The Green Door | Page 5

below, as she stood in her bare
feet on the icy floor and gazed about her, dizzy with sleep.
"Hasten and dress yourself," said Goodwife Hopkins. "Here are some
of Letitia's garments I have laid out for you. Those which you wore

here I have put away in the chest. They are too gay, and do not befit a
sober, God-fearing damsel."
With that, Goodwife Hopkins descended to the room below, and Letitia
dressed herself. It did not take her long. There was not much to put on
beside a coarse wool petticoat and a straight little wool gown, rough
yarn stockings, and such shoes as she had never seen.
"I couldn't run from Injuns in these," thought Letitia miserably. When
she got downstairs she discovered what the buzzing noise was. Her
great-great-grandmother was spinning. Her great-great-aunt Candace
was knitting, and little Phyllis was scouring the hearth. Goodwife
Hopkins was preparing breakfast.
"Go to the other wheel," said she to Letitia, "and spin until the porridge
is done. We can have no idle hands here."
Letitia looked helplessly at a great spinning-wheel in the corner, then at
her great-great-great-grandmother.
"I don't know how," she faltered.
Then all the great-grandmothers and the aunts cried out with
astonishment.
"She doesn't know how to spin!" they said to one another.
Letitia felt dreadfully ashamed.
"You must have been strangely brought up," said Goodwife Hopkins.
"Well, take this stocking and round out the toe. There will be just about
time enough for that before breakfast."
"I don't know how to knit," stammered Letitia.
Then there was another cry of astonishment. Goodwife Hopkins cast
about her for another task for this ignorant guest.
"Explain the doctrine of predestination," said she suddenly.

Letitia jumped up and stared at her with scared eyes.
"Don't you know what predestination is?" demanded Goodwife
Hopkins.
"No, ma'am," half sobbed Letitia.
Her great-great-grandmother and her great-great-aunts made shocked
exclamations, and her great-great-great-grandmother looked at her with
horror. "You have been brought up as one of the heathen," said she.
Then she produced a small book, and Letitia was bidden to seat herself
upon a stool and learn the doctrine of predestination before breakfast.
The kitchen was lighted only by one tallow candle and the firelight, for
it was still far from dawn. Letitia drew her little stool close to the
hearth, and bent anxiously over the fire-lit page. She committed to
memory easily, and repeated the text like a frightened parrot when she
was called upon.
"The child has good parts, though she is woefully ignorant," said
Goodwife Hopkins aside to her husband. "It shall be my care to instruct
her."
Letitia, having completed her task, was given her breakfast. It was only
a portion of corn-meal porridge in a pewter plate. She had never had
such a strange breakfast in her life, and she did not like corn-meal. She
sat with it untasted before her.
"Why don't you eat?" asked her great-great-great-grandmother
severely.
"I--don't--like--it," faltered Letitia.
If possible, they were all more shocked by that than they had been by
her ignorance.
"She doesn't like the good porridge," the little great-great-aunts said to
each other.

"Eat the porridge," commanded Captain John Hopkins sternly, when he
had gotten over his surprise.
Letitia ate the porridge, every grain of it. After breakfast the serious
work of the day began. Letitia had never known anything like it. She
felt like a baby who had just come into a new world. She was ignorant
of everything that these strange relatives knew. It made no difference
that she knew some things which they did not, some advanced things.
She could, for instance, crochet, if she could not knit. She could repeat
the multiplication-table, if she did not know the doctrine of
predestination; she had also all the States of the Union by heart. But
advanced knowledge is not of as much value in the past as past
knowledge in the future. She could not crochet, because there was no
crochet needles; there were no States of the Union; and it seemed
doubtful if there was a multiplication-table, there was so little to
multiply.
So Letitia had set herself to acquiring the wisdom of her ancestors. She
learned to card, and hetchel, and spin and weave. She learned to dye
cloth, and make coarse garments, even for her
great-great-great-grandfather, Captain John Hopkins. She knitted yarn
stockings, she scoured brass and pewter, and, more than all, she learned
the entire catechism. Letitia had never really known what work was.
From long before dawn until long after dark, she toiled. She was not
allowed to spend one idle moment. She had no chance to steal out and
search for the little green door, even had she not been so afraid of wild
beasts and Indians.
She never went out of the