University of Virginia Library

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
PATTY AND HER PATIENT.

We left Patty standing irresolute in the road.
The latch-string of her father's house was
drawn in; she must find another home. Every
Methodist cabin would be open to her, of course;
Colonel Wheeler would be only too glad to receive
her. But Colonel Wheeler and all the Methodist people
were openly hostile to her father, and delicacy forbade
her allying herself so closely with her father's
foes. She did not want to foreclose every door to a
reconciliation. Mrs. Goodwin's was not to be thought
of. There was but one place, and that was with Kike's
mother, the widow Lumsden, who, as a relative, was
naturally her first resort in exile.

Here she found a cordial welcome, and here she
found the schoolmaster, still attentive to the widow,
though neither he nor she dared think of marriage
with Kike's awful displeasure in the back-ground.

“Well, well,” said Brady, when the homeless Patty
had received permission to stay in the cabin of her
aunt-in-law: “Well, well, how sthrange things comes to
pass, Miss Lumsden. You turned Moirton off yersilf
fer bein' a Mithodis' and now ye're the one that gits
sint adrift.” Then, half musingly, he added: “I wish

Moirton noo, now don't oi? Revinge is swate, and
this sort of revinge would be swater on many accounts.”

The helpless Patty could say nothing, and Brady
looked out of the window and continued, in a sort of
soliloquy: “Moirton would be that glad. Ha! ha!
He'd say the divil niver sarved him a better thrick
than by promptin' the Captin to turn ye out. It'll
simplify matters fer Moirton. A sum's aisier to do
when its simplified, loike. An' now it'll be as aisy to
Moirton when he hears about it, as twice one is two—
as simple as puttin' two halves togither to make a
unit.” Here the master rubbed his hands in glee.
He was pleased with the success of his illustration.
Then he muttered: “They'll agree in ginder, number
and parson!”

“Mr. Brady, I don't think you ought to make fun
of me.”

“Make fun of ye! Bliss yer dair little heart, it aint
in yer ould schoolmasther to make fun of ye, whin ye've
done yer dooty. I was only throyin' to congratilate
ye on how aisy Moirton would conjugate the whole
thing whin he hears about it.”

“Now, Mr. Brady,” said Patty, drawing herself up
with her old pride, “I know there will be those who
will say that I joined the church to get Morton back.
I want you to say that Morton is to be married—was
probably married to-day—and that I knew of it some
days ago.”

Brady's countenance fell. “Things niver come out
roight,” he said, as he absently put on his hat. “They

talk about spicial providinces,” he soliloquized, as he
walked away, “and I thought as I had caught one at
last. But it does same sometoimes as if a bluntherin
Oirishman loike mesilf could turn the univarse better
if he had aholt of the stairin' oar. But, psha! Oi've
only got one or two pets of me own to look afther.
God has to git husbands fer ivery woman ixcipt the old
maids. An' some women has to have two, of which I
hope is the Widdy Lumsden! But Mithodism upsets
iverything. Koike's so religious that he can't love
anybody but God, and he don't know how to pity thim
that does. And Koike's made us both mortally afeard
of his goodness. I wish he'd fall dead in love himself
once; thin he'd know how it fales!”

Patty soon found that her father could not brook
her presence in the neighborhood, and that the widow's
hospitality to her was resented as an act of hostility to
him. She accordingly set herself to find some means
of getting away from the neighborhood, and at the
same time of earning her living.

Happily, at this moment came presiding elder Magruder
to a quarterly meeting on the circuit to which
Hissawachee belonged, and, hearing of Patty's case, he
proposed to get her employment as a teacher. He had
heard that a teacher was wanted in the neighborhood
of the Hickory Ridge church, where the conference
had met. So Patty was settled as a teacher. For ten
hours a day she showed children how to “do sums,”
heard their lessons in Lindley Murray, listened to them
droning through the moralizing poems in the “Didactic”
department of the old English Reader, and taught

[ILLUSTRATION]

THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS OF HICKORY RIDGE.

[Description: 554EAF. Page 270. In-line engraving of a seated woman holding a book; four children stand in front of her and several more look on, seated, in the background.] them spelling from the “a-b abs” to “in-com-pre-hensi-bil-i-ty”
and its octopedal companions. And she
boarded round, but Dr. Morgan, the Presbyterian
ex-minister, when he learned that she was Kike's
cousin, and a sufferer for her religion, insisted that
her Sundays should be passed in his house. And
being almost as much a pastor as a doctor among the
people, he soon found Patty a rare helper in his labors
among the poor and the sick. Something of good-breeding
and refinement there was in her manner that
made her seem a being above the poor North Carolinans
who had moved into the hollows, and her
kindness was all the more grateful on account of her
dignity. She was “a grand lady,” they declared, and
besides was “a kinder sorter angel, like, ye know, in
her way of tendin' folks what's sick.” They loved to
tell how “she nussed Bill Turner's wife through the
awfulest spell of the yaller janders you ever seed;
an' toted Miss Cole's baby roun' all night the night
her ole man was fotch home shot through the arm
with his own good-fer-nothin' keerlessness. She's better'n
forty doctors, root or calomile.”

One day Doctor Morgan called at the school-house
door just as the long spelling-class had broken up,
and Patty was getting ready to send the children home.
The doctor sat on his horse while each of the boys,
with hat in one hand and dinner-basket in the other,
walked to the door, and, after the fashion of those good
old days, turned round and bowed awkwardly at the
teacher. Some bobbed their heads forward on their
breasts; some jerked them sidewise; some, more respectful,
bent their bodies into crescents. Each
seemed alike glad when he was through with this
abominable bit of ceremony, the only bit of ceremony
in the whole round of their lives. The girls, in short
linsey dresses, with copperas-dyed cotton pantalettes,
came after, dropping “curcheys” in a style that would
have bewildered a dancing-master.

“Miss Lumsden,” said the doctor, when the teacher
appeared, “I am sorry to see you so tired. I want

you to go home with me. I have some work for you
to do to-morrow.”

There were no buggies in that day. The roads
were mostly bridle-paths, and those that would admit
wagons would have shaken a buggy to pieces. Patty
climbed upon a fence-corner, and the doctor rode as
close as possible to the fence where she stood. Then
she dropped upon the horse behind him, and the two
rode off together.

Doctor Morgan explained to Patty that a strange
man was lying wounded at the house of a family
named Barkins, on Higgins's Run. The man refused
to give his name, and the family would not tell what
they knew about him. As Barkins bore a bad reputation,
it was quite likely that the stranger belonged to
some band of thieves who lived by horse-stealing and
plundering emigrants. He seemed to be in great mental
anguish, but evidently distrusted the doctor. The
doctor therefore wished Patty to spend Saturday at
Barkins's, and do what she could for the patient. “It
is our business to do the man good,” said Doctor
Morgan, “not to have him arrested. Gospel is always
better than Law.”

On Saturday morning the doctor had a horse saddled
with a side-saddle for Patty, and he and she rode
to Higgins's Hollow, a desolate, rocky glen, where once
lived a noted outlaw from whom the hollow took its
name, and where now resided a man who was suspected
of giving much indirect assistance to the gangs
of thieves that infested the country, though he was too
lame to be actively engaged in any bold enterprises.

Barkins nodded his head in a surly fashion at Patty
as she crossed the threshold, and Mrs. Barkins, a
square-shouldered, raw-boned woman, looked half inclined
to dispute the passage of any woman over her
door-sill. Patty felt a shudder of fear go through her
frame at the thought of staying in such a place all
day; but Doctor Morgan had an authoritative way
with such people. When called to attend a patient,
he put the whole house under martial law.

“Mrs. Barkins, I hope our patient's better. He
needs a good deal done for him to-day, and I brought
the school-mistress to help you, knowing you had a
houseful of children and plenty of work.”

“I've got a powerful sight to do, Doctor Morgan,
but you had orter know'd better'n to fetch a school-miss
in to spy out a body's housekeepin' 'thout givin'
folks half a chance to bresh up a little. I 'low she
haint never lived in no holler, in no log-house weth
ten of the wust children you ever seed and a decreppled
ole man.” She sulkily brushed off a stool with
her apron and offered it to Patty. But Patty, with
quick tact, laid her sunbonnet on the bed, and, while
the doctor went into the only other room of the house
to see the patient, she seized upon the woman's dishtowel
and went to wiping the yellow crockery as Mrs.
Barkins washed it, and to prevent the crabbed remonstrance
which that lady had ready, she began to tell
how she had tried to wipe dishes when she was little,
and how she had upset the table and spilt everything
on the floor. She looked into Mrs. Barkins's face with
so much friendly confidence, her laugh had so much

assurance of Mrs. Barkins's concurrence in it, that the
square visage relaxed a little, and the woman proceeded
to show her increasing friendliness by boxing
“Jane Marier” for “stan'in' too closte to the lady and
starrin at her that a-way.”

Just then the doctor opened the squeaky door and
beckoned to Patty.

“I've brought you the only medicine that will do
you any good,” he said, rapidly, to the sick man.
“This is Miss Lumsden, our school-mistress, and the
best hand in sickness you ever saw. She will stay
with you an hour.”

The patient turned his wan face over and looked
wearily at Patty. He seemed to be a man of forty,
but suffering and his unshorn beard had given him
a haggard look, and he might be ten years younger.
He had evidently some gentlemanly instincts, for he
looked about the room for a seat for Patty. “I'll take
care of myself,” said Patty, cheerfully—seeing his anxious
desire to be polite.

“I will write down some directions for you,” said
Dr. Morgan, taking out pencil and paper. When he
handed the directions to Patty they read:

“I leave you a lamb among wolves. But the Shepherd
is here! It is the only chance to save the poor
fellow's life or his soul. I will send Nettie over in an
hour with jelly, and if you want to come home with
her you can do so. I will stop at noon.”

With that he bade her good-bye and was gone.
Patty put the room in order, wiped off the sick man's
temples, and he soon fell into a sleep. When he awoke

she again wiped his face with cold water. “My mother
used to do that,” he said.

“Is she dead?” asked Patty, reverently.

“I think not. I have been a bad man, and it is a
wonder that I didn't break her heart. I would like to
see her!”

“Where is she?” asked Patty.

The patient looked at her suspiciously: “What's
the use of bringing my disgrace home to her door?”
he said.

“But I think she would bear your disgrace and
everything else for the sake of wiping your face as I
do.”

“I believe she would,” said the wounded man,
tremulously. “I would like to go to her, and ever
since I came away I have meant to go as soon as I
could get in the way of doing better. But I get worse
all the time. I'll soon be dead now, and I don't care
how soon. The sooner the better;” and he sighed
wearily.

Patty had the tact not to contradict him.

“Did your mother ever read to you?” she asked.

“Yes; she used to read the Bible on Sundays and
I used to run away to keep from hearing it. I'd give
everything to hear her read now.”

“Shall I read to you?”

“If you please.”

“Shall I read your mother's favorite chapter?”
said Patty.

“How do you know which that is?—I don't!”

“Don't you think one woman knows how another

woman feels?” asked Patty. And she sat by the little
four-light window and took out her pocket Testament
and read the three immortal parables in the fifteenth
of Luke. The man's curiosity was now wide awake;
he listened to the story of the sheep lost and found,
but when Patty glanced at his face, it was unsatisfied;
he hearkened to the story of the coin that was lost
and found, and still he looked at her with faint eagerness,
as if trying to guess why she should call that his
mother's favorite chapter. Then she read slowly, and
with sincere emotion, that truest of fictions, the tale
of the prodigal son and his hunger, and his good resolution,
and his tattered return, and the old father's joy.
And when she looked up, his eyes tightly closed could
not hide his tears.

“Do you think that is her favorite chapter?” he
asked.

“Of course it must be,” said Patty, conclusively.
“And you'll notice that this prodigal son didn't wait
to make himself better, or even until he could get a
new suit of clothes.”

The sick man said nothing.

The raw-boned Mrs Barkins came to the door at
that moment and said:

“The doctor's gal's out yer and want's to see
you.”

“You wont go away yet?” asked the patient,
anxiously.

“I'll stay,” said Patty, as she left the room.

Nettie, with her fresh face and dimpled cheeks,
was standing timidly at the outside door. Patty took

the jelly from her hand and sent a note to the Doctor:

“The patient is doing well every way, and I am in
the safest place in the world—doing my duty.”

And when the doctor read it he said, in his nervously
abrupt fashion: “Perfect angel!”