Faith Gartneys Girlhood | Page 3

the right?"
"Since this fortune falls to you, Be content, and seek no new."
MERCHANT OF VENICE.
"Now, Mahala Harris," said Faith, as she glanced in at the nursery door,
which opened from her room, "don't let Hendie get up a French
Revolution here while I'm gone to dinner."

"Land sakes! Miss Faith! I don't know what you mean, nor whether I
can help it. I dare say he'd get up a Revolution of '76, over again, if he
once set out. He does train like 'lection, fact, sometimes."
"Well, don't let him build barricades with all the chairs, so that I shall
have to demolish my way back again. I'm going to lay out my dress for
to-night."
And very little dinner could her young appetite manage on this last day
of the year. All her vital energy was busy in her anticipative brain, and
glancing thence in sparkles from her eyes, and quivering down in swift
currents to her restless little feet. It mattered little that there was
delicious roast beef smoking on the table, and Christmas pies arrayed
upon the sideboard, while upstairs the bright ribbon and tiny, shining,
old-fashioned buckles were waiting to be shaped into rosettes for the
new slippers, and the lace hung, half basted, from the neck of the
simple but delicate silk dress, and those lovely greenhouse flowers
stood in a glass dish on her dressing table, to be sorted for her hair, and
into a graceful breast knot. No--dinner was a very secondary and
contemptible affair, compared with these.
There were few forms or faces, truly, that were pleasanter to look upon
in the group that stood, disrobed of their careful outer wrappings, in
Mrs. Rushleigh's dressing room; their hurried chat and gladsome
greetings distracted with the drawing on of gloves and the last
adjustment of shining locks, while the bewildering music was floating
up from below, mingled with the hum of voices from the rooms where,
as children say, "the party had begun" already.
And Mrs. Rushleigh, when Faith paid her timid respects in the
drawing-room at last, made her welcome with a peculiar grace and
empressement that had their own flattering weight and charm; for the
lady was a sort of St. Peter of fashion, holding its mystic keys, and
admitting or rejecting whom she would; and culled, with marvelous
tact and taste, the flower of the up-growing world of Mishaumok to
adorn "her set."
After which, Faith, claimed at once by an eager aspirant, and beset with

many a following introduction and petition, was drawn to and kept in
the joyous whirlpool of the dance, till she had breathed in enough of
delight and excitement to carry her quite beyond the thought even of
ices and oysters and jellies and fruits, and the score of unnamable
luxuries whereto the young revelers were duly summoned at half past
ten o'clock.
Four days' anticipation--four hours' realization--culminated in the
glorious after-supper midnight dance, when, marshaled hither and
thither by the ingenious orders of the band, the jubilant company found
itself, just on the impending stroke of twelve, drawn out around the
room in one great circle; and suddenly a hush of the music, at the very
poising instant of time, left them motionless for a moment to burst out
again in the age-honored and heartwarming strains of "Auld Lang
Syne." Hand joining hand they sang its chorus, and when the last note
had lingeringly died away, one after another gently broke from their
places, and the momentary figure melted out with the dying of the Year,
never again to be just so combined. It was gone, as vanishes also every
other phase and grouping in the kaleidoscope of Time.
"Now is the very 'witching hour' to try the Sortes!"
Margaret Rushleigh said this, standing on the threshold of a little inner
apartment that opened from the long drawing-room, at one end.
She held in her hand a large and beautiful volume--a gift of Christmas
Day.
"Here are Fates for everybody who cares to find them out!"
The book was a collection of poetical quotations, arranged by numbers,
and to be chosen thereby, and the chance application taken as an oracle.
Everything like fortune telling, or a possible peering into the things of
coming time, has such a charm! Especially with them to whom the past
is but a prelude and beginning, and for whom the great, voluminous
Future holds enwrapped the whole mystic Story of Life!

"No, no, this won't do!" cried the young lady, as circle behind circle
closed and crowded eagerly about her. "Fate doesn't give out her
revelations in such wholesale fashion. You must come up with proper
reverence, one by one."
As she spoke, she withdrew a little within the curtained archway, and,
placing the crimson-covered book of destiny upon