Jacks Ward | Page 4

work; perhaps not before
spring."
"Didn't I tell you so?" commented Rachel, with sepulchral sadness.
Even Mrs. Harding couldn't help looking sober.
"I suppose, Timothy, you haven't formed any plans," she said.
"No, I haven't had time. I must try to get something else to do."
"What, for instance?"
"Anything by which I can earn a little; I don't care if it's only sawing
wood. We shall have to get along as economically as we can--cut our
coat according to our cloth."
"Oh, you'll be able to earn something, and we can live very plain," said
Mrs. Harding, affecting a cheerfulness she didn't feel.
"Pity you hadn't done it sooner," was the comforting suggestion of
Rachel.
"Mustn't cry over spilt milk," said the cooper, good-humoredly.
"Perhaps we might have lived a leetle more economically, but I don't
think we've been extravagant."
"Besides, I can earn something, father," said Jack, hopefully. "You
know I did this afternoon."
"So you can," said his mother, brightly.
"There ain't horses to hold every day," said Rachel, apparently fearing
that the family might become too cheerful, when, like herself, it was
their duty to be profoundly gloomy.

"You're always tryin' to discourage people, Aunt Rachel," said Jack,
discontentedly.
Rachel took instant umbrage at these words.
"I'm sure," said she, mournfully, "I don't want to make you unhappy. If
you can find anything to be cheerful about when you're on the verge of
starvation, I hope you'll enjoy yourselves, and not mind me. I'm a poor,
dependent creetur, and I feel I'm a burden."
"Now, Rachel, that's all foolishness," said Timothy. "You don't feel
anything of the kind."
"Perhaps others can tell how I feel better than I can myself," answered
his sister, with the air of a martyr. "If it hadn't been for me, I know
you'd have been able to lay up money, and have something to carry you
through the winter. It's hard to be a burden on your relations, and bring
a brother's family to this poverty."
"Don't talk of being a burden, Rachel," said Mrs. Harding. "You've
been a great help to me in many ways. That pair of stockings, now,
you're knitting for Jack--that's a help, for I couldn't have got time for
them myself."
"I don't expect," said Aunt Rachel, in the same sunny manner, "that I
shall be able to do it long. From the pains I have in my hands
sometimes, I expect I'm goin' to lose the use of 'em soon, and be as
useless as old Mrs. Sprague, who for the last ten years of her life had to
sit with her hands folded on her lap. But I wouldn't stay to be a
burden--I'd go to the poorhouse first. But perhaps," with the look of a
martyr, "they wouldn't want me there, because I'd be discouragin' 'em
too much."
Poor Jack, who had so unwittingly raised this storm, winced under the
last words, which he knew were directed at him.
"Then why," asked he, half in extenuation, "why don't you try to look
pleasant and cheerful? Why won't you be jolly, as Tom Piper's aunt is?"

"I dare say I ain't pleasant," said Rachel, "as my own nephew twits me
with it. There is some folks that can be cheerful when their house is
a-burnin' down before their eyes, and I've heard of one young man that
laughed at his aunt's funeral," directing a severe glance at Jack; "but I'm
not one of that kind. I think, with the Scriptures, that there's a time to
weep."
"Doesn't it say there's a time to laugh, too?" asked Mrs. Harding.
"When I see anything to laugh about, I'm ready to laugh," said Aunt
Rachel; "but human nater ain't to be forced. I can't see anything to
laugh at now, and perhaps you won't by and by."
It was evidently quite useless to persuade Rachel to cheerfulness, and
the subject dropped.
The tea things were cleared away by Mrs. Harding, who then sat down
to her sewing. Aunt Rachel continued to knit in grim silence, while
Jack seated himself on a three-legged stool near his aunt, and began to
whittle out a boat, after a model lent him by Tom Piper, a young
gentleman whose aunt has already been referred to.
The cooper took out his spectacles, wiped them carefully with his
handkerchief, and as carefully adjusted them to his nose. He then took
down from the mantelpiece one of the few books belonging to his
library--"Dr. Kane's Arctic Explorations"--and began to read, for the
tenth time, it might be, the record of these daring explorers.
The plain little room presented a picture of graceful tranquillity, but it
proved to be only the calm which preceded the storm.
The storm in question, I regret to say, was brought about