“And shall we say Aunt Sarah, Uncle
Samuel Peter?” asked Rosalie; “you know
you must instruct us, we are such ignorant
little girls.”

He did not see her half arch and half sarcastic
expression, but replied gravely, “Why
yes, my wards, if you like; I say Sarah or
Mrs. Throckmorton merely in respect to my
dignity, not that it makes any difference to
her what I call her.”

“Were you ever sick, Uncle Samuel
Peter?” inquired Rosalie directly.

“No, my ward—why do you ask—you
do n't see any indications of disease, do
you?”

“No, Uncle Samuel Peter—that was why
I asked—you looked so remarkably well for
your years,” she went on.

“My years,” interrupted Uncle Peter,
“what of my years, Rose?”

“Why,” she continued, as if pursuing the
same train of thought, “you must be forty,
Uncle Samuel Peter, ain't you?”

“Yes, my darling ward, about that,” he replied,
stroking his chin.

[figure description] Page 178.[end figure description]

“And you look so young!” continued
Rosalie.

“What splendid hair you have!” he said,
and put his hand through Rosie's hair, caressingly
and admiringly.

She laughed, shaking loose her curls, and
asked something about “Throckmorton Hall,”
not forgetting the entire name of Samuel
Peter. A dozen times she had said it, while
I sat bashfully in the corner, unnoticed
and unthought of. Rosie knew intuitively
how to read human nature; I did not know
then, nor why it was she said Uncle Samuel
Peter, while I said nothing. My mother
called me as fair as she, and loved me as well,
and not till I set out with our uncle did
I have a thought of how much plainer I was
than she, and how inferior in every way.

Ah me! our success in this world depends
greatly on the facility with which we can say
Uncle Samuel Peter! Peter, simply, will not
do at all.

Rosalie had a bold, independent character,
but her roguish good humor charmed you
away from the superiority she unconsciously

[figure description] Page 179.[end figure description]

assumed, and the smile with which she sent
her arrow made you forgive the sting; and
then, she was so careless whom she wounded,
that no one felt she had taken any particular
aim. Whether she lived at the Hall or
at the old homestead was the same to her,
so far as pride and humility were concerned;
but she saw that Uncle Peter looked
down on our homestead, and so, smiling at
his weakness, she seemed to look up to the
Hall; I really thought it a much finer place
than our little farm; but this availed nothing—
I could not say Samuel Peter, half so
smoothly as she.

“No, Rosie,” said Uncle Peter, taking up
the thread of a conversation dropped some
time past, “I have never been sick; I really
wish I could be, but I never could consent to
violate the laws of health sufficiently.”

“Why, Uncle Samuel Peter!” exclaimed
Rosie. She did not say any more, but her
tone and manner implied to him wonder,
admiration, and curiosity, and a great deal
of general interest besides. I had said “Why,
Uncle Samuel!” at the same time: I forgot

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

to add the Peter, in my earnestness; but
Rosie was not so earnest as to forget a matter
thus important, and the consequence was
that my exclamation elicited no attention, and
our uncle said, “Because, my ward,” not
my wards, “I would like to make an example
of myself; I would like to show the world
what heroism, under affliction, is. Men are so
unworthy of the name of men, I really would
like to make an example of myself.”

“I suppose, Uncle Peter, it would be for
the benefit of the world,” replied Rosie, but
the ludicrousness of the thing was so apparent,
that the dimples deepened and deepened
until she laughed out.

“My ward! my ward,” exclaimed Uncle
Peter, “is that becoming reverence to my
years?”

“O, Uncle Samuel Peter,” answered Rosie,
“you can't make yourself seem old to me,
if you are forty,” and she ran on at once
with some inquiry about the Hall, so Uncle
Peter altogether forgot the irreverence.

“How pretty the scenery is becoming,” I
ventured to remark.

[figure description] Page 181.[end figure description]

Uncle Peter said nothing, and Rosie added,
“Yes, as we come near the Hall.”

Uncle Peter smiled and repeated, “Yes,
my ward, as we come near the Hall, the
little places about here set mine off beautifully.”

“Beautifully!” echoed Rosie

“I can't fancy anything prettier than this
place,” I said; “is it yours, Uncle Peter?”
We were passing a very highly cultivated
and beautiful farm.

“Pshaw, child! how stupid you are!” he
answered? “that is not Throckmorton Hall;
a good little sort of a place, to be sure, but
not worth driving so slow for — what an ass
Westley is!”

Rosie looked the other way, and asked
indifferently who owned the place, while I
strained my eyes to see it: the yard about
the house was so pretty, with early flowers
and leafing trees, I could not help it.

“Orpha, do sit up — you will grow
crooked,” said my uncle; and turning to
Rosie, he replied to her question most complacently:
“The place is owned by an old

[figure description] Page 182.[end figure description]

woman of the name of Graham: a most unlikeable
old creature, and in imitation of me, I
suppose, they have named the farm — they
call it Woodside;” and he could not help
laughing: it was so ludicrous that any place
should have a name except his.

Rosie laughed, too, and said, “Great men
must expect small imitators.”

“Yes, my ward,” he replied, and with so
deep and gratified a respiration that one of
his vest buttons gave way.

I could not help saying Woodside was a
sweet name.

“Respectable,” answered Uncle Peter.

“O, I do n't know,” said Rose, “it is well
enough.”

“Yes, my ward, well enough; nothing
more can be said;” and his manner indicated
that in his own estimation he had uttered a
very generous thing.

“Does the old woman you speak of live
alone?” asked Rose.

I knew not whether she had seen, though I
had, a very handsome young man seated on
the steps of the portico, reading, and at the

[figure description] Page 183.[end figure description]

same time playing coquettishly with a fine
dog beside him.

“I believe not,” answered Uncle Peter;
“she has one or two sons; I scarcely know
them, however.”

The young man had but carelessly looked
up as we passed, and I felt that Uncle Peter's
indifference was probably reciprocated.

“We have some very good honest people
about here,” he soliloquized, “but very few with
whom one cares to be intimately associated.”

“How are you, Judge?” was an abrupt, and
coarse salutation, that caused me to turn my
head quickly. Westley had drawn up the
reins, and my uncle was glancing toward the
window, before which, seated on the ugliest
little donkey I ever beheld, was a very singular
specimen of womanhood. She was small
in stature, seeming to have been stinted, by
hard work, of the proportions which nature
would have given her, as we sometimes notice
trees, dwarfed and scrubby, in climates too
severe for them. Her hair, far from being
tastefully arranged, was mostly concealed, or
supposed to be concealed, under a thick

[figure description] Page 184.[end figure description]

cambric night cap, and over this she wore a
calico sun-bonnet, smooth and clean, but otherwise
having little to recommend it. The face
beneath was a curious study; intelligent, but
exceedingly vulgar; sunburnt to a shining
brown, and with teeth nearly the same color.
Her dress, a faded but clean calico, was
tucked about her person quite too closely to
be graceful, and her bare ankles—she wore
no stockings — dangled considerably below
the bottom of her skirt. Shoes of the coarsest
and clumsiest fashion encased her feet, and
her hands seemed never to have been much
used to gloves. The bridle rein was twisted
around the saddle horn, and the donkey
guided himself, for the hands of the woman
found employment in holding fast two
children, of whom the eldest, astride the
beast, and clinging to the waist of his mother,
could not yet have seen his fifth year. This
sturdy and independent looking youth wore a
hat of black felt, greatly too large for his
head, a muslin shirt, tow trousers, and leather
suspenders. His dress consisted of these articles
alone.

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

“Ah, Mrs. Muggins, how do you do?” was
my uncle's reply to the woman's salutation.

“O, I do as well as I can; how is your old
woman?”

“Thank you, I left Mrs. Throckmorton very
well. Your children seem blessed with health,
madam.”

“Yes, thank Moses, they complain of good
appetites most of the time.”

“I have not had the pleasure of seeing your
children before now,” my uncle continued;
and patting the boy on the cheek he paid him
some compliment, asking if the others were
as promising.

“Well,” said Mrs. Muggins, “they are
about six of one and half a dozen of t' other,
but my old man thinks this the greatest boy
that ar' going,” and she unswathed a little
baby who helped in preserving her balance,
and who appeared to have been in this present
world but a very limited number of days.

“How old is the child?” asked our uncle,
in apparent surprise.

“As old again as half,” replied the woman;
“but do n't you think he's some? — he was so

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

tickled he went off on a bender, and I haven't
seen head nor heels of him for the last three
days.”

“It is n't possible!” exclaimed my uncle

“Pshaw! you might as well kill me as
scare me,” replied Mrs. Muggins, evidently
wisely superior to any uneasiness on account
of the bender.

“I hope he is not habitually intemperate,”
my uncle said.

“Intemperate, your granny! he don't drink
enough to hurt him, and what's the use of a
feller never having any good of his life?”

“But the waste of money and time, to say
nothing of health?”

“It does seem so, I s'pose, the way you look
at it.”

“I believe, madam, I must say good evening,”
and uncle Peter bowed politely.

“No you don't, Major; I've got a heap to
say yet,” and Mrs. Muggins released one
hand and dexterously gave the hindmost boy
a slap across the ear, for he had been all this
time persuading his mother to ride on by a
series of blows in her back with his fist, and

[figure description] Page 187.[end figure description]

repeated kicks against her person with his
naked feet, accompanied with such appeals as
“Thar, now, why don't you cut dirt?”
“Bone along with you, Rache;” and the like.
The boy “subsided” on receiving the blow,
with the modest reply of, “Well, take your
time, Miss Lucy,” and turning himself toward
the donkey's tail, set his strength lustily
against it. His smart repartee almost convulsed
the woman for a moment, but calming
herself, and peering into the coach, she said,
“Are these the young ones, Captain, you
have took for to raise?”

“I propose to have them for a time.”

“How old be you? how old be you?” she
asked, nodding first towards myself and then
toward Rose.

When we had told our respective ages, she
said we were big enough to do a beap of work,
but that one of us (I knew she meant me) had
a kind of a sheepish look — seemed skeered or
something — a good deal like granmam's boy
did when he thought she was like for to take
after him. I smiled, and she went on to say I

[figure description] Page 188.[end figure description]

looked a little more peart; maybe I would
not be such a slow coach after all.

She then asked Uncle Peter how long our
mother was sick, and when she died, and how
the corpse looked, and if we “took it very
hard,” and if it was likely our father would
marry again, and if he did whether we children
would not find “mother” a big mouthful.
She then told us that granmam's Jim “turned
black as the chimney back before he was
buried,” and she had had her own “thoughts
about his eating some of the pizen posies that
Hen. Graham thought so dreadful much of.”

“I meant to go over to your house, Colonel,”
she continued: “I was visiting at granmam's
to-day — but a body has so much to
talk about when a body goes from home, it
seems as if the time fairly flies. I guess,
between you and me, they don't live any too
happy there — I knowed when Hal and Netty
got married they were going it blind; Netty
liked Staff, but she couldn't get him — that is
about the truth of it — and so she took up
with Hal; well, go it ye cripples — that's my

[figure description] Page 189.[end figure description]

blessing — Staff is at home now, and he is
prouder and hatefuler than ever; if I was the
blackest, pizenest critter in the world, he
couldn't make himself more scarce than he
does when I go there.”

“Really, Mrs. Muggins, we shall have to
say good-bye,” said my uncle, almost with
petulance.

Mrs. Muggins replied, indignantly, “In a
horn! — I s'pose because you got the dimes
you think you are on a high horse beside of
us; but you can't cut off our legs, I guess, and
if you could wooden ones are cheap; so good-bye
to you, reverend Mr. Throckmorton.”

“Who was all them are, Rache?” asked the
elder boy, facing about.

“Oh, they think they are some punkins,”
replied the mother, in a tone so loud as to be
distinctly heard by us.

Rosalie was greatly amused by this “vision
of a lady,” as she called our meeting with Mrs.
Muggins, and Uncle Samuel Peter laughed
immoderately at the charming humor of his
ward, scarcely ceasing till we arrived at the
gate of Throckmorton Hall.

[figure description] Page 190.[end figure description]

The beauty that met my gaze on descending
from the carriage did not quite bewilder me,
as I had been led to expect it would. The
house itself was large and showy, and the
grounds about it carefully and nicely kept,
but the glimpse I had taken of Woodside led
me to think it more charming. Rosie clapped
her hands, saying, “No wonder Uncle Samuel
Peter keeps young, in a place like this;” and
away she ran, up one walk and down another,
delighted as a spring bird, while I walked
silently and bashfully toward the house.

There were tears in Aunt Sally's eyes as she
met me—I thought at first because she was
so glad to see me; but with a glance and a
smile she went right past me, and throwing
her arms about Uncle Peter, embraced him as
though she had not seen him for twenty years.
“Oh, my dear, I am so glad! I was so afraid!
and has nothing happened, and do you feel
well, perfectly well, my dear?” she repeated
over and again, holding his hands and looking
in his face as a saint would look into
heaven.

“Thank you, Mrs. Throckmorton,” replied

[figure description] Page 191.[end figure description]

Uncle Peter, benignly, releasing himself without
returning her embrace; “I feel very tired,
very tired; I think I could eat a spring
chicken.”

Aunt Sally did not say tea was waiting, as
it was, but hastened to order the chicken to
be caught and dressed, and in a few moments
Westley announced that such a service had
been effected.

Aunt Sally soon brought gown and slippers,
and unknotting the ribbon of his overcoat,
helped him put them on. “I wish, my dear,
you had brought down my reading chair,
too,” said Uncle Peter; and away she went
again, but it was long before she came back.
Alas! Uncle Peter had no reading chair, and
she knew it before she set out on her fruitless
search, but so accustomed was she to making
some sort of shift to meet his wishes, that she
would have essayed to obey him if he had
told her to bring in the moon.

The husband never once thought to ask
her if she were well; of course she was; he
never knew her to be otherwise. When
she stooped to kiss me, to say I must not be

[figure description] Page 192.[end figure description]

lonesome, but amuse myself till tea-time in
the garden, and that I should then have an
opportunity of seeing more of my good uncle,
he replied that I would not profit much by
his counsels—I was not wise enough, in short,
to understand him; he would give me to her;
but his charming ward, Rosie—where was
the dear girl? and our dignified relation was
soon rolling on the grass like a boy, while
Rosie threw flowers about him.

“You are a good girl, I hope,” Aunt Sally
said, presently, as I sat quietly in one corner,
trying to be as much out of the way as I
could, for I felt afraid and not quite welcome.
I answered that I had tried to be good, and
she looked at me inquiringly, and replied, “I
hope you are, for if Mr. Throckmorton should
dislike you what could I do? That is my
footstool you are sitting on,” she continued;
“maybe he will want it; I guess you had better
go to your own room and stay till tea-time.”

I obeyed with a heavy heart, for I felt that
it was to withdraw me from Uncle Peter's observation
that the suggestion was made. I

[figure description] Page 193.[end figure description]

heard the merry laugh of Rosalie, and tears
fell silently as the consciousness of my isolation
increased; I thought of our own quiet
home, and the meadow with the sheep by the
brookside; and the sugar camp beyond; they
seemed far prettier to me than “the Hall.”

I tried to dry my eyes after a time, and
stole to the great looking-glass with a determination
to observe myself narrowly, for I
began to think I must look very ugly, else
why should my uncle dislike me? I had said
nothing, I was sure, to offend him. The glass
was in a frame bright as gold, but surely, I
had never appeared half so plain in the little
cracked glass at home. My eyes were swollen
and my cheeks pale, and my frock, though
just like Rosalie's, it seemed to me was more
faded and less becoming.

When a servant called me to tea I thought
Aunt Sally had not sent the invitation, and so
declined to go, saying I was not hungry. My
sensitive and suspicious heart was my greatest
enemy. I did not know it.

And so inauspiciously began my life at
“Throckmorton Hall.”

p492-199

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