University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE MISTRESS OF HUCKLEBURY RUN AND HER ACCOMPLISHED
DAUGHTER.

On the evening of the accident at the Run, Arthur
did not retire to bed until late, anxious to learn from
Dr. Gilbert the fate of the proprietor. He called at
the house of the doctor several times, but that gentleman
had not returned. He knew that the casualty was
a serious one, and one that would be likely to have important
relations to his future life. It would inevitably
thwart all his plans, or modify, in some unlooked-for
way, his destiny. His despondent mother
felt that it was only a new misfortune added to her already
extended list, and declared that she had expected
something like it from the first.

At last Arthur reliquished the expectation of seeing
the doctor that night, and went to bed. The next
morning was dark and rainy. An eastern storm was
raging when he rose, and the walk was covered with
deciduous foliage. Large trees that had borne into the
night abundant wealth of mellow purple and scarlet
and gold, greeted the gray light of the morning in shivering

and moaning nakedness. The clouds sailed low
and fast upon an atmosphere of mist, and tossed overboard
their burden in fitful and spiteful showers. The
ground was soaked and spongy, and every thing, above
and below, looked sad and forbidding, as Arthur left his
door for the scene of his daily labor.

He had accomplished possibly half of the distance
to the mill, running rather than walking, when his ear
caught the sound of wheels; and soon afterwards Dr.
Gilbert and his gig showed themselves through the
misty twilight. Arthur hailed the doctor, and inquired
for his employer.

“He is at death's door,” replied the doctor, “with
the bare possibility of being saved. He wants, too,
such care as only a man can give him. His family are
worse than nothing, and I see no way but for you to
become his nurse, and take the charge of him until he
either dies or recovers. I have been with him all night,
but I cannot be with him to-day. Go directly to the
house, and I will be there in the course of a few hours,
and give you my directions.”

Saying this to Arthur, who was so much impressed
by this new turn of events that he could not reply, Dr.
Gilbert chirruped to the little black pony, who stood
uneasily in the storm, with his ears turned back very
savagely, and away rolled the gig into the mist, leaving
the young man standing with his face toward Crampton.
A moment of indecision was followed by the active resumption
of his way to the Run. Arriving at the mill,
he found every thing in confusion. The early breakfast
had been eaten, and the operatives were assembled in
the mill, as if there had been no other resort; but the

wheel was not in motion. Gathered into knots here
and there in the different rooms, some of them were
discussing their master's calamity with unbecoming
levity, and others, less talkative, were looking solemn
and apprehensive.

Why was it that all these men and women regarded
Arthur Blague, as he entered the mill, with an expectation
of help and direction? He was but a boy, and
knew nothing of the duties of the establishment; but
they turned to him just as naturally as if he had been
their master for years. They were “all alike down to
the Run.” They were all men and women who had
been governed, who had had their wills crushed out of
them, who had lived and moved only in cowardly dependence.
The bell had controlled them like a flock of
sheep. Their employer's presence had been their stimulus
to labor, and his mind and will were in them all.
As soon as that mind and will and presence were withdrawn,
they were helpless, because they had long since
ceased to govern and direct themselves. There was no
leader among them. They had all been conquered
—“they were all alike down to the Run.”

The moment Arthur stepped into the mill, the knots
of men and women were dissolved, and all flocked
around him. “Have you heard from old Ruggles?”
“Have you seen the doctor?” “What does the doctor
think?” were questions which poured in upon him
from every side. Arthur told them what the doctor
had said, and asked them what they were going to do.
Nobody knew; nobody assumed to speak for the others.
All were dumb.

Arthur waited a moment, looking from one to another;

when Cheek, standing on a bale of cloth, shouted:
“This meeting will please to come to order.”

As the meeting happened to be in a very perfect
state of order at the instant, it of course immediately
went into the disorder of unnecessary laughter.

“I motion,” said Cheek, assuming all the active
functions of a deliberative assembly, “that Arthur
Blague, Esq., be the boss of this mill till somebody
gets well, or somebody kicks the bucket. All who are
in favor will say `aye.”'

The “aye” was very unanimous, whatever may
have been intended by it.

“All those opposed will shut their clam-shells,”
continued Cheek, “and forever after hold their peace.”

In the midst of much merriment, Cheek handed to
Arthur, with a profound bow, an old hat which belonged
to the proprietor, and then put his own under his arm,
in token of his readiness to receive orders.

Arthur was about to decline the honor conferred
upon him, and to say that the occasion was hardly one
that admitted of levity, when his eye detected, among
the girls of the group, an earnest face, back from which
fell the familiar sun-bonnet. The moment the woman
caught his eye, she beckoned to him. Making his way
through the group, he followed her aside, and then she
turned upon him her full blue eyes, and spoke.

“Mr. Blague,” said the young woman, with a low,
firm voice, and with an air of good breeding, “these
people are in trouble, and do not know what to do.
Advise them frankly. Do not be afraid of them because
you are a comparative stranger to them. Tell

them what to do, and they will do it. Leave me, and
act at once.”

All this was said rapidly, and in a tone that no one
heard but he. The words were those of command; the
voice was one of respectful entreaty. Arthur turned
to the assembly, whose eyes had followed him, while
his mysterious counsellor took her station at her
looms.

“We do not elect our master in this mill,” said Arthur,
pleasantly. “It is not in accordance with the constitution
of Hucklebury Run; therefore, I beg leave to
decline the honor you have conferred upon me; but
there is one thing we can all do.”

“What's that? what's that?” inquired a dozen
voices.

“Each person can do his own work, and his own
duty, in his own place, and be his own master; and if
each one does this, there will be no trouble, and the
work will all be done, and done well. If Mr. Ruggles
recovers, then his business will suffer no interruption;
if he dies, you will have pay for your labor.”

The question, so difficult to these people, who had
lost the idea of governing themselves, was solved. He
had not ceased to speak, when a strong hand raised the
gate, and the big wheel was in motion. In five minutes
the mill was in full operation. A sense of individual
responsibility brought self-respect, and awakened a sentiment
of honor. They were happier, and more faithful
in heart and hand to the interests of their employer,
than they had been in all the history of their connection
with the establishment. Arthur looked for the girl
who had spoken to him. She met his eye with a smile,

bowed slightly, as if acknowledging his service, and
turned to her work.

Half-bewildered by the events of the morning, in
which he seemed to have played an important part,
without comprehending how or why he had done it, and
with the strange, low voice of the young woman still
lingering in his ears, he turned from the mill to seek
the dwelling of his employer, in accordance with the
wishes of Dr. Gilbert.

Old Ruggles lived in a little dwelling on a hill that
overlooked the mill. It was hardly superior in size and
architectural pretensions to the tenements occupied by
the men, among his operatives, who had families. Arthur
rapped softly at the door, and was admitted by a
woman, whom he recognized at once as Mrs. Ruggles.
She was coarse and vulgar-looking, very fat, with large
hands, small, cunning eyes, and floating cap-strings.
Every thing she wore seemed to float back from her anterior
aspect, as if she had stood for a week facing a
strong wind. Her cap flew back at the ears, and the
strings hung over the shoulders; the ends of her neckerchief
were parallel with her cap-strings; her skirts
were very scant before, and very full behind, as if,
which was the fact, she always moved very fast, and
created a vacuum in her passage, which every light
article upon her ponderous person strove to reach
and fill.

She greeted Arthur with a very dolorous face, but
called him “Arthur” quite familiarly, and affected an
air of polite condescension, as she inquired if he would
sit down and have a cup of coffee. “We are trying,
Leonora and me,” said Mrs. Ruggles, “to take something

to support natur', because, as I tell Leonora, it's
a duty to bear up under the strokes of Providence, and
be able to help them that needs us.”

Mrs. Ruggles said this as she pointed Arthur to a
chair at the table, by the side of Leonora, and went to
the cupboard for a plate, cup, and saucer. Leonora, the
daughter, was an old acquaintance of the young man's,
and he shook her listless, lifeless hand in silence.

The coffee doesn't look very well this morning,”
said Mrs. Ruggles, as she poured out a cup for Arthur,
“but I s'pose it's more nourishing than as if it was settled.
I always told father,” by which reverential term
the lady intended to designate her husband, “that if
coffee was nourishing at all, the grounds was the best
part of it. You know how it is with porridge?” And
Mrs. Ruggles looked at Arthur as she handed him the
cup and the suggestive illustration together, as if the
two articles were sufficient to floor the strongest prejudices.

“Will you have another cup, dear?” said Leonora's
mamma, to that young woman. Leonora did not reply,
save by a contemptuous twist of her features, and a
shake of her head.

“I don't think Leonora loves coffee very well,” pursued
Mrs. Ruggles.

“I love coffee, but I don't love slops,” responded the
young woman, pettishly.

“Now, dear, don't speak so,” said mamma deprecatingly;
“this is what we get for sending you to boarding-school.
Oh! girls are brought up so different from
what they was when I was young. Now, dear, you
know that we never settle our coffee with eggs after

they get to be over a shilling a dozen. Father and me
has always been obliged to be equinomical, and to look
after odds and ends, and if you have got extravagant
notions into your head, you didn't git them to home.
You know it, dear, jest as well as I do.”

Leonora breathed a little gust of irritation through
her nostrils, as if a fly were upon her lip.

Arthur was sufficiently amused with the mother, but
he was honestly concerned for the father, and he wondered
how the face he met at the door could so suddenly
lose its longitude. He ventured to change the
direction of the conversation by inquiring into Mr. Ruggles'
condition.

The fat face gathered incalculable solemnity on the
instant. “Father has took sights of laudlum—sights of
laudlum!” Mrs. Ruggles shook her head, as if the
“laudlum” were the big end of the calamity.

“I hope it has quieted him,” said Arthur.

“Yes, he's asleep now, and Joslyn is setting up with
him. Joslyn is a very still man, you know, for one
that's so heavy as he is. I s'pose he's got used to going
tiptoe by always having a baby to home. It would
be an awful stroke to Joslyn if father should be took
away.” Mrs. Ruggles' own woe seemed to be entirely
submerged by her sympathy for Joslyn.

“But we all hope he will live,” said Arthur cordially,
“and I know Dr. Gilbert hasn't given him up.”

“Oh! such a sight—such a sight!” exclaimed the
wife, as the sound of the doctor's name recalled the
painful scenes of the night, “every rag of clothes torn
off of him, and his leg broke, and his body no better
than so much jelly! It's the greatest wonder that he's

alive now. It seemed to me as if I never should live
through it; and it wouldn't be strange if he should be
took away, after all. But it isn't our doings, and we
must be resigned to the stroke, if it comes.”

The last portion of these remarks was accompanied
by appropriate sighs, but it somehow seemed to Arthur
as if resignation would not be such a difficult duty,
after all.

The small, cunning eyes of the woman read as much
as this in the young man's face, and she continued: “It's
a duty to be thankful for our comforts, whatever comes.
If he should be took away, I shouldn't be like them
that have no hope.”

“Is Mr. Ruggles a religious man?” inquired Arthur.

“It depends on what people calls religion,” replied
Mrs. Ruggles. “Some thinks it's one thing, and some
thinks it's another. Some is professors, you know, and
some is possessors. Father and me never made so
much fuss about our religion as some folks do. He always
give something for supporting the Gospil. I've
seen him give twenty-five dollars to once, and he was
forever taking down a codfish or something to Mr. Wilton.
Father and me has always been equinomical, but
we never stole the Gospil, never. Then father has always
provided for his own family, which is more religion
than some folks have. Folks that don't provide
for their own families are infidels, the Bible says.”

During all this conversation, Leonora had sat in
perfect silence, expressing only by her lazy features the
contempt she felt for her mother, and for the meal before
her. Her eyes gave no evidence of tears, past or

present. She was annoyed, to be sure, but she was always
annoyed. With a father and a mother wholly
absorbed by worldliness, she had grown up in indolence
—the insipid, ungrateful recipient of every loving ministry
of which her parents were capable. Arthur turned
his eyes upon her in astonishment, wondering that the
nature of any woman could be so apathetic.

Mrs. Ruggles noticed Arthur's observation of her
daughter, and continued: “As I was saying, father has
looked out for his own family, and Leonora is provided
for. There isn't any girl in Crampton that is any better
edicated than she is, and there isn't one that will
have such a setting-out. Of course, she will have all
we have got, at last, when we are both took away, but
I mean she shall always hold it in her own right. I
don't think it's right for folks to tug and tug all their
lives to get money together to spoil their children's
husbands with. When I married father—you know I
married him out of the mill—I had my own bank stock
that I had earned myself, and I've always held it in my
own right. I think it's such a comfort for a woman to
have bank stock, if her husband's took away.”

Even Leonora could not withstand this. “Mother,”
said she, “Mr. Blague thinks you are a fool; I'm sure
I do.”

“Don't speak so, dear,” responded the mother tenderly.
“You are not yourself this morning.”

“That's a blessing: then I'm not your daughter;”
and without asking to be released from the table, Leonora
rose, and lounged out of the room.

Arthur thought it time for business. “I am to
nurse Mr. Ruggles, Dr. Gilbert tells me,” said he, recalling

Mrs. Ruggles from the admiring contemplation
of her daughter's retiring figure.

“I know it,” she replied, “and I should have spoke
of it before, but I knew father was asleep, and that Joslyn
would call us if any thing happened. I s'pose (and
Mrs. Ruggles sighed) that because I talk, and eat my
victuals, you and Leonora think I don't feel this
stroke, but little do you know! I have to talk, for my
mind's distracted, and I think of every thing; and I have
to eat to support natur' and bear up. Arthur, I forgot
to inquire about your mother. How is she?”

Arthur's eyes filled with tears in an instant. “She
can neither talk, nor eat, nor bear up, as you say,” he
replied.

“She was always kind o' weakly,” said Mrs. Ruggles,
musing. “Dear me! How well I remember her
when she felt too big to speak to me! She was mighty
crank when she married the storekeeper; but some goes
up and some goes down; and isn't it strange, now, that
her boy should come here and wait upon father!”
Mrs. Ruggles said this without the remotest suspicion
that her remarks were utterly offensive.

“My mother is a lady, Mrs. Ruggles, and never
treated you in any other than a ladylike way. I beg
you never to mention her again.”

“Well, of course, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,”
replied the woman, wondering at Arthur's impudence.
“I'm very sorry, of course, for your mother.
I ra'ally hope she's got something in her own right, and
that she'll chirk up, and git along comfortable.”

Arthur bit his lip, vexed at the woman's stolid pertinacity,
and amused in spite of himself with her lack of

sense and sensibility. He rose, and said: “Will you call
Joslyn, Mrs. Ruggles?”

The floor creaked, and shook, as the large woman
went on her errand; and soon afterwards Joslyn appeared—a
white, tallowy-looking, middle-aged man, with
a large, flat face, faded eyes, and a bald spot on the top
of his head over which the hair was braided.

“How is Mr. Ruggles?” inquired Arthur.

“I don' know,” replied Joslyn in a whisper.

“Does he suffer?”

“I don' know, I'm sure.”

“Did Dr. Gilbert set his broken leg?”

“I don' know. He did something to it.”

“Are you to stay here?”

“I don' know, I'm sure.”

“What are you doing for him?”

“I don' know. Dr. Gilbert told me to set by him,
and give him his drops once in two hours if he was
awake. If he wasn't, I wasn't to wake him up.”

“Well,” said Arthur, “tell me about the drops, and
then go home, and go to bed. I will look after Mr.
Ruggles.”

“Just as you say, of course,” said Joslyn.

Then Joslyn explained the doctor's directions, and
hoped Arthur would stand between him and all harm,
if the master should wake and be offended because he
had left him. “I feel particular about keeping in with
him,” said Joslyn in explanation, “for I have a good
many to look after.” Having said this, the humble and
fearful man spread a spotted bandanna handkerchief
over his head, and went off through the storm toward

his little tenement on tiptoe, as if the street were lined
with babies in profound slumber.

Arthur entered the room where the proprietor lay.
Pale and haggard—the more so in seeming for the blackness
of his beard—he lay moaning in a narcotic dream.
Arthur took a seat by his side, and, in doing so, made
a noise with his chair. The eyes of the sleeper were
instantaneously wide open. Wild, glassy, and apprehensive,
they gazed into Arthur's face with an expression
that sent a shudder through his frame. It was an
expression of hate, astonishment, and inquiry. The
master tried to rise, but his muscles refused to lift him
an inch.

“What am I here for? What are you here for?”
whispered the man.

“You have met with an accident,” said Arthur,
stooping over him. “You are very badly hurt, and
must be quiet.”

“Who says I'm hurt? Who hurt me? Why ain't
you to work?” Old Ruggles gasped with the exertion
which the words cost him.

Then Arthur told him all about his injury, and what
had been done for him, and furthermore informed him
that he must obey all directions, or he could not live.
As the meaning of Arthur's words sank slowly into his
benumbed consciousness, the fierce look faded out of
the master's eyes, and gave place to an expression of
fear and anxiety.

“Don't let me die,” said he, with a pitiful whine.
“Don't let me die. I can't die.”

“We shall do all we can for you, but you must not
talk,” said Arthur.

“I didn't mean you any harm,” whimpered the master,
evidently recalling his treatment of Arthur, and
afraid that the young man would revenge himself upon
him in some way. “I didn't mean you any harm.
Don't lay up any thing agin me.” And the cowardly
man cried like a helpless baby.

Arthur reassured him, and then without further parley
commanded him to be silent. So the proprietor of
Hucklebury Run, subdued by fear and helplessness, put
himself into the hands of his new apprentice. Arthur
watched him through the long morning, and as the reaction
from the terrible nervous shock came on, he
hung over him, and fanned him as faithfully as if he
had been his own father. With the reaction came insanity.
The master was in his mill, scolding his hands,
and raving about Arthur. He accused one of wasting,
and another of idling, and threatened another.

At noon, Dr. Gilbert's little pony came pounding
over the bridge that crossed the Run, and the gig reeled
up to the door, the doctor touching the ground before
the vehicle had fairly stopped. He found his patient-quite
as well as he expected to find him; and giving
Arthur full directions as to his management, he told
him that he had provided company for his mother, and
that she would not expect him home until it should be
proper for him to leave his charge.

Convalescence, with the proprietor, was very slow
in its progress, and frequently interrupted by relapses.
It was for many weeks a matter of doubt whether he
would ever permanently recover. In the mean time,
Aunt Catharine had taken it upon herself to see that
Mrs. Blague was not left alone, and that she needed no

essential service which Arthur's absence deprived her
of. Business at the mill went on entirely through the
medium of Arthur Blague. He was nurse, accountant,
confidential clerk, salesman at the store, factotum. He
was the only man competent to do the business correspondence
for his employer; and as the latter was clearheaded
after the first few days of fever, he made the
young man his right arm in every department of his
affairs.

It had been one of the pet boasts of old Ruggles that
he had never been sick a day in his life, and had never
paid a doctor's bill. All his business he had done himself.
There was not a man at the Run in his employ
who had a particle of his confidence, or who had ever
known any thing of his business affairs. He never expected
to be sick. It had never entered into his thought
as among the possibilities of life that he should be disabled
and dependent. To suppose that such a man
should take such restraint and such dependence patiently,
would be to expect miracles. To Arthur he was exacting
to the last degree of forbearance—giving him hardly
time for sleep, and allowing him only a moment occasionally
to drop in upon his mother and little Jamie, on
the way to the post-office.

There was one shrewd pair of eyes that watched all
these proceedings with great speculative curiosity.
Mrs. Ruggles, relieved by Arthur from a serious burden
of care, was aware of his importance to her husband,
not only as nurse, but as business executive.
Arthur's quiet assumption of entire social equality, and
his actual personal superiority, had impressed the woman
very decidedly; and when she saw how well he took

hold of affairs, how much her husband depended upon
him, and how necessary he would be to the business in
the event of a fatal termination of the master's injuries,
she had come to the conclusion that a permanent partnership
between him and dear Leonora would be a very
profitable and a very desirable thing. The business at
the Run could go along without difficulty. Arthur
would come there to live, and the Widow Ruggles, not
without her comforts, would pass her days in prosperity
equal to her previous lot, and in peace quite superior.

Conveniently without the slightest sensibility, she
had no difficulty in approaching the subject which occupied
her thoughts, in her interviews with Arthur; and
it must be confessed that, foolish as the girl thought her
mother to be, she lent herself to her schemes. Bred to
feel that money was the grand requisite for social position
and personal power, she believed that she was
mistress of her own matrimonial destiny. She had but
to indicate her willingness to link her fortunes with
those of any poor young man, to secure that young
man's everlasting gratitude. It had been drummed into
her ears by the repetitious tongue of her mother, even
from young girlhood, that the ultimate mistress of
Hucklebury Run, and heir presumptive of Madam Ruggles'
bank stock, held in her own right, could marry
whomsoever in Crampton, or in the towns thereunto
adjacent, she might choose.

Whether eggs had gone down materially, soon after
Arthur's advent into the family, the young man did not
know, but he noticed a very decided improvement in
the quality of the coffee. Leonora, too, grew from day
to day more careful in her dress, and was always, at

certain times, to be found sitting in Arthur's way.
Wholly preoccupied, the honest-hearted, unsuspicious
fellow did not notice these things at all. The possibility
of a wife and daughter setting themselves seriously at
work to entice a young man into a matrimonial alliance,
at a moment when the husband and father lay in an adjoining
room, trembling between life and death, was
something alike beyond his suspicion and his comprehension.

One morning, Arthur was detained from his breakfast
some minutes after it was announced to be ready.
On entering the room, he found the mother and daughter
waiting. Arthur took his accustomed seat at the head
of the table, with Leonora at his right hand, robed in a
very comely morning wrapper, and a mingled atmosphere
of sassafras-soap, and sour hair.

Mrs. Ruggles looked radiantly across the table at
Arthur, as if she were sighting a cannon, the top of the
coffee-pot serving as the initial point in the range.
“Leonora and me has been talking about you,” said
the lady. “You see we couldn't get along without you
at all, and I don't know but we should have starved to
death if you hadn't come. It seems just as nateral to
have you to the head of the table somehow, as it does
to have father, and that was that Leonora and me was
saying. Leonora, says she, How well Mr. Blague looks
to the head of the table, setting up so tall and handsome!”

“Mother Ruggles!” Leonora simpered, shocked
purely as a matter of conventional propriety.

Mrs. Ruggles giggled. “Look at her, Arthur, and
see how she blushes,” said the fond mother, pointing to

the impassive face of her daughter. “You needn't
blush so, for it's just what I've said myself. But we
don't make ourselves; it's nothing for us to be lifted
up about.” The lady drew on a pious look, as if she
were the last person who would be guilty of feeding
Arthur's vanity, and the first decently to remind him
of the great Author of all beauty. “No, we don't make
ourselves,” continued Mrs. Ruggles, “but we know that
some looks well to the head of the table, and some
don't. Some seems calculated to be the head of a family,
and some seems ridiculous when we think of it. If
there's any thing that I hate, it is to see a little man to
the head of the table, particular if his wife is a sizable
woman, and he isn't big enough to say, Why do ye so?
I was saying to Leonora, only a day or two ago, says I,
Dear, when you get married—and I hope you don't think
of such a thing for the present—do you look out for a
husband not an inch shorter than Arthur Blague, for
I've seen you together, and there's just the right difference
between you. That's just what I said to her—
wasn't it, dear?”

“You say a great many foolish things, mother,”
said Leonora, lazily.

“Now, dear, don't say so. Young folks always
thinks old folks is fools, but when I see your father
lying dangerous, and the only child I have to my back
in a way of being left alone without any pertector, it's
nateral for mothers to think of the future, and to calculate
on what they'd like to see brung about. Don't you
think so, Arthur?”

Arthur thus appealed to, responded as the lady apparently
desired.

“S'posing every thing suits, and every thing should
be brung about just as it might be, and no damage
done to nobody,” pursued the woman mysteriously,
“what is your notion about a woman's holding her
property in her own right? I mean after she get's married,
of course.”

Arthur replied coolly, that he trusted all married
women who desired to hold property in their own
right, would do so by all means. As far as he was personally
concerned, while he would not blame a woman
for having property, he should altogether prefer that
she should depend upon him for support, rather than be
independent of him.

“I think those notions is good, and honable,” responded
Mrs. Ruggles. “A husband always ought to
support his family, and then if a woman has any thing
in her own right, she can keep it. When I was married,
I had bank stock, and I've always kept it in my
own right, and father never has had a cent of it, and it's
always been a comfort to me to think that if he should
be took away, or any thing should happen, I hold my
bank stock in my own right, and nobody can say, Why
do ye so? Oh! I think it's such a comfort to a woman
to have bank stock, if her husband's took away; don't
you, Arthur?”

Arthur was polite enough not to tell her that there
were some women who, he believed, would very much
rather lose their husbands than their bank stock, but he
thought so, and hurried through a meal made repulsive
by the worldly Mrs. Ruggles' conversation, and her insipid
daughter's presence. But one breakfast was the
pattern of many others; and as Mrs. Ruggles saw how

important Arthur was becoming to her husband, and
how desirable an element he was in the society of
Hucklebury Run, she became only the more pertinacious
in her persecution of him on her daughter's behalf.
Arthur could readily bring his mind to bear with
his master's petulant exactions, but the flattery of the
mistress, and her daughter's patronizing and familiar
airs, were more than he could abide.

In truth, there was a reason for his disgust with
Mrs. Ruggles and her daughter, beyond the repulsive
nature of their advances. He had never forgotten the
expression of those blue eyes that looked into his on
the morning after the accident to the proprietor. He
had never forgotten those low-spoken, well-spoken
words, and the unconscious compliment which they
conveyed to him. He had visited the mill every day—
often many times in a day. Always, of course, he had
sought for the mysterious young woman who seemed
so different from all her associates. The sun-bonnet was
always upon her head. She seemed to hold communication
with no one, and to be not unfrequently in tears.
He was thrown into no relations with her that warranted
him in extending conversation, and he could ascertain
nothing about her from others, beyond the facts
that she had been in the mill for six months, always
kept her own counsel, was well educated, intelligent,
amiable, and religious; was sad-hearted, and bore the
name of Mary Hammett.

If Arthur was abundantly employed during the
hours in which he was upon his feet, he was also abundantly
employed in his hours of retirement. The fever
that so frequently attacks young men at nineteen was

upon him—a fever invariably excited by a woman superior
in years and experience. Mary Hammett was
twenty-two, and had the maturity of a man of twenty-five;
but to Arthur Blague the earth soon came to hold
no such divinity as she. The factory became a charming
place because she was in it. Hucklebury Run was
heaven, because hallowed by the residence of one of
heaven's angels. Arthur had not been without his
school-boy fancy for Fanny Gilbert, but she had never
possessed the power to stir his deeper nature. Only the
mature woman could do this, and all his boyish likings
were swept out of mind by his new and all-pervading
passion.

Autumn deepened into winter, and winter was softening
into spring, before the health of the proprietor
was so far re-established as to allow his young assistant
once more to become permanently a resident of his
mother's home. In the mean time, Aunt Catharine in
person, or by the assistance of sympathetic friends, had
ministered to Arthur's lonely mother, and little Jamie
had grown into healthy and comely babyhood.

But Arthur had become too important to the proprietor
to be lightly spared. It was a loss to old Ruggles
in many ways to allow him to lodge at home. The
old man could never again be in his business what he
had been. His broken limb was shortened, and he could
only get about upon his cane. His nerves were shattered,
and he could not write. He could not live without
Arthur. In the measure of his dependence upon
the young man, he had grown careful not to offend him.
Thoroughly selfish himself, and incapable of appreciating
any thing higher than selfishness as a motive of action,

he had addressed himself in all possible ways to Arthur's
personal ambition and desire to get forward in
the world. He had hinted vaguely at a partnership,
possible in the future—at a great increase of wages
when some desirable changes in his business should be
accomplished—at a sale of Hucklebury Run entire to
Arthur, when that young man should arrive at his
majority, etc.

The aim of all these magnificent promises was to induce
Arthur to leave his mother's roof, and become a
resident of the Run. At length, uncomfortable weather
and most inconvenient walking determined him to
consider the master's desires, and to cast about for
some one to take his place as nightly society for his
mother.

It would not do to depend upon Aunt Catharine
again, and, to tell the truth, he would not have thought
of doing it had it been the most practicable thing in
the world. He had conceived a project, and he would
not be content until it should be fulfilled. On the same
day during which he had come to his determination,
circumstances opened a door to favor its fulfilment.