A Modern Cinderella | Page 9

Di looked on approvingly, for, though
stony-hearted regarding the cause, she fully appreciated the effect; and
John, turning to the window, received the commendations of a robin
swaying on an elm-bough with sunshine on its ruddy breast.
The clock struck five, and John declared that he must go; for, being an
old-fashioned soul, he fancied that his mother had a better right to his
last hour than any younger woman in the land,-- always remembering
that "she was a widow, and he her only son."
Nan ran away to wash her hands, and came back with the appearance of
one who had washed her face also: and so she had; but there was a
difference in the water.
"Play I'm your father, girls, and remember that it will be six months
before 'that John' will trouble you again."
With which preface the young man kissed his former playfellows as

heartily as the boy had been wont to do, when stern parents banished
him to distant schools, and three little maids bemoaned his fate. But
times were changed now; for Di grew alarmingly rigid during the
ceremony; Laura received the salute like a graceful queen; and Nan
returned it with heart and eyes and tender lips, making such an
improvement on the childish fashion of the thing that John was moved
to support his paternal character by softly echoing her father's
words,--"Take care of yourself, my little 'Martha.'"
Then they all streamed after him along the garden-path, with the
endless messages and warnings girls are so prone to give; and the
young man, with a great softness at his heart, went away, as many
another John has gone, feeling better for the companionship of innocent
maidenhood, and stronger to wrestle with temptation, to wait and hope
and work.
"Let's throw a shoe after him for luck, as dear old 'Mrs. Gummage' did
after 'David' and the 'willin' Barkis!' Quick, Nan! you always have old
shoes on; toss one, and shout, 'Good luck!'" cried Di, with one of her
eccentric inspirations.
Nan tore off her shoe, and threw it far along the dusty road, with a
sudden longing to become that auspicious article of apparel, that the
omen might not fail.
Looking backward from the hill-top, John answered the meek shout
cheerily, and took in the group with a lingering glance: Laura in the
shadow of the elms, Di perched on the fence, and Nan leaning far over
the gate with her hand above her eyes and the sunshine touching her
brown hair with gold. He waved his hat and turned away; but the music
seemed to die out of the blackbird's song, and in all the summer
landscape his eyes saw nothing but the little figure at the gate.
"Bless and save us! here's a flock of people coming; my hair is in a toss,
and Nan's without her shoe; run! fly, girls! or the Philistines will be
upon us!" cried Di, tumbling off her perch in sudden alarm.
Three agitated young ladies, with flying draperies and countenances of

mingled mirth and dismay, might have been seen precipitating
themselves into a respectable mansion with unbecoming haste; but the
squirrels were the only witnesses of this "vision of sudden flight," and,
being used to ground-and-lofty tumbling, didn't mind it.
When the pedestrians passed, the door was decorously closed, and no
one visible but a young man, who snatched something out of the road,
and marched away again, whistling with more vigor of tone than
accuracy of tune, "Only that, and nothing more."
HOW IT WAS FOUND.
Summer ripened into autumn, and something fairer than
"Sweet-peas and mignonette In Annie's garden grew."
Her nature was the counterpart of the hill-side grove, where as a child
she had read her fairy tales, and now as a woman turned the first pages
of a more wondrous legend still. Lifted above the many-gabled roof,
yet not cut off from the echo of human speech, the little grove seemed a
green sanctuary, fringed about with violets, and full of summer melody
and bloom. Gentle creatures haunted it, and there was none to make
afraid; wood-pigeons cooed and crickets chirped their shrill roundelays,
anemones and lady-ferns looked up from the moss that kissed the
wanderer's feet. Warm airs were all afloat, full of vernal odors for the
grateful sense, silvery birches shimmered like spirits of the wood,
larches gave their green tassels to the wind, and pines made airy music
sweet and solemn, as they stood looking heavenward through veils of
summer sunshine or shrouds of wintry snow.
Nan never felt alone now in this charmed wood; for when she came
into its precincts, once so full of solitude, all things seemed to wear one
shape, familiar eyes looked at her from the violets in the grass, familiar
words sounded