge her. With Rose it was _always_ 'Sat.u.r.day,'

and so she experienced no unusual flutter when Dolly bade her follow her into the kitchen, "as it was high time she learned to do the baking."

"Here, now," said Dolly, "down with you in that chair, and see if you can stone those raisins decently. Mind that you whistle all the while you are doing it, I don't want them all eat up; raisins cost something, they are very much like you in that respect."

Rose took the wooden bowl in her lap, and commenced her task, though she could not exactly understand how she was to learn to bake with her eyes fixed on the raisins.

"What is that?" asked Rose, as Dolly measured out some lard, and put it on the table.