Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/73

1866.] —a little of it, at least,—if she will only not frighten me out of my wits with a vixen temper!"

"No fear of that, I assure you," said Ernestina, encouragingly.

Nor was there any cause for fear. During the five months the girl lived with me, I found her uniformly civil and amiable. I do not intend inflicting on my readers any more of my personal experience with Lucy; it is her own little history I wish to relate.

A few days after my return home, I noticed, that, when Lucy was left to herself, she seemed sad. I often observed her suppressing tears; and every little while she gave a heavy, long sigh, as if apprehensive of some trouble.

I am as unwilling to meddle with the affairs of inferiors as with those of equals; so I contented myself with speaking very gently, granting little unexpected indulgences, and smiling cheerfully at her. I knew she was married to a man who was many years her senior, and it was said they were much attached to each other. This husband had gone into the army, and Ernestina told me that Lucy and he were looking anxiously forward to the period of his return,—more than two years off,—when they hoped to take his bounty-money and savings, and buy therewith a little house and small "garden-patch" for a settled home.

One day I asked her if she could read or write.

"Neither," was the reply.

"How then, do you write to your husband?"

This question brought out the whole story of her anxiety. Hitherto her friends had written in her name, but her husband had received only three of the many letters she had sent him during the six months he had been gone. In his last letter he had complained bitterly of her silence.

"Oh, if he could only hear straight from me!" she exclaimed. "For he thinks, Ma'am, I don't write because I gets no money. 'T isn't the money I care for. I'd sooner never have a cent from him than have him keep a-thinkin' I don't send no letters."

When she said this, big round tears fell down like pebbles on her cheeks and hands and apron. Of course I offered to write for her, saying that I would do so once a week, if she wished. She then gave me his last letter to read, which I will copy without correction; for he wrote it himself, being "a scholar," as she said, with some little pride.

And she endowed him with another possession, or gift, which seemed to give her almost as much satisfaction as his scholarly attainments.

"He kin see sperits, Ma'am, as plain as me and you sees folks; and so kin his little boy, his fust wife's child. Once when I was a-walkin' in the road with 'em, one moonlighty night, when we was a-goin' home to Spring-Town, them two stepped quick-like away from the path.

"'Lucy,' says my husband, says he, a'most in a whisper, 'quick! step furder over on t' other side.'

"After we got along a piece, them both told me there wor a band of sperits a-comin' along; and if we gets out of the way of 'em, them don't do us no hurt, you know."

I did not like to suggest to the credulous wife that probably her sharp husband had been seeing at the tavern, before starting on the homeward walk with her,

I fancy the cunning fellow, with a true masculine, marital love of power, had wished to inspire this young wife of his with a becoming awe and reverence for her him. But we will return to his letter.

"Januwerry $the/18$teen, 1864, Mooreses Island

"i take this opertunity to informe you that i am not well at preasante. and i hope you are injoyin' goode helthe providin that they ever doe finde you and of you are enny whares that you can be found

"Enny whares in the State of N Jarsey.