"I'll never do such a thing again, mother,--never! I felt as if I'd stabbed her to the heart. Do--do you s'pose it'll make her--turn agin me?"

"Gracious! No; what an idee! Why, you've worked yourself into a regular chill, I declare. Go home, and tell Hannah to fix you up a good stiff dose of Jamaica ginger right away. Well, I never!"

"Then you think she's coming out of it all right?"

"I think she's enough sight better'n you'll be, if you don't go and do what I tell you this minute; now hustle!" and Jasper, knowing his mother's decisive ways, walked away without more ado.

But not home; not to Hannah's ministering care and the Jamaica ginger, but to a little cove by the sea where, with his body thrown flat on the rocks, and his face buried in his hands, he wept like a child himself, for pure sympathy with that orphaned girl who was so dear to him.

CHAPTER IX.

REBELLION.

But the poor, perhaps fortunately, have little time for mourning. As the first hint of the long winter came in on the September's equinox, poor Sara had to rouse herself, and she began to look about her with despairing eyes. Friends, so far, had been most kind, and the little family had never actually suffered; but now that the few summer resources for picking up an occasional dollar were ended, what had they to look forward to in the long months to come?

Reuben Olmstead had owned the poor little cottage in which they lived, so a roof over their heads might be counted on, but not much besides; for his share in the last fishing-expedition, promptly paid over by Jasper, had soon been swallowed up by the family's needs, so greatly reduced had they become before it arrived.

Sara was not, perhaps, a good financier,--few girls of barely eighteen are,--but she had done her best, and her feeling had often been that of a mother-bird, wearied by a long day's search for worms, who always finds the mouths stretched wide as ever, clamoring for more. The task of filling those mouths seemed a hopeless one.

"What can I do?" she thought, as she sat huddled over the tiny fire one day, waiting for the children to come home from school. "The flour is all gone, and the potatoes nearly, and so little wood!"

She shivered, then turned to see if the sleeping baby were well covered, and resumed her dreary musing.

"I don't wonder our people almost welcome a wreck when they are so poor.

Of course it's wicked; but if there must be storms, and ships have got to go to pieces--G.o.d forgive me! I believe I was almost wishing for one, myself! If there were only something I could do; but what can I? Here are the children; they must be cared for, and the baby above all,--what can one do when there's a baby to look after? I suppose some would say, ask her people to take him; but who is there? Her mother is dead, and her father a deaf old man who can't live long; she had no sisters, and her brothers are sailors who are off all the time. There's only her cousin 'Liza, and I couldn't give the poor little fellow up to that hard, coa.r.s.e woman; besides, I promised her and I promised father to care for him myself. If I could go out into the world, it seems as if I might find a place; I am strong and young, and not afraid to work, but here there is no opportunity."

Then, after a long, silent gaze into the fire,--

"G.o.d certainly knows all about it; he could help me if he would; I wonder why he doesn't? Does he treat us as I sometimes do baby--corner us all up till there's only one way to go, and so make us walk straight?

But to walk straight now looks as if it led to starvation."

Her head drooped lower, and her thoughts grew too roving and uncontrolled for connected expression; in fact, her brooding had become almost actual dreaming, when the door swung back with a bang, and the two children rushed in, Molly screaming with laughter and resistance as she fled before Morton, who was close at her heels.

"Sara! Sara! make him stop! I"--

She was stopped herself by a sudden crash, and all three stood in blank affright and astonishment as the oval, gilt-framed mirror, which hung between the front windows, fell to the floor in the midst of them, and shivered into a dozen pieces. It had been one of the proud possessions of their own mother when she came to the house as a bride, and was the princ.i.p.al ornament of their humble living-room, as all swiftly remembered; and besides, there was that gloomy superst.i.tion which had been instilled into them since infancy,--a broken mirror meant death and disaster.

Even Sara was not proof against this. In fact, there are scarcely any of us, no matter how good and wise we may be, who do not have some such pet remnant of barbarism clinging to our souls; and Sara now stood, pale and aghast as the others, looking at that fateful, shattered gla.s.s! The baby, thus rudely awakened, set up a lively scream, which broke the spell of awed silence that seemed to have held them all until now.

Molly, with a flounce of resignation, cried out,--

"Well, it's more trouble, of course, but we're getting used to it fast!"

Sara said, rather sharply,--

"Go get the baby, Molly, and be quiet, if you can; and, Morton, help me gather up the bits." While Morton, who was already down on the floor, remarked in his slow, thoughtful way,--

"I don't see what we've done, Sara, to have things keep happening so dreadful, do you?"

Sara did not know. Just then the usual sweetness of her nature seemed turning to gall. If she could have put her thoughts into words, she would have said it seemed as if some awful Thing, instead of the G.o.d of love, sat up aloft mocking at her wretchedness; and she felt for the instant, as she crossed the floor after the old broom, an impotent rage, almost scorn, of this mighty power which could stoop to deal such malignant blows against a helpless girl.

It was but a moment,--one of those fierce, instantaneous rebellions of the natural heart, which overcome us all at times of utter wretchedness,--then, just as she laid hands on the broom, there came a cry, a choked, wondering cry from Morton,--"Sara! O Sara!"

She turned; what now?

The boy, in removing the larger fragments of the gla.s.s from the boards at the back of the frame, had come across something slipped in between, and now held it up with shaking hands and shining eyes. It was a neat pile of greenbacks, laid out straight and trim, with a paper band pinned around them. Sara looked, comprehended, and felt like falling on her knees in repentant grat.i.tude!

But, instead, she sprang towards him, and caught the package from his hands. Twice she counted it; could it be possible? Here were three hundred dollars; a sum that seemed like a fortune to the girl.

Three hundred dollars between them and suffering; and the Thing up aloft became instantly a Friend, a Father, and a G.o.d!

Molly, attempting a pirouette with the baby, now stumbled amid the _debris_, and for an instant distracted Sara's attention, as she sprang to steady her, and catch the imperilled little one from her irresponsible arms, and Morton remarked hesitantly,--

"Say, Sara, I guess I wasn't feeling just right about things, and I declare this makes me sort of ashamed!"

"Ashamed? Pshaw! Well, it doesn't me!" cried Molly, dancing about. "Now I can have a new dress, and some shoes--

"'Way hay, storm along, John, Old Stormy, he'"--

"Molly! Molly! How often must I tell you not to sing those coa.r.s.e sailor songs? Now, do sit down, before you cut your feet on this gla.s.s. Morton, you see poor mother did divide that money, after all. I presume she left out just a few dollars for every-day expenses, which was what baby threw in the fire, but this must be the bulk of the money that father brought from Squire Scrantoun's."

"Yes," said Morton, still with solemn emphasis; "and perhaps, Sara, broken looking-gla.s.ses don't always mean that somebody's going to die; if they did, this would have broken last summer, wouldn't it?"

"I don't know just what to think, Morton," squeezing the baby for very joy, while this great gladness made her eyes brilliant, "only I guess we aren't forgotten, after all! I want to remember that always now, no matter how sorrowful we may be; will you help me, Morton?"

"If I don't forget myself," said her brother; "it's kinder hard to feel good when everything goes contrary, but I'll try;" and as he spoke, she saw him select a sliver of the broken gla.s.s, and, wrapping it in a bit of paper, lay it away in a drawer where he was allowed to keep his few treasures.

"Why, what's that for, Morton?" she asked curiously.

He flushed a little, then said very low,--

"It's to make us remember," and she felt that the whole circ.u.mstance must have made a deep impression on the boy.

Not so Molly. She mourned the gla.s.s because now she had no better place before which to arrange her curls than in one of the larger pieces left, which, being cracked, gave her such a resemblance to a certain old fisherman with a broken nose, who was her special aversion, that she hated to look at herself, which was, possibly, not a bad thing, for she was in danger of growing vain of her pretty, piquant face these days.

But for a long time Sara went about the humble home with a humbler heart. She felt that she had been a traitor to her Kingly Father, and took the pretty little white cross madame had sent her and pinned it up, face inwards, against the wall.

"I am not worthy to wear it," she said, "until I have done something to atone for my rebellion."

But the winter pa.s.sed quietly away; and, if no opportunity offered for any great deed of atonement, there were always the little worries of every day to be patiently borne, not the least of which was a sort of nagging spirit which had gone abroad among the old neighbors and friends of the Olmstead family. Possibly they were a trifle jealous of Sara's looks and bearing; it may be those who had predicted failure for her, "because them as keeps so stiddy to books ain't apt to hev much sense at things what caounts," were disappointed that she succeeded so well, or,--let us be charitable,--perhaps they thought the children all needed a little maternal scolding on general principles; anyhow, whatever they thought, there was something unpleasant in the air.

Sara felt it keenly, and drew still farther into her sh.e.l.l of reticence, keeping closely to her studies and home duties, until the neighbors had some excuse for their plaints that "she didn't care for nothin' nor n.o.body but them pesky books!"

One day Mrs. Upd.y.k.e came in, sniffing as usual, and casting a hasty glance about the room with her cold, restless eyes.

"How d'ye do, Sairay?" she remarked, loosening her shawl. "I thort as how ye mought be lonesome, so I come over an' brung my knittin' a while; you got some on hand tew, I s'pose?"