Bessies Fortune | Page 9

day when Grey succeeded in capturing his hands, Granpa
Jerrold ceased to interfere with the play-house, and the boy was left in
peace upon the bench, though his grandfather often sat near and
watched him anxiously, and always seemed relieved when the child
tired of that particular spot and wandered elsewhere in quest of
amusement.
There was, however, one place in the house which Grey never sought
to penetrate, and that was his grandfather's bedroom. It is true he had
never been allowed to enter it, for one of Hannah's first lessons was that
her father did not like children in his room. Ordinarily this would have
made no difference with Grey, who had a way of going where he
pleased; but the gloomy appearance of the room where the curtains
were always down did not attract him, and he would only go as far as

the door and look in, saying to his aunt:
"Bears in there! Grey not go."
And Hannah let him believe in the bears, and breathed more freely
when he came away from the door, though she frequently whispered to
herself.
"Some time Grey will know, for I must tell him, and he will help me."
This fancy that Grey was to lift the cloud which overshadowed her, was
a consolation to Hannah, and helped to make life endurable, when at
last his parents returned from Europe, and he went to his home in
Boston. After that Grey spent some portion of every summer at the
farm-house growing more and more fond of his Aunt Hannah,
notwithstanding her quiet manner and the severe plainness of her
personal appearance so different from his mother and his Aunt Lucy
Grey. His Aunt Hannah always wore a calico dress, or something
equally as plain and inexpensive, and her hands were rough and hard
with toil, for she never had any one to help her. She could not afford it,
she said, and that was always her excuse for the self-denials she
practiced. And still Grey knew that she sometimes had money, for he
had seen his father give her gold in exchange for bills, and he once
asked her why she did not use it for her comfort. There was a look of
deep pain in her eyes, and her voice was sadder than its wont, as she
replied:
"I cannot touch that money. It is not mine; it would be stealing, to take
a penny of it."
Grey saw the question troubled his Aunt Hannah, and so he said no
more on the subject, but thought that when he was a man, and had
means of his own, he would improve and beautify the old farm-house,
which, though scrupulously neat and clean, was in its furnishing plain
in the extreme. Not a superfluous article, except what had been sent
from Boston, had been bought since he could remember, and the carpet,
and chairs, and curtains in the best room had been there ever since his
father was a boy. And still Grey loved the place better than Grey's Park,

where he was always a welcome guest, and where his Aunt Lucy petted
him, if possible, more than did his Aunt Hannah.
And sweet Lucy Grey, in her trailing dress of rich, black silk, with
ruffles of soft lace at her throat and wrists, and costly diamonds on her
white fingers, made a picture perfectly harmonious with Grey's natural
taste and ideas of a lady. She was lovely as are the pictures of Murillo's
Madonnas, and Grey, who knew her story, reverenced her as something
saintly and pure above any woman he had ever known. And here,
perhaps, as well as elsewhere, we may very briefly tell her story, in
order that the reader may better understand her character.

CHAPTER III.
LUCY.
She was five years older than her sister Geraldine, and between the two
there had been a brother--Robert, or Robin, as he was familiarly
called--a little blue-eyed, golden-haired boy, with a face always
wreathed in smiles, and a mouth which seemed made to kiss and be
kissed in return. He was three years younger than Lucy, who, having
been petted so long as the only child, looked somewhat askance at the
brother who had come to interfere with her, and as he grew older, and
developed that wonderful beauty and winning sweetness for which he
was so remarkable, the demon of jealousy took possession of the little
girl, who felt at times as if she hated him for the beauty she envied so
much.
"Oh, I wish he was blind!" she once said, in anger, when his soft blue
eyes had been extolled in her hearing and compared with her own,
which were black as midnight and bright as the wintry stars.
And, as if in answer