Helen and Arthur | Page 8

dropping a bundle of snowy linen on the floor.
"What in the name of creation is this?" cried Mr. Gleason, throwing
down his book, as the yellow ball rolled violently against his legs.
Louis Gleason, a boy of twelve, who was seated with the fingers of his
left hand playing hide and seek among his bright elf locks, while his
right danced over a slate, making algebra signs with marvelous rapidity,
jumped up three feet in the air, letting his slate fall with a tremendous
crash, and destroying many a beautiful equation.
Mittie Gleason, a young girl of about nine, who was deep in the
abstractions of grammar, and sat with her fore-fingers in her ears, and
her head bent down to her book, so that all disturbing sounds might be
excluded, threw her chair backward in the fright, and ran head first
against Miss Thusa, who was the only one whose self-possession did
not seem shocked by the unceremonious entrance of the little visitor.
"It's nobody in the world but little Helen," said she, gathering up the
bundle in her arms and carrying it towards the blazing fire. The child,
who had been only stunned, not injured by the fall, began to recover the
use of its faculties, and opened its large, wild-looking eyes on the
family group we have described.
"She has been walking in her sleep, poor little thing," said her mother,
pressing her cold hands in both hers.
Helen knew that this was not the case, and she knew too, that it was
wrong to sanction by her silence an erroneous impression, but she was
afraid of her father's anger if she confessed the truth, afraid that he
would send her back to the dark room and lonely trundle-bed. She
expected that Miss Thusa would call her a foolish child, and tell her

parents all her terrors of the worm-eaten traveler, and she raised her
timid eyes to her face, wondering at her silence. There was something
in those prophetic orbs, which she could not read. There seemed to be a
film over them, baffling her penetration, and she looked down with a
long, laboring breath.
Miss Thusa began to feel that her legends might make a deeper
impression than she imagined or intended. She experienced an odd
mixture of triumph and regret--triumph in her power, and regret for its
consequences. She had, too, an instinctive sense that the parents of
Helen would be displeased with her, were they aware of the influence
she had exerted, and deprive her hereafter of the most admiring auditor
that ever hung on her oracular lips. She had meant no harm, but she
was really sorry she had told that "powerful story" at such a late hour,
and pressed the child closer in her arms with a tenderness deepened by
self-reproach.
"I suspect Miss Thusa has been telling her some of her awful ghost
stories," said Louis, laughing over the wreck of his slate. "I know what
sent the yellow caterpillar crawling down stairs."
"Crawling!" repeated his father, "I think it was leaping, bouncing, more
like a catamount than a caterpillar."
"I would be ashamed to be a coward and afraid of ghosts," exclaimed
Mittie, with a scornful flash of her bright, black eyes.
"Miss Thusa didn't tell about ghosts," said Helen, bursting into a
passion of tears. This was true, in the letter, but not in the spirit--and,
young as she was, she knew and felt it, and the wormwood of remorse
gave bitterness to her tears. Never had she felt so wretched, so
humiliated. She had fallen in her own estimation. Her father, brother
and sister had ridiculed her and called her names--a terrible thing for a
child. One had called her a caterpillar, another a catamount, and a third
a coward. And added to all this was a sudden and unutterable horror of
the color of yellow, formerly her favorite hue. She mentally resolved
never to wear that horrible yellow night dress, which had drawn upon
her so many odious epithets, even though she froze to death without it.

She would rather wear her old ones, even if they had ten thousand
patches, than that bright, new, golden tinted garment, so late the object
of her intense admiration.
"I declare," cried Louis, unconscious of the Spartan resolution his little
sister was forming, and good naturedly seeking to turn her tears into
smiles, "I do declare, I thought Helen was a pumpkin, bursting into the
room with such a noise, wrapped up in this yellow concern. Mother,
what in the name of all that's tasteful, makes you clothe her by night in
Chinese mourning?"
"It was her own choice," replied Mrs. Gleason, taking the weeping
child in her own lap. "She saw a little girl dressed in this style, and