University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
SAL FURBUSH.

The next morning, beween nine and ten, as Mary sat by
Alice's cradle rocking her to sleep, she was sensible of an
unusual commotion in and around the house. First there
was the sound as of some one dancing in the dark passage.
Then there was the same noise in the kitchen below, and a
merry voice was heard singing snatches of wild songs, while
occasionally peals of laughter were heard mingled with Mrs.
Grundy's harsher tones. Mary's curiosity was roused, and
as soon as Alice was fairly asleep, she resolved to go down
and ascertain the cause of the disturbance, which had now
subsided.

As she opened her door, she saw advancing towards her
from the farthest extremity of the hall, a little, shrivelled
up woman, with wild flashing eyes, and hair hanging loosely
over her shoulders. She was shaking her fist in a very
threatening manner, and as she drew nearer Mary saw that
her face was going through a great variety of changes, being
at first perfectly hideous in its expression, and then instantly
changing into something equally ridiculous, though not quite
so frightful. Quickly divining that this must be Sal Furbush,
Mary sprang back, but had not time to fasten her door

ere the wild woman was there. In a tremor of terror Mary
ran under the bed as the only hiding-place the room afforded,
but her heart almost ceased beating as she saw her pursuer
about to follow her. Springing out with a bound she would
perhaps have made her egress through the open window, had
not Sally prevented her by seizing her arm, at the same time
saying, “Don't be alarmed, duckey, I shan't hurt you; I'm
Sal. Don't you know Sal?”

The voice was low and musical, and there was something
in its tones which in a measure quieted Mary's fears, but
she took good care to keep at a respectful distance. After
a while Sally asked, “Have you come here to board?”

“I have come here to live,” answered Mary, “I have no
other home.”

“Well, for your sake I hope there'll be an improvement
in the fare, for if there isn't I declare I won't stay much
longer, though to be sure you don't look as if you'd been
used to any thing better than skim-milk. What ails your
teeth, child?”

Involuntarily Mary's hand went up to her mouth, and
Sally, who if she expected an answer, forgot to wait for it,
continued, “Do you know grammar, child?”

Mary replied that she had studied it a few months in
Worcester, and a few weeks in Chicopee.

“Oh, I am so glad,” said Sal, “for now I shall have an
associate. Why, the greatest objection I have to the kind
of people one meets with here, is that they are so horribly
vulgar in their conversation and murder the Queen's English
so dreadfully. But won't you and I have good times saying
the rules in concert?”

Unfortunately Mary's knowledge of grammar was rather
limited, and as she did not exactly fancy Sal's proposition,

she answered that she had nearly forgotten all she ever knew
of grammar.

“Oh, that's nothing, child that's nothing,” said Sal.
It will return to you gradually. Why, things that happened
forty years ago and were forgotten twenty years ago come
back to me every day, but then I always did forget more in
one night than some people, Miss Grundy, for instance, ever
knew in all their life.”

“Have you lived here long?” asked Mary.

“Yes, a great while,” and the expression of Sally's face
grew graver, as she added, “Perhaps you don't know that I
lost little Willie, and then Willie's father died too, and left
me all alone. Their graves are away on the great western
prairies, beneath the buckeye trees, and one night when the
winter wind was howling fearfully, I fancied I heard little
Willie's voice calling to me from out the raging storm. So
I lay down on the turf above my lost darling, and slept so
long, that when I awoke my hair had all turned gray and I
was in Chicopee, where Willie's father used to live. After
a while they brought me here and said I was crazy, but I
wasn't. My head was clear as a bell, and I knew as much as
I ever did, only I couldn't tell it, because, you see, the right
words wouldn't come. But I don't care now I've found
some one who knows grammar. How many genders are
there, child?”

“Four,” answered Mary, who had been studying Smith.

Instantly Sal seized Mary's hands, and nearly wrenching
them off in her joy, capered and danced about the room,
leaping over the cradle, and finally exclaiming, “Capital!
You think just as I do, don't you? And have the same opinion
of her? What are the genders, dear? Repeat them.”

“Masculine, Feminine, Neuter and Common,” said Mary.

“O, get out with your common gender,” screamed Sal.

“My grammar don't read so. It says Masculine, Feminine,
Neuter and Grundy gender, to which last but one thing in
the world belongs, and that is the lady below with the cast-iron
back and India-rubber tongue.”

“Do you mean Mrs. Grundy?” asked Mary, and Sal replied,
“Mrs. Grundy? and who may Mrs. Grundy be? Oh,
I understand, she's been stuffing you.”

“Been what?” said Mary.

“Excuse me,” answered Sal. “That's a slang term I've
picked up since I've been here. It's so easy to get contaminated,
when one is constantly associated with such low
people. I mean that during my temporary seclusion Miss
Grundy has probably given you erroneous impressions which
I take pleasure in correcting. She has no more right to
order us boarders around, and say when we shall breathe and
when we shan't, than I have. She's nothing more nor less
than a town pauper herself, and has to work at that.”

“So do we all,” interrupted Mary, and Sal continued:
“On that point you are slightly mistaken, my dear. I don't
have to. I didn't come here to work. They tried it
once.”

Here pushing her tangled hair back from her brow, she
pointed to a long scar, saying, “Do you see that?” Mary
nodded, and Sal continued: “When I first came here, the
overseer was a bad man, not at all like Mr. Parker. One
day he told me to wash the dinner dishes, and to use more
than a pint of water, too, so I gathered them up and threw
them into the well; but this method of washing did not suit
the overseer's ideas of housekeeping, so he took a raw hide,
and said he would either “break my will,” or “break my
neck,” and because he could not break my will, and dared
not break my neck, he contented himself with breaking my
head. Every blow that he struck me was like melted lead

poured into my brains, which puffed out like sausages, and
have never recovered their wonted dimensions. The town
took the matter up, but I don't remember much about it,
for I went to sleep again, and when I woke the overseer was
gone, and Mr. Parker was here in his place. I was chained
like a wild beast under the garret stairs, and Miss Grundy's
broad, stiff back was hung there for a door. Nobody asks
me to work now, but occasionally, just for pastime, I go into
Mrs. Parker's room and read to her, and tell her about my
Willie, who went away.”

“How long has Mrs. Parker been sick?” asked Mary.

“I'm no judge of time,” answered Sal, “but it seems a
great while, for since her illness Miss Grundy has been at the
helm in the kitchen, and perhaps it is all right that she
should be, for somebody must manage, and, as I had declared
I would not work, 'twould hardly have been consistent to
change my mind. And then, too, Miss Grundy seems admirably
suited for the place. Her forte is among pots and
kettles, and she will get the most work out of the boarders,
keep them on the least fare, and put more money into Mr.
Parker's pocket at the end of a year, than any one he could
hire, and this is the secret of his bearing so much from her.”

“But why does she want to fill his pockets with
money?”

Sal gave a knowing wink and replied, “You are not old
enough to see into every thing, so I dare say you wouldn't
understand me if I should hint that Mrs. Parker has the consumption,
and can't live always.” Mary's looks plainly told
that this remark had given her no idea whatever, and Sal
continued, “I knew you wouldn't understand, for you haven't
my discernment to begin with, and then you were never sent
away to school, were you?”

“No, ma'am, was you?” asked Mary.

“Say `were you,' if you please, it is more euphonious.
Yes, I was at school in Leicester two years, and was called
the best grammarian there, but since I've sojourned with
this kind of people, I've nearly lost my refinement. To be
sure I aim at exclusiveness, and now you've come I shall cut
them all, with the exception of Uncle Peter, who would
be rather genteel if he knew more of grammar.”

Just then Alice awoke, and Sally, who had not observed
her before, sprang forward with a scream of joy, and seizing the
child in her arms, threw her up towards the ceiling, catching
her as she came down as easily as she would a feather.
Strange to say Alice neither manifested any fear of the woman,
nor dislike of the play, but laid her head on Sally's
shoulder as naturally as if it had been her mother.

“Dear little fellow,” said Sal, “he looks like Willie,
only not half so handsome.”

“She isn't a boy,” quickly interrupted Mary. “Her
name is Alice.”

“No consequence,” said Sally, “he's Willie to me;”
and ever after, in spite of Mary's remonstrance, she persisted
in speaking of Alice as “he,” and “the little boy.”

Mary soon found that the poor-house with Sal Furbush
shut up, and the poor-house with Sal at liberty, were quite
different affairs. Now it was no longer lonely, for Sal's fertile
imagination was constantly suggesting something new,
either by way of pastime or mischief. Towards Miss Grundy,
she and the other paupers evinced a strong dislike, owing, in
a great measure, to the air of superiority which that lady
thought proper to assume, and which was hardly more than
natural considering the position which she occupied. She
was a capital housekeeper, and to one unacquainted with the
circumstances it seemed strange, why a person, apparently
so strong and healthy, should be in the Alms-House. Unfortunately,

however, she was subject to fits, which made
her presence so unpleasant to the people with whom she lived,
that at last, no one was willing to hire her. About that
time, too, she was taken very ill, and as she had no relatives,
she was removed to the poor-house, where she had remained
ever since.

When Mrs. Parker became too feeble to work, Miss
Grundy immediately stepped into her place, filling it so well,
that as Sal had said, Mr. Parker bore a great deal from her,
knowing that no one whom he could hire would do as well, or
save as much as she did. Sal Furbush she could neither manage
nor make work, and she vented her spite towards her by
getting her shut up on the slightest pretexts. Sal knew very
well to whom she was indebted for her “temporary seclusions,”
as she called them, and she exerted herself to repay
the debt with interest. Sometimes on a sultry summer
morning, when the perspiration stood thickly on Miss Grundy's
face as she bent over a red-hot cook-stove in the kitchen,
Sal with her, feet in the brook, which ran through the
back yard, and a big palm-leaf fan in her hand, would call
out from some shady spot, “Hallo, Miss Grundy, don't you
wish you were a lady boarder, and could be as cool and as
comfortable as I am?” Occasionally, too, when safely fastened
in the pantry enjoying her green tea and Boston crackers,
she would be startled with the words, “That must have
an excellent relish!” and looking up, she would spy Sal,
cosily seated on the top shelf, eyeing her movements complacently,
and offering, perhaps, to assist her if she found the
tea too strong!

Miss Grundy wore a wig, and as she seemed disturbed
whenever the fact was mentioned, the walls of the house both
inside and out were frequently ornamented with ludicrous
pictures of heself, in which she was sometimes represented

as entirely bald-headed, while with spectacles on the end of
her nose, she appeared to be peering hither and thither in
quest of her wig. On these occasions Miss Grundy's wrath
knew no bounds, and going to Mr. Parker she would lay the
case before him in so aggravated a form, that at last to get
rid of her, he would promise that, for the next offence, Sal
should be shut up. In this way the poor woman, to use her
own words, “was secluded from the visible world nearly half
the time.”

With the other inmates of the house, however, she was a
special favorite, and many were the kind turns which she
had done for the lame woman, whom Miss Grundy took delight
in reminding that “she didn't half earn the salt to her
porridge.”

Next to the wig, nothing more annoyed Miss Grundy
than to see Sal, with grammar in hand, perched upon the
window sill or table, and repeating at the top of her voice
the “rules,” of which every fourth one seemed to have been
made with direct reference to herself. But it was of no use
for Miss Grundy to complain of this, for as Sal said, “Mr.
Parker merely winked at it as the vagaries of a disordered
mind,” and she was free to quote her grammar from morning
till night. Whenever she was crazier than usual, her command
of language was proportionately greater, and her references
to her grammar more frequent, while no one in the house could
venture a remark without being immediately corrected for
some impropriety of speech.

Uncle Peter, who had a high opinion of Sally's abilities,
always did his best to converse as she directed, but in her
“inspired days” even he became utterly confounded, and once
when in one of her lofty strains, she had labored hard to impress
upon him the all-important fact that adjectives are frequently
changed into adverbs by the suffix “ly,” the old

man, quite out of his wits with his efforts to understand and
profit by her teachings, was guilty of a laughable blunder.

“Uncle Peter,” said she, “did you notice how unusually
funnily Miss Grundy's wig was arranged at dinner to-day?”

Thinking that he fully understood the reply which he was
expected to make, and anxious to make amends for his former
stupidity, Uncle Peter promptly replied, “No, madam,
I did not-ly!”

The look of horror which Sally's face assumed, convinced
Uncle Peter that he had failed in his attempts at speaking
grammatically, and with a sudden determination never again
to try, he precipitately left the house, and for the next two
hours amused himself by playing “Bruce's Address” upon
his old cracked fiddle. From that time Sal gave up all
hopes of educating Uncle Peter, and confined herself mostly
to literary efforts, of which we shall speak hereafter.

The night following Sal's first acquaintance with Mary,
Alice cried until nearly day dawn. The milk which Miss
Grundy's stinginess allowed her, was not particularly conducive
to her health, and besides that, she missed the invigorating
bath to which she had been accustomed during her
mother's lifetime. Mary had spoken of it two or three times,
but Miss Grundy only jerked her shoulders, saying, “she
guessed she wasn't going to have such a slush around the
house. You can bring her down,” said she, “to the sink,
and pump as much water on her as you like;” so Mary said
no more about it until the night of which we have spoken,
and then she determined on making one more effort. But
her heart almost failed her, when, on entering the kitchen, she
saw how the chairs and Miss Grundy's shoulders danced
round. She well knew that something was wrong, and attributing
it to Alice's crying, she awaited in silence for the
storm to burst.

“Rind,” said Miss Grundy to the girl with crooked
feet, who was washing the milk-pail, “ain't there nary spare
room in the dark passage?”

“None but the wool room, as I know on,” was Rind's
sullen response.

“Well, wool room 'tis then,—for, as for my being kept
awake night after night, by a good for nothin' young one,
that hain't no business here, any way, I shan't do it. So
(speaking to Mary) you may just pick up your duds and
move this very morning.”

“Going to put 'em in with the wool?” asked Rind, suspending
operations, and holding up the pail so that the water
ran out of the spout.

“You shet up,” said Miss Grundy, “and wait until
you're invited to speak. Goodness alive, look at that slop!
Tip up the pail, quick.”

By this time Mary had found courage to say she thought
Alice would be better if she could have her usual bath every
morning. This only increased Miss Grundy's wrath, and
she whirled round so swiftly, that her forehead came in contact
with the sharp edge of the cellar door, which chanced to
be open.

“Good,” softly whispered Rind, while the shuffling motion
of her club feet showed how pleased she was.

Mary, on the contrary, was really distressed, for she
knew the bumped head would be charged to her, and felt
sure that she was further than ever from the attainment of
her object. Still, after Miss Grundy's forehead was duly
bathed in cold water, and bound up in a blue cotton handkerchief
(the lady's favorite color), she again ventured to
say, “Miss Grundy, if you will only let me wash Alice in
my room, I'll promise she shan't disturb you again.”

After a great deal of scolding and fretting about whims,

stuck-up notions, and paupers trying to be somebody, Miss
Grundy, who really did not care a copper where Alice was
washed, consented, and Mary ran joyfully up stairs with the
bucket of clear, cold water, which was so soothing in its
effects upon the feeble child, that in a short time she fell
into a deep slumber. Mary gently laid her down, and
then smoothing back the few silken curls which grew around
her forehead, and kissing her white cheek, she returned to
the kitchen, determined to please Miss Grundy that day, if
possible.

But Miss Grundy was in the worst of humors, and the
moment Mary appeared she called out, “Go straight back,
and fetch that young one down here. Nobody's a goin' to
have you racin' up stairs every ten minutes to see whether
or no she sleeps with her eyes open or shet. She can stay
here as well as not, and if she begins to stir, Patsy can jog
the cradle.”

Mary cast a fearful glance at Patsy, who nodded and
smiled as if in approbation of Miss Grundy's command.
She dared not disobey, so Alice and her cradle were transferred
to the kitchen, which was all day long kept at nearly
boiling heat from the stove room adjoining. Twice Mary
attempted to shut the door between, but Miss Grundy bade
her open it so she could “keep an eye on all that was going
on.” The new sights and faces round her, and more than
all, Patsy's strange appearance, frightened Alice, who set up
such loud screams that Miss Grundy shook her lustily, and
then cuffed Patsy, who cried because the baby did, and pulling
Mary's hair because she “most knew she felt gritty,”
she went back to the cheese-tub, muttering something about
“Cain's being raised the hull time.”

At last, wholly exhausted and overcome with the heat,
Alice ceased screaming, and with her eyes partly closed, she

lay panting for breath, while Mary, half out of her senses,
tipped over the dishwater, broke the yellow pitcher, and
spilled a pan of morning's milk.

“If there's a stick on the premises, I'll use it, or my
name isn't Grundy,” said the enraged woman, at the same
time starting for a clump of alders which grew near the
brook.

At this stage of affairs, Sal Furbush came dancing in,
curtseying, making faces, and asking Mary if she thought
“the temperature of the kitchen conducive to health.”

Mary instinctively drew nearer to her, as to a friend, and
grasping her dress, whispered, “Oh, Sally, Aunt Sally, don't
let her whip me for nothing,” at the same time pointing
towards Miss Grundy, who was returning with an alder
switch, stripping off its leaves as she came.

“Whip you? I guess she won't,” said Sal, and planting
herself in the doorway as Miss Grundy came up, she asked,
“Come you with hostile intentions?”

“Out of my way,” said Miss Grundy. “I'll teach that
upstart to break things when she's mad.” Pushing Sal aside,
she entered the kitchen.

Mary retreated behind the cupboard door, and Miss
Grundy was about to follow her, when Sal, with a nimble
bound, sprang upon her back, and pulling her almost to the
floor, snatched the whip from her hand, and broke it in
twenty pieces. How the matter would have ended is uncertain,
for at that moment Mr. Parker himself appeared, and
to him Miss Grundy and Sal detailed their grievances, both
in the same breath.

“I can't get at a word,” said he, and turning to the
pleasant-looking woman, who was quietly paring apples, he
asked what it meant.

In a plain, straightforward manner, she told all, beginning

from the time when Alice was first brought into the
kitchen, and adding, as an opinion of her own, that the child
was suffering from heat. Mr. Parker was a good-natured,
though rather weak man, and in reality slightly feared Miss
Grundy. On this occasion, however, he did not take sides
with her, but said, “It was ridiculous to have such works,
and that if Mary wanted whipping, he would do it himself.”

“But Sal Furbush,” said Miss Grundy, as she adjusted
her head-gear, which was slightly displaced, “can't she be
shut up? There's bedlam to pay the whole durin' time
when she's loose.”

Mr. Parker knew this very well, but before he had time
to answer, Mary looked pleadingly in his face, and said, “If
you please, don't shut her up. She was not to blame, for I
asked her to help me.”

“Wall, wall, we'll let her off this time, I guess,” said
he; and as Uncle Peter just then put his head into the window,
saying that “the lord of the manor was wanted without,”
Mr. Parker left, glad to get out of the muss so easily.
No sooner was he gone, than Sal, catching up the cradle,
started for the stairs, saying, “I won't work, but I can, and
will take care of little Willie, and I choose to do it in a
more congenial atmosphere.” Then, as Mary looked a little
startled, she added, “Never you fear, dearie, Sal knows
what she's about, and she won't make the little boy the least
bit of a face.”

From that time there was no more trouble with Alice
during the day, for she seemed to cling naturally to Sally,
who hour after hour rocked and took care of her, while
Mary, in the kitchen below, was busy with the thousand
things which Miss Grundy found for her to do.