University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

A few weeks more, and Mr. Darley's arrangements
for selling his farm and stock had been made, and he
had enlisted with his son in the rebel army.

Tom had not forgotten his mother's last wishes; but
although he was extremely fond of her, and had been
very much affected by her death, he still secretly held the
idea common to the class of men with whom he had been
bred, that a woman's opinions upon matters of public
interest were hardly worth the attention of the sterner
sex, and were necessarily feeble and one-sided. He did
not now express this opinion to Dora, through respect
for his mother's memory; but she perceived that he
still held it, and was secretly indignant with him for doing
so.

Then, Tom had his father's direct command to oppose
to his mother's conditional wishes, and she had distinctly
said that she would not have him disobey his father; but
perhaps more than all the rest, Tom, who was as ardent
and as ignorant a politician as most lads, sided strongly,
in his own mind, with the secessionists.

Part of all this argument in favor of enlisting beside

his father, the boy repeated to his sister as they were
returning from a long Sunday afternoon walk a few days
before the sale of the old home.

Dora listened attentively, and without interruption, till
he had finished. Then she said, —

“Well, Tom, you must do as you like, or rather as
you think you ought to, and I shall do the same.”

“What do you mean, Dora? What can you do except
to stay quiet with aunt Wilson till we get back?”

“I don't think I shall stay with aunt Wilson a great
while,” said Dora, quietly.

“But you must, poor little Do,” said her brother,
compassionately. “I don't suppose it will be very jolly,
and I'm afraid you'll miss the old home a good deal.
But you stay quiet, like a good girl, till I get back, and
if aunt Wilson don't treat you well, I'll —”

He paused a little, doubtfully, and a quick smile shot
across the little pale face beside him.

“What will you do to aunt Wilson if she don't treat
me well?” asked Dora, merrily.

“Well, I can't do much to her, maybe, but I'll give
her boy Dick the darnedest licking he ever got in his life,
I'll be bound.”

Dora laughed outright.

“You dear old Tom,” said she, “and what good
would that do me? Do you think aunt would treat me
any the better for it?”

“Well, it would do me some good if it didn't you,”
muttered Tom, half ashamed of his comical threat.

“No, dear Tom,” continued Dora, while the smile
died off her face, and gave place to the look of patient
sternness, if it may so be called, that was fast becoming
habitual to it; “such ways as that are only good to
laugh about. But I know just as well as I want to that
I shan't be able to live at aunt Wilson's, though I'm
going to try a little while, because it's father that's put
me there. And if I find that I can't stand it —”

“Well, what will you do then, poor little girl?” asked
Tom.

“I don't just know myself,” said Dora, thoughtfully;
“and if I did, I don't think I should tell you, because
you might try to stop me; but I shall contrive some way
or other to get to Massachusetts, and find mother's sister
that she told us of.”

“Aunt Lucy? Yes, I remember. Did you find the
letter mother told about?”

“No!” exclaimed Dora, indignantly. “Aunt Wilson
went and took all the things out of the drawers the
very day after the funeral; and I suppose she read the
letter, and then burnt it up, for when I asked her about
it she wouldn't tell me, nor she wouldn't let me look
among mother's things. She has taken all that was in
the bureau, and carried it off to her own house.”

“What, to keep?”

“I suppose so. She told me everything that was in
the house was hers now, and I had no more right to
meddle with anything than any one else had.”

“But mother said that all she had was yours!” exclaimed
Tom, indignantly.

“I know it. I don't care for clothes, nor ribbons, and
such things; but I should have liked to have them because
they were mother's, and I dare say I should have
given almost all of them to aunt. I would only have
cared to keep the things I have seen mother wear most.
But now I haven't anything at all to call my own.”

“It's awful mean, and I ain't going to stand it,” said
Tom, wrathfully; “I'll talk to father about it.”

“No, Tom, there's no use in that. Father knows,
and he thinks it's all right, or else he can't help it. He
couldn't do anything, and there's no good in getting him
into a quarrel with aunt Wilson. Don't worry. I shall
take care of myself some way. I'm used to it, you know.
As for the things, I don't care much; but I wish I could
get hold of that letter.”

“O, Ma'am Spite burnt it up, I reckon, just because
she thought you'd like to have it.”

At this moment the children reached home, and the
conversation ended.

A few days after, the farm and stock were sold at
auction, and Mr. Darley, with Tom, set out for the town
of Monterey, where he intended volunteering.

Dora went home with her aunt, who had caused all
the furniture of the Darley homestead to be removed to
her own house, where, as she had said to her brother, it
added very much to the somewhat scanty comfort of her
arrangements.

For a day or two matters went very peacefully. Mrs.
Wilson, feeling, perhaps, some touch of pity for the motherless
child, forbore to press her either with labor or
discipline; and Dora, on the other hand, exerted herself
to do all she could, and in the way that she supposed
most likely to be agreeable to her aunt.

But at last came Monday, that terrible day to the
households of short-tempered wives who have their own
work to do. Jane and Louisa, Mrs. Wilson's daughters,
always cased themselves, upon Monday morning, in a
triple armor of sullen endurance and covert opposition to
their mother's tyranny, promising themselves and each
other to escape from it at the very earliest opportunity.

On this particular Monday Mrs. Wilson contrived to
make herself more disagreeable and oppressive than
usual. Nothing done by Jane, Louisa, or Dora was
well done. Each in turn found herself reproached with
laziness, stupidity, and that most comprehensive of
household crimes, called “shiftlessness.”

The daughters, well hardened to this periodical outpouring
of sentiment, bore it, as usual, in sulky silence,
varied with gestures, glances, muttered comments, and

when their mother was absent, with open expressions of
discontent and rebellion.

But Dora, accustomed to her own mother's mild and
affectionate rule, to commands so gentle that they seemed
like requests, and to an authority as undoubted as it was
unobtrusive, looked on at her aunt's domestic management
with undisguised astonishment, merged in silent
but indignant protest as she found herself becoming an
equal sharer with her cousins in their mother's abuse.
She was silent, to be sure, and, as the day passed on,
grew still more so; nor did she join in any of the mutinous
gestures and whispered comments that sufficed for
the relief of the other girls; but one accustomed to her
face and manner would have read in the kindling eyes,
pallid cheeks, and rigid mouth a gathering storm, whether
of grief or anger, as much beyond the usual scope of
a twelve years' temper as was the power of concealing it.

Evening came. Jane and Louisa cleared away the
supper dishes, and put the cheerless kitchen to rights,
while Dora, under her aunt's supervision, folded and
sprinkled the clothes.

A large sheet came under the child's hands, and rather
than ask help of her aunt, who had left her for a moment,
she attempted to fold it alone, succeeding, as she thought,
very well; but just as she was laying it in the basket
Mrs. Wilson returned, and catching it out again, flung it
on the table.

“What sort o' way to fold a sheet 's that?” asked she,
contemptuously; “you're so plaguy smart I s'pose you
couldn't wait for me to take holt o' the end, and so ye
just wabbed it up any way, to call it done. I don't think
much o' slickin' over work that way. It's my fashion to
go through it.”

Dora made no reply; but as her aunt unrolled, with
a jerk, the smoothly folded sheet, she took hold of one
end, and helped to refold it. This was nearly done,
when, with a snap and a jerk, intended to straighten it,
Mrs. Wilson twitched the sheet out of Dora's hands, and
it fell upon the dirty floor between them.

“You great fool!” shouted Mrs. Wilson; and catching
up the sheet with both hands, she struck Dora a
swinging blow with it in her face.

“Ye did that o' purpose, ye know ye did, 'cause you
was mad at having to fold it over.”

“I did not,” said Dora's voice, in an ominous tone,
while her eyes were raised steadily to her aunt's face.

“Say I lie, do ye!” screamed the angry woman.
“You impudent trollop, I'll teach ye to sarce me that
way. You open your head agin, an' see if ye don't get
fits.”

To this Dora made no reply in words, but her looks
were too expressive to be misunderstood, and her aunt,
after a moment's pause, continued, —

“Now I ain't a goin' to have ye stand there lookin' as

if ye'd eat me up. I can tell ye what it is, miss, the best
thing for you to do is to go right ter work and unlarn all
them pretty ways ye've been brought up in. They won't
set well here, I can tell ye. Yer mother was as weak as
water, and as silly about you as a hen with one chick;
but I ain't no sech a fool.”

“My mother was not a fool, nor silly, nor weak. You
don't know anything about her, and I wish you wouldn't
talk about her,” said Dora, firmly and quietly.

“Hity-tity, ma'am!” cried Mrs. Wilson, furiously.
“Do ye know who yer talkin' to? Do ye see that 'ere
stick over the fireplace? Well, I can tell ye now that
you and it will be like to git putty well acquainted before
many more minits, ef ye don't down on yer knees
and beg my pardon. Tell ye what, gal, I'm bound to
tame ye down; that's partly what I took ye for, and it's
jest as well to begin now as any time. We'll soon see,
miss, who's the boss o' this shanty.”

sang Dick Wilson, a lad of eighteen, who, being now too
big to be beaten by his mother, revenged himself by insolence
for the injustice and tyranny she had exercised over
his childhood.

The sins of the parents are, indeed, visited on the children;
but also they rebound heavily to punish the source
whence they came.

“You, Dick, clear out o' this. Clear, I say, or I'll
scald ye, same 's I would a dog,” screamed Mrs.
Wilson.

“Don't ye git riled, old lady. Tain't good for yer
stummick,” drawled Dick, without rising. “And as
for Do, I reckon you'd better let her alone. She ain't
used to our lovin' little ways here, and tain't best ter give
her too big a dose ter once. Clear, little un,” continued
he, pointing with his thumb to the open stairs leading to
the loft where all the girls slept together.

Mrs. Wilson, glaring from one to the other, remained
for a moment irresolute whether to first attack son or
niece; and Dora, without waiting for her to decide,
walked quietly across the kitchen and up the stairs,
leaving mother and son to a short but spirited battle of
words, ending in Dick rushing off to “the grocery” at
the cross roads, declaring, as he slammed the door behind
him, that he wished he could go to Bedlam to live, instead
of such a house as his own.