Be Courteous | Page 3

feet, "that we call at Appledale, and invite Miss Martha and Miss Emma Lindsay to be of our company, please manifest it by raising the right hand. It is a vote," he quietly continued, taking his seat.
"Mary Palmer!" called out Fanny; "you are a simpleton, and so fond of serving people as to court insult."
Mary's cheek flushed a little. It was not the first time that she had been called a simpleton, or some kindred name, by the out-spoken Miss Fanny; for this young lady prided herself on not being afraid to speak plainly, and tell people just what she thought of them.
As we before said, Mary's cheek flushed a little; but she instantly thought to herself, "It is Fanny, and I won't mind it." So she smiled, and said very gently, "I am sure, Fanny, that no sensible person will insult me for trying to be courteous, though I may not exactly understand the way. It can do the Misses Lindsay no harm to receive such an invitation from us, and we cannot be injured by a refusal."
"For my own part," said Henry, "I think that the question whether we are to be neighbors or not should be settled. They are strangers, and it is our business to make the first advance toward an acquaintance. If they decline, we have only hereafter to keep at a respectful distance."
"Precious little respect will they find in me," said Fanny. "I am too much of a Yankee to flatter people by subserviency, or to put myself out of the way to gain acquaintances about whom I care not a fig. But drive on: while we are prating and voting about the nabobs at Appledale the sun is growing hot."
Henry gathered up his reins, and away the wagons clattered down the long hill, and with a short, thunder-like rumble crossed the bridge between the Sliver Place and Appledale. Perhaps the writer may be called to account for this romantic name: he will therefore give it here. Appledale was once called Snag-Orchard, on account of the old trees whose fugitive roots often found their way into the road, making great trouble, and causing great complaint from the citizens, who yearly worked out a tax there.
The people of that place would never have thought of calling it anything else, had it not been for Susan and Margaret Sliver, who sometimes wrote verses, and thought that Appledale sounded better in poetry than did Snag-Orchard. These ladies, (they called themselves young, but we must be truthful, even at the expense of courtesy,) --these ladies, Margaret and Susan, said that this old place was decidedly romantic; but the plain people living in that vicinity knew but little of romance. If they saved time from hard labor to read their Bible, it was certainly a subject for thankfulness. Most of them thought that Snag-Orchard was a gloomy place, and that it was a pity for so much good ground to be taken up with overgrown trees. It suited Mr. Croswell, however, who was the former proprietor. He had but little interest in the land belonging to this world, for all his relatives, nearly every one, had gone to the land that is "very far off." He loved the trees, and seemed to us like an old tree himself, from which kindred branch and spray had fallen, leaving him in the world's wilderness alone. Some thought him melancholy; but he was not: he was only waiting upon the shore of that river dividing the "blessed land" from ours; and one spring morning, very suddenly to his neighbors, he crossed that river, and found more, infinitely more than he had ever lost. After he was gone, the house was closed for a time; and through the bright days of the following summer, when the foliage became heavy upon the old trees, casting so deep a shadow as to make noonday but twilight there, and when the night breeze sang mournfully among the pines in the rear of that old house, people coming from the pond by the way of the plain looked stealthily over their shoulders at Snag-Orchard: but they knew not why, for nothing was there--nothing but loneliness and desertion.
There was a report among the school children that the Croswell house was haunted; and in his merry moods poor Graffam had told the boys, how many a time upon a dark night, when going from Motley's Mills to his house upon the plain, he had seen that house brilliantly illuminated, and once or twice had heard old Mr. Croswell call to him from the window, and say, "Beware, Graffam, beware." Little, however, was thought of these stories, for we all knew that the unhappy man often went home at night with a fire upon his brain, and had no doubt