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[Written specially for the Ladies’ Floral Cabinet.] 
By Augusta Larned. 
CHAPTER II .—(Continued.) 
“And it was then the good pastor wrote to your uncle here in 
America ?” 
“Yes. it was then he wrote, and my uncle replied at once, and 
arranged for my voyage. lie sent money to pay the passage, and 
appointed the ship in which I was to sail, and the day he would meet 
me in New York. The good friends of my father and mother sold 
all our small effects—the unpublished music, the dear old violin, a 
real Cremona—the humble things we had always used. They made 
a little purse for me, and bade me adieu with tears and prayers.'” 
“ How strange that your uncle failed to keep his appointment/’ 
said Winnie, musingly. 
“Oh. that was the terrible moment, when I found myself alone in 
a strange country, there at the busy crowded wharf, and all were 
hurrying from the ship. Then your good cousin Bradley saved me 
from despair. He had been most kind during the voyage, in the 
terrible mnl-Oe-mer. Finding me all alone he sought occasion to 
speak. He helped me to the deck and cheered me with pleasant 
words. When he saw me now, pale and scared, as no one came to 
claim me, he spoke to me gently, and soothed my fears, and at last 
he took me from the ship and passed* my little box through the 
cus oms. I knew the name of the hotel where my uncle was to 
lodge. He went with me there, and made all possible inquiries For 
three days he worked and sought, while I remained alone in that 
terrible hotel. He engaged the police, but no such man as Walter 
Freeborn could be found; and then he told me he had secured a 
home for me in the country, to teach the French and music to a 
young cousin. But we do not work, mo chare, at the French; I 
cannot induce you to touch the keys of the piano.*’ 
“Oh, by-and-by we will begin French,” said Winnie, carelessly, 
“but I have no taste for music, and why should I pin you down to 
that drudgery when it would not do me a particle of good? I want 
to enjoy you as a luxury, Yirginie, at least for the present. I do not 
need a governess, but I do n'*ed a friend, a sister, some one to love 
with all my heart Bradley for once has shaken off his early habits, 
and shown himself indefatigable in your service. I shall always 
bless him for giving you to me. I had to struggle with papa, and 
contend with mamma about you, but that was only fun. When 
Bradley and I are married, and have grown indifferent, or perhaps 
are hating eachother devoutly, I shall always rein mber his kindness 
to you, and the blessing he conferred upon me by sending you to 
this dreadful old house.” 
Yirginie did not speak. She sat with her hands clasped and her 
eyes cast down. 
“Bradley has written to that town in Nevada where your uncle 
lived, his he not?” 
“ 0. yes, he has written, and the answer came that Walter Free¬ 
born had removed from there months ago. No one knows where he 
is at present, but Monsieur ITalcourt has put an advertisement—what 
do you say in English?—into one of the great papers that goes 
everywhere. My uncle, if he is alive, will sec it; he will come for 
me to-day—to-morrow—next week,” she added with a kind of awe 
in her pale face. 
“lie shall not have you,” retorted Winnie, seizing hold of her 
dress. “ He has no claim upon you now, when he left you in your 
need to the tender mercies of strangers; you belong to me, and we 
are never to be separated far, for 1 will provide for your future.”. 
Virginie turned slightly pale. “God disposes,” she murmured. 
“ We must go in now,” said Winnie, getting up lazily and gather¬ 
ing the things from the grass; “that dreadful old priest has come, I 
suppose; it is a penance to sit with him at table, he has such dirty 
hands, and such a sloppy way of eating. They say at Clovernook 
that he sits barefooted in his garden, and sleeps for hours every day. 
He is only an Irish peasant with a tonsured head ; but mamma would 
get down and let him tread on her if he so ordered ” 
“She does not regard him as a man,” said Yirginie. 
“Nor I,” returned Winnie, with a little scornful laugh; “he seems 
more like a pig.” 
As the two girls entered the hall door, they were confronted by h 
strange group. Edgar was there looking pained and miserable, and 
Mrs. Braithwaite had sunk upon a chair and covered her face with 
her trembling han Is. Father Dooley, with his slovenly shoes untied, 
his mottled hands not too clean, his long, flapping coat skirts, and 
vulgar, common face, now quite white and tremulous, was moving 
towards the door, for the old judge was menacing h'm with his stick 
from the top of the staircase, waving it quite wildly, and looking 
like an aged vulture, ready to pounce down and tear something 
with his cruel claws and beak. 
*■ Get out of my house,” he cried to the priest, “and never darken 
these doors again.” 
“ I am about my master’s business,” said the priest, with a strong 
Irish brogue. 
“ You’re a hypocrite and a gormandizer,” screeched the wicked 
old man; “you make it a business to hoodwink silly women, and 
rob them of their money. Ugh, get along with you. I wont have 
you on the premises. If he don’t move lively, Swayne set on the 
dog.” 
“Oh, pardon me, father,” cried Mrs. Braithwaite, sinking in a lump¬ 
ish way upon her knees. The priest extended his hand over her head. 
“Bear up under persecution, my daughter. Power from the 
blessed saints will be bestowed upon ye.” And he took his way out 
of the house. 
CHAPTER III. 
“ O noble strain! 
O worthiness of nature! breed of greatness!” 
Another beautiful morning in that leafy country, with a merry 
little breeze sending light scuds of purple cloudlets over the green 
hillsides, that smiled and grew sober alternately, like a roguish 
dimpled child’s face. There was the pride of the meadow and the 
milky alder blowing in wild hedgerows, and everywhere the twitter¬ 
ing of birds and the flutter of butterflies’ wings. The lanes where 
cows plodded early and late, were buried deep in gadding grapevines, 
and the wild sumach and straggling clematis. Blackberry bushes 
sprang up everywhere along stone walls and waysides, and were 
burdened with green and red fruit. The whole land was crowned 
with the luxuriance and glory of the mid-summer. 
Yirginie had seated herself in a low rocking chair on her favorite 
Eastern porch, under a brilliant wreath of the trumpet vine. Here 
she could see the blue hump of Saddle Back, and catch a glimpse of 
the shining mirror of the lake, called Glenmei’e, and a turn of the 
elm-shaded road, where a great wagon, loaded with golden grain, was 
creaking on toward the barn. She was dressed in a light buff wrap¬ 
per of cheap cotton—for her gowns, though of the simplest, were 
generally in light and delicate hues, and had the quality of always 
looking fresh and unrumpled. Her lap was half filled with brilliant 
petunias, fuchsias, and salvias, mixed with fragrant sprigs of migno¬ 
nette, heliotrope, and a few large dark pansies. A round stand was 
drawn up beside her with some quaint old wine glasses upon it, in 
which she was arranging her flowers. 
Winnie was seated on a stool, a little way off, with her long, slim 
hands clasped easily around her knees, and the masses of her dark 
hair just ready to tumble from the pins that confined it. Her hat, a 
coarse straw one, with a red ribbon twisted around it, had fallen back 
and was hanging by the strings to her neck. 
Steenie lolled on the step below, with his ragged elbow holding 
down the fluttering leaves of a primer, while with a sharp stick, in 
the other hand, he prodded a slimy black beetle. 
“You are like a picture,” said Winnie, watching Virginie, “but I 
can’t fuss over flowers as you do, I am too impatient to study artistic 
effects; I love great masses of color, splendid reds, and purples, and 
blues, and if I had not some standard of taste outside my own 
instincts, I should dress like a gypsy or a squaw. But you, Yirginie, 
are a womanly woman down to your pink finger tips. You were 
born to pet birds and flowers, and sing little love songs, and make 
some man insufferably vain and conceited with your boundless 
devotion.” 
“There, you are making sport of me/’ said Yirginie, looking up 
with a smile in her eyes; “you are wishing to say that a womanly 
woman is, how shall 1 say it—contemptible?” 
“No, I am not, Yirginie; but I could not be such a one if I tried. 
I am an anomaly, and ought to have been born a boy. That 
would have suited papa and me much better, but it is weak and silly 
to bemoan one’s sex. I shall have to try and put up with myself. 
Come, Steenie, let me hear you read.” 
“Yes, Missy,” responded Steenie, as he reluctantly raised himself 
to a sitting posture, and allowed the beetle to escape. “ I'se powerful 
fond o’ lamin’.” 
“Powerful fond o’ lamin’ mischief and evil,” said old Nanna, 
sticking her shiny face out of the kitchen door. 
“I’m afraid that’s true,” remarked Winnie, seriously. “Steenie, 
you were more than half tipsy that day you went out in the boat 
with Finster.” 
* “ ’Twas that pore white trash, Sandy, as done gone ’deed me to it,” 
said Steenie, feeling safe under Winnie’s guns. “De ole ’oornan was 
onreasonable savage and aggravatin’. Its Gandy, little Miss, as is 
alius drivin’ me to destruction wid her drefful bad temper; but I 
wasn’t no time off my legs from de apple-jack datdar day in de boat.” 
“I’low I was riled,” murmured old Nanna, half convicted, “by 
dat dar ole priest of Belzybubby; felt suthin’ workin’ inside like de 
stuff in a winegar bar’l—if dar isn’t no bung-hole de bar‘l busts.” 
“I don’t no how like to hab de bung-hole made frew my head,” 
remarked Steenie. 
“You ran away and left no one to do a hand’s turn about the 
place,” said Winnie, with a clear, steady look of arraignment in her 
dark eyes. “When Father Dooley was sent off, Mr. Elgar was 
obliged to fetch his horse.” 
Steenie sniggered out, “ I jess to see Mass’r Edgar sarvin’ de 
ole boy!” 
“’Pears I know, remarked Nanna, with a twinkle in her eye, “what 
done gone an’ roused ole Mass’r. ’Twas de smell ob de chicking 
cookin’ in de pot, for de priest's dinner. He’s got powerful sharp 
smellers, honey, and he couldn’t ’bide dat no way. De ole Mass’r 
hasn’t ’peard like hisself sence dat time. He’s dat trembly as a leaf, 
and twice he’s shook his stick and drove me out ob de room, as he 
never did to ole Nanna no time afore now. ‘Pears he’s broke fast 
these few days.” 
“Poor papa,” said Winnie, with a sigh, “that encounter with the 
priest was too much for him. He had not taken a step before for six 
months, and I can see that he’s not himself, for he is terribly irritable 
even with me.” 
Old Nanna waddled away, shaking her head ominously. 
Winnie sat for a moment with her chin dropped in the palm of her 
hand. “Yirginie,” said she, suddenly, “ I never saw a better piece of 
breeding than Edgar’s treatment of the priest; he dislikes him like 
poison, but he felt the old man had been ill-treated, and he served 
him as if he had been a saint out of heaven. Did you not think it 
fine, Mousie?” 
“ I admired him for doing a kind action.” 
“There, I knew you admired him, and I shall make him happy by 
telling him so.” 
“Oh, no, no!” cried Yirginie, clasping her hands together with an 
imploring air. “Why are you so cruel? Why do you love to tor¬ 
ment poor Mr. Edgar?” 
Winnie gave an impatient twist to her shoulders, and turning 
away, bestowed her attention on Steenie’s lesson. “Come, you little 
scapegrace, let me hear you read. What is that word ?” 
Steenie scratched his wool, cocked his head from side to side, and 
eyed the word suspiciously. “ I knows dat dar word well enuf by 
sight, but I can’t no how call him by name. Dat am strange how a 
pusson’ll know a word when you hears him spoke, but can't tell 
nothin’ ’bout him when you sees hissen’s likeness. I tells you what, 
little Missy, if .you’ll agree to let me off on de readin’ I’ll show you * 
de peartest pair o’ game chickens you eber sot eyes on.” 
“ Where did you get game chickens, Steenie ? ’ 
“ I kotched ’em.” 
“You don’t mean to tell me you have been stealing?” 
“No, Missy. Don’t ’cuse me wrongfully. Dat’s what dey calls 
bearing false wickedness. I’ll tell you de livin’ truf. Gandy’s ole 
man, my grandaddy, had a big Bible, full of picturs, dat he used to 
preach and ’spound out ob on Sunday. He could read all but de 
biggest words, an’ dem he guessed at powerful well. But Gandy 
can’t read a hooter; she only use de ole book to kneel down on when 
she’s prayin’ to de Lord dat I may be saved from de galluses, an’ fire 
unquinchable; an 1 she puts it in under her piller when she hab got 
a misery in her head, or tinks she’s been tricked, or dat kine ob 
foolin’. Skinny Dater, he took a notion to de picturs, an’ offered dat 
pair ob lubly game fowls. An’ see here,” Avith a tug under his Avaist- 
band, bringing up a large brass Avatch, attached to a huge chain of the 
same metal, “ he’s gwine to let me carry dis to boot, for a munf or 
two. ” 
“•You wicked boy.” Winnie was shaking Avith ill-suppressed 
laughter, while a look of real dismay came into Yirginie's face. “Do 
you mean to tell me that you have sold your poor old grandfather’s 
Bible for a pair of fighting cocks, and the privilege of carrying about 
a brass Avatch ?” 
Steenie hung his head. 
“Go this minute and get the book back, or I will tell mammy.” 
“Little Missy,” said Steenie, Avith an air of injured innocence, 
“I’d have my han’ chopped squar’ off if you tole me to, but it do 
come powerful tough to gib up dem lubly chickings. Ef Skinny 
Dater has cut out dem picturs, 1 shall hab to paste in some from de 
Perlice Gazette. Gandy has gone bline, an’ ’tAvont signify, she’ll 
nebber know de difference.” 
Winnie Avas still sh iking spasmodically, and had her back turned 
toward the young scapegrace as he took himself off. 
“ I see you don’t approve of my method of bring up that boy,” said 
she, looking Avith mock humility into Yirginie’s face. 
“I am only afraid he Avill some day break his old grandmother’s 
heart.” 
“No danger of that, for the good predominates in Steenie. Don’t 
you see how easy it is to control him through his affections. But I 
can’t help sympathizing Avith the idle, vagabond side of human 
nature. The world Avould be insufferably stupid if everybody Avas 
good. I don't take to my book any more than Steenie does. I have 
learned Avhat little I knoAV because I have been ashamed of being 
called an ignoramus, and one can accomplish by force of wall any¬ 
thing one sets one’s self about, I yawn over a novel, even, after ten 
minutes. You, dear, are a little Minerva of Avisdom, but I am half a 
savage. 1 Avant to learn fiicts and things at firsthand. I love to 
live, and feel the rain, and the sun, and the flowing Avind; I could 
kiss the dear old earth because I am alive, for pure joy.” Leaning 
back, Avith half-shut eyes, she added, “It is a Avonder I ever took to 
a perfectly good person like you, Yirginie. Mr. Edgar is perfectly 
good, but I detested him for a long time, and can only noAV do him 
justice when he is out of my sight.” 
Yirginie gave her a glance of reproach, as she selected a tea-rose 
bud from the fragrant heap in her lap. “It is unkind to over-praise 
me,” said she, “but I know all you say of Monsieur Edgar is true.” 
“He is more than good, he is a hero!” exclaimed Winnie, suddenly 
straightening herself and opening her eyes. “ He aatis always very 
religions,.so he has told me, and he educated himself for a preacher 
Avith great effort, for he Avas poor and had no friends that could help 
him; finally, he Avent aAA T ay from the theological school Avith the 
highest honors. He became the pastor of a rich church that almost 
adored him for his eloquence and fervor; but one day there came a 
change; Edgar had stu lied and looked deeper into things. He could 
not preach the old doctrine, for he believed he had got Giold of a ucav 
truth; he was impelled to speak out his convictions, and the church 
hissed him away. He was disgraced and could get no place or em¬ 
ployment : it Avas then that papa found him by advertising, and here 
is one of the most eloquent men of the day tied doAvn to uncongenial 
drudgery, and eking out a livelihood by chance literary Avork, because 
he Avould be true to himself.” 
