Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/31

 an' gave me a turn loike—as if it wa' her varry sel'. Ah! ye dinna ken, an' lang may it be before ye do, wha' the heart's sorrow is for them it ha' luved an' lost; an' now, my bairnie, rin awa' an' play, an' dinna think I meant to speak cross to ye, my on'y treasure."

And little Alice went back to her birds and her flowers without another word, but with a vague impression upon her mind that there was something about the memory of her mother that she was not permitted to know and must not question. But youth is sanguine, and the cloud, if unforgotten, did not cast a heavy shadow. And so Alice grew up among all the kindly influences of nature; her young life as pure and sweet, and nearly as uncultivated, as the wild flowers she loved.

Of education, in its popular sense (as understood to mean book learning), she had very little, and of accomplishments she knew nothing. Her grandmother was a fairly educated woman, for the times she lived in; she could read and write and keep her simple accounts, and that was all that was then judged important for a woman to