Ernest Linwood | Page 7

We shall both feel differently then. I would not have you yield to the dictates of passion, neither would I have you forfeit your self-respect. I must not rashly counsel."
"I would not let her go back at all," exclaimed a firm, decided voice. "They ain't fit to hold the water to wash her hands."
"Peggy," said my mother, rebukingly, "you forget yourself."
"I always try to do that," she replied, while she placed on the table my customary supper of bread and milk.
"Yes, indeed you do," answered my mother, gratefully,--"kind and faithful friend. But humility becometh my child better than pride."
Peggy looked hard at my mother, with a mixture of reverence, pity, and admiration in her clear, honest eye, then taking a coarse towel, she rubbed a large silver spoon, till it shone brighter and brighter, and laid it by the side of my bowl. She had first spread a white napkin under it, to give my simple repast an appearance of neatness and gentility. The bowl itself was white, with a wreath of roses round the rim, both inside and out. Those rosy garlands had been for years the delight of my eyes. I always hailed the appearance of the glowing leaves, when the milky fluid sunk below them, with a fresh appreciation of their beauty. They gave an added relish to the Arcadian meal. They fed my love of the beautiful and the pure. That large, bright silver spoon,--I was never weary of admiring that also. It was massive--it was grand--and whispered a tale of former grandeur. Indeed, though the furniture of our cottage was of the simplest, plainest kind, there were many things indicative of an earlier state of luxury and elegance. My mother always used a golden thimble,--she had a toilet case inlaid with pearl, and many little articles appropriate only to wealth, and which wealth only purchases. These were never displayed, but I had seen them, and made them the corner-stones of many an airy castle.
CHAPTER IV.
And who was Peggy?
She was one of the best and noblest women God ever made. She was a treasury of heaven's own influences.
And yet she wore the form of a servant, and like her divine Master, there was "no beauty" in her that one should desire to look upon her.
She had followed my mother through good report and ill report. She had clung to her in her fallen fortunes as something sacred, almost divine. As the Hebrew to the ark of the covenant,--as the Greek to his country's palladium,--as the children of Freedom to the star-spangled banner,--so she clung in adversity to her whom in prosperity she almost worshipped. I learned in after years, all that we owed this humble, self-sacrificing, devoted friend. I did not know it then--at least not all--not half. I knew that she labored most abundantly for us,--that she ministered to my mother with as much deference as if she were an empress, anticipating her slightest wants and wishes, deprecating her gratitude, and seeming ashamed of her own goodness and industry. I knew that her plain sewing, assisted by my mother's elegant needle-work, furnished us the means of support; but I had always known it so, and it seemed all natural and right. Peggy was strong and robust. The burden of toil rested lightly on her sturdy shoulders. It seemed to me that she was born with us and for us,--that she belonged to us as rightfully as the air we breathed, and the light that illumined us. It never entered my mind that we could live without Peggy, or that Peggy could live without us.
My mother's health was very delicate. She could not sew long without pressing her hand on her aching side, and then Peggy would draw her work gently from her with her large, kind hand, make her lie down and rest, or walk out in the fresh air, till the waxen hue was enlivened on her pallid cheek. She would urge her to go into the garden and gather flowers for Gabriella, "because the poor child loved so to see them in the room." We had a sweet little garden, where Peggy delved at early sunrise and evening twilight. Without ever seeming hurried or overtasked, she accomplished every thing. We had the earliest vegetables, and the latest. We had fruit, we had flowers, all the result of Peggy's untiring, providing hand. The surplus vegetables and fruit she carried to the village market, and though they brought but a trifle in a country town, where every thing was so abundant, yet Peggy said, "we must not despise the day of small gains." She took the lead in all business matters in-doors and out-doors. She never asked my mother if she had better do this and that; she went right ahead, doing what she thought