University of Virginia Library

34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN.

Clayton had occasion to visit New York on business.

He never went without carrying some token of remembrance
from the friends in his settlement to Milly, now
indeed far advanced in years, while yet, in the expressive
words of Scripture, “her eye was not dim, nor her natural
force abated.”

He found her in a neat little tenement in one of the outer
streets of New York, surrounded by about a dozen children,
among whom were blacks, whites, and foreigners. These
she had rescued from utter destitution in the streets, and was
giving to them all the attention and affection of a mother.

“Why, bless you, sir,” she said to him, pleasantly, as he
opened the door, “it 's good to see you once more! How
is Miss Anne?”

“Very well, Milly. She sent you this little packet; and
you will find something from Harry and Lisette, and all the
rest of your friends in our settlement. — Ah! are these all
your children, Milly?”

“Yes, honey; mine and de Lord's. Dis yer 's my second
dozen. De fust is all in good places, and doing well.
I keeps my eye on 'em, and goes round to see after 'em a
little, now and then.”

“And how is Tomtit?”

“O, Tomtit 's doing beautiful, thank 'e, sir. He 's 'come
a Christian, and jined the church; and they has him to wait
and tend at the anti-slavery office, and he does well.”

“I see you have black and white here,” said Clayton,

glancing around the circle. “Laws, yes,” said Milly, looking
complacently around; “I don't make no distinctions of
color, — I don't believe in them. White chil'en, when they
'haves themselves, is jest as good as black, and I loves 'em
jest as well.”

“Don't you sometimes think it a little hard you should
have to work so in your old age?”

“Why, bress you, honey, no! I takes comfort of my
money as I goes along. Dere 's a heap in me yet,” she
said, laughing. “I 's hoping to get dis yer batch put out and
take in anoder afore I die. You see,” she said, “dis yer 's
de way I took to get my heart whole. I found it was getting
so sore for my chil'en I 'd had took from me, 'pears
like the older I grow'd the more I thought about 'em; but
long 's I keeps doing for chil'en it kinder eases it. I calls
'em all mine; so I 's got good many chil'en now.”

We will inform our reader, in passing, that Milly, in the
course of her life, on the humble wages of a laboring
woman, took from the streets, brought up, and placed in
reputable situations, no less than forty destitute children.[1]

When Clayton returned to Boston, he received a note
written in a graceful female hand, from Fanny, expressing
her gratitude for his kindness to her and her brother, and
begging that he would come and spend a day with them at
their cottage in the vicinity of the city. Accordingly, eight
o'clock the next morning found him whirling in the cars
through green fields and pleasant meadows, garlanded with
flowers and draped with bending elms, to one of those
peaceful villages which lie like pearls on the bosom of our
fair old mother, Massachusetts.

Stopping at — station, he inquired his way up to a
little eminence which commanded a view of one of those
charming lakes which open their blue eyes everywhere

through the New England landscape. Here, embowered in
blossoming trees, stood a little Gothic cottage, a perfect
gem of rural irregularity and fanciful beauty. A porch in
the front of it was supported on pillars of cedar, with the
rough bark still on, around which were trained multitudes of
climbing roses, now in full flower. From the porch a rustic
bridge led across a little ravine into a summer-house, which
was built like a nest into the branches of a great oak which
grew up from the hollow below the knoll on which the house
stood.

A light form, dressed in a pretty white wrapper, came
fluttering across the bridge, as Clayton ascended the steps
of the porch. Perhaps our readers may recognize in the
smoothly-parted brown hair, the large blue eyes, and the
bashful earnestness of the face, our sometime little friend
Fanny; if they do not, we think they 'll be familiar with
the cheery “ho, ho, ho,” which comes from the porch, as our
old friend Tiff, dressed in a respectable suit of black, comes
bowing forward. “Bress de Lord, Mas'r Clayton, — it 's
good for de eyes to look at you! So, you 's come to see
Miss Fanny, now she 's come to her property, and has got
de place she ought for to have. Ah, ah! — Old Tiff allers
know'd it! He seed it — he know'd de Lord would bring
her out right, and he did. Ho! ho! ho!”

“Yes,” said Fanny, “and I sometimes think I don't
enjoy it half as well as Uncle Tiff. I 'm sure he ought to
have some comfort of us, for he worked hard enough for us,
— did n't you, Uncle Tiff?”

“Work! bress your soul, did n't I?” said Tiff, giggling
all over in cheerful undulations. “Reckon I has worked,
though I does n't have much of it to do now; but I sees
good of my work now'days, — does so. Mas'r Teddy, he 's
grow'd up tall, han'some young gen'leman, and he 's in college,
— only tink of dat! Laws! he can make de Latin
fly! Dis yer 's pretty good country, too. Dere 's families
round here dat 's e'enamost up to old Virginny; and she
goes with de best on 'em — dat she does.”

Fanny now led Clayton into the house, and, while she
tripped up stairs to change her morning dress, Tiff busied
himself in arranging cake and fruit on a silver salver, as an
apology for remaining in the room.

He seemed to consider the interval as an appropriate one
for making some confidential communications on a subject
that lay very near his heart. So, after looking out of the
door with an air of great mystery, to ascertain that Miss
Fanny was really gone, he returned to Clayton, and touched
him on the elbow with an air of infinite secrecy and precaution.

“Dis yer an 't to be spoke of out loud,” he said. “I 's
ben mighty anxious; but, bress de Lord, I 's come safely
through; 'cause, yer see, I 's found out he 's a right likely
man, beside being one of de very fustest old families in de
state; and dese yer old families here 'bout as good as dey
was in Virginny; and, when all 's said and done, it 's de
men dat 's de ting, after all; 'cause a gal can't marry all
de generations back, if dey 's ever so nice. But he 's one
of your likeliest men.”

“What 's his name?” said Clayton.

“Russel,” said Tiff, lifting up his hand apprehensively to
his mouth, and shouting out the name in a loud whisper.
“I reckon he 'll be here to-day, 'cause Mas'r Teddy 's coming
home, and going to bring him wid him; so please, Mas'r
Clayton, you won't notice nothing; 'cause Miss Fanny,
she 's jest like her ma, — she 'll turn red clar up to her
har, if a body only looks at her. See here,” said Tiff, fumbling
in his pocket, and producing a spectacle-case, out of
which he extracted a portentous pair of gold-mounted spectacles;
“see what he give me, de last time he 's here. I
puts dese yer on of a Sundays, when I sets down to read
my Bible.”

“Indeed,” said Clayton; “have you learned, then, to
read?”

“Why, no, honey, I don'no as I can rightly say dat I 's
larn'd to read, 'cause I 's 'mazing slow at dat ar; but, den,

I 's larn'd all de best words, like Christ, Lord, and God,
and dem ar; and whar dey 's pretty thick, I makes out
quite comfortable.”

We shall not detain our readers with minute descriptions
of how the day was spent: how Teddy came home from
college a tall, handsome fellow, and rattled over Latin and
Greek sentences in Tiff's delighted ears, who considered his
learning as, without doubt, the eighth wonder of the world;
nor how George Russel came with him, a handsome
senior, just graduated; nor how Fanny blushed and trembled
when she told her guardian her little secret, and, like
other ladies, asked advice after she had made up her mind.

Nor shall we dilate on the yet brighter glories of the cottage
three months after, when Clayton, and Anne, and Livy
Ray, were all at the wedding, and Tiff became three
and four times blessed in this brilliant consummation of his
hopes. The last time we saw him he was walking forth in
magnificence, his gold spectacles set conspicuously astride
of his nose, trundling a little wicker wagon, which cradled
a fair, pearly little Miss Fanny, whom he informed all
beholders was “de very sperit of de Peytons.”