The Green Door | Page 5

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 house except on the Sabbath day. Then, in fair or foul weather, they all went to meeting, ten miles through the dense forest. Captain John Hopkins strode ahead, his gun over his shoulder. Goodwife Hopkins rode the gray horse, and the girls rode by turns, two at a time, clinging to the pillion at her back. Letitia was never allowed to wear her own pretty plain dress, with the velvet collar, even to meeting.
"It would create a scandal in the sanctuary," said Goodwife Hopkins. So Letitia went always in the queer little coarse and scanty gown, which seemed to