Devils Ford | Page 9

they ever translated this
precious dirt into actual coin?"
"Bless you, yes. Why, that dirty little gutter, you know, that ran along
the side of the road and followed us down the hill all the way here, that
cost them--let me see--yes, nearly sixty thousand dollars. And fancy!
papa's just condemned it--says it won't do; and they've got to build
another."
An impatient sigh from Christie drew Jessie's attention to her troubled
eyebrows.
"Don't worry about our disappointment, dear. It isn't so very great. I
dare say we'll be able to get along here in some way, until papa is rich
again. You know they intend to make him share with them."
"It strikes me that he is sharing with them already," said Christie,
glancing bitterly round the cabin; "sharing everything-- ourselves, our
lives, our tastes."
"Ye-e-s!" said Jessie, with vaguely hesitating assent. "Yes, even these:"
she showed two dice in the palm of her little hand. "I found 'em in the
drawer of our dressing-table."
"Throw them away," said Christie impatiently.
But Jessie's small fingers closed over the dice. "I'll give them to the
little Kearney. I dare say they were the poor boy's playthings."
The appearance of these relics of wild dissipation, however, had lifted

Christie out of her sublime resignation. "For Heaven's sake, Jessie," she
said, "look around and see if there is anything more!"
To make sure, they each began to scrimmage; the broken-spirited
Christie exhibiting both alacrity and penetration in searching obscure
corners. In the dining-room, behind the dresser, three or four books
were discovered: an odd volume of Thackeray, another of Dickens, a
memorandum-book or diary. "This seems to be Latin," said Jessie,
fishing out a smaller book. "I can't read it."
"It's just as well you shouldn't," said Christie shortly, whose ideas of a
general classical impropriety had been gathered from pages of
Lempriere's dictionary. "Put it back directly."
Jessie returned certain odes of one Horatius Flaccus to the corner, and
uttered an exclamation. "Oh, Christie! here are some letters tied up with
a ribbon."
They were two or three prettily written letters, exhaling a faint odor of
refinement and of the pressed flowers that peeped from between the
loose leaves. "I see, 'My darling Fairfax.' It's from some woman."
"I don't think much of her, whosoever she is," said Christie, tossing the
intact packet back into the corner.
"Nor I," echoed Jessie.
Nevertheless, by some feminine inconsistency, evidently the
circumstance did make them think more of HIM, for a minute later,
when they had reentered their own room, Christie remarked, "The idea
of petting a man by his family name! Think of mamma ever having
called papa 'darling Carr'!"
"Oh, but his family name isn't Fairfax," said Jessie hastily; "that's his
FIRST name, his Christian name. I forget what's his other name, but
nobody ever calls him by it."
"Do you mean," said Christie, with glistening eyes and awful

deliberation--"do you mean to say that we're expected to fall in with
this insufferable familiarity? I suppose they'll be calling US by our
Christian names next."
"Oh, but they do!" said Jessie, mischievously.
"What!"
"They call me Miss Jessie; and Kearney, the little one, asked me if
Christie played."
"And what did you say?"
"I said that you did," answered Jessie, with an affectation of cherubic
simplicity. "You do, dear; don't you? . . . There, don't get angry, darling;
I couldn't flare up all of a sudden in the face of that poor little creature;
he looked so absurd--and so--so honest."
Christie turned away, relapsing into her old resigned manner, and
assuming her household duties in a quiet, temporizing way that was,
however, without hope or expectation.
Mr. Carr, who had dined with his friends under the excuse of not
adding to the awkwardness of the first day's housekeeping returned late
at night with a mass of papers and drawings, into which he afterwards
withdrew, but not until he had delivered himself of a mysterious
package entrusted to him by the young men for his daughters. It
contained a contribution to their board in the shape of a silver spoon
and battered silver mug, which Jessie chose to facetiously consider as
an affecting reminiscence of the youthful Kearney's christening
days--which it probably was.
The young girls retired early to their white snow-drifts: Jessie not
without some hilarious struggles with hers, in which she was, however,
quickly surprised by the deep and refreshing sleep of youth; Christie to
lie awake and listen to the night wind, that had changed from the first
cool whispers of sunset to the sturdy breath of the mountain. At times
the frail house shook and trembled. Wandering gusts laden with the

deep resinous odors of the wood found their way through the imperfect
jointure of the two cabins, swept her cheek