Sweet Cicely | Page 9

time at her, and polite. He liked Cicely: nobody could
help likin' the gentle, saintly-souled little woman. But he wus sot: he
wus makin' money fast by it, and she had to give up.
And rough men and women would sometimes twit her of it,--of her
property bein' used to advance the liquor-traffic, and ruin men and
wimmen; and she a feelin' like death about it, and her hands tied up,
and powerless. No wonder that her face got whiter and whiter, and her
eyes bigger and mournfuller-lookin'.
Wall, she kep' on, tryin' to do all she could: she joined the Woman's
Temperance Union; she spent her money free as water, where she
thought it would do any good, and brought up the boy jest as near right
as she could possibly bring him up; and she prayed, and wept right
when she wus a bringin' of him, a thinkin' that her property wus a bein'
used every day and every hour in ruinin' other mothers' boys. And the
boy's face almost breakin' her heart every time she looked at it; for,
though he wus jest as pretty as a child could be, the pretty rosy lips had
the same good-tempered, irresolute curve to 'em that the boy inherited
honestly. And he had the same weak, waverin' chin. It was white and
rosy now, with a dimple right in the centre, sweet enough to kiss. But
the chin wus there, right under the rosy snow and the dimple; and I
foreboded, too, and couldn't blame Cicely a mite for her forebodin', and
her agony of sole.
I noticed them lips and that chin the very minute Josiah brought him
into the settin'-room, and set him down; and my eyes looked dubersome
at him through my specks. Cicely see it, see that dubersome look,
though I tried to turn it off by kissin' him jest as hearty as I could after I
had took the little black-robed figure of his mother, and hugged her
close to my heart, and kissed her time and time agin.

She always dressed in the deepest of mournin', and always would. I
knew that.
Wall, we wus awful glad to see Cicely. I had had the old fireplace fixed
in the front spare room, and a crib put in there for the boy; and I went
right up to her room with her. And when we had got there, I took her
right in my arms agin, as I used to, and told her how glad I wus, and
how thankful I wus, to have her and the boy with us.
The fire sparkled up on the old brass handirons as warm as my
welcome. Her bed and the boy's bed looked white and cozy aginst the
dark red of the carpet and the cream-colored paper. And after I had
lowered the pretty ruffled muslin curtains (with red ones under 'em),
and pulled a stand forward, and lit a lamp,--it wus sundown,--the room
looked cheerful enough for anybody, and it seemed as if Cicely looked
a little less white and brokenhearted. She wus glad to be with me, and
said she wuz. But right there--before supper; and we could smell the
roast chicken and coffee, havin' left the stair-door open--right there,
before we had visited hardly any, or talked a mite about other wimmen,
she begun on what she wanted to do, and what she must do, for the boy.
I had told her how the boy had grown, and that sot her off. And from
that night, every minute of her time almost, when she could without
bein' impolite and troublesome (Cicely wus a perfect lady, inside and
out), she would talk to me about what she wanted to do for the boy, to
have the laws changed before he grew up; she didn't dare to let him go
out into the world with the laws as they was now, with temptation on
every side of him.
[Illustration: THE SPARE ROOM.]
"You know, aunt Samantha," she says to me, "that I wanted to die when
my husband died; but I want to live now. Why, I must live; I cannot die,
I dare not die until my boy is safer. I will work, I will die if necessary,
for him."
It wus the same old Cicely, I see, not carin' for herself, but carin' only
for them she loved. Lovin' little creeter, good little creeter, she always

wuz, and always would be. And so I told Josiah.
Wall, we had the boy set between us to the supper-table, Josiah and me
did, in Thomas Jefferson's little high-chair. I had new covered it on
purpose for him with bright copperplate calico.
And that night at supper, and after supper, I judged, and judged
calmly,-- we made the estimate